Applied Mathemagics

While I am at Dragon*Con, I will be guest-starring as a character (an NPC) in Ben Williamson's D&D game.

I am pretty sure that I won't have any trouble at all role-playing this character... considering that it was based on me in the first place!

Now I can go all meta- on their asses! Anyway, I will try to interpret myself correctly. This character is what one might call an "applied mathemagician" (to quote Ben) who specializes in evocation spells. Sure, I can blow things up. :)

Flamestrike in the Office?

Earlier this evening, I received a spam e-mail that included the following statement:

Please join me in congratulating [name]. Based on [his/her] high level of professionalism and performance, [his/her] job level has been increased from a level 8 to a level 9.

Here is what I wrote to one of my collaborators who is very familiar with the organization in question:

So is it supposed to be universal knowledge what level 8 and level 9 actually mean? Can [name] cast 5th level spells now?

And here is his response to my message:

Wow, that's just cryptic. I'm so glad I'm not on that mailing list! Maybe [he/she] gets a new cape?

And my response to that comment:

I would like to think that I now have to be careful about Flamestrike being cast in the office. I hear that self-immolation is pretty popular these days.

The Prestige

Here's another belated movie review.

I saw The Prestige on November 15th. It was a good movie but not a great one. I appreciated the whole Tesla deal (especially his Sound And Vision), but the movie isn't great even though it is rather polished. The ending was extremely good, though I feel a bit dumb for not actually guessing it in advance and being a little surprised.

By the way, if you want to see a picture of a mathematician with the stereotypical magician's face, go here. (I have several funny stories to tell about this guy. He's a prick and people like it when he's the brunt of jokes, so these stories get propagated.)

As it's been a while since I've seen the movie, I'm not sure what else I should point out except that the movie starts out when the two battling magicians are Young Dudes and progresses a decent bit toward their Golden Years even though their mentor doesn't seem to age at all.