30 Apr 4705 - Startroid Update

Its about time, no? I've been meaning to post the game rule information on the web for about a year now, and I only recently felt the urge to do so. I should have as many lazy days to pursue my vanity projects. If you're one of my players, check out the rules I have so far under the Games heading. You may be particularly interested in the Pilot skill on the skills page.

Speaking of vanity projects, I finished my IR goggles today, and they work like a science-fiction dream. Everything looks like Mars outside when I put the goggles on. Its swank. I'll see if I can obtain some plexiglass tomorrow to cover the film, and maybe shop for some infrared LEDs to enhance the effect, or shine light that only I can see.

Along those lines, I read a little about LEDs and found out some interesting physics facts. Apparently, LEDs act like open circuits when paired with a battery because their resistance is so low. In fact, you're supposed to put them in series with a resistor of the appropriate Ohmage, or else the battery could burn out for being in an open circuit for too long.
This chafes against the engineer in me. Just put resistors in the circuit, you say? I have played with plenty of circuits in my day, and the story every single time was to keep the resistances to a minimum, and here I'm supposed to just throw one in with a light so it will work? It sounds crazy. It sounds like a terrible waste of battery power. Why not find a battery of the right output to begin with, or figure out the actual (albeit small) resistance of the LEDs and use them in parallel with each other to achieve the desired voltage drop?
My experience working with LEDs before is that they are surprisingly robust, and accept all kinds of power for extended periods of time, and guidelines be damned. The last time I stuck a string of them across the terminals of a nine-volt, the system worked just fine.
Of course, the problem with doing that this time is that I won't really know if they're working unless I have the goggles on.

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