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things-about-cars-in-posts · 2 years ago

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OMG I'm such a dumbass I knew you did one on the GR Yaris before too, and I love her ALSO, but I actually meant the GR Supra 😳🫣 (slip of the tongue)

Gotcha.

Since I managed to take some two weeks to answer this (got distracted both by real life obligations and other posts that were meant to be very quick to make. Meant to.) y'all may have forgotten, but our dear friend of the blog had asked for opinions on the GR Yaris, hinting to its controversial status. Turns out the GR Supra is what that request, and thus that hint, was actually about - so let's talk about the car and the controversy that engulfs it.

In 1993, Toyota launched the fourth generation of its rear wheel drive sportscar (well, arguably a bit of a Grand Tourer, i.e. something more oriented to cruising than a sportscar) the Supra - which was born a quarter century earlier as a more upmarket, six cylinder version of the Celica, graduating from Celica Supra to its own dignified name with the third generation I talked about that one time I forgot to check what blog I was reblogging with.

But this time, things would be different. Most notably because the inline six the Mk4 Supra came out with was an absolute MONSTER.

Remember how I talked about the GT-R's RB26 engine being one of the greatest, most coveted production engines to ever come out of Japan? Well, the 2JZ-GTE is the other.

It was larger at 3 liters, no less powerful, and to reduce turbocharger lag it used two of them sequentially: first air goes in the smaller, more responsive turbo, then gradually some of it gets sent to the bigger turbo to make it start spinning, then when it gets going the two are finally used in conjunction. (Imagine the big turbo as a hung husband that takes a while to get it up and the small turbo as an eager stepson ready to take over until the hung one can join in for a spitroast. Or something. I don't watch porn with real people, but from what I gather the plots seem to resemble how sequential turbos work.) It even at one point got Variable Valve Timing, i.e. the ability to vary the time in which the valves open depending on engine speed, which allows to optimize tuning for performance and efficiency! (Cool thing to go over in detail if y'all want me to.) And also, the kind of things that engine is able to take make me wish I hadn't used up my porn analogy quota.

See, to chop off eons of nuance, an engine is just a big block of metal with a lot of bits attached, and the two main measures of an engine's potential are the slope of the line in the Bits Fiddled With / Power Output graph and how far up (It's up, right? The second axis you specify is the vertical one, right?) you can take it before the block becomes the weakest link - with another important point being when you need to start messing with internals, i.e. the components inside the engine, e.g. pistons (the things the boom pushes down), camshaft (the thing the pistons spin) and connecting rods (you can guess).

So for instance, just to make the point that an engine can be beloved without having much overall tuning potential, in one of Toyota's most beloved engines, the 4A-GE four cylinder illustrated above (yes, the one from that white and black car in all the eurobeat videos), some pin the block's limit as low as 250hp. The 2JZ, tho? It can take 800hp without even messing with the internals, and once you get your grubby hands on those you can keep pushing the line to some 2000hp. That is two Bugattis. That is 40 times my car. That is well above the power level where "tires that will at any point grip" and "tires that are in any way road legal" stop intersecting.

I am not in the slightest exaggerating when I say that this and the Skyline GT-R are widely regarded as the top of Japan's 20th century automotive production. The Messi & Ronaldo of the Japanese Domestic Market. It is absolutely no coincidence this was the hero car in The Fast And The Furious.

And then in 2002, as all things, its production ended, and given the abysmal sales and catastrophic recession, Toyota decided that would be that.

And then, years later, The Teasening began.

I want to stress, almost half of my conscious life (I choose to believe the stretch from birth to kindergarten is just run-up) the world was in some state of getting teased with talk of a new Supra. The trademark on the name was renewed in 2010. In 2014 they dropped the FT-1 concept, and of course that became speculation about what the production version would look like.

Because come the fuck on, it's not gonna look like that.

Or was it?

Only five entire years and much more teasing later would we officially get an answer, when after seventeen years, the Toyota GR Supra (and for those wondering what GR means, y'all should've clicked the Yaris link >:C) hit the streets.

You know what, good enough.

Good enough to earn itself a sea of words of praise, Jason Cammisa's "The most punch-above-its-weight sportscar ever made" just some among them.

It did have its share of problems at the start, like its power being 335hp and not 382, a lack of manual transmission, and the inability to spec it with a less powerful 4 cylinder engine - well, I don't know who considered that last one a problem, but Toyota's updates solved that one too.

The Supra has a much bigger problem than those though, one no little update can solve. That red car in the background.

See, the new Supra is actually a joint venture with BMW, who made a new model of its Z4 roadster out of the platform. And unlike with the other joint-venture sportscar Toyota sells, people are big mad about that. Why?

See, the interior is engulfed in BMW switchgear and the drivetrain is all BMW (the manual gearbox took until this year to come out because BMW did not have one for that engine so Toyota had to modify another BMW transmission to fit), giving people the impression that this was less of a joint venture and more of a BMW project that Toyota tacked its design on top of, which is a problem whether true or not.

See, a range-topping sportscar is supposed to represent what the brand is capable of - having it done by someone else (or so the criticism goes) is a bit like performing Hallelujah in playback.

Actually, a better musical analogy: You know "I'm back bitch" singles? When a humongous artist drops a new record with a humongous lead single about absolutely nothing but reaffirming they're the biggest fucking deal in the universe? Without Me, Bad, Gimme More, so on. Well, think of SexyBack - one of the most monumental phenomenons of its decade, most incontrovertibly proving Justin Timberlake sat atop the goddamn world. Now, imagine if, after all the years that went by between that record and the next, when he finally came out with Suit And Tie all the verses were Jay-Z. Going from a humongous statement about having the power to reach the top of the game and stay there to having to get absolutely carried by what in this logic is essentially a competitor. Basically, that's the critics' complaint: the supra went from 2JZ to too much Jay-Z.

And therein lies the other problem of the Supra: the Supra.

See, any time you evaluate something, you do so relative to its context - and when you give it a nameplate, you make that context include where else that nameplate has been. An undeserved name may not just be stupid, but even outright kill the car in some's eyes, see the case of the Dodge Dart, or get me to talk about the Ford Capri prototype recently spotted if you want to find out what I'm like when I lose my cool. (I'd liken this phenomenon to undeserved Grammies but I already used my music analogy quota too.) So the Toyota Supra does not just need to be good, it needs to deserve the name. And some argue it doesn't. But why? This thing is no less powerful, no slower, hell it's not even any bigger or heavier and we've gone over how rare that is these days! So is it the lack of backseats and a targa version? No, no one gives a crap about those. It's something deeper.

Sometimes, the problem with a revival is people base their expectation not on what the original was like in the context of its time but what it's like in the context of today (for example, I've heard people call the latest GT-R "too computerized, too assisted, far from the pure driving experience of its predecessors", when its predecessors had some of the most technologically advanced driving assists of their time and could only be called "pure" and "analog" by comparison with cars decades newer). But of course, that'll only be some people - so if what the original car looks like to modern eyes and what the original car represented at its time are two different enough concepts, any revival will receive some criticism for not being one of the two.

But for the Supra, this compounds with another problem: the original Supra (as in the previous generation, since no one gives a crap about the first three), to modern eyes, looks like a thousand-horsepower flame-spitting beast, because that's what all Supras have been turned into, and that's why you know of Supras in the first place (it sure isn't because people bought it!), and that, consciously or not, exacerbates the problem of misplaced expectations to a level akin to hearing an NBA player is about to have a brother and expecting the baby to be a 6'4" three-shooter.

But I wasn't asked about the controversies, I was asked about my take. And my take is: no realistic expectation of what a Supra would look like today was disappointed - at least not by where the car stands today. Well, unless the expectation involved backseats.

"But it was made by BMW" and so? This is a new Supra, and a good one - what does it matter how it got here? Especially when this is an upgrade over the Z4 in every way - looks way better, drives better, and now has a manual that the Z4 doesn't.

Okay, almost every way: the Supra's roof won't get out of the way. If only though, if only. Could you imagine a Toyota product that looks this good, sounds this good, goes this fast, and has a drop top? ...and maybe backseats?

Well, I can.

Yes, the badge and core concept may have some people consider it from midlife crisis mobile to old man's car. (though we know it's not a car bought by old men because if that was the case someone would be buying these). But just try to imagine sitting in this thing.

Take a couple of seconds to take in that picture and truly immerse yourself. You're in a Lexus LC500 Convertible, with a V8 at your right foot's command, its spectacular sound ready to battle the perfect sound system serenading you with your fanciest CD, because of course Lexuses still come with CD players.

Are you immersed? Okay: Someone just called your Lexus a midlife crisis car. See? You don't give a shit either, do ya.

Automatic only though. The pain. Oh, and it kind of costs as much as two Supras. But, you know, neither of those Supras will be convertibles!

Links in blue are posts of mine about the topic in question - if you liked this post, you might like those!

#revivals #toyota supra #2JZ-GTE #lexus lc500 convertible

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sngl-led-auto-lights · 19 days ago

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How do you fix flickering headlight bulbs without replacing them?

Flickering headlights are almost always an electrical issue, not necessarily a failing bulb. Here’s how to diagnose and fix it without replacement, step by step:

🔧 Step-by-Step Solutions

Clean Ground Connections (Most Common Fix)

Locate ground points:

Check the battery terminal ground cable (clean with baking soda/water or wire brush).

Trace wires to the engine block ground (often bolted near strut towers).

Find the headlight harness ground (usually behind headlights or near radiator support).

Clean thoroughly:

Disconnect the battery, unbolt grounds, scrub metal surfaces with sandpaper/wire brush, and re-secure tightly.

Check Wiring & Plugs

Inspect the headlight harness plug:

Look for melted plastic, corrosion, or loose pins. Spray with electrical contact cleaner and reconnect firmly.

Test for voltage drop:

Use a multimeter:

Healthy circuit: ≤0.5V drop between battery (+) and headlight plug during operation.

1V drop indicates a bad connection.

Replace the Headlight Relay

Why: Weak/failing relays cause intermittent power cuts → flickering.

Find the relay:

Check the under-hood fuse box (refer to owner’s manual). Look for labels like "HEAD," "LOW," or "LIGHT."

Swap it with an identical relay (e.g., horn or A/C relay) to test.

Cost: 5–15 for a new relay.

Upgrade to a Headlight Wiring Harness

For older vehicles (like your Avalanche):

Factory wiring often degrades, causing voltage drop.

Install a heavy-duty harness with relays (plugs directly to battery + headlights):

Ensures stable 12V power.

Kit cost: 20–40.

Test the Alternator & Battery

Voltage check (engine running):

Healthy: 13.8–14.8V at battery terminals.

Below 13V → failing alternator/voltage regulator.

Flickering when revving engine?

Classic sign of a bad voltage regulator.

🚫 When Bulb Replacement IS Necessary

Bulb filament visibly broken (shake it – rattling = dead).

Moisture inside the headlight housing (causes short-circuit flickering).

Bulb base is corroded or melted.

⚠️ Safety Notes

Disconnect the battery before handling electrical components.

Avoid "LM386 modules" or "anti-flicker capacitors" sold online – they mask underlying issues.

For halogen bulbs: Never touch the glass (skin oil causes hot spots → premature failure).

🔍 Diagnostic Flowchart

graph TD;

A[Headlights Flickering] --> B{Both or One?};

-->Both

C[Check Battery/Alternator/Grounds];

-->One

D[Check Bulb Plug & Ground];

--> E[Clean Grounds → Test Voltage];

--> F[Clean Plug → Test for Voltage Drop];

-->Still Flickering

G[Replace Relay];

-->Still Flickering

H[Test Wiring Harness];

& H -->Fixed?

I[Done];

-->No

J[Install Relay Harness Upgrade];

If these fixes fail, the bulb itself may be faulty – but 80% of flickering cases are wiring/ground issues. Prioritize electrical troubleshooting before buying new bulbs! 🛠️

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talenlee · 2 months ago

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Dal Raeda, The First And Greatest

I’ve written about Dal Raeda, before, in parts and in places. I’ve run games there. I’ve used it as the 0,0 of the great graphing calculator of the world, and it sets the ‘normal’ in Cobrin’Seil (my own D&D setting I’ve used for a long time) for me. It is obviously informed by the way I see the world, and the world I’m used to, and it is very much an attempt to do something for the baseline of European Fantasy that doesn’t just copy England or the edge of France the way that so many fantasy nations do. In this case it’s an enormous land mass with huge barely-connected provinces and an island off the southern edge, which I, an Australian, came up with independently and on my own.

However, prior to now there’s never been a comprehensive article explaining Dal Raeda as a nation; its outlook, its divisons, and the way I think a player should look at that part of the world.

Warning: This is a long post, and it’s about a place that does not exist. This is straight up just game lore and you might not even be playing a game that can use this kind of lore.

Dal Raeda

Very large continental, near-imperial nation, the First Empire, the Centre Of The World

Dal Raeda is a multiprovincial megadiverse nation roughly 3,500 km north-to-south and 4,000 km east-to-west. Its shape is roughly comparable to a wide diamond, and its northernmost edge is south of the tropics, while its southern edges routinely deal with hard, cold, snowy winters. It is situated in the southern hemisphere and experiences its seasons opposite to most of the rest of the mainland of Bidestra.

In building Dal Raeda, I tried to get away from just ‘England 2’ that I think is too common in Dungeons & Dragons settings. I wanted something that could be familiar to the style of European fantasy that I enjoy comfortably, but I wanted to make sure it wasn’t just renaming something I was familiar with.

To that end, Dal Raeda’s naming scheme, from the top down, is built out of Old Irish words, mostly gleaned from Wiktionary. The actual provinces aren’t trying to be real specific places but are more informed by thinking about these spaces as ‘a type of guy who wants to be the king’ and then imagining a culture that might give rise to that kind of guy.

Obviously it’s all going to be very similar to British colonial culture, because that’s what I grew up in. Still, when you see things that you assume would carry obvious colonial tropes, many of these points are where I explicitly don’t want it to be that way. For example, Dal Raeda calls itself the First Empire, but strictly speaking it isn’t either the first Empire, nor is it actually an Empire – it refers to itself as an Empire to elevate the notion that the provinces are each equally as valid as nations to themselves, instead of the interdependent components of a large nation.

Dal Raeda is divided into Provinces, of which there are four, five, six or seven, depending on who you ask and when. The comprehensive list is:

Brin Proper

Danube

Deilahn

Glotharen

Sanders

Virett Keep

Willowsebb

Some consider only Danube, Glotharen, Sanders and Willowsebb to be ‘true’ Provinces, in that they were the four provincial powers that were present in the compact that made Dal Raeda into its own multinational power. They’re also large land masses that more or less divide up the mainland into four roughly-equally sized chunks (though three of them are happy to point out that Danube is the smallest of them).

Deilahn, the fifth is added to the list because it was a semi-independent nation-state that sued for entrance into that compact, and is considered culturally contiguous with the provinces next to it. It has land and people, and those people are basically the same as the people from the mainland, and that’s why people think it counts.

Virett Keep is the next admitted to the list, and it is notable for being a province that has very little of what can be considered ‘territory.’ They have the legal claim to the castle Virett Keep and a host of holdings on the coasts. While absolutely made up of people culturally connected to Dal Raeda, Virett Keep tends to get excluded because it’s hard to argue you’re a Provincial Power when your population can fit in a large sports stadium.

Finally, the ‘barely counts’ Province is Brin Proper, which is one city, situated in the near-centre of the landmass. It’s the capital of the nation, and it only exists to ensure that the King’s own palace is not in any province where a provincial power may try and use mundane resources to exert power over the crown.

Cultures

Dal Raeda is technically, sparsely populated. This is not because there aren’t many people living there, but because it’s so big. Small towns in Dal Raeda have and sustain a lot of people, and they are connected through different transport networks, usually a variety of different roads maintained by different authorities. There’s an aphorism that from anywhere in Dal Raeda, you can walk in a straight line for two hours and find some kind of settlement; obviously, this isn’t true, there are large expanses of empty space in the country, and huge dense population centres in each province. Around one in four people in Dal Raeda live in one of these cities.

The cities are extremely metropolitan, with a lot of heritage variety, but the basic infrastructure of Dal Raeda is made for Humans and humanlike people, including Half-Elves and Half-Orcs. Abilen are common in trade centres, and most urban places have Halflings. Tieflings and Eladrin can be seen in the cities, normally enough that they are commonly part of the language. More rural areas tend to be more homogenised with heritages, just because people are more likely to be operating within a small community.

Oh, and Goblins are everywhere. Even rural communities often have one or two Goblin families. This isn’t actually new, despite what older people think — reforms that made Goblins whole citizens of Dal Raeda just made it legal for the Goblins to be seen and counted. Before those reforms, the Goblins were there, they were just prone to running and hiding (and stealing, because they couldn’t do legal trade).

There are numerous settlements in Dal Raeda for pocket cultures; Dio Baragh, Orc, Kobolds and Eladrin all have their settlements within the borders, and for the most part they operate within the constraints of the government of the provinces, with trade and research exchanges. There are also Beastfolk communities in Dal Raeda, with a number of Gnoll Paths (the territorial trails Gnolls march) which different provinces handle in their own ways. Even within these pocket communities, though, there are normally members of other heritages. In Dal Raeda, even the Gnoll Packs have Goblins, Orcs, and Tjosen members.

Reputation

Dal Raeda is the cultural empire. The common language of the Bidestran continent is called Common because it’s named for the Dal Raedan word ‘Common.’ The language was called that because it was the one language all the provinces of Dal Raeda had ‘in common,’ in that language. Dal Raeda is one large country sometimes and seven still-pretty-big countries in a big coat the rest of the time. Dal Raedan culture is omnipresent in the Bidestran continent but fascinatingly it’s almost always referenced as the traditionalist background that the other cultures update. The population of the Eresh Protectorate will talk about the laws and regulations in Dal Raeda as backwards, and assume that they have better versions of the same.

This is in some places, pretty accurate — Dal Raeda is a nation of kings and crowns and lines of inheritance and noble titles and peerage that has been accumulated through centuries of ad-hoc laws being turned into eternal tradition. Most parts of Dal Raeda are maintained by laws that are themselves agreements between knights and nobles that have never been replaced or updated, only augmented. To this end, laws in Dal Raeda have a whole host of complicated bylaws and substructures, and traditions that follow from those, and practices to express those traditions and all of that is based on a Dal Raeda that doesn’t exist any more. See, the past thirty years of Dal Raeda has been a period of immense cultural reform that includes standardised spelling and language, public infrastructure like street lights and travelling bards providing public education and paying clerics for a certain quantity of free magical healing and food every month. These reforms extended to the legal system, creating an overarching set of rules for how laws are applied equally, and who in the nation is considered to be a person with rights. These reforms were all at the direct behest of the most recent, most beloved, and actually dead king.

Oh yeah.

That’s probably the most important thing people know about Dal Raeda. The king just died, without an heir. Not only without an heir, without even a weird cousin as backup or a magical cloned spare around anywhere. There is a power vacuum at the heart of Dal Raeda’s body politic, and every single major power in a country made up of many small powers is preparing to negotiate for that spot.

Aggressively.

Locals

To matrix out how all of Dal Raeda feels about Dal Raeda is fundamentally too big a work and not necessary. Dal Raeda is a big country with multiple economic classes and numerous fractured political structures. How your life works in Dal Raeda is going to be related heavily to the nearest local authority figure who is given some permission to shove you around based on proximity to the king and how you feel about that. For example, most people live in counties – which is to say, a district ruled over by a Count. But a Count is not strictly speaking, a noble, because the titles aren’t inherited. Unless of course that Count is also a noble in some other way, like a Knight or Viscount or Marquis or Earls or Barons or Lords, but also there are representative peers in some districts and —

It’s complicated.

Basically, Dal Raeda is a massive multiprovincial country with an explicitly regionalised body politic. That is to say, if you’re in Dal Raeda, you care more about the county you’re in, the county next to you, and your province is more like a sports team you may have a strong opinion on. Maybe you like your province and have a powerful resonance with its identity, or maybe you like those street lights that were put up by the provincial authority, or maybe you resent that large state authority that sent you a letter telling you you’re not allowed to make beer in your bathtub any more.

Travellers

If you’re travelling through Dal Raeda, it’s a pretty sweet and convenient place. There’s plenty of places with public infrastructure like roads and ferries and bridges, and there’s even an enormous spiralling Kings Highway, of the Eresh Protectorate, connecting a city within the borders of Dal Raeda to the rest of the world. What’s more, the scale of the place is one where there’s plenty of empty parts where you don’t have to deal with any of that stuff if you don’t want to.

What is most interesting to travellers though is how easily people from Dal Raeda will clock you as not-local. The language of Dal Raeda is old and most people from outside Dal Raeda speaking common are speaking a modernised version of it. Not going to show up in most cases, but there are little giveaways in the language choices, or in the way people outside Dal Raeda don’t quite express the vowels right.

Rivalries

Dal Raeda has no rivals, according to its own internal fiction. It is after all, the great superpower, the military powerhouse, and every one of its most dangerous rivals were made into members of it. There is no reason for Dal Raeda to fear anyone. Dal Raedans even believe firmly that the country can’t be invaded and is at no risk for anything miltiarily.

Anyway, Visente hates Dal Raeda, the Eresh Protectorate are willing to throw absolute hands to protect their one city within Dal Raeda, and Kyranou has a long and storied history of making fun of Dal Raedans and their ugly, utilitarian culture. For the most part, nobody is particularly fond of Dal Raeda, but there are limits to what disliking a military superpower can get you.

Trade

Everyone trades with Dal Raeda, even awkwardly. It’s huge, it has mines and farms and (now) magewrights and cultural exports and Adventurer’s Guild centres. It is simply not possible for a country so large to not have something being made that you can use, even if all you’re using it for is to turn it into something else, then sell it back to them.

Dal Raeda’s imports though, do trend towards the refined and processed goods of other cultures. Particularly, Dal Raeda has taken to importing expertise, a lot in recent years, as Danube attempts to rapidly modernise (but more on that later).

Brin Proper

The Capital

Brin Proper is the capital city and its surrounding territory. Brin Proper is a city that mostly serves administrative function. It has districts dedicated to diplomatic purposes (which means lots of places to eat and entertain people), residential spaces to serve those needs, and a large standing militarised police force who are understood to serve the purpose of defending the city in time of war.

Brin Proper serves two needs and they show in the way the city looks; it has high walls, but those walls are decorated with art, because it is the centerpiece of the nation and hosts the national Palace. It has old buildings and architecture, but laid over that architecture are the signs of modern reforms like street lights and standardised roads.

Geography

Brin Proper was made to be a capital city, and it was made to be the jewel of the imperial project that is Dal Raeda. It sits by a lake from which several rivers flow, and mostly on an island that has been built out further over time, and the surrounding territory around it is rich, fertile farmland and vibrant forest chosen for its aesthetics more than its ability to meet the city’s needs.

Important Sites

The Palace: Dal Raeda is built in a series of rings around the central palace of the royal family. Right now, it is unoccupied (in that nobody is living there), but it is by no means empty (as it needs to be maintained and cared for and guarded).

The Last Stands: Guardhouses around the city are positioned where they are tactically optimal for in case of invasion. These are large, notable buildings, where the guards are operating out of a series of watch towers with defensive slits, which are then decorated with art to make them aesthetically pleasant despite their harsh architectural needs.

Danube

The Iron Gate

Danube is situated at the northeastern quarter of Dal Raeda. It has a balmy, warm climate, and most of it rarely gets snow, except atop the mountains in the province. Danube is the only part of Dal Raeda with a land border with the rest of the Bidestran continent, and it is the province that has taken most aggressively to the national reforms. Marquess Danube is the youngest Provincial leader in Dal Raeda and she grew up with some of the national reforms as normal to her life, and it very clearly played into how she took to the legal system as a thing to be fixed.

Danube’s history is one of infrastructural defensiveness, and its current day is one of non stop aggressive change. These two things don’t work particularly well, and while it’s very exciting for Danube to be this place where new technology and new ideas are being tried out, there is inevitably a lot of stuff that fails because of the mismatch with what they’re trying to do and what they’re made to be doing.

Notably, Danube is one of the provinces that has established a representative parliament. This is a wonderfully complicated situation which involves a process called deprecation and it’s annoying a lot of people, but knowing how it works isn’t immediately important.

Settlements

Carlisle: One of the great examples of the modern Danube reforms, Carlisle is a town built, at great cost. To make Carlisle, Danube authorities recruited two different wizards and their collected apprentices to come to form a town where magical research could be conducted. However, as part of the building of Carlisle, both wizards wanted towers that could meet their needs. As such, while yes, Carlisle is a town with a lot of business for students learning magic and developing magewrights, by volume, the most common thing happening in the town is increasing construction on making one of the towers at least a little bit taller.

Copperhold: Danube didn’t have a forger’s guild – as in metal, not money – before the reforms, and when smiths petitioned for the idea of investing in an organisation that the government could then turn to for mass production projects like weapons, the Marquess took to it with aplomb. As a result, the city Copperhold was repurposed – and thanks to magewrights and aggressive development, a former mass medieval forge has been transformed into a magewright-driven multi-metal refinery.

Freegarde: The largest city in Danube, and home of the Marquess Danube, who has been smuggling her palace here. Perched on the King’s Highway, Freegarde is technically, a ‘new’ city. However, it still benefits from hold, negotiated rules about what it is allowed to have and do (without annoying other provinces) because Freegarde’s legal centre is a little town, surrounded by a series of complicated road and building placement rules that turns the whole city of Freegarde into something more akin to a legal windowbox.

Mhithan: Technically, the capital city of Danube. It’s still a large city with its own needs, but it’s undeniable that the movement of the Marquess has had an impact on the economy.

Geography

Lockrange: Danube’s largest body of water, not counting the two seas on either side, Lockrange is a lake up at a higher altitude towards the southern side of the province. Lockrange’s altitude make it notably cold, despite being near the tropical zone, and a number of luxurious resorts sit on its edges as a place for the wealthy to gather, relax, and enjoy the cool in the hotter months.

Wildreach: Technically speaking, no part of the forest in Dal Raeda is connected to the forests of Corrindale that sprawl across the northern half of the Bidestran continent. The closest that it gets is the forest of Wildreach, that runs right up to the edge of Wildreach Bay; if you stand in Wildreach’s northern edges, at the water’s edge, you can look across and see in the distance, the tops of the Corrindale trees. Wildreach stretches from this northern edge to the back of the Everknell, and all the way in curling around the northern half of Danube.

Important Sites

Everknell: Across the border with the rest of the world, in large sections, there is the fortified wall that gives Danube its epithet as the Iron Gate. This wall was historically regarded as very important for the long-term health of Danube, to protect it from barbaric invaders. The wall is known as Everknell, and it has guardhouses on it kilometers apart. Since Lagan’s integration into Dal Raeda, these guardhouses have largely never shut their gates outside of situations of weather or maintenance. There’s also a remarkably large marketplace set up on the Danube side of Everknell by the King’s Highway.

Ironfell: Copperhold was not the first attempt by Danube to create a Forger’s Guild site. The first attempt was to use magic and magewrights to construct a unique kind of forge more immediately, and the result was the collapsed site now known as Ironfell. Ironfell is still interesting for researchers and sightseers to visit, as it isn’t just a flooded quarry, but a pretty flooded quarry with brightly coloured water, into which you can throw anything metal and watch it get eaten by the water itself. Not dissolved. Eaten, as if by many chomping mouths. Ironfell’s cave system is similarly flooded, which is a real shame given all the valuable material that was left inside.

Whitwood: Danube does not have its own druidic traditions; what does exist within the province’s borders are mostly members of communions that spread across from the neighbour province Willowsebb and its extensive druidic traditions. Particularly, the druids of Willowswebb have a clause in the provincial laws that no druidic order under the sun’s rays may enter Dal Raeda without their permission. In order to establish a druidic power base, Marquess Danube established the Whitwood, a druidic order of vampires brought from the northern city of Hecsenfore, to explore the relationship between life and death in a nation where the sun shines eighteen hours of the day. While much of Whitwood is an open air grove with elaborate nets in the canopy, it is technically a mansion with an enormous garden around it, and the druids are the keepers of that garden.

Deilahn

Off the southern edge of the Dal Raedan mainland, there is an island large enough to sustain two cities of its own. It’s close enough to the mainland that it’s visible at night to the naked eye, and daily ferries travel back and forth shipping goods and people as best needed.

Deilahn’s history is publically, very well known, but phrased differently based on whether you ask someone from Deilahn or someone on the mainland. Mainlanders’ versions of the history speak of how it used to be a kind of convict colony, where disgraced thieves and criminals would escape the mainland to the island and over enough time this led to a population centre that eventually could do business and became important to the economy of the mainland, until it finally could sue for rights to enter the coalition.

Deilahn tells the story largely the same way, except it also includes the idea that the mainlanders claim Deilahn was the centre for guilds of thieves and assassins, and those kinds of ne’erdowells also fostered the presence of pirates, who then went on to develop a port town with their ill-gotten gains and eventually, elevate the island to enough economic importance that the King petitioned Deilahn’s leaders to then become legitimately part of the country so they could tax them.

Same story, but one of them has a lot more focus on infrastructural power. This may be why the collective opinion of Deilahn is that infrastructural power is so very important, and in part, is expressed through control over what kind of story gets told about you.

Settlements

Deilahn is small enough that there are no ‘non-notable’ settlements. It’s an island with basically two cities on it and a small number of fishing towns.

Earthdenn: A byway town in Deilahn, it’s notable for being the closest town to the the Carpathian Trade House’s Blind Patron. This town is mostly one-storey buildings and a lot of weather protection structures, an incredible food importer, and some of the most disproportionately nice-to-use luxury housing the Trade House can finance.

Marn Tarum: The capital city of Deilahn and home of the Deilahn noble family. It sits on the far edge of the island, away from the mainland, and stands on the top of a seaside cliff. Where it once was renowned for its deep basements and storm protections, as well as a noble family proud of their endurance in the face of hostility, it is now known as a remarkably important shadow finance capital. Thanks to integration with the Trade Houses, Marn Tarum is one of the cities that trades on stocks and shares with remarkable speed, through magical communication systems.

Nevercall: The city most people think of when they think of Deilahn, Nevercall is a raucious casino town situated on the north-western edge of the island on Sirencester Bay. It is both a large port with a well-developed trade system, but also an absolutely ridiculous place for non-stop partying that’s renowned for its extravagent light shows that are visible from the mainland, hence its epithet the City of Light. Formerly, a pirate port.

Geography

Again, Deilahn is a very small island. It has very little in the way of ‘geographical features’ that are not just, you know, look. That’s an island.

Halm Rudil: The centre of the island is split by a forest called Halm Rudil, which has been maintained through ongoing druidic efforts.

Sirencester: Deilahn as an island is a slightly curled semi-circular shape. The northern half of it hosts an enormous bay, which is Sirencester Bay.

Important Sites

Carpathia’s Blind Patron: On the southern edge of the island, away from almost all settlements, the Carpathian Trade House has established a multi-building complex. This complex holds their Blind Patron, an elaborate magical machine that is capable of acting as a Warlock patron and allows the Trade House to have its own way to sustain Warlocks as their direct employed agents.

The Watching Ninmel: In the water off the north-eastern edge of Deilahn, there’s a statue on a natural rocky outcropping. Famously, this statue somehow turns to watch ships as they sail past, but given the nature of sailing it’s possible it’s just an optical illusion and people stare at the big lady with a spear too much.

Glotharen

The First Foremost

Glotharen makes up the southeastern quarter of Dal Raeda. Thanks to a sharp rise in altitude from the southern edge of Danube, while that province is renowned for its warm-to-mild weather, Glotharen is markedly colder, and it shows in the fashion and dress of the people. Long sleeves and heavy layers are much more common, and the southernmost parts of Glotharen are known as the ‘short-dayed’ parts, where the sun takes a long time (comparatively) to set.

Where Danube is modernising rapidly, though, Glotharen is a province that has bound its identity around the idea of being old. Glotharen is very proud of the fact that Glotharen, the province, predates every other province by enough history that every other province’s oldest histories presents Glotharen as already existing, and established, and with cities. This comes out in how Glotharen’s people often refer to themselves as Glotharen citizens, in Dal Raeda, as if the province is more important than the nation.

The age of Glotharen plays out in its material history, too; most settlements are very old and there are numerous old ruins and archaelogical digs in Glotharen exploring the history of the space. Famously, the Dal Raeda Provincial Ruineers (a national service for preserving material history) indicate that roughly half of all submitted preservation efforts in the country are from Glotharen.

Settlements

Dore: The capital city of Glotharen. The city has its own culture of provincial historicity, so deep and so thorough that the people from Dore don’t even say they’re from Glotharen, they say they’re Doren people.

Lagan: Technically an Eresh city, Lagan is an anarchist co-op of goblins built in a ruined boat. It has an extensive history and is why there’s a Kings Highway within Glotharen’s borders, which has been an enormous economic boon that they like to complain about.

Mistwatch: The higher altitude of Glotharen’s river system tends to flow down and away, meaning that Virret Keep struggles to maintain a presence here. As they’re supposed to be allowed to go anywhere in the rivers, Glotharen has a system of locks to allow boats to travel up to the altitude of the province, and that set of locks centralise most boat travel to the town of Mistwatch. It is high enough to enjoy regular rolling waves of mist from the mountains down onto the locks in the morning.

Geography

Glotharen is a place with numerous forests, a mountain range, and a host of valleys and lakes of varying sizes.

Arathairn: A valley famed for peach trees. Communities near Arathairn are often proud to speak about the peach brandy they make using the fruit of the valley.

Figblossom: A valley renowned for flower fields, which is a polite way to describe a feywild portal that Glotharen has been using to make exchanges with the Eladrin living there for generations.

Important Sites

Fogge’s Barrow: A barrow that was, at one point, found to have accumulated atop a sleeping dragon. The Barrow has been politically relevant at points in history, meaning that in addition to the dragon it also has a Gnoll Pack pathing around it, and a gaggle of Kobold Researchers engaging in drug-addled oneironautics.

The Unnameable Meat Forest: There’s a section of forest in Glotharen that’s made of meat? And nobody can quite agree why or what it means.

Wexwend Observatory: There’s a Tjosen settlement in the southern edges, up on the higher altitudes, arranged around a large stone-and-crystal observatory. The Glotharen don’t like acknowledging the Tjosen being there, but they do appreciate that the Tjosen seem to be interested in investigating history.

Sanders

The Imperator’s Stand

Sanders makes up the bulk of the western quarter of Dal Raeda, divided along the boundaries of rivers and the mountain range that runs through the middle of the nation. The altitude of the province contributes to its colder climate, but the cliffs drop sharply to the coast, meaning that the coastal towns of Sanders are all exposed to the heavy southern winds that push cold air up from the bottom of the world. Sanders has a reputation as being dreary and cold.

Sanders is the traditional military powerhouse of Dal Raeda. Positioned on the far side of the province, it was built up as a fortress stronghold that could marshal military resources, and either deploy them out through their coastal towns’ boats, or sent as a mighty spear along the land through to whoever was invading through Danube. Much of the traditional history and rules of warfare in Dal Raeda are beneficial to the way Sanders does war, and that helps to entrench Sanders, in the dawn of a potential civil war, to be very big on keeping those rules and traditional ways of doing going.

Sanders is ruled by a woman, the Dux Sanders.

Settlements

Bournemouth: Most provinces have ‘college towns,’ which is residences and businesses built around the universities and colleges that specialise in their forms of study. Most colleges are magical in nature, but there are druidic colleges as well. Bournemouth is the only military college town in Dal Raeda, though, a whole town built around the Bournemouth College Of Righteous Violence, which teaches tactics and discipline. It is a fascinating place in the ways it breaks down some class distinctions, with knights and knaves alike as students, but the ways that it is also a town where most people are doing ‘get punched in the face’ classe.

Holmfirth: The capital city of Sanders. Holmfirth is a near-fortress of a city, with huge gatehouses meant to hold the city forever against a siege. The gates of Holmfirth were dismantled and turned into artworks during the unification of Dal Raeda, and have been kept open as a show of force. It’s very much a position that shouts I dare you.

Scrantown: The names of towns and cities in Sanders have a distinct archness to them, very evident to people who study such things. That makes the city Scrantown a real weird outlier. As best history can manage, Scrantown, an enormous interconnected farming community nestled between three major Sanders fortress-cities, was created by Willowsebb immigrants during a time where Sanders considered farming beneath them, and they wanted to pay for better food service. Generally, this is seen as to why Willowsebb and Sanders share the common term scran to refer to good, satisfying food.

Geography

Dawncairn: Some geographic features are just nice or pretty things. Sanders has a set of rolling fields where the grass glows gold in the morning light. It’s partly due to the angle of the hills, but also the species of grass is local and has a fairly unique trait of looking quite gold when wet.

Wolffront: A mountain range that uplifts the borders of Sanders.

Important Sites

The Sanders Stable: It says something about a province where there are stables in almost every single established settlement, there is one specific place that gets to be known as The Sanders Stables. A multi-building complex in Sanders of fields and breeding grounds and racecourses, the Sanders Stables is a stables that oversees what is generally regarded as the best warhorse creation program in the world. The Sanders Stables have such immense importance in the culture of equestrian that you don’t buy a Sanders horse: You pay an up-front fee to maintain and care for one of their horses, and if the horse dies before that fee has been addressed, the horse is resurrected, and you have to pay off the resurrection. If you die and the horse dies, they resurrect the horse and not you. Sanders Warhorses are absolutely worth the money, though and it’s generally recognised that the Sanders Warhorse is a part of how Sanders has its reputation as a modern military powerhouse despite their bias away from modern military tools.

Whealglen: Sanders makes much show of being a province with a sensible division of religion and state, with its Palescai churches and its largely secular community that extol the hierarchical view of monarchy. That’s not to say there aren’t mystical or magical traditions within Sanders, though, and it’s best seen in Whealglen. This ash-tree grove, hidden away in the forests of Sanders, is a place where wooden trees grow into the shape of statues of fallen heroes of the province of Sanders. This grove is considered a sacred site, but Sanders’ nobility and power structures want to keep people from going there and seeing it much. It does make everything seem a bit… pagan.

Virett Keep

The Blood Of Dal Raeda

Virrett Keep has no specific climate or weather. This is because Virrett Keep’s claim is the river system of Dal Raeda. Dal Raeda has a large river network that connects most of the country from edge to edge. Over two centuries ago, Virett Keep were rewarded this thanks to the family’s service to the state, and they’ve spent the intervening time pushing this legal treaty to its absolute limits.

Virett Keep’s legal permission is that they’re in charge of the rivers; this means that travelling along or across the rivers is technically their territory. The Keep claims some taxes on a number of the major bridges in Dal Raeda, and there’s an ongoing political concern about whether or not they can tax people crossing the bridges that run over the King’s Highway. Virett Keep say yes, and the Eresh Knights following the highway say no.

Virett don’t think they have the juice to get Dal Raeda to fight the Protectorate on their behalf, so they mostly let the taxes go.

Virett Keep is a small population, spread across a number of exotic sites. Virett Keep’s standard of living and general wealth for its population is extremely high. This is a good statistic to be proud of, but the thing is, it’s not clear about the economic disparity. Half of Virett Keep’s income goes to just ten percent of its citizens, who are largely nobles and landlords, while most of its members are riverboat sailors and traders.

The settlements, sites, and geography of Virett Keep are challenging to describe. Many of the ‘settlements’ are boats, and they move around. At the same time, some of those boats stay in a specific location, which means they may be a bit more like a site. Anyway, because of that, here’s just a list of stuff that Virett Keep has in it, and you can sort it into what category you want for your own sake.

Cloverrim: The closest thing the Virett have to a ‘breadbasket,’ Cloverrim is a large farm on the coast in Glotharen. Of course, that territory is Glotharen’s territory, because Virett Keep aren’t allowed to own that land. Virett Keep just rent the land, and then pay the workers to live there, but it’s very important to know that this land is ‘technically’ Glotharen’s land.

Glittering Prizes: Technically, the Glittering Prizes. Glittering Prizes is an immense riverboat, moving in a steady circle throughout the seasons. It’s a casino and a tavern, and well known gathering place for people who don’t want to be where they were, looking for work from people with ready money.

Humble’s Ford: At the edge of the lake in Brin Proper, there’s a drydock where the Humble’s Ford has been docked. That boat is part of Virett Keep, which means that anyone walking off the dock, onto the boat, are going into Virett Keep. Humble’s Ford is also conveniently parked right by Brin Proper, the capital city, which means that people can negotiate with Virett Keep’s power brokers easily.

Ir Osel: There’s a ghost ship that travels the rivers of Dal Raeda, supposedly. Supposedly, because the claim follows that it only shows up around Virett Keep’s natural citizens, who can even board the boat.

Lightbrook: There’s a little exclave of land between Willowsebb, Sanders, and Glotharen, where there’s three bridges set up in a triangle between the landmasses. In between those bridges there’s a large transport ship, unable to leave. But because that ship is in Virett Keep, it’s possible for someone to pass an item to Virett Keep then have that Virett Keep person pass that material to someone in a different province, for legally significant reasons. That boat is called Lightbrook, and if you need to go there, you know why.

Virett Keep: The actual castle of Virett Keep, which sits on an island in the river, with a bridge reaching to the mainland of the Sanders province. This bridge has been dismantled and rebuilt several times based on the political demands of the day. Virett Keep is an ostentatious palace, basically a mansion with a wall around it, and is occupied by the richest people of the Keep, and their servants.

Willowsebb

The Tangled Root

The remaining mainland territory of Dal Raeda is consumed by the daggerlike form of Willowsebb, reaching to the middle of the country but also stretching up to the northern face. At the northern edges, Willowsebb faces the tropical bay that extends across to Visente and Amenti. But that space, where the weather and hills are both mild, people don’t think of that when they think of Willowsebb.

No, they think of the forests.

Willowsebb has the largest single contiguous forest in Dal Raeda. It reaches all across the province and forms, to an extent, its borders – certainly it’s the dividing line where it ends. Within the forest there are glens and specific varieties of trees that mark them as other forests, but broadly, the vast, dark, cursed forest of Willowsebb is what it’s known for.

Oh, cursed?

Yeah, that’s what people say.

Don’t worry about it.

Willowsebb is by far the most rural of the provinces that have any land. Willowsebb’s largest cities are all the smallest major cities and some even argue that Woodshade is instead more of a large township, despite its population and breadth. This stems from the way Willowsebb’s druidic traditions resist modernisation and expansion – historically, some druidic orders had strict and hard policies against (for example) worked metal objects, but more modern ones are much more relaxed. They’re still not in favour of things like street lights and a standardised road network, though, and have impeded them. This is why Willowsebb can be so large, have so many people living in it, and still mostly be rural and semirural.

Settlements

Rosehips: The capital of Willowsebb, Rosehips started out as a town renowned for jam and flowers. The bucolic forager town became a steady cornerstone of travel through the area, until eventually, the druids felt it necessary to protect the town. Rosehips is now a very large town, spread out wide, with no more than two storeys at a time for any given house, and instead of walls, it has an enormous gnarled set of thorny rose-bushes. In times of duress, some have even claimed that the city’s walls become a maze to protect it from assault.

Woodshade: By comparison, Woodshade is a town where, the story runs, a plan was to cut down an important tree as soon as the sun rose to dry the tree out and prepare it for the axe. The druids who revered the tree told the town to not do that, and when they refused, the druids laid a curse on the town. Woodshade is now a town where the sun doesn’t rise; people can travel in to the town from blazing noon, and walking in, find the town in a grim dark twilight, with the moon butting around the edges of the horizon.

Geography

Grubhaben: The actual name of the forest that stretches over the province, Grubhaben is an old word that means something akin to ‘holding everything.’ The name is a promise and a threat; there is more in the forest than you imagined, you can always find something there, but also… you will never know all the things the forest holds.

Woodglen: One strip of the forest that buts against Danube’s border is known by the name Woodglen. For some reason, Woodglen is a well-regarded and very safe forest, where people can go to hunt and forage, from either side of the border. It’s considered that the druids think of Woodglen as an ‘offering’ of a forest – giving the people who are not Willowsebb’s own a version of the forest they can understand and survive.

Plumbreak: Over the edges of the forest, there are a set of towns dotted along the coast, including one large town with a barge train that sends goods across the bay periodically, when the Halfling Hulks arrive in Visente. This is the Plumbreak bay.

Important Sites

Bugrest: There’s a glen in the northern parts of Willowsebb where the Ozu are found. It’s not a large location and kept relatively private. Oh, the Ozu aren’t known? We’ll have to get to that.

Fanaird: Maps of Willowsebb often feature a drawing of a tall tree in the forest. This is usually treated as a sort of cartographic flair. It’s not: There’s a tree in the forest that’s about three hundred meters tall, with broad, spreading branches and an enormous cleft in the centre. This is Fainard, which is known as a central gathering point for the different types of druid from across Dal Raeda, and beyond. Fainard is a sacred site and hard to reach, even if someone heading towards it can find it, sunk deep into the forest as it is.

Stiamuzzehk: The name Stiamuzzehk is an extremely out-of-type name for the Willowsebb, but not because it’s a new import. Rather, Stiamuzzehk is an old name, older than the people using it now, and its meaning is uncertain. What it is is a wide salt flat lagoon, by Plumbreak Bay. The salt-farmers of Stiamuzzehk dig trenches from the sea into the lagoon’s area, to fill it up with sea water, and then perform rituals to enchant the salt while the water evaporates over weeks. Then, with the area dried out, they cut up the chunks of salt for sale in the markets around the world. Enchanted salt is a very common spell component and fully a quarter of the world’s supply comes from Willowsebb’s strange little industry.

Conclusion

There’s always room for more. There’s a conversation around the way that Dal Raedan weapon traditions work. There’s a talk about the way that Dal Raeda’s impending civil war influences adventurers in the space. There’s types of armour, types of weapon aesthetics, there’s attitudes of different cultural subgroups within the country, there’s more about politics and more about organisations and guilds and religion.

But.

This is hopefully, a decent start that can serve as a familiarising beginning on the nation of Dal Raeda and what opportunities it presents for the people who live there, the people who adventure there, and the people who visit there. Dal Raeda is a nation the size of Australia with a population density comparable to mainland America, and a state/province structure that’s meant to feel kind of like a hybrid of the EU and America’s state system. It is a place with a lot of room and a lot of opportunity and all the power structures are distant from the way people actually live their day to day lives.

Like how there are things telling you there are ways you have to do things, but they don’t actually exist and can’t tell you what to do.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Cobrin'Seil #Dungeons &amp; Dragons #Games

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dissertationwritinghelpforstds · 11 months ago

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How to Conduct a Literature Review Using Digital Tools (with Notion Template)

Embarking on a literature review is a fundamental component of academic research that can often appear overwhelming due to the sheer volume of relevant articles and sources. However, leveraging digital tools like Notion can substantially streamline and enhance this process. By providing a structured approach, Notion enables researchers to manage their literature reviews with greater efficiency and organization. This comprehensive guide will walk you through a methodical literature review workflow using Notion, explore various digital tools, and offer a Notion template to facilitate your research.

The Benefits of Using Notion

Notion is an advanced organizational tool that integrates the functionalities of note-taking, project management, and database creation into a single platform. Its versatility is particularly advantageous for managing a literature review. Here are several key benefits of using Notion:

Integration of Pages and Databases: Notion allows for seamless linking of pages and embedding of databases within other pages. This interconnected structure facilitates comprehensive data management and easy navigation between related information.

Customizable Filters and Sorting: Users can create custom properties and apply filters to databases, which enables sophisticated sorting and retrieval of data tailored to specific research needs.

Efficient Data Management: Notion supports the transfer and management of data from Excel sheets, enhancing the organization and accessibility of research materials.

In my workflow, Notion plays a central role through two primary databases: the ‘literature tracker’ and the ‘literature notes’ matrix. These databases are instrumental in tracking papers and synthesizing information to construct a coherent argument.

Stages to Literature Review Workflow

1. The Literature Search

The initial phase of a literature review involves a systematic search for relevant sources. This step is critical for building a comprehensive and well-rounded review.

Identify Keywords: Begin by developing a list of keywords that are pertinent to your research questions. Engage with your supervisor or colleagues to refine this list, ensuring it encompasses all relevant terms. As you progress, be prepared to adjust your keywords based on emerging research trends and findings.

Utilize Database Search Tools: Employ established databases such as Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar to locate pertinent literature. These platforms offer extensive search functionalities and access to a broad range of academic papers. Additionally, set up email alerts for new publications related to your keywords. This proactive approach ensures that you remain informed about the latest developments in your field.

Library Building and Recommendations: Manage your literature library using tools like Mendeley, which facilitates the organization of references and offers recommendations for related papers. Mendeley’s sharing capabilities also enable collaboration with colleagues, enhancing the collective management of research resources.

2. Literature Mapping Tools

Literature mapping tools are invaluable for visualizing the relationships between papers and identifying key research themes.

Citation Gecko: This tool constructs a citation tree from ‘seed papers,’ illustrating the connections between various studies through their citation relationships. It is particularly useful for uncovering seminal works and understanding the progression of research topics.

Connected Papers: Connected Papers uses a similarity algorithm to generate a graph of related papers based on a given key paper. This tool provides insights into related research that may not be immediately evident through direct citation links, helping to broaden your understanding of the field.

3. The Literature Tracker

An organized literature tracker is essential for managing and reviewing research papers effectively.

Organize with Notion: Utilize Notion’s customizable properties to document essential details of each paper. This includes metadata such as title, author, publication date, keywords, and summary. The ability to filter and sort this data simplifies the process of managing large volumes of literature.

Database Views: Notion offers various database views, such as the kanban board, which can be used to track your reading workflow. This visual representation aids in monitoring your progress and managing tasks associated with your literature review.

4. The Literature Synthesis Matrix

The synthesis matrix is a crucial component for organizing and synthesizing information from the literature.

Second Pass of Papers: After an initial screening, populate the ‘literature notes’ database with detailed information from the papers you deem relevant. This should include comprehensive notes on the paper’s summary, key results, methodology, critiques, and any future work suggested.

Relational Databases: Leverage Notion’s relational database capabilities to link related papers and create a synthesis matrix. This matrix helps in identifying connections between different studies and assists in constructing a coherent narrative for your literature review.

5. Writing Your Literature Review

Writing a literature review involves synthesizing the collected information into a structured and insightful analysis.

Identify Research Themes: Use your literature matrix to pinpoint key research themes and questions. These themes will form the basis of your literature review sections and guide the development of your thesis statement(s).

Summarize and Evaluate Sources: Focus on the most significant sources for each theme, summarizing their key points and critically evaluating their contributions. This involves assessing the strengths and weaknesses of each study and linking related research to provide a comprehensive overview.

Situate Your Research: Clearly articulate the research gap your study addresses, justifying your research approach based on the identified gaps and the synthesis of the reviewed literature.

6. Iterating Your Literature Review

A literature review is a dynamic process that requires regular updates and revisions.

Regular Updates: Continuously update your literature review as new research emerges. Balance the time spent on reading with the progress of your own research to ensure that your review remains current and relevant.

Notion Template

To facilitate your literature review process, I have developed a Notion template that includes:

A Literature Tracker Database: For recording and managing details of relevant papers.

A Literature Notes Database: For detailed notes and synthesis of the literature.

Predefined Properties: For filtering and sorting entries according to specific research needs.

You can duplicate and customize this template to fit your research requirements.

Useful Resources

Here are some additional resources that can aid in the literature review process:

The Literature Review: Step-by-Step Guide for Students

3 Steps to Save You From Drowning in Your Literature Review

How to Write a Literature Review

How to Become a Literature Searching Ninja

Mind the Gap

7 Secrets to Write a PhD Literature Review The Right Way

By following this structured approach and utilizing digital tools like Notion, you can streamline your literature review process, enhance organization, and ensure that your research is thorough and well-founded. This methodology not only simplifies the review process but also provides a robust framework for developing a strong thesis or dissertation.

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Feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] to commence a collaborative endeavor towards scholarly excellence. Whether you seek guidance in crafting a compelling research proposal, require comprehensive editing to refine your dissertation, or need support in conducting a thorough literature review, I am here to facilitate your journey towards academic success. and discuss how I can assist you in realizing your academic aspirations.

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ss-arcade-project · 5 months ago

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Day Two (Opening Unreal for the First Time)

So I'm using the First Person template in Unreal to start this project.

I'm going to be attempting to implement things like Custom Inputs, Directional Movements and a Fixed Camera.

First is the Custom Inputs.

So I'm opening my content drawer and I'm heading to All > Content > ThirdPerson > Input.

Made an Input and named it IA_Quit, as instructed.

I opened it up, check if the Value Type is Digital (bool)

I open up IMC_Default (It should be stored in the same folder as IA_Quit) and I get greeted with a whole load of buttons.

Before getting overwhelmed, I clicked the + button next to Mappings.

This makes this appear at the bottom of the list.

I change the None dropdown to the IA_Quit input action that I made. Then underneath that, there was another None dropdown, next to a keyboard icon. I clicked on it and, because I had an Xbox controller connected, clicked the button with two squares.

However, if I had no controller on hand, I would type into the dropdown menu 'Gamepad Special Left'.

For testing purposes, or if I ever don't have a controller on hand, I will add a keyboard input too so I can still play. This will be bound to the Escape key for obvious reasons.

I will need to bind every other controller button which will be done later and I will include a photo below when that is done, but for now I will go on to the next part.

Opening up the BP_ThirdPersonCharacter blueprint, I head to the Event Graph and make my way to the Movement Input section.

I'm disconnecting the white pin from EnhancedInputAction IA_Move and making my own node of the same name.

I pull out the white pin on the new node and spawn an 'Add Movement Input' at the end of that. Then, on 'Add Movement Input, there is a yellow World Direction node connector. Go back from that and make a 'Vector Snapped to Grid' node. I right clicked on the yellow 'In Vect' node connector and selected Split Struct Pin. This left me with two green node connectors of In Vect X and In Vect Y.

Oddly, because of how Unreal works, we have to connect the Action Value X to In Vect Y and vice versa.

However, right now, it doesn't like cooperating with the camera. However however, I made it so the default Movement Input works like this too, though it required a bit more work.

For one, I held down the B button on my keyboard then clicked in the Event Graph to quickly made a Branch node. Then I connect

Now for the Camera. Currently it is able to move in 360 directions, and I don't want this.

So I go to the Camera Input section of the Event Graph and disconnect the white pin connecting 'EnhancedInputAction IA_Look' to the rest of the sequence.

Then I make a completely new actor and name it anything but Camera_Actor.

Opening it up, I placed down a Camera component, then made sure that the camera was the default scene root.

Then in the Event Graph, off of the Event BeginPlay node, I connected it to a new 'Set View Target with Blend' node. Back off of the Target node connector, I made a Get Player Controller node. And then off of the New View Targer node connector, I connected a Self node.

However, if I wanted my game to play somewhat like The Binding of Isaac where the camera pans to a different fixed camera upon entering a new room or whatnot, I'd want to change it up slightly.

In the Viewport, I added a Box Collision, and then did nothing with it and returned to the Event Graph. Selecting the Box from the Components tab opens it up on the Details panel. Scrolling down gave me the option to add an 'On Component Begin Overlap' node. Off of the Other Actor blue node connector, I made a 'Cast To BP_Third PersonCharacter' node and then connected the white pin from that to the 'Set View Target' white pin.

This would be useful if my arcade game was going to be similar to games such as Resident Evil and The Binding of Isaac with the camera being fixed in the sky, with it moving every time you change rooms or areas.

However, for what I have in mind (which is nothing right now.) I don't think this will be useful to me. Though it IS useful to know in general if I ever do decide to do something like this!

#unreal engine

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bubbloquacious · 2 years ago

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Why yes I am still thinking about graphs as presheaves. Another thing you can do with functors from small categories is think about their limits and colimits. We usually think of limits and colimits as objects of the codomain category, so in this case the limit of a graph-as-functor would be a set. However, we can turn it back into a graph by then applying the diagonal functor Δ from the category of sets to the category of graphs.

Let's think about what this functor does. It maps a set X onto the constant functor from Q^op at X. Such a functor maps every object of Q onto X and every morphism of Q onto the identity function of X. So, the vertex set and the arrow set of Δ(X) are equal, and the source and target functions are the identity. The graph we get consists of one vertex for every element of X and each vertex has a single loop.

A cone under or cocone over a functor F: C -> D is exactly a natural transformation from a constant functor to F or from F to a constant functor, respectively. The limit of F is the terminal object in the category of cones under F, so in addition to the limit object we have a natural transformation from the constant functor at that object to F. Dually for colimits. Natural transformations in Q^hat are graph homomorphisms, so we can do some fun interpretation here.

The limit of a functor with domain Q^op (or Q, as they are isomorphic) is an equalizer. In Set, the equalizer of functions f,g: X -> Y is the set { x ∈ X : f(x) = g(x) } (up to a canonical bijection). It follows that the limit of a graph is exactly the set of arrows of G whose source vertex coincides with their target vertex. The set of all loops of G. Applying Δ to this we get the graph that has a vertex for every loop, and a loop on each of these vertices. The universal cone from this graph to G is the graph homomorphism that maps each loop in this graph onto the corresponding loop in G.

The colimit of a functor from Q^op is a coequalizer (surprise surprise), and in Set the coequalizer of f and g is the quotient set of Y by the smallest equivalence relation ~ such that f(x) ~ g(x) for all x ∈ X. In a graph G we have that Y is the vertex set, X is the arrow set, and f and g are the source and target functions. This means that if two vertices v and w are connected by some arrow, then they will be equivalent under ~. Applying transitivity and symmetry, we find that the equivalence classes of ~ are exactly the connected components of G. The universal cocone over G is the graph homomorphism that maps all vertices in a connected component of G onto the corresponding vertex of the graph-that-has-a-vertex-for-every-connected-component, and all arrows in that connected component onto the unique loop on that vertex.

#math #adventures in cat theory #this shows that the image of the diagonal functor from Set to Q^hat is both reflective and coreflective #just like the discrete spaces are reflective and coreflective in the category of locally connected topological spaces!

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bigfootbeat · 1 year ago

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Bigfoot Scrapbook Creation

Making a Bigfoot scrapbook can be a fascinating and engaging method to learn about the many ideas, sightings, and stories surrounding this fabled creature, as well as to dive deeper into the field of cryptozoology. A scrapbook devoted to Bigfoot provides a tangible and intimate means for both enthusiasts and researchers to record and commemorate their interest in this elusive creature. The first step in the procedure is gathering materials. Included are a good scrapbook, glue, and numerous embellishments such as stickers, markers, and patterned paper. The material that will occupy the pages, however, is what matters most. Images, sketches, and maps can be included in addition to magazine articles, printed reports from the internet, and newspaper clippings. Every component helps to create a thorough and aesthetically pleasing story about Bigfoot.

We could arrange the scrapbook chronologically, starting with some of the early reported sightings. This could include well-known tales like the 1958 finding of sizable footprints in Bluff Creek, California, which contributed to the American public's increased awareness of the Bigfoot myth. You can establish the scene and give context for the scrapbook by including copies of the original newspaper articles or even handwritten notes that summarize these early events. Another strategy is to organize the scrapbook by region and record sightings and interactions from around the world. Various cultures have recorded similar animals, such as the Yeti in the Himalayas and the Yowie in Australia, as bigfoot or similar ones under different names. By breaking these legends down into portions for each region, it is possible to compare and contrast the folklore and descriptions, pointing out areas of similarity and variance. Enhancing the scrapbook with one's own thoughts and analysis can be beneficial. This could include jotting down observations about why certain sightings stand out, identifying trends in the sightings, or formulating theories about potential explanations for the Bigfoot phenomenon. Personal tales, such as trips to well-known sighting spots or encounters with other Bigfoot aficionados, can give the collection a distinctive and captivating element. Multimedia components can add even more dynamic features to the scrapbook. QR codes can connect to interactive maps that display hotspots for sightings, audio recordings of howls and purported Bigfoot vocalizations, or video interviews with eyewitnesses, enhancing the engagement of the content. These components provide an additional dimension and layer of involvement, and they are easily accessible through smartphones.

In a Bigfoot scrapbook, images and pictures are also essential. These could include well-known pictures like the Patterson-Gimlin movie stills, artistic interpretations of Bigfoot derived from eyewitness accounts, or even the scrapbooker's drawings. Annotations and captions support the scrapbook's storytelling element by offering context and elaborating on the value of each visual piece. For those seeking to delve deeper into skeptical and scientific viewpoints, there are sections dedicated to ideas and attempts at debunking them. Analyzing the research of scientists and skeptics who have investigated the phenomenon adds a crucial component to the collection. This can include writing up summaries of scientific papers that include graphs and charts, or highlighting the main objections to Bigfoot's existence. And lastly, a scrapbook can develop into a dynamic record that changes with time. Reports of fresh sightings and proof can update and make the scrapbook more current. This ongoing process reflects the dynamic character of Bigfoot mythology, which continues to captivate people's attention worldwide. Making a Bigfoot scrapbook is, at its core, an artistic and intellectual project. It lets anyone create and maintain a unique compilation of Bigfoot mythology by fusing historical analysis, creative expression, and introspection. It's a way to honor and maintain the mystique and enigma of one of the most enduring and fascinating cryptids in history.

#scrapbook #bigfoot #scrapbooking

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codingprolab · 3 days ago

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CS 70 Discrete Mathematics and Probability Theory HW 3

1 Short Answer: Graphs (a) Bob removed a degree 3 node in an n-vertex tree, how many connected components are in the resulting graph? (An expression that may contain n.) (b) Given an n-vertex tree, Bob added 10 edges to it, then Alice removed 5 edges and the resulting graph has 3 connected components. How many edges must be removed to remove all cycles in the resulting graph? (An expression that…

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aimarketresearch · 5 days ago

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Data Center Interconnect Market Size, Share, Trends, Opportunities, Key Drivers and Growth Prospectus

Executive Summary Data Center Interconnect Market :

The global data center interconnect market was valued at USD 10.63 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach USD 30.13 billion by 2032

During the forecast period of 2025 to 2032 the market is likely to grow at a CAGR of 13.90%, primarily driven by the rising demand for high-capacity and low-latency connectivity across data centers

A credible Data Center Interconnect Market report covers a thorough study of current situation of the global market along with several market dynamics. The major areas of market analysis such as market definition, market segmentation, competitive analysis and research methodology are studied very carefully and precisely in the whole report. And not to mention, the report is amazingly characterized by using several charts, graphs and tables depending on the extent of data and information involved. Data Center Interconnect Market research report is a sure solution to get market insights with which business can visualize market place clearly and thereby take important decisions for growth of the business.

Data Center Interconnect Market study analyzes the market status, growth rate, future trends, market drivers, opportunities and challenges, risks and entry barriers, sales channels, distributors and Porter's Five Forces Analysis. This report makes to focus on the more important aspects of the market like what the market recent trends are. Analysis and estimations attained through the massive information gathered in this market analysis report are extremely necessary when it comes to dominating the market or creating a mark in the market as a new emergent. The persuasive Data Center Interconnect Market research report also endows with the list of leading competitors and their moves such as joint ventures, acquisitions, and mergers etc.

Discover the latest trends, growth opportunities, and strategic insights in our comprehensive Data Center Interconnect Market report. Download Full Report: https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/reports/global-data-center-interconnect-market

Data Center Interconnect Market Overview

**Segments**

- **Component**: The component segment can be further divided into solutions and services. Solutions may include standalone solutions, and services may include professional services and managed services. The increasing demand for efficient, cost-effective, and secure solutions is driving the growth of the component segment in the data center interconnect market. - **Application**: The application segment covers various areas such as workload (data) mobility, shared data and resources, real-time disaster recovery and business continuity, and others. The growing need for seamless data transfer and management across different data centers is propelling the application segment in the market. - **Industry Vertical**: The industry vertical segment includes IT and telecom, banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI), healthcare, government and public sector, and others. Each vertical has unique requirements for data center interconnect solutions, with the IT and telecom sector dominating the market due to the rapid expansion of data centers in this industry.

**Market Players**

- **Cisco Systems, Inc.**: Cisco offers a wide range of data center interconnect solutions to help businesses optimize their data management operations. Their innovative technologies and strong market presence make them a key player in the global market. - **Juniper Networks, Inc.**: Juniper Networks provides cutting-edge networking solutions for data center interconnectivity, enabling seamless data transfer and secure communications. Their advanced features and reliable performance position them as a major player in the market. - **Ciena Corporation**: Ciena specializes in networking and communication solutions, offering robust data center interconnect products to meet the evolving needs of modern businesses. Their focus on scalability and efficiency distinguishes them as a significant player in the industry. - **Infinera Corporation**: Infinera is known for its high-capacity data center interconnect solutions that enable fast and reliable data transmission. Their commitment to innovation and customer satisfaction solidifies their position in the market.

For further insights and detailed analysis of the Global Data Center Interconnect Market, visit: The Global Data Center Interconnect Market continues to see significant growth and evolution driven by various segments and market players. In terms of segments, the component segment stands out with its offerings of solutions and services catering to the increasing demand for efficient, cost-effective, and secure data management solutions. This segment's emphasis on standalone solutions and professional/managed services highlights the diverse needs of businesses in managing their data center interconnectivity. As organizations strive for seamless data transfer and management across data centers, the application segment plays a crucial role in meeting these demands by focusing on workload mobility, shared data and resources, real-time disaster recovery, and business continuity.

When we delve into the industry vertical segment of the data center interconnect market, it becomes apparent that different sectors such as IT and telecom, BFSI, healthcare, government, and others have unique requirements for data center interconnect solutions. The dominance of the IT and telecom sector can be attributed to the rapid expansion of data centers within this industry, further emphasizing the importance of tailored solutions for specific verticals to ensure efficient data management and connectivity.

Examining the key market players in the Global Data Center Interconnect Market sheds light on the competitive landscape and innovation driving industry growth. Cisco Systems, Inc., Juniper Networks, Inc., Ciena Corporation, and Infinera Corporation are prominent participants offering a diverse range of solutions and services to address the evolving needs of businesses worldwide. These market players' commitment to innovation, reliability, scalability, and customer satisfaction distinguishes them as major contributors to the market's expansion.

In conclusion, the Global Data Center Interconnect Market continues to witness dynamic growth propelled by advancements in technology, increasing data management complexities, and the need for seamless connectivity across diverse industries. The market's segmentation into components, applications, and industry verticals underlines the multifaceted nature of data center interconnect solutions, while the presence of key players like Cisco, Juniper Networks, Ciena, and Infinera further intensifies competition and innovation in the market. As businesses across various sectors continue to prioritize efficient data management and secure interconnectivity, the market is poised for further expansion and technological advancements to meet evolving demands.The Global Data Center Interconnect Market is currently witnessing significant growth and evolution driven by various segments and key market players. The component segment, comprising solutions and services, is experiencing high demand due to the need for efficient, cost-effective, and secure data management solutions. Standalone solutions and professional/managed services are becoming increasingly crucial as businesses seek tailored approaches to managing their data center interconnectivity effectively. The application segment is also playing a vital role in meeting the demands of seamless data transfer and management across data centers, focusing on aspects such as workload mobility, shared data and resources, real-time disaster recovery, and business continuity.

Within the industry vertical segment of the data center interconnect market, different sectors such as IT and telecom, BFSI, healthcare, government, and others have unique requirements for data center interconnect solutions. The IT and telecom sector holds a dominant position in the market, primarily driven by the rapid expansion of data centers within this industry. This underscores the importance of specialized solutions tailored to meet the specific needs of different verticals, ensuring efficient data management and connectivity across industries.

Analyzing the key market players, including Cisco Systems, Inc., Juniper Networks, Inc., Ciena Corporation, and Infinera Corporation, reveals a competitive landscape characterized by innovation, reliability, scalability, and customer-centric approaches. These market leaders offer a diverse range of solutions and services to address the evolving demands of businesses globally. Their commitment to technological advancement and customer satisfaction positions them as significant contributors to the market's growth and development.

In conclusion, the Global Data Center Interconnect Market is poised for continued expansion driven by technological advancements, rising data management complexities, and the increasing emphasis on seamless connectivity across diverse industries. The market's segmentation into components, applications, and industry verticals underscores the multifaceted nature of data center interconnect solutions, while the presence of key players such as Cisco, Juniper Networks, Ciena, and Infinera fuels competition and drives innovation in the market. As businesses prioritize efficient data management and secure interconnectivity, the market is expected to witness further growth and advancements to cater to evolving demands efficiently.

The Data Center Interconnect Market is highly fragmented, featuring intense competition among both global and regional players striving for market share. To explore how global trends are shaping the future of the top 10 companies in the keyword market.

Learn More Now: https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/reports/global-data-center-interconnect-market/companies

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DBMR Nucleus is a dynamic, AI-powered business intelligence platform designed to revolutionize the way organizations access and interpret market data. Developed by Data Bridge Market Research, Nucleus integrates cutting-edge analytics with intuitive dashboards to deliver real-time insights across industries. From tracking market trends and competitive landscapes to uncovering growth opportunities, the platform enables strategic decision-making backed by data-driven evidence. Whether you're a startup or an enterprise, DBMR Nucleus equips you with the tools to stay ahead of the curve and fuel long-term success.

Answers That the Report Acknowledges:

Data Center Interconnect Market size and growth rate during forecast period

Key factors driving the Data Center Interconnect Market

Key market trends cracking up the growth of the Data Center Interconnect Market.

Challenges to Data Center Interconnect Market growth

Key vendors of Data Center Interconnect Market

Opportunities and threats faces by the existing vendors in Global Data Center Interconnect Market

Trending factors influencing the market in the geographical regions

Strategic initiatives focusing the leading vendors

PEST analysis of the Data Center Interconnect Market in the five major regions

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#market trends #market analysis #market size

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