#idea wall

FOD Behind The Scenes

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Featuring: Daily Dress Me Description: Get informed of what to wear for the upcoming week based on where you are in the world.

For globetrotters who place extra care of their daily wardrobe during travel, packing before a flight can be a real headache as one's destination falls in region(s) with weather patterns quite different from his/her own. This is where Daily Dress Me comes in: a web-based solution highlighting the importance of experience-based fashion, beautifully packaged in a minimalist interface.

Really looking forward to see this product reach more fashion-conscious travelers around the world. OT: Would love to see this localized for users in East Asia—people back home simply dress up a lot more IMO.

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I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons for nearly a year now, and it's been a blast. A couple weeks ago, we just wrapped up our first campaign and I leapt at the chance to run the next one. I started using all my collected notes on story projects over the past decade and started throwing things together. As a matter of fact, I was so excited, I think I might be actually running three games now.

The first is, obviously, the continued story of my friend's characters after our first campaign. It's following directly where it left off and is picking up speed for another "Save the Universe from an organization that wants to throw the universe out of balance" sort of story.

The second, I started because there were other friends I had that wanted to play, but I liked the chemistry of the current group. So, for them, I started writing a parallel campaign. A story that ran side by side with the original group's. The original group of people would be, essentially, joining a brotherhood of monks to fight off a rogue-ish crime family to keep them from undoing the work the party had done in the previous story. This new group, however, is joining a robin hood-esque group of revolutionaries that are fighting against the strict theocratical status quo to bring equality to the people and out of the hands of the church.

Each group is going to be fighting against each other.

I've started designing the games so what one does, it directly effects the possibilities of the other group. If one group kills a main NPC, they are gone. If another group steals a main item or map, it will sway the direction of the game completely. I'm also hoping that down the line, the morality of a certain group will come into question and some people might switch sides and play with the other group if they disagree with the ideology of the group they started in.

by Emmanuel Quartey

photo credit: smokeghost via photopin cc

Erin Scott from Academic Computing Resources wrote to mention helpful resources for meeting some of the wants identified on the Idea Wall.

IDEA WALL #2

2. Registered student organizations should be able to access a basic CMS (content management system) for putting up basic, smart-looking websites.

"There is answer to #2 on the Idea Wall! Student organization use is the exact intent of SimpleSites. Students can request a site here: http://drupal.yale.edu/request-yalesite"

IDEA WALL #8

8. Longer lending times for media equipment borrowed from Bass.

"Under the current policies of BMEC, students can request an extended reservation at http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?%20hl=en&formkey=dFZkNHI0ODlWdHc3ZkthSm1MUldNTmc6MQ#gid=0 (A link is provided on our FAQ, as that is a very long complicated URL, we realize.)

The current 3-day reservation policy is based off of what our sister groups do (the DMCA and Event Services). If longer reservation time is desired as a default for BMEC, we’re more than willing to entertain the possibility. Come to us with a specific recommendation, such as increasing the loan period from three to five day. (“Longer times” is a little vague.)

One of the reasons that we have a relatively short time is because of the demand that we experience. Comparing the data from year 1 and year 2, we learned that there was a 260% increase in usage. Comparing Fall 2009 to Fall 2010, we saw that the number of checkouts doubled. The equipment is in such high demand that it’s very hard to justify giving everyone as much equipment as they want for as long as they want. Now, if someone wanted to, say, double our annual budget and we could buy 20 of everything, it would be much easier to hand out equipment like candy. And we would love to be at that point someday!"

I've edited the Wall to reflect this information. Thanks, Erin!

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