Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Dr Nick Bradbeer

@nickbradbeer.bsky.social

610 followers 300 following 1.2K posts

Assoc. Professor of Naval Architecture @ UCL. Director, UCL Submarine Design Course. Nerd, maker, gamer, wargame builder. He/him. I mostly post about games I'm playing for fun and games I'm creating for work, with the odd diversion into submarine design.

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 1d

Oooh, thanks - that's super cool!

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 1d

I just told my students about this fantastic webtool yesterday and they're already making great use of it. Copernicus MyOcean Viewer - an EU ocean data project.

Incredible amount of data right there - we mostly want it for bathymetrics but that's just scratching the surface. (Pun not intended.)

A screengrab from Copernicus MyOcean Viewer showing a heatmap of the depth of the world's oceans and a flyout graph card from a point in the South China Sea showing more detailed data.

1 1 9

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 2d

What have we learned? Nooooothiiiinngg

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 2d

Slightly mad ones, as per usual.

(One student said they'd heard they get to do mad designs, so I'm glad my brand is at least minimally recognised.)

1 1

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 4d

Hmm....if I'm back on Bluesky that must mean it's submarine design season again....

3 11

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 7d

That's a Sticky Bomb if the NYC Spy Museum's placards are to be believed.

(They're not, obviously.)

((Slightly ironic that the one thing that made me red-faced and cross enough to write a grumpy email to a public institution about it was a Gammon Bomb.)

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 11d

I just discovered today that JSTOR does free public access with a "limit" of 100 papers a month. Which is pretty awesome and I will use as soon as I'm not in this job.

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 12d

Thankyou! I do enjoy a dumb plan. 😀

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 12d

......why do you even have files about Amelia Earhart that needed to be declassified?

2 11

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 13d

Someone did actually run a LARP on the Das Boot shooting set (earlier this year, I think)!

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 13d

Bit of a busman's holiday, I fear!

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 13d

There are now photos!

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 13d

Hugely grateful to my co-GMs who enabled the whole ARMA simulation side of the game. And now we've done it, this will always be a daft thing that we've done.

1 6

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 13d

Quite a lot of orbital fire support called for (in narrow six minute windows while the voidships were overhead) culminating in a torpedo strike from a Cobra on the cathedral where the traitors were meeting a chaos sorcerer. And extracted just before they got overun.

1 5

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 13d

The characters were on a job for the Inquisition - masquerading as a recently assassinated traitorous Imperial Guard colonel and running his regiment through a battle while actually sniffing out other traitors in the regiment and arranging bad things to happen to them.

1 5

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 13d

Okay, so today I ran the dumbest concept LARP I've ever run (and I've run a space combat from the vestry of an old church.)

I built a tank in my garage and put five players into it for three hours while three GMs controlled a computer simulation they could drive through. This was "DuD: CHIMERA!"

The inside of the Chimera's crew bay - three seats for the map table and the vox operator. You can see the gunner's and driver's compartments at the front of the vehicle.

The bay is 66 inches tall - just low enough that none of the players could stand up straight. Enough space to fit, small enough to be really inconvenient.

3 1 19

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 14d

Well, it's time for the dumbest LARP project I've ever written...

CHIMERA Day is upon us.

1 7

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 16d

I don't know if Tir Nan Beo is still running or not. (Fantastical Dark Ages.)

I'm afraid everything else I'm aware of in the NL is less fantastical.

1 1

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 16d

I do have some friends who play English language larps in the. Netherlands. Is there a particular genre you had in mind?

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 22d

As I recall the answer was usually about a million points of physical Flaws and a BODY OF PUUUURE ENERGY.

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 26d

I think this is a really interesting point, and it explains quite a lot of the polarisation of the response.

I don't know how much of this is due to social media engagement-based algorithm and how much to deliberate political action, but it's certainly a real phenonmenon.

Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 26d

This may explain why there’s an aggressive response to people who merely post Kirk’s own words. It threatens the existence of the alternate Kirk - the motivational speaker that had been marketed to young kids and white Christian groups through selective quotation & clips.

ML @mlpoole.bsky.social · 26d

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 27d

Yeah. Certainly from the outside this [whole situation] looks terrifyingly insane.

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 28d

Gosh, some breathtaking hypocrisy today from the American Right.

2 7

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 28d

Also I don't want to sound ungrateful to UNSUNG - it's an incredible fan project which made our whole Chelt-Nam campaign possible years before the official Prairie Fire DLC existed. It's just that even exploding the limits of what you might expect fans to be able to do, still has some limits.

Dr Nick Bradbeer @nickbradbeer.bsky.social · 28d

ALSO, as a fringe benefit, now my USAF character gets an aircraft with USAF livery rather than USMC camo.

1 6