User:Riumplus

From MYSTlore

RIUM+ (originally pronounced rye-uhm-plus but I'm not too picky on pronounciation) is a Myst fan who is not quite sane. I have been a Myst fan since its release in 1991, briefly visited the online community in 1997 on an old 386 and then permanently joined the Myst community in 1999-ish when I had a 10-megabit cable Internet connection installed at my parent's house. 10 megabits doesn't sound like much right now, but in those days it was practically unheard-of (think the equivalent of a gigabit fiber connection today), especially where I live (Brisbane, Australia).

Given my location in Brisbane, Australia, I have a ping of around ~360ms to the US. As such, I sometimes have a little lag with voice communications. Until the Southern Cross Cables get an upgrade or they set up a shard in Australia, I'm stuck with an almost constant 360ms of lag permanently to the Uru servers.

I attended Mysterium 2001 as a sheet of paper with a bad 640x480 picture of my face on it, where I started the whole "paper person" tradition. I did the same in 2002 with a 1024x768 image, but in 2003 I attended Mysterium in-person. For 2004 I upgraded my resolution to 1600x1200 and I was a proper portrait picture, while for 2005 I was a 2048x1536 mask worn by Mihshehl for good luck during a game of Laser Tag. Also in 2005 I attended the first Mystralia meetup in Sydney. I attended the 2006 Mysterium in Spokane in-person again, but missed making an appearance at Mystralia 2006 (they were on at the same time and I was too busy to organise a paper-person). For Mystralia 2007 I appeared again as a piece of paper, this time at 2336x3504 and again at Mysterium 2007 as a sheet of paper at the same resolution. However, given it's starting to get difficult to gain access to a better and better camera/studio (2007's photograph was taken with a Canon EOS-20D in a professional studio), for Mysterium 2008 I am planning something a little different to sidestep the resolution problem to give me two years to get access to better equipment.

My collection of Myst memorabilia is small in comparison to the likes of CAGrayWolf, but given my location around half of my collection is items that not even CAGrayWolf has. I have the only known surviving Myst III:Exile advertising stand in the world, along with almost every "Australian" edition of the games that has come out to date. I also have a hardback Book of Atrus by Bantam Books in its psychedelic cover, and off-the-air recordings of various advertisements that have been on Australian TV. I also have a misprinted hardcover edition of the Crowthistle Chronicles: The Iron Tree (The book that Cyan made a little world for and distributed with the book on CD), which I hope to get signed by the author next time I see her just to make that book even rarer.

I'm the author of "Purple Myst" and "Orange Myst", first-prize winners of the Unmysterium 2002 and Mysterium 2003 poetry contests under the limerick category. However, don't expect me to spout out something beautiful and memorable when I'm talking to you; I won by default. Let that be a lesson to you, the next time you're thinking of not having a go because you know you're horrible at something. :P

I have a website at www.riumplus.com, which notably features a complete reconstruction of the Riven Journals, a bunch of exceedingly large Riven Photomosaics and a set of Crowthistle Screenshots.

I have some scripts on my computer that losslessly recompress PNG images. I'm a firm supporter of PNG instead of GIF (unless if it's animated), not only because of its open-source nature or the increased capabilities of the format, but also because a PNG that contains the same image data as a GIF almost always has a smaller file size. (Well, when it's properly saved at least; Photoshop has one of the worst PNG exporting libraries around and gives PNG's compression a bad name)

To prove this point, I have made some scripts that convert GIFs to smaller PNGs, as well as some scripts that recompress PNG images to a smaller size. In both instances, the outputted file is exactly the same and there are no recompression artefacts - I just find a more optimal compression route down the tree of Huffman tables and sliding LZ77 windows that make up the deflate algorithm. Think of it as a box filled with a bundle of odd-shaped items, and I don't throw away any of the contents that haven't already been thrown away by other compression algorithms - I just find a better way to pack the box with what's still there.

Doing this is completely lossless and means a slight reduction in bandwidth for the host and an increase in page load times for users on slower connections. It's basically a win for everyone. It just means that each image takes my computer an hour or two to compress, instead of the few seconds people are used to. What would you do to save a byte? ;)

I'm also a bit of an expert on D'ni time. Message me if you have a question.

If you're wanting to talk to me for some reason, or if you want a copy of my scripts (runs on at least WinXP, scripts and associated executables are free), feel free to contact me through whatever means you're most comfortable with. I don't bite too hard.

I also have a bellybutton.