IMO he can drain the fire but you should force him to "spend" it for something else, like throwing the fireball to the sky or eating it as backlash or empower his "force ring(s)"

BigMrE: I think you misunderstood, Im trying to put the computer in the circle and the wizard outside it (so theoratically the optical mouse wouldn't bork)
Butters being able to use GPS inside the circle means (at least as far as I understand it) that if you don't have an active source in the circle (like a wizard),  it will continue working like a normal mortals machine.

Yes but the point was to make this character a vanilla mortal?
(I'm not dissing your idea, it is really good btw.)

Psst, you forgot the +2 from mortal (And there are mortals withs such drastic personality change capabilities, just add a terrible old experience (and a corresponding pschological stunt) that makes the guy a harmless, kind joe one moment and a stone cold killer next.)

Dummy keyboard?

That (The camera to read the input) is a brilliant idea.  Add an optic mouse inside the ward, it's laser aimed to a movebable surface outside the circle,  one that moves as you use the track-ball. (Keep the mouse stationary and move the mousepad so to speak). This way you wont even need an access port near the user wizard!.

I was reading Small Favor (again) in the weekend and Lucios intrest in Computers made me think about it. Is it possible to "ward" a computer against increased murphionic effects?

The basic fact is simple:
Anything that is more advanced than ww2 tech is going to get borked around a wizard.

The advanced facts are not so different:(Courtesy of Waldo Butters)
A Wizards body generates an steady low grade electric/magnetic fied
When a wizard is agitated, he subconciously leaks magic,
Solid State electronics, which are delicate against power surges, rough handling plus rogue magic leaks equals smoke.
A simple circle ward stops free magic and low grade attacks (and  supernatural creatures like small fae, ghosts, zombies, spectres. Essentially anything without free will or heavy in power scale)

So the simple answer is yes. Just put a laptop and a big self contained power source in a circle (Just like Mr Butters using a GPS device in Dead Beat). If the laptop has voice activation/command software then you can even use it from outside the circle.



But that is not the real deal. When we talk about computers these days, we don't just mean the "office" capabilities in the box. We are talking about the internet access. The whole deal.

So can we make a computer with internet access and keyboard / mouse support usable by wizards?


My answer is, it is probable. The most difficult problem is the most simple, can you make a simple circle ward with access points (2 circular magically inert "stone" disks that are covered with a very light permeable to certain substances (copper and whatever keyboard and mouse's strings will be) ward.)

Put the electrical opening as far away from the user as possible. Preferably a floor down so that you have solid (stone? concrete?) wall between you and that access point. Insulate the wires with passive anti-magic, Configure the ward on this stone circle to feed from the wires. If you can balance it properly (Molly not Harry) the wards will be eating the a small part of the current on normal use (a bit data loss on phone/dsl I guess) and in case of a surge, eat the excess. Add a couple of surge protectors and a ups or 2 and that part will be ok.

The input end is a bit trickier. The keyboard will probably resemble a typewriter instead of a modern keyboard and the mouse will be a mechanichal trackball instead of a ball mouse. The input will be carried to the access points via strings (of some inert substance.  Fishing line maybe?) which will be converted to normal input inside the main ward.

The ward on this access point is trickier. Imagine 3 layers, the innermost layer is a grounding ward that eats/vacuums very small amounts of magic on the inside (computer side) and passes it to the middle ward, the middle ward is designed to repel magic on the outside and the outermost ward is again designed to eat the ambient magic (this one is much stronger than the inner one) to fuel the wards.  

Add a camera and an optical mouse inside the circle. The camera and its software reads the typwriter(which is outside)'s input (something like http://www.scalesgalore.com/global/images/product_2/167/16779_250X250.jpg) and the optical mouse uses a moving surface connected to the track-ball as mouse pad (keep the mouse fixed and move the mousepad so to speak)


What do you think? Would this be possible?

Heya all.
For the last couple of days, I was trying to register with my hotmail.account but the system never sent me the activation e-mail so I had to get this one.
Is there a possible way for me to get my "other" nick by having you closing that unactivated account?
Thanks in advance.