Apothecaria - Saving the previous witch and bringing her to Bogle's Night.

 I've been playing a journaling RPG called Apothecaria.  It's been fun.  This section wraps up one of the big plotlines. Figuring out what happened to the previous witch and, in this case, saving her from a misfired bit of magic that she was studying.  If you want to check out the game you can find it on itch.io at BlackwellWriter.

Day of the Bogle’s Night celebration

I gathered up almost all the jumpkins in the garden and spent the morning carving faces for them.  Once I had a dozen faces carved I added the bits and all of another pair of jumpkins with great handfuls of savory seasoning and sun sugar into the giant cooking cauldron that I hadn’t used before now.  I set the cauldron on to boil up a fine jumpkin soup.  While that simmered I prepared the spirit candles I’d read about in “Charms of the Healer Witches of Loch and Dell”.  I prepared thirteen each a bit of wax mixed with distillate of Spirit and a wick.

Once each of the carved jumpkins had its own little candle I set the last on the table nearby and lit it.  I felt the fire spirit fill the air above the candle and greeted it.  We talked for a little while of their world of dancing flames and my mundane world.  Eventually we got around to business.  I told it that I had prepared a dozen candles and wanted to invite fire spirits to dance in the Bogle’s Night bonfire.  This is how I learned that this invitation had been traditional a long time ago.  It agreed that it and its friends would stay within the bonfire and taught me a complicated rune so that each spirit would know they were allowed to dance in the fire.

I carved the rune into the dish of each of the jumpkins and gently melted the spirit candle into the rune.

As I waited, I remade the bed with Witch Heather’s linens, so that she will hopefully feel at home when, not if, she gets back this evening.  I didn’t have to wait long after I finished for Sara and her friends, including two strapping young men one of which was Harold, to show up with a cart.  They loaded the great cauldron onto the cart and stabilized it with a tall board so that it couldn’t tip over.  They we added the jumpkins to the back.  The runners clearly don’t expect jumpkin jack-o-lanterns to make a spooky bonfire and I allowed them to think that’s all they are.

As I was dropping off the jumpkins Farmer Bileus came by to tell me that his pigs took advantage of the laxness of a new swineherd, Torin, to sneak out.  They’ve left a note saying they’re playing hide and go seek, again.

I took a few minutes to talk to Rosemarie and we agreed to meet at the graveyard shortly before sunset.

From there I went around the village to pay for the fixtures, cushions, and linens for the rooms that have just finished.  They’ll deliver to Granite before the celebration tonight.  As I was making my way out of town I saw one of the pigs and was able to catch it easily.  Apparently, I’m “It” in this game of hide and go seeking.  I delivered the pig to young Torin on my way out of town.

I made my way to the runestone for Kera’s Hideaway without trouble.  I double checked that I had the potion, my hat, and the sequence to enter.  That last is particularly important as I don’t want to become trapped myself.

I put my hand on the first rune and pulled them magic of the stone guiding it deosil through the runes.  When I finished it felt like the stone split into three parts and the parts shifted to form a doorway.  I stepped through the doorway.

On the other side I found the small room I was expecting.  On the left there was a big open window looking out on a lake.  There was a small table in the center of the room with a small fireplace and empty pantry to the right of the table.  Across from the door was a loft bed with a small window and desk underneath.  At the desk sat a woman in a loose black dress with a black witch’s hat.  From the back I could tell she had chestnut brown hair.  She was talking to herself.

I stood there for a few seconds and saw her stand up and go to the window saying, “I should start my notes with whatever is happening with that window.”  She walked to the window and looked out for a few minutes.  Then she turned back towards the desk and said to herself, “Ah, just what I need a desk with a notebook to write in, since my notebook went missing.”  When she made it back to the desk she sat down and picked up the pen before saying, “I should start my notes with whatever is happening with that window.”

It very much looked like a classic time loop, though this seems to also impair the victim’s memory.  I stepped forward and greeted the witch as she went to the window.  This surprised her.  She asked who I was and I told her “Witch James of High Rannoc”.

This provoked a confused, “But I’m Witch Heather of High Rannoc, I ought to recognize you and I don’t!”

I nodded, “You’ve been missing for some years and I only recently figured out where you disappeared to.”  I gestured to the desk, “This place seems to have powerful defenses against intruders.”

This caused her to look at the desk and say, “Ah, just what I need a desk with a notebook to write in, since my notebook went missing.”  She repeated her time loop while I pulled out the potion to cure Extemporal Displacement.  Then I moved so she would see me on her way to the window.

When she saw me again she was visibly shocked and asked who I was.  I told her I was a witch that had been asked to look for her and that she seemed to be caught in a time loop.  Then I offered her the potion saying it should break the time loop and clear the magic clouding her senses.  She looked at my hat for a long minute before taking the potion from me and giving it a sniff.

When she downed the potion she said it was somewhat bitter, but not undrinkable.  Then she paused and looked around.  “How long have I been trapped in this room not even able to recognize my own notebook?”

“At least a decade,” I replied.  “I had the job thrust on me this spring and I’ve been collecting evidence all year.”

“Why weren’t you caught the way I was?”

“My working hypothesis is that you activated the runes going widdershins.  Did you?”  She nodded.  “It turns out the user is supposed to activate the runes going deosil.”

This caused Witch Heather to exclaim, “Runes can change what they do based on the sequence?!  I must make notes.”  She rushed to the desk and began writing at a mad pace while saying things like “This will break open the Quatha Conundrum.” And “This is why the Condorcet Key fails to open the Carrallon Lock.”

As it seemed she was slowing down I ventured an interruption.  “It’s Bogle’s Night tonight and I’ve got to go to the cemetery shortly.”

“Oh blast,” Heather exclaimed, “And I’ve got to be there to escort the ghosts.”

“Well, you could leave it to me if you want.  I’m the Witch of High Rannoc, after all.”

Heather paused, “Oh, right.  I’ve been missing for a decade.”  She looked at her notebook and closed it up.  “I really should be there.  Poor Mael must think I’ve forgotten her.  She’s one of the spirits who doesn’t have living descendants that we know of.”

We set off for the graveyard together.  When Heather asked whether I was staying at her cottage.  I told her that I’d been paying for a tower to be constructed on the headland overlooking the cottage, so I can just stay there, if she would prefer.  We agreed not to decide until after the evening was done.

Bogle’s Night Celebration

I did my best to tell Witch Heather what had happened this year and what I little I knew.

We reached the graveyard a little before sundown and joined Rosemarie there.  She had painted her face to look like a skull and was wearing a winding necklace of dried flowers winding into her hair and hanging across her collar.  She was a little concerned to see me with a female witch.  That cleared up quickly enough when I introduced Witch Heather as the previous Witch of High Rannoc.

Heather spent the half hour we waited for sunset talking with Rosemarie about the events in High Rannoc in her absence.  One interesting Rosemarie mentioned is that High Rannoc has had less magical goings on in the decade Heather has been missing, especially in the lead up to Bogle’s Night.  Heather speculated that it might because of the time loop she’d been caught in.  The deal the Witch of High Rannoc makes with the Keeper of the Manor lasts until the witch next sees the Gate of Autumn and Heather technically hasn’t seen the Gate of Autumn since the last deal she made.

Rosemarie asked why this Keeper would keep a deal through years.  Heather replied that the Keeper of the Manor is highly honorable on top of being bound by some sort of faerie logic.  It wouldn’t do to try to bend a deal intentionally, but an accident wouldn’t break a Deal even if it meant keeping the Manor separate for years.  Heather did say that my becoming the Witch would probably be understood to allow for a new Deal next Bogle’s Night, even if I hadn’t saved her.

It wasn’t long after that we saw the first of the ghosts coming out of the fog on the graveyard.  I greeted the ghosts and introduced myself as the Witch of High Rannoc.  I offered to guide them to the Spooky Soiree.  They agreed and I introduced Rosemarie and Heather.  I told them that I’d only just broke Heather out of a time loop.

I lead the haunting to the soiree.  Heather spent the walk talking with an ancient young woman, whom I assumed was Mael.  When we reached the edge of the light from the bonfire I paused to put on my mari lwyd costume.  The bonfire was extraordinary with all the dancing jumpkins bounding and bouncing about the fire.  They even cackled occasionally.  The ghosts were slowly dispersing into the crowd with Heather, but a troop stayed by me as I got dressed.  The leader of the troop was a ghost named Ionis, who served with the legion long ago.

I talked with him as I got my costume in order.  They have been in the area and are made up of men that died in the service.  The Legion was legally the family of the soldiers.  They lived and worked together for years.  Even if a man retired and married their sweetheart they almost always lived near the legion.  It turns out being family for thirty years makes men family for life.

When I was ready Rosemarie and I headed into the hall for the dancing.  Witch Heather joined us.  She said this was the perfect way to leave the Council and Lord Mayor off balance.  It would be interesting for her to see how they dealt with the uncertainty.  After all, this was the Spooky Soiree, where the living and the dead mingled freely.

When we entered the well lit room we were approached by Jeremy.  He greeted Rosemarie first.  Then he complimented me on the jumpkins.  They really add more than a touch of spooky magic to the event.  We talked briefly waiting for him to mention Heather.  He was obviously trying to place her.

Eventually, he asked her if she was Witch Heather as she looked exactly as he remembered.  She laughed and told him that she was Witch Heather.  Then he asked if she was alive or dead.  She teased him that it was bad manners to ask a lady if she was dead at the soiree.  She teased him for a while.  She did eventually tell him that she’d been trapped by a runestone that she’d been researching.

Frankly, I think Jeremy proved his mettle.  He offered to take her around to talk to the rest of the council, as the Lord Mayor is away at the moment.  Apparently, his daughter is to marry an Italian and live in Milan come the spring.  With Heather off to talk to the Council informally, Rosemarie and I were able to enjoy the costumes and the dancing.

It was a bit different from the dances for the Flower Festival, which are quite traditional, and it was different from the dances on the beach for the Sunrise Celebration, with all the playing about with everyone dancing together.  The dance at the Spooky Soiree is almost a play with each of the dancers playing the part of a “spooky monster”.  Initially, Rosemarie and I danced as a pair, but our parts ended up shuffling us to different parts of the dance floor.

I saw a lot of different costumes.  There were a lot of skeletons, ghosts, goblins, and fae.  One dance was with Heather playing a vengeful witch, I think.  She let me know that she had told the council members that she won’t be causing disruptions this winter.

I also met Grizzy on the dance floor.  I was a little surprised, but I had noticed that some of the people in skeleton “costumes” looked an awful lot like skeletons that had strung black batting about their bones.  She confirmed that a number of bogles and others that weren’t usually welcome in town took advantage of the guising to sneak in and have a bit of fun.  She’s coming along well in the reading and writing lessons.  She’s also begun asking about potion making.  I don’t think she’ll ask this season, but I wouldn’t be surprised to have her ask to apprentice sometime in the spring.  I hope she doesn’t ask before then since there won’t be space until another room is finished and I haven’t got the funds to speed things up at the moment.

As the night wore on the kids showed signs of wearing out.  That was when Bishop Manutius took the stage.  He was guising as one of the Strangers, pretty close in appearance to Aziraphale, in fact.   He had a nice speech congratulating folks on their guises.  Then he surprised me by asking me to join him on stage.  When I joined him he presented me with the Crown of Bones.  I could feel a bit of magic in the crown when he put it on my costume’s skull.

I would have left the stage then, but the Bishop had me stay so others could say a word.  Farmer Bileus was first and told the folks how I had twice helped corral his pigs when they’d snuck off to play hide and seek.  Then Jessica came up to say a word.  She was very complimentary about how I’d helped her go from being a confused newbie adventurer to getting consignments of enchanted goods.  Tiffany Tailor gave me a lovely thank you speech on account of how I’d always been ready to help when little Hans came down with what had seemed to be allergies but turned into Giver’s Disease.  Captain O’Toole told folks about the four or five times I’d rescued airmen lost in the Sky Isles without a way down.  Esmerelda told the story of the vampire that attacked the Lord Mayor’s daughter, and how I’d helped protect Esmerelda and Tiffany as well as get the news to the Crown of the trouble.  Meldrake regaled the crowd with the story of how I was so committed to healing that I’d braved going outside of reality to do battle with his evil alternate.  It got quite a few gasps. Jeremy was almost the last.  He came up and told folks that I’d been tirelessly working for the good of High Rannoc.  He and the council had watched as I learned what I was capable of.  In recognition of the good I did the last three seasons the Council had voted me 100 silver in thanks.

Jeremy clearly thought he was going to be the last as he went to help me down from the stage, but Witch Heather had other ideas.  She got up on stage and put her witch’s hat on.  This drew gasps from the crowd as most recognized her.  She told them that she’d been caught by some magic she’d been studying and locked outside reality.  She explained that I’d done a load of research, figured out where she had been locked out, and how to access the space.  She thanked me again for breaking her out of the endless round of not remembering.  Then she told the crowd that, while she would be staying at the cottage for at least a little while, she had no intention of displacing me.  In fact, she felt I was a better healer than she had been and would be glad to support me as I continued to serve as The Witch of High Rannoc.

After leaving the stage, I slipped out of my costume.  Rosemarie found me to steal kisses.  I found Witch Heather and let her know that she could use the cottage, as I’m building a tower and it is ready for me to move into it.  After all the excitement I was glad to get home, at least after escorting Rosemarie to her apartment.

Book Review: She Who Became the Sun by Shelly Parker-Chan

 The tale starts in 1345 in ancient China with the second daughter of the Zhu family hunting lizards and crickets to stave off starvation.  Her brother is said to have a great destiny while she has nothing.  Then her father is beaten to death by bandits and her brother gives up his life.  After this she takes her brother's name Zhu Chongba and flees to the nearby monastery.

As Zhu Chongba, he is obliged to hide his gender, but rises partially on his intense desire to rise.  This time at the monastery when the eunuch general of the Yuan destroys it.

Zhu Chongba joins the rebellion with their Prince of Radiance and his Mandate of Heaven against the Yuan dynasty.  He rises rapidly through a series of near miraculous victories and clever ruses.  Eventually Zhu Chongba learns that their desire is a Mandate of Heaven as well.

This is an interesting story.  The setting seems to be China at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongol dynasty.  The character interactions are fun and in patterns that remind me of folks I knew in Honolulu.  The world building is also interesting.  It draws on Taoism and Buddhism in clear ways.  The prime minister of the rebels has ministers of both the left and right.  Interestingly, the Mandate of Heaven is a visible sign that inheres to individuals with a great destiny rather than being tied to dynasties.  These individuals can also see ghosts.

This story is well worth reading.  Especially if you want stories informed by Chinese history and culture.

Book Review: Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell

 The story starts in media res as it were, with our main protagonist, Kiem, Prince Royal of Iskat, facing the Emperor.  This is a situation that usually only occurs when Kiem has caused a minor scandal of some sort, which he did often enough as a student he knows how to handle it.  This meeting isn't for a scandal.  Kiem is to marry Count Jainan nav Adessari of Feria from the planet Thea whose Iskan partner, Prince Taam, died a month ago in an accident.  The Emperor explains that this is essential for a treaty renewal that must happen in only a few months when Kiem challenges her on the marriage.  At this Kiem yields, though he commits himself to being kind and understanding with the presumably grieving Jainan.

The idea is to get through the treaty renewal ceremony without hurting Jainan's feelings and giving him time to heal from his loss.  Things don't go to plan.  It turns out the accident that killed Taam was more of a murder and someone tried to pin the blame on Jainan.  Who ever it is, is also trying to disrupt the treaty renewal for unknown reasons.

Kiem is a fun character, a reformed Bertie Wooster sort, with a very competent secretary, Bel.  Jainan is quieter, more self-controlled, and much more analytical.  Jainan has a doctorate in regolith mining, which was less useful than might be expected given his previous partner was managing a major regolith mining operation.  The relationship between Kiem and Jainan is adorably awkward, especially because their unwillingness to talk openly leads to confusion about what each wants from the relationship.

There is one thing that maybe deserves a content warning.  The story includes scenes of domestic violence, though not between Kiem and Jainan.  Other than that, this is a fun story for folks that enjoy gay space operas.

Book Review: The Unspoken Name by A. K. Larkwood

 Csorwe is our main point of view character.  She is an Oshaarun, they are a race that looks like Orcs from Warcraft.  When the story starts she is the Chosen Bride of the Unspoken One, a chthonic god of death, privation, and prophecy.  She is expected to sacrifice herself in a month when Belthandros Sethennai shows up looking for information about the magical Mcguffin, the Reliquary of Pentrevesse.  He is a wizard from Tlaanthothe.  This race is described as very like the elves from Warcraft.  When Csorwe goes to sacrifice herself she meets Belthandros.  He gives her the choice of leaving with him, rather than being a sacrifice.  This kicks off the first part of the story.

They travel through the gates to a trade hub where Csorwe receives training in weapons and language.  Belthandros continues to search for his Mcguffin.  The plan is to restore Belthandros to his position ruling Tlaanthothe.  Eventually they succeed.  Along the way Csorwe meets Talasseres Charossa.  She doesn't like him.  After a transition the second part of the story begins.

Belthandros has read an academic paper.  He thinks the Mcguffin might be on a dead world, so he sends Csorwe and Talasseres to check it out.  They travel to the dead world and meet the archeological team from the Imperial Quincuriate led by the scholar that wrote the paper Belthandros read.  Csorwe hits it off with one of them a elf woman named Qanwa Shuthmili.  It turns out the Mcguffin is here and a necromancer is trying to get it first, they just need Shuthmili to get it.  From here the situation escalates with a series of high risk plans.

I receive the ebook as part of the Hugo packet because A.K. Larkwood is a nominee for the Astounding Award.  This is an award for the best new writer.  As you might expect this is a really enjoyable story.  Csorwe is straightforward, capable, clever, and sarcastic.  Shuthmili is brilliant, capable, and sweet.  The interplay and affection between them are lovely.  The worldbuilding makes me think that Warcraft is a major source of inspiration.  Having said that the worldbuilding works better here than I've seen in the games, where it is just background to the scenarios.

I've got two criticisms.  The first is that transition from the first section to the second.  The first section wrapped up all the major threads it was dealing with.  This made it feel like a complete novella.  This led to the second section feeling like it should be a separate book.  The issue is the pacing in that second section.  It felt like the fallout of each risky plan led to the next one being immediately created, and with each of the half dozen plus plans the stakes escalated.  This left me tired of the story before the final one actually brought a happy ending.  It would have been nice to have something break up the tension, perhaps a few short scenes of Csorwe and Shuthmili getting to know one another better.

Book Review: Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire

 Regan is an intersex girl.  She just wants to be accepted for who she is, a girl that loves horses.  As she and her friends grow up Regan notices that she isn't developing like the other girls.  She asks her parents why and they tell her the truth.  She reveals this to her best friend, who she knows is very judgmental.  When she flees that rejection, she finds a door to the Hooflands and a destiny she doesn't particularly want.

It's a fun read.  The plot is straightforward.  This puts the focus on the characters, particularly Regan, and the worldbuilding.  Throughout Regan is portrayed like any unwilling protagonist might be.

If you like character focused stories or portal fantasies this is an excellent book.

Book Review: "What is Life?" by Addy Pross

In this book Addy Pross presents a theory on the origin of life.  He describes some recent research into the systems chemistry of self-replicating chemicals.  Using this he shows how this chemistry matches the behavior of simple living creatures.

Research into chemical systems indicates that these systems display properties that individual chemicals do not.  The one that matters for Pross’s argument is Dynamic Kinetic Stability (DKS).  DKS is similar to entropic stability of chemicals in that it is the tendency of a system to remain the same.  It differs in that the molecules in the system can all be constantly changing while the overall system maintains the same concentrations of those molecules.  The research demonstrates that some self-replicating RNA does tend to persist in this way.  It also shows that these RNA molecules exhibit other properties normally associated with biology.  Where there are several types the one that replicates better dominates and replaces the worse replicators.  When more than one competes for a single resource eventually one of them will replace its competitors.  Where there are several possible resources different types can dominate.

This is an interesting book.  The question is the origin of life and the evidence provided supports the argument Pross makes.  It is also a short book at just 200 pages.  It probably should have been shorter.  Pross has a tendency to layout familiar points in excruciating detail with multiple illustrations before getting to his point.

It can be bought on Amazon.

Book Review: "The King of Elfland’s Daughter" by Lord Dunsany

This bit of beautiful, lyrical, poetic prose was originally published by Lord Dunsany in 1924.  The plot is quite simple.  The characters are simple as well, mostly filling particular roles.  It couples and contrasts human ways with entirely alien Elf ways. 

The local Parliament of Erl decides it would be good for the town to have a lord that is just a bit magical.  The local lord sends his son Alveric to bring the Princess of Elfland, Lirazel.  He succeeds with the help of a witch.  When the princess is brought back to the human fields the priest has some difficulty identifying an appropriate wedding ceremony and Alveric becomes the Lord of Erl.  They have a son, Orion, and the witch is appointed the nursery maid.  Then her father sends a Rune to return his daughter to Elfland.  The priest’s difficulty is only the first as Lirazel mostly doesn’t adjust to human ways.  Lirazel is returned to Elfland.  Alveric goes on a quest in search of Lirazel and Elfland, abandoning his duties as Lord of Erl.  Orion grows up and spends most of his time in hunting.  Orion catches and kills a unicorn, in a mildly graphic scene.  The members of parliament are satisfied with this level of magic.  Orion, however, wants to hunt more unicorns.  In order to do this he recruits trolls to help manage the dogs.  A troll recruits will o’ the wisps to provide light for hunts during pitch black nights.  The members of parliament are distraught at the town being swamped with magic.  They ask the witch for a spell against magic and are told off.  The King of Elfland uses another Rune to answer Lirazel’s prayers.  This brings Alveric and Orion into Elfland, which incidentally draws the magic, and a little bit of Erl’s fields, back to Elfland. 

I enjoyed this book tremendously for the lovely flowing language and the beautiful otherness of Elfland.  Having said that this isn’t a modern story and it is very much not a swords and sorcery tale.  The plot is simple and lacks twists.  The characters are flat and mostly don’t change.  When they do, it is a transformation into another flat role.  It felt less like a novel and more like a spell calling, “Come away oh human child…”  Some are caught by that beauty while others just aren’t.

Book Review: "Trekonomics" by Manu Saadia

Manu Saadia first encountered Star Trek as a child in Paris.  The utopia it presented caught his imagination then and helped shape his thinking about how the world can be good.  In college he studied economic history and as an adult he sought an accounting of how economics works in Star Trek.  When he didn't find such a book he decided to write one himself.

Manu Saadia divides Star Trek into two sections.  The first part includes the original series and the movies up to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.  This first part assumes an economic model more like our current experience.  In Star Trek IV that changes when Kirk says the Federation doesn't have money.  The book mostly focuses on the second section because getting rid of money is a much more interesting economic situation.

The book then covers several different parts of the economy.  Chapter one explores getting rid of money.  Chapter two goes into how work works in Star Trek.  Chapter three discusses the replicator and through it how capital works.  Chapter four considers natural limits.  Chapter five gets into the problems of free riding and negative externalities.  Chapter six steps back from Star Trek and gets into the roots of Star Trek in earlier science fiction.  Chapter seven returns to thinking about work and extends that into the way people in the Federation think about everything.  Chapter eight uses the Ferengi to consider how the Federation's economy interacts with capitalism elsewhere in the galaxy.  Chapter nine asks whether we can move towards Star Trek's economic system in the real world.  The book then concludes with a reflection on the meaning of "Live Long and Prosper".

This is an interesting book.  It is one of the best books exploring the problems and concerns of post scarcity.  It also points out the ways we're already approaching post scarcity in several fields.

Book Review: "Every Heart a Doorway" by Seanan McGuire

Nancy is a teen that found a door in her cellar that lead to the Halls of the Dead.  She was there until the Lord of the Dead told her she had to return to the world of the living until she was sure.  Her parents were quite upset that she wasn't the girl they remembered so they sent her to Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children in the hope they could get her back.  What they didn't know is that Eleanor West's Home is a boarding school for the children who wandered into portal worlds and want to go back to those worlds.

This is an interesting little story set in an intriguing world.  The plot is the weakest part of the story, basically a series of murders that drive the character interactions.  The characters, on the other hand, are interesting and complicated.  Each one reflects the world they travelled to.  The interactions between the characters are enjoyable.  The universe is also quite complicated with each portal world classified on several dimensions.  The main two are Nonsense/Logic and Virtue/Wicked.  As mentioned all of the students want to return to their world, which adds an interesting tension to the conversations since they all know how unlikely it is they can return.

Overall I do recommend reading it.  Just bear in mind that it isn't your usual fantasy novel.

Book Review: "The Angel's Command" by Brian Jacques

This is a story about a boy, Ben, and his dog, Ned.  They were saved from the Flying Dutchman by the angel who cursed that ship to sail forever.  In the process Ben and Ned were enchanted so they don't age and can communicate telepathically.  They are required to travel the world helping the people they meet.

This novel is split into two books.  The first book, La Petite Marie, tells how Ben and Ned take ship with a pirate crew in Brazil following the angel's instructions.  They go through a number of trials as the pirate captain guides his ship to France where he intends to retire.  The second book, The Razan, picks up at the end of the first.  It takes Ben and Ned along the French Pyrenees joining a teenage thief girl and a young male portraitist with the magic power that his portraits always show people as they really are.  The trio is promptly recruited by an old comte to attempt the rescue of his nephew from a band of particularly evil brigands.

The novel shows most of the good features that can be found in the Redwall stories.  The characters and settings are vivid.  The bad guys are clearly evil and deserve their misfortune.  The good guys are clearly good, though they are sometimes playfully tricky.  The main things this story doesn't have that the Redwall series has are riddles and character driven plots.

Overall this novel isn't as good as any of the stories set in Redwall that I've read.  Still it is a decent, straightforward story and might be good to read with a kid.

News 12/9/2016

Well, I'm in the Honolulu airport again. I'll be visiting with Mom, Paupau, and Mary for the weekend.




I know it has been a while since I last posted. The weeks have a tendency to blend into each other. The weather is the usual. Occasionally it gets cold enough at night that I'll get out a heavy blanket. Sometimes it also gets silly hot for the islands. In the upper 80s usually with no trades so it is humid, too. Recently the temps have been great and I've seen rain every night and often during the day. I've even seen a couple of days that were completely overcast.


Over the summer I know folks saw reports of the time we had two hurricanes pass by the islands in one week. They caused trouble on the Big Island, but both were far enough away that they only made Honolulu hot and humid. We had a storm earlier in the year, Tropical Storm Darcy Darby, that caused the first thunderstorm I've noticed in the islands. Then it headed out to sea and turned into a tropical depression.


Work continues to go well. The projects are interesting though the requirements and design processes take longer than I'd like. We've just finished a larger project that had all five of the C# developers on it. It was mostly a SQL/SSIS project but it did include some interesting automated integration testing. Now we're working on housekeeping, bug fixes, and small enhancements.


I'm working on bug fixes for one of our earlier projects. One great thing is that I've been able to go through and refactor the code. Bringing it closer to current standards, applying some good practices highlighted by Microsoft's static code analysis, and making it easier to understand what the code is doing.


The plan for Christmas is that I'm flying back to Chicago. I'll get in the Friday before and spend Christmas weekend in Indy. Then I'll be back in Chicago until I fly out that Thursday.

News

I'm at the airport again. I'm on my way to Kona for the weekend. Mom has the timeshare and Aunt Judy is with her so I'm flying over to visit.


Work has been going well. We finally got the design signed off, which is good since we're only a week and a half from finishing the development work. It looks like we'll finish on schedule.


Outside of work things have mostly been quiet. Last weekend Mom, Paupau, and Mary flew in. I took Friday off and we went up to the Pali Lookout and Kaneohe. It's an area Mom hadn't explored, so we had a good time. We spent the rest of the weekend at the Hilton there in Waikiki.


I tried a standup paddleboard on Sunday. I fell into the lagoon a couple of times and never did get properly standing. Still I had fun and will try it again sometime. Perhaps when I'm able to get a lesson or at least some pointers. That hour also reminded me how much I enjoyed kayaking last time I had the chance.


I'm still getting out about every other weekend. On the downside I'm way behind my goal for the month, so I'm not going to make it to 10k words.

News

It has been about three weeks since I wrote my last news post.  Life has mostly been fairly quiet for me.

At work the application we deployed is working well and the performance is acceptable to the users, though I would like it to be faster.  They like the app well enough that the next project adds a feature to it.  We've got six weeks to do all of the development and unit test the new feature.  Then it will go into system test for two weeks.

Camp NaNo is running this month.  I saw a set of prompts shortly before the first and decided I'd like to write a bunch of short pieces using them.  I'll call it a success if I can write 10k words, but I'd like to finish all 100 prompts.  Doing that will take a little more than 25k words.  The writer's group I connected with in November isn't running write in's this month, which I know will make it a more challenging month than last November.  I'm a couple hundred words behind for the 10k at the moment and I'll try to catch up tonight and tomorrow.

I've been getting out every other weekend.  The writer's group usually gets together at a cafe on second Saturdays.  This Saturday was a miss, but I went and did some writing.  When I left the cafe I passed a used book and games store.  The book section wasn't well organized, but I found several good books at a really good value.  After lunch I heard the sound of bagpipes coming from the park.

It turns out the 35th Annual Hawaiian Scottish Festival and Highland Games is today and tomorrow.  I saw a hammer throw and a caber toss.  The caber toss is the event where they toss a log end over end.  It turns out the log only needs to go end over end once and then the toss is scored based on how straight the log is after it lands compared to the direction it was tossed.

News - delayed post from ~3/14

I'm about to go do laundry and put together a news post.  Then I discovered that I hadn't posted this news when I put it together about three weeks ago.  I'm off to watch the laundry and I intend to publish whatever I write while waiting later this evening.

Robert.

Since I last wrote I’ve mostly been doing well.  There was a weekend when I caught a nasty cold.  I came down with it on a Friday.  The same Friday the project we were working on was scheduled to go live.  Between my going home sick at lunch and some unexpected security questions that afternoon it was a rough rollout.  Since then the app is getting positive reviews from the users and we haven’t had any bug reports.  We have seen a question about an enhancement and one action is just slow enough that we might be asked to look into optimizing it.  This would be a little tricky since we already know that a major contributor are 3^rd party webservices.

The weather here in Honolulu is as pleasant as ever.  We have had two cold fronts come through.  The firsts was a month or two ago.  It pushed the temperature down into the mid 60s for most of a week.  Then last week the second pushed the temperature down into the low 70s.  It is slowly returning to the normal low to mid 80s.

A couple of weeks ago I commented on Facebook that the Eddie was on.  This is a surf contest that is only held when the waves in Waimea Bay come in clean and consistently 40ft tall or more.  I heard that the tallest wave was something like 55ft tall.  For those that have seen Ecolab’s Naperville building, imagine a wave about as tall as the building with lifeguards on jet skis coming in ahead of it telling everyone to move away from the beach and the stream.  It is a competition that hasn’t been held since 2009, so a bunch of people took the day off from work to go up to the North Shore to see it.  It is probably just as well.  The city had lane closures on the North Shore on account of the surf coming over the highway.

That reminds me, one thing I hadn’t noticed before moving to Hawaii is that Honolulu has a consolidated city/county government like Indianapolis.  The entire island of Oahu is Honolulu but, like Indy, the neighborhoods all have their own names.  I live in Makiki.  The office is in Ala Moana.  Manoa is just over the ridge from where I live.  Downtown and Chinatown are both west of me.  Ala Moana and at least the part of Makiki I live in are both part of the old Korea moku, think Korea town.  Each of the neighborhoods has its own personality.  The neighborhoods don’t necessarily have their own unique climates, but it varies considerably in a short distance.

In the year I’ve lived here it seems that Makiki doesn’t get much in the way of rain.  There have been a handful of times I’ve wanted an umbrella and only once have I wanted a car on account of the weather.  Manoa is only a mile or two from where I live and I’ve noticed that Manoa gets rain much more regularly.  When Makiki gets rain Ala Moana generally seems to get at least some of the rain, though it is often lighter.  The other nice thing about the weather is that unless the wind is from the south it is basically always sunny even when it rains and the rain seldom lasts long.  The sun and rain mix means I’ve seen dozens of rainbows.  Twice, I even saw rainbows that looked like they came down to the ground near me.  Once the end of the rainbow was just up the street at a corner.  The other time it came down in the local park where people often walk their dogs.

For the New Year’s resolutions, writing daily isn’t happening and writing weekly has been a struggle.  The key challenge is taking the computer where I will want to write rather than leave it on the desk where I play video games.  Getting out on the weekends has gone better.  Last weekend I joined a writer’s group that meets monthly to socialize.

Pu'u 'Ualaka'a State Park

This is a lovely small park on a cinder cone with a nice overlook.

Near the entrance is the trail head for the 'Ualaka'a Trail.

If you follow the road up the mountain you come to a large parking lot with a restroom and several shelters and picnic tables.  From here you can continue to follow the road or park and walk past the restrooms on a short grassy path to the overlook, where there is a small parking lot.  Both times I've been here it hasn't been particularly crowded.

You can get a pretty good view of Diamond Head from the overlook.

As well as a good view of downtown Honolulu.

Here's a great view of Manoa Valley.

There are two ways to get here, which I'll cover in a there and back again post later.

Book Review: "Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance" by Ada Palmer

"Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance" is a scholarly history.  It explores how ordinary scholars read Lucretius's 'De Rerum Natura' in the two centuries after it was rediscovered in 1417.  Ada Palmer has done this by examining the marginalia from many different copies of 'De Rerum Natura' from the renaissance.

I found the book interesting and recommend you read it if you're interested in history.  The writing is clear and very readable.  The supporting evidence is provided with the conclusions.  If you don't know if this sort of thing would be interesting I suggest starting with Ada Palmer's blog, exurbe.com.

The first chapter provides a quick overview of Epicureanism, the atheism it was often accused of, atomism and skepticism, which sometimes supported atheistic arguments.  This chapter is separable from the rest of the work and is the most like the essays Ada Palmer posts on her blog.  There are several interesting tidbits in this chapter.  One of which is that atheism in the Renaissance functioned differently from modern atheism.  At the time anything that might lead people to doubt the existence of God counted, including actions that brought the church into disrepute.  Luther, Calvin, and basically all the Popes of the period made the lists of famous atheists.

The second chapter includes a discussion of the methodology used in the rest of the book along with a description of what conclusions Ada drew from the data.  The data here is the marginalia in 52 manuscripts.  She lays out some cautions that are worth bearing in mind.  After going through the methodology the chapter describes the different sorts of marginalia and what conclusions Ada draws from them.

The third and fourth chapters deal with the ancient references and biographies that were added to manuscripts.  She goes through the material added and then discusses what they tell us about the editor's concerns.  Over time they changed in very obvious ways.  Initially, the focus seems to be on showing that Lucretius is part of the Roman canon and a virtuous man. There are several interesting approaches here.  Ranging from treating the errors as obvious and the poem as an example of difficult Latin, to Lucretius as divinely inspired, to Lucretius as a source of ancient scientific theories.

The fifth chapter contains a detailed discussion of the print editions before 1600 and the marginalia through the first few decades of the 1600s.  There are plenty of interesting points here.  Like the fighting between Lambin and Gifanius over Gifanius putting out an edition that was suspiciously similar to the Lambin edition.  Another section addresses the way De Rerum Natura was used by philosophical skeptics of the period.

News Update

I know it has been a couple of months since I last posted.  I could try blaming it on being busy or say that it feels like nothing much noteworthy has been happening.  Neither would really be true.  The truth is when I get home and sit down at my computer I generally start reading or playing computer games rather than write a post.

Since my last post I've done a number of things.  On my trip to the big island I ended up going to Volcano twice.  Once at night and then again the next day.  We also went to the vanilla farm and a chocolate farm as I recall.

After that things picked up with a startup that I'd been talking to.  The concept was to provide a platform for individuals and companies to provide scholarships so that when a student put in an application they would be available to all the registered scholarships.  This helped resolve the problem many small scholarships have with getting applicants.  By the end of September it was clear that it wasn't going to fly.  It turns out students in Hawaii mostly go through their high school college and career councilors.  The councilors each have their own "common" application which they send out to whichever scholarships they think the students qualify for.  They viewed our common application as a threat and insisted on conditions that meant we wouldn't be able to pay salaries for two years and would need to put in 40+ hours a week of developer time.

As some of you know I traveled back to Chicago the first week of October for my brother's wedding.  I had a good time visiting with family.  I was also able to take an evening to visit with Pat and the Naperville folks.  We had a good time at the sushi restaurant.  I was surprised at how much I remembered of the Ecosure applications when I was able to answer a question Pat had about the McD playground app.

Work has been going well.  We finished the project I was on and rolled it out successfully.  We're most of the way through a second website and working on requirements for another project.  This project is fairly complicated since it needs to provide a consolidated interface for three independent systems.  It will also need to be able to take a single command from the user and update each of those systems appropriately.  This will manage the contracts associated with providers in the Medicare, Medicaid, and private business systems.  I had fun drawing out the basic architecture for the application already.  I presented it at a meeting with the architect for the project and he is willing for us to go down this path.

I went to a hackathon focused on the Uber API.  Initially none of the pitches caught my attention and the API is properly focused on hailing and managing an Uber ride so I didn't have any ideas of my own.  I ended up on a team that was trying to put together an app that would allow users to setup a series of "waypoints" so that a tourist could easily setup an itinerary ahead of time and call an Uber ride from one place to the next.

A couple of weeks ago I went to another Startup Weekend - Honolulu.  I pitched a piece of one of my crazy ideas.  I call the full project "Project Encyclopedia" and the idea is to create a system that can provide a good education to anyone, anywhere, on any topic without using grad students or professors to teach or grade the work.  This goes beyond what MOOCs provide now.  They can provide static quiz's and lectures.  So far, they can't respond to the students without using people. The piece I pitched was the basic application.  I didn't end up attracting enough votes to start a team, but I wasn't expecting to since the idea is much too big to get done in a weekend.

I ended up joining a team that was also working on an education project.  It was on the edge of being permissible since the leader of the team has been working on the idea for the last 15 or 16 years.  She has created a line of educational songs and music videos that teachers can use to teach kids from kindergarten through third or fourth grade.  The ideas we hit on to make it work were games and an independent distribution system.  On that basis we won third place.  The leader decided she didn't want to continue after the weekend.  The rest of the team did want to continue, at least to participate in Global Startup Battle.  We quickly learned that the reason she had chosen not to continue was because she had come to Startup Weekend looking for potential employees rather than looking for possible partners.  Apparently it hurt her feelings that the rest of the team preferred joining a startup as partners over becoming regular employees.  The drama from that worked itself out over the course of a week or two.

Also in November, I participated in NaNoWriMo.  For those that don't know what that is, it is a challenge to see whether you can write a set amount of words in November.  You can get the details at NaNoWriMo.org.  I signed up thinking it was like the Camp NaNoWriMo I'd checked out earlier in the year in that I could pick my target.  I learned that in November the target is set at 50k words for everyone.  After a little thinking I decided to participate anyway and just aim at an unofficial 10k word count.  I managed to hit my goal by attending almost all of the write-ins and struggling outside of those to get myself to write.  I did pass my goal on the 30th.  By the end of the month I learned one trick that worked.  Take the laptop away from the desk.  When I'm at the desk in my apartment I quickly get distracted either with the internet or with games.

December was busy at work.  We got a complicated project two weeks before Christmas.  The users want a way to pull data about providers from all five of the systems that hold providers.  This will allow them to more quickly research where applications of some sort need to go for processing.

Christmas was quiet and rainy so I stayed in for the long weekend.  I got some books from Dad, Leibniz, Locke, and Spinoza.  I've started on the Leibniz book already and I'm enjoying it.  One thing that hadn't registered with me before is that all three are contemporaries.  The introduction of the Leibniz book mentions that he cancelled the publication of a work responding to Locke when Locke died and the first work by in the book includes an aside responding to one of Spinoza's arguments.

On New Years Eve I stayed in and had pizza delivered.  I stayed up and played on the computer until midnight, which was just as well.  Some of my neighbors set off strings of firecrackers in the 45 minutes leading up to midnight.

With the new year I decided to set two goals for the year.  I want to go out on the weekend more than the once a month I was doing.  I also want to create a habit of doing at least a little writing each day.  It is too soon to say how the first is going to go, but it is clear that the second is going to be quite difficult.

News update

I know it has been a couple of weeks since I last posted. I made the mistake of starting a reread of the Spearfishlake Tales on my main computer. They're engaging enough that I find it hard to stop reading them. Since 38 of the novels have been published online, the 39th starts Monday, it takes a while to work through them.


Three weeks ago Wednesday I went to a networking event called Wetware Wednesday. There was a celebration for the dozen or so graduates of the Dev Bootcamp. There was also an announcement from Datawarehouse that they have formed a new parent company called ike. Datawarehouse will continue providing consulting services while ike will work more like an incubator. They also had the man that is running their first startup talk about his business which involves monitoring the elderly in nursing homes.


Three weekends ago on Saturday was Pascha (Easter) and I went to the 11 pm service at the Greek Orthodox church. Earlier that day I went for a hike with the idea of taking a nap before service. I found a group of trails, the Honolulu Mauka trails iirc, and walked one of them. Then I walked to a state park with an overlook on Mt Tantalus near there. The walk to the park was a bit more tiring than I expected for a 3 mile walk up the mountain.


The week after that I started my reread and it was a quiet week.


Then a week ago last Tuesday I went to the Hawaii Student Entrepreneurs Showcase. They had several presentations by the students.


In the presentation for Scholar Sponser the gentleman presenting mentioned that he was looking for a technical person. He did a great job with the presentation so I introduced myself. We had a nice getting to know you talk and agreed to talk earlier this week. That conversation was pretty high level though we did talk in a very general way about what sort of conditions he'd need to meet for me to join his team. It is quite clear that he's running a nonprofit startup and doesn't have any money to pay a developer. So, if I do work with him it will be nights and weekends work. We'll be meeting again next week to talk in more detail.


Mom flew into Honolulu a week ago Thursday. She joined me for dinner Thursday and Friday. On Saturday we went to the North Shore and hiked in Waimea Valley.


This last week was quiet though I'm joining Mom and Paupau on the Big Island this weekend.

News from last week 4/6/15

Here’s the news from Oahu for last week.  Only a day or so later than I meant to get it out.  I spent Saturday and Sunday sleeping off a cold that I caught.

Early in the week there was rain in the afternoons and evenings.  From my desk I can look out through an empty office to see the weather coming down the slope above my apartment.  One day I saw that the roads were terribly backed up while I walked home.  I learned the next day that the machine that was supposed to switch the direction of the express lanes had broken down.  This effectively closed two of lanes on the H1, which resulted in long delays for the folks driving home.

Other than that it was a quiet week with not much special going on.  This week looks to be busier with events in the evening Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

"Music to Code By" by Carl Franklin

I heard about this music while listening to .NetRocks!, which is a three days a week podcast talking about different pieces of the software industry, particularly the pieces of interest to .NET Developers, with the occasional geek out on some other topic, like whiskey or space based power generation.  It is put together by Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell.

Music to Code By is music as productivity aid. You can either order the music either as a CD or get a download. If you buy the CD you get the download free. It comes with three tracks; Blue, Orange, and Yellow.

This isn't music you’re going to want to sit and listen to. The tracks aren't mind-numbingly boring, but it takes real effort to listen carefully to any of these tracks the whole way through. However, they’re really pretty good at encouraging focus on whatever task you’re working on. I loaded all three of them onto my phone and I've used them at work when I really need to focus on getting some work done.

All three are instrumental and all three seem to be mostly variations on a single motif. This gives each track a particular tone. “Blue” is really mellow. “Orange” is the darkest of the trio. It makes me think of sunset, maybe with storm clouds on the horizon. “Yellow” is the lightest with a cheerful tone.