Wedding in Louisiana

Last weekend, Kristin and I went down to Louisiana, where my sister, Rebekah, was getting married.  It was a simple, and relatively inexpensive, wedding at my parents' home in St. Francisville.  Here's a picture, so you can get an idea of what it looked like.

The wedding party.  My sister and Vance with the minister in the center.  My other sister, Sarah, on the right, and her daughter, Hope, in the white dress in front of the groom's party (she was a co-ring-bearer, since there were already three flower girls).

The minister and the bride and groom are standing just in front of the in-ground pool, which you can see in the background.  I was kind of worried about what would happen if the minister took a step back.  The wedding was short, and the food afterward was plentiful.

A zoomed out view, so you can see the tables set up.  On the right side are the porch and garage, and you can just see the Master Bedroom extension of the house poking out on the left--well, more specifically, the gutter attached to that extension.  The tables were lined up in between, and the wedding procession walked down the aisle in between.

The hummingbird feeder, and its attendant hummingbirds.  The birds were quite disappointed when it was removed for the wedding.  You could see them wandering around in confusion, looking for their meal.

The next day, Rebekah and her husband went to honeymoon in New Orleans.  My wife and mother drove them down, and spent the day there.  I stayed in St. Francisville and babysat my two nieces.  They're old enough that if you give them an iPad or Kindle Fire, they'll be nice and quiet for a good while.  I think we all had more fun this way.

What's on the back of the envelope?

The name of this blog is "Back of the Envelope".  One of my earliest blog posts was a long explanation about why I named the blog that.  The short version, from that post, can be summed up quickly:

The expression is common enough, but if you're not familiar with it, a back of the envelope calculation is a quick, simple calculation done as an estimate. It's called "back of the envelope" because it can be written out on a small sheet of paper . . . When I first applied for this address on blogspot, the idea was to name the blog after myself . . . Nothing really felt right, though, so I started thinking of other names, a name appropriate for an engineer writing about things he was distinctly unqualified to discuss. It took surprisingly little time to come up with "Back of the Envelope."

I've always used the image of an envelope with something written on the back as the symbol of this site.  In fact, this is the one I had for a long time:

The old back of the envelope symbol.

With the new template, I wanted to change the design while keeping the concept.  The new design is the background of this page.  Unfortunately, since I used the full size of the background that Blogger recommends (1800x1600 pixels, or close to it), you probably can't see the whole thing unless you have a super-high resolution display, even without the blog contents covering it.  So here's the full image, at a reduced resolution:

The new background.

As you can see, the central equation is the same.  This is the bra-ket notation used in quantum physics, and shows the inner product between two quantum computation values, 0 and + (which is a superposition of 0 and 1), so the overlap of 0 and + (technically it's the inner product, but it's the degree to which the two are the same) is one over the square-root of two.

What about the rest of the calculations?  Are they legitimate, or just random doodlings?  They're all legitimate, and equations I've used before, though it's been years.  Hopefully there aren't any mistakes.

The next equation, in red at the top, is just a circle divided into six parts, with one part divided in half.  The equation calculates the area of that section, but it's mainly an excuse for me to estimate pi as three.  That's a common estimate to use for pi when you're just doing a back of the envelope calculation.  Another useful estimate is 5 dB, or the square-root of 10.

On the left side is a charged particle over a ground plane.  This results in an image in the ground plane.  The charge in the ground plane responds in such a way that it's equivalent to an equal and opposite charge reflecting the placement of the first charge.  This results in the equation below, which is also the equation for the potential for a charge dipole.  Charge dipoles consist of equal and opposite charges close together, so that they minimize each other's effects.  A ground plane effectively converts a charge into a charge dipole, which is why ground planes help reduce noise coming from the circuits they're placed under (they also tend to minimize noise coupling into the circuit).

Below that, at the bottom of the page, is the time-invariant form of Schrodinger's Equation, since I figured I needed that on the back of the envelope.

On the right side is a 3-bit Gray code.  This is a binary sequence where only a single bit changes for each step of the sequence.  This was originally used as a method of binary counting for mechanical switches. Since mechanical switches don't change instantaneously, switching from 011 to 100 (3 to 4 in binary), could result in spurious outputs as each switch changes at a different time.  By making it equal the change from 010 to 110 instead, there are no spurious values between them.  In modern digital computers, this particular reason is not as relevant, but it is still useful for error correction.  A Gray code can be visualized as a cube, shown above, where each step travels along the edge of the cube.  I included the cube, with convenient arrows, mainly to give people a clue that I was doing a Gray code, rather than let them think I was trying to count in binary and getting it wrong.  I'm not sure whether it worked or not.

So that's everything.  I hope you enjoyed this boring math post.  I also hope I didn't mess up any of these equations.

Review of Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz

I find Dean Koontz's books either hit or miss. Some of them, like Seize the Night and From the Corner of His Eye, are beautiful, well-told stories, with great characters and intriguing premises. Others, such as Breathless, are rambling and inconclusive. It may have an interesting concept, but it never really develops into a story.

Odd Thomas is one of his better series. Odd is a polite young man and sometime fry-cook who sees dead people. The silent, lingering dead come to him for help, and he does his best to do so. He has a few other talents, such as the occasional vision or prophetic dream, and a psychic magnetism that helps him find people that he's looking for, but he'd always say that his best talent is fry cooking.

After the death of his girlfriend, Odd left his hometown of Pico Mundo, where the authorities knew and relied upon his abilities, to find his way in the wider world. He's faced down enemies from the evil to the misguided, from terrorists to the mystic, and he's killed when necessary. Now he's come to the mansion at Roseland, where there are no roses, in the company of Annamarie, a mysterious, pregnant young woman for whom he's the guardian.

All is not well at Roseland. Time is inconsistent there, and someone, maybe everyone there, is involved in something very evil. And that's just how the book starts.

Like all the Odd novels, the book's strength lies in its titular character, a gentle, humble soul whose strong belief in the power of good, and the necessity to fight evil, drives him to take on incredible dangers. As I read books primarily for the characters, and as Odd is a very strong one, I imagine that I'd enjoy pretty much any Odd Thomas novel. Odd's certainly been around a while, but that's given him more maturity, coupled with a certain moroseness, that's given him more depth. Unlike some long lived characters, he hasn't yet played out.

The actual adventure is a little more science fiction than most of what he does, although not as much as Brother Odd. But it's more old school, H. G. Wells science fiction, which I think works better with Odd. It leant the book a stronger air of mystery than a standard terrorism plot, and I certainly enjoyed it.

Overall, it was a good Odd Thomas novel, and I certainly enjoyed it, but if you're looking for answers to the mystery of Annamaria, you're still going to have to wait.

Roman Dinner

On Saturday, Kristin and I hosted a Ancient Roman dinner for our friends.  We've done Roman dinners before, as Kristin has discussed in detail on her blog.  Once again, Kristin did most of the cooking, and I did most of the dishes.  Which is not to say I did none of the cooking--I prepared the hydromel (honey water) and sorted lovage seeds, for example.

Ah, lovage seeds.  Roman meals use a number of ingredients which are not easy to get in the New World.  Among them are lovage seeds.  You can buy lovage seeds in the grocery store, but these aren't really lovage seeds--they're either celery seeds or ajwan seeds, which are different plants entirely.  You can't buy food-grade real lovage seeds, but you can buy them for planting.  And if you get organic seeds, they're untreated and edible.  So we ordered some lovage seeds.  However, while they're not treated, the seeds are only 99% pure--you also get a good bit of dirt and twigs in the package.  In addition, you can't be sure that they've been stored properly as a spice should.  So Kristin was kind of reluctant to use the seeds, but I went through them and painstakingly separated a teaspoon-full of seeds from the twigs and dirt, and convinced her to use them in one dish.

Lovage is not the only hard to get Roman spice.  Rue and pennyroyal are, unfortunately, slightly poisonous herbs.  Kristin's eager to try them--after all, if the Romans could eat them, can't we?  But I insisted that we not feed poison to our friends (besides, rue is supposed to be used fresh, not as seeds, and while Kristin has gotten some seeds, she still hasn't planted them), so we substituted dandelion leaves for the rue.  And don't get me started on myrtle berries--our myrtle bush didn't bloom this year.

Still, we managed to produce a very nice three course meal.  For the appetizer, we had flatbread, olives, sheep and goat cheese (the Romans considered cows beasts of burden, not milk or meat animals), and an assortment of olives and salami (which Kristin considers to be pretty close to Roman sausages).

The real work went into this appetizing main course:

Kristin enjoying the main course.

From the bottom to the top, there's squash seasoned with real lovage (the only one we had enough real lovage seed for), pan-seared fish, Indian chapati (a reasonable approximation of Roman flatbread, we understand), highly-seasoned pork belly, and even-more-seasoned parsnips.  Kristin wasn't too happy with the parsnips, thinking they were too salty, but they turned out to be a favorite, and the only thing we ran out of.  There are also two bottles, one containing conditum paradoxum, and the other containing the hydromel which I made.

The dessert course consisted of honeyed fritters, grapes, and figs.

Most of the recipes came from Sally Grainger's Cooking Apicius (shown left), which is our favorite of the various Roman recipe books.  For one, it's the most modern, and has the best understanding of what ingredients are available to a modern kitchen.  For another, there's a lot of scholarship involved, a lot of it based on the work that went into her and her husband's new translation of Apicius (the most extensive of the Ancient Roman cookbooks).  It seems to us to be pretty accurate, and Kristin thinks it agrees very well with her research in the area.

We did use a somewhat different recipe for the conditum paradoxum, but I've discussed that in detail before.  The hydromel also came from a different source, namely Mark Grant's Roman Cookery (shown right).  The original recipe comes not from Apicius, but from Bassus's Country Matters.  It mixes one part apple juice, two parts honey, and three parts water.  In Grant's recipe, these are boiled rather than aged the way they were in Ancient Rome.  We used apple cider rather than apple juice, since the cider's closer to what the Romans would have had.  The cookbook recommends chilling and serving as an apertif, but I preferred something that could be drunk with a meal.  It was too sweet to drink straight in quantity, but we mixed the hydromel with three parts water, as we had done with the conditum paradoxum.  Unfortunately, this was still too sweet.  Kristin, who's a much better cook than I am, suggested adding some vinegar.  Adding one-and-a-half teaspoons of apple cider vinegar to a serving was just what was needed.  It tastes more of apples that way, and the acid of the vinegar prevents the sweetness from being overwhelming.  Since the Romans usually let the mixture age long enough to ferment, I figure that the result is probably pretty close to what the Romans drank.  According to my calculations, adding one-and-a-half teaspoons of apple cider vinegar to a serving results in a ratio of 1 part apple cider vinegar, 2 parts apple cider, 4 parts honey, and 6 parts water, but Kristin prefers 50% more vinegar, for a stronger acidity.  If I make it again, I'll use my proportions.  It's easier to add a little vinegar later than to take it out.

Review of The Hollow City by Dan Wells

I loved Dan Wells's I am not a Serial Killer series, so when I saw that he had a new book out in the same genre, I snapped it up.  The Hollow City is not a sequel, and John Cleaver, the heroic sociopath from the I am not a Serial Killer series, does not make an appearance.  It's not even clear that this takes place in the same mythos as his previous books, although it's quite possible, as all these stories take place in our world, though with something sinister lurking beneath the surface.

The hero of this new novel is one Michael Shipman, and like John Cleaver, he has problems.  Rather than the sociopathy of John, Michael suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.  Not only does he have delusions of persecution, he sees people and things that aren't there.  The problem comes when some of the things he sees really are there, and don't go away with the drugs.

The story starts with Michael waking up in the hospital, missing two weeks of memory, with only vague recollections of a hollow city, though he has no idea what that even means.  He's soon committed to a mental hospital, where he's treated for his condition, and starts to realize that much of what he believes about his life simply is not true, but is a product of his schizophrenia.  Meanwhile, the FBI is questioning him about his activities during that missing part of his life, hoping that he can lead them to the Red Line Killer, the serial killer who has been murdering members of the Children of the Earth cult.  The same cult that kidnapped his mother before he was born.  He must learn whether the Children of the Earth are after him, and who are the mysterious Faceless Men, who only he can see, even when his drugs are effective.

It's a powerful premise, and there's a lot to recommend this book, but I kept stumbling over the primary problem with a story told from Michael's POV: that of the unreliable narrator.  Because Michael cannot distinguish what's real and what isn't, the reader is likewise in the dark.  He can guess at whether someone's real, and he'll find himself playing that game constantly (Is the FBI real, how about Michael's girlfriend?  Or the reporter?).  When Michael's suffering from full-blown paranoia it's more obvious than when he's largely in control.  I realize that this is part of the premise, but I found that I just didn't have that much tolerance for an unreliable narrator.

It also takes a little while for the book to get going.  I didn't find the scenes of Michael in the mental hospital, arguing with his doctor and trying to figure out what's real and not, that entertaining.  But once he was moving, and making his way back to the hollow city, then the story picked up, and moved rapidly to a strong conclusion.  I just wish it didn't take as long to get there.

Ultimately, I liked The Hollow City okay, but it is  nowhere near as strong as Dan Wells's John Cleaver novels.

Long webpages

This is an issue I've been thinking about some, especially in the context of stories on the web.  How long of a webpage is too long?  When you see a wall of text, do your eyes glaze over?  Do you hit the back button and find something else to read? What if you want to post a long article or story on the web?  How do you go about doing it?

One issue is that long webpages are intimidating.  You watch the little scrollbar shrink to invisibility, and think that maybe it's not worth it.  Then again, if you decide you do want to read a long story, can you do it in one sitting?  Probably not.  But if you go away and come back, how do you find your place again?

One option is to split it up into a number of pages.  More than one blogpost, or an article that spans multiple pages.  This may work, but a lot depends on the software you're using, and how easily you can do it.  Once you have multiple pages, you need to put some effort into making it easy to get from page to page.  How many pages are there?  If there are three, it should be relatively easy to find your way and come back to where you left off.  If there are 20 or so, you might become lost, and forget where you left off.

If instead you keep it all on one long page, you run into the issue of losing your place, especially if you navigate away and then come back.  You can simplify that with headings, but it's still a pain to scroll down to the correct heading, and you may miss it and scroll right past.  Fortunately, webpages can include anchors, which allow you to hyperlink to certain parts of a webpage, including from in the same page, such as I did in my Brief History page.  Unfortunately, the blogging software doesn't always handle anchors that well.  It took some effort to get that page working right (including modifying the html and not switching to the WYSIWYG view, which allows Blogger to mess it up).

In either case, navigation is key.  If you're using multiple pages, then you need to link to both the previous and the next page at both the top and the bottom of the page (you need to be able to go back from the top and forward from the bottom, but it also helps to be able to go forward or backward a page at a time to find your place without needing to scroll to the top or bottom each time).  You should also have links either to all of the pages, or to a table of contents.  If you're using one long page, you need to have periodic links to the table of contents on the same page.  This could alternatively be done with a separate frame that displays the table of contents at all times, but that requires you to muck around with the html of the page.  Blogging software generally can't handle that for you.

So, you see, there are a lot of issues involved in getting really long posts to work. I'd be happy to take suggestions for any other tricks.

Update to blog

I've been ignoring all the little improvements that Google has been making to Blogger for a while now. But recently I decided that it was time to finally update to a more recent template. It was a pain, because I'd already done a good bit of customization, and converting it to the new version killed a lot of that customization, and I had to redo it. That took several hours. The end result of all that work looks pretty good, I think, with a custom background, and a standard template that I've updated with some blocks of text.

Overall, I'm happy with how it's turned out.

New Kindles

Amazon has announced its new Kindles, including three new Kindle Fires, and two new e-ink Kindles.  I'm not going to review them here, just talk about their announced features.

New Kindle Fires

The two highest end Kindles have an 8.9" screen, and are priced to compete with tablets like the iPad.  They're cheaper, but have a smaller screen and a dual-core, rather than quad-core, processor.  Amazon must be betting that the budget conscious will compare the two options and decide that the Fire better fits their needs.  I suspect folks are more likely to pick an older iPad, but we'll see.

The new Fire at the low end, the Kindle Fire HD, is a less ambitious follow-on to the original Kindle Fire, having approximately the same size and price as the original.  But it still fulfills my wishlist of improvements.  Aside from the standard next generation upgrades, such as improved processor (marginal upgrade from OMAP 4430 to OMAP 4460, both dual-core), memory (doubled to quadrupled), and screen resolution (upgraded from 1024x600 to 1280x800, enough to support 720 HD), it also has almost all the things I've been missing in the original Kindle Fire.

First and foremost, they've fixed the sound.  This was a significant issue in the first Kindle Fire, which only had two tinny speakers located at the top of the tablet.  Which really made no sense, since when you're watching video (which is the only time when I really need the sound), you hold the Kindle sideways. So the stereo speakers Amazon advertises are both on the left side of the Kindle while watching a movie.  Not to mention that even at full volume, I couldn't hear them over the air conditioning in the bedroom.  I usually just wore headphones when watching video, but it'd have been nice to have the option of using the speakers.  This time, Amazon went out of the way to fix the sound, so the new Kindle Fire has dual-driver stereo speakers on both sides of the Fire when you're holding it sideways to watch a movie, and they make a big deal about how loud and clear it is.  If it's as good as advertised, that fixes a major problem of the original Fire.

Second, they've added a micro-HDMI port.  This was one of my gripes about the Fire, as I'd like to display its content on my television but I was unable to.  I'm glad that they've fixed this.

Third, they've improved battery life, now claiming 11 hours of continuous use, as opposed to 8.5 hours.  This is significantly closer to my assertion that the Fire needs a full day of use in order to fit in with Amazon's other e-readers, which is closer to where the Fire's positioned than the tablet market.  I'd never really had a problem with battery life, but that's mainly because I've never spent a whole day reading from my Kindle.

Finally, they've added an inward-facing camera. They advertise that this is for use with Skype, but it should be usable for other situations where you need to take a picture of yourself.  The iPad also has an outward facing camera, but for the most part, you aren't going to be using the camera on a tablet to take pictures or video, so it's not really a necessity.  It is nice when you want to show the other person in a video chat something, but I've discovered that most people don't really know how to use that feature.

Unfortunately, they haven't added a microSD card slot, which would have allowed the user to expand the memory.  I would have liked that option.  I'd also have liked seeing an AMOLED screen, as opposed to an LCD, but that's still a new, high-end technology, and Fire's definitely positioned at the budget end.

Anyway, the new Fire HD has enough improvements that I'd seriously consider getting it if my wife would let me.  But she points out that she got me the Kindle Fire for Christmas last year, and she'd be a little insulted if I replaced it after less than a year.  So I'll at least have to wait until January.

New Kindle e-inks

The new kindle e-inks are very different creatures from the Kindle Fire.  They clearly are not tablets, and are not designed to be.  They're e-readers, with e-ink displays that are low energy (giving battery life in the weeks range), easier to read in sunlight, and slow. Going to the next page on an e-ink display can be slower than turning a page in a book, and they often invert when doing so in order to refresh the electronic ink, which I find annoying.  Newer Kindles allow you to turn the refresh off, so the page only refreshes every six turns or so, which is good.

The new Kindle Paperwhite e-readers offer some significant improvements over the old Kindle e-readers.  First, they're touch screens, which is something Amazon introduced in the last generation, but is now making standard.  Second, the contrast is much greater.  Earlier Kindles had a gray background, with black ink, but the Paperwhites have a white background, which make them more attractive and easier to read.  Additionally, they're lit.  I've seen people call them backlit, but that's not really the case.  They use a waveguide over the screen to direct light down to the screen, where it will reflect back up.  This should cause less eye-strain than backlit screen, while providing nice, even lighting over the whole page.  One of my main reasons for getting a Kindle Fire rather than a regular Kindle was so I could read in the dark, so this is a great feature.

So what is it still missing?  Well, I didn't see any indication that the page refresh has been improved, so it doesn't need to invert as often and leaves fewer artifacts, but such a marginal improvement might not be important enough to be advertised.  I'm also still waiting for someone to come out with a color e-ink reader.  It can be done, but I don't think the technology's ready for a commercial device yet.

Comparison

The difference between the e-ink Kindle and the Kindle Fire is not the price, since they're pretty close on the low end.  They're very different systems.  The Kindle Fire is not just a reader, but a full media player and a capable, if low end, tablet, with a large number of Android apps available.  The e-ink Kindle is an e-reader, and is probably a more comfortable platform for reading--even in the dark, now that it's lit.  You get longer battery life, and free 3G data on the high end models (4G is only available on the most expensive Kindle Fire, and while cheap, is not free).  The e-ink Kindle is just pretty limited on what you can use that 3G for, as it's too slow for much web browsing, and incapable of doing video at all.  But you can download Kindle books to your heart's content.

Overall, though, I think I'd prefer the Kindle Fire HD.

Update (9/9/2012): Here's a hands-on look at the new Kindle Fire HD. (hat tip Instapundit)

Worldcon

This past weekend, Kristin and I went to Worldcon 70.  Worldcon is one of the bigger non-profit science fiction conventions, and probably the most important.  Kristin and I usually go to the serious cons: World Fantasy, Readercon, and Boskone.  With the partial exception of Boskone (only partial, since much of the "fun" part was spun off into Arisia), these are cons focused on writing and writers, with a significant portion of those in attendance being writers, editors, agents, or publishers--and often writers hoping to meet editors and publishers and agents.  Worldcon has a lot of that too, but it also has a film festival, filking, and a masquerade (specifically, costuming).

Most importantly, though, Worldcon has the Hugos.  This is probably the most important award in fantasy and science fiction, for the best stories, films, editors, etc. of the year.  This year, my friend Ken Liu won a Hugo for his short story "The Paper Menagerie."  Ken's a great writer, and is one of the biggest names in genre fiction right now.

I spent much of my time at Worldcon attending parties, and hanging out at the Black Gate table.  John O'Neill's a great guy to hang out with, and I'm not just saying this because he's agreed to publish one of my stories.  Although that does help.  I also went to a couple of panels, but fewer than I usually do, I think.  Part of the problem is that Worldcon has so many tracks, as many as a dozen panels at the same time.  I can't possibly go to all of the ones that sound interesting, and when I already have to miss most of the ones that sound interesting at any one time, it doesn't seem such a bad thing to miss them all and instead hang out with John O'Neill, Howard Andrew Jones, Peadar O Guilin, and others.

Labels

Everyone knows how important first impressions are. Fair or not, the first impression you make tends to form the filter through which all your actions are judged. If the first impression you give someone is that you are lazy, then he tends to view every instance of your avoiding a task as an example of this laziness, rather than as evidence that they're overworked. This is the logical fallacy of confirmation bias, where we tend to put more weight on examples that confirm what we already think, than on those which contradict or mitigate it.

This is not just a problem with first impressions. You can meet someone and think they're perfectly fine, but if you're later told by a friend that he's sort of sleazy, then every awkward conversation and off-color joke becomes an example of sleaziness, not simple awkwardness.

This is the problem of labels. We tend to think of labeling as a problem of ethnic stereotypes and bigotry, but it's really an example of the fact that the human mind likes to sort and categorize people, and make decisions based on those categorizations. To some extent it's a helpful short-hand that makes up for the fact that for the majority of people we meet, we'll never know them well enough to really understand how they think. But the problem is that it's never that simple, and because of the problem of confirmation bias,  we're actually not very good at telling when that label is wrong. We tend to weight facts and incidents that confirm our label more heavily than those facts which work against it. This can lead to very ugly prejudices in real life, where someone can't escape an unfair label.

For a writer, labels are both useful and dangerous. When you need a minor character, a quick label is a fast way to give a character a recognizable personality without needing a lot of detail. For minor enough characters, this may be enough. But if that's the entirety of your characterization for a recurring, or for that matter, a major character, then they can start to seem flat and static. As your readers get to know your characters, they should begin to see the cracks in the labels: the contradictions and complexities. Which is not all that different from when you start to get to know a real person better. 

Review of The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises, the final movie in Christopher Nolan's Batman saga, lies under the dark cloud of the tragedy that took place on opening night.  While it is appropriate to acknowledge that, that tragedy does not, and should not, reflect on the movie itself.

My wife and I saw The Dark Knight Rises  in Imax.  This can make for an intense experience, but I find it a lot less annoying than 3-D.  And really, when I watch a movie, it's more for the story than the "experience."  And I felt that the story of The Dark Knight Rises delivered. There was a lot of talk about the politics of The Dark Knight Rises even before it came out, about the political statements it might make and how it tied into the Occupy movement.  For all that it does echo some of those themes, it more closely parallels the French Revolution than anything in modern politics.  The themes of the French Revolution are always rich for mining, of how the quest for justice can turn into murderous revenge.  It is a line which the character of Batman has always walked, driven as he is by the murder of his parents.  The first movie in the series was, in essence, how Bruce Wayne turned from a revenge-seeking boy into the Batman, a vigilante for justice. And how that quest drove him to try to save Gotham, while others, also claiming to seek justice, sought to destroy it. The Dark Knight Rises revisits that theme, but this time asking whether the whole city of Gotham can make that same decision, choosing justice, with all its imperfections and flaws, over revenge.  It is a question that cannot be fully answered, because it is a personal question, one each individual must decide for themselves.  And in the end, the strength of those individuals who do what is right may win the day, but the challenge rises anew each day. That, at least, is how I read the theme of the movie.

In pursuing this theme, there are a lot of surprises, and violence, and explosions. Plus new toys for Batman.  There was one plot twist which I had some vague inklings of, but my wife didn't see coming at all.  Others more familiar with the Batman canon may catch it sooner.  Overall, I liked the movie a lot, and definitely recommend it.  And if you don't care much about the deeper themes, focus on the violence and the explosions.

Readercon

A week ago, Kristin and I went to Readercon.  Readercon is only the second Writer's convention that I've gone to, and the first with a genre focus.  It was also the first convention that I went to with Kristin, and where we decided to start dating three years ago.  As such, it's an important convention for us.

Readercon is a convention with a focus on the literary side of speculative fiction.  It's less fan focused that writer focused, and discusses topics such as culture, historical influences, and why we all hate paranormal romance (unless we happen to be writers of it).  It's not really a very how-to con, but it's still interesting.  The best panel we went to was on world-building and culture, and how to make them realistic.  The writers mentioned a few ideas, but there was a limit to what could be covered in an hour.

But mainly, it's a place to meet new people, especially writers and editors, and have interesting conversations.

But then, that's what most conventions are like.  Later this year, we'll be going to Worldcon and World Fantasy.

Backpacking

Kristin and I went on a three-day backpacking a couple of weekends ago.  For those of you who may be even less outdoorsy than me, backpacking is different from camping, in that it entails carrying all your supplies with you, over miles of mountain trails.  We went to NH, just north of Berlin, and hiked along the Mill Brook Trail, the Kilkenny Ridge Trail, and the Unknown Pond Trail.  In truth, it was not a particularly difficult hike, but it's probably the limit of what we're capable of, given our current physical fitness.  It had its moments, but I came away pretty badly bruised (I slipped in the mud and broke my fall on a jagged, pointy rock).

But, despite the exhausting nature of the trip, there were some beautiful views.

The view from the Roger's Ledge.

Unknown Pond

Overall, I'd do it again, but not until this bruise goes away.

Swordsmanship and computer games

Medieval European swordsmanship has the advantage of a number of contemporary training manuals, and recently there's been something of a revival as people have been attempting to recreate the techniques depicted in the manuals.  Another recent development is the explosion of motion sensors in video game systems, as evidenced by the Nintendo Wii, Playstation Move, and Xbox Kinect. Naturally, sword games are a great fit for these systems, as they naturally have a lot of movement.  Unfortunately, realistic swordplay, based on reconstructed techniques, is much harder to find.  That's something I'd be very interested in playing.

Me and Neal Stephenson, apparently.  Neal has gotten behind Clang, a Kickstarter project to develop a computer game based on incorporating Medieval sword fighting techniques.  Kickstarter, if you're not familiar with it, is a way to raise money for creative projects.  People pledge money and, if you reach your minimum funding goal, everyone's credit card is charged for their pledge, and the project receives the money.  Unfortunately, with only three days to go, Clang is still short of their goal by $70,000. I'd hate to see this project fail, but I've already pledged as much as I reasonably can.  So instead I get to pester other people into giving.

So, if you're at all interested in Medieval swordsmanship or computer games, take a look, and consider pledging.

Review of John Carter

I finally got around to watching John Carter last week.  It's time in the theater was awfully brief, and I didn't get around to seeing it before it was gone.

A lot of people, particularly fans of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Mars series, really liked the movie.  Others thought it should have been truer to the books.  Most folks who appreciated ERB seemed to like the movie, however.  The general viewing audience, however, appears to have been less enthusiastic, and the movie failed at the box office so fast that I didn't get a chance to see it.

So what did I think?  I've read the first couple John Carter novels (actually titled A Princess of Mars and The Gods of Mars), and overall I liked them.  I was not, however, particularly impressed with them.  The first novel was rather episodic, and only came together at the end.  The second also had an episodic feel, though there was more of a driving narrative.  Neither really grabbed hold of me as I was reading them.

Perhaps as a consequence, I didn't find the movie as entertaining as the other reviewers had. The beginning, which had very little resemblance to the book, felt particularly weak.  The movie broke from the book in other ways, but I think one advantage of doing so was that it was able to give the narrative more cohesion and drive. But it was still not enough cohesion and drive.  The journey to the River Iss, in particular, and the discovery of the chamber with the map of the solar system, seemed particularly random, and a bit too convenient.  

The action was fun, but felt even less realistic than other action movies.  Of course, this is partly the fault of ERB, who postulated that an Earthman would be super-humanMartian on Mars, which gave the action scenes a superhero feel.  Since, however, the genre was not superhero, it didn't work as well.  Besides, the way John Carter fought seemed to involve more swinging his sword in great slashing arcs and using his superior strength than any real swordsmanship.  In the books, at least, John Carter was a capable swordsman.

There were quite a few places in the movie where I lost track of what was going on, and why they were doing what they were doing.  I'd like to think that I was paying attention, and am at least as capable as following a movie as the average movie goer, so I suspect that some fault for that lies with the filmmaker.

Overall, I don't regret watching it.  I may even watch it again, just to try to figure out the plot in the sections I didn't follow last time.  But while I've seen worse (at least it's better than "Cowboys and Aliens," as Kristin remarked to me afterward), I'd hoped for better.

Camping conveniences

Kristin and I went camping this past weekend.  We pitched a tent, cooked a meal over coals (and then figured out that it takes forever to cook anything over coals, and instead broke out the gas stove), and climbed a mountain, and eventually managed to climb down the mountain.  It got me thinking about some of the conveniences that modern backpackers have that would not have been available in any of that fantasy fiction I write and read.

1. Lightweight, warm, and waterproof clothing.  Getting one of three was possible.  Maybe two of three.  But all three?  If it existed at all, you couldn't afford it.
2. Comfortable backpack. As far as I can tell, the Romans used a sturdy forked stick which rested on the shoulder, and suspended their pack from the forked end.  Illustrations from the crusades show a backpack consisting of a shapeless sack with shoulder straps.  Overall, not as comfortable as today's form-fitting aerated backpacks.
3. Matches. Have you ever tried to start a fire with flint and steel?  It's not as easy as fantasy fiction makes it sound.
4. A camp stove.  Recent experience suggests that it takes a really long time to cook anything on a wood fire or hot coals.
5. Well-preserved food. There were ways of preserving food: smoking, salting.  You could make bread (sort-of) that lasted a while.  None of it tasted good.
6. Insect repellent. I'm still itching from a variety of bug bites.  I can only imagine what it'd be like if I hadn't used bug repellent.
7. Sunscreen. This might not have been as big a deal.  Most people spent a lot of their time outdoors, and were likely pretty well tanned.  And you can always wear long sleeves and hats if you weren't.  But see above for the lack of lightweight clothing.
8. Well-marked trail.  There were actually such trails.  They were called roads.  The lack of a Park Service meant that any other trail you found couldn't be trusted to lead where you wanted it to, to be safe and manageable, or to always be well marked and easy to follow.  Most folks stuck to trails they knew well.

And I'm sure I'm missing more.  These are just the things I was glad we had during this trip.

Conditum Paradoxum

As I mentioned last week, I have a book coming out soon, and I've been spending some time thinking about the release party. Of course I'll have a release party. We'll probably do something local, for friends whom I can guilt into buying my book. In addition, we'll probably do something at some of the local cons: Readercon and/or Boskone, if we can. One question we've been pondering is what we can do to make it distinctive and original. Well, my book has Romans in it, so what can be more distinctive than Ancient Roman food? To that end, Kristin and I have been taking a close look at some Ancient Roman recipes, and trying to see what we can make. First up, conditum paradoxum, or paradoxically spiced wine. The recipe is from Apicius, who describes it thus:

Conditum paradoxum: conditi paradoxi compositio: mellis pondo XV in aeneum vas mittuntur, praemissi[s] vini sextariis duobus, ut in cocturam mellis vinum decoquas. Quod igni lento et aridis lignis calefactum, commotum ferula dum coquitur, si effervere coeperit, vini rore compescitur, praeter quod subtracto igni in se redit. Cum perfrixerit, rursus accenditur. Hoc secundo ac tertio fiet, ac tum demum remotum a foco postridie despumatur. Tum [mittis] piperis uncias IV iam triti, masticis scripulos II, folii et croci dragmas singulas, dactylorum ossibus torridis quinque, isdemque dactylis vino mollitis, intercedente prius suffusione vini de suo modo ac numero, ut tritura lenis habeatur. His omnibus paratis supermittis vini lenis sextarios XVIII. Carbones perfecto aderunt duo milia.

In English, with modern measurements:

Conditum Paradoxum: The composition of this excellent spiced wine is as follows. Into a copper bowl, put 15 librae (10.8 lbs) of honey and 2 sextarii (1.08 L) of wine; heat on a slow fire, constantly stirring the mixture with a stick. At the boiling point add a dash of cold wine, retire from stove, and skim. Repeat this twice or three times, let it rest till the next day, and skim again. Then add 4 unciae (4 oz) of ground pepper, three scruples (3/24, or 1/8, oz) of mastic, a drachma (1/6 oz) each of aromatic leaves  and saffron, 5 roasted date pits, the dates themselves soaked in wine, having been steeped beforehand in wine of sufficient quality and quantity so that a sweet mash is produced. When you have prepared all this, pour over it 18 (9.72 L) sextarii of smooth wine. The resulting mixture is treated with charcoal.

The English, but not the calculated amounts, is a combination of a couple of different translations, but mostly Giacosa's A Taste of Rome.  The mixture would, of course, be strained.

We decided to try this wine after finding a modern interpretation on this German website. It uses 4 L of Retsina wine, 500 g of honey, 60 g black peppercorns, 8 pitted dates, 1 teaspoon of anise, a pinch of saffron and as many bay leaves as would be covered by the liquid. Looking over it, we realized two things. First, they substitute anise for mastic, and second, they use proportionately a lot less honey, and a lot more of most everything else (with the exception of saffron). We figured we'd try something closer to the original, with gum mastic ordered from Amazon. However we did have to scale everything down, since we didn't want 11 liters of spiced wine.  We decided that the recipe would work best for 1.5 liters of wine (2 bottles).  So the proportions we used were:

• 1.5 liters (3.2 pints) wine
• 1.5 lbs (682 grams) honey
• .55 oz (15 g) pepper
• 1 roasted date pit
• 1 pitted date soaked in wine
• 1/43 oz (0.63 g) aromatic leaf
• 1/43 oz (0.63 g) saffron
• 1/58 oz (0.48 g) gum mastic

Some of these are very small quantities.  Well, except for saffron, which comes in jars of 0.5 g (technically, a jar containing a plastic bag with the saffron--but even so, it is really a lot of saffron, since it's a strong spice).  We just used one whole jar of saffron.  For the leaves, we used a couple of leaves of tejpat (though bay leaf works too).  The gum mastic, which is a tree resin, comes in beads of varying size, and after some math, we came up with 9-10 mastic beads (assuming a normal size distribution) as the proper amount.  We did use Retsina for the wine.

So, more accurately, our recipe contained:

• 1.5 liters (3.2 pints) Retsina
• 1.5 lbs (682 grams) honey
• .55 oz (15 g) black pepper
• 1 roasted date pit
• 1 pitted date soaked in wine, along with the wine
• 1-2 tejpat leaves
• 0.5 g saffron
• 9-10 gum mastic beads

I'll leave it to Kristin to give the full recipe she used, since she did the cooking (I just did the calculations).  If you do decide to make conditum paradoxum based on this information, the most important warning I should give is that like all Roman wines, it should not be drunk straight.  The Romans diluted their wines with anywhere from one to seven times as much water.  We found three parts water (or soda water, if you don't mind being anachronistic) to one part conditum paradoxum to be about right to give a sweet and spicy drink, tasting strongly of honey, pepper, and saffron. So you may think you're only making 2 liters of conditum paradoxum, but it's really 8 liters worth.  Share it with some friends.

Update (9/29/2012): Kristin's finally put the recipe up on her blog.  And I have another post on Ancient Roman food here.

Update (10/6/2012): Kristin pointed out that I left the black pepper out of the ingredient list.  I put it in.

Book contract

This past week, I signed my first book contract. Yes, someone actually paid me to publish my book. The book in question is Fire, which you've seen me talk about a lot if you follow my blog.  In the process, it has been renamed Heirs of Fire.  So, it looks like the book will definitely be published, by a real publisher.  Since it is a small publisher, they can move more quickly than a large publisher, and it will likely be out sooner rather than later.  I'll hold off on naming the publisher until they announce it themselves (I make a point not to steal other people's thunder).

For now, though, I thought I'd talk a bit about the contract.  I'm not going to discuss the actual terms of the contract, aside from saying that I'm overall happy with it.  Rather, I want to talk a bit about what I was looking for in the contract, and what points I made sure I was clear on.  Whether I was concerned about the right parts or not, only time will tell.

Indemnity clause. This is a clause that says that if the publisher gets sued because you plagiarized someone, you're the one who has to pay. The better versions of this clause say you only have to pay if the suit is successful. More worrying versions would have you paying legal fees when anyone sues, whether they're successful or not.

Rights clause. This is the clause which says how long the publisher has rights to publish your work, where and how he can publish it, and whether they're exclusive. You want to make sure the rights have a limited term, only covers places you're willing for them to publish, and if they're exclusive, don't prevent you from publishing somewhere you want to be able to publish.

Royalties. Aside from making sure the amount is satisfactory, you want to compare this to the rights, and see if there's a way for the publisher to sell your book where you wouldn't get paid. You also want to see if there's any way for the publisher to give away your book for free without paying you. The second one is less worrying, as there's not much evidence that giving away books actually cuts into sales, but if that's part of their marketing plan, make sure you're okay with it.  The other thing to make sure of is that you don't have to cover the publisher's expenses before you get royalties, such as editing, or printing, or cover art costs.

Advance. I don't worry too much about this.  The idea of the advance is that it's a pre-payment of royalties.  Just be careful if the publisher stipulates circumstances where you're required to give back all or part of your advance.

Reversion of rights. What happens if the publisher ends up not publishing the work after all? That's why you need a reversion of rights clause. This isn't as important if the term of the rights starts as soon as the contract is signed, but if it doesn't start until the book is published, or that term is particularly long, that could be a problem if the publisher never gets around to publishing your book. You'll want the rights to return to you so you can try somewhere else. You should make sure that the reversion of rights clause names a time period, rather than saying it occurs when the publisher decides not to publish, since that can allow them to sit on your book for years. If the term of the rights is especially long, you may also want reversion of rights to you if the publisher ceases to offer your book for sale. You need to be especially careful here, since the publisher may consider "offering for sale" to consist of "making available for order through a limited number of bookstores in another country," as one author discovered to her horror. That's why I prefer a limited, not-too-long term of rights, since it avoids complications like these, and your book won't be unavailable for too long. And if you are happy with them, you can always negotiate a new contract when the term ends.

Right of First Refusal. This means that the publisher gets the first chance to look at your next work, before you can send it to anyone else. It's best to avoid this altogether, but if you do end up with it in your contract, make sure it requires your publisher to respond within a set time period (months, not years), so they can't sit on your book forever, preventing you from publishing it anywhere.

In-laws and nephews

Kristin and I spent this past weekend visiting her brother and his family in Alberta, including three nephews whom I was meeting for the first time.  Although they consistently called me Uncle Donald, I was unsuccessful in dubbing them Huey, Duey, and Luey.

We spent a day at the Royal Tyrrel Museum, in Drumheller.  This is set among the badlands in Alberta, and is the home of a large collection of fossils, ranging from the Cambrian period all the way through the last Ice Age.

The next day we went to Banff, a town in the Canadian Rockies, which is well-known for its hot springs.  And its touristy small-town vibe, with lots of shops crowded by tourists over the long weekend.  There's also a beautiful hotel, called the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, that you probably can't afford to stay at.  After a hike up the falls, we ate in town, and then went to the hot springs, which was actually a pool fed by the hot springs.

A few pictures for your enjoyment:

I have way more pictures of these prairie dogs, outside the Royal Tyrrell Museum, than I have of anything inside the museum.

The lower falls, on the hike.

The upper falls, which is as far as we hiked.

My brother-in-law, his wife, and three boys--5, 4, and 5 months--on the way back from the hike.

Review of Terry Mancour's Spellmonger

I've decided to start reading, and reviewing, some of the novels available on Amazon.com's Kindle Lending Library.  This allows Amazon Prime members to read some books (one per month) for free on their Kindles.  The catch is that a lot--probably most--of these books are self-published e-books, using Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing.  That's sort of the reason I'm doing this.  Anyone can self-publish a book, and most of them are junk.  That said, 90% of anything is junk, so while there may be a lot of bad, self-published novels on Amazon, there are bound to be some good ones.  And as long as Amazon is letting me read one free once a month, I might as well take a chance on some of them.

First up is Terry Mancour's Spellmonger.  Now with this one, I may not be taking that much of a chance.  It's #7,325 in paid Kindle e-books, and has over 50 reviews, with an average rating of four stars (and while it's possible for self-published authors to game the review system, most of them seem fair, rather than the undeserved gushing of friends and relatives).  Additionally, Mr. Mancour has already published a novel (Star Trek The Next Generation: Spartacus).  So, I may be taking a chance, but not that much of one.

The first thing you notice about the novel, aside from the simple but functional cover, is the hand drawn and less functional map at the beginning.  I puzzled over this a bit, but I usually don't spend much time looking at the maps in e-books, so it was hardly a deal-breaker.  So I went straight to the opening scene.

The novel is high fantasy, with a noir voice.  The cynical, sarcastic first-person POV adds a lot of humor to the story, and it gave the novel a lot of its flavor.  The story started where most epic fantasies start: a small, rural community.  And the novel opens with a bang, with invading goblins gurvani attempting to burn the place to the ground.  At which point Minalan, the titular spellmonger, and former warmage, comes to the rescue.  It's a good opening, introducing the main character, his apprentice, and a bunch of villagers whom we instantly forget about.  Soon the lord of the valley arrives and the main plot begins.

The gurvani are coming by the thousands, armed with magic-enhancing Irionite, and the people must prepare for a siege: gathering allies and moving into the lord's castle.  Meanwhile, Minalan tells us about his life and background, weaving his backstory into the narrative. Unlike most novels of this type, the ally-gathering happens fairly quickly, and most of the novel is spent on the siege, and the clever ways Minalan and his allies use magic in order to escape complete destruction.  And it really is about how the magic is used--fairly little is done by the mundane folks.

That's one of the great weaknesses of this novel--all the important stuff is done by Minalan and a couple of his allies, all magic users.  Nothing of import is done by any of the mundanes.  They're mostly cannon-fodder and obstacles to overcome.  And there are some characters who seem like they'd have a lot to contribute, especially the mercenary leaders, but I can't remember anything of note they did outside of support for the magic types.

Another weakness is the half-hearted characterization.  There's a cast of hundreds, if not thousands, but most of them aren't important, and because they aren't, Mancour doesn't bother giving them more than a cursory introduction.  The three apprentices of the competitor spellmonger aren't even given names until just before their critical scene.  The main love interest shows up twice before the two stumble into a relationship, without any build-up to make us believe that they are actually in love.  The ruler of the rural valley goes from wise and good to petty and vain to sort of redeemed without much in the way of transition.

And for all that Minalan is the main character, he's not really that likable.  He's something of a lecher, so much so that it's hard to believe that he's decided to settle down when he does, and he has a prickly personality. He antagonizes the lord of the valley and his fellow spellmonger, but apparently they deserve it, since they're awful people--which we know because he tells us, not because of how they behave on-stage.

But for all its faults, Spellmonger still works.  It's well-written, and the presentation is professional.  The story is interesting, and the pieces come together in the end, with only a couple of plot holes.  Overall, it was worth the time to read--and really, I measure value more by the time than the money.