[Mikey]

Given the recent dearth of good new sci-fi/fantasy after Amazon told me not to scrape their new book list for filtering, I’ve been re-reading Astlan books one and two.

I very much enjoy reading multiple unreliable narrator accounts instead those of an omniscient third party. It greatly adds to the texture of the world.

What if all those unreliable assumptions about Rupert’s origins in book 1 are wrong, even his own?

He wasn’t present at his conception. His mother didn’t really understand who his father was. One of their neighbours might have seen a dark-skinned man visit, a black cat in the alley the next day, and the rumours would have taken care of the rest.

The rumours would have shaped Rupert’s self-image, which is why he started sprouting horns in the early teens. In a different environment, with different neighbours, he could just as well have started manifesting a halo and chicken wings.

The rules about demonic children so many of the players are so certain of, would not apply to demigods, who would have gotten a strong injection of the animus and mana their parent farmed/leeched off their gullible populace.

[Mikey]

[quote=Gelcube;3076]That being said, I don’t remember T-A-G mentioning that Rupert’s origins don’t involve time travel. Was that on the Amazon boards? i don’t go there, so I don’t know what’s on them.[/quote]

[url=http://www.amazon.com/gp/forum/cd/discussion.html/ref=cm_cd_et_md_pl?ie=UTF8&cdForum=Fx3RI7J5FDSG4QJ&cdMsgID=Mx1Y4VBLEGHF0R5&cdMsgNo=509&cdPage=21&cdSort=oldest&cdThread=TxKNM2O0F9QECC#Mx1Y4VBLEGHF0R5]http://www.amazon.com/gp/forum/cd/discussion.html/ref=cm_cd_et_md_pl?ie=UTF8&cdForum=Fx3RI7J5FDSG4QJ&cdMsgID=Mx1Y4VBLEGHF0R5&cdMsgNo=509&cdPage=21&cdSort=oldest&cdThread=TxKNM2O0F9QECC#Mx1Y4VBLEGHF0R5[/url]

[Mikey]

[quote=Tizzy;3079]… where everybody knows my name![/quote]

In the Navy, yes, you can put your mind at ease!

[Mikey]

I seem to recall that Bess was in Abyss at the time, Exador and RM were walking around, and Maelen spotted them?

I’ll soon get to that point on my re-read, but don’t want to jump forward to confirm…

[Mikey]

I very much enjoy the description of how it really doesn’t matter that much if Tom reveals his lowly origins as a recent recruit, since after a certain point, the opposition isn’t going to listen to intelligence reports which don’t support their previous actions, anymore.

In general, these Astlan works are a very positive detour from the works of the kind naive fantasy authors who describe worlds in which different groups of people somehow magically pretty much agree on a set interpretation, historical or contemporary, of events.

[Mikey]

I wish I had the time to read “Orc” this weekend, but instead I must evaluate Intel Edison vs. Raspberry Pi B 2 as IoT development platforms. 🙁

[Mikey]

In spring, I was part of a team which won a IoT hackathon using Bluetooth Low Energy sensors, and even since then, what’s available on the market has multiplied several times over.

For $24 you can get a Bluetooth Low Energy enabled Arduino sensor platform at http://punchthrough.com/bean-teaser

Its big brother https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1966384672/a-bluetooth-arduino-for-the-mobile-age-lightblue-b will be available soon, and this time it’s rechargeable from USB.

If you’re building remote sensor platforms for say, temperature or humidity, this is the way to go.

What I’m evaluating the Intel Edison and RPIB2 for currently is a BLE base station which controls a number of these sensors, and pushes their data over to a cloud event / queue handler, such as the AWS products, the IBM MQTT and event stream offerings, or just your own MQTT or RabbitMQ server and one of the many new products which specialize in saving time series data from IoT sensors.

It’s really fascinating how fast these things are moving. When I was starting in the business, a couple of decades ago, there would have been no chance whatever that you could pick out all the stuff you need for a development kit for a few hundred bucks at the most. We’re in the future.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/8cSwmkI.png[/img]

The Edison SOC has an Atom, WiFi, 1 GB of memory and 4 GB of SSD integrated on the tiny chip.

[Mikey]

[quote]“Longer?” Jehenna asked.
“[b]More than ever. We need[/b] an observer outside that we can trust. If any Avatars show up, I want advance warning.” Lenamare finished his brandy. “I have the wards set to allow Telemirrors, and he still has his. Therefore, Elrose coordinate a location and what supplies he needs and I’ll open the wards to let you out and back in. I only want to have them open for a few minutes at most.”[/quote]

“More than ever, we need…”

[Mikey]

82: “She was a defender of house and home a protector of her people.”

Between “home” and “a”, you’d want a dash.

[Mikey]

81: “Assuming his true form, [b]which still gave him twinges to think of it as such[/b], he swooped down to make sure that someone had caught Talarius in his free fall.”

This is a bit clumsy. Also the reader’s re-introduction to Tom.

[Mikey]

[Mikey]

Your Etonians were what brought that clip, and its nickname “Princeton”, to mind.

[Mikey]

“Because, I was forged as a demon slaying sword, and identifying and slaying demons is my [b]principle[/b] purpose.”

principal

[Mikey]

“The [b]principle[/b] beggar said menacingly.”

principal

… this can’t be the best way to provide corrections …

[Mikey]

“My [b]principle[/b] mission right now unfortunately involves me drinking prodigious amounts of very expensive wine.”

principal

[Author]

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