Friday Hyjinx

I'm super-annoyed this Friday afternoon.  When I paid to park downtown, I transposed two characters my car's license number at the electronic meter kiosk; so I came back from a visit of an exhibit on European Medieval Magic to a parking citation for not paying.  Then I wasted about two hours trying to figure out how to contest the ticket and going back downtown to pick up a paper form before figuring out what had happened.  

Bleah.

The morning, at least, was charming.  I took the day off and went to the Cascades Raptor Center.  I was surprised at how busy it was; I guess I shouldn't have been--I think a lot of schools released kids for an extended Spring Break.  

I managed to visit with a friend who works there and got some photos of Jake the Peregrin Falcon.  It was Rat Day, so many of the resident birds had that for their breakfast.  

After the Raptor Center, it was off to the Museum of Natural History.  They have an exhibition of European Medieval Magic that a friend of mine curated, and I wanted to go see it.  The most interesting item to me was the narwhale horn: I hadn't realized how they could reach four feet in length.  I'd heard about witch bottles before (typically filled with nails), but I hadn't known that they were supposed to represent the witch's gall bladder.  

There was an actual love spell, which was supposed to be written in blood from the ring finger of your left hand, and which featured the ROTAS-SATOR square.  I found a recipe for soul-cakes, which I'll have to try; maybe I can put in some other design instead of simply quartering them.  There was a technology problem with a touch screen, so the most interactive part of the exhibit was a random plinko cascade machine where you could guess what kind of familiar you might attract by where a round chip would land after you dropped it in at the machine's top. 

In terms of story inspiration, I might be able to write something at the intersection of soul cakes, Tomtens, and cookies for Santa.  

Sunday Gym, Sticks, and Moons

Went to the gym Sunday (1/22) afternoon.  20 some minutes on the Nordic elliptical for about 220 calories.  13x(30+30+40)lbs deltoid fly.  13x(30+40+50)lbs pec fly.  13x(30+45+70)lbs lat pulldowns (different machine).  3x13 curls on the Roman Chair.  3x13x30lbs barbell curl.  3x13x30lbs triceps curls.  Some assorted free dumbell work.  

The gym folks said that I could use the Zumba Studio for bo-stick work, but between the support beams, hanging light fixures, and ceiling fans, it's not a good idea.  I had better control of the stick before my workout; surprisingly, I was more of a butter-fingers with it after (I thought I might be more limber, but I guess not).

On the writing front, The Family went on a hike Sunday, so I was able to get in about 700 words in of back-story.  I also found a Fantasy Map Generator on Saturday, which was cool, and made me think about the landscape--I'd had the characters in a fairly "grey" hilly landscape or else a generic fantasy city, and the map generator was a reminder that most early cities are going to be on the coast or along a major waterway.  The other "writing" project was figuring out the story's moons -- in a moment of insantity, I gave the world two, co-orbital moons.  Several hours of pen-and-envelope calculations later, I figured out that larger moon (which is like Earth's Moon), takes either about 30 days or 41 days to make an orbit, and the smaller moon takes either about 24 or 48 ... and they switch places high or low orbits every 79 or 106 days.

Of course as I'm writing this I'm looking at all the influences and thinking too many times, "I can't make it like X" or "Ooh, this is really derivative of Y."  I should just write it and then go back and edit it.  So... The next step is to spend a little more time exploring characters and places and then doing a kind of slow NaNoWriMo over the next eight weeks (eyes a calendar).

Gym and Fighting Mechanics

Went to the gym Thursday (1/18) evening.  It was very full.  Only 15 minutes on the Nordic elliptical.  Downstairs, 13x(30+30+40 lb on the deltoid pulls.  13x(30+40+50lbs on the pec fly.  12x(40+50+60lbs on the lat pull-down.  3x13 Roman Chair pull-ups.  3x13x30lbs barbell curls.   3x13x30lbs triceps curls.     Back upstairs for about five minutes on the cable rowing machine.

I've been doing some experimentation with short sticks to get a feel for how Jerick, my fantasy axe-wielding character, would actually fight someone without opening himself up between swings.  In order to not tire out his wrists and arms, he'd have to keep his axes spinning.  In order to keep his guard up, he needs two axes:  one for striking, one for guarding.  If he's doing Parkour, it's going to be hard, because his hands will be full of axe-haft -- so I'm not sure how he's going to leap over and up walls unless he can use the axe as hooks, which will only work on wooden obstacles.  If he's doing backflips up walls and landing behind an opponent, that's going to require some intense sprinting -- so physically, he's going to to have to have the build of a gymnast, be able to sprint into striking range with his axes (or throw them) and then sprint back out before a more traditional fighter (or animal or magical beast) can whack him with a sword.  Which means padded leather armor, or "magical" metal armor that's super-light.   One net, or caltrops, or broken glass, or an oil slick, and he's either going to pull a muscle, or otherwise be unable to spring all over the place.   Good thing I'm making him twenty-two-ish.

When Writers Visit Forges

We visited Fort Vancouver today.  It's located near (surprise!) Vancouver, Washington.

What struck me the most about the site was the disjointed feeling I got from the buildings and the re-enactors dressing like Oregon Territory pioneers and Hudson's Bay Company.  1840 wasn't really that long ago, and on one hand it feels "modern"; but on the other hand, the technology, the cooking techniques, the ironwork and the dress doesn't feel that far away from the English Renaissance.  And, wow, even on a sunny day, the insides of the houses were dark.

I had a fun time speaking with the volunteers there because, 1) I was asking engaged questions about the drying savory and thyme and the forge (which I think they appreciated) and 2) I was wearing the Great Coat of +3 charisma.

I've been writing about forges, so I took the opportunity to visit with the volunteer smith there.  She told me

• there is a 1600-era bible with an illustration of a woman smith making nails (which turns out to be the 14th Century English Holkham Bible,) .
• very early smiths might have used charcoal, but smiths prefer coal because it's the most efficient fuel (and was the ballast in the ocean-going ships of the time).
• a smith was judged by the tools he or she (although The Hudson's Bay Company didn't hire women) brought with them when seeking a job (her example was a well made hammer).
• there wasn't an apprentice system in place at Fort Vancouver; the smiths had laborers who did what traditional apprentices did, but the Hudson's Bay Company was paying the smiths to fabricate metal items, not teach.
• the tools made at the fort were mostly iron, with some high-carbon steel welded in where an edge was needed (hatchet heads) or where the tensile strength needed improvement (springs).
• women and children could loop chains links at home as a kind of cottage industry.

The forge was smokey, which I didn't really notice because I'd gone into Writer Researching Mode.  I was struck between the fantasy trope version of a forge -- Weyland Smith forging King Arthur's Sword, or Alberich's Dwarves fashioning the Tarnhelm -- and the actual (historically recreated) forge.  This forge didn't have a lot of swords and armor in it, it was filled mostly with nails, rivets and punches; pliers, hammers, and shutter-dogs; and beaver-traps.  I didn't notice it at the time, but there weren't any horseshoes or other ferrier's tools (dang, I should have asked).

Also, the stories that I write which have forges in them either have the forges off-stage or have gauzy scenes of Japanese Samurai Sword forging in them.  I'm hoping to write a scene set in a more common, practical forge.  OK, a forge with singing nuns connected with that world's "Crystal Dragon Christianity"... but still.

It's Worse Than That, It's Physics, Jim

I've just finished watching Brian Greene's "The Fabric of the Cosmos."  I want to be able to write science fiction based on recent science, so I'd placed a hold on the DVDs at the library--nine months of waiting and voila!

The four-part series was cool, although I think they overplayed the Big Bang sequence.  Mark watched a little, too; he thought they jumped back and forth betwee scientists too much.

Anyway, as a science fiction writer, the most interesting aspect was how the space-time continuum can be thought of as a snapshot slice of "Now", and how that slice can appaear to angle through different parts of the space-time fabric depending on the observer's motion.  The theoretical upshot is that you can do a kind of red- or blue-shift on "Now" for places that are vastly distant from each other.  It's that whole relative observational frame thing.

I wonder if you would get a time-viewer if you could quantum-entangle a very distant particle, place it into a telescope focus or other detector, and then move it forward or backward to red- or blue-shift the "Now" slice.   Or, to put it another way, if one can have spooky interaction at a distance, why not have spooky interaction over time?

I am not sure the how adequately explained the shifting of the "now" slice of space-time, because one would think with the increase in universal aexcelleration, we'd see a spherical boundary where the "Now" slice would appear to make very very distant galaxies  move backward in time as our perception of the "Now" slice swept "backward" toward the Big Bang.  

Hmm.  Maybe I'm going to have to read the book....

Oh; I can hear....  It must be the Eugene Celebration or seomthing because I'm hearing muted Funky Jazz fusion from very far away drifting through my open window... apparently, downtown Eugene has been time-shifted to the 1960's.

And now, to sleep.