Aetheric Research, Ltd.

While usually I’m more likely to recommend authors, I recently had some dealings with another market that I feel is worth endorsing.

Full Tang Cutlery is a smithy in New York that specializes in creating unique knives.  I had been looking for a particular (somewhat unusual) sort of blade for some time, but had not seen any available that I thought were worth getting; when I realized that someone whom I knew from a message board I frequented was in the business of making custom blades, I thought I may well ask if it were possible (and economical) to have such a piece forged.

As it happened, it was very possible; while the piece that I was looking for was rather outside the usual range, it was well within their capabilities to manufacture.  

I was kept very well informed of the progress of my piece, including when a flood caused some slight delay.  It was finished well before I expected, though, and I quickly found myself in posession of a falcata with the modifications that I had requested to the ‘classic’ design.

The pictures hardly do it justice; it’s a beautiful piece of work–very solidly built, obviously very functional (though, as I don’t have any battles with Rome to attend, I’ll be using it more for insurance against rattlesnakes and the nastier sorts of chaparral) and balanced just as I had wanted it.  The construction is as solid as you could ask for, and all the parts are integrated smoothly together.

The jimping–the notches that you can see in the photos–is both decorative and practical; it greatly enhances the grip on the hilt, and adds an interesting dimension to the design.

Altogether, it’s a very solid, well-tempered piece, and an absolute pleasure to hold.  I heartily recommend Full Tang Cutlery’s work to anyone interested in good old fashioned quality workmanship.

Further use of the CR-48 has turned up a few more bugs (to be expected for an early-beta OS, but still annoying).  The rundown of annoyances over the weekend:

Video was sometimes jerky.  I haven’t yet isolated what, exactly, causes this jitter (framerate was going down to .5 or 1 fps, which is fairly unwatchable even for amusing cat videos) but showing off the video of the cat and his new toy on the CR-48 was unexpectedly difficult.

I realized that I missed the F6 key’s behavior for single-button URL/omnibox focus.  I assume that the chromebook paradigm wants you to spawn a new tab with the spyglass key when you go into a new site, but seems to have missed the use case of “whoops, wrong URL”–yes, ctrl-l isn’t -that- much more to type, but it’s still rather annoying.  Perhaps future models will have this functionality–or perhaps the window-switch key can be overloaded with shift or control chording functionality; it would be thematically similar behavior, and the location is similar.

Re-upping the data fillup with Verizon was needlessly antagonistic.  Verizon’s servers are either extremely overloaded or there is some other difficulty with them; either way, accessing the form to add the $20-gigabyte was a chore.  Further, despite having secured credit card information to register the free 100-MB, the information did not auto-populate: this required more needless typing and the requisite hassle of digging out credit cards, filling in address info, etc.

Further, the data price, upon research, is not nearly as good as it could be.  Verizon offers the very same grade of data transfer–3G cellular–as an option for tethering android phones, but at half the cost per byte.  The same $20 gets you 2 GB for a month.  Data may be cheaper with other networks as well.  Hopefully, there will be an option to unlock the wifi card to access competing networks that have lower prices on the production models.

Dan Abnett, Angry Robot Books

Triumff–properly, Sir Rupert Triumff–swashes his buckles in an alternate-history reimagining of Elizabetheian England.

Or at least, that’s how TV Guide would describe it.

The alternate history that Abnett creates is one where Elizabeth I, the famous ‘virgin queen’, decided to marry Phillip II of Spain and unite the two great sea powers of the Age of Discovery.  At the same time, Leonardo da Vinci rediscovers and popularizes magic, rather than engineering, which then becomes the dominant force. 

This has some interesting effects on both the Age of Discovery and history in general; it appears that this focus on “the Arte” has held back the progress of the world enough so that Sir Triumff can be the first discoverer of Australia, in a sailing vessel, in the year 2009.

Perhaps extending the rule of Elizabeth through 29 same-named heirs was not the ideal form of governance.

Four-hundred years of Elizabethan England aside, the novel’s conceit does lend itself to ersatz-present-day storytelling rather well, provided that the reader does not expect a “serious” adventure story.  Abnett does not rise to the level of a hurricane of puns, but the careful reader will perceive that the story is intended to be read with tongue firmly planted in cheek.  Puns are not the only symptom of the irreverence with which the book is laced; the creative spelling of the dialogue, the swiss-army rapier, and the creatively malapropist street thug all serve to set the tone.

This effect is not nearly as obvious as, say, the Xanth novels; hence, it is likely that some readers will begin reading it and then, not picking up on the intended tone, start complaining about the anachronisms, the patchy “Ye Olde Myddle-Englishe Spelling” that shows up in dialogue, and the strange mutilations of the shout-outs to both popular culture and to real-world Elizabethan culture.

Needless to say, it helps to be conversant with Shakespeare.

Triumff himself is an interesting character; he has the appearance of a gentleman-adventurer in the best traditions of Cook, Drake, or Bond (which point is reinforced by the Bond-pastiche segment with obligatory Spy-Gadget Review) but is more fleshed-out than a mere homage to the archetype would suggest.  The subtitle, “Her Majesty’s Hero,” is not the whole of his character; he is no Miles Gloriosus who vaingloriously craves glory, nor any other overuse of said word.  Abnett states in his afterword that Sir Triumff has been developing in the back of his mind for many years, and it shows–not only with how he behaves as himself, but in his interaction with other characters and flesh them out by contrast.

Neither is he the only memorable character; the apparent author-avatar (Wm. Beaver, a tabloid reporter) and certain secondary characters (Mother Grundy comes to mind) more than carry their own weight, even if they do not hold as much spotlight-time in their story threads as Triumff does in his.

Unusually, despite her name being dropped, Elizabeth XXX (Vivat Regina!) never speaks directly, and is only implied to take certain actions–thus giving her a distance from the plot which, given some tantalizing clues related second-hand, may be required to prevent her from overpowering the other characters.

A short read, but a merry one; I willingly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys Shakespeare, Pratchett, or Python.