Caught In The Whirlwind
Jason
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Posts by Jason
Book 26: Crown Of Swords
Oct 15th 2010
Title: Crown of Swords
Author: Robert Jordan
Genre: Fantasy (Epic)
Pages: 896
Summary
The wheel of time turns leaving memories that fade to legend. Legend fades to myth, and eventually makes it’s way into this long winded series of book about Rand Al’Thor and his destiny to save the world from the Dark One’s impending assault.
Women adjust their shawls and smooth their skirts. Men wonder if they’ll ever understand women. Braids are tugged, arms are folded beneath breasts and chins are raised.
And oh yeah, some stuff happens at the very end of the book that moves the story along.
Notes
You may have guessed from the summary section that I wasn’t overly fond of this book. The last three books could have been condensed into one book and the story would have been better off for it. There is a reason why authors don’t tell every single minute of the story in full detail.
My same complaints are evident here. Jordan can’t write women, spends too much time describing the most pointless crap imaginable and the relationships between men and women are enough to make me want to break my kindle in half. Several times I’ve rolled my eyes and said “You’ve got to be kidding me”.
But the story is still there, even as compressed as it is to the end of the book. The last 100-200 pages or so actually moved the plot forward (while introducing about 30 brand new, totally useless characters might I add…all with names similar to other characters). I’m still going to slog ahead because I’ve read 7 books of this thing and I want to know how it ends.
Next Book
I’ve been a bit slow about posting, so I’ve already started and completed my next book which was Book 1 of The Dresden Files, Storm Front by Jim Butcher. Which I will write about in my next posting.
RICHARRRRD!
Oct 6th 2010
It’s time for another one of those weekend activity reports I said I was trying to get away from, but this weekend happened to be totally amazingly awesome so you’re going to hear about it anyway.
Like I’ve been mentioning, I went out to Boston this weekend to meet up with my friends Kris and Marcy, hang out for a while and go see Roger Waters perform The Wall live at the TD Garden.
Saturday
I drove up Saturday morning and got there just after 11am. Saturday was going to be a day of mostly running around as they had to do some shopping and I needed to grab some landscape type photographs for my photography class assignment.
One of the first stops we went to was The Container Store as Marcy needed some….well…containers. And apparently they run demos of their closet organization system and at the end raffle off a $25 gift card. Well…we figured we were the only people who were interested so we had a pretty good shot of getting the gift card for standing around for 5 minutes listening to somebody talk. That is until Richard showed up. At the very last minute him and his (I presume) wife hopped on the bandwagon. And I know his name because he won the gift card in the random drawing. RICHARD!!! *shakes fist* This has developed into a running gag between the three of us now for whenever somebody gets screwed.
Other things I discovered on saturday:
- There is a furniture store chain (Jordan’s) that has an IMAX theater built inside of it.
- If you go into a men’s clothing store to look for a sports jacket to wear over a tshirt (a pokemon shirt in this instance) and jeans for a comic book convention, and tell the salesman who’s helping you such, he will give you a very funny look and ask several times if you’re sure that’s what you’re going to be wearing it with.
- Costume store employees who dress up as Master Chief from Halo enjoy dancing crazily on street corners until you manage to get your camera out to take a video.
We also visited a couple of scenic spots so I could get some landscape photos in considering there was actual sun this weekend. We hit a state park that was nice looking but only marginally useful for landscape photography as it turned out. But then Marcy and I took a walk down the road from their apartment (while Kris napped) and headed over to the Charles River which passes nearby which turned out to be great with the lighting of the sun just starting to go down. I took this picture which I like a lot (even though there’s some technical issues with the composition…namely the horizon being a bit too centered). As usual click to get a bigger view on Flickr.
We grabbed lunch from Domenic’s where I had the best tuna fish sandwich ever and hung out and chatted outside of Starbucks while enjoying some coffee beverages. Dinner was sushi at Shogun which was awesome. We sat at the sushi bar and got to see all of the prepwork that went into all the dishes they prepared. The sushi was great even though I ended up totally stuffed.
The night ended with with some Beatles: Rock Band and reading of comic books until I fell asleep on their very comfy couch.
Sunday
Sunday was more laid back. Woke up and grabbed breakfast at this awesome place called In A Pickle, where I had one of the best omelette’s that I’ve ever had (are you detecting a theme here?). Then we went back to their place and hung out for the remainder of the morning and afternoon, watching football. I took the time to adjust some of the photos I had taken for my class and get some work in on Kris’ book.
The Wall
Then we headed off for some Mexican and then headed into the city to visit the TD Garden and settle in to see Roger Waters. Our seats were on the left hand back corner, two rows from the very top of the balcony seating area. So pretty much almost as far as we could get:
Awful Phone Picture Of The Wall
Once the show got going though, we were in a pretty darn good spot to watch the production and video…so it ended up being a pretty good situation. The show started in a blaze of fireworks and pyro (which, as it turned out, were intended to make the arena smoky so the lighting effects would work). The end of In The Flesh? was amazing, with swirling spotlights from the ceiling lighting up the crowd to an airplane flying down from the top back of the arena into an explosion of pyrotechnics and then we were off.
The Wall which was being built brick by brick as the first half of the show progressed doubled as a gigantic video screen. As the workers laid bricks into the wall the video expanded to play on the bricks that were just put in. Gigantic puppets of the Teacher and Mother made their appearances. Eventually the band was totally seperated from the audience by the wall aside from a few small holes which, during The Last Few Bricks were stealthily covered up so you wouldn’t even notice they were gone. And then there was one brick left for Goodbye Cruel World…and then it was covered and the intermission started.
Marcy and I spent pretty much the entire intermission discussing the first half of the show (Kris kinda didn’t want to be there, he just came along to watch the show which was spoiled for him by a radio DJ a couple days before). The video show, the production…the music…everything was amazing. Especially Don’t Leave Me Now which is a track I tended to not like as much on the album but live, hearing Roger belt it out with all of the emotion in his voice…it really connected. My appreciation of the album and what it meant was growing by the second.
The second half of the show started with the band playing “Hey You” totally hidden by the wall which was surreal. It’s not something you DO in a live show. For the second half the traditional lighting you expect at a concert was mostly replaced by the video show on the gigantic wall. Comfortably Numb was a HUGE highlight with awesome guitar solos and the video show….wow. My favorite moment of the concert was during the second guitar solo, Roger (who was out in front of the wall at this point as the only band member visible) was acting like he was exploring the wall, eventually, with his back turned to the audience made as if to pound his fist on it and a gigantic crack appeared and the wall exploded “virtually” with him at the center, revealing a brightly colored landscape with the video bricks spiraling away.
Eventually the band reappeared on the outside of the wall as “the surrogate band”, with a completely different setup of instruments that just suddenly appeared ( I later realized they came out of the floor of the section in front of the wall) and they did the concert section of the album in character.
The Trial was amazing, with the iconic animations playing full across the entire wall, synced up with the lyrics and music. And with the chant of “Tear down the wall!” from the audience the gigantic wall crumbled and fell, and the band came back on with acoustic instruments to perform “Outside The Wall” and with that the show was over.
It was an amazing experience which I can’t fully duplicate through words. I’m still digesting what I saw and the more I think about it, the greater my appreciation for the album.
After the show we headed out to Spike’s Junkyard Dogs for a late night hot dog and drink which was also really good. Then back to their apartment for sleep.
Monday
Sadly, I had to return home on Monday, but not before breakfast from the local bakery (which was…well…you know) and some hanging out and Rock Band before I left.
The drive back was similarly uneventful to the drive out except I stopped at a couple more rest stops along the way making the drive more like 5 hours long.
So I’m left with an amazingly awesome weekend, spending time with some great people chatting about comics and music and life in general. I’ve determined to find an excuse go visiting again. I’ll be up there again for Boston Comic Con for sure and I’m considering hitting up PAX East this year (have to see if Jonathan Coulton is going to be performing this year or not. Probably he will.)
Unfortunately, it’s now time to get back to reality. Bah.
Er…Oops.
Sep 30th 2010
My vacation started today. I’m off of work until Wednesday, woo! Unfortunetly it started kinda crappily.
I was cleaning out Mr. Spatula’s fish tank last night…getting the green gunk off of the greek column thingy that’s one of his tank decorations. I put it back in the tank and thought everything was great. Until I came home today from work and noticed that Mr. Spatula wasn’t around. I suddenly realized what must have happened, picked up the decoration and there he was. Crap…Sorry little guy…
Since the tank was already cycled and all that I ended up running over to the store to get a replacement. He looks a lot like Mr. Spatula did mostly because I really like the color combination. I was going to call him Mr. Spatula The Second. But then I called him “Replacement Fish” when I went to put him in the tank and Wassy mentioned “Replacement” would be a good name…so that’s what I went with.
Blargh. Feel bad for killing the fish though. The first fish I’ve actually had an active role in killing since I started my fish keeping hobby.
Looking Forward and Back
Sep 28th 2010
I’m headed to Boston this weekend to see some friends and catch the Roger Waters concert on the 3rd, so needless to say I’m looking forward to the weekend right now. This stretch over the past few weeks has been pretty bad relatively, so I could definitely use a little mini-vacation right about now.
There’s just one potential problem on the horizon. Both of my roommates have come down with a nasty cold which means there’s almost no possible way I’m going to avoid getting it myself. My throat was bugging me a tad yesterday but that’s mostly gone now and I’ve got a very occasional cough. So I’m hoping this is one of those situations where they get something and I mostly avoid it because it would kinda be awful battling a cold.
This past weekend I went out to Keuka Lake (aka, wine country) in an attempt to get some landscape photos for my photography class. Sadly, it ended up being mostly cloudy all weekend. I went anyway to get out for a while and the only bits of sunlight I got was about 15 minutes when I was going down the Thruway and about 30 seconds here and there. I managed to get some shots that will work out but because of the lighting nothing spectacular. Blargh. And it’s going to be rainy all week which isn’t going to help me get photos for the assignment.
Ah well, just have to do what I can.
Book 25: Red Seas Under Red Skies
Sep 25th 2010
Title: Red Seas Under Red Skies
Author: Scott Lynch
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 784
Summary
This is book 2 of the Gentelman Bastard’s cycle. Trying not to give anything away from the first book here. Locke Lamora is forced to flee from his home city of Camorr. Thinking that he’s evaded those who have perused him, he starts in on a new scheme to steal from the elite of his new location. But things suddenly become much more complicated than he imagined. Poisoned by a political leader and forced to use his skills of deception for a chance at the antidote, Locke ends up juggling three sperate schemes, one of which on the high seas as a pirate.
Notes (Ending Spoilers are included in the last 2 paragraphs)
This series is quickly becoming one of my favorite fantasy book series ever. The main characters are compelling and complex, the plot is well thought out, the dialog is incredibly witty. Extremely well written.
Judging from the reviews on Amazon, it appears I’m in the minority for enjoying this book just as much (and maybe even a little more) than the first book in the series. I felt that the author’s writing style between the two books has matured and he’s learned to juggle the flashbacks more effectively.
Like I said in my notes from the first book, this book follows the same kind of time jump structure. In fact, the very first chapter has events that occur far in the future. Lynch dumps you right into the middle of a fight scene where some very surprising actions take place (trying to avoid spoilers here as much as possible) and then rewinds the clock back to several months after where the first book left off through all the events leading up to that moment. Interspersed is the events that occurred in those missing 2 months.
The structure is a lot cleaner this time out, although this could just be me being used to his writing style. It’s a lot easier to follow and there’s less flashback-y stuff which makes sense considering the reader should already be familiar with the world.
Spoilers begin ahead (FYI)
What a lot of the amazon reviewers termed the part of the book they hated most, the pirate plot, was actually the part I liked best. It didn’t drag for me like some people indicated, it was actually what caught my attention the most. Locke is usually so confident in the roles that he’s trying to pull off, but seeing him trying to be believable in a role where he has extremely limited knowledge was interesting to me. And I have a soft spot for pirate-y goodness. Also the pirate subplot really helped flesh out Jean’s character.
What I didn’t enjoy was the abrupt ending. As I was edging towards 90% on my kindle while reading I was trying to figure out how the heck Lynch was going to tie everything up. He had the original caper against the leader of the Sinspire, the twist sub plot involving Stragos and the military (and the poison) and the pirate subplot still going strong. But somehow it was all tied up and finished in one chapter. This seemed rushed to me, as if Lynch noticed how many pages he had written and said “oh crap, I need to end this!”. Most surprising to me was how it ended. I thought for sure it was going to turn out OK for the protagonists but, in the end things didn’t quite turn out how they expected them to.
I can’t wait for the third book now.
Next Book
I figure I’ve taken enough of a break from the Wheel of Time that I should get back onto it before I forget what happened. So I’m going to be reading A Crown Of Swords by Robert Jordan next. This is the first book in my re-reading of the series that I have not previously read. So I guess that means I’ve moved from re-reading to actually…reading. Halfway through the series!
[Plinky] Three Songs I Never Get Sick of
Sep 22nd 2010
Name three songs you never get sick of.
A Change Of Seasons by Dream Theater
This is one of my favorite Dream Theater songs ever. It’s a roughly 23 minute epic written by ex drummer Mike Portnoy about his experiences with the death of his Mom in a plane crash and how that changed his outlook on life. Powerful song with a strong message. One of my favorite songs ever written.
Stranger In Your Soul by Transatlantic
Plinky was unable to find a picture for this one so that’s why the image size is funky…but I could have listed any of several Transatlantic songs here. But I must have listened to this song at least 40-50 times, if not more and it never gets old. Ever. Transatlantic is one of my favorite bands ever.
Arriving Somewhere But Not Here by Porcupine Tree
My favorite Porcupine Tree song (although Gravity Eyelids is pretty darn close too), it’s just so well constructed. Starts off slow but builds into something totally awesome.
The Blargh Part
Sep 20th 2010
And now for the second half of the post I wanted to make this morning. Less updating, more personal stuff.
Like I said, I’ve been feeling a bit blargh recently, for a variety of reasons. Some of which would be uninteresting to people who aren’t me, so I won’t get into it. But I want to go into some of the stuff.
A lot of it probably has to do with the situation at work. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that one of my bosses and myself just don’t see eye to eye on stuff and that conflict is gradually increasing over time. Not going to turn this into a big complaint session post or anything, but just in a nutshell, I’m in a situation where he’s given me some fairly complex projects to work on without understanding that they’re as complex as they are and expecting me to finish them faster than I can. So he either gets pissed at me for getting it done on time and not working like it should because the timeframe was unreasonable, or he gets pissed at me when I do it the right way and it takes longer than he thought it would. Or the fun part, when he gets pissed at me when it doesn’t work how he thinks it should work, even though he never told me he wanted it to work like that to begin with.
I’m just detecting over the past several weeks that conversations have started to become more adversarial. Even when I attempted to bring up my concerns with him it got turned around on me somehow. The situation is heading towards some sort of breaking point. I just don’t know when.
So yeah, that’s weighing on my mind. And it’s not like I particularly enjoy working here or anything. What I just mentioned is part of the reason why, plus other things. I’ve been trying to find another job that would either present me a new opportunity in my existing career or let me go back to school on a more full time basis and work towards a graphic design degree. But so far there’s nothing in this area that looks like it might work out. And I’ve been looking.
Which brings me to my second reason for blargh-ness. I’ve got several design related projects I’ve been working on, chiefly a book layout for a friend of mine that’s pretty extensive, and a redesign for my friend Wassy’s website. Lately I’ve been slacking a bit on this stuff due to mostly, City of Heroes Going Rogue expansion. I’ve been trying to get back on top of things though. Trying to would be the operative word. It’s kinda like there’s some sort of disconnect and I just can’t come up with anything that works. It’s getting to be incredibly frustrating at this point.
So those are the big things weighing on me right now. It’ll pass at some point, I know, but right now things are just kinda blargh.
On the bright side though, the photos I posted up earlier this week seem to have gone over well with the professor of the course. Well, the first one anyway. She’s working on commenting on the rest. So it’s not all bad!
House Hunting and Other Activities
Sep 20th 2010
Blargh.
That about sums up my feelings right now. I had kinda a mixed bag weekend, but I’ve decided to split it up into two posts so I’ll get to the second, more personal one later. First the fun recapy stuff.
Saturday and Sunday I went out with my roommates on their quest to find a good house. The first one we saw was simply awesome and if they had the finances ready for the down payment and we didn’t have our lease to consider right now, I think they would have put in an offer right there. Totally updated, more than enough space, great location. Probably the only reason it hasn’t sold is that the bedrooms were a tad small but not insurmountable. The basement more than made up for it with a great almost finished area (all it needs is some kind of flooring) which could work out perfectly for a living area/tv room or something like that.
The second house…had character. The lot was right next to a busy road which didn’t leave the best first impression. Then we got inside. The entry had the lowest ceilings ever. I almost had to duck. The low ceilings continued through about half the house. The other half was really outdated and needed a TON of work, especially with the wiring only a handful of 3 prong outlets in the entire place. My favorite part though, was the two staircases to get upstairs. The first one we came across was off the kitchen when investigating what we thought was the first full bathroom. A door in the back of the bathroom though had stairs which lead up to what I presume was being used for the master bedroom. So any time anybody was using that bathroom you’re either stuck in the bedroom or unable to get to the bedroom from the kitchen. Well…unless you’re real friendly with the occupant of the bathroom. The awfulness continues upstairs with seemingly random placement of power outlets and random room layout. I know it’s an older house, but…geeze.
So that got crossed off the list and we headed home until Sunday when we went out to Ilion to check out a couple of houses there. The first one was pretty good. Good layout, pretty good bedroom sizes for an older house. Nothing that really stuck out as totally awesome but also nothing that was a major negative either. Well, until we tried leaving. It has a shared driveway with the house next door that’s very windy and cramped. When backing out we had several close calls with hitting various objects. If the next door neighbors ever have a party or something that lines their side of the driveway, that would make it even worse. It’s not a good situation for people who have multiple cars.
The second house we went to on Sunday didn’t leave a great first impression. It was a huge older house that needed a TON of work on the exterior. Some of the windows were cracked, the porch was going to need some significant repairs. but the inside was totally awesome. They must have spent all of their money fixing up the interior because it was neat. It was worth the trip just to be able to walk through it. It even had a servants quarters type situation in the loft/attic area, with an intercom system and a servant’s stairway. Big bedrooms, really cool dining area…just perfect. Well, except for the required exterior repairs. The windows were all original too which would be…costly to update if one was trying to make the place as energy efficient as possible. The exterior repairs also made it not eligible for a FHA loan which puts it out of my friends consideration as they can’t really take on a conventional mortgage.
So then onward to the rest of my activities this weekend. I played a lot of Baldur’s Gate. I bought this game back in 1998 when it first came out and never got even halfway through it. I think it was the difficulty level that did me in, but I’ve recently borrowed it from my sister (she got a copy of BG and BG2 on DVD and I think I’m missing a CD at this point from mine…) and installed it. I’m using 2 mods, EasyTutu which basically takes the original game and transplants it into the Baldur’s Gate 2 engine. Same game, better interface and a bunch of other small bug fixes that Bioware never got around to fixing. I’m also using a widescreen mod so I can play the game at 1440×900 instead of the default 640×480 (or 800×600 in BG2). So far so good. I am using a walkthrough because the game is freaking hard and I want to find all the hidden stuff. But it’s brought back a ton of memories of playing though the first part of the game over and over and over again.
I just got into chapter 3 and I’m working through side quests before I head up into the bandit camp to advance the story. It’s further than I thought I was going to get. My other productive plans for this weekend ended up falling through. But I’ll get to that in another post.
Book 24: The Lies of Locke Lamora
Sep 15th 2010
Title: The Lies of Locke Lamora
Author: Scott Lynch
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 752
Summary
An orphan who was saved from being given to the slavers, Locke Lamora eventually became one of the most feared theives in a town full of them. With the city watch on the take and the nobles looking the other way unless they get targeted, Camorr is a Thief’s wonderland. But Locke, never satisfied with playing by other peoples rules, weaves an intricate scheme with the help of his friends to defraud a noble out of half of his fortune. And from there things get complicated.
Notes
This was a recommendation from my friend Kris and I have to say it was a good one. This is Scott Lynch’s debut novel and it shows he’s going to be somebody to watch out for in the future.
The structure of the book is a little…weird until you get the hang of it. The author jumps around in time fairly frequently which can be disorienting until you learn more about the characters and are able to determine at what point in time things are happening in. Even within the same chapter the timeline can be a little convoluted.
But the effect is great. Reading this book reminded me of a good heist movie. Very Ocean’s 11-esq. The dialog is probably my favorite part of the book, very serious when it had to be and very funny when tension needed to be eased. The plot was great and you really start to care about the characters as time goes on. Lamora is essentially an outlaw, but he’s not a cut throat murderer. Quite the opposite in fact.
Recommended for anybody who likes either fantasy or heist type stories. And if you like both…well…even better!
Next Book
I’m continuing on with the series and I am currently reading Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch, the second book in the Gentleman Bastards series.
[Plinky] My Epic Road Trip
Sep 15th 2010
Describe an epic road trip you’d love to take.
Some day, I’d love to just take like a month off and just head west across the country and see what I could see.
Not sure I’d worry too much about planning or anything (well, except when it came to the less inhabited bits…don’t want to end up in the middle of nowhere without any gas). Just kinda head out, stay off the major interstate highways and see what was out there.
I think it’d be fun. Well, now I do. I’d probably get tired of it about 3 days in..but hey, it’s a nice thought! I do really enjoy road trips though.
A more realistic option is to just set off some saturday morning and just pick a direction and drive. See where I’d end up. It’s a lot easier to find yourself now with GPS and all that. I’ve come to find that there’s way more stuff in their local areas than people might realize if they take the time to look. I know that’s true around here.
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