Review: Elantris
Review of Elantris by Brandon Sanderson (9780765311771)★★★★
How do you summarize Elantris? It's got mystery, magic, romance, action, political intrigue... and it all works while avoiding falling into classic fantasy tropes and cliches. #books (https://b-ark.ca/Ou8ws6)
Elantris was the capital of Arelon: gigantic, beautiful, literally radiant, filled with benevolent beings who used their powerful magical abilities for the benefit of all. Yet each of these demigods was once an ordinary person until touched by the mysterious transforming power of the Shaod. Ten years ago, without warning, the magic failed. Elantrians became wizened, leper-like, powerless creatures, and Elantris itself dark, filthy, and crumbling.
Arelon's new capital, Kae, crouches in the shadow of Elantris. Princess Sarene of Teod arrives for a marriage of state with Crown Prince Raoden, hoping -- based on their correspondence -- to also find love. She finds instead that Raoden has died and she is considered his widow. Both Teod and Arelon are under threat as the last remaining holdouts against the imperial ambitions of the ruthless religious fanatics of Fjordell. So Sarene decides to use her new status to counter the machinations of Hrathen, a Fjordell high priest who has come to Kae to convert Arelon and claim it for his emperor and his god. But neither Sarene nor Hrathen suspect the truth about Prince Raoden. Stricken by the same curse that ruined Elantris, Raoden was secretly exiled by his father to the dark city. His struggle to help the wretches trapped there begins a series of events that will bring hope to Arelon, and perhaps reveal the secret of Elantris itself.
It’s been about a week and a half since I finished reading Elantris, which means once again this review is coming late, well after my initial impressions have faded. So, don’t expect too much.
Despite being his first work, this feels like classic Sanderson to me. We have reversals of classic fantasy tropes. We have powerful female characters leading the fight for justice, something which I’m discovering is a bit of a fixture in Sanderson’s work. We have, of course, a fairly coherent magic system whose rules are the key to the big reveal at the end of the novel. And, of course, we have a bit of a Sanderson avalanche at the end.
I will say, the slow reveal of the magic in this world was a bit frustrating, if only because it proves so critical in the final acts of the book. But, that issue aside, this book was well paced and exciting.
Continue reading...Very nice intro piece on capital ‘S’ Stoicism and how deeply its misunderstood. I wouldn’t label myself a Stoic–I don’t spend nearly enough time on the topic–but it’s had a very profound effect on my own life.
#stoicism (https://b-ark.ca/WQu2Gk)
Finished Elantris by Brandon Sanderson (9780765311771) (https://b-ark.ca/YmWE24)
Thank you, James Randi. You were a stalwart defender of facts and reason, something we can use that now more than ever. Thank goodness we have @jref to carry on your legacy.
#reason (https://b-ark.ca/yyMCsW)I’ve always found the demoscene incredibly inspiring. The marriage of art and technological innovation never ceases to blow my mind, and MONOSPACE by @p01 is no exception.
#hacking (https://b-ark.ca/IaS0sg)
Currently reading Elantris by Brandon Sanderson (9780765311771) #books (https://b-ark.ca/Ui_eio)
Review: Warbreaker
Review of Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson (9780765320308)★★★★
A standalone novel by Brandon Sanderson, Warbreaker is fascinating for it's reversal of many tropes, but really shines due to the commentary provided along the way. #books (https://b-ark.ca/6QKwM2)
Warbreaker is the story of two sisters, who happen to be princesses, the God King one of them has to marry, the lesser god who doesn't like his job, and the immortal who's still trying to undo the mistakes he made hundreds of years ago. Their world is one in which those who die in glory return as gods to live confined to a pantheon in Hallandren's capital city and where a power known as BioChromatic magic is based on an essence known as breath that can only be collected one unit at a time from individual people.
By using breath and drawing upon the color in everyday objects, all manner of miracles and mischief can be accomplished. It will take considerable quantities of each to resolve all the challenges facing Vivenna and Siri, princesses of Idris; Susebron the God King; Lightsong, reluctant god of bravery, and mysterious Vasher, the Warbreaker.
So the entire month of September was a bit of a weird one for me, and so I completely forgot that I hadn’t posted a review for Warbreaker. As a result, this post is both going to be a) a bit of a retrospective after the memories of the book have faded a bit, and b) probably a bit short. But since no one is reading any of this, anyway, well, what do you care??
Continue reading...We’ve had an astounding fall here in Edmonton. Truly a blessing in a tough year!
#fall (https://b-ark.ca/m26YcE)
Finished Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson (9780765320308) #books (https://b-ark.ca/wKSiKC)
IPv6 and self-hosting
A little post about how I've used IPv6 and a dual-stack VPS to address common networking issues when hosting services at home. #ipv6 #selfhostingMany of the non-critical services I run–messaging, RSS, home automation–run on an Intel NUC I’ve hidden away at home. This has advantages over a VPS in that if I need additional resources, I can just add some memory or storage rather than having to move to a new service tier and paying that much more every month. Plus, given how much I’m working and using these services at home, having them hosted locally means higher perceived performance due to lower latency.
Unfortunately, connectivity for services hosted on a residential broadband connection is always a pain in the butt. While over the years my residential broadband connection has been incredibly stable, I still face the challenge of changing IP addresses. And yes, I can set up dynamic DNS, but I’ve always found it relatively fragile (not to mention an enormous hack). Additionally, you have to contend with ISPs potentially blocking ports and so forth. And finally there’s all the issues with NAT, reverse port mappings, internal and external DNS record management, and on and on. Basically it’s painful and brittle.
On what might seem like an unrelated note, IPv6 is still gradually getting deployed. Certainly mobile networks use v6 extensively, but outside that space adoption is still pretty nascent. As a result, it’s always been a bit questionable if deploying v6 at home is worth the trouble (minus the novelty and bragging rights).
But it turns out that, with a VPS and an IPv6 tunnel, you can dramatically simplify the process of hosting services on a residential broadband connection. As a result, this has proven to be the “killer app” that has driven me to truly adopt v6 at home.
Continue reading...Of course, after tweeting that out, I decided to test drive searx.info, which is a metasearch engine that includes Google’s results while also supporting IPv6. Best of both worlds?
#ipv6 #indieweb (https://b-ark.ca/8S0Sue)I run IPv6 at home (shout out to @henet!) I switched from a /64 to a /48 and now @google thinks there’s “suspicious traffic” coming from my network. Solution: switch to @startpage. Thanks Google!
#ipv6 #selfhosting (https://b-ark.ca/ecquci)The Astronomy Picture of the Day from NASA has been in my RSS feed list for as long as I can remember. There’s a lot of things I love about it, but that it’s basically a flashback to the late 90s web is definitely near the top of the list.
#indieweb #astronomy #nostalgia (https://b-ark.ca/yW8WAm)
Made the jump from Ubuntu back to Debian testing and man, it really has come a long way! I missed you, buddy!
#linux (https://b-ark.ca/CWOgc2)Ah, the joys of self-hosting. I’ve been refactoring my server infrastructure, and that lead me to reworking my publishing flow, including changes to lillipub, which I hope are now working…
#indieweb #selfhosting (https://b-ark.ca/cOYcg4)Intellectually I understand that 40 kph winds gusting to 60 is pretty windy. The reality of it is something else entirely. Hell of a day to do my first 100k...
#cycling #activity (https://b-ark.ca/yeEyoQ)
First day of the virtual ride. A pleasant, short ride with some friends. Fantastic!
#cycling #activity (https://b-ark.ca/_qKUss)
Indieweb Activity Logging
My hacky solution to book blogging and exercise tracking in the indieweb. #indieweb #hacking #technologyMy personal blog, a static site built with Jekyll, is a bit of a frankenstein. I really need to write some posts that get into the dirtier details of how I’ve stitched various bits together (like webmentions, POSSE syndication, and so on). But for this installment I wanted to start with something I’m doing which I think is a bit unique.
So, backing up, as we all know, social media isn’t just about long-form articles on Medium, medium-length rants on Facebook, or short-form trollbait on Twitter. We also track what we read, what we listen to, what we watch, the games we’re playing, the exercise we engage in, the websites we’re bookmarking, and on and on. Basically, if there’s some human activity that we want to collectively experience, there’s probably a social platform somewhere.
I wanted to explore these same ideas, but in the context of my blog. First I started with replacing Goodreads. I’ve since followed that by blogging my cycling PESOS-style with Strava. In both cases I’ve used a combination of purpose built, locally hosted tools for collecting metadata, and then integrating those tools with my blog to enabling publishing the data to the world.
I won’t claim this is a friction-free approach. But it’s working pretty well for me, so I figured it was worth sharing!
Continue reading...