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For a kid’s book, it’s really grim. Grimm Brothers grim. I’d forgotten that completely.

I’m trying to get rock faces down. My general idea is the same as always: Don’t draw shapes; just draw details. But big rocks with sheer faces have nothing but outlines and shapes in monochrome. Instead of drawing texture like trees, I could try shading. I’ll give that a shot next.

The problem fantasy movies have with anti-war messages is everyone runs around deep-voiced talking to each other about how war is bad…until the orcs show up. Then it’s ‘kill them all, show no mercy, death and fire!’

So war is bad. Unless the other side is a race of bad guys.

So, like, if you hate elves, aren’t they a race of bad guys? Aren’t Tolkien’s orcs elves*?

*Yes and no. Yes, if you take the Unfinished Tales and a few other sourcebooks as canon (which most people do). Yes, if you take the movies as canon and assume Saruman wasn’t lying when he told the Uruk Hai the story of orcish origins. No (or maybe really), if you stick strictly to the printed book LotR and Hobbit.

BTW, since the elvish afterlife is a thing in Tolkien, killing them all and letting the Valar sort them out is actually a perfectly valid, in-world strategy.

My point here is that anti-war messages in fantasy stories sometimes don’t make any sense.

You know how sometimes the world decides to remind you of humility?

The most pleasant way it does is by making me work with people much smarter than me.

Thank you everyone who ordered a copy. (A download?) I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Those matter a lot, because more downloads raise the book in Amazon’s algorithm. That controls exposure, linkage, etc. Since I’m working on another, having Mara do well would be a big help. If you have purchased it or read it on Kindle Unlimited, please leave a review. Even just stars would be fantastic.

I appreciate you reading and hope you enjoy it.

Today’s the last day to get Mara free on Kindle. The physical book is available too.

The world is hard. Be kind to each other.

I’d be interested in seeing retention numbers for people with offices, cubicles, and hot-swap desks.

A wavelet is a chunk of a wave. In theory, waves go on forever, but they don’t. Contraction from waves to wavelets is analogous to applying friction to Newtonian forces. The mechanisms seem quite different.

In what situation would eigenVolts be a valid unit?

Maybe Eigen Volts, eigen volts, Eigenvolts, or what have you. Unit-term capitalization plays fast and loose with rules. But whatever.

If you have a matrix of potentials, you might be able to address the matrix eigenvalues as eigenvolts, but you wouldn’t do that addressing the value itself. An eigenvalue of 2.3V would just be 2.3V. To meaningfully use a term eigenvolts, you’d have to….what? Be describing potential degeneracy?

There should be a situation wherein eigenvolts would be useful, but I can’t think of one.

When you meet kids you don’t know, the best form of contact seems to be the high five.

Some kids, especially the small ones, try to hug everyone, and that’s nice. But some get very shy. You can see their minds working. “Who is this stranger? Why is he grabbing me? Why are my parents allowing this?” They don’t like it.

A similar train of logic applies to handshakes.

High fives seem to be the better course because the kid does all the fiving. You just stand there with your hand up. Kid gets excited? Great. Kid barely touches your hand? Still great. Kid hides behind a parent’s leg? Not a problem.

In general, I’ve found most do get a little excited because they’re the ones with power. They have agency, mild as it is, but mild agency is just right for smaller kids. They don’t go mad with power at high fiving an adult.

Well, some do, but those are mad with power to begin with. Also, how mad with power can a six-year-old get giving a high five?

Don’t answer that.