Well, Otakon 2003 is over.  Lots of good stuff there; I suspect most people had a good time.  I managed to see “Otaku no Video” (finally), Mystery Anime Theater 3000, the AMV contest (easily my favorite part of the con), and the T.M. Revolution concert.

Oh, and the dealer’s room.  I picked up Princess Prince, a plush Nyarlathotep, a plush Kuro Neko-sama (that one was a gift), a small pin with Utena on it, and another pin with Ryo-Ohki.

Had fun at the raves, spinning glowsticks.  There were a couple other people there who were quite good.  I talked with them a bit over the course of the evenings, not that I remember their names now, of course.  One showed me an interesting variant on the weave that he called a hyper loop.  Has to be done with shorter strings/chains, as it has a component that’s between the arms, in front of the body.  Is also quite tricky.  Will have to play with it and see if I can duplicate the thing.  I think it might work with fire, too, though certainly with much practice beforehand.

I again enjoyed working the con.  Security (correction: “Special Operations”) was again much work, though the work was generally rewarding.  Got to talk to lots of people, and no severe problems occurred that I had to deal with.

And now it’s back to the real world.  Work today, followed by a trip home (where I haven’t been since before work last Thursday).  With luck, I’ll have time to start grabbing copies of the AMVs I liked before I fall asleep.

What time is it? Well, no one knows for sure

Interesting discussion of different timescales (as produced by differing treatments of leap seconds) and possible consequences for the differences.

Finished it yesterday.  Not too bad.

It’s past five in the morning. I’ve been up reading for almost the last four hours because I wanted to finish War of Honor. It’s good. The pace is much slower than I remember previous Honor Harrington books being, but things do move along.

Reading all of the Honor anthologies before this book is highly recommended.

Spoilers

As usual, the end of the book is very open for more.  Also as usual, I’m left with the feeling of, “Okay, what now?” Giancola needs to be removed from office.  Unfortunately, that’s probably not going to happen until late into the next book, at best.  And what of Honor, Hamish, and Emily?  Emily seems more accepting of a three-way relationship now (or, at least, of Hamish having relationships with two women).  Can Honor do the same?  Can Hamish balance two relationships?  (If he can’t, I fear Emily will be the poorer, given the newly forged empathic bond between Honor and Hamish.)

Hm. Other thoughts. I knew from the dust jacket that there’d again be escalations of hostility. (I hate those things; they can spoil a lot. Don’t even get me started on the ones for Archangel.) I was, however, left guessing for much of the book about whether it would be with the Republic of Haven or the Andermani Empire.

It was very hard to read about the political manuverings of the High Ridge government. Sadly, I’m too willing to believe that their actions were plausible. It just turns my stomach to see people behaving in that manner. (Have I mentioned that I get very involved in the books I read?)  Giancola, too. Watching his political machinations, just for personal political gain, drive two governments to war with each other was rough.

A lot of people died. This has happened in other Honor Harrington books, too, but I noticed it more this time around. That gets depressing.

On the whole, the book was enjoyable. Good writing of the sort that Weber does well—consistent science, detailed military encounters, well-written politics, and a larger-than-life Honor.

So I decided to go and weed my webspace, including cleaning up my pages a bit.  While I was at it, I set up a simple blog, which is what you’re seeing now.  I figure I’ll at least play with it and see how useful it is.  Mostly, I expect it’ll be used for comments on books I’m reading and the inevitable propagation of URLs to stuff I think is interesting.  I also don’t expect to update it all that often, so my website should, on the whole, remain just as boring as ever.