So, in the series of “cookbooks I use all the time”, this:

David Joachim’s The Food Substitution Bible

As the name indicates, it’s a list of ingredients vs. possible substitutions if say, you absolutely need rice wine but don’t have an Asian shop ready. It also lists cooking method substitutions: what to do if you don’t have a claypot or a barbecue grill. It’s not exhaustive (for instance, I couldn’t find an entry for potato starch), but it’s making a freakingly good attempt at being so: the list of ingredients includes various obscure French cheeses, panko, and a lot of the Asian ingredients I often find that I have to replace at the last minute (dropping an ingredient from a Vietnamese recipe is usually a bad idea, since they rely so much on the layering of flavours to achieve their effect–remove one, and the dish kind of lacks oomph). The substitutions are pretty smart, too (even though some of them seem a bit off to me at times). But mostly, they’re smart.

The thing I use it for most, though? It’s not the substitution list: it’s the little header besides each ingredient, which lists corresponding volume and weight equivalence (ie, 1 shallot=1 tablespoon chopped shallot=15 to 30g). Pretty much a lifesaver for all those recipes which call for ingredients by weight, whereas you tend to buy vegetables by units (well, I do, at any rate).

There’s also tables listing common ingredients such as apples, potatoes, vinegars and explaining their properties. It’s less useful for me, because they’re US varieties, and for instance, the apples list has about 20-30% varieties in common with the apples I can find here. If you live in the US, I’d imagine that section would be way, way more practical.
(and I do wish there was a section on the different starches and thickeners and their uses, but fortunately Cook’s Thesaurus has a great one).

So, over Tuesday evening, the H and I finished up Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood. Having watched both animes, and read the manga, I thought it would be fun to post some thoughts on the various versions. Insofar as I can remember, the FMA:B anime follows the manga pretty closely (if there are divergences I haven’t spotted, feel free to yell at me in the comments).
(spoilers below the cut. You have been warned)
Continue reading →

-Ove Jansson aka Cybermage:

Aliette de Bodard has done it again. Harbinger of the Storm is an action packed Aztec mystery opera with magic, interventions from the gods and more twists and turns than the first book. (…) The story is self contained and can be enjoyed standalone, but you will not want to miss out on the first. I wish it was 2012 already even if the world is going under while I read the final Obsidian and Blood.

–Violin in a Void:

[Acatl] leads us into an increasingly dark and bloody tangle of mythology and political intrigue that is not merely a worthy successor to Servant of the Underworld, but a tighter, pacier and altogether more exciting read. (…)It’s a complex but intriguing story, and I for one am thoroughly satisfied with this sequel. According to De Bodard’s blog the final book in the Obsidian and Blood trilogy will be titled The Master of the House of Darts, and its due for release in November 2011. If De Bodard continues to build on what she’s done so far, it’s going to be epic.

–Publishers Weekly (starred review):

Political intrigue and rivalry among a complex pantheon of divinities drive this well-paced murder mystery set at the height of the Aztec Empire in the late 15th century.(…) De Bodard incorporates historical fact with great ease and manages the rare feat of explaining complex culture and political system without lecturing or boring the reader.

Er, wow? PW starred review is certainly most intimidating, and I’m very glad a lot of people seem to think HoS is a better book than its predecessor. I’d be going for a liedown if I wasn’t %%% busy…

Been a while since I’ve done that, but since Christmas I’ve read Let The Right One In (the book of the movie), which was awesome, a very neat take on a vampire in modern days.

Currently deep in K.J. Parker’s Scavenger trilogy (just started book 2), which is… intriguing, to say the least. The main character is Poldarn, an amnesiac who wakes up on a battlefield, and who may or may not be a god, may or may not be the most evil man on the continent–and may or may not bring the Apocalypse with him. The books so far feel like an extended puzzle box: there are bits and pieces with vivid images, and as the story progresses they get slotted into places. We learn more about Poldarn and his past, about the history of the world (which is some kind of pseudo-Roman Empire)–and through it all, there’s this definite sense of something very bad about to happen. Quite curious to see how it all ends.

So, now that we’ve finally finished watching it…

(warning: spoilers below for all seasons)
Continue reading →

Some Servant of the Underworld mentions (sorry for the long list, I kind of haven’t updated in a long while on this):
–Windrose Meanderings (loved it)
–You Fight Like Anne Rice (didn’t care so much for the style or the main character)
–Solar Bridge (thought the milieu tended to overwhelm the novel)
–Jonathan McCalmont at the Zone (to say that he didn’t like it is an understatement. It’s the review with claws I was referring to earlier. I’ve skimmed through it but not really read it–I can deal with this kind of deconstruction, but only after book 3 is completed).
–Violin in the Void (thought the setting was great, but was worried some people might think the pace was laggy, and that Neutemoc was a pain)
–Miranda Suri (in a more general post about other mindsets, why we should write them and what are the pitfalls. In which I get mentioned next to Lord of Light, one of my all-time fave SF books. Wow).
–starlady38 (really liked it, thought Mihmatini was awesome)
–trollsmyth (thinks it would make an awesome tabletop RPG. I’d tend to agree–it would be extra fun to dump PC into Tenochtitlan. I’d GM that kind of thing myself, if GMing didn’t interfere with my creative processes).

–Bourgeois Nerd reviews Servant of the Underworld:

(…)we rarely get fantasy based in a non-Western setting and grounded in a different culture, and hardly ever does anything set in Mesoamerica get written. Servant of the Underworld changes that, introducing us to a world of jade and obsidian, where gods walk the world, mortals walk the divine realms, and blood powers the universe.
(…)
The next book in the series, Harbinger of the Storm, comes out in January, and I for one can’t wait to return to the shadows of Tenochtitlan.

-Made a trailer for Harbinger of the Storm, which is still in the editing stage. Hopefully it can be shared soon. What amazed me was how much faster it went, compared to the previous Servant of the Underworld trailer. I could feel I’d learnt a lot in the time in between, even though I didn’t touch anything remotely trailer-related in a year (aside from watching friends’ trailers, which I guess gave me a lot of cool ideas I could borrow). I’ll do a specific post a bit later about how I went about it and what I learnt.

-Finally, watch this space on Monday for author’s notes about “The Shipmaker” (now in out in issue 231 of Interzone)

Also, this:

Yup, made phở from scratch this week. Yum yum. Recipe forthcoming when I have a moment.
(ignore the poor lighting. The house’s electricity installation doesn’t quite satisfy late at night)

Books read recently:
–Unseen Academicals: the latest Terry Pratchett about the wizards of UU playing football. A lot of the pleasures of the Pratchett books currently is the reccurrence of the main players such as Lady Margoletta, Sam Vimes, Rincewind and the witches, and this one is mostly the same. There’s a couple of hilarious set pieces (the chicken-powered computer is awesome), and the new characters are nice, though not all are memorable (I loved Glenda, wasn’t such a big fan of Juliet, who’s too good to be true, though I got it was the point).
–The Sea Thy Mistress: Elizabeth Bear was kind enough to provide me with an ARC of this one, and I leapt at the chance. The Edda of Burdens is one of my absolute favourite series out there: All the Windwracked Stars had this awesome meld of technology, magic and post-apocalypse, and By the Mountain Bound has all the gravitas and sense of impending doom of the Norse epics. The prose is always a pleasure to read, and there’s a couple of really strong characters (the wolf Mingan, and Muire, the least of the waelcyrge, who learns that she can grow and come into her own). Short, non-spoilery version: the book is made of awesome, and you should go read it and its predecessors. It’s available for pre-orders now; I think it’s not out until Jan 2011.
(more spoilery discussion under the cut)
Continue reading →

Just watched the first episode of Eleventh Hour with Rufus Sewell. Er, wow. Admittedly, biology isn’t one of my strong tracts, but the science in this, for once, held up pretty well. OK, it still wasn’t 100 % OK, but at least it didn’t have me screaming at the TV (as I did for pretty much every science fiction show I ever watched). Special points for NOT attempting defibrillation when the heart monitor flatlines, but instead doing what doctors actually do, ie CPR. Sure, there was nothing earth-shatteringly out of this world as regards the science (people trying to clone humans[1]), but it felt particularly realistic precisely for that reason.

Also, bonus points for actually having a scientist with a strong sense of ethics, which is a welcome change from all the people without scruples you see in TV shows–and for having him actually specialised in biology rather than being McGyver (I’m looking at you, Samantha Carter).

Later googled stuff, and found this article on IO9 about how the show gives science a bad name. Er, ok, I’m not sure why the strong reaction here. Without being over-alarmist, science does have good and bad sides, and I don’t see why the show shouldn’t be able to focus on the excesses of science applied blindly and without morals (there’s plenty of books and movies that present science like some kind of miracle, and this is no more realistic than the alarmist approach of Eleventh Hour ). And Jacob Hood not being in a lab? Given the guy’s sense of practical (trying to write down the plate number of a car by standing in front of it…), I’m thinking he has a PhD in theoretical science, and that if you give this guy a lab (ie one with dangerous products), he’d blow it up in no time.

Also, Rufus Sewell… totally yummy :=)

Please tell me it stays that good. Pretty please. I like the bit when I watch a science-y show and don’t scream at the TV. I really do.

[1] The episode has the surrogate mothers of the clones dying of complications. And, yeah, I know that based on what we’ve done on animals and for IVF, we can suspect that the biggest problem with human cloning is going to get viable embryos rather than worrying about mothers dying in childbirth. But since we haven’t actually tried the whole thing on humans, I’m ready to buy that the cloning process could be less straightforward than we think. In any systems, there’s always some weird interactions, and I’ve seen weirder things than an egg with a reconstituted nucleus messing up the delicate balance of a pregnancy.

Well, I’m pretty sure I had a weekend, except it seems to have disappeared…

Aside from wedding stuff, we went to see Wild Target, a dark comedy about an ageing hitman who finds himself dealing with a young, awkward apprentice, and a con artist/kleptomaniac, both of whom he has to protect from the goons sent after them. Hilarious, well worth several watches (interestingly, learnt afterwards it was a remake of a French farce, Cible Emouvante. Might track the original down…).

Did one blog post for a guest blog, and am still working on another one. Also decided I’d had enough of not doing any actual writing (I did revisions and synopses, but I miss my first drafts), and started thinking on a new story, aka “Chinese dynasty on space station”.