In late 2004 there was an earthquake in Niigata (a place in Japan) and for three months the only public transport from here to Osaka and Kyoto was by airplane. The train and bullet train lines were turned into twisted scrap metal. A bullet train de-railed. I remember the quake. I was at a work party. Everyone just said "Huh, an earthquake," and then continued eating. But then, I did too because I am from near Wellington in New Zealand, and we have a lot of quakes there too.

Does anyone else get a tired mind trying to hold onto the imagery of the main characters as cats? I mean, I always know I am reading about cats, but I am afraid that if I don't concentrate on the catness of the characters, they will become humans in my minds eye. Every now and then I get jolted by phrazes such as 'flirted her tail' and think "cat, cat, cat, remember the catness." Maybe I am just going mad.

There's enough body language like "put her whiskers forward" and so on that I'm constantly reminded that they are cats.

I suppose you could always find photos of cats that look like them (start with DD's flickr?) and print them out, captioned Rhiow, Saash, Urruah and Arhu. Or whoever you'd want on such a list.

That might be a good idea. I think my problem is that I have never owned a cat. My Dad is allergic to them, you see. Even though I no longer live at home, I can't get one now because I will have to go back to NZ in a little over a year.

Belated nitpick from chapter one:

quote:

dear staid Urruah, had finally lost his temper two weeks ago and sat down and actually started washing his sth’uw at Ffrihh during one of these perorations.

I just checked the current revised version and it still says Ffrihh. Shouldn't that be Jath? (I was thinking Ffrihh was one of the London team, but I just checked, and that's Fhrio.)

I like this by Aufwi (chapter 3 now):

quote:

he pulled the gate up from the branch and dove through it, taking it with him as he vanished.

This is a style thing, right? I mean, if it's dangerous to take a patent gate through a gate (Urruah's comment in WH), how much more dangerous is it to take a patent gate through itself?

I was surprised at the gate thing too. I would have thought the end result would have been like when you pull a Cat's Cradle through the wrong way and get a big tangle that you then have trouble extracting your fingers from. But a hundred-million times worse, and using strings of powerful power rather than strings of, er, string.

What format is the date string in? At first I thought of the Unix secs format, but that begins counting from 01/01/70 (which is why OS X and other Unix related systems can sometimes screw up and think it's 1969), so it is not that. I'm curious.

The 'another day in paradise' quote I do know, however; it's from a Phil Collins song advocating more help for the homeless.

She calls out to the man on the street,
"Sir, can you help me? It's cold and I've nowhere to sleep;
There's somewhere you can tell me?"

...

Oh, think twice!
It's another day for you and me in Paradise ...

Great song, especially on Serious Hits Live!, and it's from the But Seriously album.

I always like seeing songs I know referenced in books.

The dates in the YW books are almost all in the Julian date format. The date in chapter 2 seems to be the same format - at least, it works out to 1946, which the webpage says is the year the story is set in.

See this page for an explanation:

quote:

Julian dates (abbreviated JD) are simply a continuous count of days and fractions since noon Universal Time on January 1, 4713 BCE (on the Julian calendar). Almost 2.5 million days have transpired since this date. Julian dates are widely used as time variables within astronomical software. Typically, a 64-bit floating point (double precision) variable can represent an epoch expressed as a Julian date to about 1 millisecond precision. Note that the time scale that is the basis for Julian dates is Universal Time, and that 0h UT corresponds to a Julian date fraction of 0.5.

You came to the same conclusion a friend did when I posted the question on my Livejournal (I know lots of fellow geeks). Here is his response:

Julian Date 2432022.87398 (the converter I found online truncates at that point) is 21 July 1946, at approximately 8:58:32 Greenwich Time. It's a Sunday.

Julian Date is (or at least was) popular with astronomers as it avoided all the confusion of Gregorian and Julian calendars; having a straight serial number makes computing times of periodic or periodic-with-correction-term events easier. It's also probably the easiest way to convert from one calendar system to another (go through the Julian Date), and vastly simplifies figuring out how many days there are between two events. That it keeps the same number through a night's observations (if you're in Europe) was another bonus to the astronomers, who counted the day as starting at noon up till 1926.

He didn't have any other information about my question other than it was some sort of date reference that was supposed to track back to 1946.

I now know a few more factoids!

quote:

I am afraid that if I don't concentrate on the catness of the characters, they will become humans in my minds eye. Every now and then I get jolted by phrazes such as 'flirted her tail' and think "cat, cat, cat, remember the catness." Maybe I am just going mad.

Nope, you just do not identify with the cat traits and cat personality enough, and therefore need to remind yourself. Well, it is a possible explanation...
For me it is not an issue - those lines ("flirted her tail") fit. I guess I see the cat personalities as both personalities and clearly cat; I think it depends on our personalities how we perceive that...

quote:

I suppose you could always find photos of cats that look like them (start with DD's flickr?) and print them out, captioned Rhiow, Saash, Urruah and Arhu. Or whoever you'd want on such a list.

What is DD's Flickr id? How do I find it?

quote:

Originally posted by nelka35:
What is DD's Flickr id? How do I find it?

Well, you either search her blog for a reference, or you just click here.

quote:

just click here.

Thanks! I didn't remember seeing it in the blog, so I didn't think to search for it there. And I didn't find it when I did a search on Flicker for DD's name(well, the lateness of the time I was doing it at may have had something to do with it...).
Thanks, Garrett!

Aha, I knew there was a reference to pictures of the cats: it's here.

But I can't find those cats in DD's flickr. Oh well. I found some that (nearly) fit the descriptions on a stock photo site, so I'm going to make those into a page that has the characters on. I haven't found pictures for the London cats or LA ones yet, nor for Jath.

quote:

Originally posted by nelka35:

Nope, you just do not identify with the cat traits and cat personality enough, and therefore need to remind yourself.

Actually I'm quite catlike. A nocturnal loner who likes to do a lot of nothing, anyway.

The explanation is that I am strange and going into early senility, that's all.

Took me forever, but I finally got around to reading Chapter 3. Given my teflon brain, I had, of course, completely forgotten that DD had mentioned Helen Walks Softly before. Very nice to finally meet her. And particularly fun that DD's working in actual Chumash ("Haku!").

I wonder if DD's missing L.A., given that Big Meow and Stealing the Elf-King's Roses are both set there.

I know DD's going through a really tough time right now, so I don't want bother her with a silly question about Chapter 4, so I'm hoping someone here knows the answer.

Is it up? The email I got said to use the Chapter 3 login info and Ch.4 would be listed there. I've done that and I can't see it.

I just want to make sure I'm not doing something wrong. If it's not up, then that's fair enough and entirely understandable. DD's got more than enough on her plate right now.

I just see chapter 3, too. I think DD must have been too busy to change the page to have links to chapter 4 on Friday.

Ahhh, OK. At least I know I'm not doing something technically challenged.

Cheers Peter!

Yay! Chapter 4!
And, with chapters so far being 20, 24, 23 and 36 pages, it's 50% longer than the longest chapter so far.
Not sure about Rhiow's assumption about Helen, though.
Now I need to find a picture of a Duesenberg car, to remind myself what they look like.

What era do you want? (I still have not gotten an email -- I did a full-novel subscription --about the new posting unless it hit my spam box, but I haven't found it yet if I have, and the website said it should have been up two weeks ago -- help? I tried contacting the address on the site, but no one replied).



This is a 1929 Duesenberg Phaeton. Very classy.