Fashion: Holster Bags

A guy I read, The Flee King, posted a link to Skin Graft Holster Bags as something he is interested in for steampunk costuming. I've worn a holster bag somewhat like those and I find it useful, but difficult to find an outfit to wear with it. Not unlike a woman trying to match a handbag to an outfit, but moreso. On the positive side I think either my single side bag or these items are nearly impossible for someone to surreptitiously fish something out of. But this is because the wearer's arms are mostly down over them and this also makes detailing less effective. If I were to buy one for myself I think I would go for a relatively plain one because of this. And there is the cost... women may be used to $120 a bag to carry things when wearing an outfit without suitable pockets, gut I'm not (the one I have was much less expensive). Lastly I would like to wear this item when it is too hot for a coat and the straps can be uncomfortable in such weather.

My verdict is interesting, but not something I am likely to purchase unless I came into a much, much better job. I also think that such purses suitable for men or women could be better designed. My personal inclination is that the bag might be improved if it was hung about six inches below the belt and secured loosely to the upper leg. This would provide easier access and wouldn't be trapping heat against the torso. Even better from a fashion point of view is that whatever detailing would be visible rather than hidden by the wearer's arms.

My advice to people is that this is an interesting fashion experiment, but only for those who don't mind getting a hairy eyeball or two from people nervous about weapons or punks generally.

Almost a Review: Antique Bakery

This is a manga, but I'm still counting it as a book for the purposes of a count of everything I'm reading in AUC 2762 (CE 2008). Written and illustrated by Fumi Yoshinaga it a light creation about three men working in a bakery. Which, of course, isn't usual since gender roles are very defined and the serving person at a bakery is almost always a female. And they all have an interesting background or past. The chef, who is a gay rake, his apprentice who is a former boxer, and the owner/server, who is a young rich man out to make money. And avoid a job where he has to be clean shaved.

Don't worry about it being too torrid, if Chef Ono were having straight sex the scenes might be rated PG-13, no bits or even clothes off. Out of 191 pages there were two with sex or male-male kissing happening on them. So this wouldn't really be called Yaoi, it is more a compilation of stories about particular social situations found in Japan that happen to intersect in a pastry shop.

I found it interesting to figure out how these three very different men came to be working together and the little side stories that come in for cake and tea. I recommend it to people who like light romance and/or slice of life stories and can stand the right to left page layout of Japanese manga.

Book 5

Difficulty of the Hugos

Since I have a membership in Worldcon I can nominate works for the Hugos. Unfortunately I have read very little that was published in the past year. I am remedying the gap by quickly hitting the library with lists of recommendations. Like reading the Ted Chiang novelette (by the Hugo definition) The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate in the September 2007 edition of Fantasy and Science Fiction, but made available online. It was recommended by Abigail Nussbaum in her journal. I'm going to publish a list of what I'll be nominating later today and as you will all see it is a pathetic anemic thing. So I need anyone within range of this broadcast to point people at me to recommend things.

To answer a question that might otherwise be asked why don't I just use Hugo Recommend over on Livejournal or SF Awards Watch to make my list of things to look at and read? Well because I want more personal recommendations from people who are more closely associated with me by degrees of separation. And won't recommend William Gibson. More seriously I am using them, but I'm wondering if there is something more "Mishalak" that they might have missed.

Almost a Review: Blood Child & Kindred

I read a lot of speculative fiction long after it is fresh. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly does not help me when I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to nominate for the Hugos. Case and point, the titular short story of Octavia E. Butler's collection Blood Child and Other Stories. It is a weirdly gay science fiction story. I don't think I'd ruin it for anyone by saying so as I think it fairly well known given that it won the 1984 Nebula for best Novelette.

On the one hand Octavia says nothing new with these stories. They're all very ordinary science fiction themes. The disease that makes the ordinary amazing. The sort of things that we'll risk for emotional reasons around making our families safe... and to be loved. Genetics and destiny. Yet, there is an extraordinary quality to her writing. I think it would shine through even if I did not know who she was already, very important late 20th century SF writer.

On the other hand her novel Kindred both impressed me with its unromantic view of people, but it was a sort of deadpan magical realism. The fantasy elements are perfectly ordinary and never explained, but not mysterious as it would be in the classic Latin variety of magical realism. I still do not know what to think of them having finished them the day before yesterday and one week ago, respectively. My ability to review falls short of the stories I have read.

But who would I recommend them to? More than anything I think Kindred will appeal to fans of historical novels. A Uncle Tom's Cabin without the stiff language or black and white view of the world. Blood Child and Other Stories might appeal to fans of Bujold's Ethan of Athos or Tiptree's Houston, Houston, Do You Read?. But it is a short collection and I think everyone ought to give it each of the stories a few pages to grab them.

Books 3 & 4

Auld Acquaintances

Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? I raise my cup and think of them and times long gone by.

Make a post to your Live Journal, blog, MySpace, Facebook, or whatever, with a list of the names of old friends that you haven't seen in a long time, and would love to get in touch with again. Maybe one of them will Google their name and your post will turn up. Maybe someone on your friends list knows them and can pass the word along.

Jenny Stencil, Paul Domes, and Ro Holden.

And in the spirt of this thing I'm going to try to renew some sort of social contact with Gomez Lemuex, Robin LaChance, Christopher Winterburn, and Garfied Lindo.

Geek Out!

In the process of getting everything I read on LJ into google reader I managed to come across something that I missed from CorwinOfAmber's journal from two years ago. A flash animation of a song called Geeks in Love. This may be one of the cutest things I've ever seen on the net. Geeking out now! The only way it could have been better (in my opinion) is with gay geeks.

Glowing Eyes

Thinking about the traditional fantasy or science fiction species/monster with glowing eye my first speculation is that it would be useless. Glowing eyes are not seen anywhere in nature as far as I know and that is often a very good indication of what is useful (though not only). Though many nocturnal animals (and ones in other low light environments) have eyes with a tapetum lucidum, a bright reflective layer behind the retina that improves low light vision by reflecting it back through the retina. This layer reflecting some light back out of the eye is responsible for the impression of glowing eyes. I can also add a bit of personal experience to my book learning. I once had my contacts glow in while I was in a room lit with an UV 'blacklight'. It made my vision fuzzy and reduced my ability to see less illuminated objects, but I could see my contacts glow when I looked in a mirror, with some difficulty.

I suspect if I was constantly had my lens/eyes glowing I would not notice it as a glow after a time. Instead my brain would compensate and I would not notice the glow or objects of the same color hidden in the glow. So my first thought is that any species emitting light from its eyes would be color blind in a section of spectrum near that part and I could not see any advantage to it.

However this is assuming that the glow from the eyes is in the visual spectrum of the species emitting the light. If instead a species gave off ultraviolet light from its eyes and saw in the normal visual spectrum it would cause otherwise invisible things to become visible to it. So my second though about the subject is that maybe some real world species gives off ultraviolet light and uses that along with eyes sensitive in the blue/green region to see otherwise invisible things as a forensic investigator with an ultraviolet light might.

But ultraviolet is very energetic (relatively). So it might not be possible for anything to bioluminesce in the ultraviolet spectrum. I've not heard of anything that does, though it is possible that it may not be as well investigated by researchers. So what then if a theoretical species had eyes that glowed blue and used the re-emitting of light in longer wavelengths such as green, yellow, or red?

But why even have an eye glow? This is the basic problem that objectively a designer would not want to have a detection device like and eye also emitting what it is intended to detect. It would be much better if using blue or ultraviolet light to find otherwise hidden prey to have the light emitting organ separate. At most you would want it around the aperture of the eye like a ring flash on a camera. That at least could give the classic horror/fantasy look of the glowing eye with a black dot of the pupil in it. If the light emission was under the voluntary control of the animal then it would also be useful for signaling.

So my bottom line is that I think it unlikely to have a creature (or robot for that matter) having glowing eyes. But if a sorcerer or engineer had his heart set on it it could be practically designed. With some drawbacks.