Review Day: Blood of the Mantis by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Blood of the Mantis is the third book in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt series. The book offers a brisk, tightly-focused cloak-and-dagger story and avoids the excessive sprawl which colored my enjoyment of the previous book.

The story begins after the siege of Collegium. Stenwold Maker must keep his military alliances intact in the face of differing opinions about who should benefit from the schematics for the Wasp-Kinden's deadly snapbow. Che travels to a Spider-ruled border town at risk of falling to the Wasps in hopes of warning the populace and gaining new allies. Acheos, Tynisa, and Tisamon hunt for the mysterious box stolen from Collegium, fervently desired by the Wasp emperor for some strange Mosquito ritual of power.

Instead of the large-scale battles of the previous books, Book 3 focuses more on political intrigue and subtlety. We learn more about the ancient pecking order of the different Kinden groups and explore the magic of the Inapt, those Kinden without a propensity for using technology. More time is spent exploring the mindsets of the main characters, especially Thalric, which helped to deepen my connection to the characters and see them as more than plot ciphers.

There's still a bit of worldbuilding sprawl, in the form of new characters, new Kinden abilities, and an interesting side plot involving the Bee-Kinden city of Szar that will undoubtedly come back later. However, I found Book 3's sprawl to be very manageable because the main characters are often in close proximity and there are only a few "main" plot threads to juggle.

Be aware that this book feels like a "middle book" with no strong conclusion. The plot in the final chapter goes off the rails like a sabotaged Wasp convoy, and feels more like a setup for the next book, Salute the Dark.

Final Grade: B

Quotable Professor Day

Wisdom from Dr. Peter Spencer's Pedagogy of Music Theory class, Fall 2001

• "We're not dealing with Philip Glass here; we're dealing with someone who can write music."


• "The University of Florida has about as much right to call themselves a School of Music as I do to call myself a professional golfer. Actually, I have more of a right to call myself a professional golfer."


• "Not even [John Cage] would argue that you need to know how to write a C major triad. He wrote so many of them!" - on the importance of teaching music fundamentals


• "Fundamentals textbooks are a lot like gerbils -- they proliferate and then they die." - on why he wrote a music fundamentals textbook


• "'This is why you got it wrong, dummy.' Isn't it funny that we can't use the word 'dummy' in the classroom anymore? We can buy books with 'dummy' written all over...we have no problem labelling ourselves as dummies." - on how to explain a student mistake


• "This may be the best first quiz, collectively, I've ever seen. You don't look that bright, but you obviously are."


• "Stephen Foster really irritates me [...] He writes these smarmy, nasty, little tunes [...] But it is a good example of a two-phrase period, blast him!" - on the audacity of Stephen Foster and the use of Camptown Races as a politically incorrect example of periods


• "A mnemonic I use is the phone number, 473-6251. I tell people that's actually a bordello in Miami. Students seem to get a kick out of it." - on remembering the circle of progression for harmonic motion


• Dr. Spencer: "When you go to the store to buy marmalade and there's a whole row of jellies and marmalades, what do you do?"
  Student: "Taste them?"
  Dr. Spencer: "Taste them!? No wonder we've got an anthrax problem."


• "The 'whatever' will hit the fan, and we need to make sure the fan is running very slowly when that happens." - on the pitfalls of overexplaining figured bass symbols in basic theory classes


• "When you're teaching, try to get yourself into the minds of students, to the extent that some of them have minds."


• "'Cadential' isn't the most common word in student conversation. The most common word is 'like'. Isn't it fun sitting at the table with a younger brother or sister and having no idea what they're saying? It took me a while to figure out the word 'bad'." - on defining theory terms for students


• "Let's go on to the Mozart... the hell with Beethoven; he never knew how to part write anyhow." - on clear examples of diatonic seventh chords


• "When one's thirty-five, one knows everything... and then you gradually know less and less. [...] Then you hit eighty and you're suddenly omnipotent."


• "I agree, I don't like the operatic kind where the pitch on each note is everywhere and you could drive a truck through it." - on gratuitous vibrato


• "I think you've got to be a kid, or something better than an undergrad." - on people capable of reading the Harry Potter series


• Dr. Spencer: "Is there a place that students hang out these days?"
  Student: "...the Chiefs hang out in the lounge, the 'players' hang out down by the lockers, the string players hang out on the fourth floor..."
  Dr. Spencer: "I see. So where do the weirdos hang out?"
  Mark Connor, composer: "We hang out in the breezeway!"

Weekend Wrap-up

On Friday night, I surprised Rebecca with a date night to Coopers Hawk in Reston. Dinner was braised short ribs and blackened ahi tuna along with a red wine sampler. We also walked over to Reston Town Center for gelato and to see all of the restaurants that have risen and fallen since we stopped going there on a regular basis.

On Saturday, we went to Alamo Drafthouse for a family-friendly "Cat Video Fest". Maia loved it although it was really just a compilation of TikTok and YouTube clips with minimal, poor editing and transitions. Afterwards, Maia went off for a playdate with her friend, Rahel, then we all met up again later in the evening for Sweetfrog.

On Sunday, the rest of the family went off to church in the morning while I had my own regular quiet time. In the afternoon, Sofia, Kenny, Miles, and Anselm came over for a grill night (simply burgers and hot dogs).

Monday, Labor Day, was a trip to the grandparents with the kids while Rebecca went to a fancy yoga class with one of her old favourite yoga teachers.

How was your weekend?

End-of-the-Month Highlights Day

New photos have been added to the Life, 2024 album.

• Events
  • Solo dad dinner at Local Provisions on H 8/1.
  
  
  • The kids visited the grandparents, F 8/2 - S 8/4.
  
  
  • Rebecca and I went into DC by Metro for the AJR concert on F 8/2. Dinner at Irish Channel and lodging at the Fairfield Inn.
  
  
  • Rebecca and I went to Ghazaley's 40th Birthday Party on S 8/3.
  
  
  • Dinner with the grandparents and kids on S 8/4 (ham).
  
  
  • Family dinner at Fire Works Pizza followed by a splash pad visit on T 8/6.
  
  
  • Family trip to Claude Moore pool and climbing wall on F 8/9. Maia lost another tooth.
  
  
  • Visit from Catherine and Autumn on S 8/10 - 8/11.
  
  
  • Went to a new dentist on M 8/12. Family trip to Frying Pan Park with dinner at Taco Bamba.
  
  
  • Solo dad dinner at Local Provisions on W 8/14.
  
  
  • Solo dad dinner at Miller's on H 8/15.
  
  
  • Visited the Ahlbins in Rhoadesville, F 8/16 - S 8/17.
  
  
  • Visited the grandparents in Alexandria on M 8/19.
  
  
  • Went to the HOA meeting on W 8/21. Rebecca smashed her toe.
  
  
  • Maia started 2nd grade on H 8/22 in Ms. Schaljo's class.
  
  
  • Took the kids to Runnymede Park on F 8/23, followed by a family dinner at Cantina d'Italia.
  
  
  • Maia tried out a Girl Scout troop on S 8/25.
  
  
  • Solo dad dinner at Local Provisions on M 8/26.
  
  
  • Date night at Coopers Hawk and the Reston Town Center on F 8/30.
  
  
  • Went to CatVideoFest at the Alamo Drafthouse on S 8/31. Maia went to Rahel's for a play date afterwards.


• Projects
  • Thawed out another AC coil freeze on S 8/11.
  
  
  • Completed the 17 year journey of finishing the Paravia Wiki on S 8/18.
  
  
  • Backed up all of my Finale music files on S 8/31.


• Consumerism
  • Bought a new dryer to replace the 20-year-old Whirlpool Duet.
  
  
  • No amazing new music, books, shows, or movies this month.
  
  
  • Tried playing Elden Ring and bounced off. Dabbling in Starfield in my sparse downtime.

August's Final Grade: B, first half of the month was too busy with homeownership, balanced out by a chill last half

Finale Day

The music composition world (which I am barely even an honorary member of anymore) is up in arms about sudden end of Finale, the music software which I used to craft all of my MIDI recordings and scores during my music career. The president of the software company posted this letter on Monday:

I appreciate the challenge of monetizing and improving 40 years worth of code and the honest introspection it took to pull the plug. I also get how disruptive this change is to people actively using Finale in their daily careers. Hopefully, the company will add more off-ramps based on the uproar (more ways to convert file formats, longer time before shutting off the authorization server, and maybe executables that no longer have a "phone home" requirement).

Update: In the span of just 3 days, the company has already agreed to host the authorization server for the forseeable future instead of just 1 year, and plans to bundle the latest version of Finale (v27) with cross-upgrade to another company's software, Dorico.

I started using Finale in tenth grade (May 1994), when my dad purchased it and a dedicated MIDI Interface card that used up one of the valuable expansion slots in our Pentium family computer. I spent that summer inputting existing scores (such as Shostakovich's Festive Overture) so I could hear them played back as tinny MIDI, and then used Finale in my junior year to arrange really bad pep band charts. By my senior year, I was composing original music and ended up using Finale on a daily basis through grad school and even a little more afterwards.

Finale was never a great piece of software, but it could definitely do everything you needed and a bunch of stuff you didn't. The music notation software hewed too close to how computer people think about music and not how composers did. I recall sending tons of feedback over the years (always acknowledged but never implemented) on ways to make things more intuitive. For example, adding an accelerando to a score required the composer to type in a bunch of numbers representing the tempos and then defining the rate of change across the period of time using a shape designer. Having a preset like "go steadily from 80 beats per minute to 120 beats per minute over 4 beats" would have made so much more sense to anyone not thinking like a computer.

I'm currently trying to get my last purchased version of Finale (v25.5) working in Windows 11, after which I'll convert all my files to an interim format, MusicXML, that should be transferable to another software choice. I probably won't learn a new scoring tool any time soon, given my recently posted idea to go in a different direction:

I have also felt the itch to get back into music composition, but from the perspective of the final product being a recording of exactly what I want to express (read: Cubase) rather than a printed score that real musicians will never be able to recreate as well as I can in my brain (read: Finale). This would require a whole 'nother skillset that I've never explored before.