Under the Stars

Hail readers!

It has been a long time since I’ve written here on the Magical Realm, for which I can only express my regret. Alas, life has a tendency to catch up on you. Moreover, I’ve had a number of things to keep me occupied and otherwise indisposed.

The first of these was university, especially my second (and last, thankfully) Spanish class, which was a mess of grammar. Then the summer holidays came; school finished, but I spent a long time on the road to Romania, fell sick to an abscess in the gums, and spent much time occupied with these foibles. Then there were tuition fees to be paid, not to mention a microeconomics paper to complete.

After all that, I followed my grandparents to the countryside, where, for a time, I had no Internet. Blogging was therefore out of the question, but I still managed to work on both Fallen Love and its sequel.

Speaking of the books, I will get onto that in a moment. Firstly: I wish to discuss my latest poem, entitled Under the Stars (for which this post is eponymous).

A New Poem

Under the Stars is slightly meta-poetic, in that it refers to a poet, but its main message concerns immortality—the immortality of being remembered, of being important to the universe in a way above and beyond the normally insignificant lives led by humans. (Hence the metaphorical allusion to the stars.)

The poem is also a warning, of sorts: those who never seek to explore the world, to understand some of its mysteries, are no better than lesser animals—the poem compares them to chickens.

I should make a few things clear about this poem is not, however. The poem does not deal with any kind of physical immortality (debatable based on the definition of physical immortality and the laws of entropy). Nor does it comment on non-physical immortality (another can of worms entirely).

With that said, read on!

Under the stars Where the Heavens shine bright
In the dark shadow of the blue night
A poet dreams
The things unknown to man.

The moon dares not show herself
For her time is not yet;
The night belongs to the darkness
To the pale blue, the faint yellow
The unseen magenta hues.

It is said
That to admire those precious points of light
For too long
Leaves mortals mad.
The vast unknown is too great to ponder.

But the poet, nay;
He is no mere mortal, is he not?
For what is immortality
But remembered epics
That live forevermore in the minds of men?

On this dark night
In this bright sky
When others sleep soundly in their beds
(Fools, so little they know!)
The poet is allowed to wonder.

What lies in yonder universe?
A man feels small
Among such wise giants.
For the stars look on,
And know humanity too very well.

Does humanity deserve
Such greatness?
The poet thinks, and wonders;
It does not surprise him, in truth.
Man no more deserves it than the chickens.

Poets, philosophers, and kings;
Men of science and learning;
Curiosity lives in them
Bright as the stars
Darker than space.

Yet they are so few:
Diamonds among a mass
Of dull coal, like stars in the great expanse
Of emptiness.
For many are incurious, and stupid.

Mortality is a curse;
Death and suffering are its arbiters
As surely the knife is to the chickens.
Blood flows, men die, turn to dust.
Nought comes of it.

The poet is right, aye.
Those who gaze at the stars
May one day hope to join them;
Those who think of meat and the earth
Are doomed to join the objects of their desire.

Such is the way of the world
Is it not?
The moon waxes and wanes
Day gives way to night, and night to dawn.
Only the stars can taste eternity.

The Struggle for Fallen Love

I come, at last, to my long and difficult journey in getting the book published. Primarily, the problem has been a lack of time and energy on my part; the simple fact of the publishing industry at present (and for the last ten years or so) is that it requires immense perseverance. It is, in some ways, a numbers game: the probability of getting represented by one agent is very low, so it requires a lot of queries—this is an inevitable outcome dictated by statistics. I’m willing to bet that the number of queried agents required to obtain representation is approximately normally distributed around a mean, but left skewed (i.e. all authors need to query 10+ agents, but some end up querying 100).

Another problem is of course simple faith—in the book, in myself as a writer. The publishing process is by its nature demoralising. So what am I to do? Soldier on, carry my cross? It would seem so.

I shall leave you now, dear readers, for I am to return to Amsterdam and still have much to do. Rest assured, however, that I will return to blogging. I aim to write another article on photography and my experiences with my first DSLR. Until then...

The Journey Continues...

Hello readers!

I have not updated the Magical Realm for quite a long while, for which I am sorry. Winter has finally melted over into spring; the days have lengthened and the temperature has risen, albeit erratically, as is characteristic of Northern European climates. Though the seasons have changed, my progress on getting Fallen Love published remains somewhat glacial.

I queried 17 agents and received a handful of rejections, and another handful of no-replies. One agent asked to see part of the manuscript but ultimately did not go further. This is, in fact, entirely unsurprising: it is difficult to get traditionally published, and rejections are normal. However, all this has meant that I have spent the last 2 months twiddling my thumbs waiting.

Or, well, not quite: I have been working on the sequel. That will remain under wraps for now. (All I can say is, I have made surprising progress.) The focus nonetheless remains on getting a publishing contract for Fallen Love, and perhaps even a two-book deal.

To that end, I have submitted directly to two publishing houses that accept unsolicited submissions. In addition, I will resume querying for agents. Doing this simultaneously may seem strange, but considering the response time of the publishing houses (namely: months) and the fact that an agent can act on my behalf to negotiate a contract, it actually makes sense.

In other news, my life has progressed mostly uninterrupted: I have started a new semester, and have slowly adapted to my new course workload. My new 4K monitor has proven itself very helpful in writing—it renders text nicely, and lets me edit multiple documents at once (a much appreciated boon for this writer).

My usual interest in gaming has led me to try a new game, called Dota 2 (you may have heard of it). However, I soon gave up: the gameplay is far too complicated, and not particularly interesting either. SuperTuxKart and Battle for Wesnoth will continue enjoying my attention, as will the Epic Battle Fantasy series.

In any case, I must leave you, dear reader, before I ramble further. Keep an eye out on the Magical Realm for more writing-related news. Also, pay a visit to the Reviews page up top: there’s a particularly interesting novel I will be reviewing soon. Now, onto work...

New Look, New Book

Hello readers!

I am at last getting back to you after the long pause here on the Magical Realm. I have some news for you: the most obvious is, of course, the new theme. I have redesigned the Magical Realm so that it is a) more interesting to look at (the old theme was getting a bit long in the tooth) b) works better on high resolution displays—that took some testing and c) references Fallen Love, my new novel.

Subtlety is not really thing when it comes to web design, incidentally. The fallen angel background—and the colour scheme, with its blacks, dark reds and light blue accents—are all meant to quickly convey what my blog and book are about. In that respect, I think I’ve succeeded; however, feedback is appreciated, as the current design should still be considered beta.

Speaking of Fallen Love, I have received a handful of rejections from agents, but several more have yet to reply. In truth, finding representation is a slow and sometimes difficult process—I don’t expect to get an agent on board until February at the earliest. I, and you, dear reader, must remain patient.

Instead, this post will be about two other things: a brief discussion about my Spanish course this month, and a slightly longer (but still concise) explanation into my shiny new 4K monitor!

The Monitor: An Explanation of Sharpness

To translate from the marketing jargon, a 4K monitor is a monitor with a 3840x2160 resolution: that is to say, it has 3840 pixels on the horizontal side, and 2160 on the vertical, to form a matrix of 8.4 million pixels.

This is significantly more than a more standard 1080p display (1920x1080 yielding 2.1MP in total) and quite a bit more even than a 1440 display (2560x1440, 4M pixels in total). What does this mean in practice? Well, a few things. Pixel density is one: on a 27-inch diagonal monitor, a 4K resolution results in a ‘pixel pitch’—a measure of how fine the pixels are—of 163ppi. A 1080 monitor at the same size, by comparison, has only 81.5ppi.

The above diagram is a good representation of the phenomenon.

But what does it mean in practice? Images show much more detail, for example: I can now edit my photos and actually see all of my mistakes. If focus is not quite right, or the lens have poor sharpness, or if noise smoothing has smeared detail, or if compression has introduced artifacts; any imperfection is shown up in frightening clarity.

But the biggest difference is text. On a 1080p monitor of the same size, text would look... frankly terrible. (1080p monitors at this size should never have existed: they’re awful for any kind of desktop use.) On a higher resolution 1440p monitor, text would look bearable. On a 4K monitor, text looks... good. Almost as good as a high quality print—the key word being almost.

I will not go into all the details of font rendering and its various technical complexities right now; there are many excellent websites that cover the topic, such as Adobe’s Typekit . I will simply state that it is incredibly difficult to render sharp, clear text on any kind of LCD display—especially one that is desktop size. It’s much easier to print sharp text, and to render it on smaller screens like the ones found in phones.

The reason is ppi, as mentioned above. What we perceive as ‘sharpness’ is determined by how small the individual pixels are relative to our ability to discern them. Sharp text is achieved only when the display has a ppi greater than our eye’s maximum at the display’s typical viewing distance. The PC experts Puget Systems have a nice explanation complete with a ppi calculator: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Can-you-see-the-difference-with-a-4K-monitor-729/

Another variable, which I haven’t mentioned, is eyesight. Old people with low visual acuity can’t tell the difference between a 4K monitor and a lower resolution equivalent. I, however, possess the eyesight of an eagle. It’s a blessing, but also a curse: even my 4K monitor isn’t nearly good enough.

The Monitor Itself: the LG27UD69

That said, I am very happy with this monitor. It looks beautiful, for one: it has fashionable thin bezels, and a curved stand. For two, the stand supports height adjustment and tilt, and ergonomics are vital to comfortable computer use. Thirdly, contrast is good, especially with proper lighting—though the monitor still suffers from backlight bleed (a common foible with LCD screens). Finally, colour accuracy is OK; the monitor is factory calibrated.

If all of the above sounds complicated—and display technology is complicated—let’s just say that it’s a very good monitor. In fact, it’s probably the best monitor at its price point, and it’s almost as good as LCD tech gets.

I say almost, again, because there are 5K displays out there. That’s right: 14 million pixels! There are only two models on sale right now. The iMac is one (the screen is manufactured by LG, of course) and Philips makes the other.

The reason I didn’t buy the Philips, aside from price, has to do with another complicated aspect of display tech: bandwidth. A 4K monitor can’t be connected to just any computer: to run properly, it needs to be connected via the latest version of HDMI (version 2) or DisplayPort (version 1.2+). Those old VGA and DVI cables aren’t gonna cut it. In fact, I had to buy a new graphics card for my desktop; the installation took all day.

A 5K monitor can only be connected in one of two limited ways. Option 1: two DisplayPort 1.2 cables. Option 2: a single DP 1.3 cable. The former isn’t properly supported under Linux. The latter would work best, but there aren’t any DP 1.3 monitors on the market... yet.

Anyway, I’m pleased with my shiny new monitor. Below are screenshots. (Yes, I’m bragging.)

Spanish

Moving on, I am currently engaged with studying Spanish. The university requires me to study two foreign language courses as part of my degree—a requirement that I dislike intensely. Although Spanish itself is a nice enough language (indeed nicer than Dutch, and not too idiosyncratic) the teaching format just doesn’t work for me. There’s not enough time—only 4 weeks—and there’s too much emphasis on grammar and test-taking.

Still, I must do my best. Español es una lengua muy bonita! Pero no es fácil.

Final Words

This has been a long enough post, and I have conveyed much information to you. I would write more; but alas, time does not permit. My Spanish lessons demand study, and I am occupied with numerous other hassles. I can only ask, instead, that you keep an eye out on the Magical Realm. I am busy now, but there will come the day when Fallen Love will be published. Until then, keep following!