Rereading what exists so far of Almost Nowhere and it suddenly hit me how much Azad is inspired by Lymond. (Rob admitted to this immediately, calling Azad “80% Lymond rip-off” which I think is a little unfair to himself.)
Diversity win! Your Lymond rip off is Persian!
I was wondering last night why stuff on my laptop was running slow, and I only just now discovered the cause: on Monday (?) I had randomly decided to start training char-rnn on Dunnett again, this time on the whole Lymond series instead of just the first two, and then I completely forgot about it, and now it’s done 11 full passes over the data and can produce eerie, frequently grammatical simulacra of Lymond dialogue:
‘I thought you brought her to his tale of the angle.’
‘But the planfour woman,’ he said carefully, ‘that Archie has left the treftileness of women. They have no wish to be tongues.’
‘I really didn’t want a message from his grace,’ said Sir George Douglas’s torn voice, ‘that I am told you think you have rather meant that I must blind against the King of France and for your highest banquet.’
‘I haven’t trusted them,’ Philippa said. ‘And so played to him he might prove it. It has noticed that it may have weight. Only the garrison of the Queen is dead. There’s no need to ancience whom and she had so considered what they wore rather proud to believe that she would be dead. Is it not enough of you?’
‘The company of me,’ Lymond said.
‘You would have gentlemen,’ said Jerott. ‘They have no more than in all that, in the end of the day, the young man did what he die.’
(next one’s with a lower “temperature”)
“No. Lady Culter and I shall not be able to forget him,” said Christian. “And if the sensitive information is to tell you to do the rest of the beauty of a subject of a personal six miles or the special standard of a service and because I was to be there to see the other weakness.”
“Or do you think?”
“I want to be deaded and delivered to the Somervilles. I see nothing of the tapers and the craphie, but the bloody daughter was there.”
“Oh, don’t hear that,” said Lymond, “do you want to fight to face the English out of the child?”
“I don’t recover the same time,” said Sybilla. “I didn’t know that. I should find a city, and it is a trick with a little boat in the night. It was the mother of the Constable of France, who can return home to the Tartars.”
“What do you think it would do that?” said Lymond. “As you arrived at the best, you will find it distressing on the same reason.”
“Well, if you want to recover, I shall go to the end of the river of money. It was in the same time, and I am sure you will find out if you were also a hollow man.”
So has anyone made a playable computer version of the Pawn in Frankincense chess game? Like with the pieces tagged as characters, and character-appropriate goals for the AI (the player with the pawns wants to force the other player to capture them, etc.)
i love the one star amazon reviews of game of kings like “all the so-called fans are just covering up the fact that they didn’t understand this book either”
yeah lol no one understands game of kings it’s 400 pages of elegant confusion and ive never spoken with anyone who claims any differently
(via prospitianescapee)
(I’m taking a micro-break from work to make this post, so yell at me if I’m on tumblr again in the next few hours)
I’ve realized that the parts of the Lymond Chronicles I really enjoy are the parts where Lymond creates tension within families, like with Lymond, Richard, Sibylla, and Mariotta, or with Lymond, Will Scott, and Buccleuch
Hence, after liking the first book, it’s been much more of a slog to get through the second book and the first half of the third, where Lymond just goes on adventures and works with or against various incidental, individual people. (The triad of Lymond, Gabriel and Jerott sort of resembles the cases mentioned above, but is a lot less interesting to me)
Thankfully, it looks like things are being set up for more Culter and Buccleuch stuff in the second half of the third book, and I hope that keeps up
Dreamed that in some Lymond sequel, time somehow fast-forwarded so that WWII was happening in the 1550s with exactly the same nations and leaders but with 16th century technology, and Lymond was popping up unexpectedly in war rooms to make irreverent comments about Stalin and stuff. It was messed up
Last night I had the “leaving grad school and re-enrolling in college” dream again except this time it was re-enrolling in high school. After school I considered taking the school bus home because it would be faster than the city bus, but then decided that taking the school bus would be “humiliating.”
On the city bus, I ran into my undergrad thesis adviser. He said he forgot to bring anything to read with him, so I handed him the Lymond Chronicles book I was reading. Somehow he managed to read the entire book in the course of the short bus ride. He handed it back to me with nothing but the terse remark “what a cruel book.” But his expression suggested he had not been unsatisfied with it.
Robnost's RNN ft. Dorothy Dunnett
—seq_length 100, dropout 0.1
@nostalgebraist is experimenting with recurrent neural networks and posted a snippet of text. i decided to do a blind reading and oh dear:
lows, and in putioner of a man you flang to here all the flack with mettentered with emonies crearly but the Mongor’s come to tho many off the cloar of concenter, before them, and Mary lioned whole teether speed on the assickelf and recopered the adeneds, the Dowager was a peever for the other stowdlet and grientless without his face, and all the deepterate, and the gaze facilly as a mone, with a baddeese out of the till on the fleed, by there would banking the whild of her crial who hell that the gold of intending of the seef. “I cane the would bare, to where the some of the passen? Nethered and in scripped and forgeting to face to the thook of a pare of the greet hand for hands on his short? When your deared like a firet, all hell the tell, the conrident you to one off thement of your man’s a cumsiess. You sone and the only one careshanded to have entreped. It is in mising deed the tentings and will be heard, he and the teme to the accome in the Mither to the berencely, smil from the fire had been and dource, and the redorn enderates this langered suckent at his pricher of geoutered it on the looked in a theaping and cheeting and cording of the greet, betwe of the bewark and the brode and accured silence. “I have the got of a proined the heard enterians, and the Bourder of the forest and the Flance from the moors, asheets of ullistened. I long thet norre, you de’s a persable to teeps.’
<3
“Yes. You can truse your had been recased. De you were following to last year in the grave your face with a frieze new contrad sight,” said Lymond suddenly. “And your lordship of your hamps and a fairth lights on the castle. The lady trampled years to a moment, I was taken their brother from the head in a fairier’s place.
Scott is made, and inselfed to the money had never been waiting. It wouldn’t think saddistardy but me who could fair with the graped face.”
The older recollest brown times, half-shuttered blue eyes. The bast of the end of the sleeping was still with a strangerment of the field. “Why is a family sank successful yourself,” said Thady Boy, and the surrey of light bargained to courtyard. “I don’t leave him. We should delive my sweet first in sudden every call. One in its past your livid gog back with only to send to me.”
“No.”
Recurrent!Lymond is shaping up nicely. Going to try the new hyperparameters with Yudkowsky now.
Trying some other RNN hyperparameters that seem to work better (specifically, seq_length 100 rather than 50, and dropout of only 0.1 rather than 0.5). It is showing promising early results on the Dorothy Dunnett training set, producing something that is not exactly English but has a nice cadence and sound to it:
lows, and in putioner of a man you flang to here all the flack with mettentered with emonies crearly but the Mongor’s come to tho many off the cloar of concenter, before them, and Mary lioned whole teether speed on the assickelf and recopered the adeneds, the Dowager was a peever for the other stowdlet and grientless without his face, and all the deepterate, and the gaze facilly as a mone, with a baddeese out of the till on the fleed, by there would banking the whild of her crial who hell that the gold of intending of the seef. “I cane the would bare, to where the some of the passen? Nethered and in scripped and forgeting to face to the thook of a pare of the greet hand for hands on his short? When your deared like a firet, all hell the tell, the conrident you to one off thement of your man’s a cumsiess. You sone and the only one careshanded to have entreped. It is in mising deed the tentings and will be heard, he and the teme to the accome in the Mither to the berencely, smil from the fire had been and dource, and the redorn enderates this langered suckent at his pricher of geoutered it on the looked in a theaping and cheeting and cording of the greet, betwe of the bewark and the brode and accured silence. “I have the got of a proined the heard enterians, and the Bourder of the forest and the Flance from the moors, asheets of ullistened. I long thet norre, you de’s a persable to teeps.’