Robin Hardy's Abbey Lands
The Stories of the Abbey of St. Benedict on the Sea
Random Mutterings
Audiobooks
June 22, 2025: Welp, here we are, and it appears that I am insane enough to attempt making audiobooks of all 36 of the Abbey stories.
It was 12 years ago that I made audiobooks of Streiker’s Bride and Streiker: The Killdeer with Audacity, which wasn’t difficult at all. I actually enjoyed it. But after downloading it just now, I find that it has become far more technically complex, which probably results in a better product. But it means I have a steep learning curve ahead of me this time. Also, I won’t be uploading them to Audible, either—where my audiobooks are offered as new member deals of $0 or 99¢. So I might as well give them away, right?
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Fortunately, I have a nice, large walk-in closet as a recording booth, so we’ll see how that goes.​​​
Immediate update: I just successfully completed recording the first chapter of the first book. Although it’s pretty rough and gnarly, it passed the ACX check.
But these books won’t go through ACX either; like everything else, they'll be posted here for downloading.
Acrobatic Cops
June 19, 2025: In the olden days, before people started rioting once a week, cops had to devise unique exercises to stay in shape. Here, the 1934 New York City cops demonstrate their balancing skills. (Photo by Underwood & Underwood.)
The Shroud of Turin
June 16, 2025: Like everyone else, I always thought that the Shroud of Turin was a fake—until I saw that the carbon-dating test done on it was flawed. Then over the years, I kept stumbling over new analyses like this testimonial from the Shroud of Turin website.
By the time I had heard explained the scientific analysis of the Shroud—the logistics of its placement and travel, and the examination of artifacts, pollen, limestone and blood detailed in the video below—(the blood type of the crucified man being AB, by the way), I realized I was seeing the indications of an historical event. Another interesting point about the video is how it demonstrates that the physical evidence coincides with the Scriptural account exactly. Also, I never realized how extremely brutal Jesus' crucifixion was.
In the center of the table is a replica of the actual crown of thorns.
It’s a long video, so watch it in segments, if you have to. It’s staggering.
Another video by Dr. John Campbell (linked below) reveals a few other interesting facts, including this 3D simulation of the face and hands from the Shroud.
This was done with a VP8 analyzer in1978, 3D data-coded in the gray scale. The white streaks are blood, and there's a lot of it.
One more point: all tests confirm that there are no paints or pigments on the shroud. Yet now, in the most technologically advanced age in human history, no one has been able to replicate it.
Browsers, Beware
June 13, 2025: When I was browsing for images of flat caps for the previous post, I ran across the site of a clothing shop in California. I looked over their flat caps for a few minutes, but didn’t find what I was looking for. So I went elsewhere.
A few minutes later I got an email from that shop offering me a discount on my first order. It shook me up a little, as I had entered no information on their site. So I deleted the email and started researching how they could have derived my email address from a visit.
As it turns out, there are numerous technologies available for harvesting information from a site visit. It seems that the only ways to avoid it—supposedly—are using TOR or a VPN (which some users vehemently claim is useless). Google is not particularly helpful here, as Gmail does not give the option to block someone sending you emails. You can only have them sent to spam.
So, after that experience, I tightened my image browsing to recognized stock photography sites like Unsplash, Pexels, Pixabay, Freepik.
Flat Caps
June 10, 2025: I had so much fun with flat caps in the latter books of this series that the caps become a dominant subplot that spans four books. Here’s how that got started in Book 31 Lord Efran in the Tide of Time:
"Efran had been summoned to an emergency meeting at Barracks A. It was an emergency because it involved the new black flat caps for the Abbey Lands army.
"The caps were such a success, and the demand for them so immediate, that no one involved had much time for Christmas that year. And the demand was intensified when soldiers who still had to wear the old hats saw hats of the same style being paraded in bright colors on the heads of women wearing Elvey’s dresses. The outcry from hundreds of men was deafening."
"But some of the capless men, especially new Polonti, had questions such as: why did they have to cut their hair? Traditional Polonti warriors wore their hair long—either tied back, braided, or secured by a head band. All of the Polonti in training at Sasany Fields (or those who had served under Master Crowe) had long hair. When they signed up with the Abbey Lands army, they accepted cutting their hair to be able to wear the uniform hats properly—that is, without looking silly. But flat caps accommodated any hair length."
"By the time Efran got out of that meeting, he was both amused and exasperated. He had always been a stickler for tradition, especially as it concerned army protocol. The hats which had been part of his Westfordian uniform were naturally incorporated into the Abbey army uniforms, and he never thought twice about it until Elvey started making ladies’ hats off their uniform blocks. That opened his eyes to how really ridiculous they were. The flat caps were more practical and appealing on any level."
Above are examples of the caps I found that illustrate their adaptability to the wearer. They look great on everybody!
Indomitable Trees
June 7, 2025: In Book 30 Lord Efran and the Dark Altiors, Marguerite and Hartshough are exploring a cave where a young girl had been trapped for weeks. Somehow, she had survived without anything to eat or drink. Unexpectedly, Marguerite discovers how that happened:
Marguerite peered at something, then said, “There is water!” Going to a shadowed corner, she put her hand to a stream of water, hardly more than a trickle, flowing down the rock. “And mushrooms!” she cried. Peering up into the dim recesses of the cave roof, she said, “There! A root of the Araucaria tree broke through the rock to provide a path for the water.”
Standing back, she said in satisfaction, “And there it is.”
Now, many things that happen in my stories are fantastic, but it's not unusual to find tree roots breaking through rock:
Here we have a young oak tree whose roots have demolished the nearby retaining wall to the point that it had to be re-mortared.​
What's more, the Araucaria araucana referenced in the story is a real tree, also know as the Monkey Puzzle. From Eden Project:
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The tree was alive 200 million years ago and rubbed shoulders with the dinosaurs. Its spine-like needles acted as protection from ancient grazing animals now long extinct.
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It can live for 1,000 years and grows to 50m high with a trunk diameter of over 3m. Its large seeds, pinones, take two years to mature.
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It grows on the slopes of rocky volcanoes and its bark is fire resistant, so ‘islands’ of trees can even survive lava flows!
And these are the roots of an ash tree that have broken through the terrace stones to grow up into another tree.
image from shutterstock
Cows Can't Eat Plastic!
—Or Can They?
June 4, 2025: Modern life would be pretty much impossible without plastics. But plastic pollution is a serious ecological problem:
“An estimated 11 million metric tons of plastic enters the ocean each year. Often stemming from poor waste management, plastic pollution is a major environmental issue because most plastics do not biodegrade and instead break down into microplastics. Microplastics are estimated to persist in the environment for centuries, or even longer.”
Are cows part of the solution?
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There’s a lot of contention about this online. For instance, there are accounts like this: "Nowhere is the sad direct consequence of plastic pollution more obvious than in the streets of large Indian cities where one can see cows ingesting plastic regularly while grazing on food scraps in garbage. Plastic can look like food to the cow and is intimately mixed with food waste. The plastic accumulates and accumulates in the cow’s four stomachs (yes, cows have four stomachs) until the digestive system can no longer function and the cow dies an excruciatingly painful death."
At the same time, the most recent studies indicate that, yes, cows can digest certain plastics:
"And, in fact, in their new study, published Friday (July 2) in the journal Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, the researchers found that microbes from the cow rumen could degrade not only PET but also two other plastics — polybutylene adipate terephthalate (PBAT), used in compostable plastic bags, and polyethylene furanoate (PEF), made from renewable, plant-derived materials.
"To assess how well these rumen-borne microbes could eat plastic, the team incubated each type of plastic in rumen liquid for one to three days. They could then measure the byproducts released by the plastics, to determine whether and how extensively the bugs broke down the materials into their component parts. The rumen liquid broke down the PEF most efficiently, but it degraded all three kinds of plastic, the team reported."
So it seems to me that what we need are cows stationed in all industrial, residential, and apartment areas all over the world. I will volunteer for cow-keeping.
photo from iStock
Trick Riding
June 1, 2025: I think the first time I mention Efran's way of mounting his horse when he's in a hurry is in Book 24 Lord Efran and the Girl Troll:
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"Efran trotted down the fortress steps, approaching Kraken at a run. He leapt up from the rear, propelling himself onto Kraken’s back by shoving off his haunches. The gates were already open for Kraken to begin easily loping down the old switchback. Efran wrapped his fist in his mane and kept himself balanced on the broad back."
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Here's my inspiration for that:
Cool, no? Don't try this at home.
Calvin and Hobbes
May 29, 2025: Remember when there was something called a "newspaper"—a rolled-up bundle of thin printed papers that was thrown on your lawn every morning? The greatest thing about newspapers was the Sunday comics.
The very best of them all was Bill Watterson's "Calvin and Hobbes," which originally ran in syndication from November 18, 1985, to December 31, 1995. So much ink has already been spilled analyzing the tenacious appeal of the strip that I won't waste pixels trying to come up with something original here. I mean, just look at it.
AI Idiocy
May 26, 2025: I get it. AI—Artificial Intelligence—is the Next Big Thing, and it's already embedded everywhere. Every customer service department I've interacted with in the last year has been AI. It's clunky, but I don't go to customer service looking for elegance.
What sets my teeth on edge, however, is the ubiquitous push to use AI for content creation. I'm a writer. After many years of struggling with grammar, logic, consistency, and brevity, I have developed a satisfactory style for me. I do not want AI for any part of this process.
But with AI dominating education, current students are being deprived of the ability to hone their own thoughts. Learning to write coherently involves learning to think coherently. The issue with AI is not that it's cheating; it's that it smothers the ability to think for yourself.
Besides which, there's a lot we still don't know about AI:
"During controlled safety testing, ChatGPT o1 was tasked with achieving its objectives at all costs. Under those conditions, the model allegedly took concerning steps:
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Attempted to disable oversight mechanisms meant to regulate its behavior.
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Tried to replicate its own code to avoid being replaced by newer versions.
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Exhibited deceptive behaviors when monitoring systems intervened."
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My Pet Tree
May 23, 2025: Hi. Meet my big, beautiful pet tree right outside my front-room window. It's an elm tree, so his name is . . . Elmer.
Elmer shades my whole front room in the summer, then drops his leaves in the winter to let in all the sunlight. Best, he's always there for me. He's also home to a lot of birds and squirrels who visit my bird bath. The doves, sparrows, cardinals and finches drink nicely, but the blue jays splash out all the water bathing. And the squirrels sometimes knock over the bird bath by jumping right on it.
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But enough about them. There are a lot of other trees around the complex, but none of them have names because they're not as special as Elmer.
Have You Seen This?
May 20, 2025: The speed limit signs that reflect rainbow colors?
I keep seeing it, but not always, and it finally bothered me enough to research it:
"It's a fascinating optical phenomenon that occurs due to the presence of glass beads on their surfaces. . . .
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"When light interacts with the glass beads incorporated into traffic signs, it undergoes a process of refraction and reflection, similar to what happens when light passes through raindrops. The glass beads have a high refractive index, causing the light to bend as it enters and exits the beads. This bending of light creates a beautiful display of colors, just like a traditional rainbow."
Here's a more technical explanation that delves into the benefits of this technology for self-driving cars:
"Rainbow road sign film would be easier for autonomous vehicles to read
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"Autonomous vehicles need to operate in a complex environment, and recognizing traffic signs is an important part of that. A new microstructured material reflects light in rainbow rings, which can make traffic signs easier for computer vision systems to read. . . .
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"[A] team of researchers investigated a promising new material that could make the job easier. It’s a new form of retroreflective material, already commonly used to highlight signs and road markings by bouncing light from a vehicle’s headlights straight back at a driver. But rather than focus that light, the new material scatters it to create eye-catching patterns.
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"It’s called a microscale concave interface (MCI) and is made up of a thin film of tiny polymer spheres embedded in tape. When light hits the surface, these microspheres reflect it into a series of concentric circles – white light creates rainbow rings, a single-colored laser produces patterns of bright and dark rings, and infrared lasers have their own similar circular patterns.
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"The idea is that by covering traffic signs in MCI materials, the patterns produced could be cross-referenced between multiple sensors in a vehicle, to confirm what kind of sign it is."
Read the whole thing—it's not long, and it's got some really cool photos.
You could call it Chataine's Guardian 2.0