What would have happened if... in the Fires of Heaven Aviendha would have taken Rand into the Land of the Madmen instead of Seanchan.

Rand tried to listen to Aviendha's heart, but its beating came slower and slower. She was dying and there was nothing he could do about it, he would have been overjoyed to see Moiraine popping out of the air to heal Aviendha, he would be even glad of Semirhage. But he didn't know how to heal. And Aviendha was dying, unless… Bits and pieces of things he had just heard about came to him, he didn't know this either but he could have guessed, using all the power he could master he wove Spirit. One of the most complex weaves he had ever woven, he had only little knowledge about what might happen if he would succeed, but suddenly he could feel Aviendha. Feel his body and her's; it was supposed to help her, though he had no idea if anyone had tried this before on women. The warder bond he had created should give her the power to survive wounds that would kill any other, he just hoped that it would work on her too. Prayed that she wouldn't die from freezing, of course, if she would survive he probably wouldn't.

She had made that gateway to run from him, he had no idea what she would do when she would find out that she was tied to him. He put his ear on her chest again, searching for heartbeats, he thought they were a bit stronger, only a bit. But he could feel her weakness, feel what she felt though she was unconsciousness. And she was ice in his arms, through the small knot of emotions and senses in the back of his head he could sense her weakness. Trying to cut his line of thoughts, he really didn't want to think of what might happen to Aviendha, and trying to stop himself thinking that he had a woman with no cloths on against his body, he started talking. He talked about the first thing that came to his mind, Elayne and her letters, unfortunately the thoughts of kissing Elayne in the Stone also came with it. The last thing he needed now was to think about kissing, he tried to talk about Min for a while. He had no idea what he felt for her, no more than he had about what he felt toward Aviendha and Elayne, but he liked her.

Don't think about women, you fool. He thought furiously, the void trembled and he barely managed to avoid being destroyed by saidin. Rand's hand started stroking Aviendha's hair, glimpsing damply on the dim light of the flames he wove before. She was warm, he noticed suddenly, very warm. He should move away from her, but he had as much chance to fly as to force his body away from her. Her eyes opened, clear green eyes staring at his without even a touch of the anger that was so often there when she looked at him, he started moving away from her and she caught his hairs in painful grip. He couldn't move away without leaving a bald patch on his head. "I promised my near. sister that I would watch you for." She seemed to be talking more to herself than to him, in almost expressionless voice. "But the rings do not lie, and I can run no more." Her voice firmed noticeably. "I will run no more!" She clutched his head with both hands and pulled his mouth to her. The void was gone and saidin fled from him as she kissed him, it was certainly strange to feel the kiss as she did it, strange but certainly pleasant. The last logic thought he had was that he could stop neither her nor himself.

Rand watched Aviendha while they walked toward the gateway she created. Saidin filled him and he channeled fire to melt them a path. He glanced back at the snow hut, some part of him hoped that he could have just stayed forever with Aviendha there. The small knot of emotions in the back of his head, Aviendha, told him nothing he could understand. Not that he expect anything, if he couldn't sort out his own feeling why should he expect that he could sort out Aviendha's. The warder bond worked both ways, and now Rand started having a very uncomfortable feeling. Aviendha was more than good in reading his mind before he bonded her, to save her life, now she probably be able to know what he would think. After they… he raked a hand through his hair and tried to push the memory away, only half succeeding. She nearly took his head off when she found out that he had bonded her, he thought he could find a way to move the bond to someone else, if not to break it completely. He only half understood what he was doing when he bonded her. But he could only move the bond to a man that could channel; the only choice she had save him would be Asmodean. So she would stay bonded to him, surprisingly it wasn't the bond itself that seemed to worry her, but that she now had a part of him that Elayne didn't owned. He had more chance to understand how to escape the taint on saidin than to understand Aviendha; or any other women at all. If he only had half from what Mat knew... He had just enough time to throw himself at Aviendha, walking angrily at his side and muttering about frozen water and her current opinion about the car'a'carn. And not those he would have liked to hear from her, before a ball of fire as big as a horse or two passed right where their heads were before.

At the same time he had woven flows of Fire and Earth, no time to be gentle or sophisticated, just simple weaves that would make the Forsaken that had attacked them sorry he hadn't stayed hidden. It had to be one of the Forsaken, the ball of fire had been made by saidin. Though he did expect something more from Sammael, only Sammael would attacked him so, Demendred was too careful to challenge him if he thought he had the slightest chance to loose or had other choice. He thought that lesson to the Forsaken on Parran Disen. And Asmodean was too weak to risk such simple attack. The source of saidin faded, it could mean that the man had released saidin but Rand  hoped that this meant that Sammael was dead. It had to be Sammael, no one else would have done it, he thought grimly as he helped Aviendha to rise.

"What do you…" she started as soon as she was on her feet, the glare she gave him could have melt the snow by itself, without needing saidar, and then she saw the tree that the fire had burned on its way to them and swallowed hard. "Thank you." She murmured finally. But he barely heard, he could see the gateway she had created, but he didn't walk that way, he had to make sure that the Forsaken was dead. He hurried to the place he had felt saidin being woven, with Aviendha not a step behind. Of course, now it was nothing more than a big hole in the ground. "No!" he whispered when he saw the broken body that was lying there, it wasn't Sammael or anyone of the Forsaken. "No!"

A young man only little older from himself; with dark hair and eyes staring at the sun without blinking. He had never seen the man but knew more about him than he ever wanted to know. Men who can touch the male half of the True Source are becoming mad and then they are starting to rot, creating horror with the One Power. That was what stories told, that was the fate expected for him. A path that the man he had just killed had already met, the eyes were whole but almost everything else in the face had already given up to the rotting, he could see white bone through blood red gushes in the face and the hands. He heard Aviendha's gasp behind him, and didn't blame her at all. Without the void he probably would've thrown up.

He didn't regret killing the man, this was probably the best service he could have given the men, "At least it would explain why I thought the earth was shaking, half explain." He realized that he had said it aloud only when Aviendha grunted and glared. His face felt on fire, even inside the void. He turned away from the man, there was nothing he could do for him or himself.

"Rand," surprisingly, Aviendha hesitated, a thing she never done before. But there was fear inside her now, he could feel it as much as he could feel his own. If he would go mad… there was a reason for the title kinslayer. "You could do nothing." Aviendha continued. He turned his face to her, not stopping trotting, but his glare just slide from her. "I know, Aviendha. The light help me, that much I know." The words was bitter, if he would go mad… he didn't want to think what he might do. If he would manage to lay a hand on callandor or worse, the male ter'angreal he had kept on Rhuidean… he didn't needed to complete the thought. There would be no world after that. And the fury that babbled inside him was for that he was helpless as a baby against the madness as much as it was for the Dark One for tainting saidin.

On the Age of Legends they had tried to clean saidin, that he knew, and right then he didn't care how he knew this. Of the three trying one had created the Spine of the World and the second the Mountains of Dhoom. Three times the Aes Sedai on the Age of Legends tried to clean the taint from the male half of the True Source. Three? And only two failed? What in the name of the light was the third? He thought as he understood what he was thinking, he could already see the gateway, Aviendha followed him with worried glances, did she thought he might go mad right now? His laugh made her jump, and she laid a hand on his shoulder,

"Rand al'Thor," she started, and then gasped when the gateway she made closed. The tingle, that told him she was holding saidar, faded for the first time since she saw the man, she would have been sagging to her knees hadn't he was holding her. He carried her through his own gateway, into utter blackness, he had cut the weave that was holding her gateway open. They weren't going back just yet, the platform started moving as soon as he was on it. He laid Aviendha on the platform, making her as comfortable as he could, and sat on the floor. His destination was the Blight, and even skimming took time.

Aviendha could stand by her own when Rand opened another hole in the blackness that surrounded them. The shock she felt when she saw that their only way home had gone was too much for her, going on the top of what happened last night between them. Not to mention the bond between them, she could feel Rand, and that was both pleasing and shaming. He belonged to Elayne, but Aviendha wanted him for herself. Ji'e'toh left her one choice though, and she never even considered breaking it. She followed Rand into the Blight; what could Rand want in the Blight she had no idea, Rand just ignored her questions. Rand stopped in front of a tree she didn't recognize, one that hadn't given up to the corruption of the blight. The tree had the look of one that had been here for a long time. Rand laid a hand on it, murmuring something that sound like a prayer. In the back of her head there was sadness and grief.

 "What is so sad about this tree, Rand al'Thor?" she asked sharply, she had enough not knowing so much. "It's the grave of the Green Man, Aviendha. Somatsa was a friend of mine." Her breath caught, "So this is the Eye of the World, but what you're seeking here, what is it?" The look he gave her was so innocent she almost believed he came here to visit the grave of the Green Man, "I can feel this, Rand al'Thor. What. Are. You. Seeking. Here." She was loosing the hold on her temper, but right now she didn't care. She had more than enough reasons to be angry. Now she could see a building, on the arched door there was a symbol half white and half black, divided by sinuous line. The ancient symbol of the Aes Sedai in the Age of Legends.

Rand entered the building without even slowing, for herself; Aviendha allowed herself to scan the building Rand entered to for a heartbeat before she entered inside it. You couldn't be too careful in the Blight. When she finally came inside, Rand was seating on the floor, holding a small green stone, his angreal, there was sweat on his face, and she felt the taint inside him. "This was once a place where a part of saidin was kept," he sounded as if he was talking to himself more to her, she didn't care, she needed answers. "One hundred men and women created this place, they had somehow learned how to clean saidin but they hadn't the power to clean it all. They kept the part they manage to clean, I destroyed the Eye the first time I came here. You asked what I'm seeking Aviendha, isn't it? I'm seeking the way they had found, and believe me I will find it."

And use it even if it will kill you too, thought Aviendha. Egwene told her what happened in the Eye when she and Nynaeve and Rand and Moiraine came here. But whatever weave were used here to clean saidin was over three thousand years old. There was no hope for Rand in his search here. "Saidin and saidar turn the Wheel of Time." Now there was more beads of swear on his face and he breathed too quickly, "I have a… trick, you may call it so, sometime you can see what happened in the past." As if his words were a sign, a mist began to form itself from nothing, creating the image of men and women standing, she needn't need to count to know that there were a hundred of them. "Going that much back is... difficult." The light of saidar surrounded the women while the men were surrounded by a blackness that somehow didn't stop her from seeing through it. She saw the weave they used, or only half of it, the half that were made by saidar. Rand was watching them closely, and Aviendha copied him. It was interesting, if Rand could find a way to clean saidin, if he could escape the madness and the… the picture of the young man Rand killed would hunt her many night. The mist image was gone, and Rand was on his feet, another hole in the air open behind him as he offered her a hand to help her rise. "Where are we going now?" She asked. Rand's smile sent a ball of ice into her stomach, those men and women died trying to clean a small part of saidin, what was Rand planning to do? "To Rhuidean, of course, to clean saidin."

What would have happened if… in Lord of Chaos, a few days after Taim's arrival Aviendha would have found out that she was pregnant.

Rand entered his rooms in Andor on tiptoes, he thought that it must be already midnight. And for once he hoped that he would come when Aviendha was already sleeping, he tried to avoid her as much as he could now. The dangers he must face before the Last Battle shouldn't be shared with her, he had seen her dying once, on the very day he had killed Rahvin and avenged Elayne's mother. There were few things he was sure about them completely, but one of them was that any woman he kept too close to him was in danger. If he learned anything from Lanfear it was this lesson, and it wasn't one he could easily forget.

He glanced at the pallet were Aviendha should have been, even if she wasn't sleeping she should have been there, waiting for him. The woman had a great deal of fun taunting him, sometimes he thought that she did this just because he blushed. He frowned when he noticed that Aviendha wasn't on her pallet. She had nowhere to go in this time of the night, and that left the possibilities of a shadowspawn or one of the Forsakens, if she was dead; or kidnapped by Semirhage or Greandel or any one of the other that was still alive. Even Asmodean if the man had the nerves to come in here when he was that much weaken because of Lanfear's shield; which wasn’t very likely. But he had seen Aviendha dead once, and he doubted if there was a thing he wouldn't do to stop her from dying again, this time there might be no balefire to alter the weave of the pattern, and if Aviendha died… He would die too.

Before he even began thinking he reached for saidin, all the sweetness of life and corruption of the taint; caused by his own actions. He filled himself with the power till he thought he would burn from the amount that was in him, till he was full with a river of molten ice and a lake of frozen fire. With saidin in him he could sense every stir of the air against his skin, see the world so clearly that life without the power was unthinkable. He could hear Aviendha breathing, she was in the room he used as a throne room, he must have gone past her by without noticing.

Rand turned and went to her, no matter how hard he told himself that this is a mistake. He only meant to take a look at her, to see that she was fine. Those fears were ridiculous; of course, Aviendha could take care of herself very well. But he couldn't stop for his life, he feared for her any moment she wasn't in his sight. And every moment he had her in front of him he had to fight himself as much as he fought saidin, he wanted her even though he knew he couldn't have her. Even when he knew that he was a danger to her, it didn't matter how often he told himself that he had to stay away from her, he just couldn't do it. His grin held no mirth, if he couldn't make himself send Aviendha away when every shred of logic told him he must send her away from him, what was the chances that he could hold the madness off. He raked a hand through his hair; he really didn't want to think about this. For a moment he wasn't sure whatever he meant, madness or Aviendha.

His eyes stopped on Aviendha, sitting on the floor in nearly white blouse and dark skirt. Light but she was beautiful, he thought. His eyes bulged when he understood why she was so quite when he passed her by few moments ago. She was drunk! Aviendha! That was unthinkable, she rarely drunk something stronger than wine. What under the light could have made her drink so much? He hurried to her and kneeled beside her, taking her head in his hands he channeled briefly. Simple weaves of Spirit and Fire and Water, the weave came from Lews Therin's memories, for once he was grateful that memories passed along the borders between him and Lews Therin. He never thought of asking Asmodean how to suppress the affect of too much drinking.
Aviendha gasped as if thrown into roaring fire and jerked right out of his hands. The drunkenness seemed to slide out of her when she stood on unsteady feet, he hold her hand. To help her stand he told himself, it had nothing to do with that she felt so good, nothing at all. She didn't try to free herself and she didn't walk away, what he expected her to do, instead she just looked at him. Clear blue-green eyes staring at him not a foot away, there was something in her eyes, a redness that he first ignored that he now recognized as signs of crying. That was even more stunning than anything he had seen this day, he could have accepted Aviendha drunk, but Aviendha crying! That was more than unbelievable, more than impossible.
"What happened, Aviendha?" He asked her softly, gently. He doubted if something else would help him, in fact he very much doubted if anything would help him at all. But instead of telling him what happened to her that was enough to make her drink so much and cry; or even telling him that this was none of his business as he more than half expected, she sagged against his chest. And mumbled something he didn't understood clutching his arms hard enough to leave marks on his bones. He turned her face to him, "What happened, Aviendha?" he asked again, a bit more firmly than before. He didn't like to see her like that, it wasn't natural to her.

"I'm with a child, Rand al'Thor." She answered faintly, her eyes still red from crying. Had she told him that the Dark One was free he wasn't as stun as he was now. He stepped away from her, his mouth tried to reach the floor; "You are with…" He stopped to swallow hard, he thought his eyes might fall on the floor any moment. Aviendha grunted and she removed his hold in her. Hhe rubbed her arms, only half aware for them. She watch him closely, she wasn't joking with him, though he very much wanted her to.
"Are you sure? Mine?" he asked before he had regained his hold in himself in disbelief. He cursed himself immediately. Those questions couldn't have been planned better to make her more angry. She wouldn't have told him if she weren't sure and the other question didn’t bear thinking about. But it at least explained why she was crying, or half explained it.
"Not yours, Rand al'Thor. Sammael's." Her voice full of sarcasm, and her eyes of lightning "Who else do you think it could be, you fool man? I hadn't…" she took a ragged breath and glared at him. He glanced at the table where all the drinks were kept, more than a few of them had gone but he found a cup and a jar that Aviendha hadn't emptied. Saidin left him when Aviendha talked but now he channeled to fill the cup and send it to him, Aviendha snatched it from the air. Not caring one bit that it was his, and emptied it all in one gulp. Rand sighed and walked to the table, letting saidin to leave him wasn't hard this time, he didn't want to be too aware around Aviendha, her hands against his arm, her smell. All that threaten to break the wall he tried to create between them so she would be safer, he didn't know what he felt for her, only that if she would be harmed he would die. Sometimes he had nightmares of the day he killed Rahvin, but on those he came and found Aviendha dead, they woke him with cold sweat anytime he dreamed them. He had to stay away from her, no matter how hard it was; no matter how it hurt him.

He filled himself a goblet and then turned to Aviendha; she already finished drinking and stepped to fill her cup again. She sat on the floor, sipping from her wine and watched him. He didn't understood how she could be so calm, he didn't know whatever to start laughing or… or… he didn't know what and he didn't care. He sat himself on the floor, facing her with all the courage he could find; she would laugh herself till her death if he would let her know how carefully he had to gather it.
"What are we going to do with it?" He said when he was on the floor, not a pace away from her. Aviendha looked at him in surprise, what did she thought he would do. Did she really think that he would abandon her with a child? His child!
She just stared at him flatly for a moment, "I must speak with Elayne, Rand al'Thor. I must!" Her voice was full of urgency.
"That is all, Aviendha?" He asked, "Why not asking the sun with her? I'm trying to find her more than a month now, if I would have known where she is, she would already be here." He silenced himself when he realized he was all but shouting at her.
"She is in a place called Salidar, Rand al'Thor. Egwene asked us not to tell you, but…" Aviendha squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, her face pained. "I need to talk with her, could you… would you take me to her, Rand al'Thor?" He was gaping at her; she knew all that time where Elayne was? And didn't tell him. He had found her, the light burn his bones to ashes if he hadn't found her. He was so overjoyed that he bent toward Aviendha and kissed her. She hadn't even protest; she took his head in her hands and pressed his lips to hers. A thing she did only once, a thing he dreamed of every single night since. He didn't mean to do this, it was just an instinct, only his body move on his own, and he kissed Aviendha as thoroughly as he ever had.

The light from the windows woke him in the morning; he was in his bed and there was a body pressed against his. He opened his eyes and saw Aviendha, still sleeping, her hair spread on his shoulder and her head on his chest, so beautiful, so peaceful.

His hand stroked her back, and he let his head fall on the pillow. Lews Therin murmurs in the distance became audible. Love is twice as dangerous as surrendering to saidin and ten times as addictive.

Rand tried very hard not to listen; soon he would go to this Salidar and Elayne. And he had no bloody idea what he felt both toward Elayne and Aviendha, even though one was snuggled in his arms. Blood and bloody flaming ashes, he thought. There was no better way to sum his feeling as this was.

What would have happened if... Min has died on Dumai's Wells

Rand stared at Min, shock and grief battling each other inside him, the Void had gone as soon as he saw Min's eyes, staring at him accusingly, lifelessly.
No! Not again! Shouted Lews Therin, but he hardly noticed the man. He formed the Void inside him, it was easy, the white-red fury the overwhelmed him left no emotions behind it. Only this vast emptiness he remembered from the day he killed Rahvin. He drew as much as he could, and more. Faster than ever before and more of saidin that was safe for him to draw.
He took it all and stopped, even with that amount of the power he could do nothing, Min was dead. The thought was thousands knife cuts, more. The void broke, and he felt tears on his cheeks. Once, on Tear he tried to heal a dead child, with Callandor he could draw more then he could with any other sa'sangreal save one, and even Callandor was useless against death.
The only other option he had wasn't one he could take, not even for Min's life. He had been offered that kind of option before, when he knelt near another woman he killed. But now he hadn't the madness to excuse his action. He killed Min when he tried to break free, an accident, but it wasn't a excuse for him. He wouldn't turn to the Dark One, not for any price. That was one oath he meant to keep, he swore it in an other life, but it was still held for him, so many ages after he voiced it.

The Void formed, and he drew saidin again, he meant to do exactly what he had done before, but no one died when he last died, now he meant that every Aes Sedai that had captured him would die, everyone who had helped them.
No! This was Lews Therin. I will not die again! The flood of saidin that rushed inside him stopped. Now Lews Therin fought to take saidin from his grasp; fought harder than he ever did before, and Rand didn’t have the strength to fight anymore.

It was Rand al'Thor who knelt beside the woman's corpse, but Lews Therin was the one who rose from the ground, Rand was shut up to a buzzing fly. Lews Therin used air to lift the woman - Min, that was her name? - he wove all the Five Powers and traveled. Making Min and himself part of saidin, he felt the taint he had to pass to reach to the True Source, felt it burning inside him. Into his soul and bones, but ignored it. The True Source turned the Wheel of Time, and there wasn't a faster way to travel, and now time was important then anything else. The madness waited for him, he knew that more then well enough, but he could subside it. For a little time at least.
He laid the woman on the floor on his - Rand's, was there any difference between them now? - rooms on Cairhien. And run to the wardrobe, tearing up the traps he had woven and inverted around it, he uncovered two statues, a male and a female holding a crystal globe and wearing a flowing robe.
The grimace he wore was only partly due to what happened, the woman's death and his own imprisonment, the taint on saidin was probably cause directly because of those two statues.
He took the male one, the only one of the pair he could use, the other was of no use to him without a female to draw saidar to aid him
Saidin turns the Wheel of Time, and with the ter'angreal in his hands he could draw enough to make the breaking of the world look like a walk in the park. He reached for the True Source through the sa'angreal, faintly aware of the huge replica that shined brighter than the sun not very far away from the city; even during the day, it light up the skies like a second sun. He sent it all to the corpse on the floor, kneeling to touch her face.

It was better that way, all the Five Powers to search, to seek, the Lord of the Grave was one of the names people gave the Dark One. But the Trollocs called him The Lord of Death, and with the sa'angreal in his grasp he could challenge the creature himself, and win, maybe. Her breasts started moving, eyes flickering, he could hear the blood starting to rush again in her veins, could see her heart start beating. The amount of the power he drew was beyond his wildest dreams, and he directed it all into the woman body, he could keep it alive as much as he wanted without the sa'angreal, as an empty shell, a body without a soul. Her eyes opened, not the soulless stare he half expected for, dead eyes while the heart still beat and the body lived, but a live stare, tears trickled down her cheeks, and his. He took a deep breath and was only half aware that it was his first in a long time, almost since the moment he saw that she was dead. Her eyes closed again, but she breathed, and he could feel that there was a soul inside the body. There was one thing he still had to do, he had to move quickly. He knew that he was walking on the edge of madness, on the edge of razor of saidin., but Rand would never do this no matter how much he knew he had to. He traveled again, Min would be alright, she was sleeping now. But there was other thing he had to heal, another wound he create, though this was a long time ago.

On the very top of the Dragonmount, the closest thing he had he could call a grave, he looked at the White Tower . They needed to learn what it meant to challenge the Lord of the Morning.

This time he didn't draw from saidin, he drew the taint. Sending it all to the White Tower , a trail of darkness as black as balefire was white. He could feel it evilness even as he build walls to stop it from harming him. He had no idea how much time passed, it could have been hours, or day or maybe just a heartbeat, but finally he could reach for the male half of the True Source and feel only saidin, the taint had gone. Sent it to the place that was created because of the taint, to a place that dedicated all its effort in finding and severing men that could touch saidin.
The place from which the order came to those who called themselves Aes Sedai and put him inside a box. He still held on to the power, and he couldn't hear the faintest sound from the Tower. He directed the taint to the White Tower alone. No one there would have survived this. Not unless they had time to ready themselves, which they didn't.

Lews Therin released the male half of the One Power. Clean as the female one. And retreated to the shadows in the mind of the man that became the Dragon Reborn. Rand al'Thor could move, could feel, he cursed Lews Therin, every curse he ever heard, he even passed to the Old Tongue without noticing once or twice. But the man knew what he had doing and Rand wouldn't have undone anything of the man's doing even if he could have.

He didn't trusted Lews Therin's way of traveling, he didn’t know how this worked and he couldn't trust what he didn't know. The gateway he opened into the utter blackness out of the pattern, on the other hand, was well known to him. He left the White Tower behind him, nothing would survive the blast of darkness Lews Therin used to clean saidin and avenge the Aes Sedai. Though the books in the library and the ter'angreal the Tower kept would survive. He couldn't have thought of a fate worse than this to the Aes Sedai. Especially to the Reds, to suffer what he had to suffer every time he had touch the True Source, although it was very quick for them. The gateway closed behind him and the platform - the ancient symbol of the Aes Sedai - moved through the darkness to his destiny, Cairhien, and Min. One thing Lews Therin left behind was that he couldn't run from duty nor love, the man put it in a different manner, of course, Rand didn't doubt that Lews Therin could make Mat blush like ten suns. He sat on the platform and tried to think about something else then Elayne, Aviendha and Min. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, it was one battle he was losing in.

If you haven't noticed, I read quite a bit. But my most favorite books belong to The Wheel Of Time (Amazon), to say that they are excelent would be demeaning, they took up a whole year of my life (in which I did little but read the books over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again).

For nearly three years I've managed to avoid reading (but not thinking) about WoT, but I just read New Spring , and it's every bit as good as the rest of the books, and it brought me back a rash of memories.

I actually was a prolific fanfic writer for a time. My current nickname is based on some of my stories from that time.

I just found those stories again (I back them up to a CD, then lost the CD, and had a HD crash a few months ago that wiped out my remaining copies) at the Dragon Library, looking at them now, it seems that I was quite a busy bee then.

I'll post them to this blog as a way of preserving them for the future. This is normally a technical blog, but this is too important part of my past to ignore. I'll put them all under the Writings category, so just ignore that if you don't want to read it.

As a warning, those stories, like all fanfic, will make no sense whatsoever if you haven't read the Wheel of Time.

Another warning is due, I wrote those stories as a teenager, and I don't think that I was ever a writer good enough to do justice to the story. But it passed the time (two years betwween each book) very nicely.

I currently have in the repository [ svn checkout svn://svn.berlios.de/nqa ] the code for both editors.

The Cfg.Xml editor is considered complete and is fully integrated into the UI.

The Hbm.Xml editor is still incomplete, but it already can do very much in terms of editing simple mapping files. The Cfg.Xml was easy to write because it's relatively simple (the hard parts were making it easier to use, the type & resource browsers, and they weren't really hard).

Mapping files are highly complex, and trying to show them in a usable UI (meaning, avoiding this) and I wrote most of it without network connection, so I had to go with were a couple of hbm files on my HD and no documentations except NHibernate source.

A new version of Boo, the write friendly language is out!

I didn't get to do a lot of work with it lately (NQA got in the way), but I've a secret project in it that I hope will have time to finish soon.

It's a very good language, and it's fun to write code in it.

I've a question regarding testing GUI applications, spesifcally, it's related to NHibernate Query Analyzer.

I started this application as a spike (I think that is the XP term) / proto-type, so I didn't bother writing tests or following any TDD rules. Currently, the only tests that were done to the product were manual ones, with me running the application and writing down the results.

Now, NHibernate Query Analyzer is no longer a prototype, and I'm a bit uncomfortable using it without tests. It's compromised from several core/utitilies classes, with all the rest being UI. Writing the tests for the core wouldn't be a problem, but how do I test the UI?

I'm aware of NUnit.Forms but I wonder how far should I take it? When do I stop doing Unit Testing and move to integration testings? When I make a change in the UI, and save it, do I need to verify that it was saved correctly, or to trust the core tests to catch that? What about missing links in the core<->UI connections (so I forget to save a field), how do I catch that? In the UI layer (save and then load, then test it all?) or do I go directly to the core classes?

Any ideas would be welcomed,

Thanks in advance,

I've been using ReSharper for a long time, and I don't think that there is anyone who read my blog who doesn't know how highly I think of it.

Nevertheless, today I was taken about by it's capabilities.

I'd a class B that inherit from class A, where A has a non trivial constructor, and class B is a small extention to A. I wrote the class and the single extra member, and told ReSharper to generate a constructor. It generated a constructor that include both the new member and all the requirements for class A's constructor, and even add a call to it.

That would've been the way I would've written it. And it saved me some small but measurable amount of time (which I'm using to write this post).

Joel's post about debugged products come to my mind when I saw this. That is one quality product! The attention to details is simply amazing. And I haven't even began to use all the new features in the Early Access Program for version 1.5.

I spent the weekend adding a Cfg.Xml editor to NQA, it should've been a few minutes of coding, but expanded to ~1,500 lines just to get it right.

I'm pretty sure that it now works currectly, but there are some issues with saving invalid files (syntaticly correct, but that fail to configure), that I will need to investigate further.

The remaining big feature that I want to add is a Hbm.Xml editor, which should prove quite a challange.

After that, I'll move the project to beta and start pushing to 1.0 release.

The current code is in repository,  svn checkout svn://svn.berlios.de/nqa

I've previous mentioned MyGeneration and not in favorable terms, the application took a very long time to start and used over 0.5 Gb (!) of RAM.

Since them, Mike Griffin have contacted me and sent me a fix that solved the problem in a very complete way. (Right now the startup time is ~5 seconds and modest memory size).

Naturally, I'm unique, and in over 42,135 people who downloaded the product, I'm one of the two that have this problem. I can't say that I'm excited about this.

What I'm excited about it that the fix not only fixed the current version, but the previous versions as well. I intended to use the new JetBrain profiler to check what was the cause for the problem. Unfortantely I'm unable to repreduce it. I unistalled the fixed and wiped out any trace of it in the system, and then install the version with the problem. Behold, it's fixed!

Niether Mike nor I can understand what happens to cause this (the problem or the magic solution).

Oh well, at least now I can get to use the product. It seems to have interesting capabilities and (most importantly) it has NHibernate templates :-)