This year started off pretty light when it came to programming because I’ve been addicted to the video game Against the Storm since last winter. But I eventually started working again on various projects – some old and some new. I didn’t do any programming in January, so we’ll st … | Continue reading
Last night I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream where I was at a programmer convention. A bunch of devs were arguing and they came to me to be the deciding factor for the future of the KDE Plasma 6 project. Each was very passionate about the direction they wanted […] | Continue reading
Just a few thoughts on programming languages that have been rattling around in my head this week, but which don’t each merit a full blog post. The main theme is that the culture behind each programming language leads to some interesting choices, as is the case with spoken languag … | Continue reading
If Hemingway Wrote JavaScript by Angus Croll My rating: 3 of 5 stars The intro mentions the natural language nature of Javascript. I wonder if the book had been concieved a few years later if it would rather have been Python or Ruby – both of which are way more like human languag … | Continue reading
Walkaway by Cory Doctorow My rating: 4 of 5 stars Got this book for free from the Tor Ebook Club This book is a refinement of many topics that Doctorow has broached in the past: – uploading of consciounesses/backups and how that changes things– living in Capitalism vs leaving cap … | Continue reading
I had to change my wordpress username as it contained characters that were fine back when I started this blog in 2005, but didn’t work for federation. So this is a test to see if the post will properly federate now that I’ve changed the username. Here’s hoping! | Continue reading
Back in 2013 when I started using Fedora Core 1, I had no idea I’d still be on Fedora when it reached its 40th release 11 years later. Congrats to the team and here’s the official announcement. | Continue reading
Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes My rating: 4 of 5 stars Description in one line? Cowboy Bebop meets Mass Effect with a Cuban protagonist. I grew up in Miami, Florida so having a main character speak in “spanglish” brings me back to my childhood. The narrator also nails the voic … | Continue reading
Maangchi’s Real Korean Cooking by Maangchi My rating: 3 of 5 stars This book is a companion to Maangchi’s youtube channel. It teaches you how to cook the way she cooks. So it’s authentic to her even if it’s not what you’re used to from Korean BBQ. The recipes are a good jumping o … | Continue reading
RELIGION: Ruining Everything Since 4004 BC by Zach Weinersmith My rating: 2 of 5 stars I’m generally a fan of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (the source of these comics) and even though I would identify myself as a Christian, I’m not one of those easily-offended, book-banning … | Continue reading
Happy Doomsday by David Sosnowski My rating: 1 of 5 stars I got this for free from the Kindle First (or whatever it’s called now) program where Amazon Prime members get a free book each month. It’s been a while since I disliked a book a much as I disliked this one. I kept reading … | Continue reading
Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is my second time reading the book. I lowered the rating from 5 to 4 stars mostly because 5 stars is “it was amazing” and 4 stars is “really liked it” so that’s a more honest assessment. This is a book that I […] | Continue reading
Nightmare Magazine, Issue 137 by Nightmare Magazine My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Cut Cares Not for the Flesh (George Sandison) – It was foreshadowed from the first paragraphs, but if one finds themselves in a horror story, it pays to read the contractual fine-print. I’ve read stor … | Continue reading
Butts: A Backstory by Heather Radke My rating: 3 of 5 stars This book is definitely more political than the last non-fiction book I read, Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, but that makes sense. The author’s entire thesis is not so much about but … | Continue reading
I came across this video that’s a pretty in-depth history of video game controller that taught me quite a bit I didn’t know and helped bridge some connections between the different companies throughout the industry’s history. | Continue reading
I first heard MxPx 28 or 29 years ago. At the time my family was still a church-going family. This was my first experience with the idea of a youth group that played rock song versions of the praise music. So I was jazzed to go to church every Wednesday and Sunday. The middle sch … | Continue reading
I didn’t really use any new programs this year. I just continued expanding on programs I’ve used in the past. Python For Python I continued to mostly use Pycharm. I’ve spoken about it for the past few years, but JetBrains continues to add features that make it easier to work with … | Continue reading
Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 113, October 2019 by John Joseph Adams My rating: 4 of 5 stars Another great issue of Lightspeed Magazine. There was only one story I wasn’t a fan of. Science Fiction———–The Beasts We Want to Be (Sam J. Miller) – a historical SF set in Russia after the … | Continue reading
Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon My rating: 5 of 5 stars I loved listening to this book. The author (also the narrator) does an incredible job taking a look at every difference between male and female bodies and explaining the cu … | Continue reading
Starter Villain by John Scalzi My rating: 4 of 5 stars Just like Scalzi’s previous book, The Kaiju Preservation Society, this one is a real popcorn book. It’s also got a pretty silly movie-inspired premise and I consider them to be in a meta series. As the book blurb says, our pr … | Continue reading
Night Watch by Terry Pratchett My rating: 4 of 5 stars this is my second time reading the book. The rating remains 4/5 stars. I didn’t remember liking this book so much given the fact that I’m not much of a fan of time loops, at least, not since I got use to the idea. […] | Continue reading
Golden Age and Other Stories by Naomi Novik My rating: 4 of 5 stars A neat collection of short stories that take place in the world of the Temeriare series. Some of them are simultaneous with the series and some take place afterwards. It’s a fun little reunion with our friends fr … | Continue reading
In my 2022 year-end blog post, I thought I was going to focus more on finishing up the narrative video games I started in the prior years. I definitely made some good progress on Disco Elysium, but not nearly as much as I wanted. I didn’t finish any of the narrative games. In Jan … | Continue reading
I’m all-in on 8bitDo. Prior to getting on the 8bitDo train, I was mainly focused on PC gaming, so I would get Xbox controllers (whatever the latest was at the time). But with 8bitDo supporting PC, Switch, Android, and (I think) the Xbox and PS4/5 with addaptors – it’s a no-braine … | Continue reading
League of Dragons by Naomi Novik My rating: 4 of 5 stars A perfect ending to the Temeriare series. There’s finally an ending to the Napoleonic threat – I won’t say whether it follows the same trajectory as in our world. But, more importantly, we finally begin to see dragons final … | Continue reading
Mislaid in Parts Half-Known by Seanan McGuire My rating: 4 of 5 stars Since this novella only just came out on Tuesday (a few days ago), I’m going to be very careful about any spoilers other than what can easily be inferred from the back of the book description. McGuire has forme … | Continue reading
Another year has ended and so it’s time to take a look at the music I listened to all year. First of all, it was yet another year in which I grew my personal music collection. I’ve seen more an more artists removed from places like Spotify, Apple Music, etc, so it’s still importa … | Continue reading
Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is my second time reading this book. I left the rating at 3/5 I debated dropping the rating to 2 stars (“It was OK”), but Lu-Tze was enough to keep it at 3 stars. I am not sure if we learned his […] | Continue reading
Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 112, September 2019 by John Joseph Adams My rating: 4 of 5 stars Even though AI has been a constant subject in science fiction for nearly 100 years now, it’s interesting reading the two AI-related stories in the 2023, the year of ChatGPT. Although ChatG … | Continue reading
Blood of Tyrants by Naomi Novik My rating: 4 of 5 stars Oh, Temeriaire, you sweet summer child-dragon (to mix together 2 vastly different dragon-containing series). Yes, you’re learning, but you still are way too optimistic about people, dragons, and battles. This was one of the … | Continue reading
In 2023 I just didn’t have the urge to do as much programming as in years past. I felt more of a tug towards video games, reading, and baking/cooking. So this recap will be quite a bit shorter than usual. A couple upfront themes and ideas: The programming was essentially Go and P … | Continue reading
By the end of 2023 I had 3049 ebooks and magazines (a change of 256 – pretty even with last year). Of those, 2434 were unread. Some chunk of those – maybe as much as ¼ were giveaways like Raspberry Pi Magazine, HackSpace Magazine, and Tor.com book club freebies. I stopped getting … | Continue reading
Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 111, August 2019 by John Joseph Adams My rating: 4 of 5 stars This issue was one in which I enjoyed all of the stories very much. Science Fiction One Thousand Beetles in a Jumpsuit (Dominica Phetteplace) – a dystopian story taking place “20 Minutes in t … | Continue reading
The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi My rating: 4 of 5 stars What is this book? It’s a love-letter to science fiction nerds. It shares narrative bits with Jurassic Park. It’s a reminder of how disruptive 2020 […] | Continue reading
Crucible of Gold by Naomi Novik My rating: 4 of 5 stars When we last left Laurence and Temeriare, they were in Australia, contemplating retirement. This book has them dragged back in because Napoleon continues to scheme. Thanks to the deviation from our history in which Africa ha … | Continue reading
I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells My rating: 3 of 5 stars I’m not a horror person – I got this to listen to with my wife on a car trip. She calls the book Baby-Dexter. She’s not wrong. I think the book fits in a very interesting intersection. It’s (in my […] | Continue reading
Long Past Dues by James J. Butcher My rating: 3 of 5 stars (a reminder that I use the star rating tooltips on the goodreads site. 3 stars = “I liked it”.) Butcher, the son, is back with another entry in The Unorthodox Chronicles. Book 1 was a buddy-cop plot. We’re back with the s … | Continue reading
Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novik My rating: 3 of 5 stars Just like the Africa book, this one is a lot of just passing the time without much happening. Then in the last few chapters we get a bunch of bombshells about how the world continues to differ from ours because of the the … | Continue reading
Lightspeed Magazine, April 2018 by John Joseph Adams My rating: 4 of 5 stars SCIENCE FICTION What is Eve? (Will McIntosh) – Will does a great job with the story. The reader can probably guess the general direction of the story, but it’s the details that make it shine. I think he … | Continue reading
Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik My rating: 4 of 5 stars I found this book to be a nice change of pace from book 4. It was more exciting and moved the plot along quite a bit. We’ve had the dragon suffrage plot as a Chekov’s Gun since around the first book and we […] | Continue reading
Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik My rating: 4 of 5 stars I have come to the realization that what I enjoy in this series is similar to what I enjoy in Anne Leckie’s Imperial Radch series – I enjoy the formality of the systems that govern the main character’s lives. I wouldn’t want … | Continue reading
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia My rating: 4 of 5 stars I was not familiar with the original (The Island of Doctor Moreau Illustrated), but my wife tells me the plot is fairly similar (based on her recollection of the Marlon Brando movie). What we get out of … | Continue reading
For the past 9 years I’ve been using a Garmin watch while swimming. Back then I had a swim-focused watch, now I have a multi-sport watch. Most days the biggest benefits are the fact that I can pre-load a workout (so that I don’t need to print one out or keep my phone nearby (whil … | Continue reading
American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza by Peter Reinhart My rating: 4 of 5 stars As a cookbook this one is fascinating. It will not be a huge surprise to those who have read Reinhart’s other bread books, but the first half of the book is entirely prose. Reinhart takes us o … | Continue reading
The Sunlit Man by Brandon Sanderson My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Year of Sanderson is over (book-wise anyway). This book is the most Cosmere book of the year. Both Tress of the Emerald Sea and Yumi and the Nightmare Painter were basically standalone stories that happened to have H … | Continue reading
House of X/Powers of X by Jonathan Hickman My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is Hickman at his most Hickman. There are repeated timelines, conspiracies, and a semi-non-linear story that goes out 1000 years from the time of the first book. It’s more sci-fi than a typical X-Men book. It … | Continue reading
Compulsory by Martha Wells My rating: 3 of 5 stars Almost too short, it’s definitely microfiction. Murderbot is still Murderbot, but doesn’t get to shine with such a small word count. View all my reviews | Continue reading