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What 8bitDo can learn from the Competition (and also what 8bitDo is doing better!)
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-brainer to go with 8bitDo,…
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Review: League of Dragons
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 finally understand their place in…
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Review: Mislaid in Parts Half-Known
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 formed a main clique…
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2023 in Music (Last.FM and Spotify Listening Trends)
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 important to…
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Review: Thief of Time
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…
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Review: Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 112, September 2019
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 ChatGPT is still far away from general AI,…
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Review: Blood of Tyrants
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 better Temeriare novels, although so far they’ve all been…
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My Reading Life in 2023
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 the monthly free…
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Review: Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 111, August 2019
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 the Future” that seems to me…
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Review: The Kaiju Preservation Society
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 was in every day. I had a lot of fun with this story. I think the only…
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Review: Crucible of Gold
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 has been wrested from colonialism, Napoleon makes a…
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Review: I am not a Serial Killer
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…
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Review: Long Past Dues
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 same…
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Review: Tongues of Serpents
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…
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Review: Lightspeed Magazine, April 2018
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 also does a…