-
Making sure video games can be played by the widest group
Ever since a class during my undergrad which mentioned technology that can help make sure the real world is accessible to all folks no matter what their physical limits may be, I’ve been very interested in the topic. It’s led to my interest on web accessibility (although I’m not always perfect when it comes to…
-
Review: Generation Xbox: How Videogames Invaded Hollywood
Generation Xbox: How Videogames Invaded Hollywood by Jamie Russell My rating: 4 of 5 stars Anyone who has followed my book reviews on Good Reads or my blog knows that I have read quite a bit of video game history. Whether it’s a history of video games starting with the miltiary and university campuses, a…
-
MxPx – MxPx: You’re Never Too Old to Rock
Last October I came back to MxPx, as I detailed in this post about how the lyrics for Friday Tonight led me to finally watch Friday. Over the past half year I would return to their self-titled album on Spotify. (I don’t subscribe to Spofity, but I do use the free tier to discover new…
-
MxPx – Before Everything & After: What if MxPx made a Good Charlotte album?
(the first 3 paragraphs are a slight modification of what I wrote for an Amazon review) The headline kind of gives it away, but this album definitely sounds like a cross between early/late MxPx and Good Charlotte. You can see on Wikipedia and other places that this was part of a 3ish album trend where MxPx…
-
Mozilla’s Legacy
A few days ago I read this article over at Tech Republic about how, Mozilla’s greatest achievement is not Firefox, but the Rust programming language. They point to Firefox’s declining numbers in the face of Chrome and Chromium-based browsers and I’m inclined to agree with the author. There is, of course, a kind of poetry…
-
2020 in Music (Last.FM and Spotify listening trends)
Thanks to COVID I missed out on the concert where I was going to see Paul and Storm and Jonathan Coulton. Compared to last year, I also barely bought any music. This year I switched from using Ampache to listen to my music at work, to using Funkwhale. The more responsive interface has led to…
-
Review: The Mongoliad: Book Three
The Mongoliad: Book Three by Neal Stephenson My rating: 5 of 5 stars This book was a great cap to the long trilogy (although – put together I think it’s not longer than a Brandon Sanderson Stormlight Archive book). While the first third of the book continues to build things up, we’ve met just about…
-
All Journey and No Destination: Friday and Fast Times at Ridgemont High
By complete coincidence I ended up watching Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Friday (each for the first time) back to back this week. I watched Fast Times because it was being covered by Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson were covering it on Unspooled, their film podcast. As for Friday, well, that’s a slightly more…
-
Review: Ancillary Sword
Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie My rating: 5 of 5 stars I’m a huge world-building junkie. It’s one of the reasons I love science fiction and fantasy. And, as I realized while writing the previous sentence, it’s also why I love history non-fiction books and podcasts. I love learning about the society and what drives…
-
Review: A Man On the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts
A Man On the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin My rating: 4 of 5 stars The book that was used by Ron Howard, et al to make the Apollo 13 movie! I got this book as part of a space-themed Humble Audiobook Bundle. As I was choosing the next audiobook…
-
Today in Programming: MakeCode and Python
Python A user of my Extra Life Donation Tracker program discovered that I had introduced a regression for brand new users who didn’t have a persistent setting. I thought about it overnight and it was exactly what I thought it would be – when I switched away from threading for the GUI, I forgot to…
-
Hey, Pycharm, hey.
Back in September I wrote about moving to KDevelop for my larger Python projects and also staying with Kate for my smaller projects. I’ve REALLY been enjoying all the features as I work on more and more complex packages involving lots of files. But for a few episodes of Python Bytes now (and/or maybe Talk…
-
Review: A Man On the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts
A Man On the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin My rating: 4 of 5 stars The book that was used by Ron Howard, et al to make the Apollo 13 movie! I got this book as part of a space-themed Humble Audiobook Bundle. As I was choosing the next audiobook…
-
Review: Fool Moon (The Dresden Files, #2)
Fool Moon by Jim Butcher My rating: 5 of 5 stars I typically read 1-3 fiction books at once (depends on whether I’m caught up on my podcasts and listening to an audiobook), going back and forth between books I already own (say from Humble Bundle or Story Bundle) and books I have to buy.…
-
Review: Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson My rating: 4 of 5 stars I think the best way to describe this book is to reference the last chapter and Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s catchphrase on his podcast – the Cosmic Perspective. Even though I already knew a bunch of the info in the…