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Review: The Circlet Treasury of Erotic Steampunk
The Circlet Treasury of Erotic Steampunk by J. Blackmore My rating: 4 of 5 stars As I’ve said many times before – I’ve been exploring more genres recently instead of locking myself into just one. I don’t remember how this ended up in my To-Read list back in 2014, but it’s definitely different than my…
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Reviews: The Future is Japanese: Science Fiction Futures and Brand New Fantasies from and about Japan; Cibola Burn; Edgedancer; Sixth of the Dusk; The Virtuous Feats of the Indomitable Miss Trafalgar and the Erudite Lady Boone; The Churn; Altered America: Steampunk Stories; Dungeon Hacks: How NetHack, Angband, and Other Roguelikes Changed the Course of Video Games; Nemesis Games; Legion
The Future is Japanese: Science Fiction Futures and Brand New Fantasies from and about Japan by Masumi Washington My rating: 3 of 5 stars Another anthology. As usual, I’ve included my status updates with some spelling fixes. Overall it was a very uneven collection in terms of what I enjoyed. The stories all seemed to…
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XCOM, Steam, and Linux
One of the great things about Steam and the internet is the cloud save. It means that you can go from computer to computer and, as long as it’s connected to the Internet, you can pick up your game where you left off. In my case, I have a Windows computer and a Linux computer…
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Review: Raising Steam
Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett My rating: 3 of 5 stars I don’t know what’s different this time. Maybe it’s me; maybe it’s Sir Pratchett. This book just never seemed to have a climax. Had the journey not been sufficiently fun I might have scored it 2 stars. This book reminds me of what was…
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Review: A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk
A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk by Scott E. Tarbet My rating: 5 of 5 stars It’s always tough when people redo Shakespeare. Sometimes it works really well and sometimes it’s just horrible. I absolutely loved the way Scott Tarbet resets a Midsummer Night’s Dream in a Steampunk Victorian England. He was able to use Steampunk to…
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Amarok works with NPR steam now!
It’s not a surprise that I love Amarok. Take a look at the related posts below. I think nothing beats it as a music program. If the KDE4 for Windows libraries were more robust I’d recommend it for everyone. As is, I think it’s the best on Linux. But, until the most recent updates there…
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Valve To Release Steam on Linux?
I heard this on The Linux Outlaws Episode 42 and I thought it was a pretty awesome idea. Up until now Valve has been pretty hostile towards people asking them to release onto Linux, even threatening to ban anyone who brought it up in the forums. Apparently someone has convinced them of the merits because…
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Review: Golden Age and Other Stories
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 from the last 9…
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2023 Game of the Year
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 January, I…
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Review: Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 106, March 2019
Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 106, March 2019 by John Joseph Adams My rating: 4 of 5 stars SCIENCE FICTION The Synapse Will Free Us from Ourselves (Violet Allen) – a story that seems (however horrifying) even more likely now than it did when this issue was first printed. I don’t want to give anything away so…
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Review: Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 105, February 2019
Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 105, February 2019 by John Joseph Adams My rating: 4 of 5 stars Here are my reviews per story: SCIENCE FICTIONLife Sentence (Matthew Baker) – This story’s a real doozy. It’s about a potentially different way to handle criminal punishment. Because this is a well-written story, it’s not simple to decide which…
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Review: Continue? The Boss Fight Books Anthology
Continue? The Boss Fight Books Anthology by Gabe Durham My rating: 4 of 5 stars This whole collection of essays makes me think a lot about the semi-gonzo video game reviews that Tim Rogers is known for. The shorter format allows the authors to be much more creative than they can be in the full-size…
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2022 in Video Games and 2022 Video Game of the Year
1. Gwent (1 day, 5:50:44): Around May I found out that CD Projekt Red had changed the rules around the Gwent Journey, so that journeys were no longer time-bound. This meant I no longer felt pressured to play every day in order to progress. Freed from feeling forced to play, I once again caught the…
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Review: Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution
Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R.F. Kuang My rating: 4 of 5 stars It will be very interesting to compare this book to Seize the Stars when I get to it next year. Both involve the seeming impossibility of pushing for justice against a society…
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Ted Corbitt 15k 2022
Because of various issues I wrote about before (mostly stemming from the issue with my right sesamoids), I ended up canceling my summer and fall races. The last one I was really looking forward to was the Ted Corbitt 15k, honoring Mr. Corbitt who has a long list of achievements, including being the first African-American…