Today I ran my first trail run, the Bigfoot Endurance Trail. I will definitely say that Ripit Events did a great job running the race. There were lots of good reminder emails leading up to the race. They had folks managing parking. Everything went smoothly and, more or less, on time. The race was at …
Author Archives: Eric Mesa
Florida in July
Playing With Sparklers
Catching up with my photos from July. These are my favorite sparkler photos.
Was Something Killing Birds in Maryland this summer?
When I was walking through my yard in July I found these three dead birds And all summer I kept finding bird corpses during my neighborhood runs. Did they eat too many cicadas or something?
MxPx – Panic and Secret Weapon (Special Edition)
I continued to catch up with the MxPx back catalog and purchased both Panic and Secret Weapon. My initial feelings upon listening were that I liked a lot more songs on Secret Weapon. But maybe, as with Before Everything & After this would turn out to be just a first impression where when looking at …
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Adding Art to the Mundane
I saw this when I was doing a boardwalk run this summer. I’d been visiting Coney Island for nearly 20 years at this point, but the recent revitalization has been impressive to see. That includes ideas like this art that bring happiness and joy even when Nathan’s is closed.
Programming Update: September / October 2021
Across both September and October I got a decent amount of programming done. I just about finished the Learn You Haskell for Great Good book (got up to just before Monads) and started Head First Go. Once I had enough Go language to get started on AoC, I knew I’d be ready for the 2016 …
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Review: Riot Baby
Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi My rating: 3 of 5 stars I got this book for free twice: Tor.com ebook club and Hugo Award nomination This book was very, very hard to read. It ripped open so many of the psychological wounds from the past decade in which I finally, truly understood the injustice of …
Review: Axiom’s End
Axiom’s End by Lindsay Ellis My rating: 3 of 5 stars I received this book for free as part of 2021 Hugo voting process. Also, a reminder that I use the Goodreads tooltips for ratings – 3/5 means “liked it” – it’s not a bad rating. Let’s use the whole scale, guys! I have been …
Review: Lords and Ladies
Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is my second time reading Lords and Ladies Throughout this re-read I have asked a question in my reviews: Is this a good jumping on point for The Discworld. I have tried to give justifications for an answer in either direction. This …
Review: The Last Emperox
The Last Emperox by John Scalzi My rating: 4 of 5 stars Well, that was quite the trilogy! Scalzi took all that he had been building up over the three books and used them to create a satisfying ending. If this isn’t your first Scalzi series you won’t be surprised by the ending. Don’t get …
Review: Django 2 by Example: Build powerful and reliable Python web applications from scratch
Django 2 by Example: Build powerful and reliable Python web applications from scratch by Antonio Melé My rating: 3 of 5 stars If you want to learn Django, definitely get the newer version of this book that covers Django 3. That said, this book was VERY helpful in getting me started with Django for the …
Review: Network Effect
Network Effect by Martha Wells My rating: 5 of 5 stars I got this book for free by being a World Con member for the 2021 convention. It’s part of the review packet.So, that was really flippin’ good. I wasn’t sure how well Martha Wells would do at transitioning from novella length Murderbot to full-length …
Review: Small Gods
Small Gods by Terry Pratchett My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is my second time reading this book. I dropped the rating from 5/5 to 4/5. As usual, Terry Pratchett uses the fantasy of Discworld to shed light on reality. This book is less whimsical than other Discworld book although it does have its …
How to get around Elisa’s lack of last.fm scrobbling
Elisa is currently the “default” KDE music player, replacing Amarok. I am just taking a guess, but I think that Amarok just ended up with too large a codebase to be maintainable at a reasonable pace. I’ve been using Cantata, an mpd player for KDE that’s currently on maintenance mode. On the one hand, I …
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