With KDE’s 25th Anniversary and the release of KDE Plamsa 5.23, I got excited to check out a few KDE-focused distros. Kinoite First up was Fedora’s KDE-based RPM-OSTree distro, Kinoite. (summary after each video) Fedora provides a nice RPM-OSTree solution for folks who want to use the tech, but don’t want to use Gnome. The …
Author Archives: Eric Mesa
Review: Lightspeed Magazine, June 2014: Women Destroy Science Fiction! Special Issue
Lightspeed Magazine, June 2014: Women Destroy Science Fiction! Special Issue by Christie Yant My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is one of my favorite collections of stories and one of the best anthologies/magazines I’ve read so far in 2021. A lot of the stories in here a phenomenal. There are also a lot of …
Review: The Consuming Fire
The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi My rating: 4 of 5 stars Scalzi continues to kick butt in the second book of The Interdependency. I’m used to the second book of a planned trilogy to be all setup for the third book which can mostly be climax. Yet, within this book Scalzi continues to have …
Review: Witches Abroad
Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is my second time reading the book Our third outing with the Witches and the second one that includes Magrat Garlick. This one is part parody of the travelogue and part parody of Fairy Tales and Fairy Godmothers. It also introduces the Discworld …
Review: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins My rating: 4 of 5 stars I listened to the audiobook narrated by Greg from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend as I drove the 900-something miles from Maryland to Florida and it was better than I thought it would be. Ms Collins has avoided most of the annoying tropes …
Continue reading “Review: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes”
Review: The Collapsing Empire
The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi My rating: 4 of 5 stars I can’t believe I waited so long to read this book, it’s so great. The quick summary: Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series meets the family competition dynamics of Frank Herbert’s Dune. Interesting to read at the same time as The Ballad of Songbirds and …
Review: Exit Strategy
Exit Strategy by Martha Wells My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is the perfect ending to the original Murderbot novella quartet. All the threads from the previous three books finally line up in a way that sets Murderbot up for its debut novel. Murderbot takes everything its learned and developed in order to solve …
Review: Rogue Protocol
Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells My rating: 4 of 5 stars Another great entry in the Murderbot novellas! Our favorite SecUnit is once again involved in a mystery while working on the overarching plot of the novellas to figure out what happened during the incident that led it to override its governor as well as …
Review: Artificial Condition
Artificial Condition by Martha Wells My rating: 4 of 5 stars After reading the second entry in The Murderbot Diaries, I’m sold on why this is such a hit with everyone. Martha Wells takes what was great about the first one – an android who just barely understands human irrationality (although suffering from some himself …
Review: All Systems Red
All Systems Red by Martha Wells My rating: 4 of 5 stars I got this book for free from the Tor.com eBook club. Also, would have gotten it for free from the Hugos 2021 I know I’m late to everyone’s favorite genderless, somewhat on the autism spectrum, Murderbot but I really loved this book a …
Review: Necessity
Necessity by Jo Walton My rating: 5 of 5 stars This book was the perfect cap on the trilogy. Told in a series of POV chapters that shuttle back and forth through time, the book forms the perfect meta-analogy to the way the gods experience time. Their personal time is moving forward even as they …
Review: Black Powder War
Black Powder War by Naomi Novik My rating: 4 of 5 stars Black Powder War is another great entry by Ms. Novik in the Temeraire series. It picks up almost immediately after the previous book ended. Now Temeraire and crew must head to the Ottoman Empire. Oh, and for variety, Ms Novik has their ship …
Completing Advent of Code 2015 with 3 Programming languages
Throughout the spring and summer of 2021 a few of the times that I mentioned on the Advent of Code subreddit that I was doing the 2015 problem set in all 3 languages, some folks said they’d be interested in a writeup on the experience. Now that I’ve finally finished 2015 (my first set of …
Continue reading “Completing Advent of Code 2015 with 3 Programming languages”
Review: Crimson Son
Crimson Son by Russ Linton My rating: 3 of 5 stars I got this book from a Story Bundle called “Immerse or Die”. The editor of the bundle had a process that went something like, “I got on the treadmill and started reading. If the book wasn’t pulling me in by the time I finished …
Review: Reaper Man
Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is my second read. I have dropped the rating from 4 stars to 3 stars I love Discworld’s Death. He makes any book better by his presence and so I especially love the books that feature Death. In this book Death is the …