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Review: The City We Became
The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin My rating: 4 of 5 stars A love letter to New York meets Lovecraftian Horror and you get this book. I believe this is probably one of those love or hate books with very little room in between. As someone who married into a NYC family, I was […]
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Review: Nettle & Bone
Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher My rating: 5 of 5 stars Well, that was incredible and deserving of all the praise it got. I was already a fan of T. Kingfisher from when my eldest daughter convinced me to read A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, but this was just so perfect to me. […]
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Review: The Last Continent
The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett My rating: 1 of 5 stars This is my second time reading. I dropped the rating from 2 to 1 star The first time I read this book, I thought, “I’m done with Rincewind stories”. And this second time around cemented that. The book is essentially Pratchett riffing on […]
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Review: The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories
The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories by Tara Moore My rating: 3 of 5 stars Thoughts as I first read through this collection:Boy, modern English is so dumbed down. I love to read and read voraciously and still found it so laborious to read some of these short stories. Everyone speaks in purple […]
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Review: Tress of the Emerald Sea
Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson My rating: 5 of 5 stars As a Kickstarter backer on this campaign, I was able to read this book immediately on the first day of the year and I bet it will be tough to find another book that I will love more this year. As […]
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Review: Dead Man’s Hand
Dead Man’s Hand by James J. Butcher My rating: 4 of 5 stars This first book by Jim Butcher’s son has prose that reads like a combination of his father’s prose and John Scalzi’s prose. It’s fun and sarcastic, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t serious stakes. I was actually quite happy that Butcher tends […]
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Swimming 2022
About a decade after someone first suggested that I should join US Masters Swimming, I finally did. Originally it was because a local swim team required swimmers to be USMS members. I didn’t end up joining the team because the pool plus team fees were a bit more than I wanted to spend. But, since […]
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An Update on Fedora 36, Plasma 5 and Wayland
KDE Wayland has come a long way support has come a long way since I last wrote about it 8 months ago. Yakuake now shows up in the correct place (although it seems to have a hard time remembering to start up upon login). The lock screen bug hasn’t hit me in the past month. […]
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2022 In Programming
I started off the year mostly working on Python projects. For January and February I finally started making some great progress with understanding modern web frameworks and use of CSS frameworks rather than rolling my own. This not only helped with the Prophecy Practicum project, but would form the backbone to a lot of coding […]
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Carol Chidester Series Swim Meets #4 and #5 (Jan and Feb 2023)
Meet No4 (Jan 2023) This meet was at the Arundel Olympic Center. It was my first time there, and what a beautiful venue for a swim meet! Unlike the other pools in the Carol Chidester series it has 6 or more lanes available for warmup and cooldown while the meet is running. This is due […]
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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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Programming Update: December 2022
December was wholly dedicated to solving the Advent of Code 2022 problem set. Our job was to help the elves trek through the jungle to get magical starfruit. It was a lot of fun to do it live once again! This year I also had experience from the previous years (both live and on my […]