The Making of Prince of Persia by Jordan Mechner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I got this as part of a bundle - probably Storybundle as I’ve bought nearly all their video game bundles - and I had put it off in favor of other books because I don’t have a strong connection to Prince of Persia (POP henceforth). My family was working poor until I was getting into later elementary school, by which time a lot of computer game industry had lost its first “death” to the consoles. By the time I was playing computer games, it was mostly just RTSes hanging on and we weren’t anywhere near the Steam Renaissance that would make the PC the best place to play games again (except for bad ports).

Big Pulp Fall 2011: On The Road From Galilee by Michael D. Turner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A fun anthology that had more stories I liked than didn’t. As usual for an anthology, a collection of my status updates as the review:

“On the road from Gallilee” - time travel and it tackles the age-old question. But they deal with it in a very creative way.

The Machine God by MeiLin Miranda

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, this story functions quite well to continue the story from Black Mercury. We see the fates of many of the characters from the previous novel, but this really is quite a different story with a different focus. The series is going from mostly Steampunk to Steampunk Fantasy in this book while also exploring ideas of colonialism, fallen empires, and racism. (Also university and identity politics)

As I continue to go through my photos from May, I found these photos of Sam using his bubble lawnmower when I was cutting the grass.

Earlier this year we took the twins to Coney Island for the first time. They were not amused.

This year Scarlett concluded a season of ballet and tap with a recital. It was pretty neat to see it all come together after having seen it in bits throughout the season. Here are some of the photos I took. I think next year I’ll do the same thing the guy behind me did and rent some f2.8 glass so I can freeze the action a bit more and get less motion blur.

I had been wanting to do brisket for a very long time, but I couldn’t find anywhere convenient to buy a whole packer brisket. But right before I was convinced I was going to have to go to a butcher, Costco decided to carry them.

Yeah, it was 20 lbs, which is ridiculous for what was essentially going to be just 3 adults, but it was USDA Prime for only $3/lb! I had no choice. I put it in my shopping cart and resolved to deal with the consequences later.