A guy in a wheelchair with a hook for a hand is in a bad spot.

-D.D. from work (who is wheelchair bound, but does not have hooks for hands)

Interviewed for MyLinuxRig.com about my desktop setup and Linux history. Press Coverage of Baltimore Comic-Con 2014

And working on my graduate degree.

April:

Civilization V (7 hrs): Met Dan in Mesa Bros; Waiting in Lefties Game

May:

Civilization V (11 hrs): More of the multiplayer games.

June:

Civ V (3 hrs): More multiplayer games.

Super Meat Boy (30 min): I played a few levels until it began to get too hard for me. It is a very well-designed game, but I was never that good at platformers. Really, I just stuck to Mario and Sonic growing up. The others were often too hard for me; at times even Mario and Sonic were too much. I don’t think I ever beat a Sonic game although with one of them (3 or S&K) I used to always get to the final Robotnick.

It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.

More Scarlett at the beach! This time in NYC!

It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.

Scarlett at the Beach in Florida and my dinner at Universal Studios.

Strip Tease by Carl Hiaasen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve listened to somewhere between four and five dozen audiobooks (used to be an Audible subscriber) and the voice acting/narration on this book is definitely in my top three, if not in the top spot itself. Although the narrator slipped a bit in the last chapter with Garcia sounding a bit like Chad, it was otherwise an amazing performance. The narrator did something like 15 different, distinct voices. It’s not always necessary and it’s distracting if done poorly, but for this book it really brought something special. I’ve been a huge opponent of those who have used ebook DRM to prevent book readers from autoreading books to the sight-impaired. This book is a perfect example of why they shouldn’t prevent sight-impaired people from having a machine read a book. That’s just someone reading a book. It’s nothing special. But a performance, like in this recording of Striptease, that’s something worth paying for and something MANY years away when it comes to machine reading.

From Hell by Alan Moore

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There’s something to be said for the rough style of this graphic novel. It goes quite well with the subject matter. There’s also a bit of - “oh, the gore’s it’s not so bad if it’s in black and white” like Hitchcock’s Psycho. And, like Psycho, there’s the added benefit of us being able to suspend more disbelief because it’s in black and white. Hitchcock used syrup or chocolate, I can’t remember, for the blood. Similarly, we can get caught up in the story and the gore without being taken out of it with the blood being the wrong color. Also, as I’ve mentioned on some of my reviews here and on www.comicpow.com , color affects the way you interpret the comic - is it more cartoony or realistic. I remember a few years back hearing someone having issues with a sci-fi comic because the palette was all wrong. All that said, the lack of color and the rough drawings sometimes made it hard for me to keep track of who was who.

How Music Works by David Byrne

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is not a book about how the mind interprets music or why we make music from an evolutionary point of view (although the topic is explored in the last chapter). It is probably more suitably titled How Music is Made - although I can see why they didn’t pick that title - people might expect a set of steps for making music on their own.

Don’t Know Much About Mythology: Everything You Need to Know About the Greatest Stories in Human History but Never Learned by Kenneth C. Davis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is a great primer on mythology. Although it spends a lot of time with the myths we are very familiar with (middle east, Greek, and Roman), it does also cover lesser known myths like Indian and Chinese. The best part of each section is the list of gods. I would recommend the book as a jumping off point for anything that interests you about mythology.

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It’s been nearly 15 years since I first saw Fight Club, the movie. Since then I’ve seen it front-to-back maybe twice. But it really stuck with me. As I listened to this audiobook I found myself wonder when this or that scene would come up since the movie turned out to be an incredibly faithful adaptation. There are a few key differences, most notably the ending. But also a more sympathetic Marla in the book. But, for the most part, all the best lines in the movie came from the book. It’s rare for such a perfect adaptation to work, especially with a narrated book. But somehow it did. I also loved the narrator of this version and how he did different voices.