Ever since a class during my undergrad which mentioned technology that can help make sure the real world is accessible to all folks no matter what their physical limits may be, I’ve been very interested in the topic. It’s led to my interest on web accessibility (although I’m not always perfect when it comes to this blog) as well as in other realms. One of my favorite series from the Game Maker’s Toolkit Youtube channel is his yearly wrap-up on how accessible games were that year. Here is his 2020 video:

Auberon by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As the back of the book (so to speak…this is only available as an ebook at the moment) says, this novella is a chance to see what Amos’ old colleague Erich is up to. The novella starts off with a quote about a changing of the guard that mirrors the opening to The Churn. It appears that Erich has learned the lessons of that book and applied them to his current enterprise. At the same time, this novella really isn’t about Erich and his crime empire at all. (Although that probably would have been a pretty great novella in its own right). Instead it’s about Governor Rittenaur and, despite being listed as #8.5 in the series, it might reasonably fit in better as 7.5. The plot takes us back to right when Laconia has taken over and Governor Rittenaur is sent in to be in charge of the most important star system in terms of riches and potential scientific developments. It’s a story about colonizers and colonies that is mature enough to show that neither side is perfect. In a way, who you side with in this story says more about you than it does about anything else. Within that story, it’s also about ideological purity vs the real world. As we’ve already seen in a few novels, Duarte’s leadership style enforces and creates a hierarchy that does not tolerate deviations because they’re so certain that they are on the right side. One can form so many parallels to history in that.

Death Masks by Jim Butcher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If Goodreads had half-stars, I’d definitely give this one 4.5 stars. Butcher has taken everything I like about the Dresden files and eliminated a lot of what was annoying. Dresden has FINALLY earned the trust of Murphy on the SI unit at the Chicago PD. It was getting tiresome having them fight over dumb stuff. By the same token, Dresden is finally not trying to be such a hero that he holds back info from Murphy in a way that both endangers them and causes her not to trust him. Over the last couple books, Dresden and Marcone have reached a level of respect for each other. Sure, Dresden still would prefer to keep Marcone uninvolved, but at least he’s realized he shouldn’t be so childish.

Lightspeed Magazine, April 2014 by John Joseph Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a GREAT issue. I don’t think there was one story that wasn’t top-notch. My favorite SF stories were Codename: Delphi and Exhalation. My favorite fantasy was The Only Death in the City. The Afterparty excerpt was great and I added the book to my To Read list. As I normally do with collections or SFF magazines, below are my reviews per story. (They roughly align with my status posts, but sometimes I have to trim the statuses to remain within the character limits)

Generation Xbox: How Videogames Invaded Hollywood by Jamie Russell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Anyone who has followed my book reviews on Good Reads or my blog knows that I have read quite a bit of video game history. Whether it’s a history of video games starting with the miltiary and university campuses, a book like A Mind Forever Voyaging: A History of Storytelling in Video Games or the Boss Fight Books series - I’ve gone through quite a bit of video game history. So when this one started off with Atari and the ET game I was a little wary. By this point anyone my age or older with any bit of knowledge of video game history knows of the crash in the 80s and how it was (at least partially) caused by Atari’s horrible ET game. The Indiana Jones game would have been news to me if I hadn’t seen a long Ars Technica article about it last year. So a slightly boring start for me.

Programming Perl by Tom Christiansen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve effectively finished this book, although I’ll admit to skipping the section called “reference”; the book had already gotten deeper into the weeds than I needed at the moment.

I’ve read a lot of programming books over the past 15 years (and a few before that when I was a young buck trying to learn exactly what one could do with “computers” or on the “Internet”). But rarely have I read a programming book as delightful to read as this one; especially since it focuses so much on the internals of the language. But the book is written with that dad-joke-ish programmer humor that keeps it from ever getting too dry.

Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading as I do my Discworld re-read. Dropped the start rating from 3 stars to 2 stars.

This one seems a slight step backwards in the progression of Discworld novels. It’s not really about any character growth and we more or less get a sitcom-like reboot at the end. It appears Pratchett had not yet decided that we wanted to continue to modernize Anhk-Morpork as he would in the later novels. We do get a few new characters. Windle Poons is introduced here and continues into the next book, Reaper Man. Our main character’s class mate later features as a grad student who does the Discworld version of particle physics research. Otherwise, it’s another story in which too much magic allows Lovecraftian monsters a way to come in from the demon dimensions. Other than that it’s almost a Flintstones-level parody of Hollywood in which you look for the Discworld equivalent of real-world things - like 20th Century Fox being Century of the Fruitbat Pictures.

Introducing Go: Build Reliable, Scalable Programs by Caleb Doxsey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Over my many years as a programmer (and now boss of programmers) I’ve read many of O’Reilly’s series - Learning {language}, Programming {language}, {language} in a Nutshell, {language} Pocket Reference. This is the first time (that I can remember) that I’ve read a book in the “Introducing” series. I’d say this book is great for someone who already knows how to program, but wants to get a feel for the syntax Go uses. That does mean that the early chapters that introduce conditionals and loops are a bit elementary, but I have a hard time feeling that someone who’s never programmed before would really get the later chapters with pointers. Each chapter ends with some questions that makes me wonder if this book was developed to be a textbook for an introduction to programming high school or university class. It would certainly work well for a dev who has the support of a teacher and/or TAs.

After nearly 2 years of training, I finally was able to run the Credit Union Cherry Blossom 10 mile race on 12 Sept. Yeah, last year I ran a virtual race, but that was really no different than a training run. This year we finally had the COVID-19 vaccine and so the race was able to take place in person. It was worth it.

The starting line when I first arrived to the race.

After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A reminder that I go by Goodread’s tooltips for the star ratings. At the time I’m writing this, 3 stars is “liked it”

This is a very compelling short novel (or maybe novellette? or novella?) That jumps back and forth between 3 time periods, although eventually two of them coalesce into one. In the future (2035) humanity is hanging on by a thread after some kind of world-ending disaster has struck. The best parts of the story focus on the interpersonal conflicts in a “society” that cannot afford them. More than at any time in which you’ve ever hear the platitudes, the group really does need to be put above individual needs.