Over the Wine-Dark Sea by H.N. Turteltaub

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the second time I’ve read this book, the first time being nearly 20 years ago when it first came out. A few key bits had stuck with me, like Menedemos’ womanizing and a battle at sea. But after 20 years, most of the details had faded, so it was almost like reading it anew.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 134 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wasn’t quite into this one as much as some other recent issues. Here are my reviews per story:

Prasetyo Plastics - Less of a traditional story and more of a meditation on unbridled capitalism that does not descend into a libertarian dystopia. Rather, it’s another that asks if we truly realize what we’re doing to this planet on a scale that we believe has never been attempted before.

Starswept by Mary Fan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I met Ms. Fan at Farpoint 2019 at her booth after seeing some of the panels she was on. We started talking about her books and I was intrigued and put this book and Stronger Than a Bronze Dragon on my To Read list. I also started following Ms. Fan on Twitter, and from getting to know her via tweet, she has put a lot of herself into this book: She went to college for music and has original compositions on her site: https://www.maryfan.com/songs.html. There are silks performances in the book and Ms. Fan is currently attending classes to get better at performing silk (Cirque de Soliel type stuff) routines.

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve been really improving my cooking by leaps and bounds thanks to America’s Test Kitchen’s books. They make sure recipes are perfect (or as near as can be) in terms of directions, ingredients, etc. They have truly spoiled me to the point that I often hate other cookbooks. But, as my wife says, you’re not truly cooking until you can just look at the ingredients in the house and come up with food on the fly. Or know how much salt the food needs by tasting it. So, after seeing Samin Nosrat’s Netflix show (which shares its name with this book), I added the book to my wishlist.

I wrote about GitQlient a while ago. A few days ago I got a GitHub notification that GitQlient had finally reached 1.0. Consequently, the author created an Appimage version of the client so I was finally able to try it without having to compile on my own. As I started taking screenshots for blog post, I realized that the points I wanted to make would be more easily made if I could show them via a video, so I made a video comparing the two.

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to ask the twins what they did that day while they were isolated from each other.

Stella: “We played LEGO and built a lot of cool things.”

Sam: “We went to Costco and then came right back home.”

Mind you, they both had the exact same day and did the exact same things. If I had to guess at why they focused on the things they did, I’d say that Sam’s answer was based on the fact that he likes to go out, especially to the park. So he was upset they’d left the house and hadn’t done anything he found fun. I’m not sure why Stella only focused on the LEGOs, but she is still playing with them a few days later, so maybe she was really happy to have new things to play with.

I was reading Serious Python by Julien Danjou as well as looking through other Python repos when I realized that my Extra Life Donation Tracker repo was a mess. (It’ll be different by the time you read this, but here’s how it looked at the time) After learning about how things should be structured and reading Mr. Danjou’s book about how I could use Sphinx to auto-document my code, I decided to undertake the challenge. However, there was a lot to learn and this code is used by many others for their Extra Life campaigns. I wanted to start off with much simpler code, so I started off by packetizing my lastfm-twitter code. It was a fun journey over the last week or so as I learned how to restructure my code and auto-document. (I also learned a lot about how to use Drone CI, which I’m using for my home projects that aren’t on GitHub) As the final lesson, I taught myself how to create a package for PyPi via Drone CI and so, I now have a PyPi package that anyone can import with pip!

This year I’ve added some narration to the video which is duplicated below for the hearing impaired. Below all that you’ll find my favorite video game of 2019!!

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Stardew Valley: I was a big fan of Harvest Moon when it came out on the GameCube. My future wife and I spent way more time than we should have playing it instead of studying in college. When Stardew Valley first came out, it piqued my interest. Maybe it could scratch the same itch. But I was busy at the time so I put it off until this year when it was on Sale. I immediately loved the trip back to SNES-era graphics and the love and care that ConcernedApe obviously put into the game. As I advanced in the game, each new level of skills brought new fun to the game. It’s pretty easy to see why it has such a dedicated fan-base on its subreddit. I will say that I’m a little surprised when I see people on the subreddit who have farms that are way past year 3. There’s definitely a lot to do in Stardew Valley, but the biggest reason I haven’t finished (get to the end of year 2) is because I’ve reached a point where I essentially have infinite money and nothing else I truly want to buy - it’s the same thing that ended up killing Harvest Moon for my wife. Now, I *do* understand the replayability factor - there are many reasons for that, including the fact that there are 4 or 5 different maps which require different farm strategies. I hope sometime in 2020 to “finish” the game and maybe in late 2020 to start a new farm.

Without a doubt, the biggest story to tell about my cooking in 2019 is learning how to make, and no longer be intimidated by, breads. I made 15 different new breads and biscuits this year, including new family favorites like the Amish Friendship Bread and Brown Butter-Cardemom Banana bread. Also, there were the harder breads like the braided cinnamon bread and hot cross buns.

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• cinnamon swirl bread
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After spending years wanting to make my own bacon, I finally did!

A Man On the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The book that was used by Ron Howard, et al to make the Apollo 13 movie!

I got this book as part of a space-themed Humble Audiobook Bundle. As I was choosing the next audiobook I’d listen to whenever I ran out of podcast, I decided to go for non-fiction book. And so I started my journey through a couple decades of NASA history. Once things get going (ie the men are on their way to the moon), Chaikin does an excellent job of switching POVs throughout the mission to give us some insight into each man’s thoughts, challenges, and even prank ideas. Since hacks/hackers originate with the MIT train team and the Stanford/Caltech student pranks, it’s no surprise that NASA missions had the same kinds of Easter Eggs one finds in video games (especially in the more wild-west era of video game development before everything became AAA multi-million dollar games in the late 90s; of course with the re-emergence of indie games you’re seeing them again). As examples, there were jokes embedded in their instruction manuals, various parts of the spaceships, or in coded messages back and forth with NASA HQ.