Then Will The Great Ocean Wash Deep Above by Ian Sales

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I don’t usually say this because I can understand people having different opinions about fiction, but I’m baffled by the higher scores on this book. The first two in this quartet had a conventional plot; even if the stories were mostly about the journey with just a little twist tacked onto the end. But on this one I didn’t even understand how the two stories fit together. The book provides a history less at the end so we understand in which way Mr. Sales different from our timeline, but I almost feel the fact that this one hewed so close to reality that he had to do that was a failure compared to the other two books. Oh well, we’ll see what happens with the fourth one.

White Sand, Volume 2 by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As per usual, the second volume in a trilogy keeps setting things up without any resolution. The same applies here. That said, I do like the forward momentum in Kenton and Kris’ respective stories. While it is nice to see an illustrated version of Mr. Sanderson’s work, I can’t help wishing this were just a prose novel. There’s so much detail that I know we’re not getting because comics are a “show, don’t tell” medium. Still, the story’s kind of neat and it’s fun to see a new magic system. Interestingly, Kenton helps someone named Trell and I could have sworn that’s the name we’ve heard about in Mistborn Era 2? Clearly this story takes place before Mistborn Era 2 because we know that Kris has been exiled from her planet and we know that she’s on Scadrial around the time of Mistborn Era 1 books 2 and 3. So maybe this Trell ends up on Scadrial somehow? Or maybe (and this is rare for Sanderson) it’s just reuse of a name that has nothing to do with it.

The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself by Ian Sales

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is definitely one of those stories that’s more about the journey than the destination. I was wondering the entire time what the point of the story was going to be. It literally took place en route somewhere and in flashbacks. Overall an OK story with a heck of a twist at the end. Felt very pulp science fiction. It appears the four short stories (of which this is the second) don’t have anything in common other than the first story introduced the idea of alternate timelines and so each is in a different NASA timeline. (Which actually reminds me somewhat of Hickman’s The Manhattan Projects, Vol. 1: Science. Bad.)

The South’s Best Butts: Pitmaster Secrets for Southern Barbecue Perfection by Matt Moore

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I gave this book a three, but it’s really more of a 3.5 rating. The stories of all the pitmasters that Matt Moore interviews are a 4. They really bring to bear the diverse people who work the pits to make BBQ throughout the south. The recipes are a 3 as compared to the recipes Steve Raichlen, America’s Test Kitchen, or Meathead provide.

Python 3 Object-Oriented Programming: Build robust and maintainable software with object-oriented design patterns in Python 3.8, 3rd Edition by Dusty Phillips

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve rarely done object-oriented programming in Pytnon and haven’t done any serious OOP since undergrad, nearly 20 years ago (and in Java). i found this book to be very well written and a good way to become an expert in the Python way of doing OOP. I discovered new and more efficient ways to write functions I’ve been writing that should allow me to have more easily maintainable code.

As I’ve mentioned a few times, my first running race was the 5k at the 2019 Red Hat Summit. I caught the bug and started thinking about running longer races. Since a lot of races use official USATF-certified times to qualify or to get a corral placement, I wanted to find a race that was USATF-certified. So in July I signed up for the 9th Annual Annapolis Running Classic. I started training and working my Saturday runs up towards a 10k distance. Today, it finally all paid off.

Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The first book I started in 2019! I started reading it yesterday while working on photos (sometimes writing metadata to the files takes a little bit so I wanted to have some reading to do while waiting). That evolved into me just reading and forgetting about my photos and, therefore, finishing in one day. (Well, I had read a lot of the novellas earlier because I’d received them separately via the Sanderson humble bundle) Why? So many reasons.

Three years ago I wrote a post (along with a Youtube video) about how to set up a KVM VM with Dual Monitors (or even triple monitors). Since then there’s been a bit of a change. I loaded up remote viewer and, for some reason, I couldn’t add more monitors to my Linux KVM VM. Turns out what you have to do is look at the Video (QXL) section in virt-manager. Look at how many “heads” it has listed. For example:

What is Obscenity?: The Story of a Good For Nothing Artist and her Pussy by Rokudenashiko

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I first heard about Ms. Rokudenashiko on the Daily Show years ago. A couple years ago I remembered her story and added the book to my wishlist. In 2018 I got it for Christmas. I had no idea the book was a manga, I thought it was just a regular prose book. It works so well as a manga, I’m glad the story was told that way.