Three years ago I created ELDonationTracker to use the Extra Life API to provide donation alerts on my screen while I’m streaming or recording games. About a year and a half ago, I actually had to start using it because the previous donation tracker I’d been using stopped being maintained. Since then I’ve been steadily improving it, but there’s still a bit of functionality for the alerts when someone donates that I was missing by running a commandline utility. A year ago I tried creating a GUI with Tkinter, but I just found it too hard to figure out. What I really wanted anyway was to do it in QT or QML. A few months ago I saw that it appeared the company being QT was going to finally take Python seriously. While looking up some tutorials on PyQT I found out that I could use QT Designer to do a WYSIWYG design and then a simple utility to convert it to Python code. Since designing GUIs is a real drag and takes away time from doing the coding to make the GUI work, I was jazzed. So I threw this together over a couple days, copying the interface from the program that was no longer maintained:

This year I continued last year’s trends of reading cook books and stories I’d purchased as part of a Humble Bundle or Story Bundle. This led to some great surprises like Singularity Girl, which I really liked and Kissing Booth Girl which had a bunch of haunting short stories. Because it was the 200th anniversary, I started off the year reading Frankenstein for the first time ever. I read that together with the Sword and Laser book club. Much later in the year I also read Zer0es with the book club. This year I read my first Cuban SF novel with A Planet for Rent and that was a really neat read. But there were two big universes I tackled in 2018. I read nearly all of the novels in The Expanse and I read nearly all of the remaining books, short stories, and novellas in Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere. In fact, reading all of Mistborn Era 1 and 2 and the Stormlight Archive books 1-3 (all that’s out now) took up nearly all of my reading time. I’d set a goal of reading 45 books. I read 81, but would have read many, many more had it not been for the 1000+ pages of each of the Stormlight Archive books.

Babylon’s Ashes by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is probably the most direct sequel so far in The Expanse. It pretty much picks up right where the last one left off (not counting the interstitial novella). One thing JSAC use for great effect in this book (and I think more than any of the previous ones) is to use the POV-ness of the chapters to jump back and forth in time. So chapter X ends and then chapter X+1 actually rewinds things a bit and provides a new perspective on what happened in chapter X. It mostly worked well.

Muffins & Biscuits: 50 Recipes to Start Your Day with a Smile by Heidi Gibson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Written by the owner of a bakery, this book has relatively easy-to-follow recipes and beautiful photos of the muffins and biscuits. I’ve made one biscuit recipe in here and it’s already a staple of our weekend big breakfasts. Many recipes end with instructions for variants you could make from the base recipe. If you’re looking to expand your muffin and biscuit repertoire, this book is worth having.

The Future is Japanese: Science Fiction Futures and Brand New Fantasies from and about Japan by Masumi Washington

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Another anthology. As usual, I’ve included my status updates with some spelling fixes. Overall it was a very uneven collection in terms of what I enjoyed. The stories all seemed to run hot or cold for me with nothing lukewarm.

The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon - The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World by Steven L. Kent

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very comprehensive look at the history of video games going way, way back. I’m familiar with a lot of the main points from having read lots of industry histories. Where this one excels is in going to the smallest of details and talks about a lot of the personalities and more obscure companies involved. So even if you already know a lot about video games history, if you’re interested, you’ll end up learning things you most likely didn’t know. Most importantly it is stuffed with first-hand quotes from interviews and other published material.

Partway through the year Spotify broke at work and, shortly after, Youtube Music appeared along with (likely) rumors that Google Music will be nixed in favor of Youtube Music. So I finally followed through on the work necessary to get Ampache up and running. I also experimented with Funk Whale - an open source attempt to resurrect Groove Shark. Funk Whale had some issues with the version of Firefox we have at work, so I went all-in on Ampache. It’s been really awesome to have access to my entire music collection at work. Hearing my favorite music just gives me such a pick-me-up when the day is wearing at me. Also, it’s great not to have ads interrupting my music listening.

Back in October I went to BBQ and was shocked to see something moving. When I opened the grill all the way, I saw:

Mouse living on my Weber Spirit

Somehow, even with the lid closed and the cover on, the mouse had ripped off bits of my charcoal bag to climb into here and make a nest.

Mouse and fuzzies in my BBQ

An Election by John Scalzi

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A fun little short story about an election in a very diverse district. I kind of want to see more of this world which I think is the mark of a good short story.

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You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing by John Scalzi

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If you are an aspiring writer, Scalzi tells it like it is and gives you a good feeling for what it might be like to be a modern writer. No writing tips here - that’s for other types of books. This one is about being a writer and making a living.