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2024 Concert #1: MxPx & The Ataris
I first heard MxPx 28 or 29 years ago. At the time my family was still a church-going family. This was my first experience with the idea of a youth group that played rock song versions of the praise music. So I was jazzed to go to church every Wednesday and Sunday. The middle school…
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Review: Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 113, October 2019
Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 113, October 2019 by John Joseph Adams My rating: 4 of 5 stars Another great issue of Lightspeed Magazine. There was only one story I wasn’t a fan of. Science Fiction———–The Beasts We Want to Be (Sam J. Miller) – a historical SF set in Russia after the communist revolution. The SF…
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2023 Game of the Year
In my 2022 year-end blog post, I thought I was going to focus more on finishing up the narrative video games I started in the prior years. I definitely made some good progress on Disco Elysium, but not nearly as much as I wanted. I didn’t finish any of the narrative games. In January, I…
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Review: Crucible of Gold
Crucible of Gold by Naomi Novik My rating: 4 of 5 stars When we last left Laurence and Temeriare, they were in Australia, contemplating retirement. This book has them dragged back in because Napoleon continues to scheme. Thanks to the deviation from our history in which Africa has been wrested from colonialism, Napoleon makes a…
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My First Week with Finis Smart Goggles and Ciye App
For the past 9 years I’ve been using a Garmin watch while swimming. Back then I had a swim-focused watch, now I have a multi-sport watch. Most days the biggest benefits are the fact that I can pre-load a workout (so that I don’t need to print one out or keep my phone nearby (while…
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Review: Battle Ground
Battle Ground by Jim Butcher My rating: 4 of 5 stars And so it appears we have finished the most recent Arc of the Dresden files. We tied together everything that has come before and just like the previously named book Changes this one changes a whole bunch. We’ve now left the world as it…
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Review: Apex Magazine Issue 138
Apex Magazine Issue 138 by Jason Sizemore My rating: 4 of 5 stars Original Fiction The Relationship of Ink to Blood (Alex Langer) – I world have interpreted the actions this story very differently had it not been in a SFF magazine. But in Hebrew we have different expectations about what’s real and what’s not.…
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Review: Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 108, May 2019
Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 108, May 2019 by John Joseph Adams My rating: 4 of 5 stars SCIENCE FICTIONCocoons (Nancy Kress) – This story could very easily have gone to a horror place. But instead it ends up being about the complexity of humanity, the perils of colonizing a new world, and hope. This Way to…
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Howard County, Zum, and Industry Disruption being Disruptive
Last week was the first week of school in Howard County, Maryland. It was a chaotic week for transportation and, I think it was caused in large part by contractor issues. In the USA we tend to believe that privatizing everything makes it better. But, in fact, all it does is create an extra layer…
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Review: Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 104, January 2019
Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 104, January 2019 by John Joseph Adams My rating: 4 of 5 stars I think the only story here that didn’t really click with me was “With Teeth Unmake the Sun”. It was beautiful and I appreciated that, but it wasn’t my fave. “Midway” hit me very hard at this age. Endor…
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Review: Uncanny Magazine Issue 26: January/February 2019
Uncanny Magazine Issue 26: January/February 2019 by Lynne M. Thomas My rating: 3 of 5 stars This issue started off unevenly for me, but I ended up liking most of the stories and non-fiction essays. A Catalog of Storms (Fran Wilde): A fantasy world in which weather becomes sentient. I failed to gel with the…
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Review: Carpe Jugulum
Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is my second time reading the book. Dropped the rating from 5/5 stars to 3/5 stars. On this second time reading through the Discworld books, I’ve come to realize that I really prefer the Witch books to the Rincewind/Wizard books. Usually (or at…
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Review: Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 103, December 2018
Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 103, December 2018 by John Joseph Adams My rating: 5 of 5 stars This was an awesome issue of Lightspeed magazine where I really enjoyed every story. I was especially happy to find out that I started out my Lightspeed magazine subscription with this issue because for the next 5 issues they…
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Review: Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware: The Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware: The Super Nintendo Entertainment System by Dominic Arsenault My rating: 5 of 5 stars This book is written at the level of a college paper with lots of footnotes, citations, etc. There are even some sections of chapters that get into some heavy terminology that didn’t really mean anything…
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Podcasts I’m Listening to In 2023
Once again I used a script to pull out the official descriptions of the podcasts as well as the URL where I access the feed. After the official description you’ll see my commentary about the podcast. Politics 5-4 Pod – Official Description:5-4 is a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks. It’s a progressive…