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Review: The Princess in Black
The Princess in Black by Shannon Hale My rating: 4 of 5 stars If you have little girls or little boys who love princesses and a little mischief, this book is a great first chapter book. I read this to my four year old twins and they really loved it and immediately asked for the…
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Review: Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 137
Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 137 by Neil Clarke My rating: 5 of 5 stars This issue was full of longer piece, but also pieces I loved so much. I was cracking up so much with Solderin’. I felt pretty emotional with Umbernight, especially as I am getting older like the protagonist and slowly being replaced by…
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Review: Summer Knight
Summer Knight by Jim Butcher My rating: 4 of 5 stars Things continue to evolve in Dresden’s Chicago. By this point it’s become obvious to me that the main series (as opposed to short stories) requires the reader to read them all in order rather than just jumping in to any particular case. Like a…
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Review: Serious Python: Black-Belt Advice on Deployment, Scalability, Testing, and More
Serious Python: Black-Belt Advice on Deployment, Scalability, Testing, and More by Julien Danjou My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is an AWESOME book that has completely transformed the way I code in Python. That might sound like the opening to a parody review, but I’m being sincere. One of the best things about Python…
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Review: Over the Wine-Dark Sea
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,…
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Review: Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 133
Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 133 by Neil Clarke My rating: 4 of 5 stars As usual, the per-story reviews are below this section. But first, a ranking of said stories. The stories I REALLY liked: The Sum of Her Expectations, The Last Boast-Builder in Ballyvoloon, Intro to Prom, Shiomah’s LandGreat: Red Lights, And RainGood: The Psychology…
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Today’s Programming: Ruby and Python
I don’t know how long I intend to keep doing this, but I decided I wanted to document my programming as I went along. So yesterday I worked on Scratch and here’s today’s entry. Ruby A while ago I got a bunch of kids’ programming books in a Humble Bundle. I tried showing Ruby to…
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Podcasts I’m Listening to In 2020
I’ve both added and dropped some podcasts since last time around. Where I’m listing the same podcast as last year I may use the same description as in the past with slight (or no) variation. Public Radio Radiolab – Heard about them because sometimes their stories are used on This American Life. Radiolab is a…
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Review: Serious Python: Black-Belt Advice on Deployment, Scalability, Testing, and More
Serious Python: Black-Belt Advice on Deployment, Scalability, Testing, and More by Julien Danjou My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is an AWESOME book that has completely transformed the way I code in Python. That might sound like the opening to a parody review, but I’m being sincere. One of the best things about Python…
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Review: Over the Wine-Dark Sea (Hellenic Traders, #1)
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,…
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2019 in Cooking
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…
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Review: Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 133
Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 133 by Neil Clarke My rating: 4 of 5 stars As usual, the per-story reviews are below this section. But first, a ranking of said stories. The stories I REALLY liked: The Sum of Her Expectations, The Last Boast-Builder in Ballyvoloon, Intro to Prom, Shiomah’s Land Great: Red Lights, And Rain Good:…
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2019 In Programming
This was a VERY busy year for my coding. This year I had over 769 commits to GitHub; my previous best was 58 in 2014. The commits were very unevenly distributed. If you look at the graph of my commits, outside of a busy week in January and another in May, I didn’t really start…
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Review: Make: LEGO and Arduino Projects: Projects for extending MINDSTORMS NXT with open-source electronics
Make: LEGO and Arduino Projects: Projects for extending MINDSTORMS NXT with open-source electronics by John Baichtal My rating: 4 of 5 stars I had been waiting to mark this book as read until I finished all the projects, but the reality is that might take years; not because the projects are hard, but because I…
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Review: Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 130
Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 130 by Neil Clarke My rating: 5 of 5 stars Another awesome series of stories compiled by Mr. Neil Clarke. I loved all but the last fiction story and enjoyed the non-fiction. Here’s what I thought of each story/article: An Age of Ice (a translated story): A story involving a multi-generational family…