Jim DeVona
Latest posts
Website Status
Two years hence from my last SSL certificate goof, I m back up after another weekend website mix-up. Thanks to Scott at Laughing Squid hosting for the helpful and patient support. This blog and jimdevona.art are now both on upgraded cloud hosting accounts which should be free of the intermittent outages that affected my previous setup.
Books of 2026
Here s a list of what I ve been reading this year. I update this post periodically.
Visualizing Publication Timeline
Here is another visualization of my books of 2025. These plots were created with Publications Timeline, an Observable notebook I ve written as a tool for plotting the publication dates of a list of books or stories. The notebook has various interactive options, but the key use case is visualizing the distribution of items over time. [ ]
Visualizing Books of the Year
My books of 2025 list is complete. In lieu of reviews, here s an interactive chart to visualize the breakdown. The basic display is a countable bar chart of books by four broad categories. You can split the chart into two or four small multiples by source and/or format. It s mainly an exercise in creating dynamic [ ]
Spelling Bee Poetry
As a fan of wordplay and crossword puzzles, I enjoy the New York Times seasonal Puzzle Mania section. In particular, the two-page Super Mega crossword grid is a mind-magnet that demands attention until complete. This year, the section included winners from a writing contest based on the Times Spelling Bee game, with modified rules to [ ]
Word Alert: Kraken
I just read China Miéville s Kraken. The pages were packed with exact vocabulary, both real and aptly concocted. Some of the novel terms I looked up: horripilation: goose bumps! (The shared root with horror is the bristling of hair, as with dread.) atrament: an inky black substance such as cephalopod ink. plastination: a specimen [ ]
Words of the Week
A few spells I overheard in recent wanderings through the hinterlands of the written world: sepultured: buried. (Alternate spelling of sepulcher.) brio: vigor, vivacity, verve. (Thanks, MW, for an alliterative definition.) tath: manure, or a field enriched by it. condign: deserving or appropriate. rhyton: a horn-and-animal-shaped drinking vessel/funnel from antiquity. parlous: perilous. psaltery:…
Crossword: Letter References
November Word Alert
Eight new words I recently encountered.