Just trying to do just the things mentioned in the title.
My work requires me to some extent to deal with artificial intelligence and as a person who spent years doing research in AI (or knowledge-based search and multi-agent systems) I often end up engaged with AI to some extent. Between these, and needing to build up my knowledge and skills, so I can support people making good choices about AI, I'm starting to write a lot more about AI (and other…
For some of the projects I've been working on I've wanted to set up an easy web interface based in Java. After looking at a bunch of options to learn, I chose Spring Boot which seemed like the most straight forward and possibly useful choice. I ran into some issues getting started, so I thought I'd write them down in case it helps anyone else. I'm sure that mostly I'm confused and not reading the…
So I've managed to post at least once a month since July of 2016, right up until April this year. Now I've been quiet for quite a few months. I'll be honest I'm struggling with what's worth sharing. I think in the current world, the purpose and use of the internet has become a lot messier than it was in by-gone days and given the amounts of hate and misinformation, I don't know what to put into…
I read quite a bit less in March. Not really and intentional thing or not, just how the month turned out. I did find that "Woken Furies" took forever to read, and I never did get that into it. Partly that was having a reader who sounded a lot like the reader for the first two, but who missed all the nuance of pronunciation that was key to the first book. Victoria Goddard continues to be awesome…
February was the month I was really focused on recovering from my health stuff in January. I didn't sit down a read as consistently as I'd have liked, but I always had an eBook and an audiobook on the go. If you look at this month's author cloud, it's very funny how tiny Victoria Goddard is because "The Tower at the Edge of the World" and "Aurelius (to be called) Magnus" were probably the two most…
While I've been looking at a lot of these yearly wrap up posts, one thing I was reminded of is how much I've really managed to make reading a happy habit. I've always read a lot, but since we all locked down in 2020 I've tried to be a lot more intentional about how I read and now I'm pretty happy with that. Keeping track outside of Good Reads has been really helpful for that, and it's nice to know…
I had some health stuff to deal with in January, which kinda skewed how I read over the month. Sharing "The Dark is Rising" with my partner was great; we listened to a radio play version during the height of the pandemic, and we both really appreciated getting the whole text. Victoria Goddard's writing continues to entertain and "The Return of Fitzroy Angursell was great to read and made me happy.…
The Lays of the Hearth Fire series by Victoria Goddard is good. It's also long, but I really enjoyed spending most of December on "At the Feet Of The Sun". Kinda made it to my goal of 104 books for 2024, Good Reads says so, but my tracking only gets to 103. Still not to bad and I'm looking forward to all I get to read in 2025. Stats for December - (Year to date) Reading Stats Books Read - 4 (103)…
In 2024 I managed to play five new games. As always I do a rough sorting of what I played and this year everything ended up being Good or Very Good. Everything I played had something to recommend it and it mostly depends on how the quirks of the games bug you as to how much you might enjoy these. I'm sad I didn't get a chance to play Legend of Zelda: Echos of Wisdom, but equally, I may need a…
November was a bit weird. The Hands of the Emperor is long, but excedingly good. I'm continuing to find Anna Lee Huber a very engaging mystery writer, for both of her series. This is How You Lose the Time War was quite interesting to reread, I enjoy the epistilary nature and the co-authors passing back and forth. I think because of the nature of how they made it, it could some times be a little…
I've always liked mysteries, but until recently I don't think I'd have described myself as a mystery reader. Looking at the stats (since I keep stats) almost exactly half of the books I read this year were mysteries and mostly historical mysteries at that. That's between 47 to 49 mysteries — depending on what you count as a mystery — and 48 non-mysteries in mid-November 2024. I liked mysteries —…
Into the Breach, Subset Games, 2018 This is a mix of obvious video game tactics and their obvious implications for getting things done. I'm writing it mostly to get it out of my head, although I think the thought is helping me get more things done in a way that makes me happier. If you've been reading here for a while, you're probably aware that while I love tactics / strategy games I'm not good…
Fairly quiet month. My partner and I spent a while reading through A Night in the Lonesome October and at about a chapter each day, it was a lot of fun. Babel was interesting and worth the time, but it's not a comfortable read. Stats for August - (Year to date) Reading Stats Books Read - 5 (95) Pages Read - 1784 (31325) The Books Treacherous Is the Night by Anna Lee Huber Sunset by Yoshiki Tanaka…
One of my first memories in our house, about 7 years ago now, is sitting at the dinning room table and thinking the fridge was about to explode. It was loud and rattly and given that the previous owners never seemed to use the right tool to fix the job, I assumed it was just going to die any day. We did eventually get someone in to look at it and learned that we could get the seal on the door to…
Again, Critical Role cut down on a lot of my reading, especial audio books. The three books set in the inter-war period were interesting counter points and I have to say that Anna Lee Huber writes in a style I really enjoy. Garth Nix's Left-Handed book sellers was a lot of fun, a little more elegance in crafting the front half, but a good action novel in the second. As always Martha Wells'…
I didn't read much in August, which was again party due to watching a lot of Critical Role and partly I just wasn't in the right mood. Anna Lee Huber's Lady Darcy books are a good balance of Scottish murder mystery and romance and I found a Grave Matter really fun. Petty Treasons was a lot of fun and the fact that it starts in second person more or less makes sense and works. I added a bunch of…
I'm late updating things for July, so I don't know that I have a lot to add. I did start watching through Critical Role , (from the very begining) and that's cut down on my Audio book listening quite a bit. I ended up picking up a lot of the Legend of the Galactic Heroes books since they were kind of easy to pick up and put down. In case you're interested, they're written -- or translated -- very…
Um hello! I'd wish you a Happy Belated Blog End and Start day , but that was a while ago... Did anyone one get the licence plate of that August? I'll be picking calendar shrapnel out of my brain for weeks! If you're new here, welcome, good timing. The next sentence I'm going to write is weird, but it'll be a whole year now before I write again. My rule is to never start a project without an idea…
If you've been reading here for a while, you know that I sooner, or later, I will always come back to talking about Ogre Battle 64. You'll also know that while I think it has a lot of flaws, I love it deeply. I've spent a lot of time thinking about how, if I were to get serious making video games, I'd love to make Ogre Battle 65. (You know, Ogre Battle 64, but one better...) I was neither…
I've really started to enjoy the "Books of Raksura", it's nice to discover that there are a fourth and fifth. Stats for June - (Year to date) Reading Stats Books Read - 10 (71) Pages Read - 3213 (23741) The Books Read The Serpent Sea by Martha Wells Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett The Art of Focused Conversation: 100 Ways to Access Group Wisdom in the Workplace edited by…
This is the second in the catch up Games posts, the games I played in April. I've been able to fix a few things, mostly that make my life better There are a few things I haven't fixed, particularly the months played letters, but I'm looking at how to do that better. I've noticed where my RSS reader doesn't apply CSS they're also pretty obstructive. There are probably also a few things I'm…
Well, I guess this is version two of my new games post plan. Jinja has been super useful for automating a lot of my games played information. I'm now able to put up a little article for each game, including some basic info, which months I played it in and some notes. There are a few things that aren't really set up right / well yet. One is the months played list is a little messy. I think it looks…
May felt like a lot of different months and it feels like ages since I started reading Carola Dunn's Daisy Dalrimple books or since I was reading Kings of the Wyld. The Daisy mysteries are fun and the supporting cast really sells them for me. They do seem a little draggy in overall plot. Kings of the Wyld was interesting and felt like it was playing with a lot of the 70s and 80s fantasy tropes. I…
I’ve been having a lot of fun with my new book tracking infographic. Doing things like making a word cloud of authors and a grid of titles is just interesting enough that it’s a great job to have on hand when I don’t want to do anything that needs more thinking. And more, or less, I like the look of what I’ve put together. I’m sure I could make it more … infographicy … but for now I still like it…
A little while ago, somewhere out there on the Internet, I ran across a thing about the joy and value in rereading books. I’ve managed to lose track of the thing now, but thoughts about rereading has been rumbling around in my head. So I started writing this, got a little hung up on why and how I read, so ended up writing my post on reading as well. Like that post, I’m not sure anyone needs to…