Eric's Medium-sized Thoughts

Back in 2013 when I started using Fedora Core 1, I had no idea I’d still be on Fedora when it reached its 40th release 11 years later. Congrats to the team and here’s the official announcement.

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 youth group also had a CD lending library. Thus was I introduced to DC Talk, Newsboys, Audio Adrenaline, and MxPx…

I didn’t really use any new programs this year. I just continued expanding on programs I’ve used in the past. Python For Python I continued to mostly use Pycharm. I’ve spoken about it for the past few years, but JetBrains continues to add features that make it easier to work with Python. For example, this year they added a model explorer to have better visibility into your models in Django.…

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 didn’t play any video games as I worked on my end of the year blog posts. In February I got re-obsessed with…

I’m all-in on 8bitDo. Prior to getting on the 8bitDo train, I was mainly focused on PC gaming, so I would get Xbox controllers (whatever the latest was at the time). But with 8bitDo supporting PC, Switch, Android, and (I think) the Xbox and PS4/5 with addaptors – it’s a no-brainer to go with 8bitDo, especially since you can choose the form factor most comfy to you – PS/Switch Style with the Pro…

Another year has ended and so it’s time to take a look at the music I listened to all year. First of all, it was yet another year in which I grew my personal music collection. I’ve seen more an more artists removed from places like Spotify, Apple Music, etc, so it’s still important to me to own my music. New albums C. Tangana – El Madrileno. Chill Hop Music – Essentials Winter 2022(?),…

In 2023 I just didn’t have the urge to do as much programming as in years past. I felt more of a tug towards video games, reading, and baking/cooking. So this recap will be quite a bit shorter than usual. A couple upfront themes and ideas: The programming was essentially Go and Python. I started reading a book about Julia, but didn’t do any new programming in Julia. I mostly worked on new code vs…

By the end of 2023 I had 3049 ebooks and magazines (a change of 256 – pretty even with last year). Of those, 2434 were unread. Some chunk of those – maybe as much as ¼ were giveaways like Raspberry Pi Magazine, HackSpace Magazine, and Tor.com book club freebies. I stopped getting the monthly free Prime books since I no longer have a way to liberate them. I ended the year with 197 audiobooks (a…

Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 111, August 2019 by John Joseph AdamsMy rating: 4 of 5 starsThis issue was one in which I enjoyed all of the stories very much.Science FictionOne Thousand Beetles in a Jumpsuit (Dominica Phetteplace) – a dystopian story taking place “20 Minutes in the Future” that seems to me to be even more likely now than it was 4 years ago when this story was published. That said, I…

<a href=”https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57693406-the-kaiju-preservation-society&#8221; style=”float: left; padding-right: 20px”><img border=”0″ alt=”The Kaiju Preservation Society” src=”https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1624897234l/57693406._SX98_.jpg&#8221; /></a><a…

Crucible of Gold by Naomi NovikMy rating: 4 of 5 starsWhen 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 deal with the largest “country” on the continent to provide them with…

I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan WellsMy rating: 3 of 5 starsI’m not a horror person – I got this to listen to with my wife on a car trip. She calls the book Baby-Dexter. She’s not wrong. I think the book fits in a very interesting intersection. It’s (in my opinion) a little gruesome for YA being in John’s head and reading his sociopathic thoughts. But because it’s YA it’s also pretty tame with…

Long Past Dues by James J. ButcherMy rating: 3 of 5 stars(a reminder that I use the star rating tooltips on the goodreads site. 3 stars = “I liked it”.)Butcher, the son, is back with another entry in The Unorthodox Chronicles. Book 1 was a buddy-cop plot. We’re back with the same characters and, roughly, dealing with the consequences of the first book. I say roughly because JJB seems to be…

Tongues of Serpents by Naomi NovikMy rating: 3 of 5 starsJust like the Africa book, this one is a lot of just passing the time without much happening. Then in the last few chapters we get a bunch of bombshells about how the world continues to differ from ours because of the the dragons equalizing things between the colonies and colonizers (or would-be colonizers). The epilogue seems Mr. Laurence…

Lightspeed Magazine, April 2018 by John Joseph AdamsMy rating: 4 of 5 starsSCIENCE FICTIONWhat is Eve? (Will McIntosh) – Will does a great job with the story. The reader can probably guess the general direction of the story, but it’s the details that make it shine. I think he also does a good job with the voice of a middle school kid.Webs (Mary Anne Mohanraj) – Starts off with what seems like a…

Victory of Eagles by Naomi NovikMy rating: 4 of 5 starsI found this book to be a nice change of pace from book 4. It was more exciting and moved the plot along quite a bit. We’ve had the dragon suffrage plot as a Chekov’s Gun since around the first book and we finally started to get some movement on that in this book. Additionally, we see the consequences of the actions at the end of the last…