Posts

"Children of Earth and Sky" by Guy Gavriel Kay

March 20, 2020 Culture

I should have known Guy Gavriel Kay wouldn’t let me down. Kay’s books are often classified as fantasy, but I think they’re firmly historical fiction. I don’t have anything against fantasy—I grew up on J.K. Rowling and Philip Pullman, and I still love it—I just don’t think Kay’s books fit the description. Kay’s characters believe in mysticism, but I think that’s more a reflection of how people used to see the world than an effort to inject magic into the proceedings. Sword-and-sorcery novels these are not.

"Darknet" by Matthew Mather

November 20, 2017 Culture

Like Douglas E. Richards’s Infinity Born, Darknet is a near-future science fiction thriller about the dangers of artificial intelligence. But Darknet is a much subtler, more carefully crafted, realistic, and enjoyable novel.

Ubuntu Updates

November 17, 2017 Technology

As I’ve continued to use Ubuntu as my Linux distro of choice on Dell XPS 15 laptop, I’ve made some modifications to my setup. I’m describing some of them here.

"Infinity Born" by Douglas E. Richards

November 15, 2017 Culture

I didn’t like this book. It has some interesting and promising ideas, but none of them are well-executed. Ultimately it’s a book with boring characters about computer science and espionage that seems to be written by someone with little understanding of either computer science or espionage.

Ubuntu 17.10 on the XPS 15

November 2, 2017 Technology

I recently upgraded my primary computer from the great but aging Thinkpad to a new Dell XPS 15 laptop. So far, I love the Dell, and a full review of that will come a little later. But now it’s time for a post reviewing the process of getting Linux up and running on my new machine.

"All Our Wrong Todays" by Elan Mastai

October 20, 2017 Culture

I loved this book. It’s a really fun, fast-paced novel about a guy in a seemingly utopian future with an uhappy family who accidentally destroys the future utopia by using his father’s …

The Daily: Disappearing Factory Jobs

October 19, 2017 Policy

The Daily is the New York Times daily news podcast. It typically runs about 20 minutes, and involves the Times’s Michael Barbaro taking a deep dive into an important news story, often with …

"The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet" by Becky Chambers

October 19, 2017 Culture

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is a science fiction novel by Becky Chambers. It borrows some tropes of the genre that’ll be familiar to fans of Firefly and The Expanse. However, Angry …

Google Calendar for Web Gets Material Design

October 17, 2017 Technology

Today, Google launched a major refresh to the design of Google Calendar for the web. The update is long overdue, but it’s extremely well-executed and looks stunning. Sometimes you just look at a design and it feels right. This is one of those. After using the new design for a while, I’d imagine it’ll be tough to go back to the old one.

"The North Water" by Ian McGuire

October 16, 2017 Culture

Ian McGuire’s novel The North Water is a story about whaling. That alone invites comparisons to Moby Dick, and, indeed, both are gritty, realistic tales about adventures on nineteenth century whalers. But the stories are very different. The North Water is told in the third person and the present tense (which, combined with the graphic descriptions of violence and gore, has prompted comparisons to Cormac McCarthy).