Wednesday, May 10, 2023

Books of April 2023

Reading

Stats in April (Year to Date)

Reading Stats

Books Read - 8 (28)Pages Read - 2957 (10861)

Books Read

Ancillary Justice by Ann LeckieThe Nova Incident by Dan Moren
A Long Shadow by Charles ToddDoomsday Book by Connie Willis
Still Life by Louise PennyMagic Burns by Ilona Andrews
Shards of Earth by Adrian TchaikovskyKomi Can't Communicate (Volume 12) by Tomohito Oda

Collage of the covers of the 8 books listed above. April 2023 Covers

Authors

Adrian Tchaikovsky - 1 (1)Alexander McCall Smith - (2)
Angeline Boulley - (1)Ann Leckie - 1 (2)
Brandon Sanderson - (1)Charles Todd - 1 (2)
Connie Willis - 1 (1)Dan Moren - 1 (2)
Ed Yong - (1)Elizabeth Bear - (1)
Elle Cosimano - (1)Ilona Andrews - 1 (1)
Isaac Asimov - (1)Jim Butcher - (1)
Louise Penny - 1 (1)N. K. Jemisin - (1)
Patrica Briggs - (4)Robin McKinley - (1)
Rick Riorden - (1)Timothy Zhan - (1)
Tomohito Oda - 1 (1)

A word cloud of all the authors above with Patrica Briggs in the centre as the first author read this year and largest as I've read 4 of her books.2023 Author Cloud - April Update

Publishing


Publication Range

Earliest Book - 1953Most Recent Book - 2022

Publications by Decades

2020s - 2 (12)2010s - 2 (5)
2000s - 3 (7)1990s - 1 (3)
1950s - (1)

Books

Source

Borrowed From Library - 5 (24)Borrowed From Friends - (1)
My Audible Library - 1 (1)My libro.fm Library - 1 (1)
My "Kindle" Library - 1 (1)

Formats

Audio Book - 4 (18)eBook - 3 (8)
eBook (Comic) - 1 (1)Hardcover - (1)

Tuesday, May 09, 2023

Video Games of April 2023

April was pretty quiet in terms of games. I was mostly focused on making stuff and organizing in my own time. Plus watching more stuff, particularily "Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These" since apperently I really like lots of space ships, even if not accompanied by very nuanced stories.

My three games (by play time) for April were:
  1. Tactics Ogre: Reborn - I'm still really enjoying Tactics Ogre. I think there's some mechanics I'm still a little fuzzy on, but the game has given me enough resources that I can push through most things.

  2. Hollow Knight - I started a new play though and it's been a nice reminder that I am getting better at the game, however slowly. My other play through is pretty far along, but I'm certainly struggling and I find each time I restart I get a little better and a little more momentum.

  3. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - Vrooom. Honk. Screeech!


Here's my total play time chart for April:


And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:



Saturday, April 08, 2023

A General Update on Code Doodling

Doodle Code is my “knitting” project, where I dabble in programming while watching TV or during family gatherings (hey, it works for my family), and I haven’t had any really goals, so I haven’t had a point to stop and update. It also turns out I’ve been a bit forgetful and messy, but oh well. Now seems like time to dust it off and share it with anyone who’s interested, even if it's not the repository of useful teaching code I'd thought it might be originally.

Graph of Languages for the Github repository, showing Java at 77.1%, Processing at 18.8% and Python at 4.1%.
Can you tell I'm a programmer who did most of his learning in the late 90s and early 2000s?

There are about 15 doodles, in various states of completion. Dunking on the dumb mathematical things sports casters say has been a bit of a theme and beyond that playing with colours. Everything else is things I thought would be interesting or just stuff I’ve been meaning to do (like the Coding Train Challenges).

I’d drifted away from doodling for a while, so back in February I thought it was time to start again. Then I came to the realisation that basically nothing was organised, documented or finished. I’ve started poking at that, but as it turns out it’s more fun to do new things than it is to go and clean up my own mess.

Graph of GitHub Commits showing tjkendon with 251 commits from January 2022, to April 2023, 6739 lines of code added and 1464 lines of code removed.
Github is always good for that endorphin rush of numbers go up.

Each doodle now has at least a description and a Readme, some are better documented than others, but that’s a starting point. I’m trying to strike a balance between working on new stuff and cleaning up what’s there so that it might be useful for someone else at some point. It may not be good for my existing habit of not getting stuff done, but I’m honestly feeling quite happy doodling around with stuff and I’m not feeling that compelled to “finish” anything. I am slowly learning to unlink my feelings of self-worth and happiness from productivity and I must say it’s quite refreshing and the project is leaving me feeling pretty good even if it may not be that actually useful.

Sunday, April 02, 2023

Books of March 2023

Reading

Year to Date


Reading Stats

Books Read - 2 (20)Pages Read - 693 (7904)

Books Read

Soul Taken by Patricia BriggsRose Daughter by Robin McKinley

Collage of the covers of the 2 books listed above. March 2023 Covers

Authors

Alexander McCall Smith - (2)Angeline Boulley - (1)
Ann Leckie - (1)Brandon Sanderson - (1)
Charles Todd - (1)Dan Moren - (1)
Ed Yong - (1)Elizabeth Bear - (1)
Elle Cosimano - (1)Isaac Asimov - (1)
Jim Butcher - (1)N. K. Jemisin - (1)
Patrica Briggs - 1 (4)Robin McKinley - 1 (1)
Rick Riorden - (1)Timothy Zhan - (1)

A word cloud of the authors above with Patrica Briggs in the centre as the first author read this year and largest as I've read 4 of her books.
2023 Author Cloud - March Update

Publishing


Publication Range

Earliest Book - 1953Most Recent Book - 2022

Publications by Decades

2020s - 1 (10)2010s - (3)
2000s - (4)1990s - 1 (2)
1950s - (1)

Books

Source

Borrowed From Library - 2 (19)Borrowed From Friends - (1)

Formats

Audio Book - 1 (14)eBook - 1 (5)
Hardcover - (1)

The Books I Read - November 2024

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