Project 3 : 25 books in 52 weeks : Update 1

So as with everything associated with this blog, I'm behind on my reading for the 25 books in 52 weeks project. I started the project on September 3, 2012 and will wrap it up on September 3, 2012. As it's June 29, 2012 at the time of writing, 43 weeks have elapsed and I've only made it through 7 books. Ideally at this point I should have read about 23 books, but the point of this project is to push myself back into reading so I'll take having made any progress at all as a good thing and will see where I've made it to by the time September 3 rolls around.

New Books this Update 

• The Atrocity Archives - Charles Stross
• I love John Le Carré's George Smiley books especially the focus on the infrastructure built by the espionage organizations. The Laundry books do an amazing job of invoking that feeling and mixing it with some Lovecraftian world mangling and a healthy dose of Dilbert.
• The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross
• As with the George Smiley element in The Atrocity Archives, the James Bond elements in the Jennifer Morgue work very well as well. 
• The Fuller Memorandum - Charles Stross
• Unlike the other two Laundry books, I felt like the Fuller Memorandum was more "in it's own style" although that may be because I haven't read the books wikipedia mentions as influence. All of the Laundry books are a lot of fun to read and I'm very excited that the next major novel is coming out in the next few days.
• Mort - Terry Pratchett
• I'm working my way through the Terry Pratchett books in publication order and I have to say that I found Mort much harder going than the first three (Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic and Equal Rights). With the first three it was fairly easy to slip into the world as odd as it was, but Mort feels like such a festival of anachronism that the world is hard to accept. 
• The Alloy of Law - Brandon Sanderson
• I loved all of the first Mistborn trilogy, but especially the first volume. I enjoyed the action and adventure and heistyness and especially how alive and active Vin felt. The other two were good as well but I found that they didn't move as quickly as the first (which I think is something of a standard problem for Brandon Sanderson). The Alloy of Law felt like a return to that first books energy and I finished reading it and wanted to pick up the next one immediately. (Which is sad because I think the wait might be a while).
• The Sword of Shannara - Terry Brooks
• I read this book at least partly due to having never finished the project I undertook in junior high school where I promised that I would read it. I found this, especially for the first two thirds to be an incredible drag with uninteresting characters. As I eventually began to accept it as a Tolkien based D&D campaign rather than "people run back and forth in a small park" (seriously the longest march they undertakes is about 4 days, how close are all the major cities). The end had enough charm and momentum and I don't regret reading it, but I'm glad to have relieved myself from that particular guilt of my youth and don't think I'll pick up any of the other books from the series without some serious motivation.
• I should also point out that I seriously expected Menion Leah to have no idea what a woman was when he first meets Shirl. The entire first three quarters of the novel is devoid of the mention of women, so it seems to me that Menion should have been totally baffled. Serious missed opportunity for an Ethan of Athos kind of world. 
• Great by Choice - Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen
• I liked the ideas put forth in Built to Last and Good to Great. I think that Great by Choice is better than either in that the findings of the book are much more applicable to the daily life of a graduate student. It's certainly worth a read and is an especially good jumping of point for trying to be more productive.

Status

• Project Completeness: 7/25 - 28%
• Time Remaining 9 weeks.

Blog: That post about why there are no posts

So it seems inevitable that anybody writing a blog ends up missing a long stretch and then posting about why they were missing and how they're going to do better now.
This is that post.

It's been two semesters since the last time I managed to post and as far as getting excited and making things goes, I've managed to get enough things done to continue on in grad school. I've also made it through a period of low energy and stress, but I seem to be doing pretty well now.

The plan when I started this project was to use it to encourage me to stop sitting around and actually get the things I want done in life done. This has not been a huge success for the big projects (like the ones I've started here) but it has started to work for the smaller things that need to be done.

Now I would like to get myself organized to be more productive, even though there are several things related to my PhD that I will still need to focus on. Over the sumer my time can flex a little more, so for the next few months I will try to post at least one post a week here, either a blog post or a project update.

In the next few weeks I want to post some thoughts on a few of the video games I've played in the last while, particularly which parts are interesting when thinking about how to design the games I would like to design. I will also be writing a few other posts about things that interest me on the web, as well as some other software design things that have interested/bothered me over the years.

Hopefully this blog will keep being a useful tool for organizing myself and continuing to push myself forward.

Time to get excited and make something!

Blog Post: Derek K. Miller

This post is my thanks to Derek K. Miller. Derek was an amazing blogger, podcaster, musician, photographer, citizen of the web, husband, father and most of all human being.

Derek K. Miller

Many years ago, when I was just starting my Masters, I decided that while I seemed to be spending a lot of time on the internet, I certainly wasn't experiencing the best parts of it. Conveniently around that time Tod Maffin (CBC's then resident expert on the internet) was talking about good blogs that people should be following, and amongst the ones he mentioned I started following Derek's penmachine.com.

In early May 2011, Derek died. It wasn't a surprise, he'd been battling, and later living with cancer for more than four years. I followed his blog from his wait for his first biopsy results, though to his last post. I was immersed in his many informative posts, elated when good news came and saddened when the bad news came.

Derek's death was heart breaking, far too soon, with his family too young and with too many awesome things that will never be done. I am glad, that at least he and his family had some time together, to take off and do the important things, like go to Disney world, and to plan for what comes next.

This post, as you may have noticed, is late. It has been many months since Derek died and while I should have got off my ass and written something right away, but I didn't and since then I've wondered a lot about what I should write. After all, I didn't know Derek in real life, he didn't know me from Adam and his death is really the business of his family and friends. I can extend my sympathy, but really what does that do for their grief and their pain.

What I've come to is this: I am inspired by Derek. He lived his life well, did things he was interested in and excited and passionate about. He loved his family and was good to them. He made decisions that made his family's lives better. He never bogged down, even when his pain was at its worst, when the cancer or the chemo was ravaging him he kept going and when he reached the end of the road he took his rest.

I am inspired by Derek and can only say in his death that I will try to follow in his footsteps. I will try to be a good person and a good citizen of the web. I will try to produce creative things that I enjoy making. I make no guarantees beyond that, but looking at the happiness he had in his too-short life, I don't know what else someone could wish for.

Derek and his wife Air. Stylin'. That's most of what you need to know.

Project 3 : 25 books in 52 weeks

As I think I've mentioned one of the reason why I'm doing this blog is to try to stop the powerful force of my own procrastination. One of the things I've procrastinated the most about is reading, and while I mean the reading I need to do for my PhD to some extent, the reading I've really been missing out on is reading for pleasure.

So I'm starting a project to try to increase the amount of reading I get done. Over the next 52 weeks, I'd like to read 25 books. Hopefully it will take less that 52 weeks as this isn't a very ambitious goal, but I want to give myself a chance.

I've started by taking a look at the huge pile of books I have sitting around that I haven't read yet, and a few that I've been thinking of reading again. I've listed these books out below. I don't guarantee that these will actually be the 25 books I read, but at the moment they're what I'm planning to read.

Title	Author	Notes
A Short History of Nearly Everything	Bill Bryson
Agent of Change	Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
The Atrocity Archives	Charles Stross
Camelot 30K	Robert L. Forward	Re-Read
The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh	C.J. Cherryh
The Complaints	Ian Rankin
Cryoburn	Lois McMaster Bujold
The Dragon Book
Essex County	Jeff Lemire	Canada Reads
The Fionavar Tapestry	Guy Gavriel Kay	2nd Try
Fluke	Christopher Moore
Fortress in the Eye of Time	C.J. Cherryh
Fool	Christopher Moore
Good to Great	Jim Collins	Re-read
Local Custom	Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
Matter	Iain M. Banks	Hopefully no extracted eye balls or unnecessary surgery
New Sprint	Robert Jordan
Nebula Awards Showcase 2009
Regenesis	C. J. Cherryh
Spirit Gate	Kate Elliott
The Sword of Shannara	Terry Brooks
This Alien Shore	C. S. Friedman	Re-Read
Unless	Carol Shields	Canada Reads
Will Grayson, Will Grayson	John Green & David Levithan
The Years of Rice and Salt	Kim Stanley Robinson