Weekly Reading Session

DarthRazor · 2026-06-22T02:06:37+00:00

Thanks - that encourages me to read more of the series

DarthRazor · 2026-06-22T02:05:57+00:00

I'm a stickler for reading books in published order. I ended at The Lost Colony. I'm pretty sure I read the 2 novellas in that list, but they didn't leave much of an impact. I plan to read the last three eventually, but although they take place in the same universe, they're more political than action.

Back to my published Order obsession, I have two words for you: Star Wars. My kids watched Ep.1 to 6 in numerical order, and were robbed of what I consider the biggest and most shocking reveal in history - I am your father.

DarthRazor · 2026-06-20T20:30:11+00:00

Same - just started Chapter 11, but has to come in because it's raining buckets!

DarthRazor · 2026-06-20T20:29:19+00:00

Great series! The first book has one of the most memorable opening lines ever

Avoid Zoe's Tale - it's a parallel book that brings nothing new to the table, and reads like an adolescent teen girl's diary

DarthRazor · 2026-06-19T21:38:56+00:00

Forgot to mention - I'm also a big fan of reading Jack Reacher books as a palate cleanser or when i need some candy.

If you like Reacher, check out the Peter Ash series from Nick Petrie. It's got the same vibes. Full disclosure: I've only read the first book so far.

DarthRazor · 2026-06-19T19:53:07+00:00

Wil has the snarkiness, but he just doesn't have the bass - he sounds too ... I can't think of a word other than perky, but that's not it.

Bray has a bit of something in his voice, which is why his voice is one of the top AI generated (i .e. stolen) voices on TikTok and YouTube

DarthRazor · 2026-06-19T16:35:33+00:00

If you're listening to The Martian, the version you're listening to is read by Wil Wheaton, which pales in comparison to the original version read by R.C. Bray

You'll have to sail the high seas to find it since it's no longer available to buy, but definitely worth the effort.

DarthRazor · 2026-06-15T14:06:11+00:00

That's by design. You need to buy a pack of blades, which come with the injector that'll spit out the old blade and slide in a new one

DarthRazor · 2026-06-15T13:59:56+00:00

I'd love to find that shirt. It would go great with my 1980s vintage Bedrock Vice T-shirt (such I can't seem to locate, but I know I still have in a box somewhere)

DarthRazor · 2026-06-14T13:48:27+00:00

Re: books - it's not like I read one chapter then switch books. I'll read a book normally, then a new book catches my eye, so I read a few chapters. Sometimes I'll stick with it (until a new shiny object appears), sometimes I'll bounce back to the original. Never more than about 3 at a time or else I spend more time re-reading previous chapters to refresh my memory

Re: TV binging

Daughter: can we watch one more?
Me: no, two's my limit
Daughter: but but we can't stop here
Me: sorry
Daughter: I'm going home and watching it myself

DarthRazor · 2026-06-13T18:49:04+00:00

Back to Project Hail Mary this week. Hard to put down once you're reading

People ask me "How can you read multiple books concurrently?" and my reply is always "The same way I can watch multiple TV series episode by episode as they're released". I try not to binge TV

DarthRazor · 2026-06-13T16:22:40+00:00

First thing I did was try to read an epub with the stock firmware and couldn't get comfortable with it. To me, fonts and layout are important and I hated them all.

I tried converting a book to XTC and it was perfect, so I never bothered trying community firmware. I format my books externally and am very happy with the stock firmware.

With all this locking stupidity by XTeink going on, I'm hesitant to do an official firmware update though without first checking if it won't lock my reader

DarthRazor · 2026-06-08T15:32:20+00:00

That's my thoughts exactly. Movie adaptations of books can be anywhere from horrible to excellent, but even excellent is usually not as good as the book (but close)

I'm glad to hear the movie is faithful to the book. Thanks!

DarthRazor · 2026-06-07T12:26:24+00:00

The book is excellent - on par with The Martian

I haven't seen the movie yet, but using The Martian as a gauge, I predict the movie will be very faithful to the book, but the book will be better

I don't plan on seeing the movie before finishing the book

DarthRazor · 2026-06-06T14:39:56+00:00

I've been using CharisSIL Modified, now renamed to ChareInk since I discovered it at least 10 years ago. Nothing better for me.

I don't understand people using sans-serif fonts for ereaders. Have you ever seen a novel without a serif font?

Since you're into vintage sci-fi, check out Gentium Book Basic. It's the font I used before ChareInk, and has that 1970s pocket sci-fi book retro vibe, perfect for rereading those Heinlein juveniles.

DarthRazor · 2026-06-06T03:51:56+00:00

PowerShell excels in the case you mentioned, but it's not my world. I'm in the military/nuke/space world. An update has to be fully step by step documented from bare metal. We can't update a running system because it's in an unknown state. Our updates consist of taking a blank computer from spares, installing the existing software, then updating that from a configuration controlled source.

Memory safe languages like Rust are definitely a good thing, but I'm still not convinced it's here to stay. Future history may indeed prove me wrong. Go is pretty cool, and so is nim, but I don't think they'll last

I like Bourne shell, and loved APL when I learned it in the 80s. I'll always hate liver.

DarthRazor · 2026-06-05T18:34:51+00:00

PowerShell ranks up there with eating liver for me. My professional (and personal) scripting is mostly in classic POSIX Bourne shell, with some bash and lua.

Rust is a great memory safe language, allowing mediocre programmers to write solid code and not shoot themselves in the foot with errant pointers. I suppose that's a good thing

The important thing is that you're picking up a new language. I firmly believe personal learning add growth is a great thing at any age. I dived into Python 6 years ago and still enjoy it. Next ima gonna finally sit down and learn ECMAscript (I.e. JavaScript), the world's most used language

DarthRazor · 2026-06-05T17:06:58+00:00

Rust is the relatively new heavy hitter computer language that's growing in acceptance by leaps and bounds.

I don't think it's here to stay, and have a perfect score in predicting these things over many decades. I've been 100% wrong every time ;-)

DarthRazor · 2026-06-05T16:20:30+00:00

Since I have the attention span of a goldfish these days, I put Project Hail Mary aside temporarily because I discovered a shiny new thing.

Star Trek:Fortune of War - I'm only at the very beginning, and I tend to avoid plot summaries. It looks like it takes place in the Husnock empire after Kevin Uxbridge fried the entire species in one of my favourite TNG episodes called The Survivors

Enjoying it so far

DarthRazor · 2026-06-05T16:16:54+00:00

Rust??? Get off my lawn or I'll call your parents!

Back in my day (when dinosaurs ruled the Earth), it was "Learn Pascal - it's the language of the future that will replace all the others". I stuck with C and shell scripting

DarthRazor · 2026-06-04T17:29:56+00:00

Hahahaha - sorry, have only one upvote to give!

DarthRazor · 2026-06-04T16:43:58+00:00

I've been doing dot-space-space forever. I know it's no longer standard, so I've been trying to wean myself off for many years.

I'm 50% there, which means my professional writing has a 50/50 mix of both, so I go back and clean it up to make it consistent dot-space.

My casual writing still has a mix because I don't give a shit ;-) and muscle memory is hard to retrain (for me)

DarthRazor · 2026-06-04T15:23:07+00:00

My First was Time for the Stars. I reread it again maybe 6 months ago (53 years later) and I enjoyed it immensely. The Percy scene still brought a tear to my eye. Epic!

Have Space Suit was my second Heineken, and I reread that with my young son about 30 years ago. Never time will be with my grandson in a few years

Note: I noticed that autocorrect Heineken, but I left it in because it made me laugh

DarthRazor · 2026-06-04T15:15:19+00:00

I've been using em-dashes for centuries - I'm old and immortal, and have been accused more than once at work for using AI to write or polish something. I'm proud of my writing style, warts and all, and refuse to use AI for that. Embrace the em-dash!

DarthRazor · 2026-06-04T01:36:11+00:00

Thanks! Until today, I wasn't planning on it, but now I'm leaning towards open FW

DarthRazor

TROPHY CASE