Hello!
The weather is turning colder, and I am utterly delighted by it.
Again, this month, I don’t have a ton to report. I’ve been rebuilding some of my routines that I decided to shuffle around; I’m slowly moving more and more of my life to be tracked in Linear, which is the best system that I’ve found so far.
It’s been a great month for the Philadelphia JavaScript Club: Technical.ly ran an article about us, which has led to quite a few new faces showing up!
I also made my first TikTok ever, featuring Lana the Dog and Yymamy the Flipper Zero:
@tjwds Reading my dog with a Flipper Zero #flipperzero #rescuedog #hacktheplanet ♬ animal crossing ~ new horizons lofi – Closed on Sunday
Speaking of Lana — M and I taught her to spin in a circle on command, though we haven’t yet captured a good video of it. She’s not an old dog, but she’s certainly not a young dog either, so it’s nice to have taught her a new trick.
Other than that, I don’t have a whole lot going on. It’s been a month of reading — more on that below!
Music
Reading
I did not get through Pride and Prejudice; I unfortunately found it a bit too repetitive.
I did, however, thoroughly enjoy Espedair Street by Iain Banks. It was a really sad story, but very engaging. This also means that there’s now another entry in the “My opinion on every Iain Banks book…” list!
I also flew through The Crysalids by John Wyndham. It was so completely foreign to what I was expecting, for a sci-fi novel from 1955. I really got caught up in the story… but the ending was, in my view, utterly repugnant. So, it was really disappointing to be so eager to turn the pages in this one, only to be really let down in the end!
At time of writing, I don’t think I’ve settled on a new novel, but I’m sure I’ll land on a new one soon.
As for non-fiction, I read and learned so much. I’ve been slowly working through The Rust Programming Language, making a ton of flashcards to make sure I have the fundamental concerns of the language truly locked in place in my head. But this means that it’s been quite slow going.
I also really loved Open Circuits by Windell Oskay and Eric Schlaepfer. You can download the first chapter from the No Starch Press website, and I very highly recommend checking it out. So many electronics concepts have clicked into my permanent memory because of this book, and just based on reading this and looking up some things in more detail as I went, I’m starting to feel a lot more confident in my knowledge about electronics in general.
Relatedly, I read Make’s Jumpstarting Your Own PCBs by Shawn Wallace. It was quite good: basically the exact technical manual that I was looking for to unlock the next level of my understanding.
failbetter
This month, failbetter published:
- “Spellcasting for Lost Souls” by Daniella Postavsky,
- “Some Random Issues” by John Repp,
- and “And in This Episode” by Ian Woollen
Stats
This month:
- I typed 730,000 keys and clicked 119,874 times.
- I listened to 1,279 songs.
