Stung Eye blog

Blog: Reading and Listening in 2022

Sun, 12 Feb 2023 16:40:40 +0100

I read 12 books last year. Two on my Kobo e-reader and the rest were deadtree format. Eight of them were fiction. Four were non-fiction. Nightly reading with the girls continues. My commute to work is back (after a nearly three year work-from-home pause) so I expect 2023 to see an increase in books.

Two of the books read this year were written by close friends, which was a treat.

Fiction in 2022

Perhaps the Stars - Ada Palmer - The conclusion to the epic Terra Ignota quartet. “Did we poison our ethics with the trolley problem?”
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars - Christopher Paolini - “Eat the path, or the path will eat you.”
The Immortalist - Chloe Benjamin - “Here’s what happens: you make choices, and then they make choices. Your choices make choices.”
Rumours of Virtue - Sam Popowich - Authenticity and trauma Winnipeg.
Vita Nostra - Marina & Sergey Dyachenko - Sasha is a verb in the imperative mood.
Tinkers - Paul Harding - “[B]e comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it.”
Termination Shock - Neal Stephenson - Climate change solutionism and the Line of Actual Control.
Late Nights on Air - Elizabeth Hay - The long and sudden of it all.

Non-Fiction in 2022

Chase That Smile - Harold Cabrera - Infectious positivity and gounding gratitude.
Building Thinking Classrooms - Peter Liljedahl - Collaboration, the fostering of autonomy, and “keep thinking” questions.
The Art of Game Design : a Book of Lenses - Jesse Schell - “An artist is someone who takes you where you could never go alone.”
C++ Best Practices - Jason Turner - On writing fast, maintainable, portable code.

Top Books Written by Friends in 2022

Happy to have read two books written by friends in 2022, one fiction, one non.

Rumours of Virtue - Sam Popowich

“[E]very image distorts the reality people suppose it just records. It abstracts, it selects, it changes the emphasis, the perspective. I say the image does that, but of course it’s the photographer who does it, in the first instance. But they are not alone, not the sole author of this fakery: everyone who developed the scientific theory of optics, everyone who manufactures cameras, everyone who designs sensors. In the old days, I would have said everyone who produced and developed film and prints. A myriad decisions go into the production of an image that, out of a profoundly naive understanding of technology, people tend to believe is a direct and unmediated capture of what actually exists.

Disgraced photo-journalist Nick Maitland is forced to confront the traumas he harbours, and the impacts of his decisions, when accused of faking his most celebrated image.

The story of a self-obsessed hedonist and what happens when we reject our obligations to society in the name of ego, pleasure, celebrity, or even artistic expression.

"Sure, people are responsible for their own lives, but they aren’t solely responsible. They inherit things from their parents, from their teachers, from the world around them. You don’t start a world over again, fresh, you have to make do with what’s given to you, which includes a world full of other people.”

Chase That Smile - Harold Cabrera

“Life is good. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Harold Cabrera is a man with a plan! Actually he had three plans. Before the age of 40 Harold dreamt of running the Paris Marathon, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, and completing an Ironman triathlon. Not to spoil anything, but he accomplished all three, and went on to write this book about the planning, training, and determination it took to do so.

It’s a special thing to have a friend like Harold. His positivity is infectious and his ability to seek out and revel in good times is second to none. Also inspiring are the physical challenges he puts himself through, and it’s not just big races. By way of Strava I get to see Harold running, cycling and swimming each and every day of the year. Harold reminds us to challenge ourselves, to recognize when life is good, and to be grateful for it all.

Top Three Books of 2022

Late Nights on Air - Elizabeth Hay

“Despite the red glow of the on-air light, he then pushed through the studio door, only to be met by one of the great mysteries of life. We look so very different from the way we sound. It’s a shock, similar to hearing your own voice for the first time, when you’re forced to wonder how the rest of you comes across if you sound nothing like the way you think you sound. You feel dislodged from the old shoe of yourself.”

Friendship and love in 1970s Yellowknife through the eyes of a group of CBC radio journalists. A pipeline proposal and its impact on the indigenous people of Northwest Territories. An epic but ill-fated canoe trip. Winner of the 2007 Giller Prize.

Vita Nostra - Marina & Sergey Dyachenko

“She was caught and pulled up like a kite, while her body left on the grass remained inert. A thread that connected her to this anchor helped her soar and kept her close. She felt the trees as her arms, and grass, as her hair. A lightning struck, torn leaves flew by, and Sasha laughed with pure joy.

She knew herself to be a word spoken by the sunlight. She laughed at the fear of death. She understood what she was born for and what she was destined to carry out. All this happened while the lightning remained in the sky, a white flash.”

Suggested to me by Sam when I mentioned I liked grammar-based magic systems. Sasha is coerced by a strange man to enter the Institute of Special Technologies. This book is weird and dark and philosophically pretenious in the best of ways. There’s not much more I can say. It’s full of “concepts that cannot be imagined but can be named” and vice versa. Originally written in Ukranian by spouses Maryna and Serhiy Dyachenko. Serhiy Dyachenko passed away last year.

Building Thinking Classrooms - Peter Liljedahl

“For a curricular task to generate thinking, it should be asked before students have been shown how to solve it. Does this mean the task should come right at the beginning of the lesson? Yes.”

Back in June I attended a PD session at work by Peter Liljedahl. Afterwards I tweeted:

Very rarely do I leave a staff PD session thinking “oh wow, time to rethinking everything!” but here we are.

Fourteen (at times unituitive) teaching practices for building a classroom where students engage in solving problems as a community of learning. Read over a few nights this summer, I’ve already put some of these practices into place at the college. I’ll definitely re-read this book soon while taking careful notes.

Family Books in 2022

We read 100 story books and graphic novels from the library, including Lumberjanes vol 14 through 17, plus a few chapter books for good measure.

The Best (Kids’ Pick): The Undercover Book Club - Colleen Nelson

The bookworm and the class clown. Takes place in Winnipeg.

The best (Dad’s Pick): Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures - Kate DiCamillo

Of cynics and superheros. An existential adventure for children. A book that treats kids like adults while making adults feel like kids.

“‘Do not hope; instead, observe’ were words that Flora, as a cynic, had found useful in the extreme. She repeated them to herself a lot.”

Honestly, I wish I could just quote the entire book here.

“All words at all times, true or false, whispered or shouted, are clues to the workings of the human heart.”

The girls enjoyed the movie too; I thought it was a travesty.

Podcasts in 2022

Apparently I listened to 636 podcast episodes, across 32 podcasts, for a total of 500+ hours (20+ days!).

New podcasts:

Stuff Dutch People Like - My sister Colleen (a long-time expat in the Netherlands) and her friend Allard Westenbrink have started a podcast on Dutch culture!
Sean Carroll’s Mindscape
ADSP

Podcasts where I listen to nearly every episode: ADSP, CBC Spark, Eric Normand, Game Dev Advice, Invisibilia, Lex Fridman, Long Now Seminars, Nice Game Club, Overdue, Philosophy Bites, Sean Carroll’s Mindscape, Song Exploder, Stuff Dutch People Like, The Bike Shed, This American Life

Occasional listens: CBC Ideas, Conversations with Tyler, CppCast, Hanselminute, Philosophize This!, The Tim Ferris Show, Syntax

Favourite Podcasts of 2022

Some of my favourite episodes from the past year, listed alphabetically by show:

CBC Spark: Human and AI Consciousness, What AI can and can’t do

CBC Ideas: Reith Lectures: Artificial Intelligence and Human Existence, The Authoritarian Personality, Maria Ressa: Last Two Minutes of Democracy

Conversations with Tyler: Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Part and Relishing the Present, Lydia Davis on Language and Literature

Lex Fridman: Lee Cronin: Origin of Life, Aliens, Complexity, and Consciousness, Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures, John Vervaeke Meaning Crisis, Atheism, Religion & the Search for Wisdom, Michael Levin: Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots, John Carmack: Doom, Quake, VR, AGI, Programming, Video Games, and Rockets, Todd Howard: Skyrim, Elder Scrolls 6, Fallout, and Starfield

Long Now Seminar: Sean Carroll: The Passage of Time and the Meaning of Life, Dorie Clark: The Long Game: How to be a long-term thinker in a short term world, Steward Brand, Jonathan Haidt, Kevin Kelly: Democracy in the Next Cycle of History

Overdue: Romona Quimby Age 8

Philosophy Bites: Josiah Ober on the Civic Bargain

Reply All: The Contact List

Sean Carrol: Anil Seth on Emergence, Information and Consciousness, Kate Jeffery on Entropy, Complexity, and Evolution, C. Thi Nguyen on Games, Art, Values, and Agency

Stuff Dutch People Like: The One Where we EAT All the Dutch Snacks, The One about the Dutch and Money, The One About Biking, Three Kisses, and how Dutch men can’t flirt

Tim Ferris - Margaret Atwood - A Living Legend on Creative Process, Susan Cain - Transforming Pain, Building Your Emotional Resilience, Professor Donald Hoffman - The Case Against Reality

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Blog: Sound + Code = Jam (Vol 1)

Wed, 27 Jul 2022 08:49:35 +0100

This past Saturday (July 23, 2022) marked the first in a series of in-person events focused on experimenting with sound and code. That’s right, we spent the day hacking music at New Media Manitoba in the beautiful Dingwall Building!

We had 18 folks at our peak, which is an amazing turnout for a niche event. The day went by in a flash. Like a good party, I was left feeling energized and inspired, but also with a melancholic sense that there wasn’t nearly enough time to get to know / catch-up with all those in attendance.

The day started with some lightning talks on Sonic Pi, Chuck, a musical instrument built using Scratch, and the wonders of Ableton Link. The rest of the day was full of cool experiments like:

A gamepad controller drum machine built using Godot.
The coding of a Sonic pi version of the 80s anthem Take on Me.
Generative music built using Node.js synchronized with tunes from a digital DJ deck using Ableton and (I believe) Serato.
Sonic Pi controlled in real-time using a hardware midi device.
An “augmented trumpet” converted into a midi controller using machine-learning pitch detection: source code and video. (This is the project I worked on.)
A number of folkds explored Sonic Pi for the first time. Some reverse engineered the code for DJ_Dave’s blockgame to learn about live loop synchronization and text-based drum patterns.

There were also folks with awesome hardware gear and lots of great conversations on the possibilities of combining code with music. Some attendees assembled instrument and drum kit sample packs and surfaced this great CC0 fake acoustic drum kit pack.

Based on the event turnout, I’m already pondering Sound + Code Volume 2. I’d love for the second event to be slightly more structured to ensure that everyone has a chance to work on a collaborative project.

A big thanks to New Media Manitoba for the event space and to Prairie Dev Con for the delicious lunch. (The 2022 Winnipeg Prairie Developer Conference will be this November 7th and 8th!) I’d also like to thank the Winnipeg Game Collective community for being the initial inspiration for the event.

To get a better sense of what’s possible in the space of algorithms and music, I’ve included a few videos below.

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Blog: Reading and Listening in 2021

Mon, 14 Feb 2022 10:57:05 +0100

I read 12 books last year. Three were read on my Kobo e-reader and the rest were deadtree format. Six of them were fiction. Six were non-fiction. Nightly reading with the girls continues. I’m mising my weekday 1.5 hours bus commute reading sessions. It’s just too easy to fall asleep with a book across your face. :)

Fiction in 2021

What’s Bred in the Bone - Robertson Davies - The nature and nuture of people and place.
Secret Commonwealth - The Book of Dust Vol 2 - Philip Pullman - When you stop believing in magic.
Red Seas Under Red Skies - Scott Lynch - The bastards take to the sea.
Darker Shade of Magic - V. E. Schwab - Red London, Grey London, White London, Black London.
Leviathan Wakes - The Expanse Book 1 - James S. A. Corey - Not quite warp speed and first contact.
A Gathering of Shadows - V. E. Schwab - Red London and pirates.

Non-Fiction in 2021

Sapiens - A Brief History of Humankind - Yuval Noah Harari - Of human cooperation by way of imagination.
Reinventing Comics - Scott McCloud - Towards an infinite canvas.
Math Art: Truth, Beauty, and Equations - Stephen Ornes - The aesthetics of equations.
Procedural Generation in Game Design - Edited by Tanya X. Short & Tarn Adams - Algorithmic media synthesis.
The Book : On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are - Alan Watts - Other people teach us who we are.
Self-Reg: How to Help Your Child (and You) Break the Stress Cycle and Successfully Engage with Life - Dr Stuart Shanker - Don’t forget the body while calming the mind.

Top Three Books of 2021

What’s Bred in the Bone - Robertson Davies

“A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.”

This was my only re-read of 2021. I think this is my favourite Davies novel, but I tend to think that after reading any of his books. It’s part two of his Cornish Trilogy, and shares some characters and settings from his Deptford Trilogy. Who was Franis Cornish? I’m a sucker for coming-of-age stories, but mix in art, philosophy, religion, spies!, forgery, provincial Canadiana, angles and daimons, and you know I’ll be hooked throughout.

“The art of the quoter is to know when to stop.”

Sapiens - A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

“You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.”

Although I disagreed with some of the book’s claims, they are presented with such conviction that I just went along for the ride; it’s a good ride if slightly depressing. Harari’s history of humanity begins with the evolution of imagination and concludes with an exploration of human happiness. A 100,000 year story of how we (homo sapiens) outlived five other human species and (for better or worse) came to dominate the world.

“Biology enables, Culture forbids.”

Math Art: Truth, Beauty, and Equations by Stephen Ornes

A coffee table art book with artist interviews and high-level explorations of aesthetically pleasing mathematical concepts. Goes beyond the usual math art of Escher and Fractals, although both are mentioned. If you’re intrigued, the book is available from the Winnipeg Public Library.

Instead of a quote I’ve included photo from the book at the bottom of this post.

Family Books in 2021

Public libraries were open throughout 2021 so took full advantage.

The best:

Lumberjanes Graphic Novels - Volumes 1 through 13 - The girls absolutely love the adventures at Miss Qiunzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet’s Camp for Hardcore Lady Types.

One top of those we read 73 story books and books 6 through 11 of Ivy + Bean by Annie Barrows.

Podcasts in 2021

Due to my backed up queue of podcasts I only added two showa to my Pocket Cast list, Eric Normand’s Thoughts on Functional Programming and Conversations with Tyler. I also managed to pare down my show count from 28 to 23.

Podcasts where I continue to listen to every episode:

CBC Spark, CppCast, CppChat, Game Dev Advice, Gameplay, Hanselminutes, Invisibilia, Lex Fridman, Long Now Seminars, Nice Games Club, Overdue, Philosophy Bites, Reply All, Song Exploder, The Bike Shed, The Tim Ferriss Show, This American Life

Occasional listens:

CBC Front Burner, CBC Ideas, Philosophize This!, Syntax

Favourite Podcasts of 2021

Some of my favourite episodes from the past year, listed alphabetically by show:

CBC Ideas - Entre Chien et Loup: How Dogs Began, Flow, No Feeling is Final: The Wisdom of Rainer Maria Rilke
Conversations with Tyler - Audrey Tang on the Technology of Democracy and Amia Srinivasan on Utopian Feminism
Eric Normand - Computer Programming as Art
Gameplay - Honk! The Sound Design of Untitled Goose Game
Lex Fridman - Andrew Huberman: Sleep, Dreams, Creativity & The Limits of the Human Mind and Neal Stephenson: Sci-Fi, Space, Aliens, AI, VR & the Future of Humanity
Philosophy Bites - Suki Finn on the Metaphysics of Nothing
Song Exploder - Danny Elfamn - What’s This from The Nightmare Before Christmas
This American Life - The Weight of Words and Act V
Tim Ferris - Jessica Lahey on Parenting, Desirable Difficulties, The Gift of Failure, Self-Efficacy, and The Addiction Inoculation and Giuliana Furci on the Wonders of Mycology, Wisdom from Jane Goodall, Favorite Books, and the World’s Largest Fungarium

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Blog: Reading and Listening in 2020

Sat, 13 Feb 2021 09:05:12 +0100

I read 22 books last year. Three were read on my new e-reader, the rest were deadtree format. Fourteen of them were fiction. Eight were non-fiction. I continued to read to the girls almost every night. Normally my bus commute allows for my reading and podcast habit. In 2020 my reading shifted into bed before sleep. Podcasts shifted to running and cooking. 2020 was also the year the fam truely took over my Spotify account. The algorithms are confused.

Where 2019 was all re-reads, 2020 included one re-read, a bunch of sci-fi (as per usual), and a number of math and coding tomes.

Fiction in 2020

Jennifer Government - Max Barry - Capitalizm knows best.
The Final Solution - Michael Chabon - Exploits of a once-famous detective turned senile beekeeper.
The Cursed Hermit - Kris Bertin & Alexander Forbes - The Hobtown Junior Detective Club solves another Lynch-ian mystery.
Fall or Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson - Digitally ever after; a simulation of Paradise Lost.
The Silkworm - Robert Galbraith - Bombyx Mori.
The Slow Regard of Silent Things - Patrick Rothfuss - Auri alone in the Underthing.
The Book of Dust - Philip Pullman - Alethiometers, Dæmons, and His Dark Materials.
American Gods - Neil Gaiman - Of old and new gods.
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters - J. D. Salinger - Folks who live in Glass houses…
Babel-17 - Samuel R. Delany - Sapir-Whorf in space.
Three Body Problem - Liu Cixin (translated by Ken Liu) - Long distance calls to another world during China’s Cultural Revolution.
Recursion - Blake Crouch - Loop back again. Loop back again. Loop back again.
Radicalized - Cory Doctorow - Near future dystopias.
Rebel Angels - Robertson Davies - Scholars and Gypsies. The root to the crown.

Top Three Fiction Books in 2020

The Book of Dust by Philip Pullman

“The pleasure of knowing secrets was doubled by telling them.”

The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss

“There was a door, but it was terribly bashful, so Auri politely pretended not to see it.”

Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies

“Universities cannot be more universal than the people who teach, and the people who learn, within their walls.”

Non-Fiction in 2020

How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen - Joanna Faber, Julie King, Adele Faber
Getting to Yes - Roger Fisher abd William L. Ury
How to Solve It - George Pólya
A Tour of C++ - Bjarne Stroustrup
The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled from India to Europe for Love - Per J. Andersson, Anna Holmwood (Translator)
This Book is Anti-Racist - Tiffany Jewell
Burn Math Class - Jason Wilkes
Game Coding Complete - Mike “MrMike” McShaffry and David “Rez” Graham

Top Three Non-Fiction in 2020

How to Solve It by George Pólya

“Solving problems is a practical skill like, let us say, swimming. We acquire any practical skill by imitation and practice. Trying to swim, you imitate what other people do with their hands and feet to keep their heads above water and, finally, you learn to swim by practicing swimming. Trying to solve problems, you have to observe and imitate what other people do when solving problems and, finally, you learn to do problems by doing them.”

Burn Math Class by Jason Wilkes

“Forget everything you’ve been told about math. Forget all those silly formulas you’ve ever been told to memorize. Make a little room in your head with clean white walls and no math. Without leaving that room, let’s reinvent mathematics for ourselves.”

A Tour of C++ - Bjarne Stroustrup

“Think of [this book as a] short sightseeing tour of a city. […] You do not know the city after such a tour. You do not understand all you have seen and heard. To really know a city, you have to live in it, often for years. […] After the tour, the real exploration can begin.”

Family Books in 2020

The library was closed for much of 2020 so our picture book consumption plummeted. We still managed 40 picture books, two Nancy Clancy chapter books, one Harry Potter, and far too many garfield comic strips. Jelani Memory’s A Kids Book About Racism gave us the words to talk through the racism the girls have no doubt already noticed in the world.

Podcasts in 2020

The plan for 2019 was to pare down my podcasts, but in 2020 my show count balloned from 20 to 28. To keep up, I’m no longer an every-show-completionist.

New Podcasts: Front Burner, Nice Games Club, Game Dev Advice, CBC Spark, CppCast, CppChat, Lex Fridman, Pitchfork Review, Gameplay

Podcasts that continue to be in rotation:

CBC Ideas, Commons, Greater than Code, Hanselminutes, Invisibilia, Javascript Jabber, Long Now Seminars, Overdue, Philosophize This!, Philosophy Bites, Reply All, Song Exploder, Syntax, The Bike Shed, The Public Philosopher, The Ruby Rogues, The Tim Ferriss Show, Think Again, This American Life

Top Three Podcasts in 2020

Lex Fridman

Machine-learning researcher does long-form interviews about the nature of intelligence, consciousness, love, and power.

Way more than three favourite episodes:

Front Burner and Spark from CBC

Front Burner is a short daily news podcast, while Spark is a weekly look at how technology, innovation and design affects our lives. I don’t listen to every episode, but Jayme Poisson and Nora Young are there when I need a news and culture explainer.

Instead of picking fav episodes, I suggest you cherry pick the topics that stand out to you.

Nice Games Club

A show where nice gamedevs talk gaming and game development. A lovely show with a thoughtful group of friends.

Navigate the 200 plus episodes by topic.

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Blog: Email to Friends From This Morning

Sun, 13 Dec 2020 08:56:34 +0100

I’m here today to spread the gospel of the Mellotron.

Le Mellotron is people and music. A blog that became a webradio gathering and then a community of music curators and lovers. Located in a bar near Place de la Republique square in Paris, Le Mellotron beats day after day to the rhythm of the city, its people and streets. We believe in an emerging parisian musical scene, moved by its curiosity, and strengthened by its ability to capture and transform its influences. LeMellotron will be its amplifier.

I recommend binge-listening their “by year” playlists. The vibe is chill, funky, and full of soul.

The video stream gives you a glimpse of the friendships of a Parisian neighbourhood. For the full experience, it’s important to keep the video within sight while listening. :)

Love ya! Kyle

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Blog: Reading and Listening in 2019

Sun, 19 Jan 2020 21:36:32 +0100

I read 20 books last year. All twenty books were deadtree format. Fourteen of them were fiction. Six were non-fiction. I continued to read to the girls almost every night. Together we read an additional 9 chapter books and oodles of picture books. I managed to drop a few shows from my podcatcher. Our family listened to 700 hours of music.

2019 was a year of re-reading favourites from my youth as well as more recent favourites. A year of nostalgia and retrospection! I enjoyed the journey and am planning on re-reading one book a year from here out.

Fiction in 2019

Fifth Business - Robertson Davies - Of saints and fools and the revenge of the unlived life. - “God, youth is a terrible time! So much feeling and so little notion of how to handle it!”
The Manticore - Robertson Davies - Humanity’s mythic past and the archetypes that shape our lives. - “My job is to listen to people say things they very badly want to tell but are afraid nobody else will understand.”
World of Wonders - Robertson Davies - A life of roughness and cruelty transformed by magic. - “We have educated ourselves into a world from which wonder, and the fear and dread and splendor and freedom of wonder have been banished.”
Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse - The wisdom of a river. The meaning of a life. Every truth contains it’s opposite. Enlightenment through strife. - “Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.” (Available for free on Project Gutenberg.)
Over Sea, Under Stone - Susan Cooper - Three siblings find and protect the holy grail in a 1960s English sea-side town. Their uncle may or may not be Merlin. - “You can’t find a treasure map and just say, ‘Oh, how nice,’ and put it back again.”
The Old Man and The Sea - Ernest Hemingway - What you can do with what there is. Such a frustrating protag! - “It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.”
Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury - Colonialism on the red planet. “Sleeping beauty awoke at the kiss of a scientist and expired at the fatal puncture of his syringe.”
Franny And Zoe - J. D. Salinger - Walking the razor’s edge between ennui and egoism. - “I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.”
The Stranger - Albert Camus - A stranger to himself and indifferent to the world. - “Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness.”
Slaughter House Five - Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - Billy Pilgrim is unstuck in time. A duty-dance with death. - “And so it goes.”
Origin - Dan Brown - AI, evolution and the end of religion. Summertime guilty pleasure. Not a re-read. - “May our philosophies keep pace with our technologies. May our compassion keep pace with our powers.”
Exhalation - Ted Chiang - Mind-expanding sci-fi shorts with a focus on fate and choice. - “Free will is a kind of miracle; when we make a genuine choice, we bring about a result that cannot be reduced to the workings of physical law. Every act of volition is, like the creation of the universe, a first cause.”
Anathem - Neal Stephenson - An epic alternate history of the western philosophical tradition. - “The mystic nails a symbol to one meaning that was true for a moment but soon becomes false. The poet, on the other hand, sees that truth while it’s true but understands that symbols are always in flux and that their meanings are fleeting.”
Dune - Frank Herbert - Destiny, fanaticism, ecology, and the spice melange. “[T]he mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”

Read in that order.

Top Four Books in 2019

Top three re-reads and then one book that was (for the most part) new to me:

Anathem by Neal Stephenson and Dune by Frank Herbert

Anathem and Dune are my top two all-time favourite sci-fi books. They did not disappoint.

Similarities: Epic world building. The nature of reality. The mysteries of consciousness and free will. Long now thinking. Neologistic dictionaries. Appendices. Myth, mysticism and religion. Math, science and philosophy.

Difference: Although I’d never wish to visit Dune’s desert plant of Arrakis, I’d love to spend a few years living amongst the avout in a Mathic concent on Arbre.

The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies

I’m going to cheat and pick the entire Deptford Trilogy rather than just one book. I’m hooked on Davies again and will now have to re-read all his other trilogies. There are fates worse than this.

Myth, magic, psychology, history and a dash of rural Canada in the first half of the 20th century.

Exhalation by Ted Chiang

I’d read one of these short stories before, The Lifecycle of Software Objects, a must read for all AI enthusiasts / apologists. Read Online.

I also recommend listening to Levar Burton read The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate, a tale of time-travel in medieval Baghdad. Listen to Part 1 and Part 2 on Stitcher, or Part 1 and Part 2 on Spotify.

Non-Fiction in 2019

Honey I Wrecked the Kids - Alyson Schafer
Digital Mosaics - Steven Holtzman
Nonviolent Communication - Marshall B. Rosenberg
The Practicing Mind - Thomas M. Sterner
Learning C++ by Building Games with Unreal Engine 4 - Sharan Volin - Not a re-read.
Ways of Seeing - John Berger

Top Three Non-Fiction in 2019

Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg

With Nonviolent Communication (NVC) we learn to hear our own deeper needs and those of others. Communication as a spiritual practice involving deep listening, empathy and compassion. Observations, Feelings, Needs, Requests.

I might have to re-read this one yearly.

Honey I Wrecked the Kids by Alyson Schafer

Pairs nicely with NVC. Highly recommended for all parents. Don’t let the intro scare you off. This isn’t just a book for families experiencing major behavioural difficulties. This is a guide to family harmony based on “the three Cs”:

When kids don’t feel connected they’ll seek attention.
When they don’t feel capable they’ll seek power.
When they don’t feel counted they’ll seek revenge.
When they don’t feel courageous they’ll seek avoidance.

The Practicing Mind by Thomas M. Sterner

“Everything in life worth achieving requires practice. In fact, life itself is nothing more than one long practice session, an endless effort of refining our motions.”

We are what we do!

Family Books in 2019

This was the year I started reading chapter books to the girls. We read:

Mixed in to our nightly reading were about 150 picture books and graphic novels from the library.

The non-fiction family book that stood out was Sex is a funny word : a book about bodies, feelings, and YOU by Cory Silverberg, with illustrations by Fiona Smyth. An age appropriate cartoon book about bodies, gender, and sexuality.

Podcasts in 2019

The plan for 2019 was to pare down my podcasts, but I only managed to drop my show count from 23 to 20. My unlistened episodes queue is currently at 17. I estimate that I’ve listened to over 410 hours of podcasts this year, the equivalent of 17 24-hour days. I also switched apps from BeyondPod to Pocket Casts. I listen to most podcasts at 1 to 1.2x speed with silent gaps removed.

Podcasts still in rotation:

Top Three Podcasts

Commons with Arshy Mann

In 2019 Commons focused on Canadian oil and Canadian dynasties.

Fav Episodes: CRUDE #2 – Bombs, Blood & the Battle of Trickle Creek, CRUDE #5 – A Town, Annihilated, and DYNASTIES #3 – The Fords

Overdue with Andrew Cunningham and Craig Getting

Andrew and Craig take turns reading books and telling each other about them. The things they say are funny and smart. I only listen to episodes for books I’ve read.

I recommend digging through their back catalogue to find your favourite books. For example, they’ve got an episode on Dune, The Martian Chronicles, Franny and Zooey, The Old Man and the Sea, Siddhartha, and Slaughterhour Five.

The Bike Shed with Chris Toomey and Steph Viccari

Excellent podcast about software development. I’ve listened to almost every one of their 200+ episodes. 2019 was a good year. I’m digging the conversations between the current hosts Steph and Chris.

Music

New for this year, our family music consumption. We have a paid Spotify account, with additional tunes provided by YouTube, Soundcloud, Mixcloud, old CDs in the car, and the radio.

Even though we mainly listen to multi-artist playlists, Spotify tells me our top artists were:

Jain
The Beatles
Chilly Gonzales
Panic! At The Disco (The girls have sway.)
!!!

Top genres: Lo-fi beats, Electronica, Rock, Edm, Jazz boom bap

In all, we listened to over 42,000 minutes of music together. The equivalent of one month of 24 hour a day tunes.

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Blog: Learning in Public

Sat, 11 Jan 2020 08:36:00 +0100

I teach coding at Red River College. I’ve been at the college for almost 12.5. Although I’ve learned a lot over this time, this learning has been almost exclusivly related to teaching and web development (and outside of work, parenting and open government).

It’s time to step a bit of my comfort zone: I’m going to learn modern game development.

So, okay, it’s not too far outside my comfort zone. It’s still tech. It’s still coding. But it feels like a different world.

It’s also a return to the math and physics of my engineering days, and to coding with C++, which has changed significantly in the 15 years I’ve been away from the language. There’s metric ton of learning to do. The goal is to distill this learning down to a collection of college level game development courses.

I’ll be documenting my learning here. Join me.

(The idea of documenting “learning in public” was inspired by the work of Tania Rascia.)

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Blog: Switched On

Mon, 08 Jul 2019 08:21:22 +0100

Total network nerd out! I switched my internet provider from Bell MTS to TekSavvy and it was quite the ride.

Why the switch? Half the monthly cost and total control of my home network. Oh, and I love tech puzzle and the challenge of the build. ;)

My New Network Stack

Technicolor TC4400 Cable Modem - $160cnd from TekSavvy
TP-Link Archer C9 WiFi Router - $135cnd on Amazon
D-Link DIR615 Flashed with DD-WRT firmware - pre-owned
Raspberry Pi for Ad Blocking - pre-owned

In Winnipeg TekSavvy acts as a Shaw reseller, so the TC4400 takes in a cable signal from the Shaw network. The TC4400 acts as a Bridge to the internet for the Archer C9, which provides local wired and wireless routing. The DIR615 is configured as a Switch to allow for more wired connections, seven in total.

The Archer C9 also handles DHCP IP allocation for all devices with the Raspberry Pi set as the Domain Name Server. The Raspberry Pi uses the open source Pi Hole software to filter out ads at the network level, so no web or app ads get served to the devices on our network.

Benefits of the Switch

Here are a few of the benefits that made this switch worthwhile. Most of these benefits came from switching from the MTS provided modem/router/wifi combo unit (Arris 5168N) to the custom stack described above. The Arris unit wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t very configurable.

1) Wifi Signal Strength - My entire house and the backyard now has Wifi coverage in the -40 to -60 dB range at 2.4 and 5Ghz, which is really good. Measurements taken with the Wifi Analyzer Android App. I’m also running my 2.4 and 5Ghz wifi using the same SSID and password to allow my devices to auto-select 5Ghz when close to the router, and 2.4Ghz when further away.

2) More Wired Connections - I’ve gone from 4 ethernet ports to 7, meaning I can down run the following devices wired rather than on wifi: 2 laptops, 1 pi hole, 1 chromecast, 2 chromecast audio, 1 security alarm system. (Note: The Chromecast didn’t work at all when wired on the Arris.)

3) Pi Hole Ad Filtering - I had a Pi Hole running with the Arris setup, but it wasn’t perfect. So far the Pi Hole has blocked over %53 of all DNS requests as ads/trackers. That’s right, more than half of all domain name requests on my home network were for ads and trackers that I didn’t ask for. (Note: I still run uBlock origin on my browsers to catch the occasional ads that sneak through. Especially required for Facebook and YouTube.)

4) Download Speeds - Our internet speeds needs aren’t extreme. At mosts we’re pulling down 2 to 3 simultaneous audio/video streams. As such I stuck with the same speed band of 25Mbs. With MTS, speed tests over the years showed that we were rarely getting the promised 25Mbs download rate. So far with Teksavvy we’re consitently getting significantly faster than 25Mbs across all devices.Testing was done via Google and SpeedTest.net.

5) Monthy Cost - I’m now saving 50 bucks a month on my internet. More on this in the next section.

Costs and Savings

Total cost to switch: $295 (New Modem and Router)
Monthly Savings: $54 ($97/month MTS - $43/month Teksavvy)
Time to pay off switch: 5.5 months
Savings per year after that: $650

All that said, if you call MTS to cancel they’ll eventually offer you a deal. They offered to upgrade me to their Fibe 100 plan while dropping my bill to $45/month for two years (afterwhich it would be $119/month). It’d already purchased the cable modem from Teksavvy and was looking forward to my custom network, so I declined.

Also, it possible to switch to TekSavvy with a much simpler network stack by purchasing the Technicolor DPC3848V Modem/Router/Wifi combo unit. You’ll get fewer wired connections, no ad blocking, and I can’t speak to the WiFi coverage, but it should still be a solid setup.

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Blog: Reading and Listening in 2018

Sun, 03 Feb 2019 12:32:53 +0100

I read 20 books last year. All twenty books were deadtree format. Fourteen of them were fiction. Six were non-fiction. I continued to read to the girls almost every night. Podcasts still loom large in terms of time invested.

There’s a chart below showing books read by year since 2011.

Fiction in 2018

The Cuckoo’s Calling - J. K. Rowling as Robert Galbraith - Tropey brit-bloke detective novel. Fun. I’ll follow this series.
The Vorrh - Brian Catling - An endless, timeless African forest. Colonialism and ancient magic.
Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë - An exploration of tyranny and love on the heath.
All The Birds in the Sky - Charlie Jane Anders - Witchcraft and science in the near-future.
A Wrinkle In Time - Madeleine L'Engle - The Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics for kids.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach - Positive thinking and tenacity for birds.
Seven Surrenders - Ada Palmer - Providence in another God’s universe.
Democracy - Papadatos, Kawa & Di Donna - 490 BCE Athens as graphic novel.
The Lies of Locke Lamora - Scott Lynch - Gentlemen Bastards serve the Crooked Warden in medieval Venice, but on another planet.
Our Man in Havana - Graham Greene - Spycraft and other self-fufilling prophecies.
Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro - A quest to remember in a time with a need to forget.
REAMDE - Neal Stephenson - Gold farming and jihad.
2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke - “oh my God! — it’s full of stars!”
The Will To Battle - Ada Palmer - A tract of time, wherein the Will to contend by Battle is sufficiently known.

Read in that order.

Top Three Fiction in 2018

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

“I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind. And this is one: I’m going to tell it - but take care not to smile at any part of it.”

This book came highly recommend by Sam. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t an exploration of tyranny, love, and inter-generational trama on the heath.

From Sam:

“This is a wild ride: raw and violent and exceedingly modern. In Wuthering Heights there’s no hiding how terrible most of the people in it are. At the same time, the novel seems to be precisely about how conditions of violence, cruelty, racism, and intolerance reproduce themselves from generation to generation.”

At the end I was hoping for a Nelly spin-off.

Seven Surrenders and The Will to Battle by Ada Palmer

“If God made Man and Man made this, it is still a Self-portrait. And if, as some say, God made Man in His Image, and His Image then made this, it is a portrait’s portrait. And if Nature is the face of God, another Portrait, and Man is the spawn of Nature, it becomes a portrait’s portrait’s portrait. The Nature we see on Earth too is a microcosm, one might say a portrait of the Cosmos, and the Cosmos a portrait of the Laws of Nature, portraits spawning portraits like the spiral chambers of a nautilus repeating the face of God. Such a Creator seems desperate to show Himself to someone. And yet He hides Himself.”

Part two and three of the Terra Ignota Series. Philosophical and political sci-fi of the best kind.

Is there a place for miracle in a scientific society?

Is an Imperfect Sovereign better than a mounting Will to Battle?

What exactly is it that holds society together?

Non-Fiction in 2018

Fully Engaged - Thomas M. Sterner
Nonviolent Communication - Marshall B. Rosenberg
Becoming Leonardo - Mike Langford
Its OK Not To Share - Heather Shumaker
If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?- Alan Alda
Salt Fat Acid Heat - Samin Nosrat & Wendy MacNaughton

Top Three Non-Fiction in 2018

Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg

“Nonviolent Communication holds that most conflicts arise from coercive or manipulative language that aims to induce fear, guilt, and shame. These "violent” modes of communication divert the attention of the participants away from clarifying their needs, their feelings, their perceptions, and their requests, thus perpetuating the conflict.“ -Wikipedia Entry on NVC

Becoming Leonardo by Mike Langford

"What accounts for Leonardo is an act of self-discovery, and the tenacity to make it, over and over. […] Learning to read was incredibly difficult, writing “correctly” even more so. Everything seemed wrong to him, backward somehow, and he couldn’t figure out why. He felt so stupid. And then, somehow the idea was inserted into his confused little brain, “Do it your own way, even if it is different. You are not stupid! Find how it works for you.”

Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat. Illustrated by Wendy MacNaughton.

“Play to each element’s strengths: use Salt to enhance, Fat to carry, and Acid to balance flavor.”

A cookbook for those who wish to cook without cookbooks.

Podcasts in 2018

For podcasts, 2019 will be the year of the pare down. I seem to have collected 23 podcasts in the podcatcher and I can’t keep up. My unlistened episodes queue is at 27 and growing.

Podcasts added this year:

Flash Forward - Possible & not so possible futures. Speculative radio plays and science journalism.
Interactive Indies - Conversations with Winnipeggers doing game dev and/or interactive media work.
Javascript Jabber - Guest and panel discuss all things JS.
Syntax - Tasty web development treats.
Views on Vue - Guest and panel discuss all this Vue.
ZigZag - Journalism as a token economy.

Podcasts still in rotation:

CBC Ideas, Commons, Greater than Code, Hanselminutes, Invisibilia, LeVar Burton Reads, Long Now Seminars, Overdue, Philosophize This!, Philosophy Bites, Reply All, Song Exploder, The Bike Shed, The Public Philosopher, The Ruby Rogues, The Tim Ferriss Show, Think Again & This American Life.

Top Three Podcasts

I enjoyed these podcasts the most in 2018.

Ideas with Paul Kennedy (CBC)

Still a favourite. So many great episodes to pick from.

Fav Episodes:

Two takes on consciousness as a fundamental element of the universe:
- Panpsychism and the Nature of Consciousness
- Biocentrism: Rethinking Time, Space, Consciousness, and the Illusion of Death
Maximum Canada: Why 35 Million Canadians Are Not Enough
Who are you? Five stories of how gender shapes identity.

Flash Forward

Possible and not so possible futures. Speculative radio plays and science journalism.

Fav Episodes:

Portrait of the Artists as an Algorithm. Welcome to the Museum of Non-Human Art. Listen on Spotify
Bot for Teacher. A future without schools. Listen on Spotify
Our Father, Who art in Algorithm. Machine-generated super religion. Listen on Spotify

The Public Philosopher

I was introduced to philosopher Michael Sandel in 2012 through his online course on Justice at Harvard. Since then I’ve been following his BBC Radio series of public debates.

Fav Debates:

Should we aspire to be citizens of the world, or is a citizen of the world a Citizen of Nowhere? (St Paul’s Cathedral, 2018)
Why Democracy? (Online Global Debate, 2015)
CBC Ideas Crossover, 2017: Why Democracy Depends on How we Talk to Each Other - A debate about immigration that is actually a debate about what it means to be a citizen.

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Blog: Maps and Clouds

Fri, 07 Dec 2018 11:26:08 +0100

On Wednesday I spent the day at the Google Cloud Civic Tech Hackathon. It was fun day of teamwork, fancy food, data and technology. There was even an improv comedy workshop with some of the members of Outside Joke.

The Google Cloud Relay took place in 8 cities across Canada. The challenge was to build a web application to paint a picture of your city and how it is changing, evolving and adapting.

My team focused on the City of Winnipeg property locations and assessment value open dataset.

Below are two of the maps of Winnipeg we created. The first shows property values inspired by the work of Eugene Chen and Darkhorse Analytics. The second shows density of single detached homes.

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Blog: Meow Reader Ex Machina

Tue, 05 Jun 2018 16:50:45 +0100

9 years, 4 months, 19 days ago I posted my first image to Meow Reader, a Tumblr dedicated to images of cats reading and cats learning how to read.

A few weeks back I mentioned the (then abadoned) site to my department chair and he (jokingly?) suggested I use Machine Learning to automate the discovery of new Meow Reader images.

Challenge Accepted.

A few Ruby scripts later (plus some research into the Clarifai API) and I’ve got a shiny new collection of reading cats, dogs, rabbits, sloths… you named it! I’ve documented the process below, but you can also skip straight to the images.

Finding reading animals, a play in five acts:

Act 1 - Collect 140 existing images of reading cats.
Act 2 - Use Clarifai to detect concepts within images from Act 1.
Act 3 - Sort the discovered concepts by:
- How often they appear.
- Machine’s “confidence” in the concept.
Act 4 - Collect 1000s of new animal images Tumblr.
Act 5 - Filter images from Act 4 using concepts discovered in Act 2:
book, book bindings, book series, education, literature, newspaper, research, technology
Profit!

The Clarifai API could also be used in Act 5 to filter the images even further to limit the reading animals to be cats only. View the full source code here. There’s a separate script for each step.

Oh, and I also created a new version of the Meow Reader Android app using Vue.js and Cordova.

Please install it and leave me a glowing 5 star review. (/◔◡ ◔)/

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Blog: Reading and Listening in 2017

Sun, 21 Jan 2018 09:39:47 +0100

I read 20 books last year. In 2016 I read 17. In 2015 I read 15. In 2014 I read 25. In 2013 I read 19. In 2012 I read 18. And in 2011, when I first started tracking, I read 16. All twenty books were deadtree format. Eleven of them were fiction. Nine were non-fiction.

I also read to the girls almost every night and, for the first time this year, Acelyn started reading bedtime stories aloud as well.

As in 2016 and 2015, I listened to a large number of podcasts.

Fiction Read in 2017

The Tenth Man - Graham Greene - Thirty prisoners. Three must die. A tale of cowardice and conscience.
The Invention of Morel - Adolfo Bioy Casares - Speculative fiction from 1940. A mysterious island, unrequited love and a strange kind of immortality.
The Robots of Dawn - Isaac Asimov - Robotolove.
The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt - Friendship as an antidote for trauma.
Walkaway - Cory Doctorow - Post scarcity onsens.
Innocent Blood - P.D. James - Careful what you wish for.
In Our Times - Ernest Hemingway - Rivers and train tracks.
The Martian - Andy Weir - Scientific solutionism can be exciting.
And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie - U.N. Owen’s game of guilt and punishment.
Too Like The Lightning - Ada Palmer - A far-future 18th century treatise.
You Shall Know Our Velocity - Dave Eggers - Friendship as an antidote for perceived trauma.

Read in that order. Not as many stand-outs as 2016 but no major duds.

Got halfway through One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. I started off loving it, but grew frustrated by the dense, fanciful plot. Reminded me of my experience with Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled in 2013. Maybe I don’t have the patience for stream of consciousness magical realism.

Nearly half of this year’s fiction was science fiction. Seven of the eleven were found at Value Village. Three (Walkaway, Morel, Lightning) were from the library. One (Goldfinch) was from my sister.

Non-Fiction Read in 2017

The Practicing Mind - Thomas M. Sterner
Naked Statistics - Charles Wheelan
Cartoon Guide to Statistics - Gonick & Smith
Mindful Discipline - Shapiro & White
Finite And Infinite Games - James P. Carse
Mindstorms - Seymour Papert
How to Raise the Perfect Dog - Cesar Millan
Waking Up - Sam Harris
Honey I Wrecked the Kids - Alyson Schafer

Mindfulness, meta-cognition, stats and parenting. The stats books were research for my Paper’s We Love talk on information.

Podcasts in 2017

I discovered podcasts in 2015 and continued to listen to hundreds of hours worth of them this past year. Looking over the length of this list, it’s no wonder I’ve got a Beyondpod queue of 19 unlistened podcasts.

I’ve continued to listen to most of the podcast I listened to last year.

New this year:

COMMONS - The only politics show in Canada for people who “hate” politics.
Every Little Things - Big ideas about the small stuff.
Levar Burton Reads - The best short stories, performed just for you. In other words, Reading Rainbow for adults.
Long Now Seminars - Helping make long-term thinking automatic and common instead of difficult and rare.
Overdue - A podcast about the books you’ve been meaning to read.
Philosophize This! - A podcast dedicated to sharing the ideas that shaped our world.

Top Four Podcasts

Three general interest favourites and one favourite coding podcast.

Ideas with Paul Kennedy (CBC)

Fav Episodes:

The Motorcycle is Yourself: Revisiting ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ - This episode originally aired in 2014 but was revisited in April when Robert Pirsig passed.
Read - Listen
Dr Owen Taylor: How Internet Monopolies Threaten Democracy - Four internet platforms — Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple — increasingly control our lives, our opinions, our democracy. We urgently need to start talking about how we are going to respond as a society.
Read - Listen
Michael Sandel: Why Democracy Depends on How we Talk to Each Other - A debate about immigration that is actually a debate about what it means to be a citizen.
Read - Listen

Long Now Seminars

Fav Episodes:

Geoffrey B. West: The Universal Laws of Growth and Pace - Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies.
Nicky Case: Seeing Whole Systems - Exploring the non-linear feedback loops between culture, economics, and technology. Understanding how collective behavior emerges from individual minds and motives.
Kevin Kelly: The Next 30 Years - A dozen “inevitable” trends will drive the next 30 years of digital progress.

Levar Burton Reads

Fav Episodes:

Empty Places by Richard Parks - An accomplished thief is approached by a wizard who wants to send him on an unusual mission.
YouTube: Part 1 & Part 2 - Spotify: Part 1 & Part 2
The Lighthouse Keeper by Daisy Johnson - The story of a solitary life by the sea, and a woman’s courage.
Listen on YouTube - Listen on Spotify
The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu - An immigrant mother’s magical attempt to bond with her American-born son.
Listen on YouTube - Listen on Spotify
Chivalry by Neil Gaiman - An elderly widow purchases the Holy Grail at a second-hand store, and becomes wrapped up in an epic quest.
Listen on YouTube - Listen on Spotify

Greater Than Code

Fav Episodes:

Category Theory for Normal Humans with Dr. Eugenia Cheng - Includes a discussion on replacing the gendered terms masculine and feminine with the concept of Congressive and Ingressive Behavior.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Mind Manipulation - Casey Watts and A Neurobiologist’s Guide to Mind Manipulation.
The Accessibility of Board Games - Show notes include links to tons of great games.

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Blog: Types as Concretions

Sat, 28 Oct 2017 08:38:41 +0100

I love that space where coding and philosophy collide.

Rich Hickey talked about types, such as Java classes and Haskell ADTs, as concretions, not abstractions.

People often talk about a Person class representing a person. But it doesn’t. It represents information about a person.

A Person type, with certain fields of given types, is a concrete choice about what information you want to keep out of all of the possible choices of what information to track about a person.

An abstraction would ignore the particulars and let you store any information about a person.

– Eric Normand, Clojure vs. The Static Typing World

From the same piece, how Clojure was designed to make a certain kind of software easier to write.

A type of software characterized as:

solving a real-world problem
=> must use non-elegant models

running all the time
=> must deal with state and time

interacting with the world
=> must have effects and be affected

everything is changing
=> must change in ways you can’t predict

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Blog: Reading and Listening in 2016

Sat, 25 Mar 2017 09:46:46 +0100

I read 17 books last year. Two more than 2015. Eight less than 2014, Two less than in 2013, one less than in 2012, and one more than in 2011. All seventeen books were deadtree format. Thirteen of them were fiction. Four were non-fiction.

If we also count the books I’ve read to my girls before bed, the number would larger. This was the first year I started reading chapter books with the girls. We finished four chapter books together.

As in 2015, I listened to a large number of podcasts, but I took a break from audio books and audio lectures.

Fiction Read in 2016

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J. K. Rowling
Q - Luther Blissett - 16th century Europe. Reformation, early capitalism, and the journey of an Anabaptist radical.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe - Charles Yu - An exploration of the melancholy nature of consciousness. And time-travel.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J. K. Rowling - Late to the game, but I can now officially call myself a Rowling/Potter fanboy. The final book did not disappoint.
Golden Mean - Annabel Lyon - Fictional account of Aristotle’s years tutoring Alexander (later to become The Great) of Macedon. A search for the mean between action and thought.
The Cat’s Table - Michael Ondaatje - Friendship!
Purity - Jonathan Frazen - Although sunlight is a disinfectant, too much is a cancer.
Seveneves - Neal Stephenson - We never learn who blew up the moon. Survival story. Post-apocalypse far-future history.
Embassytown - China Miéville - Must-read for language nerds. Aliens whose native language doesn’t support falsehoods. Through humans they learn to bridge similes into lies.
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini - The lives of girls and women in Afghanistan, 1960 to 2000.
Children of Dune - Frank Herbert - Free will versus prophetic determinism on the formerly desert planet.
The Wise Man’s Fear - Patrick Rothfuss - Out-of-the-pan-into-the-fire hero fantasy of epic scale. Much fun.

Read in that order. No incompletes or duds this year.

It’s my usual mix of science fiction (How to live…, Seveneves, Embassytown, Children of Dune), fantasy (Harry Potter, The Wise Man’s Fear) and historical fiction (Q, Golden Mean), with a dash of “coming of age” (The Cat’s Table). Purity and A Thousand Splendid Suns sit outside my wheelhouse and I thank my sister for those. I found ten of the thirteen novels at Value Village. Still rocking the serendipity-driven reading plan.

Children’s Fiction Read in 2016

Read with the girls:

The Secret World of Og - Pierre Berton
The Search for Sunken Treasure - Geronimo Stilton
The Quest for Paradise - Geronimo Stilton
The Kingdom of Fantasy - Geronimo Stilton

Adventure!

Non-Fiction Read in 2016

The Annotated Turing - Charles Petzold
The 4-Hour Chef - Tim Ferriss
How to Sit - Thích Nhất Hạnh
How to Behave So Your Children Will, Too! - Sal Severe

I first attempted to read the Annotated Turing in 2013. In 2016 I forced myself to persevere by promising to give a “Papers we Love” talk on Alan Turing’s 1936 paper on computable numbers. Charles Petzold’s book is an heavily annotated version of Turing’s paper. I enjoyed the process of reading the book, grokking Turing’s Universal Machines, and giving the talk. I also got to reconnect with my year 2000 engineering thesis advisor, Bob McLeod, who attended the talk and asked some tough questions at the end. The slides for the talk can be seen here.

Podcasts in 2016

I discovered podcasts in 2015 and continued to listen to hundreds of hours worth of them in 2016. The podcasts I’ve been listening to, in alphabetical order, split into non-technical and coding categories:

General Interest Podcasts

Ideas with Paul Kennedy (CBC) - Documentaries in which thoughts are gathered, contexts explored, and connections made.
Invisibilia - The invisible forces that control human behavior – ideas, beliefs, assumptions and emotions.
The Longest Shortest Time - The parenting show for for everyone.
Philosophy Bites - Top philosophers interviewed on bite-sized topics.
Public Philosopher - Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel examines the thinking behind a current controversy.
Reply All - A show about the internet.
Song Exploder - Musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.
The Tim Ferris Show - Interviews with world-class performers to extract the tactics, tools, and routines you can use.
Think Again - Surprising the smartest people you know with ideas they’re not prepared to discuss.
This American Life - Themed story-driven journalism.
We Turned Out Okay - The modern parent’s guide to old-school parenting.

Programming Related Podcasts

The Bike Shed - Programming chat about Ruby, Javascript, Rust and more from Thoughtbot.
Greater Than Code - Panel discussions and interviews about people, politics and technology.
Hanselminutes - Weekly tech interviews.
The Laila & Brenda Show - Software is eating the world, but who’s building the software?
Why Are Computers - A podcast about computers and computer programs and why.
Ruby Rogues - Panel discussions and interviews about coding in Ruby and beyond.

Top Three Podcasts

The Tim Ferris Show

Binge listened to over 150 episodes of the Tim Ferris Show in 2016. Most episodes are long-form (1 to 2 hour) interviews with interesting people. Tim has a knack for making his guest feel comfortable and chatty. I likely could have pick 50+ favourites, but here’s three.

Fav Episodes:

#93 - Jane McGonigal - Jane is a world-renowned game designer and the Director of Games Research & Development at the Institute for the Future. Her research focuses on how games are transforming the way we lead our real lives, and how they can be used to increase our resilience and well-being. Listen on the web.
#157 - Mike Rowe - Mike’s performing career began in 1984 when he faked his way into the Baltimore Opera. His transition to television occurred in 1990 when — to settle a bet — he auditioned for the Shopping Channel and was hired after talking about a pencil for eight minutes. Amazing story teller. Listen on the web.
#148 - Josh Waitzkin - Josh was the basis for the book and movie Searching for Bobby Fischer. Considered a chess prodigy, he has perfected learning strategies that can be applied to anything, including his other loves of Brazilian jiu-jitsu (he’s a black belt under Marcelo Garcia) and Tai Chi push hands (he’s a world champion). He talks about everything from dynamic quality (Zen and the Art) to parenting to athletic training and learning. Listen on the web.

Think Again

I’ve listened to all 90 episodes starting in June 2015. Host Jason Gots and guests explore surprise topics.The conversations are fun and wide-ranging.

Fav Episodes:

#47 - Kate Tempest - Poet and spoken word artist Kate Tempest won the Ted Hughes award for her epic poem Brand New Ancients. Her 2014 album Everybody Down has been described as “novelistic hip-hop”.
#50 - Ethan Hawke - Ethan Hawke and host Jason Gots discuss fatherhood, perpetual warfare, and the daily struggle between light and dark within every person.
“Best Of” Mixtapes - Mixtape #1, Mixtape #2, Mixtape #4 - Listen to these to get a feel for show and then cherry pick the archives for guests you know.

Invisibilia

I listened to the 2016 season while on vacation in the Netherlands, Greece and Spain. Made for some heady runs.

Fav Episodes:

The New Norm - Social norms determine much of your behavior - how you dress, talk, eat and even what you feel. Hosts Alix Spiegel and Hanna Rosin examine two experiments that attempt to shift these norms.
The Problem with Solutions - Are there problems we shouldn’t try to solve? Lulu Miller visits a town in Belgium with a completely different approach to dealing with mental illness.
The Personality Myth - We like to think of our personalities as predictable, constant over time. But what if they aren’t? What if nothing stays constant over a lifetime?

Audio Lectures and Audio Book in 2016

None.

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Blog: Thinking in Tic Tac Toe

Sun, 01 May 2016 09:28:25 +0100

Thirty one years ago I typed tic tac toe code, found at the back of a computer magazine, into my VIC 20. I didn’t understand the code but I felt wizardly when the game popped up on the living room TV. Thirteen years later I would code my own tic tac toe game for the first time while learning to build Microsoft Access apps during my coding internship at MTS. I added the game as an easter egg to the time tracking app I built for the MTS Solutions Group.

The first two were written in flavours of BASIC. I’ve since coded tic tac toe in Pascal, Perl, Ruby and Clojurescript. The Pascal one was Connect Four, a 4-run tic tac toe with gravity.

All were written as code kata in the name of learning through experimentation. Sketching with code.

“This kind of coding as thinking out loud is known in the Agile methodology as a spike. It is meant to be as informal as possible. It’s the equivalent of whiteboarding. And just as whiteboarding sometimes leads to a formal solution, sometimes it’s benefit is in quickly and simply framing a problem. Coding allows us to whiteboard directly with data.”

This quote is from my friend Sam’s talk on Coding and Humanism for the UTSC Digital Pedagogy Institute.

Sam’s talk is embedded below. Worth the watch if you’re into such things as digital literacy in libraries, agency through computational thinking, formalism vs hermeneutics, amateurism, openness and pedagogy. ლ(´ڡ`ლ)

Sam’s talk got me thinking about how I learned to program computers. It also got me thinking about the privilege of having spent three decades thinking in code. I was fortunate to have access to a computer from a young age, with leisure time for computational tinkering, encouraging parents, friends, teachers and mentors. The gender, race and class issues present in the tech world have not been working against me.

Sketching with code. As an IT educator I’ve tried to balance the strict formalism required by technology with an informal exploratory approach to learning.

Sketching with empathy. To better serve all my students a recognition of privilege must also inform my teaching practice.

* * *

My most recent tic tac toe sketch can be played here. The computer plays randomly, not strategically. View the game’s source code, written while learning Clojurescript, Reagent and React.

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Blog: Reading and Listening in 2015

Fri, 19 Feb 2016 16:46:26 +0100

I read fifteen books this past year. Ten less than 2014, four less than in 2013, three less than in 2012, and one less than in 2011. All fifteen books were read in deadtree format. Fourteen of them were fiction. One was non-fiction.

As you’ll see at the end of this post, my drop in book consumption can be attributed to my new found love of podcasts.

Books Read in 2015

On Beauty - Zadie Smith
Howards End - E. M. Forster
Dune - Frank Herbert
The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes - Jamyang Norbu
East of Eden - John Steinbeck
The Player of Games - Iain M. Banks
Death of an Expert Witness - P.D. James
Idlewild - Nick Sagan
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
Dune Messiah - Frank Herbert
Geek Sublime - Vikram Chandra
Power and the Glory - Graham Greene
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - J. K. Rowling
NW - Zadie Smith
The Valkyries - Paulo Coelho

Read in that order. No incompletes this year. The majority of these books were really great.

Top Three Books in 2015

Dune

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Publish 50 years ago, this sci-fi novel set 21,000 years in the future, has aged incredibly well.

Politics, religion, ecology, philosophy… Dune has it all. Forget top books of 2015, I’d say this would be one of my favourite books of all time. If forced to find fault, I’d point to sexism: The Bene Gesserit, a matriarchal order, develop a breeding program to produce the Kwisatz Haderach, a male Bene Gesserit who, being male, can do what they cannot do, can see what they cannot see.

Dune Messiah proved to be a solid follow up, and there were interesting similarities to the other far-future novel read in 2015, The Player of Games.

East of Eden

“The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel —'Thou mayest'— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if 'Thou mayest’ — it is also true that 'Thou mayest not.’”

This book came highly recommend by Sam and it did not disappoint. The characters (even the minor ones) felt so real, their struggles so familiar.

Oh, the things we do for love (or the lack of).

Never Let Me Go

“All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma.”

What would you do to preserve the innocence of a group of children shuned by the rest of society? A melancholy story about purpose, love and mortality. Like Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day (one of my top three from 2014) it’s also about memory and denial.

This book left me feeling sad and protective. Protective of my children but also of the entire human race. And that’s a weird feeling.

I don’t want to say much more, because spoilers, but I really enjoyed how well the author captured the way children see and interpret the adult world.

Podcasts in 2015

2015 was the year I discovered podcasts, which is why I read far fewer books this year. I listened to hundreds of hours worth of podcasts throughout the year. The podcasts I’ve been listening to, in alphabetical order, split into non-techical and coding categories:

General Interest Podcasts

Invisibilia - The invisible forces that control human behavior – ideas, beliefs, assumptions and emotions.
The Longest Shortest Time - The parenting show for for everyone.
Media Nerds / Starwards Nerds - Fellow RRC instructors Kenton and Dan talk media and Star Wars.
Mystery Show - A podcast where Starlee Kine solves mysteries.
Philosophy Bites - Top philosophers interviewed on bite-sized topics.
Public Philosopher - Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel examines the thinking behind a current controversy.
Radiolab - A show about curiosity.
Reply All - A show about the internet.
Song Exploder - Musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.
Start Up - what it’s really like to get a business off the ground.
Think Again - Surprising the smartest people you know with ideas they’re not prepared to discuss.
This American Life - Themed story-driven journalism.

Programming Related Podcasts

The Bike Shed - Programming chat about Ruby, Javascript, Rust and more from Thoughtbot.
Giant Robots Smashing into other Giant Robots - Another thoughtbot podcast, this one is being less technical and lately more about product management / product marketing.
Ruby Rogues - My favourite programming podcast. Panel discussions and interviews about coding in Ruby and beyond.
This Developer’s Life - What’s it like to be a developer? This is the podcast that got me into podcasts!
Turing Incomplete - How I keep up with the ever changing Javascript world.

Top Three Podcast Episodes

Invisibilia - How to Become Batman

The story of a blind man who says expectations have helped him see. Literally, see.

Mystery Show - Case #3 Belt Buckle

A young boy finds an enchanting object in the street.

Reply All - #36 Today’s The Day.

PJ and Alex go outside. I highly recommend listening to episodes 1 through 35 first for context.

Audio Lectures and Audio Book in 2015

I only completed one set of audio lectures in 2015, but it was a doozy, a 42 hour review of Western philosophy. I also listend to the ebook version of Thinking, Fast and Slow, which was an amazing look at how we othen place too much faith in human intuition.

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Blog: Coding is Two Things

Sat, 11 Jul 2015 09:43:45 +0100

Coding is hard because it’s two things:

Expressing ideas in the rigid syntax & grammar of a formal language.
Problem solving.

While learning to code we often focus too much on the first. This is also true while teaching others to code.

This fall I’m going to highlight problem solving while teaching my intro programming courses. Below you will find some of the problem solving strategies I may adapt for my students.

Solving Problems in Five Acts

Define the Problem
Let it Simmer
Plan a Solution
Carry out the Plan
Reflect

via: University of Waterloo Centre for Teaching Excellence

FOWL Problem Solving

Figure out What You’re Being Asked
Organize the Presented Data
Work out the Problem
Look Over Your Answer

via: Geekdad

George Pólya’s Problem Solving Techniques

Understand the Problem
Devise a Plan
Carry out the Plan
Look Back

via: George Melvin - Berkeley University

Also: Pólya’s book on the subject, How to Solve it - A New Aspect of Mathematical Method: Full PDF, AbeBooks, Amazon

Feedback

How do you solve problems?

On reviewing this post Sam suggested emphasising hypothesis and testing when teaching these strategies. I agree that formulating a hypothesis during planning makes room for false starts, while testing adds rigure to the self-assesment of the “Look Back”/Reflect phases. The wonderful part about making these two steps explicit is that we now have something akin to the scientific method:

Statement of the problem.
Hypotheses as to the cause of the problem.
Experiments designed to test each hypothesis.
Predicted results of the experiments.
Observed results of the experiments
Conclusions from the results of the experiments.

Language geek note: The word solve comes from the Latin solvo, to loose an object bound, to release, set free, disengage, dissolve, take apart.

Blog: Reading and Listening in 2014

Thu, 22 Jan 2015 14:11:00 +0100

I read twenty-five books this past year. Six more than 2013, seven more than in 2012, and nine more than in 2011. Only one of the books was read on my Kobo, the rest were deadtree. Nine of them were non-fiction and sixteen of them were fiction.

Fiction Read in 2014

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Good Omens - Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
An Instance of the Fingerpost - Iain Pears
System of the World - Neal Stephenson
Saturday - Ian McEwan
The Tesseract - Alex Garland
Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone - J. K. Rowling
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss
Colour of Magic - Terry Pratchett
The Samurai’s Garden - Gail Tsukiyama
The Circle - Dave Eggers
Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - J. K. Rowling
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
Story of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang - Incredible “sci-fi” short stories. I’ve put sci-fi in quotes, ‘cause they are so much more than that.

Read in that order. No duds this year, although I’ve got two incompletes:

The Difference Engine by Sterling & Gibson
Friend, Follow, Text - Short stories about online culture.

I can normally savour a slow journey but Sterling & Gibson’s creation story for the Steampunk genre lost my interest. The stories in Friend, Follow, Text were harshing my mellow, so I’ve taken a break.

Non-Fiction Read in 2014

I fulfilled my goal of reading more non-fiction books. Many of these were inspired by a series of audio lectures on the Eastern intellectual tradition, others were inspired by parenthood as well as our work at Open Democracy Manitoba. They were read in this order:

Existentialism and Human Emotions - Sartre
No Death, No Fear - Thích Nhất Hạnh
Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby - Sandi Metz - Oh, now I get it. Thanks Sandi for helping me understand OO after 15+ years.
Feminism is for Everybody - Bell Hooks
Yoga: Discipline of Freedom - Patanjali - Translated by Barbara Stoler Miller
The Lost Painting - Jonathan Harr
Electing Better Politicians: A Citizen’s Guide - Charles K. Bens - A must-read for accountable citizens!
Good Citizens - Thích Nhất Hạnh
Raising a Self-Reliant Child - Dr. Alanna Levine

Audio Lectures in 2014

Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition - TGC - Grant Hardy - 17hrs - The best series of lectures I’ve listened to, ever. The content was mind expanding. The lecturing was enthralling.

Consciousness and It’s implications - TGC - Daniel N. Robinson - 6hrs - Difficult and at times even disturbing.

Headspace - Take 5 - A Guided Introduction to Meditation - I’ve been meditating on and off since 2000 (when I took a meditation course in the rain forest near Cape Tribulation, Australia). I’m 25 days into the program and I cannot recommend it enough. Try Take 10 on the Headspace app for free. It’s 10 days of 10 minute meditation sessions. You’ll thank me.

Currently Reading and Listening

Howards End - E.M. Foster (After just finishing Zadie Smith’s homage.)
Practicing Mindfulness: An Introduction to Meditation - TGC - Mark W. Muesse
Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition - TGC

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Blog: Sweat Lodge Ceremony

Wed, 04 Jun 2014 13:16:00 +0100

On Monday I participated in a sweat lodge ceremony organized by Red River College Aboriginal Student Support & Community Relations. This took place near Libau Manitoba at the site of a yearly Sun Dance. The ceremony was a teaching lodge led by Bundle carrier, Sun dancer, and Spiritual Advisor for Corrections Services Canada, Brian McLeod.

A sweat lodge is an Aboriginal ceremony of purification, thankfulness, healing, and discovery. The lodge itself is built of saplings lashed together and hung with heavy cloth tarp. A dome maybe 10 feet (3 metres) in diameter, the shape of a great turtle shell.

We offered tobacco to the fire blazing outside the entrance of the lodge. The offering made in the name of all our relations. We knelt and entered the lodge sitting side by side on a circle of blankets. Brian spoke to us of vulnerability, of strength, and of living in a good way.

The tarp is pulled shut from outside. It is dark inside but for the red light of the Grandmothers and Grandfathers, the granite rocks pulled from the fire outside and placed into the earthen pit in the centre of the lodge.

The smell of cedar. The sound of rain. Drumming and rattles and voice. Water on stone; the hot breath of life. Hottest right before the flaps open, only to be closed again. Four cycles of heat. Four doorways. Giving thanks to all our relations. Awash in the fervour of sensation and gratitude.

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Blog: Pecha Kucha Winnipeg Vol. 18

Fri, 23 May 2014 14:15:00 +0100

PechaKucha 20x20 is a simple presentation format where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images advance automatically and you talk along to the images.

Last night I participated in volume 18 of the Winnipeg Pecha Kucha night at the Park Theatre.

My talk went well, or at least I assume it did. It was a blur once I got on stage. The talk was delivered by auto-pilot Kyle. I found the 20x20 format challenging. With twenty 20 second slides you talk for 6 minutes and 40 seconds. I’m use to lecturing for an hour or more, so this was an interesting exercise in constraint. Producing the slides a week in advanced, and building the talk around them, had me initially trying to cram in too much. Even after a few rewrites for brevity I felt at times like a nervous robot dictating my talking points for each image. :D

Shout out to all the #pknwpg18 presenters. Exhilaration & time dilation. 6 mins felt short, while 20 secs felt long! @PKN_Winnipeg
— Kyle Geske (@stungeye) May 23, 2014

The crowd was great. Very welcoming and clappy. The other speakers were engaging and passionate. I was told ahead of time that at past events an ad hoc theme for the night tended to emerge. The theme for last night’s event seemed to be social justice.

Again: social justice. Unofficial theme of #pknwpg18
— PechaKucha Winnipeg (@PKN_Winnipeg) May 23, 2014

I was the first to speak. I talked about the experience of building winnipegelection.ca and manitobaelection.ca. I also argued that a well functioning democracy requires engaged and accountable citizens.

Here’s Karenia Niedzwiecki mash-up of the evening:

Government accountability requires citizen accountability. Democracy gives us the chance to say “I’m worth more than you think”. You can think of me as the travel santa… but apparently we’ve all been bad. The most successful matches are made when organizations identify the need. I’d been running for a 1000 days in a row, so I thought, let’s run a 50k for fun. I hope your next vehicle will plug in. We work hard to make this happen—grandmothers and grandchildren, happy and healthy. I know you’ve had a couple of DJs present before, but I have one thing that they don’t, and that’s offspring. Citizen journalism requires a disconnect from self-focus. That’s what I want to avoid… rejection (as a graphic designer or as a comedian).” — source

The sentence Democracy gives us the chance to say “I’m worth more than you think” was from the talk after mine by Dougald Lamont. Mr. Lamont spoke about his research into economic inequality and what we can do about it. I think our talks went well together.

Synergy High-Five!

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Stung Eye blog

Blog: Reading and Listening in 2022

Fiction in 2022

Non-Fiction in 2022

Top Books Written by Friends in 2022

Top Three Books of 2022

Family Books in 2022

Podcasts in 2022

Favourite Podcasts of 2022

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Blog: Reading and Listening in 2021

Fiction in 2021

Non-Fiction in 2021

Top Three Books of 2021

Family Books in 2021

Podcasts in 2021

Favourite Podcasts of 2021

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Fiction in 2020

Top Three Fiction Books in 2020

Non-Fiction in 2020

Top Three Non-Fiction in 2020

Family Books in 2020

Podcasts in 2020

Top Three Podcasts in 2020

Blog: Email to Friends From This Morning

Blog: Reading and Listening in 2019

Fiction in 2019

Top Four Books in 2019

Non-Fiction in 2019

Top Three Non-Fiction in 2019

Family Books in 2019

Podcasts in 2019

Top Three Podcasts

Music

Blog: Learning in Public

Blog: Switched On

My New Network Stack

Benefits of the Switch

Costs and Savings

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Fiction in 2018

Top Three Fiction in 2018

Non-Fiction in 2018

Top Three Non-Fiction in 2018

Podcasts in 2018

Top Three Podcasts

Blog: Maps and Clouds

Blog: Meow Reader Ex Machina

Blog: Reading and Listening in 2017

Fiction Read in 2017

Top Three Fiction Reads in 2017

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Top Three Fiction Reads in 2017

Podcasts in 2017

Top Four Podcasts

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Blog: Reading and Listening in 2016

Fiction Read in 2016

Children’s Fiction Read in 2016

Top Three Fiction Reads in 2016

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Podcasts in 2016

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Programming Related Podcasts

Top Three Podcasts

Audio Lectures and Audio Book in 2016

Blog: Thinking in Tic Tac Toe

Blog: Reading and Listening in 2015

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Podcasts in 2015

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Programming Related Podcasts

Top Three Podcast Episodes

Audio Lectures and Audio Book in 2015

Blog: Coding is Two Things

Solving Problems in Five Acts

FOWL Problem Solving

George Pólya’s Problem Solving Techniques