Finished reading: Powers Book Two by Brian Michael Bendis 📚
Finished reading: Powers Volume 1 by Brian Michael Bendis 📚
It’s hard to read stuff like this and not think, maybe the internet was a bad idea after all.
All of the Marvels 📚
I’ve finished listening to All of the Marvels by Douglas Wolk.
From the premise, “man reads 27,000 comic books”, I expected an A.J. Jacobs-style story about how attempting a ridiculous project impacts the author’s life and relationships, with some tidbits about the comics thrown in. That would have been OK with me!
This is not that sort of book, though. Wolk spends each chapter pulling on a thread of the Marvel story, either for a character or team (Spiderman, Thor, The X-Men), or a theme (film, music, Presidents), highlighting specific issues that are notable. It’s one man’s highlight reel of the Marvel universe, and I enjoyed the journey.
If I had been reading this book on paper or device, I would have dog-eared a lot of pages, or taken notes. I listened to the audiobook, mostly while driving or walking, so I couldn’t note as much. I was still able to remember or jot down a few things. Here are the comics ‘All the Marvels’ has added to my reading list:
- Hickman’s Fantastic Four
- Priests Black Panther
- Simonson’s Thor
- Ryan North’s The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl
- Warren Ellis Thunderbolts
- Some amount of the Dark Reign saga
It’s nice top see that Sound Blocks shipped! I spent a few minutes playing with it this morning, and it seems to be what I hoped for: midinous for someone who doesn’t want to have to figure out all the MIDI stuff.
My first song was… nothing worth sharing. But maybe I’ll be able to make some game music with it.
Currently listening: All of the Marvels by Douglas Wolk 📚
Ad Hoc
Today is my first day as an Ad Hoc employee. I’ve watched from the sidelines over the years as they’ve hired a number of my favorite people, both former CFPB colleagues and “internet friends” whose work and careers I’ve taken an interest in. I’m looking forward to being part of the team!
The actual client I’ll be working for is… a different civilian federal agency with a financial focus. You might be thinking “out of the frying pan and into the fire”, and aren’t completely wrong about that. My discussions with folks from Ad Hoc, the “prime” contractor subcontracting to Ad Hoc, and the client agency have convinced me that the work is necessary and should be funded for some years to come. I think it will be stable at least through the length of the contract, so long as I do good work.
Finished Listening: War for Eternity by Benjamin R. Teitelbaum 📚
Endings
Hello from Camp T. Brady Saunders. It’s the last day of summer camp. The kiddo mostly had a good time, but we’re both ready to go home.
Today is technically also the last day that I am a CFPB employee(last day actually working was 7/3). I wasn’t laid off this time, I’ve got a new job that starts Monday. I’m pretty excited about it, but I’ll save writing about that for next week.
Finished reading: Hidden Systems by Dan Nott 📚
Finished reading: Failure to Launch: A Tour of Ill-Fated Futures by Kel Mcdonald 📚
An excellent graphic journey through all sorts of could’ve-beens: including Y2K hysteria, decentralized wind power, robot dogs, virtual pop stars, a mechanical duck that poops (maybe), and Louisiana hippos.
Currently listening: War for Eternity by Benjamin R. Teitelbaum 📚
Currently reading: Failure to Launch: A Tour of Ill-Fated Futures by Kel Mcdonald 📚
I ♥️ BTRFS Subvolumes
I’ve been mucking around with my operating system setup for reasons too tedious to describe here. One hilarious bit of hijinx involved trying to use the Nobara repository exactly in the way it says not to…
It is NOT recommended to try to upgrade your Fedora installation to Nobara and support for doing so will not be provided.
Turns out, there are reasons.
But, the point of this post is actually a nice thing I discovered:
- When you install fedora, by default your
/home/directory is placed on a BTRFS subvolume - If you ever need to install again, the Fedora installer recognizes the subvolume and can preserve it.
In the past, if you wanted to re-install a distro and preserve all of your files, you either needed the foresight to put /home' on it’s own partition or device, or have backups. Now, it’s no big deal.
Like I said, I don’t love my latest game, but it feels good to add something to the /games page after six months.
The Invisible Alligator
I’m not that proud of The Invisible Alligator in its current form, but the Godot Wild Jam 82 deadline is here, and it’s nice to ship a game after almost 6 months of not doing much gamedev.
It could use more levels, sound and music, animation, more NPC variety, and more effort spent on graphics. The core gameplay isn’t that fun yet, but Benjamin calls it “satisfying”, so that’s something.
I started out thinking about it as a 2D version of Hitman Go, with animals. It ended up in a place that (if built out more) would feel a bit like Hoplite.
Maybe I’ll keep tinkering, towards a more polished post-jam version.
Finished reading: Drawing Blood by Kevin Eastman 📚
Confession: I picked this up thinking it was non-fiction and that Shane Bookman was a real author.
One of the nice things about going to events again is seeing the fancy offices people work in.
(brought to you by the seltzer dispenser at The College Board)
Currently reading: Drawing Blood by Kevin Eastman 📚