2 Bit Hacker

Some of you may have noticed my recent tweets about finishing books now and then. A few months back I started on a reading challenge to read through NPR’s Top 100 SciFi/Fantasy book list. I have a somewhat inconsistent reading habit. I’ll find an author I like, read everything by them that I can find, then go into a lull again when I run out of their books. The intent of reading through the list is to get exposure to a bunch of different authors, and hopefully get an idea of who I like and who I don’t.

My rules for the challenge:

1. Only reading books available on Kindle. This cuts the list down to about 85 entries.
2. If a series is on the list, I’m only reading the first book. If I like it, I’ll read the rest later.
3. Treating the list as a countdown, starting at 100 and working down to one. Hopefully this means the books will get better as I go.

I started on this late last year, and I’m four books in so far:

• #99: The Xanth Series by Piers Anthony. With 35 books in the series so far, I’m glad I choose to only read the first book in listed series, in this case A Spell for Chameleon. I’ve read some Anthony in the past, back in middle school, and I remember it being fairly juvenile stuff, and my memory served me right in this case. It’s not a bad book, but it’s pretty straightforward and plainly presented. Fun, but not terribly filling.
• #98: Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. Very different from what I usually read, but I liked it. Very rich descriptions of the setting but the reader is left to figure out a lot of the physics and politics on their own. I’ll probably be revisiting this author once the list is done.
• #97: The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. An interesting take on time travel, though probably not what most people would call SciFi, as the science has next to nothing to do with it. Good story though, would definitely recommend.
• #96: Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. I was enjoying this through the first half, till about comet-fall, after that it just seemed to be a study in how people can be horrible to each other. Maybe I just have more faith in humanity, but I’d like to think we wouldn’t turn on each other quite so quickly.

So, now I’m on to #95, Red Mars, which I started to read a few years back and lost interest in. Hopefully it’ll be better this time around.

Recently Meg and I have been playing Minecraft probably more than is really healthy. It’s not quite as bad as when I was playing World of Warcraft, but it’s still a pretty good time sink. While there isn’t much to it from a gaming objective perspective, it is fun to explore and build. Recently I’ve been playing around with some redstone circuits and have made a few little things I thought I’d show off.

Read more…

So I’ve been giving some thought about whether or not to keep this site around. Clearly I don’t post very often, and I don’t really hold any illusions about being a great and popular blogger. I think my friends and family mostly keeps tabs on me through Twitter or Facebook these days, so I don’t think it’s terribly valuable for that anymore.

I started blogging back in the LiveJournal days, when all the cool kids were into it. Eventually I got annoyed with them and moved to my own system, originally running my own stuff coded in HTML::Mason, then moving through MoveableType and Blosxom before settling with everyone else on WordPress. And these days it seems like I spend more time updating WordPress than I do writing blog posts.

There are also other blogs hosted on Hindenburg that I could spend time writing on if I wanted to, such as Hindenburg’s own blog, which might get more people to donate toward it’s hosting.

So, overall, what do people think? Should I try to write more often? Here? Elsewhere? On what topics? Or should I throw in the towel and make this a redirect over to about.me?