Eclecticism

This is something in between “wishlist” and “proposal”, in that it’s something I really want, but don’t have the skills to create on my own.

Another two-week update!

Book 47 of 2026: The Making of the Trek Conventions by Joan Winston. ⭐️⭐️⭐️: Sits right in the center of a Venn diagram with “Star Trek Fans” and “Convention Goers/Conrunners”, which just so happens to be right where I sit too, so…yeah, this was fun.

I can’t really imagine he’ll care, but after literal decades of reading John Gruber’s Daring Fireball (I even had two different DF t-shirts back from when I thought he was worth supporting monetarily), the time has come to unsubscribe.

Book 46 of 2026: Accessibility: The Illustrated Guide by Nandita Gupta and Rachel Grossman-Kahn. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: An excellent (and cute) introduction to digital accessibility; less of a detailed “how to” than a good “here’s what to think about and why” starting…

Book 45 of 2026: More Beautiful Than Death by David Mack. ⭐️⭐️⭐️: Reading a Trek novel set in the Kelvin universe is…weird.

♿️ Another busy week with the start of the quarter, but not at all a bad week.

Book 44 of 2026: Happy Hour of the Damned by Mark Henry. ⭐️⭐️: I picked this (and its first two sequels) up at the local library book sale a while ago on a whim, as cheesy urban fantasy set in Seattle sounded amusing.

Book 43 of 2026: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: The Making of the Classic Film by John and Maria Jose Tenuto. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Another good entry in the Tenutos’ series of “making of” books for the Star Trek films, now covering the “Genesis trilogy” of films II-…

The latest thing in my “Apple really needs to get their shit together with the macOS Music (iTunes) app” file: If you have a compilation album where the tracks aren’t numbered (common for things like mashup compilations), the tracks display and play in al…

♿️ Been a very busy couple weeks of work as we’ve been approaching the start of classes for the fall quarter.

Book 42 of 2026: The City and The City by China Miéville. 2010 Hugo Best Novel winner (tied with Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl). ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Mostly a crime noir, but set in two cities that share the same physical space but do not interact.

Home from vacation!

Book 41 of 2026: The Death of Princes by John Peel. ⭐️⭐️⭐️: Solidly average, most notable for the number of overt A-Team references given to Barclay.

Book 40 of 2026: Small Gods by Terry Pratchett. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Pratchett takes on religion, belief, godhood, corruption, holy wars, goodness, and compassion, and does it all with style, humor, and heart.

We’re back in Seattle!

And now for merrie old England!

Bonjour Paris!

Book 39 of 2026: Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: A Discworld look at stories, fairy tales, and what happens when someone is a little too intent on making sure they go just the way they should.

And now for Belgium (my apologies for using such rude language)!

…the Netherlands, and Amsterdam!

From Frankfurt, we rode the train northwest to Berlin!

In Part one, we spent two days exploring San Francisco before jetting off for…somewhere else.

This has been coming to mind as I travel through Germany on our vacation this year: I really miss music stores.