Books I Read 2018

Eaters of the Dead - Michael Crichton
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 4: I Kissed a Squirrel and I Liked It -
    Ryan North and Erica Henderson
No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarty
Dark Matter - Blake Crouch
American Assassin - Vince Flynn
The Secret Lives of Lawrence of Arabia - Phillip Knightley and Colin Simpson
The Cartoon Guide to Genetics: Updated Edition - Larry Gonick and Mark Wheelis
Eat Sleep Poop: A Commmon Sense Guide to Your Baby's First Year - Scott W. Cohen, MD, FAAP
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Like I;m the Only Squirrel In the World -
    Ryan North and Erica Henderson with Murray and Renzi
Deadpool vs. Thanos - Tim Seeley
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:An Inquiry Into Values - Robert M. Pirsig
Ed Mastery - Michael W. Lucas
The House with a Clock in Its Walls - John Bellairs
Leading the Unleadable: How to Manage Mavericks, Cynics, Divas, and Other Difficult People -
    Alan Willett
The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War - David Halberstam
Seven Pillars of Widdom - T. E. Lawrence
Elk and Elk Hunting: Your Practical Guide to Fundamentals and Fine Points - Hartt Wixom
GunDigest Book of the Revolver - Grant Cunningham
Make you bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World - William H. McRaven
Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter - Scott Adams
The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Artemis - Andy Weir

Books I read 2017

The Deerslayer - James Fenimore Cooper

War Stories from the Future - Art of Future Warfare Project

Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods: With a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts - William T. Cox

Trout Fishing in the Shenandoah National Park - Harry W. Murray

Technology Ventures: From Idea to Enterprise - Richard C. Dorf and Thomas H. Byers

The Sugar Bush Chronicles: Adventures with the World's Most Photographed Squirrel - Kelly Foxton wtih Lou Harry

Defending Your Castle: Build Catapults, Crossbows, Moats, Bulletproof Shields, and More Defensive

Devices to Fend Off the Invading Hordes - William Gurstelle

Riding the Red Horse - Edited by Tom Kratman and Vox Day

The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World from Scratch - Lewis Dartnell

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Squirrel Power Vol 1 - Ryan North and Erica Henderson

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Squirrel You Know it is True Vol 2 - Ryan North and Erica Henderson

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Squirrel, You Really Got Me Now Vol 3 - Ryan North and Erica Henderson

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man - John Perkins

The Wilderness Cabin - Calvin Rutstrum

The Long Arctic Search - The Narrative of Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, U.S.A - Frederick Schwatka

Common Lisp Recipes: A Problem-Solving Approach - Edmund Weitz

Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail - Theodore Roosevelt

Square Foot Gardening - Mel Bartholomew

African Game Trails: An Account of the African Wanderings of an American Hunter-Naturalist - Theodore Roosevelt

Monster Hunter International - Larry Correia 

The Ancient Engineers - L. Sprague de Camp

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster - Jon Krakauer

Arthas: Rise of the Lich King - Christie Golden

John MacNab - John Buchan

No Second Place Winner - Bill Jordan

Gardening in the Shade - Anne Halpin

The New Way of the Wilderness - Calvin Rutstrum

Computer Pattern Chaos and Beauty - Clifford A. Pickover

The Sloyd System of Wood Working - B. B. Hoffman, A. B.

Life of a Roman Soldier - Don Nardo

The Harlem Hellfighters - Max Brooks, Illustrated by Caanan White

No Bended Knee: The Battle for Guadalcanal - Gen. Merrill B. Twining, USMC (Ret.)

Permission Marketing - Seth Godin

Star Wars Vol. 1: Skywalker Strikes  - Jason Aaron

Star Wars: Darth Vader Vol. 1: Vader - Kielron Gillen

Books I read 2016

A Sierra Club Naturalist's Guide: The Deserts of the Southwest - Peggy Larson

The River War: An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan - Winston Churchill

Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words - Randall Monroe

The Black Swan: The Impact of Highly Improbable - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

The Battle of the Bulge: A Graphic History of Allied Victory in the Ardennes, 1944-1945 -

Wayne Vansant

Dinosaur Comics: Fig e. Everybody knows failure is just success rounded down. - Ryan North

Talk Like Ted - Carmino Gallo

Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them: Newt Scamander - J.K. Rowling

Quidditch Through The Ages: Kennilworthy Whip - J.K. Rowling

The Tales of Beedle the Bard: With Additional notes by Professor Albus Dumbledore: J.K. Rowling

Shadow Command - Dale Brown

Becoming a Technical Leader: An Organic Problem Solving Approach - Gerald M. Weinberg

Afghanistan: A Russian Soldier's Story - Vladislav Tamarov

A Pattern Language - Christopher Alexander

Blood Year: The Unraveling of Western Counterterrorism - David KilCullen

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Parts One and Two - Jack Thorne, John Tiffany, J.K. Rowling

A Sierra Club Naturalist's Guide: The Piedmont - Michael A. Godfrey

Manual of Lathe Operation and Machinists Tables - Engineering Department of the Atlas Press Company

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood - Marjane Satrapi

Wardogs: The TRUE STORY of How Three Stoners from Miami Beach Because the Most Unlikely Gunrunners in History - Guy Lawson

D&D Basic Rules: Player's Basic Rules Version 0.2 - Wizards of the Coast

Defeating ISIS: Who They Are, How They Fight, What They Believe - Malcolm Nance and Richard Engel

The Grid - Peter Seibel

The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth Extracted 

Textually from the Gospels - Compiled by Thomas Jefferson

Boy: Tales of Childhood - Roald Dahl

D&D Basic Rules: Dungeon Master's Basic Rules Version 0.3 - Wizards of the Coast

Gon - Masashi Tanaka

Books I read 2015

The Man-Eaters of Tsavo - John Henry Patterson
The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Sa'ud - Robert Lacey
Thinking About America's Defense: An Analytical Memoir - Glenn A. Kent
American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S.
Military History - Chris Kyle, Scott McEwen , Jim DeFelice
MiG: Fifty Years of Secret Aircraft Design - R. A. Belyakov and J. Marmain
Pigsticking or, Hoghunting: a complete account for sportsmen, and others - R. S. S. Baden-Powell
Guerrilla: A Novel - Lord Dunsany
Thirteen Years Among The Wild Beasts Of India: Their Haunts And Habits From Personal
Observation With An Account Of The Modes Of Capturing And
Taming Elephants - George P Sanderson
On War - Carl von Clausewitz [Translated by Colonel J.J.Graham, Revised by Colonel F.N. Maude]
The Mythical Man-Month - Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
The Martian - Andy Weir
Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World - Gen. Stanley McCrystal, Tantum
Collins, David Silverman, Chris Fussell
Meditations on Hunting - José Ortega y Gasset, Translated by Howard B. Wescott
The Wit and Widsom of Benjamin Franklin: A treasury of Quotations, Anecdotes and Observations -
James C. Humes
Large Game Shooting in Thibet and the North West, 2nd ed. - Colonel Alexander Angus Airlie Kinloch
Dreamland: Razor's Edge - Dale Brown and Jim DeFelice
Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance - Donald Mackenzie
War as I Knew It - General George S. Patton, Jr.
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War - P. W. Singer and August Cole
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Robert B. Cialdini, PhD.
The Student's Manual of Tactics - Matthew Horace Hayes
Global Value: How to Spot Bubbles, Avoid Market Crashes, and Earn Big Returns in the
Stock Market - Meb Faber
Global Asset Allocation: A Survey of the World's Top Investment Strategies - Meb Faber
Shareholder Yield: A Better Approach to Dividend Investing - Meb Faber

Books I read 2014

The Baby Owner's Manual: Operating Instructions, Trouble-Shooting, Tips, and
Advice on First-Year Maintenance - Louwis Borgenicht and Joe Botgenicht
Dinosaur Comics: fig. d Dudes already know about chickens. - Ryan North
Experimenting with Babies: 50 Amazing Science Projects You Can Perform on
Your Kid - Shaun Gallagher
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My
Life - Scott Adams
Red Storm Rising - Tom Clancy
The Creative Engineer: The Art of Inventing - Winston E. Kock
Warfighting: MCDP 1 - U.S. Marine Corps PCN 142 000006 00
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Do-It-Yourself Energy-Saving Projects - Sunset Book
The Colt 1911: An Engineer's Perspective - Malcolm J. Werner
T-Rex Trying - Hugh Murphy
The Dictator's Handbook: A practical manual for the aspiring
tyrant - Randall Wood & Carmine DeLuca
Crisis In Zefra - Directorate of Land Strategic Concepts (Canadian Army)
Charlie Wilson's War - Goerge Crile
Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton
The Decline and Fall of IBM: End of an American Icon? - Robert X. Cringely
Men's Style - Russel Smith
The Scientific Breakthrough: The Impact of Modern Invention - Ronald W. Clark
Fantastic Voyage - Isaac Asimov
Sniper: A History of the US Marksman - Martin Pegler
American Indian Myths and Legends - Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz
Fart Proudly: Writings of Benjamin Franklin You Never Read in School - Edited
by Carl Japikse
What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions - Randall Munroe

Books I Read 2013

All In: The Education of General David Petraeus - Paula Broadwell
The Bro Code - Matt Kuhn
The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility - Stewart Brand
Spec Ops - William H. McRaven
Ender's Shadow - Orson Scott Card
Analogue Computers - K.N. Dodd (Teach yourself books)
Marine Sniper - Charles Henderson
Hammerheads - Dale Brown
Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell
Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson
Rogue Forces - Dale Brown
Animal, Vegatable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life - Barbara Kingsolver
Roughing it Elegantly: A Practical Guide to Canoe Camping - Patricia J. Bell
Through the Brazilian Wilderness - Theodore Roosevelt
Theories of International Politics and ZOMBIES - Daniel W. Drezner
Eat Sleep Poop: A Common Sense Guide to Your Baby's First Year - Scott W. Cohen
Guide to Your Baby's First Year - Mayo Clinic
The Old Way: A story of the first people - Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
2004 Toyota Camry Owner's Manual - Toyota
Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches - Theodore Roosevelt
Elmer Keith's Big Game Hunting - Elmer Keith
The Clock of the Long Now: Mechanical Drawings of the First Prototype

2013 Superbowl pool template

New superbowl pool template

Not sure if I am doing it this year due to the move, but I update this file every year, so here it is.

Superbowl pool 2013

Haven't used a pen (sustained) in a while, its nice

I was drawing some diagrams today and drew them on paper before I put them into figures on the computer.

My trusty Pilot G-2 mini and computer printer paper were made for each other.

Lifelong goal reached

So, I finally met a lifelong goal.

I can now walk to the printer without taking my headphones off in the office.

I bought a 12ft extension for headphones and it works great.

Data fusion

I was reading yesterday and two facts came together in my head.

First, from "A Day Without Seapower and Projection Forces":
almost 90% of the world's population lives within 500 miles of the ocean

and

from an aviation week article about future technologies:
with hypersonic vehicles we can hit targets 500 nm away in less than 8 minutes

I am going to assume the Navy guy was talking about 500nm, so that means, almost 90% of the world's population would be at risk of attack in under 8 minutes if we have hypersonic vehicles.

How not to make grilled cheese

I'd just like to let the world know that you *can* make a grilled cheese sandwich in the toaster, although I don't recommend it.

I took a piece of cheese and put it between two slices of bread. I then smashed the whole thing to one slice of bread thickness. Went around the edges smashing a bit more. Then two cycles on "not crazy dark" in the toaster.

Its ... meh. Spend the time to do it right, who cares if you make a pan dirty. (I had just finished a weekend full of dishes, so I was looking for something quick.)

I was lucky that the cheese did not drip out, I think they sell sleeves for the sandwich to make cheese sandwiches in the toaster.

Thesis baby (inlaws: no, not a real baby... )

me: "Man, I have gotten fat"
*me grabs belly and pats it
her: "Well... we will just call it... your thesis baby"

1 attoparsec per microfortnight

I feel like my dissertation work is moving at one attoparsec per microfortnight.

gah.

In other news, I maimed a butterfly by accident yesterday. I was driving back from the store and saw this butterfly in my path. I braked and swerved and braced for impact. Sometimes, small insects can just be pushed around without actually hitting the car, but it was not meant to be for this butterfly. I couldn't see the impact, so I thought he was safe. He was not. When I stopped at a light, a dazed butterfly tried to fly away from the front of my car, but fell to the ground and kept trying to fly. I was hoping I missed him, but nope.

my monitor is dying

I bought a crt monitor in 2002, and its been moved at least 7 times (5 of those include a cross country shipping.

Lately, its been acting up, it loses one color so that the screen has a red tint to it.

I'm sort of resolved to see this one to its end, and if I wait, it always goes back to working. While its missing a color, I tend to keep doing what I was doing as I mostly need to read text and type.

I was reading some news this morning though, and they had an article about the North Koreans and getting back into talks. There was a picture of Hilary Clinton, and she was looking much more youthful than normal. I figured it was due to the color change on my monitor, so I googled "bill clinton color blind".

Turns out he is color blind.

Tech transfers from military R&D

I used to have a friend that would always tell me that NASA and the DoD were useless. Part of the argument involved the R&D that each group did. I would counter that sometimes we got really cool things from them (microwaves anyone?).

Anyway, I didn't normally have too many 'recent' advances that were useful, but while reading some magazines a few months ago I ran into some cool things.

First one was a neat non-stick coating for pans that came from aircraft coatings. (it can also be used for prosthetics). Quasicrystalline Aircraft Coating Shows Promise for Cookware, Prosthetics
The tech actually came from the missile defense program. They actually don't have the time/money to develop it further, but I would love to see that on pans, teflon sucks (we have a pan that is only about 3 years old? and the teflon is useless (well, and i *might* have used the wrong sponge on it and removed the coating. or cooked with acids, or something)).

Second one is some radar technology being used to help cure breast cancer. Algorithms designed for radars are being applied to microwaves used for cancer destruction. Radar Technology Finds New Target. The algorithms null out the heating outside of the tumor so that good tissue is not destroyed. They are moving forward with this tech, and doing clinical trials.

Back to swimming

I hurt my achilles tendon(s?) sometime at the end of apr/early may. It hasn't been getting better, so I decided to stop standing (I had switched to a standing desk) and stop running.

Still had to do something, so I did biking and swimming.

It was really awesome getting back into the pool. The first day I went the 50mx25m pool was setup as a 50m pool, which is great. Water was cold and I did 1km.

I need to find a way to keep on swimming, maybe do two 30 min-ish workouts some days.

side note: I bought running shoes :( . Apparently it gets "hot" in July (making the road hot), and I am not sure that I am going to get up to 10k by July 4th on my bare feets [sic]. So, plan is to wear the VFF KSOs a bit while running until the 10k. I'll use them when in inner cities (oh the needles!!! (common reaction)), and for trail/river stuff.

Let over lambda saves the day (sbcl threads)

Messing with threads and sbcl/common lisp.

(loop for n from 1 to parallel-decision-num do
       (format t "~&outsidethread~a" n)
       (sleep 0.5)
       (sb-thread:make-thread
        (let ((m n))
          (lambda ()
            (sleep (random 5))
            (format t "~&insidethread~a" m)
            (sleep 2)))))

Remember to use a let so that the threads all have their own scope as you are spawning them. Also, join those mo-fos back up so that you don't cause horrible things.

(loop for thread in (sb-thread:list-all-threads)
   do
   (if (equal thread sb-thread:*current-thread*)
       '()
       (sb-thread:join-thread thread)))

Probably not the best way to do it, but it is *a* way.

M1911 Adoption Centennial

The M1911 was adopted on March 29, 1911.

To celebrate, I gathered my M1911(well, technically closer to the M1911A1 standard, but I digress) owning friends (friend).

Highlights of the celebration included "eyes closed" 1911 disassembly and reassembly.

My best times for eyes closed were: 41 seconds disassembly, 76 seconds reassembly.
Best times for eyes open was 19 seconds disassembly (stupid barrel bushing!) and 38 seconds reassembly.

Andy got 12 seconds disassembly with his eyes open, he basically picked it up and shook it and parts rained down. He was consistently faster at disassembly but slower with assembly. I think that my disregard for light scratches from the slide stop helped me there.

Went and got the patent for it, number 984519. I found something that shocked me, apparently the firearm originally had a magazine disconnect. Glad he came to his senses. I think one element of the longevity can be attributed to the nice trigger (ha, also that the plans are available and not patent encumbered like other newer designs).

Anyway, thanks JMB, PBUH.

Update: Thinking about the magazine disconnect, it *should* be possible to make one that does not affect trigger pull. I'll need to look at the hi-power and see why it increases trigger pull/gritty-ness. Anyone want to donate to the "Get me a hi-power" fund?

Just in: We interrupt this lack of posts for...

Just thought I would let people know how I am feeling. I have in my bloodstream:

Cetirizine Hydrochloride (Zyrtec)
mometasone furoate monohydrate (nasonex)
Diphenhydramine (Benadryl)
Acetaminophen, Dextromethorphan hydrobromide, phenylephrine (Alka-Seltzer Plus Day)

Reason?:
Pollen count soars (2248 grains per cubic meter of air) 89 is the max that can be called moderate, 1500 is the max high, and anything about that is very high.

Also might have a cold, which is why I was on the Alka-seltzer.

Blog posts coming soon (aren't they always?), I need to fix a computer to get some photos off of it.

Friday at 5pm, really?

I seem to be at peak productivity on Friday at 5pm.

wtf?

really!?

Anyways, heading home.