Sorry about the lack of bloggage lately. I’ve been busy buying a house. We closed escrow and everything, and we’re moving next week. Can’t wait until next weekend when it’ll all be over, relatively speaking. In other news, Mike Vanier’s Foundational Programming Languages made the front page of Proggit today….
Author: elbeno
Book Meme
Here are the Top 100 Most Popular Books on LibraryThing. Bold what you own, italicize what you’ve read. Star what you liked. Star multiple times what you loved! 1. Harry Potter and the sorcerer’s stone by J.K. Rowling (32,484) * 2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6) by…
Miscellanea
Another book sale last weekend. A bit light on technical books this time, but I did snag quite a quantity of old SF paperbacks, and a box set of software engineering classics. Of late, I’ve had some unsolicited interest in RotateAVI. There is a reported bug that causes it to…
Antifeatures, and two requests to Google
I’ve been reading some noise on the wire lately about anti-features. Benjamin Mako Hill, who seems to have coined the term, writes: “Anti-features are sold to customers as features but are fundamental or unavoidable aspects of systems that can only be removed or withheld through technological effort.” In other words,…
e-book reader
I got an e-book reader for my birthday! It’s very shiny. Comparable to the weight of a small hardback, with an internal memory of 200MB (doesn’t sound a lot, but novels don’t take up much space), and expansion slots for SD and Memory Stick Pro Duo. The e-ink technology is…
Gasoline prices comparison
My regular gas station in West LA is running just under $4.40 a (US) gallon right now. My dad’s regular petrol station in South London is £1.30 a litre, which is about $9.70 a gallon.
End of the Vacation
Sunday was another rest day: we went to Crystal Palace Park in the morning, and in the afternoon we had a birthday tea to celebrate the family birthday coincidence. Monday was my actual birthday, and now that half term was over, we headed back to the Natural History Museum for…
London Calling
Here’s how the holiday has been so far: Arrived Thursday afternoon after taking off Wednesday night. Spent the first evening chilling and getting over some jetlag. Friday we headed to Greenwich, walked through Greenwich park and looked around the Royal Observatory. Didn’t have time to see a planetarium show, but…
I’m in London
Catching up with family and friends on the UK side. Weather’s not bad at the moment, and I must have a sort of reverse jet-lag because I’m up at 6.40am on a Saturday (and nobody else is yet). Yesterday, went to a whole other hemisphere.
Unexpectedly Valuable
It’s come to my attention recently that my library of video games contains some that are now quite rare, sought-after, and therefore valuable. Many of the video games that you can’t buy new any more are available through eBay or Amazon sellers, although frequently (at least on Amazon) the items…