Naomi Novik is one of the best fantasy writers around. Her early book, His Majesty’s Dragon and following series was one of my favorites, but it had a problem. It rather wandered around the globe, Patrick O’Brian style. Unfortunately, as an obvious result, it felt rather disconnected and random at times. Naomi Novik conspicuously avoided […]
The Golden Enclaves: Naomi Novik finally completes a trilogy Read More »
The HP Book Studio G9 is very nearly perfect. I need a computer for data science with which I can also travel far and wide as a digital nomad, and I’ve been searching a while for the best one. Besides programming, movies and writing are the other use cases, and the occasional Civilization game. I
HP ZBook Studio 16 Inch G9 Review Read More »
I can see why Columbia, particularly Medellin, is a popular travel destination. Firstly, the weather is perfect all year round. It has a tag of the City of Eternal Spring, or perhaps more likely, eternal summer given that it is mostly 70 rarely leaving the 60-80 degree range. It is lush and fertile, with ample
Columbia: Cycling and Remote Work in Medellin Read More »
City of Bones is a rather niche, otherwise forgotten book from 1995 that has enjoyed some renewed interest as a result of the amazing Murderbot book series by the same author, Martha Wells. It is not to be confused with another book of the same name by a different author. It can be rather difficult
City of Bones: a quick review Read More »
Setting up a Python environment is often a pain. Even worse is that sometimes the environment, once it is finally built, is surprisingly slow because the underlying numeric libraries (BLAS, OneAPI, and so on) are improperly configured. This aims to be a fairly definitive guide to fixing those problems as of early 2022. How much
Tunisia is a difficult country to judge. On the one hand, it is the most interesting country I have been in for quite a while – away from Europe which was becoming routine (if pleasant). Tunisia is warm, inexpensive, not crowded, and has excellent history On the other hand, I got sick three times in
Tunisia Digital Nomad Review Read More »
2021 was a long, eventful year. Was it good or was it bad? I am not sure. Both, I think. The defining thing about 2021 for me was the sheer amount of travel I did. I was in Ukraine, home, then Savannah, Knoxville, Utah, home, and then Lithuania, Croatia, Tunisia and then home. These weren’t
Croatia is just about perfect for everyone. It is rare that can be said about a destination. I came for the history, of Roman, Venetian, and countless other influences. I also came for the weather, which on the coast stays mild for much of the year (inland is a different story). To go with that
Croatia: Digital Nomad Review Read More »
“GLORIOUS PURPOSE!” Loki is one of the best, or perhaps more accurately, one of the most emotional TV series I have ever watched. It was amazing, for me. Yet I don’t think that will be true for the average viewer. Let’s start with the difficulties. Loki relies on having a solid grounding in the Marvel
Loki Review: Glorious Purpose! Read More »
After what seems like a lull, with few decent book waiting in my reading queue, I was thrilled to see Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education, she being one of my favorite authors. Black Sun meanwhile came from the NPR top books list, and happened to be in stock in English in the bookstore here in
Fantasy Roundup: Deadly Education and Black Sun Read More »
