Books, mostly

Hola.

My last set of posts about Using the Model-Store pattern in Inversion took a large heap of my blogging-concentration, but as they've been going since March it's good that they are finally out of the way.

Work's going well and I'm getting my teeth stuck into producing a cloud-based platform for digital library services for digitised collections, services like deep-zoom image serving, discovery, managing metadata and work with the emerging IIIF standard for viewers. Work days, I'm at Wellcome, which is a bit like being on a spaceship, although the food is probably better than NASA serve.

I'm cycling to work which is moderately terrifying. Drivers are terrifying. Cyclists are terrifying. Especially cyclists, frankly, considering some of the whacked-out shit I've seen them do in just a few weeks of riding.

At the moment I'm studying for the Microsoft Programming in C# Exam (70-483) which is on Monday afternoon. It helps out Digirati and definitely doesn't hurt me to go for the certification. However, the study has kinda precluded me making much progress with the stuff I'm reading.

Oh, I bought a Microsoft Band the other day, partly because geek and partly to mitigate an RSI I'm getting in my right index finger. Reaching for my phone in jeans pockets every 30 seconds is really causing a problem, it seems, so the Band picks up the notifications for me. The cycle / run tracking is really good too, although I was tipped over into buying one when I learned that they'd opened up the SDK to allow arbitrary RSS feeds to be added to the tiles.

Go get one! They're really cool.

Currently reading:

Assassin's Apprentice (Farseer Trilogy part 1)
Robin Hobb

Building Microservices

Sam Newmann

(Well, I lie - I just finished it the other day - really bloody good, though.)

And my exam book:

Programming in C# Exam Ref 70-483

Wouter de Kort

Which has got a whole bunch of text inconsistencies (calling things modules, for example), some really bad practice (if you generally mark your classes as sealed then you, whomever you are, are a sociopath), and some answers missing. So that's nice.

Reading progress ...

Finished William Gibson's "The Peripheral" earlier this week after reaching about 80% of the way through it, realising that I was totally absorbed in it and that I didn't want it to end. So, I restarted the book and I am so glad that I did. It's an amazing, lushly detailed work. Very happy that he has returned to sci-fi with what might possibly be his finest work.

There are so many books queued up on my Kindle. I've recently got back into going to the gym where I tend to get a good hour's worth of reading done if I find a free cross-trainer. Now I can start to chew through the pile of purchases I've made over the past six months since I moved into my fiancé's place from my old flat where the gym was just over the road.

First up, I'm hitting the start of the Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb. The whole series were on offer a while back and I was a bit click-happy.

Currently reading:

"Assassin's Apprentice (Book One of the Farseer Trilogy)" by Robin Hobb

Bookmarks for 20140313

Thursday is an exciting day. I'll tell you all why soon. Work is busy, things are progressing and I saw a cracking gig last night - Hollie McNish supported by Sabrina Mahfouz - awesome awesome awesome spoken-word poetry at Bush Hall. After the gig I popped in for a quick beer at my neighbouring bar and ended up on a call to technical support for half an hour to try and fix their card machine, which didn't get fixed but at least I got a free beer out of it. I then woke up with a headache this morning and I'm blaming the card machine.

Good article on thinking about appropriate data structures in Redis.

https://matt.sh/thinking-in-redis-part-one

StreamTools by the New York Times R&D Lab.
https://source.opennews.org/en-US/articles/introducing-streamtools/

Steve Jackson's Sorcery! A Fighting Fantasy RPG brought to Android and iOS. However, I'm biased so here's just the Android link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.inkle.sorcery1

I've been on a massive reading binge recently, here's a couple of highlights:

Red Phone Box: A Darkly Magical Story Cycle, by Salomé Jones, Warren Ellis, et al. This was quite a ride through London... Every London.

Gun Machine, by Warren Ellis. This is the detective novel I've been waiting for. Also some of my favourite writing I've come across for a while. An unsettling case that spreads across 20 years and all of Manhattan.