Monday, November 30, 2020

Review: Matador Beast 28 Technical Backpack

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 I received a Matador Beast 28 backpack over the summer as corporate swag. I've been using it for mountain biking and hiking as a daypa...
Monday, November 23, 2020

2020 Books of the Year

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 This year I read around 82 books or so, including a number of re-reads. In the context of the mess that's 2020, reading has both been ...
Thursday, November 19, 2020

Review: How Long 'til Black Future Month?

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 How Long 'til Black Future Month? is the first collection of N.K. Jemisin's short stories. I loved her Inheritance Trilogy but bou...
Monday, November 16, 2020

Review: The Tyranny of Merit

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 In the wake of the 2020 election, there were several events that puzzled me, such as Joe Biden losing Florida despite the $15 minimum wage ...
Thursday, November 12, 2020

Review: ABLEWE KVM Switch

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 I was switching a USB hub between work laptop and home desktop, but thought about how much better my life would be if I could just find a K...
Monday, November 09, 2020

Review: Jabra Elite 65t Active

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 I've actually been somewhat happy with my Pamu wireless headset , with but one caveat, that the carrying case was too big! So when the ...
Thursday, November 05, 2020

Review: havit HV-F2056 Laptop Cooler

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 Long gone are the days when companies would issue you a desktop and a laptop so you can have lots of compute power. In fact, nowadays, comp...
Monday, November 02, 2020

Review: Bushwhacker Basket Panniers

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 I'd been riding the kids to and forth from school and various other activities with my now 25-year old Robert Beckman Panniers. Those p...
Thursday, October 29, 2020

Review: The Awakened Kingdom

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 I didn't realize that there was a novella called The Awakened Kingdom  in The Inheritance Trilogy (which I reviewed: The Hundred Thousa...
Monday, October 26, 2020

Review: The Paper Magician

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 The Paper Magician is available to read for free if you're a Prime member, I checked it out, and to my surprised found myself enjoying...
Thursday, October 22, 2020

Review: Spellbreaker

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  Spellbreaker is set in preindustrial London, in a mythic world where magic exists and is used by everybody, with prices set by markets. Th...
Monday, October 19, 2020

Review: Physics of the Impossible

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 I checked out Physics of the Impossible from the library, not noticing that it was incredibly dated. The book was written 12 years ago, bu...
Thursday, October 15, 2020

Review: Complexity - The Emerging Science at the Edge of Chaos

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  Complexity purports to be a book about the science and math of emergence. In reality, it actually is an account of the history and foundin...
Monday, October 12, 2020

Review: Blood and Truth (PSVR)

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 I got the PSVR several years ago, but until recently never got around to actually finishing a game on it. Part of it is that the medium do...
Thursday, October 08, 2020

Review: Garmin Varia UT800 Urban Edition

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 My light selection from 2017 is no longer in stock on Amazon, just as the battery (which is soldered to the motherboard on the device) is ...
Monday, October 05, 2020

Review: Jetboil Flash Camping and Backpacking Stove

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 For many years, I've been using the cheapest stove I could find on Amazon . The $12 specials are nothing special, but they're light...
1 comment:
Thursday, October 01, 2020

20 Lakes Basin/Hummingbird Lake Trip

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 The labor day forecast was for 100 degree+ weather in the Bay Area and bad air quality. Arturo had suggested Leavitt Meadows, but a look at...
1 comment:
Thursday, September 24, 2020

Review: Democracy in Chains

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 It is rare that a book takes me a full 3 weeks to read when checked out from the library. Democracy In Chains took me this long not becaus...
Monday, September 21, 2020

Review: The Night Tiger

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 Someone on Facebook recommended The Night Tiger as a novel over Kevin Kwan's Crazy Rich Asians series. I picked it up and read it over...
Thursday, September 17, 2020

Review: The Calculating Stars

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 The Calculating Stars won the 2018 Nebula Award for best novel.  It postulates a world in which a meteorite strikes the Atlantic Ocean in ...