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A novel about chess, set in the 1960s? How good could that even be?
Turns out: fairly good.
Although (and this isn’t that common for me) I did enjoy the TV show more.
It’s an entire world of just 64 squares. I feel safe in it. I can control it; I can dominate it. And it’s predictable. So, if I get hurt, I only have myself to blame.
In a nutshell, we follow orphan Beth Harmon as she discovers chess–but also drugs–gets adopted, really gets into chess, wins a bunch of games, loses a few, faces addition and loss, and ends up playing the best in the world.
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“We are what we choose to be, girl,’ she said. ‘Let others determine your worth, and you’ve already lost, because no one wants people worth more than themselves.”
The setting and world building in this book remind me strongly of The Runelords / The Wheel of Time / Brandon Sanderson’s works, which is already a solid win so far as I’m concerned.
Basically, we have a world where ‘demons’ form out of thin air (more or less) at night, free to terrorize anyone left outside without a circle of wards around them. It’s literally ‘what if the monsters in the night were real’. From there, we have a world that finally fought back against the demons, managed to drive them off, and had a golden age… only to forget. And fall once again–making this world feel post apocalyptic, humanity on the brink of losing for good. But even then, people will fight to survive.
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Oh man. Faction Wars.
We’ve spent several books referring to this or actually planning it… and now, we’re finally here! The one where powers in the universe come to the Dungeon planet and lead armies of their own as a larger than life sort of war game.
Except this time, it’s no game. This time, they can die just as easily as the crawlers can.
This time, it’s war.
Oh, and this time the crawlers have an army all their own–with some unexpected allies.
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Every time you take one path, you must live with the memory of the other: of a life left unchosen. Decide as seems best, one course or the other; each way will have its bitter with its sweet.
The sequel to The Bear and the Nightingale. While the first mostly took place in the edge of the Russian wilderness, this one travels far and wide. To towns being raided to Moscow itself. And all the while, we have Visilisa, refusing to choose either life in a convent or married. One thing leads to another, she disguises herself as a boy–as one does–and things escalate from their.
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“… That could have gone much worse,” said Three Sea-grass, when she could. She straightened up. Wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. And didn’t try to get away from Mahit’s touch, not at all. “Look, Mahit-nobody died, not even slightly.”
Well that’s a fascinating change of pace.
In A Memory Called Empire, we pretty much stayed in the heart of Teixcalaan. A single planet, mostly a single City. We had all sorts of politics and worldbuilding and hints of what else was out there, but for the moment, it felt like a fairly contained story within that larger world.
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The impossible was never out of reach. Especially if it made for good television.
Or… the one with the trading card game.
Down another level (or two) and we have a whole new way to mess with Carl and Donut. This time around, we have ‘memory ghosts’ of the world that was, a war storyline between seals and crabs, all sorts of chaos with gods and demons, and …
Shi Maria.
The Bedlam Bride.
Gaze upon her fifth eye and be driven mad.
What could possibly go wrong?
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I just wanted to make a quick montage of all 31 sketches:
You can combine all of the preview images and then add some nice text with a pair of imagemagick commands:
montage content/programming/2026/genuary/*/gen26.??.png \
-tile 6x6 \
-geometry +2+2 \
-background none \
gen26-grid.png
mogrify \
-gravity southeast \
-pointsize 200 \
-fill "white" \
-stroke "black" -strokewidth 2 \
-annotate +20+20 "Genuary 2026" \
gen26-grid.png
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I have very little experience with graphics shaders, but I’d like to learn. Perhaps I’ll take a month to redo all these prompts with shaders. That’d be neat.
But for now, one shader, messing around a bit.
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A throwback to what’s probably one of my earliest programming projects (originally in qbasic…): bugs!
It’s very simple: each frame, each bug moves randomly and the draws a dot.
That’s really it.
I’ve updated it a bit with various parameters to tweak. Play with them. See what they do!
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That got quite a bit more than I expected. So now it’s basically an evolving programmatic image generator. 😄
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And that’s when things really went off the rails.
The last season (and especially the last episode) of Lost are somewhat controversial–and for a good reason.
There are some really fascinating ideas in this one, don’t get me wrong. Really fleshing out the mythology of the island (for better and for worse), dealing (ish) with the consequences of time travel and changing the timeline, and then finally trying to wrap up five seasons of throwing whatever crazy ideas they had even sort of neatly.
I’d think you might be able to guess what I think about how they did. 😄
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Whelp. I’m not a fan of that, but it was interesting enough. I got to brush off my tabbed view code. And do some weird things with CSS. Whee?
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So this one really fits better for Genuary 2026.25: Organic Geometry and that one is a lifeform like this one, so… we’ll consider them swapped or something.
Anyways, spawn branching nodes and draw a bunch of squares. Not only an organic looking lifeform but creepy to boot! I do love it without borders and with fade.
Be careful with high child count without either a high segment length or death rate to compensate, it will get slow.
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A favorite technique of mine. I’ve already done it on day 5, day 7, and day 13. But now we can go one a-maze-ing step further…
See what I did there? 😄
Basically: generate a maze. For each cell in the maze… generate a smaller maze! Recursively.
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So basically we have a simulation where each of n different species has a weight of attraction/repulsion for each other species. This is, by itself, enough to generate some pretty organic behavior!
Edit: This one probably fits better for Genuary 2026.27: Lifeform and that one here.
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This book is dedicated to anyone who has ever fallen in love with a culture that was devouring their own.
So basically: an empire of Space Aztecs with funny Number Thing names and a proclivity towards politics and poetry (and especially political poetry)–
The Empire, the world. One and the same. And if they were not yet so: make them so, for this is the right and correct will of the stars.
–and a new Ambassador who should have memories of her maybe murdered predecessor to help her out… and doesn’t.
Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe; it gives life back to those who no longer exist.
Things, of course, get messy.
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It started off with a neat grow of blocks and just sort of grew from there–as these things seem wont to do.
This is another one that really benefits from the animation, but it’s neat enough to see each simulation done.
Try playing with the settings. This one looks like a game of Pick Up Sticks. And this one is just tiny brick chaos!
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Genuary 2026.10: Polar coordinates did the transparency thing, but … let’s do it again!
This is one that really stands out when it’s animated.
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Split a polygon into triangles and then recursively split those triangles over and over again!
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He just keeps going. More chaos, more levels, more caring for this absolutely ridiculous setup and what is going to end up to happen to Carl and Princess Donut and all their friends/enemies/fans/decapitated sex doll heads.
Aaaaaah!
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It started more than a decade ago now (2012!). I was catching up to 30 new releases in a year in theaters and reviewing them. Then at some point (2014), life happened and I didn’t make it to the theater as much anymore.
After that, starting in 2015, I realized I could do the same thing with books! And I started writing a review of every book I read. And I read a lot. Since then, I’ve reviewed over 1300 books–and I still have over 1000 on my to read list. So that isn’t likely to stop any time soon.
It’s mostly fantasy and to a lesser extent scifi, although I do get a few horror novels in there, along with a couple non-fiction or poetry anthologies a year. I’m always looking for more to add though. Hit me up!
Then, starting in 2021, I started again with the movie reviews, this time mostly ignoring what was in theaters, instead watching whatever seemed interesting, much like my book reviews. And this time, I added TV reviews as well.
And… here we are. Really, it’s as much a memory aid for me as anything. I love being able to look back at all the covers I read in a year, pick one at random, and use my own writing to remind me of a particular book/movie/show. And if anyone else is inspired to read something out of it? Well, all the better!
Current book bingo: 2025 Book Bingo
The earliest memory I have of ‘programming’ is in the early/mid 90s when my father brought home a computer from work. We could play games on it … so of course I took the spreadsheet program he used (LOTUS 123, did I date myself with that?) and tried to modify it to print out a helpful message for him. It … halfway worked? At least I could undo it so he could get back to work…
After that, I picked up programming for real in QBASIC (I still have a few of those programs lying around), got my own (junky) Linux desktop from my cousin, tried to learn VBasic (without a Windows machine), and eventually made it to high school… In college, I studied computer science and mathematics, mostly programming in Java/.NET, although with a bit of everything in the mix. A few of my oldest programming posts on this blog are from that time.
After that, on to grad school! Originally, I was going to study computational linguistics, but that fell through. Then programming languages (the school’s specialty). And finally I ended up studying censorship and computer security… before taking a hard turn into the private sector to follow my PhD advisor.
Since then, I’ve worked in the computer security space at a couple of different companies. Some don’t exist any more, some you’ve probably heard of. I still program for fun too, and not just in security.
But really, I still have a habit of doing a little bit of everything. Whatever seems interesting at the time!
… other things I currently haven’t put into a category!
I love to take things apart and put them back together. It’s one of the reasons I work in computer security for a living. But more recently, the dropping prices of 3D printing and entirely not dropping prices of wood working have led to a few new hobbies. :D
I’ve always had a soft spot for photography. I borrowed my mother’s camera in high school and eventually bought my own. These days, I mostly use my phone (it’s amazing how good those have gotten), but I still pull out my years old DSLR from time to time.
Mostly, I have pictures organized by photosets, but I’ve started adding a few ‘meta sets’ like Mini Worlds, Bugs etc (macros), and Fungus Among Us.
Another hobby I’ve been getting into more recently is Home Automation! Previously these posts would have been in Other, but it’s nice to have them all in one place.
I am a writer–I just don’t always remember it.
I wrote my first novel in 2011. I’ve started 14 more since then, finishing about half of those. One of these days I’ll actually try to find someone to publish them (or just do it myself). Onward!
(If anyone would like to be a beta reader, feel free to drop me a line).
Once upon a time, I was on track to get a PhD in censorship/computer security.
I was ABD (all but dissertation) when my advisor decided to leave and go into the private sector. When that happens… you either find a new advisor or you go with them. I decided to go with them, move to Silicon Valley, and join a startup. It was perhaps the best thing that could have happened to me. While I sometimes regret not having the extra letters after my name, I love the practicality of working in the ‘real world’. Not to mention the job prospects are better. :)
So for the most part, these posts are archival, but there are still a few gems in there.
