Dust
Book Notes Posted by kitt at 14:46 on 13 June 2015
The dust jacket blurb is awful:
Wool introduced the silo and its inhabitants. Shift told the story of their making. Dust will chronicle their undoing. Welcome to the underground.
The book, however, is great. There were a number of parts in the book where I just hated to keep reading. All of them were parts of people being assholes to other people. There's looking out for your own needs, and then there's just plain greed. The former I understand, the latter I do not. The deliberate claiming of another person as property I also cannot stand.
Upside to this book, it has as close to a happy ending as you can get in a book with the previous two books Wool and Shift prior in the series. The plot in this world doesn't jump between centuries, making it easier to read. It wraps the saga up nicely, lots of small mysteries solved, which was nice.
I recommend reading this book (after the previous two, of course, it'll make no sense without those two first).
Applying branch changes to a new branch in git
Blog Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 07:15 on 12 June 2015I am unsure how other people do this, but this is how I apply changes from one branch to a new branch when the original branch can't be rebased to master (say, when the original branch is thousands, or really, maybe just hundreds or tens of conflicting, commits behind master).
$ git co branch-no-longer-loved
If differences with master aren't causing rebase issues, can do this:
$ git rebase master $ git diff master > ~/some-differences.diff
More likely, I'm doing this because I can't rebase to master. So, taking my changes back to where I diverged from master, say 3 checkins:
$ git diff HEAD~3 > ~/some-differences.diff
Applying the changes to a new branch with patch.
$ git co branch-that-is-now-favoured $ patch -p1 < ~/some-differences.diff
The branch-that-is-now-favoured branch now contains the changes from branch-no-longer-loved, as unadded and unstaged and unhistoried files, without having to fight with git to get things in there.
The -p1 in patch makes this easy.
Of cleats and toenails
Blog Instead of being asleep at 21:44 on 10 June 2015, kitt created this:
"Hey, Todd, you still play soccer a lot?"
"Yep."
"Do you have all of your toenails?"
"Heh. Yes, of course."
"Have you ever lost a toenail?"
"Does that still happen these days?"
"..."
"I heard my dad talk about how he used to lose toenails playing soccer. I don't think anyone has that problem any more."
"... Okay."
Apparently, crazy toenails are a thing of a previous generation, and not something that currently happens with modern shoe technology. I was unaware of these advances, and continue to do cleats incorrectly.
That all said, boy, am I having fun playing ultimate these days. I am way out of shape, I'm slow, my throws aren't crisp, I can't cut deep to catch a huck to save my life (of course, the throws not actually making it as far as I've cut, and my having to turn around to find the disc, and same lane hucks, are not helping my cutting-deep stats at all), but dang, am I having fun.
Not playing IN a thunderstorm is nice. Playing one last point when lightning strikes close is not. While I didn't turf that throw on purpose, I was very happy to have that point end quickly.
Shift
Book Notes kitt decided around 21:29 on 10 June 2015 to publish this:
Okay, here's the blurb on the back of the book:
In 2007, the Center for Automation in Nanobiotech (CAN) outlined the hardware and software platform that would one day allow robots smaller than human cells to make medical diagnoses, conduct repairs, and even self-propagate. In the same year, the CBS network re-aired a program about the effects of propranolol on sufferers of extreme trauma. A simple pill, it had been discovered, could wipe out the memory of any traumatic event. At almost the same moment in humanity's broad history, mankind had discovered the means for bringing about its utter downfall. And the ability to forget it ever happened.
Doesn't really do the book justice. It's a background and continuation of Wool. I struggled to start with this book. Wool was great, and while I was interested in more of the Silo world Howey had created, I wanted the story to sit. It felt complete. This one starts out with how the Silo world was created. Given it starts out with politics and manipulation, I can't say I was overly enthusiastic about it. Okay, I wasn't. It took me a long time to get into this book.
I really like Howey's writing style, however, so I kept going. After I decided a couple days ago that I was going to finish a book, dammit, this is the one I chose, and I'm glad I did. I finished it, and finished it fast. It's good.
Yay, the book-finishing-drought is finally over! This is a great one to do it with, if you've read Wool. If you haven't read Wool, read it first, then read thing one. Next up, Dust.
So much for that group hike
Blog Posted by kitt at 14:44 on 7 June 2015
I took the kids for a hike today. Which is to say, I drove the kids to a hiking spot, hopped out of the car, and had one of the two kids follow me.
The second one refused to leave the car. "I don't want to go on a hike," he said, while crossing his arms and entering his sulk mode. I stood there for a bit, holding the door open, debating my options. I'm bigger than he is by more than a factor of two. I could wrestle him out of his car seat, throw him under my arm and stomp down the trail. The other kid was watching me, waiting to see what I would do.
I closed his door, opened the driver's door, rolled down all the windows, closed the door, locked the car and walked away.
Kids are a simpler version of adults, but have the same basic requirement of control: they have to give you permission.
Kids have to give you permission to parent them. Adults have to give you permission to govern them. Without either set of permissions, those in the power role cannot maintain power.
It's a different facet of Eleanor Roosevelt's quote, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." If you don't give someone else permission to govern you, if you rise up against an injust system, things can change.
In this particular case, the kid had to power to make my hike time miserable. That is where his power lies. I chose not to allow him to ruin my morning hike, so walked away with the bigger kid. We went off and had our hike, while the smaller kid sat in the car pouting. We saw a number of adorable dogs, only one beagle, before I realized we were hiking in an off-leash dog park. Both of us had a wonderful time.
Fortunately, we missed all of the dog poop on the ground. Back to the car we went, the small one still pouting.
I have to say, I was happy to pet a bunch of friendly dogs and hand the kids back to their mother. Small people in small doses should be my new mantra.