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Book Reviews for 2023 So Far
We appear to be in the midst of a resurgence of pulp. But rather than spinning a rack of pulp magazines and comics at your local grocery store, instead you spin the scroll wheel on your mouse to browse online shelves. Mountains of adventures are ready to be downloaded to your device, or delivered straight to your door. Books dominate my entertainment diet, and I’ve found myself more excited for book releases than for upcoming movies and TV shows.
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The Black Crown Book Review
The Black Crown is the new debut fantasy novel by John A. Douglas. Douglas is a family man living in Louisiana. He’s a huge coffee fan, and a tabletop gamer. He’s been writing for years, honing his craft, and this debut novel displays his fantastic storytelling skill.
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Meno and Authority Over Virtue
But, wait a minute. I have questions. What was wrong with the list of virtues approach? Why is having a list of virtues inferior to having a list of the universal characteristics of virtues? I don’t think I see a practical difference in how the information for either approach could be obtained, nor applied.
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Create the Culture
When big studios announce that they’ve acquired a beloved IP, or are remaking a classic story, there’s no excitement left. There’s no anticipation other than dread for whatever flop they’ll end up delivering. The fix for this is simple and time-tested (although Hollywood can’t bring themselves to embrace it).
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Story: Malice at Midnight
It’s the dead of night, and something is clearly wrong. The family dog raises the alarm, and wakes the house. A family man must rely on his wits, will, weapons (and a stranger’s help) to battle a beast who’s dead set on attacking his home and loved ones.
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Simple Fix for Savage Axis Failure to Feed
For the life of me, I could not get my Savage Axis rifle to feed reliably. But then, I finally found the simple fix I was looking for.
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The Pilgrim's Hope
The last time I read The Pilgrim’s Progress, I was inspired by Christian’s courage in the face of evil. This time, I am struck by how Christian’s hope kept him from succumbing to despair.
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How To Use RSS
Sometimes my readers tell me that my RSS feed is broken. They click on the “RSS Feed” link expect to be subscribed to my blog. But, instead they just see a bunch of computery gibberish filling their screen.
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What Does Superversive Mean?
Modern storytelling, whether it be in the form of songs, poems, television shows, movies, or books has been progressively tearing down our cultural foundations by trying to convince the audience that lies are truth, ugliness is beautiful, and evil is good. Superversion is the antidote to such societal decay.
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The Fairy Tale Horror, Little Red Riding Hood
When I decided to analyze Little Red Riding Hood, I was not expecting to find a story that bludgeoned the reader over the head with a spiked bat. But that’s exactly what this version of the story does. It’s a full fledged horror story that has a moral for the kids, but there’s also a moral for the adults reading it.
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The Fairy Tale of Hansel and Grethel
This is a children’s story. It’s meant to be read to children. The themes of starvation, death, betrayal, murder, and cannibalism might be jarring to modern audiences (it’s a long way from If You Give A Mouse A Cookie) but I think it’s very important. Children need to grapple with these topics so that they can be inspired to overcome. This story teaches children to have faith in God, to have hope in the face of danger, and to aspire to vanquish dragons.
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Two Foundational Principles for Dialogue
There are two non-negotiable beliefs that are essential to healthy dialogue.
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The Pilgrim's Courage
The Pilgrim’s Progress has a particularly inspiring passage about courage. It’s when the protagonist, Christian, faces off against evil in the form of Apollyon.
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Develop an ASP.NET Core Site on Linux
If you’re a bit of an idealist, like I am, and you want to run open source software while still leveraging the powerful C# development ecosystem, then this should give a quick glimpse into what it’s like to develop C# websites on Linux.
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A Framework is an Implementation Detail
Frameworks are not all good. Weigh the benefits with the pitfalls.
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Hand Tool Woodworking
I built a box
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RSS is Wonderful
Inspired by Web Rings from the 90s, I created a tool for serendipitous discovery of blogs called RSS Discovery Engine. Similar to how web rings work, I make the assumption that interesting blogs will tend to link to other related blogs, and therefore, linked blogs are likely to also be interesting.
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My Favorite Tools on Linux
Last year I decided to take on the challenge of running just Linux. … Thankfully, I don’t really miss Windows 10 that much. There were some bumps along the road, but the overall results were positive and enjoyable. So, I thought I’d share my favorite software choices for my personal Linux workstation.
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Building Strength of Character
I hope the principles in this article can be used to edify ourselves and our communities.
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Credit Card Processing with Python
If you run a business, charity, or any organization that accepts money, a professional online payment feature on your website is a great way for your patrons to conveniently pay you. Here’s how such a payment feature can be implemented in Python with Authorize.net.
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Building Blocks of Function Components in React
Class based components aren’t the only way to build rich user interfaces in React. Here are some building blocks that can be used to build the same dynamic experiences using Function Components.
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Program Review: Mike Westerling's Basic Strongman
This is my review of Basic Strongman. Basic Strongman is a program by Mike Westerling that I spent the last 12 weeks running. It’s a 3-day-a-week program for general strength and the sport of Strongman.
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GitHub Pages and Quakkels.com
Now with HTTPS
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Flat is Better Than Nested Versus Single Entry Single Exit
I examine why to avoid single exit and why to prefer flatter code rather than accepting more levels of nested code.
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Functions for Documentation Instead of Comments
I’ve become convinced that comments are often worth avoiding. Comments aren’t subject to a compiler nor to an interpreter. Code may change and the corresponding comment often remains as it was. Except now the comment is misleading. This makes maintaining the code unnecessarily difficult.
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Naming Things Clearly
Guidelines for professional programmers to help them write code that’s as easy to understand as possible.
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Run Plex on an Ubuntu Server at Home
This is how I set up a home media server with Plex, Ubuntu, and a home server tower.
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Getting Started with Mobile Development and Xamarin
Xamarin enables programmers to write native mobile applications for both Android and iOS using C# and free development tools like Visual Studio Community Edition. This means that if you’re invested in the .NET ecosystem and the C# language, you can write cross-platform mobile applications using technology that’s already familiar to you.
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Home Gym Outfitting; Train with a Sled
Outfitting a home gym with a sled for drags and arm-over-arm pulls is simple. You don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars on equipment or gym memberships in order to train with a sled.
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Getting Started with Django
Django is a Python framework that I’ve written about before. I’ve compared Django to ASP.NET MVC. But, I didn’t go into much detail about how to actually use Django to create a data driven website. That’s what I’ll cover now.
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Configuring Vim When Using Git Bash on Windows
Occasionally I become enamored with the idea of becoming a Vim expert, or at least a competent Vim user. I work primarily in Windows environments so, though the desire exists, there aren’t many good opportunities to build Vim habits. There is a Vim on Windows release available. This has a GUI interface and an installer executable. Though if you have Git for Windows installed, then you already have Vim available. Git for Windows comes with the ever useful, Git Bash. And, lo! Git Bash has Vim.
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MySQL Quick Reference
A set of basic MySQL functionality for when you just have access to the CLI.
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Gogs on Raspberry PI
In a previous article I configured a headless Raspberry Pi for Wifi and SSH. Next, I’ll set up a personal Gogs server on it.
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Why I Prioritize Strength Training
Over the last few years, I’ve taken up a new hobby; strength training. It’s something I’ve really grown to love doing. And I’ve wanted to write about it for a while, but I wasn’t sure exactly how to articulate the reasons I loved it.
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Configure Headless Raspberry Pi for Wifi and SSH
Raspberry Pis are great little computers. Wonderful for running hobby services. But, whenever I start a new RPi project, I dislike needing to dig out my spare HDMI monitor and USB keyboard. I don’t like having to take up room, connect all that hardware, just to enable SSH and Wifi so I don’t need any of that equipment I just finished setting up.
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Identify Valid Standards
There’s more to finding the right tool for the job than just looking for the ‘industry standard’.
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Don't Take Frameworks for Granted
Using a framework can give you a boost of development speed in the beginning of a project, but can also hold you back in the long run.
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5 Slack Tricks that Changed My Life
The tricks I will discuss here have helped me to stay nimble in Slack’s user interface. At first, I looked at Slack as a swamp of messages that I needed to wade through. But, with these small tricks, Slack has become easier to use and it even plays more of a productivity role.
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Into the Nether: Linux
Come with me on an adventure as I discover how to make Linux look like the systems in movies that inspired me when I was young.
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Maintaining Your Vision
Programmers are often creators. Being a creator takes vision. Vision to see the destination, and vision to see the course.
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Let's Scrape the Web with Python 3
Web scraping can be useful especially if you need an API and one doesn’t yet exist. Here I use Python 3 to scrape an page’s HTML for its data.
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What Happens When You Login?
Storing passwords securely is extremely important. Not everyone gets it right.
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Learn Insertion Sort with Video Game Discs
Insertion sort is in the same family as the bubble sort in that its worst case complexity is O(n2). But in practice, it is usually a faster sort.
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Learn Bubble Sort with Playing Cards
Let’s say you have an unordered list of numbers and you wanted to put them in order from lowest to highest value. How would you do that?
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Let's talk to a SQLite database with Python
Foray headlong into SQLite data.
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ASP.NET MVC Compared to Django
I compare the similarities and the differences between these two web frameworks.
