Book - The Drafting Table

The Left Bank of the Rhine

This post contains a review of Lotharingia: A Personal History of Europe's Lost Country by Simon Winder, along with a bit of programming practice I did recently. Lotharingia is a history/travel book about the swath of Europe where French and Germanic cultural regions

Book

Monsoon Prospect

Here's the promised forward-looking Part 2 to the historical book reviews from Part 1. In the previous part of this series, I wrote about some of the history of the Indian Ocean. In this part, I'll be looking at the geopolitical outlook of the

History

Monsoon Legacy

This post is the first part of a two-part series I have planned. It is about the history of trade on the western Indian Ocean and is based on reviews of a couple of books I read this year. Part two will look forward

environment

Harvesting Algae and Other Parts of the Biosphere

This post is a rambling review of a couple of books and a technical paper that are all around a common theme of obtaining renewable resources from photosynthesis. The books I'll be covering in this post are Harvesting the Biosphere by Vaclav Smil and

Book

10 Books Before '20

At the start of September, a friend on Facebook issued a challenge to read 10 books before the end of the year. I decided to share the brief reviews I wrote here. The rules allowed for books you were in the middle of when

Book

Polynesian Pacific

Sorry about having such a long gap between posting. I've been on a couple of business trips, and when I've been home my social calendar and the hot weather haven't left many good opportunities to sit down at my computer and write. Sea People:

Book

Centuries of Rice and Salt

I usually only write reviews of non-fiction books that I read but a novel I read recently was different enough from typical fiction that I thought I'd make an exception. The Years of Rice and Salt, by Kim Stanley Robinson, is an alternate history

Book

Sand and Soil

This post contains reviews of a couple of books I've read recently. They relate to a similar theme as the previous post—how people are reshaping the earth. About the Books Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations by Dr. David R. Montgomery is about the

Book

The Basics of Complexity

This fall I read a couple of books about complexity: A Crude Look at the Whole by John H. Miller and Complexity: A Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell. For my final post of the year (except for an upcoming year in review post), I've

Book

Waifs of the Tide

Some poetry, some history, and some Maritime scenery. At the end of September, I took a detour to Grand Pré after a weekend in Halifax. The landscape there is a UNESCO site, in recognition of the Grand Dérangement. On October 8, 1755, the inhabitants

Book

Facts, Forecasts, & Figures

If you're looking for a break from the doom-and-gloom in the news, this post is for you (I'll also suggest this one from last year). Below, I share reviews of two books—so it won't be a short read and I'd recommend grabbing a

Travel

fietspaden en droge voeten

This is my final post based off of my trip to the Netherlands. It focuses on reviewing a book about land reclamation and flood control infrastructure in the Netherlands and sharing a couple of bike trips I took out into the countryside around Amsterdam

Book

Pirates and Vikings

This post contains 2.1 book reviews. The two books are The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates by Peter T. Leeson and The Sea Wolves: A History of the Vikings by Lars Brownworth. The extra 10 percent is two chapters from David

History

Steppe Cycle

This post is a review of Water on Sand: Environmental Histories of the Middle East and North Africa. The chapters have different authors and mostly stand on their own; the editor of the whole volume is Alan Mikhail. One of the things I've read

Computer

Week 7: Haskell

With this post, I've come to the end of my series going through the book Seven Languages in Seven Weeks by Bruce Tate. It was a good experience and I feel like I learned quite a bit (but have a lot more to learn—

Computer

Week 6: Clojure

After the past two posts on different topics, I'm returning to my series on Seven Languages in Seven Weeks by Bruce Tate. The programming language covered in this week's chapter is Clojure, a dialect of Lisp. Week 1 ˙ Week 2 ˙ Week 3 ˙ Week 4

Bible

St. Paul

I intended to have this post written shortly after Easter, but April has been a really busy month so far (and looks to continue as such) so I didn't get to it until now. Next post, I plan to return to my series on

Links

Assorted Links (Spring 2018)

I decided to take a break from my programming series this week (and probably next week too). Like back in the fall, I've got some links saved up that are related to things I've written, or that I just found really interesting. Although I've

Book

Week 2: Io

Continuing the series I started last week, this post is about the entry in Seven Languages in Seven Weeks on the prototyping language Io. As before, I'm going to share my notes on this chapter, including a few excerpts, some significant methods, snippets of

Book

Week 1: Ruby

As I mentioned last week, I'm trying to work through the book Seven Languages in Seven Weeks by Bruce Tate this winter. This first week was about the object-oriented language Ruby. Week 1 ˙ Week 2 ˙ Week 3 ˙ Week 4 ˙ Week 5 ˙ Week 6 ˙ Week

Math

Circles and Triangles

This post is about a book on geometry that I read last year (finishing up over the holidays). Beautiful Geometry was written by Eli Maor and Eugen Jost. Each of its 51 chapters explains a topic in geometry and presents an artistic plate illustrating

Book

There Really Is a Tree

This is my final post for the year (not counting a year in review summary planned for a week from now) and it is a book review I've been saving for Christmas. The book is Every Good Endeavor: Connecting your work to God's work

Book

Salt makes you Thirst

This post contains reviews of a couple of history books that I read this fall: Salt and Thirst. The former is about salt as an ingredient, preservative, and commodity; the latter is about approaches to water management in various ancient societies. Salt Salt: A

Book

Putting Civilization in the Sea

This post is a book review. The title is an allusion to another one I wrote earlier this year. Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity from Politicians was written by Joe Quirk with

Water

The Tao of Water

This post contains some philosophical and cultural views of water and the sea, including a book review. A book (Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization) that I read a few years ago gave the following description of competing perspectives (dikes vs.