Book - The Drafting Table

Mini-Reviews 2021

Last year was a busy year on the personal front (due to a growing family) so I didn't have as much time to write reviews of things I read compared to previous years. Still, I wanted to have some highlights and notes to reference in future posts; the collection below

Map

Cartography in the Wardrobe

The Chronicles of Narnia is one of my favourite children's series. Every good fantasy novel is incomplete without a map. While the Narnia books include some maps, they tend to focus on the area where each book is set; there is a comprehensive map in the back of some editions,

History

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 come into contact—and frequently, over

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 region (including the South China Sea

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 at possible developments in that region.

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 Slime by Ruth Kassinger. It's my

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 the challenge was issued, so the

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: The Puzzle of Polynesia by Christina

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 novel. It starts with a world

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 history of soil as a requirement

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 reviewed these books and the concepts

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 of Grand Pré were loaded onto

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 cup of coffee. Factfulness by Hans

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 and Rotterdam to see some of

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 Friedman's book Legal Systems Very Different

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 a fair bit about (although never

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—this really only scratched the surface

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 ˙ Week 5 ˙ Week 6 ˙ Week 7

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 Seven Languages in Seven Weeks. Recently

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 been trying to learn some other

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 code, and links for further reading.

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 7 Introduction For this first post

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 it. In addition to the artistic

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 by Tim Keller. Tim Keller is

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 World History by Mark Kurlansky looks