My book log
Updated at 2009-12-22T01:34:00+02:00
7 more books since the last post. Two more this year, and I'll
reach my book-a-week goal. I'm currently reading Accelerando,
and I might read the latest Remes thriller too, if I get my
hands on it, which would bring me to my goal.
At least Christmas time is conductive for reading. No fixed
schedules, mostly, and some slow holiday days with nothing
much else to do. Although I think I'll spend more of my time
working this Christmas then the years before.
Books read
Updated at 2009-11-10T00:38:00+02:00
Books read
Updated at 2009-07-20T02:27:00+03:00
Q: What do you do when you have read a dozen or so books without writing about them?
A: Dump them into one entry and try to get more regular about writing again.
Q: How? They are in this silly file in this silly XML format.
A: xmlstarlet sel -t -e books -m /entries/entry/books/book -c . future-entries.xml |xmlstarlet fo > foo.xml and then C-x C-f foo.xml C-x h M-w C-x b <RET> C-y plus some little editing.
On the whole it seems that I have only read 25 books in 8
months. Not quite the pace I'd like to keep up. I seem to
have completely stopped reading in January, and only
finished one book in February, so it's actually more like 24
books in 6 months, or somewhat under a book a week, which
feels fairly reasonable to me.
It's also clear I haven't frequented the local library this
year. It feels bit sad, but it seems that I have enough to
read as it is.
Books read
Updated at 2009-07-20T01:24:00+03:00
Books
I don't think I've posted an entry with two books since the
very beginning in August, when the first post included a
chunk of library history.
Life update
On my too-much-stuff-to-do front there isn't as much
pressure as usually, since I finished my B.Sc. thesis. Now
I'm concentrating on work, a school C++ project, and some
other school stuff. Also, there is a potential trip to Japan
looming on the horizon. It will needs planning at some
point, but that can probably be deferred until Christmas.
On the B.Sc. front I still need to make a presentation,
oppone someone else's presentation and write an essay about
the thesis subject. The presentation is likely not that
great a success, since the presentation group has dwindled
from six people to just three. Not much of an audience,
especially considering the subject is very technical in an
obscure fashion even for a technical univerity.
Random
I need to start more logs like this. Some ideas that come to
mind are: photography, alcoholic beverages and
movies. Writing out one's thoughts seems to be a good way to
organize them.
Updated 208-12-07 18:55 Oops, the first posting had wrong id.
Books read
Updated at 2008-12-07T019:05:00+02:00
Hm, apparently I hadn't written this post yet. I thought I had.
Books read
Updated at 2008-11-26T02:00:00+02:00
I'm updating the look of the site, and moving the book listing
onto a separate page.
Books read
Updated at 2008-11-20T16:52:00+02:00
Woo, finished another book. No time to chat.
Books read
Updated at 2008-11-13T08:55:00+03:00
Tutka onkin sekä meri- että ilmapurjehduksen arvokas apuväline toimittaessa pimeällä, sumussa ja pilvien läpi.
In English: Radar is a valuable instrument in both air and
sea navigation when operating in the dark, in fog or through
cloud cover.
Apparently the book meme requires one to
- Grab the nearest book.
- Open it on page 56.
- Find teh fifth sentence.
- Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
- Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
For me the nearest book was the one that this post is
about. I had almost finished the book before stubmling upon
this silly meme, so I finished up and thus had a chance to
post! I had to use page 57 instead of page 56, since page 56
only contained illustrations.
I found this book at the local book exhibition. Excellent exhibition, but costly.
Books read
Updated at 2008-10-17T04:35:00+03:00
It seems that my book log doesn't support collections of
short stories very well. Also, I need to read more so that I
get the excuse to write more about personal things in these
comment sections.
Photos from Moscow are still largely unprocessed. Too
little time. B.Sc. paper is still largely unwritten. Too
little time. Course work for the machine learning course is
not yet even started. Too little time. Oh, and I guess I
haven't read much either - except papers about transactional
memory, but those don't count.
Besides not doing what I probably should've been doing,
I've started watching Dexter. It seems to be good so far,
though that is to be expected, considering the series' main
theme. How could a TV show about a sane serial killer who
happens to work in the police not be good?
While reading this book, I started thinking that there
doesn't seem to be much scifi around, that would take the
current world as its premise. In the 40s and 50s it seemed
to be rather popular to extrapolate developments of the then
world, and write about them.
Books read
Updated at 2008-10-04T01:51:00+03:00
Long time no read. Well, I had other things to do, like
seeing a bunch of movies, eating in Olde Hansa, touring museums
in Russia, some studying and a bit of work. Luckily there isn't too much other stuff on the horizon now, so perhaps I'll get back to reading more.
Next on my reading list is Tomorrow,
the Stars. Incidentally, it is edited by one Robert
Heinlein the last of whose published works of fiction I
completed in the last post. I completely forgot to
celebrate, and didn't really even notice it then. Afterwards
there was a sad feeling of completion, when I realized there
really was nothing more to be read by the great author.
Books read
Updated at 2008-09-14T10:03:00+03:00
So very quick read. IRL I visited the Helsinki comics
festival, and I have in the order of 1000 pages of
unread, unknown comics now. Perhaps I should start logging
comics too?
Books read
Updated at 2008-09-10T22:45:00+03:00
The first week of school. Not much shoolwork yet. The
perfect time to finish a novel before two furiously busy
weeks of work, schoolwork, 17 18
movies to watch and a
trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg. Not
the Verne novel, though, but another Aubrey/Maturin
piece. Next up, again before the Verne, is Space Cadet.
I also fixed the timestamps of the Atom entries.
Books read
Updated at 2008-09-01T08:33:00+03:00
Two weeks with hardly any time to read. Novels anyway. I
managed to study for an exam, and ploughed through the
latest three volumes of the
ultimate Barks collection though. I also watched 14
movies, worked, attended the Leningrad
concert and took the aforementioned exam. Quite busy on the
whole.
Despite obvious scheduling problems I managed to get
halfway through a Verne book during the first week, but grew
utterly bored with the style of writing. The O'Brian book
proved an easier read, and a good excuse to post something
here.
Books read
Updated at 2008-08-17T23:50:00+03:00
It seems that I was a bit early in thinking For Us, the Living was the
last Heinlein story I hadn't read. Apparently I've also missed
Space Cadet. Having now spent almost three hours
crawling through the
bibliography at Wikipedia and making sure I've read all
the short
stories, it seems that Space Cadet really
is the only story remaining unread.
I think I started reading with Heinlein sometime in 2005,
stumbling upon The Green Hills of Earth and Starship
Troopers in a local library. Three years and in the order
of 10000 pages later I feel sad that there are soon no more of
his masterpieces to enjoy.
It will take some time until I can get my hands on Space
Cadet. The only copy that was available in the regional
libraries seems to have been lost in 2004, and neither of the
big bookstores has it in stock here. Amazon thinks it will be
here sometime between September 12 and October 2.
Books read
Updated at 2008-08-15T03:12:00+03:00
I subscribed to my own feed and noticed that the updated
timestamps were missing. The problem should now be fixed. I also
changed the summary element to content element instead, since
the content wasn't right for a summary anyway and added
published timestamps to entries.
Update: Bumped all the entries' updated timestamps since they
need to be reinterpreted by readers because of the change from
summary to content.
Books read
Updated at 2008-08-15T03:12:00+03:00
The potentially-unread For Us, the Living was easily
found in a local library. I found some other interesting books
too. One of them was a popular science book with an interesting
name: Satunnaisuuden viidakot (The Jungles of
Randomness). Based on the name I tought it would be a boring
text on elementary statistics, but some of the contents were
actually interesting. It was a slow read too, only a bit over
200 pages in a week or so. I think I'll try the Heinlein next
for quicker satisfaction.
I also added support for comments on books to the blog
system. They are shown directly in the book list currently, but
perhaps I'll get around to adding some pop-up or pop-open
panel for them so that the list does not get too cluttered.
Books read
Updated at 2008-08-15T03:12:00+03:00
I finished my first book since starting this
log. Incidentally, I think this was the last "R.A.H story" I
hadn't read. Or perhaps not. I think I have read For Us, the
Living, but the short plot synopsis I glanced at looked quite
unfamiliar. I guess I'll have to check it out, to see if my
journey in Future History is complete or not.
Books read
Updated at 2008-08-15T03:12:00+03:00
Now both the book log page and the feed are generated from a
single source instead of being hand-crafted. Perhaps they will not
diverge now. I also added timestamps to to the book log page
Books read
Updated at 2008-08-15T03:12:00-03:00
Books read
Updated at 2008-08-15T03:12:00+03:00
Obviously it's a book log, what else could blog mean?
I decided to start keeping log of the books I read. I'll start
by adding the book I finished last night with somewhat accurate
timestamps, the previous book with less-than-accurate end timestamp
and the history of my library account without
timestamps.
I'll exclude comics, scientific papers and audiobooks from the
log for now. A separate log for comics might make sense, looking
at my library log. My library log also seems to go back less than
a year. So much good information lost :(
Books read
