I love a good anthology, although I’d read a few of these stories before: Contact! (David Drake): this story is quite unlike the other stuff of his that I have read, mostly because its set in the Vietnam War, not the far future. A good story with an excellent twist. The Warbots (Larry S. Todd):…
Author: mikal
Lyonesse
This is another book I read as a child, except in this case I didn’t really remember much of it — the only bit I remembered was the punishment of Madouc’s mother, but that might have been because I was a teenaged boy at the time. Overall this is a very good book. It took…
Building a hygrometer with a HS1101
The next sensor I wanted to add to my home was a set of hygrometers. Specifically I wanted an exterior one, and a matching interior one. This would be useful as we have evaporative cooling, and if the humidity level outside is already high, then it doesn’t make a lot of sense to put extra…
The Man in the Rubber Mask
I’d been looking for this book for ages, as it is quite rare, so it was exciting to find it at Gould’s the other day. This is the memoir of the dude inside the rubber mask that Kryten wears in Red Dwarf. The book is an easy read, and entertaining, although I wouldn’t call it…
The Renegades of Pern
This book starts off in quite a disjointed manner, with the introduction of a variety of seemingly unrelated characters. The only thing that they all have in common is that they’re holdless. However, as the book progresses these characters are all weaved together into a relatively cohesive story line. I say relatively because there are…
Asimov’s Mirage
If I was to name one flaw with the Robot City and Robots and Aliens series, it would have to be that they’re not very good. They’re lackluster, have difficult to believe plots, very simple structure, and are overall poorly thought through. Its a similar sensation to that I feel when I read the tie-in…
The Beer Fridge saga continues
Since the last update on the beer fridge, we’ve had to do some murdering of the original PCB to get it to fit in a case. In addition, we’d failed to take into account the startup power draw for the compressor (5 amps), and had to upgrade the relay we’re using from a 3 amp…
Buy Jupiter Short Stories
This is another Asimov short story collection. The following stories appear in the book, although I have already read a couple as part of either the Robot short stories or the Nightfall collection of short stories. To be honest these stories aren’t Asimov’s strongest. They entertaining, but they’re not as amazing as some of his…
Books read in December 2009
Bolo Strike Dragonsdawn The Dragonlover’s Guide to Pern Last Human Bolo! Saturn’s Children Foundation’s Friends Isaac Asimov’s Robot City: Robots and Aliens: Humanity Colony
Thinking about arduino as a prototyping platform
So, I’ve mentioned in earlier posts about arduino projects that I consider the arduino to be a prototyping platform, and a damn good one at that. Hack a day seems to think of it in similar terms. It was really Doug who got be thinking in this direction with the initial PCB design for the…