Aron 2 Blue

We listened to the second two books of the Cane Chronicles, from Rick Riordan, about Egyptian gods and their interactions with the Cane family on the drive to Florida for Thanksgiving. They are engrossing and entertaining. Interpreting the different gods in a modern context leads to fun characterizations, like Bast the cat god and Bas, the ugly dwarf who can scare things to death by yelling "boo". Also read the first Outlander book. I've watched the TV show, so there weren't any real surprises, but the comparison was interesting. Overall pretty good. Next: The Martian, by Andy Weir - I like it so far. The summary I heard of "magyver on mars" is pretty accurate - except he's just trying to survive.

I don't normally use Linux, so it's been an adventure trying to get Ubuntu configured on a persistent USB stick boot. Particularly using NVIDIA drivers, since that's what I need to test the OpenGL based volume renderer which is having the issue. I managed to make it boot to a black screen by removing said NVIDIA drivers. :( But I figured out that I can change the /boot/grub.cfg file following hints from another tutorial and just change 'quiet splash' to 'text' and it boots into the console. Now to see if I can install those nvidia drivers again.

Hmm, not memorable this far after the fact!

I keep meaning to post what I've read... Reality is Broken: Why are games so much more satisfying than real life? How can we make life more like a game to motivate game-players? Stuck in my mind: Tombstone hold-em, played in a cemetery to help use think about death in a non-depressing way. Headstones make up the two-card hold. Wings of Fire series - kids books, my son William read them first, dragons! 5 book series with each book told from the viewpoint of one of the 'dragonets of destiny', who are supposed to stop a dragon war. Lost years of Merlin - read aloud to my family. The Penderwicks - read aloud. Stuck: OAP == 'oldest available Penderwick' i.e. whose in charge, or who gets blamed. The Knowledge - still in progress - what you need to know to reboot civilization after it collapses for some reason. Cool distillation of many cool facts about technology and science. Did you know rubbing steel wool on a 9V battery can start a fire? Game of Thrones - f...