Milsats: Bombshell(s)

Today’s MilSat is a little different – I highly recommend the Bombshell podcast at War on the Rocks by three very intelligent, articulate women: Radha Iyengar Plumb, Loren DeJonge Schulman, and Erin Simpson.

I am actually on the opposite side of some of their beliefs, but it’s very informative and great fun to listen to! Just click on the image below:

 

Books I read in 2016

Last year was my lowest year in ten years for amount of books read.  To be honest, I was working through textbooks and FreeCodeCamp learning to code, which took away from my reading time.  Still, there were a lot of interesting books on this year’s list!

January

1.) 4th Generation Warfare Handbook – William S. Lind and Gregory A. Thiele

2.) The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom – Candida Moss

 

February

3.) Robopocalypse: A Novel (Robopocalypse #1) – Daniel H. Wilson

4.) Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft – by Elizabeth Bear and Greg Bear et al.

5.) Algebra: Sets, Symbols, and the Language of Thought (The History of Mathematics) Revised Edition – John Tabak, Ph.D.

 

March

6.) Hannibal and Me: What History’s Greatest Military Strategist Can Teach Us About Success and Failure – Andreas Kluth

7.) White Needle: 5 (Shadow Squadron #5) – Carl Bowen

8.) Phantom Sun: 6 (Shadow Squadron #6) – Carl Bowen

9.) Uncertainty in Games (Playful Thinking series) – Greg Costikyan

10.) The Magician’s Nephew (Narnia Chronicles) – C. S. Lewis

11.) Gorilla Mindset – Mike Cernovich

12.) Foundation’s Fear (Second Foundation Trilogy #1) – Gregory Benford

 

April

13.) Law: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions #180) – Raymond Wacks

14.) Sociology: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions #12) – Steve Bruce

 

May

15.) The Circle – Dave Eggers

16.) Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War – P. W. Singer and August Cole

 

June

16.) Will I Ever Be Free of You?: How to Navigate a High-Conflict Divorce from a Narcissist and Heal Your Family – Karyl McBride, Ph.D.

17.) The Cartel Hit (Mack Bolan the Executioner #438) – Mike Linaker, Don Pendleton (Series Creator)

18.) Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World – Cal Newport

19.) The Tournament – Matthew Reilly

20.) Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behavior and Feel Great Again – Jeffrey E. Young and Janet S. Klosko

21.) Scarecrow Returns – Matthew Reilly

22.) Progression – Sebastian Marshall

 

July

23.) Abyss Deep (Star Corpsman #2) – by Ian Douglas

24.) Express in Action: Node Applications with Express and Its Companion Tools – Evan Hahn

25.) Your Many Faces: The First Step to Being Loved – Virginia Satir

26.) Bitcoin for the Befuddled – Conrad Barski and Chris Wilmer

27.) Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money – Nathaniel Popper

 

August

28.) Star Wars: The Rise of the Empire – John Jackson Miller et al.

29.) Re-read GIS for Dummies – Michael N. DeMers

30.) The Blood of Gods (Emperor #5) –  Conn Iggulden

 

September

31.) Battlefront: Twilight Company (Star Wars canon) –  Alexander Freed

 

October

32.) Head First Mobile Web – Lyza Danger Gardner and Jason Grigsby

33.) The Water Knife – Paolo Bacigalupi

 

November

34.) Public Health 101: Healthy People – Healthy Populations – Richard Riegelman, Brenda Kirkwood

35.) Soil: Digging into Earth’s Vital Resource (Exploring Science: Earth Science) – Darlene R. Stille

36.) Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism – Stephen Graham

37.) Planet of Slums – Mike Davis

38.) Proxima – Stephen Baxter

 

December

39.) There Will Be War Volume X – Jerry Pournelle, Editor

40.) JavaScript: The Good Parts – Douglas Crockford

41.) Smashing Node.js: JavaScript Everywhere 2nd Edition – Guillermo Rauch

42.) Foundation and Chaos (Second Foundation Trilogy #2) – Greg Bear

MilSats: Osprey

I love this dramatic shot of the accident-prone Osprey.  I got it from War Is Boring, and you should read the linked article on the failed Yemen raid!

Update and Coming Events

I haven’t written her for awhile and the reason is quite simple: I started a new job. In addition to that I kept the part-time minimum wage job that I was also working. Throw in the fact that part of the time I am a single dad, have a house to keep up, and am still learning programming, and you end up with a lot of stuff to do. That said, my time management skills have slipped, and now I am working on getting back on board the train. I wasted time on Instagram, ridiculous political arguments on Facebook, and getting lost in the endless articles on Medium – not to mention Bullet Journal blogs and Instagrams.

Yes, I’ve fallen into the Bullet Journal craze, but to be honest, mine is as utilitarian and minimalist as it can be. No drawings, no fancy fonts, I don’t even use a ruler. But it has helped quite a bit anyway. Things that were slipping through the cracks are now getting caught. I haven’t gotten back into the full “Getting Things Done” mode that I was a few years ago, but now I find that I actually have time, for example, to…write a blog post! So at some point I’ll do a post on how my BuJo works, and how I organize and all that stuff, but for today, let’s hit some highlights.

As noted, I landed a job, in the IT field (at last). It doesn’t have as much development or writing code as I’d like, but I’m learning a lot about networks, how systems of different software work, and what it’s like to be on call pretty much all the time(!) I’ll do a post soon on how I got the job, how Free Code Camp helped, etc.

In addition, I’ve decided to build a Fintech app. Really, it’s a toy app, something for me to play around with and learn to use some new languages and technologies, as well as mock up something that could actually be used. It will involve me learning SASS, React, ArcGIS web development and Bitcoin.JS, as well as using the knowledge I have of HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript (I may even need to learn ES6), MongoDB, Node, and Express. It’s pretty ambitious, I guess, but I can do it in pieces and slowly get up to a full scale app.

Anyway, I’ll be blogging my adventures, hopefully weekly or more, and I hope you’ll jump in for the ride!