Part of the Twenty Books in Twenty Days series.

William Boyd is a great novelist [affiliate link], and this is (possibly) my favourite of his. The impact it’s had on me, in a way, is that the main character is very much flawed. It’s good to be reminded that no one is perfect.

Part of the Twenty Books in Twenty Days series.

I was given the first edition of Code Complete [affiliate link] in a training course in my first job, post-university. My Computer Science degree covered a number of sophisticated but impractical techniques for software engineering, the most memorable being testing. By comparison, Code Compete was incredibly refreshing. Its advice is practical and pragmatic, yet based on solid research and experience. It also rarely says “this is the way” to do something. Instead, it will list the advantages and disadvantages of various approaches. I treat with suspicion anyone who advocates for One True Way to do something.

Part of the Twenty Books in Twenty Days series.

As I type this I am wearing a t-shirt with the slogan “Don’t Panic” on it. Douglas Adams [affiliate link] was always going to make a “best of” list from me. Might as well get it out of the way at the start. The combination of science fiction, satire, and the quality of the writing just works for me. I am one of those people who is forever quoting the books. Sorry, not sorry.

I’ve been following and participating in the twenty books in twenty days hashtag on Mastodon. It’s described as follows:

20 books that have had an impact on who you are. One book a day for 20 days. No explanations, no reviews, just book covers.

I’m going to cheat. I am going to explain my choices. The posts that follow are all part of the challenge. As with my annual reading lists, these are not reviews per se, more notes, observations or thoughts that occur to me as I read them.

For a while, this book [affiliate link] was everywhere. It was recommended on podcasts. Every second person on the Tube was reading it. Friends suggested I take a look.

In the end, I added it to my queue at the library but its popularity meant that I had to wait six months for it to become available!

For various reasons, I wasn’t able to read it in the three weeks load period. I could have waited another six months to read the end, but I was invested enough to buy a copy.

My wife mocks me for watching SWAT. Sadly with some justification. It is kind of silly. The main character is supposed to be a heart-throb but – I dunno – I don’t quite see it.

If you’ve not seen it, it’s a police procedural set in the SWAT team of the LAPD. In each episode there’s some disaster or crime that’s being committed that needs the efforts of our heros to resolve. Standard stuff.

You know that thing were you’re trying to debug a problem and you just know that you’re the culprit, that past-you did something stupid, and you just can’t figure out what?

Welcome to my day.

Anyway, I’m documenting my stupidity so you don’t have to suffer as long as I did.

The background: in order to debug an application that runs on a cluster can be a challenge. The way I tend to do it is to run a server in debug mode in my IDE and connect to that same server using a client. The server is super-simple:

The background story: I’m preparing to deliver a training course. Each module of the course is in a different PowerPoint deck and, once I finished, I need to export each of them as a PDF to share with delegates. There are about twenty modules so doing this wouldn’t take that long but I would probably consider using the word “mind-numbing” to describe the process.

In hindsight, I’m not sure that writing VBA code to automate it was significantly less mind-numbing, but I’m sharing it here so you don’t have to.

Apparently US regulators are considering what to do about WiFi phone callson planes. Their rationale is that many passengers think that people making phone calls is annoying.

But is that the real reason? If airlines were worried about passenger comfort would they allow the seat-back satellite phones? Is the difference here, perhaps, that they can charge a lot for calls? (Kind of another net neutrality debate, but at 37 000′.)

Similarly, if customer comfort was a priority, surely we?d get more leg space. And better air. And fewer jerks that sit in front of you and recline the seat immediately after take-off.

Those with extraordinarily good memories will recall that I read a couple of John Scalzi book a few years ago and enjoyed them (“Redshirts” and “Fuzzy Nation”). In fact, it took me longer to pick up another one of his books than I expected, though, to be fair, when I did it, I did it in style: I bought a “Humble Bundle” of them. “The Kaiju Preservation Society” is the first of that bundle that I’ve read.