S1E20 Sail Away, Summer Reading, Gaslands, Self-Healing Switches, Second-hand Tech

I’m David Moore and I’ve been sailing in a boat, which is bumpier than a dirigible, and digging heavily into my books pulled from several of the libraries here in the Lair.

I’m Ken Newquist and I’m happily buried underneath the many books of my summer reading list.

Water-born Dirigibles

• David is moving forward with ASA sailing training
• ASA 101 complete!
• Erin and David studied and watched three of the newer Deathrace movies
• Sailing with friends on Lake Erie did not go as planned

Library 67

• A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
  • Has some definite Firefly vibes
  • Much more about the characters rather than a larger plot
  • Was good, thinking of picking up book two
• Savage Legion and Savage Bounty by Matt Wallace
  • Read the first one and immediately wanted to read the second one
  • Fantasy civilization that is gobbling up all of the other countries around it to feed itself
• Emergency Skin by N.K. Jemisin
  • Sci Fi novella – a civilization sends back a scout to Earth to get materials that it cannot get. The scout encounters a surprise from a supposedly dead and dangerous planet.
  • Highly recommended, warning – David’s kind of politics
• A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher
  • A great young adult fantasy that has a carnivorous sourdough starter

The Garage of Doom

• A vacation with some friends provided a good opportunity to satisfy David’s Deathrace/Mad Max gaming with Gaslands
• Think: Fury Road meets Matchbox cars

Underworld Arcade

• Hades – an addictive roguelike game with a good story

Dyson Fall Updates

• David’s working on oracles to help GMs or groups create where they will explore
• Stuck a bit on how to make the community building fun, interesting, and easy to track

Self-Healing Gaming Machines

• Ken’s Switch healed itself while he was a Philmont
• Now he’s playing far too much Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Summer Reading

• Ken finished 11 of the 14 books on his summer reading list
• Gained two books …
  • Alien: Bug Hunt
    • a collection of short stories involving Colonial Marines dealing various alien (but not Alien) threats. Includes one by Scott Sigler (who wrote Alien: Phalanx)
    • If you like Aliens and Colonial Marines, you’ll like this book.
  • Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky
    • Follow up to Children of Time
    • First book was so good, I had to add the sequel to my list.
    • Great world building book about first contact, accidental evolution, and overcoming barriers to communication.
• … but lost one
  • Inhibitor Phase by Alastair Reynolds. The new Revelation Space novel was set to release July 27, 2021, but is now set to come out on October 12, 2021.

The Closet of Outdated Tech

• Ken bought his daughter a new computer for college, so he gets her old Surface Pro.
• About 4 years old … but it can run Campaign Cartographer (so Ken can finally use that mapping Humble Bundle he got…)
• Might have enough heft to let him play a few PC games on Steam. If he can free up some disk space (only 8 GB remains…)

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