'On Finishing The Expanse'

I recently finished the final novel in The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey. This series was recommended to me by my friend Andy Obusek.

This series started slow for me. I can’t put my finger on why. It could have been the amount of world building the authors had to do. It could have been that I was going back and forth between other Sci-Fi novels and getting confused. It could have been I was in a weird place mentally with books at the time. It could have been anything. The result was that the first two or three books were slow reads for me.

I finished the first book in September 2019. I didn’t finish the second book until June 2020 and the third book until February 2021.

I almost gave up this journey, but Andy kept insisting that I continued on. I’m glad I did.

Things picked up for me around book five or six. So much in fact, that I finished the last four books this year (and it’s April). I couldn’t put the last few novels down and flew through them.

I’ve recommended this series to several friends. One of them ended up (basically) reading the last few books with me. We would read them and talk about them via text.

I did not read any of the novellas that occur outside the novels. I may read those next.

There is also The Expanse TV series. I’ve heard it’s excellent. I haven’t started watching that yet. I didn’t want to get into a place where I was ahead of the novels. Now I don’t need to worry about it.

If you’re into Sci-Fi, check out The Expanse series. There are nine novels. This can seem daunting, but the journey is worth it.

Some of my favorite things - 2021 Edition

Photo by Brands&People

I’ve consumed quite a bit of content in 2021. Here are some of my favorites. Not all of these were released in 2021, but it’s when I enjoyed them. So I’m going to count them. And since I’m making up the rules here, I’ll allow it.

Books

In 2021, I read 43 books. I liked most of the books that I’ve read. I couldn’t put down either of the following books.

Favorite

My favorite book that I read this year was Hail Mary by Andy Weir. I really like his books and this was no exception. It’s a great Sci-Fi novel.

Runner Up

It was hard to chose a runner up. It was really close between any of The Expanse novels that I’ve read. But I think my runner up is Press Reset by Jason Schreier. It’s a great look into the video game industry when things don’t quite go as planned.

Movies

I don’t watch as many movies as I used to. I really enjoy watching movies, but I am alone on this in my house. So I try to sneak movies in here and there. Sometimes it’ll take me a week to watch a movie. I was able to talk some family members into watching these two movies though.

Favorite

Dune was such a good movie. I only watched it once, but can’t wait to watch it again. The movie also has an amazing soundtrack, which I have listened to multiple times (including The Dune Sketchbook).

Runner up

No Time to Die is a great ending to the Daniel Craig Bond movies. The Daniel Craig Bond movies are the only Bond movies I’ve seen, but I’ve enjoyed all of them. This one was no different.

TV Shows

We watch more TV Shows than movies. But we end up watching older shows like The Office, Seinfeld, Friends, etc.

Favorite

Wandavision was a bit of a slow start. Once things got going, they didn’t slow down until the end. I spent a lot of time reading the Wandavision subreddit theorizing about what might happen next.

Runner up

Ted Lasso (Season 2) was a family favorite. I think we watched the entire season over a weekend. We’re all looking froward to season 3.

Video Games

Along with movies, I don’t play as many video games as I used to. And I’ve actually gotten pretty bad at them. But I did play a few video games this past year.

Favorite

I both played and finished Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. I have a thing for Star Wars content. This was probably the best Star Wars game I’ve played in a while. I hope they make a sequel to this game. I had a lot of fun playing though it.

Runner up

Metroid Dread. I have a special love/hate relationship with this game. It’s an amazing game. But I am terrible at it. I died hundreds of times. I persisted and made it to the end boss.

I really enjoyed how Metroid Dread made me better at the game the more I tried (and died). I never finished the game though. I got to the final boss, got frustrated, took some time off and have probably forgotten everything I’ve learned while playing.

2022

2022 is just hours away. I have a backlog of content. I hope to make another list like this next year.

General Update: March 2021

It’s been a busy month. I’m not even sure where the month went. I figured I’d post a general update on what I’ve been up to.

Development Updates

I’ve been super busy at work, working on a new (to us) property. I’m not sure if I can announce what that property is yet, so I won’t. Once it launches, I’ll probably post an update here with more info.

As far as personal projects go, I’ve shipped a large update to Beer Style Guidelines. This update includes the Brewers Association 2021 Beer Style Guidelines. The release notes are here. I love updating the app with new guides as they come out, but I always forget how much work it is. I do a fair bit of testing the guide out before I release it, but I just know that I’m going go missing something.

This last few weeks, I’ve been really busy working on a few server components to another update to Beer Style Guidelines. It’s not ready yet and users shouldn’t notice any difference in how the app works. But this new set of server components it building towards some future features.

Gaming Updates

I haven’t been playing many video games this month. I’ve been so busy with the development updates above, it doesn’t leave a lot of time for playing video games at night.

I’ve dabbled in a few new games, but nothing has really hooked me. I think if a game hooked me, I’d find a way to play the game more.

Some of the games I’ve started:

I probably spent the most time playing LEGO Harry Potter Collection. I love LEGO games, they aren’t usually hard, and I can let my mind wander a bit while playing through them.

I stared Gears of War, but didn’t make it too far in. I’ve played through this game a few times, years ago. I have a lot of fond memories playing through these with my brother. But I just couldn’t really get into it again.

I finished the Pikmin 3 demo, but not sure I’m ready for the full game yet. I love the early game of Pikmin games, but I always get to a point where I get frustrated with the games. It’s probably because I’m bad at video games. I’m still debating whether I want to get this game or not.

I tried Hollow Knight. I’ve heard so many good things about it. It made me realize (even more) that I’m bad at video games. I couldn’t even get past the first boss (False Knight) before getting frustrated and giving up. I feel like I should keep at it, but I am just so bad at this game.

Book Update

I’ve read a handful of books this month. Looking back at the list, it was more than I expected. I listen to most of my books. It makes it much easier to enjoy books while I go for walks, runs, or while driving in the car.

In March, I finished these books:

Bossypants was a fun, quick read. I like Tina Fey and the work she’s done. This book was written during her time working on 30 Rock (which was a great show). Tina is also an Eagles fan, so that helps immensely.

I am a big fan of the new Star Wars: The High Republic content that’s been coming out this year. It’s an entirely new era being discovered in Star Wars. I’ve been keeping up with the novels and comic books in this ear and have really been enjoying them. I listened to about half of this book in a single day during a long road trip.

I really enjoyed the art style in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Graphic Novel Adaptation. The graphic novel adaptation gets the bulk of the story across from the movie and the (non-graphic) novel adaptation. I still enjoying reading comics on my iPad. Although, I only really list the graphic novels or omnibuses on my list of books I’ve read.

The Lead Developer book was an impulse read of mine. I saw it promoted by some iOS developers I follow on Twitter, so I decided to buy it. The book is a good first version. There were a handful of typos throughout the book, but I could easily see past those. But the book does give a good overview of what a lead developer’s responsibilities are and some practical tips on how to survive as one. This is a relatively short book that I read in 3 or 4 sittings.

Wrapping up

This has been quite a busy month. I didn’t even cover the movies and TV shows that we’ve been watching. Maybe I’ll cover that in a different post, maybe not.

I hope to provide more frequent updates on the site. But I’m not always great with that.

Getting Out of My Technical Rut

I’ve spent about six months in a technical rut. Not really learning anything new iOS/tvOS/Swift-wise. I got a little complacent with the skills that I had.

Recently, I’ve started breaking out of that rut. At least I hope.

Over the past week and a half, I’ve made my way through Core Data by Tutorials from the Ray Wenderlich team. The Core Data book is currently on sale (50% off). It’s a really good book.

I’ve used Core Data quite a bit over the years, but I haven’t used it heavily since 2016. Since 2016, most of my professional work has been using Realm which is an alternative to Core Data.

Core Data by Tutorials was a really nice refresher on Core Data. I also learned a few new tidbits here. Most interesting chapters to me were “Unit Testing” & “Core Data & CloudKit”.

The unit testing chapter gave me some great ideas on how to improve my unit testing in various areas. I’ve been trying to get better with unit testing in both professional and personal projects. This chapter sparked some interest in that area that I’ve been able to progress with, so far.

The Core Data and CloudKit chapter was entirely new to me. I’ve had multiple false starts on getting cloud syncing working in projects. These attempts include a failed blog series called Data Sync Series. I had also made multiple attempts to get syncing into my retired app MyCntdwn.

This book has got me thinking about data syncing again. I’ve even thought about doing a few things. First, adding sync to MyCntdwn (finally) and shipping it again. Second, revamping my data sync series and actually finishing it. I’m not sure if any of this will happen. But this book has got me started down that path mentally. Who knows, maybe it will be a nice Summer project.

I’ve got my next book lined up. It’s Combine: Asynchronous Programming with Swift also from the Ray Wenderlich team. I’ve been dabbling in Combine here and there since it was announced by Apple at least year’s WWDC. It’s not something I can really use professionally, yet. Combine requires iOS 13+ to work and we support iOS 11+ at work. But Combine is something that I can use in personal projects.