Posts Tagged “reviews”
Posts where I review a piece of media, product or tool
-
Ender’s Game, Revisited Thoughts and Issues
08 May 2024
I used to think that “Ender’s Game” was one of the deepest novels and series
I’ve ever read. I’ve since reconsidered my opinion on this significantly. I’ve
since decided its quite dumb and overplayed. The characterization of the
children is too much. There’s an obsession with hyper intelligent children that
isn’t realistic or believable in this day and age. I’ve revised this opinion
because I’ve been listening to the audio drama version of it with “Ender’s Game
Alive,” it a great audio production with an extremely high production values
with a full cast and excellent voice actors. It’s been really nice to revisit
this novel and revise my opinions on this novel. Also all spoilers are unmarked
and may include details in the other novels. This is not quite a book review,
its more a rant about organizations and how to build a stable system.
-
Book Review - 'Randomize' By Andy Weir
27 January 2023
I recently finished reading “Randomize” by Andy Weir. He is probably one
of my favorite authors and comic creator (He used to have a web comic, and
its awesome). His writing generally blends the right amount of real world
science and entertaining characters for a technical audience. It’s a really
good short story about how quantum computing will affect the gambling industry.
It’s also part of an anthology called “Forward about various future
technologies.
-
The Lightyear Movie and Resilient Organizations
27 June 2022
“Lightyear” was a very fun movie. It’s not a timeless classic, but I
enjoyed it. There were some serious issues with it, and the overall
organizational structures. I expect better from Pixar on their research,
after all they made one of my all-time favorite movies “Wall-E”. They
got in an actual doctor of fishes in to explain how fishes move for
“Finding Nemo.” As always there will be unmarked spoilers.
-
Superman - Man of Tomorrow
02 April 2022
It’s been awhile since I’ve done a movie review, but I just finished yet
another DC animated movie, that I think deserves another chance from
critics. It’s “Superman: Man of Tomorrow”. You might think it’s another
generic superman movie, and you would be right, however I need to
applaud the use of Lobo and Parasite, two of my favorite rogues in
Superman’s gallery. Both are really fitting villains for him to face.
-
A Review of "Extraterrestrial" by Avi Loeb
01 September 2021
I’ve been listening to “Extraterrestrial” by Avi Loeb published in
January 2021. It is a decent book with some flaws in it’s presentation
and dialogue. It’s about what is believed to be the first extra solar
object found called “Oumuamua” and how it’s weird properties might
indicate that was made by intelligent extraterrestrial life. It also
covers a fair bit of the author’s academic career which seem to be very
successful based on how many committees he’s on, and some of the issues
he sees with the academic community and how funding is allocated.
-
Visiting the NYC Fire Fighter Museum
06 July 2021
I was in New York City for 4th of July this year. I actually discovered
a pretty cool museum when I saw this firefighting boat docked near
Little Island, which had great views of New Jersey. I searched for Fire
Boat tours, but there was none to be found. However I did find a
firefighter museum which was really cool. So I went because it was
raining a little bit outside and just a little bit dreary out.
-
Yetris Review - A Fantastic Terminal Tetris
08 December 2020
Yetris is a very cool tetris clone for the terminal. It features
colors and a neat interface with lots of levels. I really enjoy playing
it, but I always forget the name of the program, so I’m making a post so
I don’t forget what’s it called.
-
Dr. Stone - Arithmetic Battle
26 October 2020
So I’m watching Dr. Stone, and in the science demonstrating
contest between Senkū and Chrome they have a final battle over who knows
more math. This is a list of some of the math I think Senkū would have
used to crush Chrome or at least some math tricks I think are really
cool. I know that it doesn’t go down like this, but I like to think it
could have possibly went down a couple different ways and might have hit
on these. It’s obvious in the manga that Chrome only knows Arithmetic,
but these are some cool tricks that could’ve been applied.
-
Review of Antergos Linux
25 January 2019
I’ve recently been running Antergos Linux a derivative of Arch
Linux on my Thinkpad w540. I have to say that Antergos is a much
better version of Arch and has some significant polish on the system,
especially over many other much bigger distributions. I previously tried
Arch in the past, but had to stop when updates kept breaking my system
because I didn’t update my machine often enough (It was at home while I
was at college).
-
Whiskey Review - Southern Comfort
31 July 2018
I recently turned 21, so that means I can legally drink alcohol. So why
not review them as I go along. Let’s start off with one of the most
common, Southern Comfort whiskey.
-
Batman Ninja Review
02 June 2018
I just saw “Batman Ninja”, and it is the most over the top action
movie ever. Although it lacks a plot, this movie has some of the best
art ever and the action is completely over the top. I feel the action
more than makes up for the lack of plot.
-
Fedora 27 Review
24 November 2017
I recently bought a new laptop, and I put Fedora 27 Workstation on
it, and it is much better than my previous impression. Things are
functioning much better than my encounter Fedora 25. There’s proper
integration with services. Things are working out of the box and with
RPMFusion, it is the single best distro out there for desktop work.
-
Universal Studios Florida
14 June 2017
I recently visited Universal Studios Florida and it was really nice. This will
cover all my thoughts on the various areas excluding Harry Potter world. The
islands of adventure will also be it’s own separate post. I will link to those
posts at the bottom of this one when they are posted.
-
Arch Linux
09 May 2017
I recently decided to make a move to Arch Linux, and I really like it.
I haven’t encountered any major issues yet. It’s very slim. However there are
some rough points to it, and some extremely nice parts.
-
Gripes with Fedora 25
18 April 2017
I’ve recently upgraded to Fedora 25, and I’ve run into some issues with
it, and I’m not as happy with it as I used to be. I still like Fedora, but it
feels like some issues are beginning to pop up with it.
-
Review of Alpine Linux
30 March 2017
I’ve recently started using Alpine Linux for a school project and its a
really neat little distro. It’s designed to be very small, and secure. It uses
an alternative C standard library known as musl, and it’s the new default
for docker images. This post will detail the installation and my thoughts
regarding this distro and what needs to be improved. This review is for
Alpine Linux 3.5.2 released on March 2, 2017.
-
My Thoughts on the Amazon Fire TV
14 August 2016
I recently bought an Amazon Fire TV Stick. I really like it. It’s not
a bad streaming device, although I would like it to have more integration
with the various streaming services. As it can search Hulu through the
voice interface, but it cannot search Netflix. In my personal opinion it
would
make it much better. The other major flaw is that the keyboard sucks. If
it didn’t have the voice search, it would be impossible to use. I hate
clicking and scrolling to type, it stinks. Other than those flaws, I would
have to say that I really like it. It has a real smooth interface for most
uses. It supports casting from your cell phone for the major apps, so
that’s nice. The remote feels slick and well put together.
-
Review of the Pixels Movie
29 July 2015
I recently went to see Pixels, and I thought it was rather good. Even
though it had an absurd premise. There is a possibility of spoilers
below, so read on with caution if you care about that.
-
Review of Drake Well
07 July 2015
Drake Well is one of the coolest things I have ever seen. I went there
on vacation recently. It is so impressive to see what people in the past
accomplished with nothing more than mechanical systems. From the way they
distributed power to the logistics of the well, it is really impressive. I
highly recommend visiting Drake Well at least once.
-
Idiot Engineering #1 - Jurassic World
28 June 2015
I just decided to start a series about idiotic engineering in movies. The
first movie I’m going to do is Jurassic World. Which is an
awesome movie, however it is full of idiot engineering. So fair warning
there will be spoilers below, so if you haven’t seen it stop reading
now, or keep reading for a detailed examination of the engineering
failures in Jurassic World, and how they could have been prevented.