hermiene.net

Behold! The new Books page in its full glory! What's new:

• When viewing multiple books, you get a sleek overview of the title, front cover (if any) and the series the book is in (if any). For a demonstration of this, see e.g. the Fantasy category or the Space Odyssey series.
• When viewing a single book, you no longer get a big, ugly table; you get a slightly-less-ugly list (of sorts) with the information about a book sorted more neatly. I also decided to remove the links to various book stores from the ISBN field. For a demonstration of this, see 12 Rules for Life (my latest read).

There was a serious dearth of updates on my web site from 2014 to 2018, and during that time I did read a lot of books, but I mostly didn't bother to write up a synopsis or a review. I added those books to the database in addition to keeping track of them, so here, organized according to theme, are lists of books I've read from 2014 to 2018, with links:

Science fiction:

• The first four books in the Artemis Fowl series: Artemis Fowl, Artemis Fowl and the Arctic Incident, Artemis Fowl and the Eternity Code, and Artemis Fowl and the Opal Deception
• Two books by Arthur C. Clarke: Cradle and The Nine Billion Names of God
• Two books by Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men and Star Maker
• Two books by Philip K. Dick: Time Out of Joint and Ubik
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• Manhattan in Reverse by Peter F. Hamilton
• Tau Zero by Poul Anderson
• Usurper of the Sun by Hōsuke Nojiri
• The Winds of Change: ...And Other Stories by Isaac Asimov

Other fiction:

• Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders by Neil Gaiman
• The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
• Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
• Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
• Likkisten by Erik Meling Sele

Non-fiction:

• Three essay collections by Isaac Asimov: The Beginning and the End, The Sun Shines Bright, and The Tragedy of the Moon
• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
• If You Want To Write by Brenda Ueland
• Hitch-22: A Memoir by Christopher Hitchens
• Utopia by Thomas More

With that backlog of stuff no longer hanging over me, onward!

I made a bunch of (mostly trivial) quality-of-life improvements to the design of my web site, mostly for visitors on mobile phones.

I also went through every single page, making them conform to the latest specifications of HTML and CSS (which mostly involved finding alternatives to obsolete elements, and fixing small syntax errors). Therefore, the Colophon page no longer lies when it claims that my web site conforms to these standards.

During this sort of janitorial work, I've discovered how much of the content on my site is old! I want to work on having more up-to-date content on my web site (i.e. content that more faithfully reflects my current interests and obsessions), and I don't want to cull too much old stuff, either, which means I have to expand.

I spent some time doing janitorial work on the Links page, mostly culling links, but also adding some. I culled...

• from Games section: 3D Logic, Gridlock, Shyguy's Cave of Death, and TrackMania Nations
• entire Gaming encyclopedias section
• from People section: Jean-François Im, Jeff Dee
• from Science section: Ebon Musings
• entire Collection sites section (which only consisted of Galbadia Hotel)
• from deviantART section: PolishPanties
• entire Four-days-a-week schedule web comic section (which only consisted of Drawing Board)
• from Haphazard web comic secion: Miscellanea and Nearing Zero
• from Frozen web comic secion: Concerned and Decorum

In addition, I renamed the link to Massimo Pigliucci's web site Rationally Speaking Podcast, and moved it to the Podcasts section, and renamed the Books section the Literature section, into which I put The Internet Speculative Fiction Database (which I use when researching books for my Books page) and The Pulp Magazines Project (which I mainly use for reading old science fiction).

I have a huge backlog of books to review and add to the database, but I can at least mention the latest book I read, Ralph 124C 41+. (More coming very soon!)

If you frequent my web site, you may notice that I've re-styled it a bit. It's not a lot, but it's a little bit more stream-lined now, I think. And a little more mobile- and tablet-friendly.

With an update schedule of twice per year (i.e. inbetween semesters), I can only improve!

This semester has been somewhat tumultuous for me — as it has been for all of us, with Covid-19 raging — but at least I've gotten the hang of various digital meeting solutions! And for the last few months Norway has been partly opening up again, so things are slowly going back to normal here.

I got a summer job at my university, which has just ended and lasted four weeks, and was tons of fun! It's an intensive course in mathematics and physics which lasts six weeks (four weeks of mathematics and two weeks of physics) for people who want to enter an engineering course at the university, but don't have high school-equivalent passing grades. Two other students and I were hired to teach these courses. I taught most of the mathematics part, and nothing of the physics part (due to Jovana's due date). It has been a wonderful experience for me, and I've learned a lot from it (from using Beamer to produce LaTeX slides, to different methods of teaching different people, to how to actually use time effectively in front of a podium).

I've also started writing a book! I don't want to say too much about it, not even what it's about, not yet. ;-)

My life is massively busy these days, but that doesn't mean I can't update my site once in a while.

Firstly, last semester (fall 2019) I had only two courses, physics (in which I got a D, sadly) and mathematics (in which I got a B, happily).

Secondly, this semester I have three courses: Linear Algebra (mathematics), Relativity & Astrophysics, and Experiments in Physics Education. Everything is in English, which I'm perfectly happy with.

Thirdly, I didn't get cracking on working on the Books page, but oh well.

Really, this update is a way for me to kick-start myself into working more on the site, and not to let too much time pass between each update. Carry on.