yacoob

I think I was expecting more of a personal story. There are some inside it, but there's also plenty of relatively dry facts. Some of the stuff I'd expected is missing (nothing about Ez2Dancer or DanceManiax). The whole book is also rather US-centric. On the other hand it does contain plenty of stories about people who loved their games and went to extraordinary lengths to enjoy them :)

Boring story, horrible execution, predictable plot and really shallow puzzles. Plus, if you've ever read any story about Pan Samochodzik by Zbigniew Nienacki, you've seen it all. Avoid by all means.

There's always a problem with technical books of this kind: they're either too vague, talking about general concepts, not really relevant past the moment you learn enough, or far too detailed, ungreppable printed man pages (hi there, UNIX Network Programming :). This one strikes a fairly balanced point between those two ends of spectrum, being an useful review of tools Posix presents at your disposal. I've read that book during my university courses, and again, between jobs. Worked like a charm, every time. Recommended, if you want to get a general idea what kind of gnomes jump up and down behind the scene in Unix world.Note: this book doesn't describe much in terms of kernel internals and structures. For this kind of information, in Linux flavor, read Linux Kernel Development 3rd Edition.

Excellent overview of challenges specific to systems employing machine learning algorithms. There's a bit of overlap between chapters, as a result of different authors contributing them - that's the only reason I've not given it 5/5.

The first book of this series is one of the most enjoyable books I've ever read. This one comes close, but misses the mark in a couple of places. It's way more grounded, compared to the almost dream-like story of the first book. The fact that so much time passed between publishing of the first and second book necessitated all of the mini explanations sprinkled over the first half of the book, and they make the narrative more coarse. Jane presents herself as somewhat of an anti-chromatic fanatic - the sudden departure after the bath scene near the end, and her subsequent return was really a mood whiplash.

There's a bunch of other minor things that bothered me mildly while I read this book, but overall - the story is engaging, the plot well laid out, and the stakes escalate properly. I just hope the revolution will engulf more than one planet :3

Disclaimer: I grew up with author's Jean-Luc Picard being almost a role model for me. Given that, I was very eager to read Patrick Stewart's autobiography, especially that I wasn't all that familiar with his background and acting history.

What a read that was. Highly enjoyable, warm and embracing. It felt like listening to a story from an old friend. Patrick was able to talk about the high- and lowlights of his life, in a kind and wholesome way. He didn't shy away from responsibility, and I empathised a lot with his anxieties. Absolutely fantastic, not only for a Star Trek fan.

Bez trzęsienia ziemi - Wierzba ukończył swą transformację w oczekiwany sposób. Dobre dociągnięcie wątków, solidna robota, żadnego nagłego Disneya, dużo realpolitik. Wydaje mi się też że poprzedni tom trzepnął mnie mocniej emocjonalnie.

Początkowo miało być 4/5, ale po namyśle dorzucam jedną gwiazdkę za eleganckie zawiązanie całości. Do pełnego szczęścia brakuje mi tylko fanfika yaoi o dalszych przygodach Liao Tzu i Niebiańskiego Smoka. No i oczywiście anime na podstawie cyklu, w stylu Gin'eiden 8)

Delightful set of (mostly) night time postcards from Tokyo. Lukasz excells at finding unusual views, and this book is a collection of such.

Note: I'm not an avid Black Library reader.

I've enjoyed it, to put it as brief as possible. It was very serviceable, without any riveting plot twists, with the adjective overload usual to the universe tie-in books. As someone who doesn't have any investment in the universe itself, I think I'd rather save my time and read the wiki instead. If you're tracking the cross-book overarching plot as it develops, it's probably 4/5 :)

The main problem I had with this one was not being familiar with WH40K lingo, and having to guess whether a particular term is something a reader of this book should know, or a part of this book's mystery.

Well, I must admit this one landed a bit flat after season 4. With all of the previous seasons I was eager to listen to “just one more episode” at the cost of my sleep, this one was more of a slow trot towards the finale. I'm not unhappy with how the story ended, but there were definitely bits of it that I was let down by. For example:

- The Jon/Martin pairing had all of the neccessary trappings spinning up, but once it landed, nothing has changed. Sure, there are love declarations and Martin plays the damsel in distress but I really felt like I'm missing some tenderness between them. Neither of them lowers the guard towards the other, their dialogues are still snippy and full of ironic remarks. Sure, it's the apocalypse - but they still sound like they're unable to fully trust each other. This might have been intended - plus, the author said that the relationship itself won't be much of a focus in the fifth season. Still, it felt like a bit of a weird situation.

- The statements felt less scary. I feel like before our current reality acted as a grounding framework. Something along the lines of “see, a normal world... EXCEPT THE DARKNESS EATS YOU!”. With the world turned to hellscape my perception shifted a bit, and some of the statements, felt like very elaborate indulgences. Most of the time they were still tasty morsels of horror, but they didn't fit as well, so to speak.

- After a most excellently performed twist in the season four finale, the plot of this season seems... very straightforward. “We'll walk up to the Eye and kill him” - well, guess, what, they do walk up to the Eye and kill who they wanted to kill. In that sense it ends up being Kill Bill, straight and simple. Web's shennanigans is half-expected, half deus ex machina. It's not a bad narrative - I just expected more of a ride after episode 160. And having majority of the exposition provided by all-knowing, all-powerful protagonist is just not as satisfying.

But I still enjoyed that season, a lot :)

The formula runs out surprisingly quickly, which caused this book to drop out of my reading schedule.

I haven't played FATE (yet), but this is a decent summary on how to frame and structure a space story.

Zawiera bardzo ładną wariację na temat pipoka 8)

Pewnie jakbym to przeczytał za nastolectwa to miało by więcej gwiazdek. Bardzo nieskomplikowana historia o dzieciakach w kosmosie, z lekką nutą dydaktyczno-filozoficzną :) Zupełnie nie czuć ręki Zajdla w tym.

It's probably four stars, if you absolutely love Dark Souls. I just enjoy stories about games and gaming communities. There was an annoying self-flaggelating tone through the book along the lines of “oooh! the game! remember how we suffered? those were the times”. I could use less of that and more of a structured analysis WHY people persist despite the game being far from friendly.

All in all, not a bad book about a game, and a decent Dark Souls piece. Very happy that I've gotten the ebook version instead of the fancy Italian paper one, as it turned out I'm not necessarily the core audience of this book :)

Very interesting book if you like Shpongle. Dinged one star for the layout - some pages have really bad contrast.

It's a solo RPG, journal style, focused on the feeling of loss. It's definitely not a cheerful read, but it's well equiped with tools that allow the player to keep an eye on their stress levels. It's a treat on a graphical level too.

Did you like the recent Dune movie? If yes, get this book - it's beautiful, has some really good art, opens useful insight behind the decisions made about the movie, and is a lovely treat.

I just wished they've talked about the Atreidean salute; it was such a good addition to the overall mood of the story. :)

Not a big fan of the setting, but I've found Starforged by getting familiar with Ironsworn - so I'm happy to give it 5 stars :)

It's very much a companion book for “Within the wires” podcast. The emotional impact of the constructed world will probably be smaller, if you haven't listed to the podcast already. It's a presentation of protagonist's disasociation, and overall enjoyable read - if you know and like the podcast. Oh, and if you do - it doesn't bring much of a substantial information in how the fictional world of Society works - you get the history of the Institute, but it's primarily flavour.

Still, a good read :)

Solo RPG with a space setting? Sign me up! More seriously: I've initially found Ironsworn, and was enchanted by its simplicity. The only thing that was unappealing was the setting. And then I've found Starforged :)

To jest zdecydowanie Dukaj-lite - ale dobre lite. Bez dłużyzn, bez szkatułkowych opisów, bez salwy z garłacza załadowanego neologizmami. Dobra historia, starannie skręcony świat, wyraziści bohaterowie. Czytało sięto tak wartko, że spokojnie można by to rozbudować o jakieś sto stron bez rozcieńczania jakości.

Jedyna rzecz która mi zaskrzypiała w całości: Matylda, buńczuczny anark podpaliła by pół Bazy gdyby ktoś ją ciągnął na te kroplówki. Tak, był w książce kawałek że nawet anarkiści posłusznie chodzą na szczepienia, bo jest to ważne. W moim modelu postaci który sobie zbudowałem do tego momentu, postać Matyldy zrobiła by wszystko, żeby kolejnej kroplówki nie zaliczyć. A ten temat przechodzi praktycznie zupełnie bez krzty buntu.

Ale i tak była to świetna lektura :)

Ja: o, szósta część Algorytmu Wojny! Super, przeczytam sobie, lasery, orbity, roboty!
Michał Cholewa: haha, podciągnąłem swój warsztat, proszę, oto studium straty i chronicznego stresu.
Ja: ej no

Well, this is a very polished WH40K fanfic ;)
Most books based on games suffer from the same set of problems, one of which is unnecessarily flowery language. It happens here, but kind of fits the theme, with everything being over the top. Some bits of the book felt like forcibly summarised (“and then we spent half of a year in warp with nothing of note happening”) - and I'm unsure whether this is deliberate thing done in order to keep the book focused or author's lack of skill in describing specific scenes. The characters are unsophisticated and there are no plot twists - but it is a fine piece of WH40K gloomy mayhem.

Saruthi's design was sufficiently bizzare and alien, so that's a highlight of the book ;)

Just to make the obvious out of the way: yes, this is a very thinly veiled ad for Netlify. Which probably should have been called out more prominently, but then again it's been Netlify's CEO (and book's author) that has coined the term, so it's kind of OK :)

First half of the book is rather bland and focuses on jamstack's benefits that are subjective and hard to measure. The case study is really good - so good, that in fact the book could have used more smaller ones with increasing level of complexity. The “mental model” chapter was also useful, as it had addressed a bunch of misconceptions I was carrying around in my head.

All in all, worth reading for any webdev and anyone who wonders about publishing their content online in a way that doesn't give up control completely to a third party.