The Stochastic Game
Ramblings of General Geekery

It’s that time of the year again! Private gig with a pig roast and an ocean view!

A bass guitar and some effect pedals
Pig roast slowly turning over the fire
A view of the Pacific Ocean, with Vancouver Island in the distance

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The good fluffy boy is still doing good. He’s got big sticks, and lots of balls.

A good boy golden retriever with half a tree in its mouth.
A good boy golden retriever with 2 orange balls.
A good boy golden retriever lying down in a stream, drinking, and looking at its orange ball getting swept away by the current.
A good boy golden retriever standing on a trail in the forest.

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Yesterday’s mail call was the Deluxe Edition of the Classic Traveller boxed set. The main 3 little black books, plus some introduction adventure, and a cool-looking map of the Spinward Marches! Yay, maps!

Cover of the boxed set, with the iconic Free Trader Beowulf mayday message.
The books inside the box: Books 0, 1, 2, and 3, plus the "Introductory Adventure".
The sector map for the Spinward Marches, in all its hexagonal cartographic glory.

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I’m torn on the Foundation TV series. They expanded on the books with some good ideas and great production design. But also, why the fuck are Hari and Gaal still around a century later? Do the writers understand psycho-history at all? Why is there so much fantasy/destiny bullshit in my sci-fi?

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After throwing out old programming books, I sadly started also throwing away all my old CDs and DVDs. Remember when music came with a beautiful, little artsy booklet with very hard to read lyrics? Good times!

Booklet for Pink Floyd's The Wall, with psychotically written lyrics
Nice concert photos from Pink Floyd's Pulse
The booklet for The Cooper Temple Clause's Make This Your Own
A booklet from one of David Bowie's Best Of albums.

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More old programming books to be thrown away! “Why Scrum Works” 🤣😅 But hey, at least I read that book. Unlike half of the managers I worked with who *thought* they were doing Scrum but were really just doing performative bullshit.

Agile Project Management with Scrum, by Schwaber
The foreword to the book, "Why Scrum Works"

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I recently sorted and threw away a bunch of old programming books… it was a blast from the past, looking at some of those. Like, do you remember when you first learned about C++ RAII or template meta-programming?

Computer Graphics by Foley, van Dam, Feiner, and Hughes. The C++ Programming Language, by Stroustrup.
Code Complete 2 by McConnell Windows PowerShell Cookbook by Holmes. Programming WPF by Sells and Griffiths. Applications = Code + Markup, by Petzold.
Framework Design Guidelines by Cwalina and Abrams The Pragmatic Programmer by Hunt and Thomas
Exceptional C++ Style by Sutter C++ Template Metaprogramming by Abrahams and Gurtovoy C++ Coding Standards by Sutter and Alexandrescu Exceptional C++ by Sutter Modern C++ Design by Alexandrescu More Effective C++ by Meyers Effective C++ by Meyers

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Oh hey here are some pictures from a couple months ago when I spent a day in Deep Cove with the fluffy good boy. He is *not* afraid of cliffs, somehow.

The good fluffy boy is standing atop Quarry Rock, overlooking the Indian Arm.
The good fluffy boy is standing atop Quarry Rock, overlooking the Indian Arm.
The good fluffy boy is waiting atop a few stairs on the Quarry Rock trail.
The good fluffy boy is waiting on the Baden Powell trail somewhere above Deep Cove.

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Most of the time, the good fluffy boy is one colour. But sometimes he’s two colours.

The good fluffy boy is walk through the water near Deep Cove, BC (photos taken a few weeks ago)
The good fluffy boy is rolling around on the sand over his ball.
The good fluffy boy now has a black snout and black paws.

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