Here’s a list of books I read in 2021. The ones in bold I recommend.

Fiction:

Enigma by Graeme Base
City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett
Look to Windward (Culture 7) by Ian Banks
Surface Detail (Culture 8) by Ian M Banks
Pump Six by Paolo Bacigalupi
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
Lexicon by Max Barry
Mage Errant 1 by John Bierce
Mage Errant 2 by John Bierce
Mage Errant 3 by John Bierce
Mage Errant 4 by John Bierce
Mage Errant 5 by John Bierce
The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake
Lilith’s Brood (Xenogenesis 1) by Octavia E Butler
Elegy Beach (Change 2) by Steven Boyett
Curse of Charion by Louis Bujold
Xenocide by Orson Scott Card
Bohemian Gospel by Dan Carpenter
Convergence (Foreigner 18) by C J Cherryh
Emergence (Foreigner 19) by C J Cherryh
Convergence (Foreigner 21) by C J Cherryh
Iron Prince by Bryce O’Conner and Luke Chmilenko
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Artemis Fowl (Artemis Fowl 1) by Eoin Colfer
The Arctic Incident (Artemis Fowl 2) by Eoin Colfer
Eternity Code (Artemis Fowl 3) by Eoin Colfer
Opal Deception (Artemis Fowl 4) by Eoin Colfer
Space Between Worlds by J Conrad and Micaiah Johnson
Little Brother by Cory Doctrow
Homeland (Little Brother 2) by Cory Doctrow
Children of Chaos by Dave Duncan
The Alchemist’s Apprentice by Dave Duncan
The Alchemist’s Code by Dave Duncan
The Alchemist’s Pursuit by Dave Duncan
The Cutting Edge by Dave Duncan
Upland Outlaws by Dave Duncan
The Stricken Field by Dave Duncan
Queen of Blood by Sarah Beth Durst
Vita Nostra by Maryna and Serhiy Dyachenko
How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse by K. Eason
Malazan (Malazan 1) by Steven Erikson
Daughter of the Empire by Raymond Feist and Janny Wurts
Mistress of the Empire by Raymond Feist and Janny Wurts
Servant of the Empire by Raymond Feist and Janny Wurts
Dragon’s Egg (Cheela 1) by Robert L Forward
Mother of Learning by Domagoj Kurmaic/nobody103
Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
The Warehouse by Rob Hart
Forging Hephestus by Drew Hayes
Super Powereds, v1 by Drew Hayes
Super Powereds, v2 by Drew Hayes
Super Powereds, v3 by Drew Hayes
Super Powereds, v4 by Drew Hayes
Johannes Cabal by Johnathan L. Howard
The Medusa Plague by Mary Kirchoff
Six Wakes by Muir Lafferty
King of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
Emperor of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
First Contacts by Murray Leinster
Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem
Perfect Vacuum by Stanislaw Lem
Tuf Voyaging by George R R Martin
Memory of Empire by Arkady Martine
A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
Middlegame by Seanan McGuire
The Host by Stephanie Meyers
The city & the city by China Mieville
*The House that Made the 16 Loops of time by Tamsyn Muir
Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
The Last Graduate (Schoolomance 2) by Naomi Novik
Stiletto (Chequey, book 2) by Daniel O’Malley
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett
Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett
Jingo by Terry Pratchett
The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett
Monsterous Regiment by Terry Pratchett
Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett
Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
Snuff by Terry Pratchett
Sourcery by Terry Pratchett
The Truth by Terry Pratchett
The Woven Ring (Sol’s Harvest 1) by M D Presley
Years of Rice + Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Torch That Ignites the Stars by Andrew Rowe
Sleep Donation by Karen Russell
A Darker Shade of Magic by V E Schwab
Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V E Schwab
Vicious by V E Schwab
Vengeance by V E Schwab
Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith
Why Is This Night Different Than All Other Nights? by Lemony Snicket
Dark Storm (Rhenwars 1) by M L Spenser
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Nimona by Noele Stevenson
Hunter x Hunter manga v1-36 by Yoshihiro Togashi
Worth the Candle by Alexander Wales
Educated by Tara Westover
Soulsmith (Cradle 2) by Will Wight
Blackflame (Cradle 3) by Will Wight
Skysworn (Cradle 4) by Will Wight
Ghostwater (Cradle 5) by Will Wight
Underlord (Cradle 6) by Will Wight
Uncrowned (Cradle 7) by Will Wight
Wintersteel (Cradle 8) by Will Wight
Bloodlines (Cradle 9) by Will Wight
Reaper (Cradle 10) by Will Wight
The Crimson Vault (Travelers Gate 2) by Will Wight
*Dinosaurs by Walter Jon Williams
Blind Lake by Robert Charles Wilson
Thousand Li by Tao Wong
Thousand Li 2 by Tao Wong
Thousand Li 3 by Tao Wong
Thousand Li 4 by Tao Wong
Thousand Li 5 by Tao Wong
Sorcerer’s Legacy by Janny Wurts (see also Feist)
Heretical Edge by ceruleuanscrawling
Mark of the Fool by UnstoppableJuggernaut
there is no antimemetics division by qntm
Only Villains Do That by Webbonomicon
Worm by wildbow

Nonfiction:

Compiling with Continuations by Andrew W. Appel
The Rule of Benedict by St Benedict (read the front material only)
Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley
Whole Brain Emulation Roadmap by Nick Bostrom
Data Matching by Peter Christen
Attack and Defense by James Davies and Akira Ishida
Engines of Creation by K. Eric Drexler
Class by Paul Fussell
The Food Lab by J Kenzi Lopez-Alt
Primitive Technology by John Plant
Monero whitepaper by Nicolas van Saberhagen
Secrets and Lies by Bruce Schneier
The Cuckoo’s Egg by Clifford Stoll

I downloaded all 27 million Go games from online-go.com, aka OGS, with permission. They are available on Internet Archive or here as SGF files or JSON. You can use them for whatever you like.

I was looking into building a raspberry pi based supercomputer lately. Here’s the background research I did comparing pi models. Most of this information is sourced from raspberrypi.org. I was especially interested in which boot methods worked for which models, which is very scattered, as well as prices.

I added a software section to my website. It lists all the software I’ve made over the years (well not all of it, but what I think is most useful to others).

I updated the archive page as well, mostly to remove the software that was there. As usual, I try to make sure all links to my website are good forever.

I made a site for your constant refresh needs: http://isrickandmortyout.com/

I’ve had pretty irregular sleep schedules at times, so I have some tricks for making it more regular, or moving it back/forwards. Take everything here with a spoonful of salt. All of these tricks are relatively long term (1-4 weeks) and won’t instantly fix your schedule. Most of them are from experience, with some knowledge backing them.

Also, as a note, I wake up whenever I feel like it (I don’t have a day job). I have used many of these same tricks with an alarm and a day job when I had those, but I might be forgetting some details.

Quality of sleep. First off, make sure the sleep you are getting, is good. I recommend something like a Zeo ideally, because it’s hard to get a subjective feel for how well you’re sleeping. Ultimately, it’s important to you to sleep enough and sleep well. Sleeping at the right times is important to other people.

Quantity of sleep. Get enough sleep. Enough said. If you have a good quality of sleep, you don’t use an alarm, and you’re waking up relaxed, you’re probably fine.

Here are some things I’ve found screw up my sleep schedule and affect my quality of sleep.

• Caffein affects schedule AND quality. Caffein at 2pm, affected my quality of sleep at 2am. This is something I just COULD NOT have figured out without a Zeo. Quality of sleep is hard to diagnose.
• Bright/blue light late affects schedule. Use f.lux or a similar program for your computer. Be aware that most programs of this kind don’t actually WORK for your phone–I don’t use a smartphone, personally. Don’t turn on room lights late at night. I find I’m good if I turn lights off about 3 hours before I want to sleep. Turning on lights very late at night (when you’d usually be asleep), even briefly, screws up your circadian rhythm.
• Light pollution affects quality. Light while you sleep sucks. I sleep next to a big window, and I often get poor sleep based on whether neighbors have their lights on. Or sometimes, I just need to sleep during the day.
  • A sleep mask gives you EXCELLENT quality of sleep, but can screw up your schedule because you don’t get early-morning light–you’ll sleep longer and drift forward.
  • Blackout curtains are like a sleep mask, but worse, because they don’t block light as well and they’re expensive. They could be better if you have light pollution from one window only, and they’re okay in combination with a timer light (see below).
  • Cover any electronics with lights, especially blinking or blue LEDs. I use black electrical tape.
• Allergens affect quality
  • Air quality massively affected my sleep. I’d wake up with my throat scratchy, but it took a while to figure out it was affecting my sleep. I now use an ionizing air filter. The trick to air filters is that you have to regularly (once a month) clean the prefilter, and replace the main filter every 6-12 months.
  • Itching. Sometimes this was just mold, which other than an air filter there’s not much I can do about, but also make sure to regularly wash your sheets. Food (don’t eat in bed!) or dust mites can make me itchy.
• Other drugs may affect schedule and quality. When I started on marijuana I found it massively screwed up my sleep schedule. YMMV. Some foods can too, especially before bed.
• Relaxation level affects quality. If you’re tense (neurotic especially), you’ll sleep poorly. I haven’t done a lot of experimentation with this one, because it comes up rarely for me. Deliberate relaxation and self-love (the hippie kind, not the sexual kind) before bed can give nice dreams, though.
• Exercise before bed, or working right before bed, affects at least schedule. Both tend to keep me up.
• Playing videos before bed affects quality. I might RIGHT before, like 2 minutes–I have some maybe bad habits as a bachelor. I think this doesn’t let your brain relax properly, you need more “down” time.
• Working in bed may affect schedule. As a general tip, it may be better to avoid working or otherwise being in bed during the day, to cue your body that bed=sleep.
• Nightmares affects quality. Unfortunately, I can’t be much help on this one. I rarely remember my dreams.
• Depression affects schedule and possibly quality. Depression makes you sleep more, mania makes you sleep less. If like me you become depressed when you don’t get enough sunlight, you can end up stuck nocturnal. A bright artificial light during the day is a partial solution.
• Having a regular schedule is self-reinforcing. If you regularly go to bed at the same time or wake up at the same time, you’ll keep doing it. Also, you’ll get cranky if you don’t. [A similar principle applies to dieting–if you eat meals at the same time each day, you’ll get a sudden appetite then. If you don’t eat meals regularly, you won’t have an appetite, or will have one only when actually hungry. But for sleep, regular is good]
• Age. At 20, I needed 12 hours of sleep a day. At 30, I need only 8-10. This varies a LOT per-person, too. Some people just need more/less sleep.

If you want to move your sleep schedule forward, it’s fairly easy. Just stay up later. I have only performed the “roll forward until you’re the right time” operation once, and don’t recommend it. Normally I hit a wall at dawn. Go forward by no more than 1 hour a day, preferably half that, or it won’t stick. If you do it for more than a few days, you’ll feel weird and sleep deprived.

If you want to move your sleep schedule back a significant amount (more than just undoing a recent 1-hour forward shift) I recommend:

• Do it gradually. Half an hour a day, probably more like 15 minutes. Don’t bother trying to schedule it.
• Have caffein AS SOON as you get up (within 15-30 minutes, the sooner the better). This moves your circadian rhythm back, and also stops you falling back asleep. Again I don’t use alarms these days, but it’s a great combo to set a schedule.
• You can try adjusting it by taking small (0.5mg) melatonin supplements before your usual bedtime, if you’ve just drifted forward a bit
• Make sure you are getting natural light if possible. If you aren’t, or if it’s winter and you want extra help: hook up your lights, especially a sun lamp, to an automated timer so you get bright white light in your room around when you’d like to wake up. This can fix problems caused by blackout curtains.

Finally, I’ll leave you with a horrifying trick I learned while sleep-deprived at my first job after college. To get up while incredibly sleep deprived, set two alarms, about 30 minutes apart. After the first one, hit the alarm, chug significant portions of an energy drink on reflex while mostly asleep, then immediately fall back sleep. On the second one, actually wake up–the caffein will help keep you awake.

• Emperical Zendo, a semi-competitive game for 3-8 players based on the icehouse game Zendo. Vaguely based on rants by Bayesians.
• Logic Potions, a competitive game about deductive logic and making new rules for 2-4 players. Actual gameplay quickly gets complicated as players add more rules about brewing potions. Inspired by “Imaginary Go Fish” and “Emperical Zendo”.
• Deadly Education RPG, a traditional pen+paper RPG game based on Naomi Novik’s “Deadly Education”. Reading the book is not required.

All three are untested as of posting.

See also: List of all games

What happened in 2020? Well,

• (General news) COVID-19 of course, and Trump left office
• I stayed inside. I’ve been getting groceries delivered, even–I’ve been somewhere other than my house maybe twice since COVID-19 lockdown started.
• I started watching wayyy more videos, especially video game streams.
• I looked into buying land in Colorado and living in an RV
• I transcribed my log books, and started coverting them all to a standard, computer-parsable format (mostly done, one left).
• I deleted bs.
• I figured out twitch streaming, both with a standalone capture card and on linux.
• I got hardware random number generators to work.
• I designed v1 and v2 of a protocol to allow a set of computers to store a large amount of content. It’s designed to back up things like the Internet Archive. I’m calling the project “valhalla”, after ArchiveTeams’s project valhalla and IA.BAK.
• I learned to use an oscilloscope, and bit-banged SPI and I2C for a while, trying to get a 9-axis sensor to work unsuccessfully.
• I learned how to make a pretty good pizza
• I played a bunch of video games
• I worked on the Lazy Beaver problem, and tied the state of the art.
• I made a master TODO list, and finished every single TODO I had that took an hour or less.
• I figured out how to make VMs in Linux and run them all the time
• I got a tablet, and learned GIMP and InkScape well enough to draw some stuff.
• I wrote a custom client for omegle
• I did a yearly backup
• I did various research. I learned about algorithms, data structures, RALA, and quantum physics.
• I wrote up my cookbook and released it.
• I wrote some blog posts 🙂
• Four of my friends moved to Ohio, two from nearby me. I only know one person in the state I’m in well at this point.
• A friend of mine got out of jail and got to go home.

I’ve added a central games page https://za3k.com/mygames.md to my website, with all the games I designed. The new games:

Loot Boxes. Untested. Easy storytelling game for 2-4 players. The players have an inventory of absurd random items, and must solve challenges using each item in turn.

Stupid Russia. Tested. Party game for 10+ people. Each player is a spy director at the Stupid KGB, and must report as many codenames to the Inspector as possible, swapping secret information with other players. The players had fun, especially adopting bad accents. The rules were too hard to understand, and it was too much work and no fun for me as the Inspector. Overall I’d just recommend Stupid Conspiracies instead.

Stupid Conspiracies. Untested. Party Game for 8+ people. Each player tries to recruit the others into their conspiracy, for about half an hour. It’s a re-write of the core idea in Stupid Russia. Overall, big party games are just too hard for me to organize.

I also playtested “No this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!”. It ran about 45 minutes prep (not fun) and 45 minutes playtime, which was the main problem. Overall the play time was fun. I rewrote it to have MUCH easier prep, and for the game to be generally easier. I also re-wrote the rules of “Ninjas Ninjas Ninjas” without a playtest. I don’t think it will ever be too popular but it has a soft spot for me.

Here’s a list of books I read in 2020. The ones in bold I recommend.

Fiction:

A College of Magics by Caroline Stevermer
A Crucible of Souls by Mitchell Hogan
Alcatraz and the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson
A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine
Apex (Nexus 3) by Ramez Naam
A Practical Guide to Evil, to end of book 5
Arena by Holly Jennings
Ariel by Steven Barnett
Ascend Online by Luke Chmilenko
Bastard Operator from Hell
Circe, by Madeline Miller
City of Brass by S A Chakrabarty p1-460
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Colour out of Space by HP Lovecraft
Crux (Nexus 2) by Ramez Naam
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Cultivation Chat Group – ch1-56
Dark Lord of Derholm by Dianna Wynne Jones
Dayworld by Philip Jose Farmer
Dayworld Rebel by Philip Jose Farmer # gave up halfway
Dust by Hugh Howey
Emperor Mage by Tamora Pierce
Enchantress by James Maxwell
Exhalation by Ted Chiang
Fall by Neal Stephenson p1-545
Forging Divinity by Andrew Rowe
Future Indefinite by Dave Duncan
Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now by Cory Doctrow
Ghostwater by Will Wight
Gideon the Ninth by Tansyn Muir
House of Blades by Will Wight
House of Earth and Blood by Sarah Maas
Ithenalin’s Restoration by Lawrence Watt-Evans
Lament by Maggie Stiefvater
Legacy of the Fallen by Luke Chmilenko p1-316
Lone Wolf / Kai adventure series 1-5, magnakai 1, by Joe Dever
Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey
Magician by Raymond Feist
Magicians by Lev Grossman
Making Money by Terry Pratchett
Mirror Gate by Jeff Wheeler
New York Fantastic by Paula Guran
Nexus by Ramez Naam
Night of Madness by Lawrence Watt-Evans
Ninth House by Leigh Bardogo
Od Magic by Patricia McKillip p1-222
One Word Kill by Mark Lawrence
On the Shoulders of Titans by Andrew Rowe
Past Imperative by Dave Duncan
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Present Tense by Dave Duncan
Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, p1-534?
Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter (some)
Relics of War by Lawrence Watt-Evans
Starfish (Rifters 1) by Peter Watts
Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal (all)
Shift (Silo 6-8) by Hugh Howey
Shining Path by Matthew Skala
Shouldn’t You Be In School? by Lemony Snicket
Sister Sable, by T Mountebank, p1-378
Skysworn by Will Wight
Skyward by Brandon Sanderson
Snowspelled by Stephanie Burges
Spellmonger by Terry Mancour, p1-165
Starfish by Peter Watts
Stone Unturned by Lawrence Watt-Evans
Storm Glass by Jeff Wheeler
Sufficiently Advanced Magic by Andrew Rowe
The Alien’s Lover by Zoey Draven
The Archived by Victoria Schwab
The Atrocity Archive by Charles Stross
The Blood of a Dragon by Lawrence Watt-Evans
The Burning White (Lightbringer 5) by Brent Weeks
The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
The Fractured World by David Aries
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
The Magic Goes Away by Larry Niven
The Maker of Universes by Philip Jose Farmer
The Misenchanted Sword by Lawrence Watt-Evans
The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex by Tamsyn Muir
The Necromancer’s House by Christopher Buehlman
The Queen’s Poisoner by Jeff Wheeler
The Rook by Daniel O’Malley
The Sorcerer’s Widow by Lawrence Watt-Evans
The Spell of the Black Dagger by Lawrence Watt-Evans
The Spriggan Mirror by Lawrence Watt-Evans
The Unwilling Warlord by Lawrence Watt-Evans
The Vondish Ambassador by Lawrence Watt-Evans
The Warrior Heir by Cinda Williams Chima, p1-116
The Wiz Biz by Rick Cook
The Woven Ring by MD Presley, p1-28
Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
Twig by wildbow (arc 1-18)
Uncrowned by Will Wight
Underlord by Will Wight
Unsong by Scott Alexander
Unsouled by Will Wight
When Did You See Her Last? by Lemony Snicket
Wintersteel by Will Wight
With a Single Spell by Lawrence Watt-Evans
Wool by Hugh Howey (v1-5)

Nonfiction (mostly I read web nonfiction):

507 Mechanical Movements by Henry T Brown
Advanced Magick for Beginners by Alan Chapman
Broadcast Channels with Confidential Messages
Busy Beaver Frontier by Scott Aaronson. I did some work based on it.
Computational Geometry by Mark de Berg
Craeft by Alexander Langlands
D&D 5e Player’s Handbook
D&D 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide
Forrest Mem’s Notebook
Forrest Mim’s Engineer’s Notebook
Forrest Mim’s Mini Notebook
Intel’s x86-64 manual
Introduction to Analysis by Maxwell Rosenlicht
Kademelia by Peter Maymounkov
kleiman v wright australian tax document
Incremental String Searching by Bertrand Meyer (KNP algorithm)
Rules to One Night Ultimate Werewolf
The Art of Computer Programming, v1, v3 by Donald Knuth (parts)
The Pragmatic Programmer
The Rust Programming Language
There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom by Richard Feynman
Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey
W65025 manual (6502 clone)