Episode 626
Nayonna Purnell on Changing to a Career in IT
Nayonna Purnell was a teacher who decided a few years ago to change careers and become a software engineer. She talks abuot her journey, the challenges, and the rewards of that journey.
"The Silver Dream" by Neil Gaiman, Michael Reaves, and Mallory Reaves
September 13, 2020 8:26 Comments [0] 
In The Silver Dream, new characters are introduced. Most significant is Acacia Jones. She has the ability to "walk" between worlds but is clearly not another version of Joey.
During a training mission, Joey loses a teammate, discovers there is a traitor within Interworld, and is transported through time.
This book is the sequel to Interworld and suffers from even less Gaiman than the first novel. The writing itself was mostly delegated to Mallory Reaves, daughter of Interworld co-author Michael Reaves.
This is a good Young Adult book and a quick read, but well below what Neil Gaiman fans have come to expect. And it ends with a cliffhanger, which pretty much means you must read book 3 to finish the story.
Watchman takes place two decades after Mockingbird. 26-year-old Jean Louise "Scout" Finch has returned to her childhood home of Maycomb, Alabama to visit her father Atticus. If you know Jean Louise from the earlier novel, you will not be surprised to learn she has grown into a strong-willed, independent woman during her time in New York. The novel follows Jean Louise as she interacts with the town folks and flashes back occasionally to her teenage years in Maycomb. The story climaxes when JL discovers that Atticus holds racist beliefs inconsistent with her perception of him.
Although originally marketed as a sequel, Watchman is now seen as an early draft of Mockingbird. There is very little overlap in the scenes of the two novels, but Lee did reuse several passages in her final version of Mockingbird.
In addition, the central story of Mockingbird (Atticus defending Tom Robinson - a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman) is mentioned in Watchman, but some of the details are different.
I am happy this is not a sequel, because I disliked this version of Atticus. I grew up knowing Atticus as a hero worthy of admiration. He was open-minded and fighting for the rights of the oppressed negroes of the south; but here, he is transformed in 20 years into one who sees blacks as inferior to whites and unfit to govern themselves. In his 50s, he stood up to the status quo of a racist society; In his 70s, he saw the NAACP as a greater threat than Jim Crow laws.
Here are a few of examples of Atticus's philosophy in Watchman:
"Now think about this. What would happen if all the Negroes in the South were suddenly given full civil rights? I’ll tell you. There’d be another Reconstruction. Would you want your state governments run by people who don’t know how to run ’em?"
"Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters? Do you want them in our world?"
"Honey, you do not seem to understand that the Negroes down here are still in their childhood as a people. You should know it, you’ve seen it all your life. They’ve made terrific progress in adapting themselves to white ways, but they’re far from it yet. They were coming along fine, traveling at a rate they could absorb, more of ’em voting than ever before. Then the NAACP stepped in with its fantastic demands and shoddy ideas of government—can you blame the South for resenting being told what to do about its own people by people who have no idea of its daily problems?"
"If the scales were tipped over, what would you have? The county won’t keep a full board of registrars, because if the Negro vote edged out the white, you’d have Negroes in every county office."
It is comforting to think this is a different Atticus from an alternate universe and that Ms. Lee discarded him before deciding to publish her masterpiece. I can see hold onto the Atticus I know as the real one.
I have been writing a lot of Java code the past few months. My current project mandated that the code is written in Java, so i have spent considerable time learning this language and the ecosystem around it. As I learned more, I documented my knowledge by creating the following videos:
Creating a RESTful Web Service with Spring Boot
Supporting POST HTTP Requests with Spring Boot
Dependency Injection in Java Spring Apps
Logging in a Java Spring Boot Application
Logging to Azure Application Insights from a Java Spring Boot Application
Spring Boot Logging with Mapped Diagnostic Context
HTTP Request and Response Headers in a Spring Boot Application
Basic Error Handling in a Spring Boot Web Service
Throwing and Catching Custom Exceptions in a Java Spring Boot Application
GCast 93:
Handling Spring Boot Errors with ControllerAdvice
In this video, you will learn how to use the ControllerAdvice pattern to centralize error handling in a Spring Boot application.
Code:
https://github.com/DavidGiard/java-spring-boot-demo/releases/tag/GCast93
Episode 625
Peter de Tender on Azure Certification
Azure trainer Peter de Tender talks about what it takes to acheive Azure certification.
Links:
https://microsoft.com/learn
https://www.007ffflearning.com
https://twitter.com/pdtit
9/6
Today I am grateful to see the Dee Alexander Quartet at Jazz Showcase last night.
9/5
Today I am grateful for a 45-mile bike ride yesterday - my longest ride ever.
9/4
Today I am grateful for sushi.
9/3
Today I am grateful for the man that my son Tim has become.
9/2
Today I am grateful for an early birthday celebration with Tim last night.
9/1
Today I am grateful to successfully complete a project with a great team.
8/31
Today I am grateful for the puns of John Alexander.
8/30
Today I am grateful for a walk around Brookfield and a drive through Palos Park yesterday.
8/29
Today I am grateful for Friday afternoon "Happy Hour" chats with my team.
8/28
Today I am grateful to see Marty Sammon and Rick King playing blues at Kaiser Tiger last night.
8/27
Today I am grateful for kind words from my manager during my review at the end of the Fiscal Year.
8/26
Today I am grateful for an unexpected free lunch.
8/25
Today I am grateful to spend an afternoon working at a coffee shop for the first time in months.
8/24
Today I am grateful for great architecture in this city.
8/23
Today I am grateful to spend Ray Bradbury's 100th birthday in his hometown of Waukegan, IL.
8/22
Today I am grateful for the imagination of Ray Bradbury.
8/21
Today I am grateful to attend a live concert for the first time in months - Sharel Cassity at Jazz Showcase last night.
8/20
Today I am grateful for great movies.
8/19
Today I am grateful for a new photo of the sunrise over the ocean shared each morning by Dave Noderer.
8/18
Today I am grateful for a flu shot yesterday.
8/17
Today I am grateful for all the natural areas in the city.
8/16
Today I am grateful for my first visit to Marquette Park and to Dan Ryan Woods yesterday.
8/15
Today I am grateful to attend a virtual Happy Hour yesterday with Becky and her friends.
8/14
Today I am grateful for 3 doctor appointments this week.
8/13
Today I am grateful to have my son visit this past week.
8/12
Today I am grateful for a hot, fresh latte each morning.
8/11
Today I am grateful for the safety of my family and my home.
8/10
Today I am grateful to spend the weekend with my sons.
8/9
Today I am grateful for a delicious Italian dinner with Nick and Tim last night.
8/8
Today I am grateful for my new scale.
8/7
Today I am grateful that Larissa arrived safely in Michigan yesterday for her first step toward college this fall.
8/6
Today I am grateful to participate in the Microsoft mentorship program.
8/5
Today I am grateful for a nearby park where I can sit on a bench and read a book.
8/4
Today I am grateful to finalize my will and power of attorney.
8/3
Today I am grateful to arrive home safely last night after getting caught in thunderstorms miles from home.
For the record, the book is fine by the second standard; but disappointing by the first.
Interworld tells the story of Joey Harker - a teenage boy, who finds himself transported across multiple dimensions where he learns that each dimension has its own variation of Earth and its own variation of Joey Harker and that these Harkers have special talents that make them an ideal space force to protect the universe from the bad guys. Joey joins the force after discovering he has a special talent for finding paths between dimensions.
The idea of multiple versions of our planet and universe is not new; nor is the idea of a team of heroes fighting the bad guys across space and dimensions; nor is the story's conflict between magic and science. The characters have potential, but none are really fleshed out to my satisfaction. Even the villains lack motivation other than their desire for revenge and domination.
I liked the character of Hue - an interdimensional creature, who speaks only in shifting colors and saves the day on multiple occasions.
As a pulp science fiction story, it is not bad. As a young adult novel, it is above average. As a Neil Gaiman story, it is below what I have come to expect. Overall, it felt rushed. "Interworld" was originally conceived as a television show and it feels like it was designed with that adaptation in mind.
Interworld is part 1 of a trilogy and it interested me enough to continue to book 2.
GCast 92:
More Error Handling in a Spring Boot Application
More on error handling in a Java Spring Boot application
Code: https://github.com/DavidGiard/java-spring-boot-demo/releases/tag/GCast92
Episode 624
Damian Brady describes how to assign the concepts of DevOps to Machine Learning projects.
Sound confusing? It is supposed to be. O'Brien weaves together a complex story in which authors and their creations interact directly with one another in absurd ways. He includes tales of Irish folklore that include invisible fairies and the devil-like Pookas and empowers fictional characters with the ability to influence the author who created them.
The novel is difficult to read. Dialog is never delimited by quotation marks and the narration frequently shifts from an inner story to an outer story as characters interrupt one another in the middle of a story. Add to that the blurring between various realities and one can easily become lost. I frequently had to re-read sections to understand what was happening.
"At Swim-Two-Birds" is a novel within a novel within a novel in which the characters do not respect the boundaries of their own story. O'Brien displays enormous imagination and extraordinary discipline in keeping the stories consistent (if somewhat nonsensical) despite the multiple layers and plots.
He warns us from the start, when on page 1, O'Brien states:
"One beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings."
And he delivers with a clever work of metafiction.
But he is most closely associated with Chicago and the 1893 World's Fair because he lured so many of his victims to his Englewood hotel during the Fair before killing them and either disposing of their bodies or selling their skeletons to medical researchers.
Holmes's story is told in The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson. Holmes was a handsome charming sociopath. He was a liar and a polygamist who swindled almost everyone with whom he came in contact. His quick wit and charm allowed him to deflect attention away from his crimes and character flaws for years.
Alternating with Holmes's story in this book is one chronicling the race to complete and host the Fair itself - "the greatest fair in the history of the world", which was named The Columbian Exposition to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's journeys to The New World. The Expo suffered from financial problems, labor disputes, fatal fires and other disasters, construction problems, bank failures, a national recession, and even a political assassination. Architect Daniel Burnham is the star of this part of the story. The visionary architect succeeded in making the Exposition a memorable and profitable event. "The White City" refers to the expo buildings, which were all painted white and gleamed in the summer August sunshine.
L Frank Baum, Theodore Dreisel, Helen Keller, Anne Sullivan, and Dr. Alexander Graham Bell were among those influenced by their attendance at the Fair. Shredded wheat, zippers, the first Ferris wheel, Columbus Day, The Pledge of Allegiance, Juicy Fruit gum, Aunt Jemima, and Cracker Jacks are just some of the things introduced at this Exposition.
Burnham and Holmes never met and are only peripherally related by their connection to the Exposition - an event that Holmes attended only briefly. Still, Larson does a good job of weaving together their parallel stories. Each man was obsessed by the task before him - Burnham to create a memorable event that would put Chicago on the map as a world class city; and Holmes with his obsession to exercise absolute power over his victims.
The book is a work of non-fiction, but it reads like a mystery novel.
Although Larson brags that everything in quotes is directly from a written document, he does take liberties in setting scenes - even to the extent of telling the reader what is in the mind of his characters. He also acknowledges that much about Holmes's crimes remains unknown. For instance, Holmes confessed to killing 27 people, but only 9 have been confirmed and some estimates put the number as high as 200.
So, take with a grain of salt the historical accuracy of The Devil in the White City.
But as an entertaining story it succeeds very well.
Episode 623
Glenn Block on Astrophotography
Glenn Block has been exploring the world of Astrophotography. He shares what he has learned about photographing stars, nebulas, galaxies, and deep space objects. He talks about the equipment to buy and how it is used.
https://www.instagram.com/glennblock/
https://amzn.to/34lr3Pc
https://astrobackyard.com/
https://www.cloudynights.com/
The strength of this novel is its dialogue. Bowen captures perfectly the austere tone and small talk of polite English society. Her prose also paints a clear picture of the settings and the characters.
While weak on plot, presents a satirical look at the hypocrisy and dishonesty of people across various classes. It gives the reader a feeling for Portia's disillusionment, as her expectations of those around her are shattered. It is a story of teen angst and of the shallowness of just about all the characters.
But he did not know what he was getting into. He found himself in a ward run by Nurse Ratched, a former army nurse, who exerted absolute control over her domain. She favored order and discipline over everything else - including helping the patients under her care. McMurphy's rebellious ways and his questioning of authority conflicted with Nurse Ratched's routine and the two butted heads often. Ratched mostly used a passive-aggressive strategy to manipulate her patients, but she would stop at nothing - up to and including shock therapy and lobotomy.
McMurphy's antics inspired the other men to stand up for themselves and to think for themselves. To a man, they have been repressed and emasculated since their arrival.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey is told by "Chief" Bromden - a gentle Native American who has been in the ward for years. Everyone mistakenly believes the Chief is a deaf mute, so he observes everything and reports it to the reader with a mostly dispassionate eye.
But this is far from a dispassionate novel.
Kesey fills the ward with colorful characters, who are intimidated by Ratched, but inspired by McMurphy's free spirit to assert their own rights. They begin to demand human respect.
McMurphy is no angel. He offers no apologies for his past crimes; and he is a misogynist and he exploits those around him. But he offers hope for the emasculated victims of Nurse Ratchet. He inspires them to regain their lost dignity. And he does so at great personal risk to himself.
And Nurse Ratched is one of the great villains in the history of literature (and in cinema; she was portrayed brilliantly by Louise Fletcher in Milos Forman's excellent 1975 adaption).
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is the story of order versus chaos; of independence versus control; of the rights of individuals versus the demands of the establishment. It is about power and abuse of power.
Kesey makes us feel the pain of those who have lost their dignity and their hope. And he inspires us to regain it.
Episode 622
Jon Skeet on Programming an Electronic Drum Kit
Jon Skeet has a new electronic drum kit and has been writing code to automate its functionality.
He talks about various types of applications he has written (WPF, Console app, command-line, Blazor) and what he learne along the way.
The story is told by Scout Finch - a 6-8-year old tomboy raised by her widowed father Atticus in the small fictious town of Maycomb, AL in the 1930s. It is a story of life and morality in the rural south of the depression. Scout and her brother Jem learn about life from their father - an idealistic lawyer assigned to defend Tom Robinson - a local black man accused of raping and beating a white woman. Atticus does not shrink from his duty and delivers a convincing defense, even though he faces the anger of many of the racist townspeople. It is a lost cause that he faces unflinchingly because it is the right thing to do.
Woven through this racial drama is the story of Boo Radley - the silent (presumably autistic) neighbor who never leaves his house. Neighborhood children are fascinated and afraid of this mysterious invisible presence in their town.
But it is much more than these stories. It is about family and community relationships; and the expectations of gender roles; and why people hate one another.
Atticus is among the most noble heroes in literature. Not only does he take on an unpopular position - standing up for black rights in the deep south of the last century - but he refuses to judge his persecutors. He repeatedly turns the other cheek to those who attack him. In Atticus's own words:
"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."
Maycomb is divided into a caste system: The educated whites, the poor whites, and the blacks live separately, and each group is suspicious of the other with many finding faults with those outside their group. But Atticus does not see the world this way. He tries to understand the world through the experiences of others, and he tries to teach this to his children. Scout and Jem learn to accept those different from themselves. They lose their childhood innocence when they experience the hatred and prejudice of the community for the first time; but they are elevated by the idealism and integrity of their father, who teaches them tolerance and empathy.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a timeless morality tale! It is the story of injustice and intolerance and tolerance and morality and courage and gender roles. It is a coming-of-age novel.
"In fact, no immigrant in American history has ever made a larger contribution than Alexander Hamilton"
-Ron Chernow
During the early days of the United States, Hamilton was arguably the most powerful man in the country, other than George Washington, who served as a father figure to his young aid for much of his career.
Hamilton was an integral part of the American Revolution, the Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention, and the Washington administration. He founded the national bank, the Coast Guard, and the US Customs House.
He used his excellent skills as an orator and writer to persuade the passage of the US Constitution. James Madison was the primary author of the Constitution; but Hamilton was its most successful advocate, writing 51 of the 85 Federalist Papers - a set of pamphlets that were instrumental in convincing the public and the Congress to accept the guidelines for the new government.
As the first Secretary of the Treasury, he became a hero to the merchants of New York thanks to his ability to repeatedly avoid financial crises and maintain some degree of stability in the young economy. He was able to do so despite having no previous examples on which to draw.
Shortly after the formation of the United States, the country began to break into factions, forming the first political parties. People were divided between urban vs rural lifestyles; northern vs southern geography; slaveholders vs abolitionists; and those who believe power should be concentrated centrally or distributed among the states. Hamilton was a northern urban abolitionist, but he expended most of his energy fighting for a strong central government. As a result of his articulation of this principle, he became the leader of the Federalist Party.
Hamilton's success and strong opinions attracted the ire of numerous rivals - many of whom spread false rumours, accusing him of embezzling or attempting to create a monarchy in the US. Many of Hamilton's enemies accused him of benefitting financially from his role in government, even though no proof has ever been found to substantiate claims of professional impropriety.
But Alexander Hamilton was not without his faults. He was arrogant, short-tempered, and prone to hold a grudge. These characteristics became more pronounced after Washington's retirement. Washington and Hamilton remained close friends; but when Washington retired from public life, he no longer held the same calming influence over his protégé. Hamilton's public disputes with Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison became increasingly hostile as both sides resorted more frequently to personal attacks against the other.
And, although he was faithful in his professional duties, he was a faithless husband and famous for his womanizing. This despite having a beautiful, loving, and faithful wife. One of his greatest mistakes was an affair with a married woman who later conspired with her husband to successfully blackmail Hamilton. When this became public, it damaged Hamilton's reputation greatly.
The last years of Hamilton's life were marked with tragedy. His eldest and favourite son was killed in a duel; his political influence diminished, along with the popularity of the Federalist Party; and he worked to remove himself from debt. Ultimately, his disagreements with Aaron Burr (Jefferson's Vice President) resulted in Burr blaming him for his own political failures, which led to the duel that took Hamilton's life.
Chernow does a masterful job walking the line between historian and storyteller. He presents numerous details of Hamilton's life and enhances these incidents with historical context. But he also keeps us engaged by telling Hamilton's story as the life of a real human being. Chernow is clearly a fan of Hamilton and his contributions to America; but he does a good job pointing out his weaknesses and how they hindered his personal and professional life.
Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton - the book - is a Rags-to-riches story; a love story; a story of political intrigue; and a tragic story of self-destruction.
GCast 91:
Throwing and Catching Custom Exceptions in a Java Spring Boot Application
This video shows how to respond appropriately to errors in a Spring Boot application by creating and throwing custom exceptions when appropriate; then, handling them in the controller and returning an appropriate HTTP response to the client.
Source code: https://github.com/DavidGiard/java-spring-boot-demo/releases/tag/GCast91
Episode 621
Donovan Brown on App Innovations
App Innovations is a concept in new and existing applications are designed to take advantage of what the cloud offers. Donovan Brown talks about some of these advantages and decisions around this strategy.
Links:
He wrote one popular short story collection, then tried unsuccessfully to write a novel. He taught at a small college but succeeded only in seducing an emotionless Muslim grad student before quitting just short of one semester. Ultimately, he took a job as a sportswriter because it required little effort, involvement, or commitment on his part.
His existential crisis began with the death of his young son, which prompted him to quit his novel and embark on a series of one-night stands while traveling away from his wife. His marriage ended when his wife discovered letters from another woman, prompting her to burn the contents of her hope chest. Frank does not bother to tell his wife that he never slept with or even kissed the woman in the letters. He accepts her judgement and their divorce.
Except for an occasional flashback, Richard Ford's 1986 novel The Sportswriter, is told in the first person and in the present tense. This emphasizes to the reader that we are inside Frank's head, experiencing his thoughts and actions as he does. It is primarily a stream-of-consciousness story and it works.
It works because, although Bascombe is without direction, he is very much self-aware. He accepts his limitations and makes no effort to stretch himself beyond them. He understands his weaknesses - he just is not motivated to correct them. The story often reads like a confession. Frank does not even like sports or people, although his job is to write about both. And he continues with it because he is good at it. It is the path of least resistance.
Frank has no friends. He does not need or want them. He even keeps his young, beautiful, sexy girlfriend at an emotional arm's length; but people confide him - probably because they see him as non-judgmental, although this may be the result of him thinking of other things when pretending to listen to their problems. One casual acquaintance considers Frank his best friend and writes him a letter just before committing suicide.
Ford does an excellent job of building a flawed, yet sympathetic character. I saw many of my own flaws in Bascombe. Although I constantly try to rise above mediocrity, I find that this is often a struggle against my own complacency. The easier path is easier and always tempting.
The book explores life inside a prison and the society that persists there. It is not about the brutality of prison - a theme of so many other novels; rather it is about the prisoners' relationships with the guards and with one another. Men come to Farragut and tell them about themselves - often confessing a great deal.
We also learn a lot about Farragut himself. We perceive that he is an educated man by the language of three letters he writes. Farragut is a former heroin addict and a current methadone addict, and we learn what led to his addiction. We learn about his failing marriage and his current relationship with his wife. And despite having a wife on the outside, Farragut begins a sexual and romantic relationship with another male prisoner. Interestingly, we do not learn the details of his crime until the end of the novel.
This delving into the mind of the protagonist gives the story a very personal feel, making one forget that it is written in the third person.
As a psychological analysis, Cheever's novel is brilliant. It goes beyond a story of crime and punishment and incarceration. It is the story of a man and how he feels and how he copes.
GCast 90:
Basic Error Handling in a Spring Boot Web Service
Learn how to handle errors in a Spring Boot application.
Episode 620
Tibi Covaci on Creating a GitHub Action
Tibi Covaci talks about a custom GitHub action that he created to deploy a node.js application to Azure. He describes some of the challenges he encountered and how he was able to overcome them.
8/2
Today I am grateful to visit the world's largest coffee house yesterday.
8/1
Today I am grateful to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation yesterday for the first time in longer than I care to admit.
7/31
Today I am grateful for a walk around Winnetka, IL and Loyola University-Chicago yesterday.
7/30
Today I am grateful for my bicycle.
7/29
Today I am grateful for frictionless Amazon returns.
7/28
Today I am grateful for my first visit to Northerly Island this summer.
7/27
Today I am grateful I finally found the time this weekend to record some screencasts of some of the things I've learned the past few months.
7/26
Today I am grateful for my new alarm clock.
7/25
Today I am grateful for a bike ride yesterday along The 606 - an elevated trail in northwest Chicago.
7/24
Today I am grateful for 2 days in west Michigan.
7/23
Today I am grateful for walks yesterday around South Haven, Holland, and Three Oaks.
7/22
Today I am grateful for a walk along Silver Beach in St. Joseph, MI last night.
7/21
Today I am grateful for a hot bath to relieve stress.
7/20
Today I am grateful that my brother is out of the hospital after checking in almost a week ago and being diagnosed with blood clots and respiratory issues due to COVID-19.
7/19
Today I am grateful to attend a Chicago Dogs baseball game last night.
7/18
Today I am grateful to complete Anthony Powell's epic 12-volume, 3000-page, 50-year series "A Dance to the Music of Time"
7/17
Today I am grateful to those who took the time to document history.
7/16
Today I am grateful for dinner by the river in Milwaukee last night before the skies opened up.
7/15
Today I am grateful for my longest ride of the year (so far)
7/14
Today I am grateful that the pain in my ankle has subsided.
7/13
Today I am grateful to live in a city that remembers its history.
7/12
Today I am grateful:
-to attend the South Loop Gathering for Unity, Peace, and Love yesterday
-for a final drink at the Scout Waterhouse & Kitchen before they close for good
7/11
Today I am grateful for a walk around Highland Park, IL yesterday.
7/10
Today I am grateful to sit on my balcony last night and watch the city on a warm summer evening.
7/9
Today I am grateful for a new case for my phone.
7/8
Today I am grateful for dinner with Emilija last night.
7/7
Today I am grateful for my new phone case.
7/6
Today I am grateful for a new rug in my office.
7/5
Today I am grateful to watch fireworks from my balcony last night.
After 12 volumes, Anthony Powell concludes his epic series A Dance to the Music of Time with Hearing Secret Harmonies.
It is the late 1960s. We meet Fiona - the niece of narrator Nick Jenkins, along with some of the members of the cult to which she belongs, including its creepy and charismatic leader Scorpio Murtlock. We will see more of them later in the story.
Much of this series has dealt with Kenneth Widmerpool - a former classmate of narrator Nick Jenkins - who has risen to power through blind ambition; so, it is fitting that the final volume focuses much of its energies on his last days. Widmerpool is now an old man losing some of his cognitive abilities. He now rejects bourgeois society, embraces the counterculture, has joined Murtlock's cult, and is striving for humility. He is regretting some of his past actions - possibly as a result of his wife's suicide in the previous novel. Part of the old Widmerpool remains, as he challenges Murtlock for control of the cult.
A few other old characters return - some only peripherally:
- American writer Russell Gwinnett is presented the Magnus Donners Memorial Prize for his biography of the late X Trapnel.
- Sir Magnus's widow Matilda oversees the award and a wedding later takes place at their former castle.
- The teenage twin daughters of J.G. Quiggin become frequent companions of Widmerpool
- One character appears whom Jenkins met briefly at a college party in Book 1 and has not seen in the decades since.
- Bithel - a WWII comrade of Jenkins's, whom Widmerpool had kicked out of the army for drunkenness - is now an old man and a member of this same cult.
The cult attempts to raise from the dead Dr. Trelawney, who led a cult in earlier Time novels.
In a series not known for plot twists or cliffhangers, this final novel does a good job of wrapping up the story.
This series as a whole exceeds the quality of any individual novels.
Reading A Dance to the Music of Time has been an amazing journey and I am happy to complete that journey.
GCast 89:
HTTP Request and Response Headers in a Spring Boot Application
Learn how to read headers from an HTTP Request and write them to an HTTP Response.
Episode 619
Mete Atamel on Serverless Containers
Google Cloud Developer Advocate Mete Atamel describes some of the tools for managing serverless containers in the cloud. He discusses the advantages of K Native, Tekton pipelines, Build Packs, and Cloud Run.
Links:
Temporary Kings is the penultimate book in Anthony Powell's epic 12-volume series A Dance to the Music of Time and covers the end of the 1950s - 10 years after the preceding novel - Books Do Furnish a Room.
Book 10 introduced - then killed off writer X. Trapnel. But he lives on in "Kings". Two new characters - both American - want to tell his life story. Scholar Russell Gwinnett is researching a biography of X; and film producer Louis Glober wants to make a movie about X's life.
Narrator Nick Jenkins and those around him are getting older and some pass on, but those who survive retain and evolve their core personalities. One character observes that "...growing old’s like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed."
The Widmerpools return. After losing re-election to the House of Commons, Kenneth is granted a Lordship to continue his social ascendency. But he is still married to the awful Pamela, who becomes even more terrible than she has in the past. Kenneth is accused of spying and Pamela is accused of killing her lover and these accusations are addressed in a rant by Pamela near the end of the story.
The revelations near the end are atypical of this series, which heretofore tended to favor character development over plot twists. The latter events are foreshadowed by a painting observed earlier in the novel.
Thanks largely to the ending, this was one of the more entertaining books in the series.
World War II has come to an end and Nick Jenkins, the narrator of Anthony Powell's 12-volume A Dance to the Music of Time has taken a job in a publishing house and is writing a biography. Goods are scarce and the nation is tired, but everyone is moving forward with their lives.
Books Do Furnish a Room begins the final trilogy/season/movement of the series.
The ambitious, but insufferable Kenneth Widmerpool has been elected to the House of Lords, which should make him happy; but, as expected, his marriage to femme fatale Pamela Flitton presents many personal difficulties.
This book is mostly about Pamela and the newly-introduced X. Trapnel - an enigmatic author, who becomes infatuated and entangled with Pamela - again with predictably disastrous consequences. Pamela is cruel and manipulative and unfeeling and fascinating. She draws men to her and poisons them, before leaving them damaged.
As always, Powell does an excellent job at building characters and evolving them as they age.
Episode 618
Dave Pine on NET 5 and the Docs team
Dave Pine discusses the coming features in .NET 5 and .NET MAUI and how it affects his Microsoft Documentation teams. We also touch on ethics in open source development and his show - .NET Docs Show.
Links:
We are now at book 9. The Autumn Cycle (or the Third Movement, depending if you are using the music or painting allegory) of Andrew Powell's 12-volume A Dance to the Music of Time.
The Military Philosophers covers narrator Nick Jenkins's life as World War II comes to a close. Although Nick remains mostly in Britain as a staff officer and never comes close to the front, he is still greatly affected by the war. He is eventually promoted to Major and he loses two of his oldest friends in the fighting, along with a longtime family friend. All the deaths appear "off camera", but they still move us as we know the history of each victim.
As always, the narrator's life is overshadowed by the lives of those around them and the events in which they find themselves. In this case, the event is the second world war and this book covers about two-thirds of it. It moves quickly and we see the change in people. Nick runs into a comrade from his first unit and is barely remembered because it was so long ago (although it was only a few years).
Kenneth Widmerpool - the ambitious former classmate, who appears in every novel of the series - continues to rise in power, eventually becoming a Colonel. But we see the dark side of his ambition, as some amoral decisions present themselves - decisions that cost the lives of others.
We are introduced to Charles Stringham's niece Pamela Flitton, a Pamela Flitton who keeps reappearing throughout the novel.
Near the end of the book, an old character returns who I suspect will alter Nick's postwar life.
And the author makes reference to French novelist Marcel Proust, with whom he is often compared.
I was touched by a scene in which Nick fights to secure from a General the only room with a bath because an Indian officer of lower rank needed it "for religious reasons". Nick never asks the specifics of the religion and does not try to understand it; but fights for him anyway.
Powell does an excellent job of bringing his characters together and evolving them over time; and he does a good job of conveying the weariness felt by England at the end of the war. A celebration at St. Paul's feels more like a funeral than a commemoration.
It is 1941 and London is suffering regular bombing raids by the Germans.
Anthony Powell's The Soldier's Art (volume 8 of A Dance to the Music of Time) follows narrator Nick Jenkins's life in the army and the lives of those around him.
The war takes its toll, as bombs kill several of Nick's family, friends, and acquaintances and others die in battle or suicide.
Nick encounters his old friend Charles Stringham, who appears to have recovered from his alcoholism and found some stability - if not happiness - as a cog in the army.
Nick continues to bump into many of his old acquaintances, often at the same time and place - coincidences that are common in this series.
This book shines a light on the petty politics of military and its officers. The omnipresent Kenneth Widmerpool features prominently and he seems to be more and more dominated by his ambition.
I find myself more and more engaged in these characters as the series progresses. I grieve at their deaths of some and I hope for their recoveries of others.
Episode 617
Kayla Cinnamon on Windows Terminal
Windows Terminal, which just released version 1.0 provides a single interface for almost any command-line system. PM Kayla Cinnamon discusses the existing features and what is coming in this tool.
https://github.com/microsoft/terminal
https://aka.ms/terminal-docs
The Valley of Bones begins the second half of Anthony Powell's epic 12-volume cycle "A Dance to the Music of Time".
It is 1940 and Narrator Nick Jenkins is now in the army and England is now at war with Germany. Nick travels with his outfit to Wales and Ireland but returns to London for a weekend leave to attend a cocktail party with his pregnant wife.
For most of this series, Nick has interacted almost exclusively with his own class - the British middle/upper class and the London arts community. But in Valley, he meets many people outside his social stratum. This gives us a peek into a different part of society in England. The enlisted soldiers are drawn from working men, while the officers were bank managers and other professionals.
Powell includes satire of the military, from the incompetent general to the drunken aid.
This is a good opening to the 3-volume World War II cycle.
Anthony Powell's The Kindly Ones begins and ends with a prelude to world war.
The opening chapter takes us back to narrator Nick Jenkins's childhood - at the outbreak of World War I. We see a love quadrangle among the family servants that results in a nervous breakdown for one of them; a visit from Nick's Uncle Giles; news of the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand, plunging Europe into war; and a local cult leader.
In the closing chapters, England is preparing for an entry into World War II and Nick must make arrangements for his uncle's funeral. Several characters from Jenkins's past turn up at the small town where he is arranging the funeral - remarkable coincidence, but seemingly necessary to advance the story.
In between, a group of friends attend a dinner party at the home of Sir Magnus Donner. The party turns slightly decadent as the guests pose for photographs as the seven deadly sins - a game that nearly results in another nervous breakdown.
At the halfway point of his 12-volume A Dance to the Music of Time series, Powell concludes the "Summer" cycle (or "Second Movement", depending if you accept the painting or the music metaphor for this work) and leads us into the war. One gets a sense of foreboding as the storylines take darker turns.
I liked the preludes to world war that bookends the novel, and the evolution of the characters over time.
I look forward to the second half of this cycle.
Episode 616
Yina Arenas on Microsoft Graph
Microsoft Graph is a tool that allows you to query and analyze data about a user - including messages, calendar items, SharePoint lists, shared documents, devices, and many mores. Program Manager Yina Arenas describes how developers can use Graph to generate insights and enhance their applications. She also lists some of the new and recently-announced features of Graph.
Links:
7/5
Today I am grateful to watch fireworks from my balcony last night.
7/4
Today I am grateful to be a citizen of the United States of America.
7/3
Today I am grateful for easy Amazon returns.
7/2
Today I am grateful for new bike pedals.
7/1
Today I am grateful to ride the northern part of the Chicago Lakefront Trail for the first time since the lockdown.
6/30
Today I am grateful for meals from 2 different African countries yesterday.
6/29
Today I am grateful for my new iPhone.
6/28
Today I am grateful for my first visit to Jackson Park.
6/27
Today I am grateful for my first car wash in almost a year.
6/26
Today I am grateful for a long bike ride yesterday.
6/25
Today I am grateful to have Nick and Adriana here this week.
6/24
Today I am grateful for dinner with family in a beer garden last night.
6/23
Today I am grateful to those who have had a positive influence on my character.
6/22
Today I am grateful to spend Father's Day with family and friends.
6/21
Today I am grateful to be a father.
6/20
Today I am grateful for a chance to visit many places in south Chicago honoring the contributions of African Americans to this city and country.
6/19
Today I am grateful for a day off to relax and reflect.
6/18
Today I am grateful to those who provide constructive feedback.
6/17
Today I am grateful for all the public art in my city.
6/16
Today I am grateful for so many beautiful churches in my city.
6/15
Today I am grateful for eBooks.
6/14
Today I am grateful to all those who donated over $1700 to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline last week.
6/13
Today I am grateful to Eric for inspiring me to publicly support mental health this past month.
6/12
Today I am grateful for my new bike lock.
6/11
Today I am grateful for my new shorts, so I no longer need to choose between long pants and gym shorts on a hot day.
6/10
Today I am grateful for mailmen (and women)
6/9
Today I am grateful that the Chicago Public Library re-opened yesterday.
6/8
Today I am grateful for a weekend in southwest Michigan.
The fifth novel of Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time is the darkest so far in the series.
Powell bookends his story nicely with a visit to
The novel begins with a flash-forward to a woman singing near a bombed-out restaurant in war-torn London, which reminds narrator Nick Jenkins of a dinner years earlier with the now-deceased Mr. Deacon, musician Hugh Moreland, music critic Maclintick, and other English bohemians at the Italian-turned-Chinese restaurant named Casanova's Chinese Restaurant, which is also the title of this book. During the flashback, the group discusses marriage, seduction, suicide, and other topics that become relevant later in the novel. The conversation is recalled near the end when one of the group of friends kills himself, following the destruction of his marriage.
Earlier books in the series presented relationships and marriages that failed for various reasons, but CCR presents one particularly dysfunctional relationship in which the couple bicker constantly - often to the embarrassment of those around them. The situation is at first amusing but leas to a tragic end.
Characters from previous novels make appearances. The eccentric Erridge has disappeared to fight in the Spanish Civil War, only to return at the story's conclusion. And Nick's school friend Stringham shows up unannounced and drunk at his mother's party.
Again, the narrator's life takes a back seat to those around him. Nick's wife miscarries their child, but that event is glossed over and only seems a reason to run into Morland at the hospital and more attention is devoted to the birth and death of Morland's child.
This book is darker than the first four with its suicide, infidelity, alcoholism, and divorce. But it is not without its humor.
Last month, I completed a school year working with students at Infinity Math, Science & Technology High School.
The students were participating in the Illinois Science & Technology Institute's STEM challenge and I was one of a group of volunteers helping to mentor them. This year's theme asked students to design projects using Artificial Intelligence. I was impressed by the projects - each of which was designed to help those less fortunate. The three projects delivered were:
Fast Food Sign Language - an application designed to assist deaf people communicating their order at a fast food restaurant
OS-Fruitable - an app designed to help blind people by identify a fruit and its level of spoilage, based on a phone photograph
Pal Protect - a virtual friend device that allows parents to track younger children and for children to call for assistance when needed, while also providing entertainment.
We were supposed to host the school presentations at the Chicago Microsoft office; then select one team to represent the school at the statewide showcase to be held at the Museum of Science and Industry. But the COVID-19 crisis threw a monkey wrench into those plans. So this event was entirely virtual.
It was a pleasure to see the ideas that students came up with to help their communities using AI. And it was a pleasure mentoring high school students for this event the second year in a row.
I am looking forward to next year!
Episode 615
Sven Aelterman on Data in Education
Sven Aelterman is a Cloud Solution Architect and a former IT manager amd professor at a university. He talks about the type of data used by educational institutions, some of the compliance requirements around educational data, and tools used for managing student information.
Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time marches into the summer of Nick Jenkins's life with volume 4 in the series - At Lady Molly's.
Nick becomes engaged but relays this information almost as an afterthought as he continues to focus attention on other characters.
The Tolland family figures heavily in this book, as numerous siblings, in-laws, and others pop in and out of the story. It is a large family with some eccentric characters - most especially the patriarch Erridge, who rejects society's expectations and decides to live among the proletariat in order to understand their struggles.
Widmerpool again figures heavily in this story as we learn of his engagement to a much older woman.
Weaved throughout is the story of Mona - a relatively minor character who establishes relationships with major characters, then leaves each for another. She seems to represent the impermanence of the current life of everyone in this intra-war England.
The outside world invades the bohemian and upper-class dinner parties more in this book than in previous ones as the characters discuss the likelihood of war with Germany and Marxist Quiggin associates with Erridge.
The characters still intrigue me and, with a third of the story behind me, I am committed to continuing this series.
The Acceptance World is the third novel in Anthony Powell's epic A Dance to the Music of Time series.
Narrator Nick Jenkins has progressed somewhat in his career and has even written (but not published) a book.
We get a bit of mysticism (a fortune teller and a séance), a bit of politics with Quiggin expressing his Marxist views, and a bit of economics with Widmerpool's long-winded speech on the topic.
And we get numerous marriages and divorces - a sign of the fast times of the Jazz Age in England. But the Jazz Age has passed, and 1930s England is experiencing the upheaval of worldwide economic depression and the spread of new political ideas.
This novel reveals more of Nick than the first two and he finally connects with Jean Templer - sister of his school friend Peter - even though Jean is married to someone else.
The first quarter of the series is now complete. I don't know if Powell planned it this way, but the first three volumes are sometimes referred to as "The First Movement", as if the entire series were a symphony; or as "Spring" to separate Nick's life into four seasons.
Episode 614
Jeff Fritz on Migrating from Web Forms to Blazor
Blazor allows you to create client-side applications using C#. Jeff Fritz discusses the process of migrating applications based on Web Forms to take advantage of Blazor, without re-writing the entire application. He is building an Open Source project - Blazor Web Forms Components - live on his Twitch channel.
https://github.com/FritzAndFriends/BlazorWebFormsComponents
https://www.twitch.tv/csharpfritz
https://conf.livecoders.dev
Buyer's Market is the second book in Anthony Powell's "A Dance to the Music of Time" series.
Our narrator Nick Jenkins has graduated from university and moved to London where he has a job at a publishing house, a girlfriend named Barbara, and invitations to a lot of parties. He encounters many of the characters introduced in volume 1 (A Question of Upbringing), such as Uncle Giles, Stringham, and Widmerpool; and Powell introduces a few new characters, such as Mr. Deacon, an artist who was a friend of Nick's parents.
Like the first novel, this book explores the changing relationships between Nick and his friends. Only Uncle Giles seems consistent in his behavior as the years pass.
For me, the most interesting character was Widmerpool, who displays and odd combination of social awkwardness and arrogance - a trait I have observed in others; a trait that moves me to both annoyance and pity.
The other plot point that intrigued me was Jenkins's relationship with women. We see his affair with Barbara (presumably his first girlfriend) and his dealings with the rambunctious and sexually liberated Gipsy Jones.
Nick's career has not yet started; his love life is erratically beginning; and his place in the universe. The character development compensates for a minimal story and lead me to volume 3.
A Question of Upbringing kicks off Anthony Powell's 12-volume cycle A Dance to the Music of Time.
Nicholas Jenkins narrates the story of his school days in England in the 1920s.
Not much happens in this story. At school, Jenkins hangs out with his two friends - Charles Stringham and Peter Templer. They play a prank on their annoying housemaster and they laugh about their odd classmate Widmerpool. At the end of the term, Jenkins first visits with Templer's family; then spends the summer in France with friends of his family, where he encounters Widmerpool and begins to reassess his opinion of him. When Jenkins returns to school, he finds that he and his friends have drifted apart.
This book stands alone, but it seems incomplete. Each scene seemed disconnected from the others until at least two-thirds through the novel - almost like a collection of short stories.
However, I enjoyed the individual scenes, I enjoyed Powell's prose, and I enjoyed the characters, which I am told will reappear and develop throughout the series.
I am ready for Book 2.
Episode 613
Jason Fox on Spatial Computing
Jason Fox describes the science of Spatial Computing, which allows a computer to become aware of its physical environment; and talks about some practical applications that take advantage of this technology.
John Converse was once a successful playwright. But his ideas dried up and he found himself working as a correspondent during the Vietnam War. But, even at this job, inspiration escaped him. So, he decided to smuggle heroin into the United States, enlisting his old friend Ray Hicks to transport the drugs to his wife Marge in California.
Things go terribly wrong. The bad guys learn about the drugs and try to steal them. They threaten Hicks and Marge; then, kidnap Converse. Hicks and Marge go on the run, trying to find a way to sell their product and escape their pursuers.
Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone is a thriller with a suspenseful buildup and an exciting climax. But it is also a commentary on the cynicism that swept America after the idealism of the 1960s counterculture. American soldiers are selling narcotics, cops are corrupt, and young people are bored with LSD and trying more dangerous drugs.
Stone intersperses the action with philosophical musings via the inner dialogue of each character. There are moments of humor, of reflection, and of fear.
The thoughts of one character as he slowly dies while trying to escape through the desert is particularly poignant.
Dog Soldiers won the 1975 National Book Award. It is not a classic, but it is an exciting and well-written novel, with enough ideas to exercise your brain.
In 18th century Peru, Brother Juniper was out for a walk when he witnessed the bridge collapse, sending 5 people plunging to their death in chasm below. Why these people?, he wondered. Was there something about them that destined them for this tragic end? Was their death random chance or part of a divine plan? Why was I spared?
"Some say that we shall never know and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer day, and some say, on the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God."
He spent years investigating - to learn about the five victims.
- Marquesa de Montemayor was a mother mourning the damaged relationship with her daughter. She and her orphaned companion Pepita were returning from praying for the daughter at a nearby shrine.
- Esteban was on his way to serve on a sailing vessel to help him heal from the death of his twin brother and to earn money for a gift for the Abbess who cared for the boys when they were young.
- Uncle Pio had just begun to reconcile with his estranged niece and was on his way to Lima with her son Don Jaime.
There are no heroes or villains here - just people living their lives and loving one another and fighting one another. The three sets of victims did not know one another, but their lives were connected through their interactions with others.
The lives of the five people yield no clue as to why they were selected for death on this day and no clarity on God's plan.
Brother Juniper is ultimately punished for even asking his questions.
Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a brief, simple story that brings the reader into the interconnected lives of the characters. We see how they struggle with loss and how they deal with grief. We witness the cruelty of the world as events beyond their control affect their lives.
It is this and the beauty and subtlety of Wilder's prose that won this novel the 1928 Pulitzer Prize.
The book does not answer Brother Juniper's questions about God's plan, but it does offer a message on the meaning of life:
"Soon we will die, and every memory of those five will disappear from the earth, and we ourselves will be loved for a short time, and then forgotten. But love will have sufficed; all those motions of love return to the Love that created them. Not even memory is necessary to love. There is a world of the living and a world of the dead, and the bridge is love, only survival, the only meaning"
Episode 612
Troy Hunt on The Role of Technology in Social Isolation
The COVID-19 pandemic and responses to it have affected many aspects of our lives. Troy Hunt discusses how technology and technologists have adapted to this.
Links: