I participated in the first several days of Advent of Code 2022. I enjoyed the first few tests, but I found the story around the more recent tests to stretch believability. When personal circumstances impacted my time to hobby program, it led me to stop.

If you’re interested in the solutions I wrote, I uploaded my work to my Code Kata GitHub repo.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here.

The change that prompted me to update my blog was a renewed interest in Mastodon. I set up an account in 2018, but there wasn’t enough content at the time to keep me engaged. However, with the recent changes at Twitter, I’ve joined a multitude of people who are revising their Mastodon accounts. The link to mine is in the sidebar.

By the way, I used these instructions to add a share to Mastodon button to my Jeckyl-generated blog. Thanks, Jan!

I recently reviewed Embers of War by Gareth Powell. A few weeks later, I’ve finished the trilogy. Here are my thoughts.

It has been years since I read a sequel immediately after reading the first book in a series. I normally alternate fiction and non-fiction. In this case, I made an exception. I’m glad I did.

In many ways, the writing and story improved as the novels progressed. Each of the three books felt like an act in a larger story, which many other series fail to achieve. The climax of the first novel informs the second, Fleet of Knives. However, Fleet raises the stakes from Embers. The same is true of the third book, Light of Impossible Stars.

Also, the new characters in Fleet and Light did not irritate me as Ashton Childe did in Embers. The new characters in both books ended up having character arcs of their own, whereas I felt like Childe existed merely as a catalyst to bring a change in others. In Fleet and Light, we see how all these characters are changed by their circumstances and choices.

There another pitfall that Powell avoids, that’s common to movies as well. It’s easy to find examples of books and movies where the middle installments do not stand alone, but instead only act as a long prologue to the next part. A recent example is Jim Butcher’s Peace Talks, which is a long prologue for the following novel Battle Ground. Another glaring example is The Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling, in which a person can skip the first movie or first half of the book. The story seemed to me only existed to emphasize how bad things were for Harry, Hermione, and Ron. When events start picking up at the beginning of the next part, that’s when the story regains interest.

I’m happy to report that Fleet of Knives stands on its own, and so does Light of Impossible Stars. At the end of Embers, there’s an event that changes the lives of all the characters in the story. Fleet explores the consequences of that event, and our heroes old and new come face to face with a new challenge. The new challenge is inherently interesting, and was worth a novel to explore. In dealing with that challenge on a local, personal level, they realize more is at stake than they realized, and those stakes drive Light. In structuring the plot this way, each installment is enjoyable as a discreet story. At the end of each story, people are changed profoundly, yet the tapestry of their intersecting lives form a coherent story.

It’s akin to the original Star Wars trilogy. At the end of the A New Hope, it appears that all is well with the world. So it is at the end of Embers. However, The Empire Strikes Back shows that the climax of A New Hope was just a setback for the Empire. Like Empire, Fleet shows that there’s more to the story than we first suspected in Embers. And, like Return of the Jedi, Light of Impossible Stars features a reckoning.

It’s not a Rebellion versus Empire story, though there are political factions in Embers of War. One of the elements I most enjoyed about the Embers of War trilogy is the House of Reclamation. The House is a place for people looking for a fresh start, and its mission is to rescue ships and people in distress. To join, people must renounce their citizenship and sever ties with their former governments. Our protagonists are trying to redeem the sins of their pasts, to greater and lesser degrees of success. This theme of redemption plays strongly throughout the novels, and that is what drew my comparison to the Star Wars trilogy.

Reading the Embers of War novels back to back, I did find some of the remembrances of past events distracting. An author has to make sure that a reader who picks up the second book in a series isn’t lost, and Gareth Powell does that here. However, for those of us who read about those events yesterday, we don’t need reminding.

In many cases, though, the callbacks to previous events seemed natural. Characters reflect on prior events as they experience loss and grief, in some cases remembering lost comrades to each other. The net effect is that the main characters had some depth and verisimilitude.

The later books also explore some of the milieu and trappings introduced in the first books. In particular, the vessels in this series are intelligent and characters in their own right. The ship Trouble Dog becomes a well-rounded character in her own right. I’ve seen multiple authors introduce elements like sentient ships, but fail to illustrate the consequences of there being sentient ships. Powell embraces this aspect of world-building, to my delight.

I recommend the series, and I’m excited that it’s coming to television.

For six years running, I’ve had a reading goal of completing 52 books by the end of the year. One thing I’ve learned is that if I’m not making time to read a book, it’s not the right timing for me. Such was the case for Embers of War by Gareth Powell.

I started the book in early December. It’s a sci-fi epic, containing strong military elements. I’m a fan of books like Old Man’s War by John Scalzi and Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein, so Embers drew me in.

It was an interesting plot, and the book was unusual in that the story is told in the first person. Each chapter is told from the point of view of a main or secondary character. I found that the device caused me to become more intimate and invested in the characters. And yet, due to holiday activities and the process of moving, I found myself not coming back to the book. I set it aside for a graphic novel.

A couple weeks later, I was looking for something new to read. I remembered enjoying Embers, so I picked it back up again. I’m glad I did!

I feel that the book picks up at about the third-way point. Sal Konstanz, her ship the Trouble Dog, and Ona Sudak became real for me, and I wanted to know what happened to them. I also found the concept of the House of Reclamation interesting, a place for troubled people to find a new lease on life. I’ve wanted that too, at times.

Powell uses the sci-fi elements of the book to his advantage. The set pieces are intriguing and well-described. While technology plays a key role in the book, in the end, this is a human story about people – just the way I like it.

In looking back at the book, I realized that I was less interested in the Ashton Childe subplot, which was the focus of the part of the book where I put it down. I think I was initially looking for a romp like The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, but this book takes itself more seriously than that. By the end of the book, I came to appreciate Ashton and understand why he’s there, but he’s still not my favorite character.

I recommend Embers of War, and I’m looking forward to reading the other books in the series.

I decided a few months ago to end the Agile Chuck Wagon podcast.

As part of that, today, I removed the Agile Chuck Wagon posts from the website. I removed the posts because the descriptions, by themselves, didn’t offer much content. Also, the links to play the episodes are now broken.

When I started the Agile Chuck Wagon in 2015, I was heavily involved in the agile community in Denver. I was a member of the Agile Denver board of directors, for example. Over the last five years, as I transitioned from software engineer to manager, I found I used my agile skills less directly. While I still love agile, I have less hands-on experience to talk about.

I enjoyed the podcast, but the branding became problematic. Many of the episodes published in the last two years were not about agile at all, but about management and leadership. Listenership waned with the Covid-19 pandemic, it increasingly felt a chore to shoehorn content into the brand, and it seemed fitting to retire the Agile Chuck Wagon podcast and name.

This is an in-between time in my life. I’m typing this blog post in temporary lodging. We sold our house earlier this year, and our new home is not quite built yet.

I do miss publishing content. I had fun recording podcast episodes, and participating in the discussions they spawned. I still want some outlet like the podcast in my life. However, I do yet not know what form that endeavor will take.