Technical nonfiction and spec fiction. She/her. Melbourne, Australia. Generation X. Admin of Outside of a Dog. BDFL of Hometown (Mastodon) instance Old Mermaid Town (@futzle@old.mermaid.town). Avatar image is of a book that my dog tried to put on their inside.
My rating scale: ★ = I didn't care for it and probably didn't finish it; ★★ = It didn't inspire but I might have finished it anyway; ★★★ = It was fine; ★★★★ = I enjoyed it; ★★★★★ = I couldn't put it down.
So I was a dog lover from the start. Our next family dog after Mistral was Herbie, who was a mixed breed, a cross between a German shepherd and an aircraft carrier. He was huge. Fortunately he was also very affectionate, although sometimes his rambunctiousness intimidated visitors who didn't know that he was harmless.
"Herbie!" we would shout. "Put the UPS man down RIGHT NOW!"
There was an ending (a happy utopian one in a book where most endings were akin to dying in a vacuum) which could not be reached by following the rules of Choose Your Own Adventure books: no other decision in the book pointed to this ending. At the time I considered this a betrayal of the social contract of Choose Your Own Adventure. I was mad! With the benefit of adulthood I've come to accept that this was an in-joke, social commentary of sorts on the consequences of breaking the rules. I still don't think I like it.
At the turn of the twenty-second century, scientists make a breakthrough in human spaceflight. Through …
A human adventure in space, in four acts
4 stars
I finished this book a couple of weeks ago. Like all of Chambers's books, it feels as though nothing much is going on in them at any given moment, but in a good way. There are interpersonal relationships continuously developing and evolving, there's the discoveries about the planets that the explorers land on, and then there is the revelation about events back on Earth which the explorers, 17 light years away, can do nothing about.
For such a simple and shortish story, I found the revelation at the end to be suitably profound, as well as the way Chambers left unanswered, but in a satisfying way, some of the questions about what had happened back on Earth.
I have read some more of this book. It comes across as fantasy but it will probably veer into sf territory, given that's what the author's typical fare is. I wish there was less gender essentialism in it, but that's sadly common in this genre.
The Art of Electronics, by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill, is a popular reference textbook …
Not a multivibrator in sight!
5 stars
Golly, this book is a brain-burner, but it was the first time I really understood semiconductors. And I include the Electronics subject I did at university in that.
This textbook starts from the basics of passive components (resistors, capacitors, inductors) and by chapter 3 transistors have been covered. From there it's on to signal processing, amplification, rectification, and, inevitably digital circuits (which are, to me, less interesting).
A critical thing I noticed is that the stereotypical rookie-advanced circuit, the astable multivibrator, isn't in this book at all. There's a digital implementation with chained flip-flops, but the version with two transistors criss-crossed is nowhere to be seen. This comforts me, because the multivibrator just isn't as important in the real world as everyone makes out, and it's actually super-hard to understand.
Because it's a textbook, it has broad coverage of so many topics and it doesn't always delve into every corner …
Golly, this book is a brain-burner, but it was the first time I really understood semiconductors. And I include the Electronics subject I did at university in that.
This textbook starts from the basics of passive components (resistors, capacitors, inductors) and by chapter 3 transistors have been covered. From there it's on to signal processing, amplification, rectification, and, inevitably digital circuits (which are, to me, less interesting).
A critical thing I noticed is that the stereotypical rookie-advanced circuit, the astable multivibrator, isn't in this book at all. There's a digital implementation with chained flip-flops, but the version with two transistors criss-crossed is nowhere to be seen. This comforts me, because the multivibrator just isn't as important in the real world as everyone makes out, and it's actually super-hard to understand.
Because it's a textbook, it has broad coverage of so many topics and it doesn't always delve into every corner of electronics. Its intent is to get you up to speed with circuit design, but it'll take a few rereadings before I think I'll get even close to that.
The dry humour of the authors is noted and appreciated. I may post some choice quotations here in the future.