Book Review: The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu

The Dark Forest (黑暗森林), by Cixin Liu, is the second book in the Remembrance of Earth’s Past series and is translated from Chinese by Joel Martinsen. This is the sequel to the 2015 Hugo-award winning novel, The Three Body Problem, which received an enormous amount of well-deserved praise. The Dark Forest is no different; it is an absolutely excellent sci-fi story that I recommend checking out.

Note that this post has significant spoilers for the first book in the series (The Three Body Problem). If you haven't read that yet, stop here. Otherwise I try to avoid spoilers from book two in this review.

Data Science: My Blog with R

Over the past few weeks, I've been taking an online course on Data Science with the R programing language. It's my first time taking an online course and it's been quite fun. I wanted to learn more about data science in general and this course came recommended by a friend. I didn't know anything about R at the start, but I have many years of experience working with Python, IDL, IRAF, etc, so it was easy to pick up. One of the best ways I learn, however, is through practice. So I figured I would create my own personal project: some data analysis on my blog.

This blog post will focus on the statistics I gleaned from accessing the API for Blogger, which is a product of Google. If you are interested in more technical details, I'll point you to my Github repo where I share the code I used to get the results I present below. Rather than focus on visitors or visibility, I instead focus on production. That is, how often do I post? What is the typical length of my posts? What words do I tend to use? And so forth.

This is a relatively long post with some graphs and lots of discussion. Read on if you're interested in how this blog has evolved through time or if you want to learn how to do it yourself.

Book Review: Eight Skilled Gentlemen by Barry Hughart

Eight Skilled Gentleman is the third installment of Barry Hughart's Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox. It follows from the prior books, but an indeterminate amount of time has passed. As before, the novel takes elements of Chinese history and myth and blends them together with a lot of fantasy and a detective-style story.

Read on for my full review.

Book Review: The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin

Over the past year, since the English translation was released in November 2014, The Three-Body Problem (三体) has received a huge amount of praise.  It's considered one of the most popular science fiction novels in China and with its English translation, it's easy for me to see why. Liu Cixin blends together a lot of fascinating concepts in a hard science fiction story reminiscent of the type Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov would write. If you are a fan of classic science fiction, you owe it to yourself to try out this author. I guarantee you will enjoy it.

For my spoiler-free review, read on.

Book Review: Mort by Terry Pratchett

Mort, by Terry Pratchett, is the fourth book in the Discworld universe and the first of the "Death" novels, so called since they focus on the character of Death. It is an excellent starting point to the Discworld novels. Here's the Goodreads blurb:

In this Discworld installment, Death comes to Mort with an offer he can't refuse -- especially since being, well, dead isn't compulsory. As Death's apprentice, he'll have free board and lodging, use of the company horse, and he won't need time off for family funerals. The position is everything Mort thought he'd ever wanted, until he discovers that this perfect job can be a killer on his love life.

Read on for my spoiler-free review.

Astronomy: Young Stars and Planets Near the Sun

This past week, I attended the 314th International Astronomical Union (IAU) Symposium titled Young Stars and Planets Near the Sun. This symposium was held in Atlanta, Georgia and covered everything related to the subject including, of course, young stars, but also brown dwarfs, circumstellar disks, and discussions of upcoming observatories and surveys. In this brief blog, I talk about my experience there as well as my work as part of the Science Organizing Committee (SOC).

Book Review: The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

For the latest book club pick, and as a tribute to the late Terry Pratchett, we decided to read on the Discworld novels. We looked online and found a listing of the best ones, which included The Color of Magic, Mort, Going Postal, and, the one we selected, The Wee Free Men. It's a fairly short book.

Read on for my full review.

Astronomy: On Leaving Academia

Earlier this month, I got a request for a telephone interview for one of the many academic positions I applied for. While it was good news, I immediately knew that this was not something I wanted. This was not because of the particular offer, but because of the greater aspect of being a professor. It was the moment I realized what had been nagging me for the past few years: It was time to leave the academic path.

In this post, I'll describe some of what I went through. I know I am not the only one that has left academia, nor will I be the last. I think this may be of help to people passing through the same situation.