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A Review: Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Prelude To Foundation Asaac Asimov ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0008117481 Although, as a child and teenager, I’ve heard an abridged audiobook many times and read Prelude to Foundation the first time more than two decades ago, I loved it more than I can describe and more than any other book I have read for a long time. It’s a good story, well told. While probably not true Space Opera, it has a wide scope. It has all the things I like: Spaceships, otherworlds, science and even some action. I also realised for the first time that Hari Seldon is both unpleasant and sexist. Maybe this is because I am viewing a book from the mid eighties through eyes from the 2020s. Maybe this was Asimov’s intention. Maybe it’s how Asimov was. Perhaps reading the other Foundation and Robot novels will help my understanding.
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Not as good as TV! A review of Caliban's War, The Expanse Book 2

Caliban's War by James S. A. Corey ISBN: 978-1841499918 I was really keen to read this after Leviathan Wakes was so good and after enjoying the TV series so much. Of course there was the pull of the introduction of Chrisjen Avasarala as well, and she really did not disappoint. She was amazing. The majority of the book was a bit ploddy, especially compared to the first, but the exciting bits were super exciting. The events which resolved the climax and sustained one of the main characters were somewhat contrived and convenient, but I could live with that. In this book, the TV series diverged even more. This disappoints me, because the story and events in the book are so much better than what they changed or invented for TV. I guess I have more of this to come moving on to book 3.

A Review: Detonation Boulevard

By Alistair Reynolds ASIN: B0C99899GL Take two of my favourite things and my favourite author and what do you get? Formula 1 in space with cyborgs, and who doesn’t love a Sisters of Mercy Reference? From a Formula 1 perspective, there’s so much there. Reynolds explains how, in this universe, there are different races on different bodies in the solar system. He alludes to some of the sports biggest questions from how much technology is used, to the role sponsors and money play to some of the politics around which teams are favoured and what benefits they may get to stay in the sport. He explores a bigger question through the drivers as well. This is a short story, so I read it in two sittings. There definitely could be a larger novel here, but I suspect there won’t be. If you’ve an hour or two to spare, give Detonation Boulevard (which I can only hear in my head in Andrew Edritch’s voice) a read!

A Review: God Emperor of Dune

By Frank Herbert ISBN:  ‎ 978-1473233805 I’ve seen lots of people rave about God Emperor of Dune, the first of the second Dune trilogy, which is set several thousand years after the events of Children of Dune. As far as I’m concerned, it’s ok. It consists mostly of the God Emperor, Leto II, whose body is transitioning into a wormlike state with a protruding, cowelled face and arms, giving various other characters his thoughts and feelings on existence and how wonderful and godlike he is. Not much actually happens in the book, few conclusions are drawn and the ending kinda peters out.  

Deploying AWS Lambda with Terraform and GitHub actions

Separation of Concerns is a key principle in software engineering. When we used to deploy applications to physical hardware, the two separate concerns of infrastructure and software would often become blurred as an application would often need to tailor to particular hardware, or more likely the operating system running on that  hardware. In the modern world of Infrastructure as Code (IaC), where everything is software (almost), it’s potentially even more difficult to separate the concerns of infrastructure and software. Organisations often have two teams. A platform team to look after the infrastructure and a development team to develop the software. Once the infrastructure is created and the software is written there is an overlap between the teams which is deployment. This is where the teams must work together. Consider AWS Lambdas. There are two separate components which are often considered as a whole, the Lambda itself within the AWS infrastructure and the code which runs within

A Review Storm of Swords: Part 1 Steel and Snow

Storm of Swords: Part 1 Steel and Snow George R Martin ISBN: 9780007447848 I didn’t like the previous book, A Clash of Kings and Storm of Swords isn’t a great deal better, but it is better.   I really enjoyed the multiple threads and, of course, learning more about the characters we all know from the TV series. There are hints about the Red Wedding and I was expecting it to be in the final part of the book, but the last 5% turned out to be appendices this time. Perhaps it’s at the start of the second part. I’ll get to it.

Bloomreach Transactional Email API Client

A nonofficial, JavaScript, feature complete, client library for sending transactional emails via Bloomreach . The aim of the bloomreach-transactional-email package is to get you going with the Bloomreach Transactional Email API as quickly as possible. The sendEmail function takes the minimum number of required parameters to send an email. Other parameters are optional. Full details of all the options can be found in the Bloomreach Transactional Email API documentation . bloomreach-transactional-email  uses axios , as a peer dependency, to make HTTP calls. Install npm i -save bloomreach-transactional-email Basic Examples If you have Customer IDs and a default email integration with a sender name and address setup in Bloomreach then you can use the minimum configuration to send an email by specifying a HTML body and a subject: import { sendEmail } from 'bloomreach-transactional-email'; const auth = {     username: '...',    // Your APIKeyID     password: '...',