Paul Grenyer

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!

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.  

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 wit...

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.