Peter Grant Series Book Binge

Better late than never.  I guess I'm sold on reading the Peter Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch.  I've just started book 3, Whispers Under Ground.  The series started in 2011 and is now at book 7, or 7.5 if you go for the novellas.

Heck, this series has its own wiki, https://follypedia.fandom.com/wiki/The_Follypedia_Wiki

Pretty awesome.

WWW Wednesdays

I forgot this until today Thursday. So here I go.  That is, as of yesterday.

The Three W's are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you'll read next?

What are you currently reading?  Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch
What did you recently finish reading?  Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch 
What do you think you'll read next?  Whispers Under Ground by Ben Aaronovitch

What can I say, I'm binge-reading the Peter Grant series.

Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch Book 2 In the Peter Grant Series

This series is hitting me like the Dresden series by Jim Butcher and the Iron Druid series by Keven Hearne.  On these two series, I couldn't make it through the first book.  I picked each up about 6 months later and just couldn't get enough of them.  Now that's the way I feel about the Peter Grant series (or Rivers of London).  After reading the first book I didn't know exactly if I wanted to go through with reading more in the series but since I had the ebook and the audiobook on my reader I thought I would read "Moon Over Soho".

Aaronovitch's Peter Grant is a smart, sometimes too smart constable in London that just happens to be an apprentice magician to DCI Nightingale.  Because of this, he has to live in the "Folly" with Nightingale which leaves Grant with a lot of research time between his police duties and his magic lessons.  After investigating the death of a Jazz musician he starts seeing that Jazz musicians are dying off at an alarming rate when compared to other types of musicians.  Grant discovers the reason being "Jazz Vampires".

This is why I am loving this series (thanks Mike Finn) because of Aaronovitch's unexhausted originality and the storytelling by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, who else can come up with Jazz Vampires and who else could sell like Kobna.  One phrase does not make a book, but the originality of this book really makes it a good read.

I rate this an 8 of 10.

Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch
Book 2 in the Peter Grant series

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch, Book 1 in the Rivers of London Series

Rivers of London is billed as "What would happen if Harry Potter grew up and joined the fuzz".  I disagree.  When Harry Potter grew up he knew there was magic.  PC Peter Grant did not know or believe in magic until he was left by himself while protecting a murder scene while his partner goes for coffee.  While alone he is greeted by what he believes is a ghost.  After the ghost leaves a man walks by and identifies himself as a DCI Thomas Nightingale.

At the same time, he and a fellow PC Lesley May are reaching the end of their probation and pondering and hoping for an exciting assignment.  Lesly gets the job she dreams of, joining a major crime department while Peter finds out he going to be pushing paper for his career. 

Enter DCI Thomas Nightingale, and PC Grant finds himself in a secret investigation department, which consists of DCI Nightingale and now himself.  Their department basically investigates things that go bump in the night.  As Peter is introduced to magic and begins his lessons he learns there is a lot more to Nightingale than meets the eye.

Rivers of London introduces us to a new magical story and Ben Aaronovitch's imagination is magical in its own self.  Aaronovitch takes Peter through modern England and its history to tell this story.  Some parts get a little long but all in all, this is a very solid book and a very good lead-in for a brand new series.  While I am late getting into this series, I will probably catch up with it by the end of the year.

I rate this a 7, and I bet this series gets better as time goes on.

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch
Book 1 in the Rivers of London Series

Why I'm glad I Use Linux . . .

Microsoft Issues Warning For 50M Windows 10 Users
by Gordon Kelly Senior Contributor at Forbes.com

Between this and other problems like not backing up its registry, along with a host of other problems, see Chris Titus thank Microsoft for all the fish here.

Now that gaming is happening with Steam on Linux for most of you gamers, I don't play games so I don't use it, and a lot of programs are cloud-based, like Microsoft office, probably the only reason not to use Windows is the Adobe suites and yes, some games won't work on Linux.

Watch the Chris Titus video, he suggests using Linux or going to Apple.  Linux is not as hard as you think.  There are a handful of Linux distros out there for people switching from Windows to Linux.  Linux Mint, Zorin Linux, Pop!OS, even what I use, Manjaro XFCE can be used by newbies.  In the time that it takes you to update your Windows system you can watch youtube video's that show you how to customize your Linux of choice. 

Am I Window's free?  No, my wife wants us to buy the disk when it comes to tax programs, so I have to maintain Windows.  Also, the drive that has Windows on it has a protected partition so the build partition won't get erased.  I don't have the drive in my laptop that has Windows, but I have it and will put it back in when I don't want to use my computer because it will take all day to update my computer.

But whatever you do, switch, stay or buy an Apple, just do it on an OS that fits your needs, not an OS that doesn't match your needs.

I Finally Got It (I Hope) My latest XFCE Build

Tonight I reloaded XFCE on my larger drive, not that it matters because I doubt if I will get over 50GB loaded on my 250GB SSD.  Over the week I played around with Conky so much I had a lot of Conky, Conky Manager and Lua files on my drive and I didn't want my clone of my Manjaro XFCE with all these extra files that will never be used.  I've done this so many times that I got everything I wanted and ran Clonezilla within a couple of hours.  Now I have a proper backup and now all I have to do is add my Dropbox to my drive.  That's just how easy Manjaro XFCE is.

For years I've always had pictures as wallpapers on my desktop, but now I've just got a graphic, so it wouldn't make my Conky look too busy.  It looks like Manjaro is my main distro of choice, mainly because it's got a rolling release and the other reason is that it's not an Ubuntu-based OS.  Ubuntu is good but every time I did a new release upgrade, I would end up reloading it anyway.  I'm hoping that this won't be the case with a rolling distro.  With Manjaro I even get to pick the kernel I want.  You can do that with Ubuntu but Manjaro's GUI makes changing your kernel very easy, either going forward or rolling it back.  You can even get the experimental kernel if you choose.

One thing I've done on all my XFCE desktops is to configure them the way Linux Quest has in his tutorial on youtube.  He's using Antegros, which is now defunct since April this year but everything still works for about any XFCE, especially any XFCE based on Arch.

Manjaro is great.  Just like Arch, well maybe not quite like Arch, you can get as cutting edge as you want or you can go with a stable version.  Probably next week I will foray into Manjaro's I3 window manager.  I can go the I3 route or load it on top of XFCE, I just have to read up on it. I look at the Reddit r/unixporn too much.

Now if I could just get Conky Weather to work I would be a real happy camper.  Now to finish my Dropbox install and finish my book, Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch.

Stranger Things 3

The Strange Things series has not disappointed me, that's for sure.  I just binge watched the complete Stranger Things 3 and it was great.  I can't say which season I liked the most but this 3rd season really is worth the 8 hours sitting in front of a TV.  No spoilers here but there are internet stories saying that there will most definitely be a 4th season.  I can't see it going past 4, especially the way season 3 ended, but they did leave it open for another.  Let's hope so.

Netflix really comes up with some great and original programming.  This 3rd season of Stranger Things should be full of awards.  Best show, best actor (Millie Bobby Brown), and best supporting actor (either Winona Ryder or David Harbour).

WWW Wednesdays

I just found this on BookLikes and I love books so I think I'll start doing this.  Here are the instructions;

The Three W's are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you'll read next?

I guess you'll then click on the picture which I have linked and comment on the post.

So here I go.

• What are you currently reading? -  River's of London by Ben Aaronovitch 
• What did you recently finish reading? -  Backlash by Brad Thor 
• What do you think you'll read next?  -  Either Moon over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch (depends on River's of London) or Blood Lines by Angela Marsons

Backlash by Brad Thor, Scot Harvath Series, Book 19

When I got into reading one of the first espionage series that I got into was the Scot Harvath series by Brad Thor.  Backlash is the 19th book in the series and if the bro-mance spy thriller type books are your bag, as Austin Power's would say, then "this should be in your bag, baby".

Without getting into the story, this is your typical Scot Harvath story, told by Armand Schultz.  Backlash picks up where Spymaster ends, and finds Scot in hot water in a very cold place.  The story is good, and every Scot Harvath fan should be happy when finished.

Picking up the picture, and his glass, he headed outside. The sun was almost low enough to touch the water. He wanted to watch it disappear. Then he wanted to start thinking about what he was going to do next.

Cue the contemplating music. The end.

I rate this 8 of 10

Backlash by Brad Thor
Scot Harvath Series, Book 19

Manjaro XFCE, Reloaded

When I say Manjaro reloaded, Manjaro hasn't changed their XFCE, with the exception of a few updates.  I mean I've erased my old XFCE and reloaded it with a fresh copy.  I want to get my computer just right so I can clone it for future use.  I might still do some distro-hopping but I think I'll stick with XFCE, and stick with the Arch-based Manjaro.

I really wanted to have Budgie as my main OS, not that I like it better than XFCE but I tinker too much with XFCE.  Budgie is simpler and doesn't have all the options that XFCE has but Budgie seems to use more resources and with my old Acer laptop, I can't afford that.  KDE is still my favorite, but KDE has too many settings that I can play with and I would always be changing them, and that would take too much time away from reading.  I can't have that.

Here's what I have so far;

My biggest change is that I've got a shell running at startup with Conky loading 2 different scripts, and I've changed the colors to the 'chill blue' in the scripts.  I went with a stock Manjaro wallpaper that has a hint of blue in the middle, and I'll probably try to find a theme that has that blue color instead of the Manjaro green.  I might even do the Manjaro Menu button in the blue color.  Either way, I'm going to try to get another Conky script for the weather to add to my shell script.  If I do that then I might have to change the clock to something smaller to keep from having my desktop looking too cluttered.

When I get it the way I want it, then I will clone it with Clonezilla.  Then I'll add Dropbox and download my Dropbox files. Now this time I'm going to finish my book.  Okay, after I change my External IP address back to show what that address really is.  Wish you were here.

Mother Nature Starts the Fireworks Early

Mother Nature seems intent on celebrating the 4th with us, with 3 nice shakers.

1. A strong earthquake occurred at 10:33:48 AM (PDT) on Thursday, July 4, 2019.
   The magnitude 6.4 event occurred 12 km (7 miles) SW of Searles Valley, CA.
   The hypocentral depth is 9 km ( 5 miles).
2. A light earthquake occurred at 10:35:01 AM (PDT) on Thursday, July 4, 2019.
   The magnitude 4.7 event occurred 10 km (6 miles) E (79 degrees) of Ridgecrest, CA.
   The hypocentral depth is 4 km ( 3 miles).  
3. A strong earthquake occurred at 10:33:48 AM (PDT) on Thursday, July 4, 2019.
   The magnitude 6.4 event occurred 12 km (7 miles) SW of Searles Valley, CA.
   The hypocentral depth is 9 km ( 5 miles).  

I was just sitting here enjoying my latest read, Brad Thor's Backlash and the house rocked for about 10 seconds. Not a violent rock but like a few little rolls on a lake if a boat had gone by a couple of hundred yards away.

Searles Valey is not quite halfway between Bakersfield and Las Vegas, cheating to the Bakersfield side. This is about a 4-hour drive from La Quinta, or maybe 8 hours.  You can never tell on a southern California holiday.

Ridgecrest is almost a 4-hour drive from La Quinta and about a 30-minute drive from Ridgecrest to the Searles Valley.

Now back to my Scot Harvath book.  It's probably one of the best in the 19 books so far.  I'll know for sure in a couple of hours when I've finished reading it.

In the Market for Murder by T. E. Kinsey, Book 2 in the Lady Hardcastle Murder Mysteries Series

In the second installment of the Lady Hardcastle Murder Mysteries, we find our Lady Emily Hardcastle and her Lady Maid and best friend Florence (Flo) Lawrence going to a livestock auction, going to a Rugby match, going to a farmer's market for lunch, going to a seance, and the bringing to justice the people that committed insurance fraud, scams, improper disposal of a body, a misuse of witchcraft, the theft of a Rugby trophy, attempted murder, and of course a murder or two.  All this and they buy a car and dare say, two women driving a car?  People are aghast.  These two lead us through such a busy life.

I enjoy these type of books, even though they aren't that great and there's a little too much saccharin in this series where I can read more than a couple at a time.  I enjoy the author's use of what we think of the proper English used in the early 20th century.  I also enjoy Elizabeth Knowelden's storytelling in the audiobook.  If it weren't for Knowelden's narration I would never have bothered with the books.  She really has her pish posh's down. 

I give this a 6 of 10 rating

In the Market for Murder by T. E. Kinsey
Book 2 in the Lady Hardcastle Murder Mysteries series.

31:39 of the Funniest Ted Talk I've Ever Seen . . .

Close-up card magic with a twist | Lennart Green