Birch Street Computing -

about me

John M is a Linux fan in Lowell, MA.

I work at at a company writing software. I fool around with Free and Open Source software for fun & profit.

I was big into Last.fm and you can still see some of what I listen to there. I can also be found using github and recently sourcehut as well as bitbucket (historically). I don't care for most popular social media sites. If I have an account on one or the other it's probably either old and unused or was created just for tinkering.

promo

Links to things I like, use, or otherwise feel is worth sharing. Things I'd like to see get more popular.

Some Books of 2020

I wanted to keep a bit of a record of some books I read in 2020. This isn't a complete list. This only covers books I completed and only those that were a first read. I didn't keep track over the course of the year, I just looked over what's on the shelf and I clearly remember completing it.

This isn't a brag list or anything, but I am happy with the fact that I read much more long-form books this year than the past few.

  • A Think Tank for Liberty - Poole

  • Bad Blood - Carreyrou

  • Bottleneckers - Mellor, Carpenter

  • Grant - Chernow

  • How Innovation Works - Ridley

  • How to Have Impossible Conversations - Boghossian, Lindsay

  • John Goblikon's Guide to Living Your Best Life - Goblikon, Dermer, Rispoli

  • Lord of Emperors - Kay

  • Lost in Math - Hossenfelder

  • Seeing Like a State - Scott

  • Skin in the Game - Taleb

  • The Book of Legendary Lands - Eco

  • The Founder's Mentality - Zook, Allen

  • The Guarded Gate - Okrent

  • The Infidel and the Professor - Rasmussen

  • The Storm Before The Storm - Duncan

  • Thinking as a Science - Hazlitt

  • What If? / How To / Thing Explainer - Munroe

Every blog page or article on this site is available under the CC-BY-SA license unless otherwise noted.