Monads for Normal Programmers

If you know people interested in programming language theory, you will have heard of the monad. Especially in Haskell, they are used extensively. When trying to find out what they are, exactly, the average programmer will have a distinct Matrix feeling, though: You can not be told what a Monad is! Lots and lots of websites try to explain what a monad is, so many that you must wonder what an exceptionally awesome concept this is that it can not be explained in simple, understandable terms, but is still so important that people will not simply give up on using it.

After watching a Google Tech Talk presentation recently, I was enlightened as to how monads can be explained to normal programmers.

One-Way Functions for Unique Identifiers

A somewhat common but faulty pattern for programmers who need to hide information is to use unsalted hash functions. This does not work. Let me explain.

Book Review: A Latent Dark

A Latent Dark

by

Martin Kee

Why no real cover?

In the steampunk novel A Latent Dark by Martin Kee, eleven year old Skyla barely escapes as the house of her mother is burned down. A hunt begins with Reverend Inspector Lyle Summers trying to bring her in to save his church, while Skyla tries to find out what happened to her aunt.

I was positively surprised by this book. It starts out seemingly as a standard witch story, but soon diverges from the normal expectations. In particular, the author manages to created a unique steampunkesque world while telling the story, mostly without delving into infodumps. The world just unfolds while you read the story. This was very well done.

There were a few things that annoyed me, though. A few sections did not advance the plot fast enough, making it laborous to get through them. The author also over-uses deus ex machina resolutions. They do, eventually, have a coherent explanation in the story, but during reading, too many dramatic situations are resolved by unmotivated semi-miracles. And finally, a pet peeve of mine. Stories with a strong fantasy flair should try and avoid modern physics as the main explanatory point. Explaining magic using a modern understanding of subatomic physics just kills immersion for me.

Other than that, a well-written and an enjoyable read. Recommended.

Book Review: Riverwatch

Riverwatch

by

Joseph Nassise

Why no real cover?

In the mystery novel Riverwatch by Joseph Nassise, construction workers find an ancient statue in an abandondened tomb. When they return with the property owner, the statue is gone, and a corpse is in the tomb instead. Soon, others are killed as well.

The narrative starts out well in the style of Lovecraft, but soon switches to describing the evil explicitly, turning the book from a horror novel I might have enjoyed into a mixture of mystery and splatter which is not exactly my kind of genre. And while the text is mostly written fluidly, the story is a bit too cliché and the characters remain flat and uninteresting thorough the book, so I was actually happy it was over when it was.

I suspect I might have enjoyed the book more if it had been my type of genre. So if you enjoy mystery books about ancient evils splattering in the modern world, you might like it.

Book Review: The Tombs

The Tombs

by

Clive Cussler

Why no real cover?

In the adventure novel The Tombs by Clive Cussler, the rich treasure hunting couple Sam and Remi Fargo are called to help by a friend of theirs with an excavation. What they find puts them on the trail of Attila’s long-lost tomb. But they are not the only ones interested in the treasures, and soon they find themselves in grave danger.

This is the fourth book in Clive Cussler’s Fargo adventure series. It’s my favorite series by him, though I have to say this book is not the best one of them. Still, the fast-paced action combined with very likeable characters made the book a joy to read and a pain to hear the alarm clock after way too little sleep. For me, they made up for the in parts somewhat thin story.

Again, one of the things Cussler does really well is to present a double-protagonist of male and female, including some genderized roles such as a damsel in distress scene, while balancing those out easily and giving both partners strengths and weaknesses that make neither one clearly superior. This is sadly rare in the book market.

If you like adventure stories, don’t miss out on this book.

Circe 1.0 released

Version 1.0 of Circe, the Client for IRC in Emacs, has been released.

It is always difficult to make a release, especially a major one such as 1.0, for software you develop yourself. Programs are really never done, so making that step can take a while. For us, it took over seven years.

Development on Circe began in August 2005. Since then, Circe has grown a lot, and today, a small group of developers are actively using and continuously improving it.

You can read more about it on the client homepage:

https://github.com/jorgenschaefer/circe/wiki

Book Review: Blaze of Glory

Blaze of Glory

by

Weston Ochse

Why no real cover?

In the apocalyptic novel Blaze of Glory by Weston Ochse, the world is overrun by zombies an extraterrestial blob of slime martian invaders maggots, which are seemingly exterminating all of humanity. The story follows an unlikely group of survivors, who for all they know could be the last living people on earth! They stick together to push through, but the odds are against them.

As this summary of the plot might show, the story of this book is very, very generic. In the post scriptum of the book, the author notes that he wanted to write a story in the B-movie genre alongside of Tremors and The Blob, and if that was the goal, he succeeded well. Too well, for my taste: The book has pretty much no unique flavor, no surprises, nothing to set it apart from all the other stories in this genre. Which is sad, because the characters are somewhat likeable and the general writing style is mostly fast-paced and easy to read. Had the author done just a little bit to make the story stand out from the rest, this could have been a great book. But as is, it’s just one of many.

Unless you are a huge fan of b-movie apocalyptic worlds, I can’t recommend this book.