User Profile

pootriarch

pootriarch@sfba.club

Joined 4 months ago

mostly sapphic·witch·romance (pick two) and, in mentally calmer times, climate paranoia

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pootriarch's books

Currently Reading

Ingrid Burrington: Networks of New York (Paperback, 2016, Melville House)

With more than 50 color illustrations, Burrington takes us on a tour whereby she decodes …

A true field guide to chalk scribble, not just for NYC

A charming guide to network infrastructure, in the style of a nature field guide, by @ingrid@everything.happens.horse, a self-proclaimed artist-not-techie. Like a good field guide, the sketches highlight the visual differences between, say, a public Wi-Fi access point and an automated license-plate reader.

Atlas Obscura wrote the review that I'd like to have written: www.atlasobscura.com/articles/mapping-the-hidden-structures-of-new-york-citys-internet-networks

[This is a resubmitted 2021 review that was lost in an instance migration.]

Ross, John: Network know-how (Paperback, 2009, No Starch Press)

Good when published, but now superfluous

When written in 2009, this book covered a lot of networking concepts that may not have been general knowledge. Ethernet! Wi-Fi! Sharing a printer between computers! Our devices were yoked to individual machines by USB cables; we were dumb and happy.

Sixteen years later, we're much less dumb and much less happy. Anyone who needs to know what's in here already knows it. It feels unfair to rate a book poorly when it once was good, but really, you don't need to pick this up.

Violet Blue: The smart girl's guide to privacy (2015)

"Discusses how to protect personal information from online privacy violations. Covers how to set and …

Never scan or photograph your ID and send it to anyone online—even to Google or Facebook. No one should be asking for your ID, and you're not legally required to show it.

The smart girl's guide to privacy by  (Page 13)

2025: golf claps for the governments making it so you are legally required to give your ID to websites

Charlie Jane Anders: Lessons in Magic and Disaster (EBook, 2025, Tor Books)

Jamie is the average New England academic in-training--she has a strong queer relationship, generational trauma, …

This time of year, fall creeps up on you and whacks you upside the head. One minute it’s hazy and bright and your collarbone itches with the sweat trapped under your shirt, the next—bam! The sky darkens early, cold mist fills the air, and everything feels weighed down with regret, or just damp.

Lessons in Magic and Disaster by  (3%)

Andrey Taranov: Guide de conversation Français-Néerlandais et dictionnaire concis de 1500 mots (EBook, Français language, 2017, T&P Books Publishing)

Compact phrase book with IPA pronunciations

A small, inexpensive book, organized by situational themes, of common Dutch phrases relative to their representation in French.

Two things made this stand out: Some common phrases, like "exit" or "where is?", appear in multiple sections so that you don't have to flip around guessing where to find the part that you should "already know." And the pronunciation guides use the International Phonetic Alphabet; this is important to me as Dutch uses phonemes from (at least) English, French, and German. Most guides try to approximate the pronunciation in the reader's tongue, with varying (but generally low) levels of success. IPA removes that ambiguity, at the cost of needing to understand IPA itself.

Paul Yamazaki: Reading the Room (Paperback, 2024, Ode Books)

When I walk into Three Lives in New York, or other stores in San Francisco like Green Arcade or Green Apple, or on the rare chance I get to go to Seminary Co-op in Chicago, my eye gravitates to two things: one, the thing that I'm not familiar with and, two, something I may be very familiar with but now see in a new context. It's all about developing a conversation between the books.

Reading the Room by  (Page 1 - 2)

In which the City Lights bookseller name-checks my beloved Green Arcade, which survived lockdown only to close soon after.