The Flame Bearer (The Saxon Stories, #10)

(www.goodreads.com)

the_flame_bearer

📚 Uhtred of Babbenburg's lifetime obsession with reclaiming his stolen birthright reaches its endgame, but as with all things in his complicated, but fascinating life, it's never simple or without unexpected consequences. I've really enjoyed this series and found The Flame Bearer to have a surprising amount of emotional payoff for my investment in Uhtred's story.

Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made

(www.goodreads.com)

revolution_in_the_valley

📚 Continuing my computer history trend for the year, just finished Andy Hertzfeld's definitive insider account of the creation of the Macintosh computer, Revolution in The Valley and it was quite good.

Nexus (Nexus, #1)

(www.goodreads.com)

nexus

📚 Nexus is a fun and fast paced nano-tech thriller with a lot of interesting ideas.

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution

(www.goodreads.com)

hackers_heroes_of_the_computer_revolution

📚Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution is a thoroughly enjoyable history of the late 20th century computer revolution and the unique individuals that made it all happen. Took me a while to work through, but it was worth it.

Warriors of the Storm (The Saxon Stories, #9)

(www.goodreads.com)

warriors_of_the_storm

📚Just finished, Warriors of the Storm, another solid entry in the Saxon Stories series. Uhtred continues to be a fun character as he's evolved into an old battle-scarred warlord still struggling to balance his personal ambitions and political obligations.

Once a Runner

(www.goodreads.com)

Once a Runner

📚Finally read the classic running novel, Once a Runner and really liked it. It absolutely captured the singleminded focus, dedication, and sacrifice the sport requires at the highest levels.

15 Years

I knew that the anniversary of my first post on axodys.com had to be coming up, but I hadn’t gotten around to checking my archives until today. Turns out that January 24 is in fact its birthday.

This site got its start as a place for me to play around with html and the web at my very own domain. But it’s been a blog from the beginning, and I realized this pretty quickly. While I linked to various interesting sites from the first post on, I also treated my blog a lot more like an open journal than I do now.

Thinking back I’m impressed that I stuck with it at all considering how crude the process was. I updated everything manually at first, then eventually burned out on the process. Eventually Blogger came out and by late October of 1999 I was able to use their groundbreaking system to handle my updates.

Since that first couple years my posting frequency gradually waned which seems strange when you consider how much blogging and news gathering technology has improved in that span. But despite my tendencies towards consumption rather than blogging productivity, I’ve never abandoned the site and don’t expect to any time soon. I don’t have any concrete plans for more writing this year or the next, but I expect the blog will carry on much like it always has– one post at a time.

Joel Kills a Patent

Joel Spolsky: Killing patents with Ask Patents

My dream is that when big companies hear about how friggin’ easy it is to block a patent application, they’ll use Ask Patents to start messing with their competitors. How cool would it be if Apple, Samsung, Oracle and Google got into a Mexican Standoff on Ask Patents? If each of those companies had three or four engineers dedicating a few hours every day to picking off their competitors’ applications, the number of granted patents to those companies would grind to a halt. Wouldn’t that be something!

Along those lines, companies should start giving rewards for contributing to a blocked patent application.

Glenn Fleishman Buys The Magazine

(the-magazine.org)

In a somewhat surprising turn of events Glenn Fleishman just bought The Magazine from Marco "The Golden Goose" Arment.

Thus Mr. Arment, in effect, built and incubated the publication, and your faithful editor — as of June 1, editor and publisher — is the beneficiary of that work, which I shall cherish and shepherd. Marco will be an advisor, and I will listen to him, as we all might. Marco has made a variety of interesting decisions in his life that have given him both personal fulfillment and personal success. He’s not telling me yet what he’s working on next, and I can’t wait to see it unveiled before Marissa Mayer buys it and removes its vowels.1

Can't wait to see where Glenn takes _The Magazine_ and what Marco comes up with next.

Marco on Tumblr to Yahoo

(www.marco.org)

Marco Arment’s perspective on the Tumblr to Yahoo deal.](http://www.marco.org/2013/05/20/one-person-product)

I've been looking forward to Marco's take on things since the Tumblr to Yahoo acquisition news came out and I was not disappointed. A great candid and humble look back on his time at Tumblr. Now hopefully John and Casey can get him to discuss things a little further on this week's Accidental Tech Podcast too.