Scrapbook Saturday – BTTI 2020
Katie 
Back to the Island 2022
Back to the Island 2022… I’m not going to lie, in the days leading up to this trip I was seriously hoping it would be canceled so I wouldn’t have to cancel it myself. There was so much stress and anxiety about getting a negative covid test to get into the country (even though I went nowhere for 10 days before I left, other than for my covid tests of course) and what would happen if I tested positive while I was there and needed to quarantine for 5-14 days.
But I finally had a negative PCR and Antigen result in hand and was ready to go to sleep at 8pm for a 2am wake up when Southwest emailed me that my flight from Hartford to Baltimore was canceled. I considered driving 4 hours to Baltimore and cutting out the Hartford portion (since I’d be returning through Baltimore too) but some friends were leaving out of Boston on American Airlines so I last second booked a brand new flight and Southwest rescheduled me for 2 days later when I was panicking. Arriving 2 days later wasn’t going to cut it, so I canceled that flight and hit the road to Boston to meet a friend. (Shout out to her for staying up all night to wait for me to get there and then for it to be time to go to the airport for a 5am flight #teamnosleep) We made it there without any other hiccups and got the shuttle to the resort. [Now to wait and hopefully get reimbursed by my travel insurance for all the last minute expenses *fingers crossed*]
Book Review: Going, Going, Gone!
In the middle of a modern day World Series between the San Francisco Giants and the New York Yankees, there is an earthquake. 2 of the players for the Giants and the manager, found that they have survived the quake, but when they make it out of the rubble, the ballpark is gone. In fact, nothing is how they remember it and they soon realize they have somehow gotten transported to 1906. Being unsuccessful in trying to find a way back to the present day, they end up playing baseball with the 1906 teams and realize the game is much different from what they had been playing. Since that is all they know how to do, they continue to play to make a living while trying to figure out how to get back to the present day. They also realize that a butterfly effect of sorts is going on and thinks that they thought should be happening based on things they learned in History class – are not as they should.
Can they make it back to present day and who will they need to help them get there? And with the changes to history – what else will happen in the present day based on the butterfly effect?
I liked the idea of this book, but it had a bit too much baseball filler for me when I really just wanted to find out if these guys were going to make it back home or not.
I received a free e-copy of this book from NetGalley in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.
About the Book
An earthquake decimates San Francisco’s baseball stadium. Two players and their manager are trapped. With water rising, the trio crawls through a gash in the wall. Naked and penniless, they climb through the muck onto shore. Downtown San Francisco is on fire. They can not find their stadium, or any new buildings, or the parking lot with their fancy cars. No one has a cell phone to call for help.
André Velez, the self-absorbed superstar; Johnny Blent, the faithful-to-his-wife rookie infielder; and their baseball-is-life manager, Bucky Martin, have been transported through time into the 1906 earthquake. Can they figure out what happened? Or how to get back to their 21st-century lives?
In a world without television cameras, social media, or Sabermetrics, the players make money the only way they know how. But the 1906 they’re inhabiting isn’t one from our history books. Soon, the three find themselves part of an international baseball challenge against the rump remnant of the Confederacy and its all-star team, featuring Walter Johnson, Martín Dihigo, Ty Cobb, and Ty’s murderous, menacing baseball brothers.
Book Review: C# Via the Happy Path
I’m always looking for new languages to learn, especially ones that might come up in my line of work – and C# is one I used to continually get asked if I knew, and I always had to say no. Not that I will become an expert by any means after reading this book, but having some more background on it is certainly a step in the right direction! This book is designed to be a quick and easy guide for computer science students – so if you have 0 experience with programming and dot net development, you might not want to start here. (Or at the very least teach yourself strings, loops, if/else on your own before jumping in. These are pretty simple concepts and I’m sure YouTube has some great intro videos out there.) The first part of the book is on hardware, which the intro said you can skip and come back to. Since I am working as a software engineer, I skimmed it to make sure it was all things I already knew before moving on.
The rest of the book contained a lot of code and I think it would have been better if I had a project to build and follow along with, but it definitely was a quick read and learn. I’m not sure in the end that C# is something I want to pursue, but I liked how this book was put together and I’m sure it would be helpful to many CS students!
I received a free e-copy of this book from NetGalley in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.
About the Book
If you need a quick and easy yet comprehensive book on C# programming, then we believe this is it.
No previous programming experience is required, because the book aims to teach you all the necessary things you’d want to know. We start with visually engaging explanations of how the computer actually works and you’ll have a great time flying through the book reading about bits, how things are implemented in hardware, what a computer memory is anyway and clear and practical explanations of object-oriented programming in C#.
We did our best to make sure the reader really gets it and provided some real-world code examples. You’ll be learning about classes, generics, inheritance, interfaces, delegates and events and why you would actually need them. To complement your learning with practical projects, you’ll build a fully functional game, and a registering system web application that IT companies would want you to do as a test job while applying.
Along the way you’ll be exposed to many other interesting and useful bits and pieces of code you wish you had been shown before. Why not take the leap of faith and see for ye self!