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Blog Archive

2023 in Reading

Here’s what I read in 2023.

How I Take Notes (Digitally)

Most of my digital notes live together in one system, a folder with Markdown files that I can compile together into a simple website.

Accessibility Adventures: October 2023

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about in the world of accessibility: certifications, ebooks, precise and unambiguous language, and more.

2022 in Reading

Here’s what I read in 2022.

Accessibility Adventures: December 2022

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about in the world of accessibility: buttons, ARIA, iOS, Android, Fedora, and more.

Website Redesign

After several months of work, I have finally completed an extensive redesign of my website/blog.

SFF Adventures: January 2022

Here’s what I’ve been reading, watching, and listening to lately in the realms of SFF: Gravity Falls, Kipo, Scooby-Doo, and Breaking the Glass Slipper.

2021 in Reading

Here’s what I read in 2021.

Accessibility Adventures: November 2021

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about in the world of accessibility: birding, description lists, personalization, video games, audio descriptions, and the contrast triangle.

CPACC Results

I am now a Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies!

CPACC Reflection

I took the exam!

ICT Accessibility and Organizational Management

What, specifically, should an organization do to practice accessibility?

Disability Rights & Accessibility Laws, Inside the United States

Inside the United States, what rights do people with disabilities have and what laws mandate accessibility?

Disability Rights & Accessibility Laws, Outside the United States

Outside the United States, what rights do people with disabilities have and what laws mandate accessibility?

Disability Rights & Accessibility Laws, Regionally

What’s the state of disability rights and accessibility laws in different regions across the world? What are the key treaties, agreements, and standards?

Disability Rights & Accessibility Laws, Internationally

What international declarations and treaties affect the rights of people with disabilities?

User Experience, Usability, & Accessibility

How does accessibility relate to usability and user experience?

Universal Design for Learning

What are the principles and guidelines behind Universal Design for Learning?

Principles of Universal Design

What are the main ideas and guiding principles behind universal design?

Principles of Web Accessibility

What are the main ideas and guiding principles behind web accessibility?

Benefits of Accessible Design

What are the benefits of accessibility?

Universal Design vs. Accommodations

What is universal design? And how does it relate to accommodations?

Disability Etiquette

How can we be kind toward people with disabilities, rather than jerks?

Disability Demographics and Statistics

How many people have disabilities? From looking at statistics about people with disabilities, what else can we learn?

Disabilities, Barriers, Adaptive Strategies, and Assistive Tech

What are different types of disabilities? What are their characteristics and associated barriers? What are appropriate adaptive strategies, assistive technologies, and social and/or environmental supports?

General Types of Disabilities

There are many different types of disabilities. What are the different ways we can categorize them?

Theoretical Models of Disability

What are the different ways of understanding disability, and what are the strengths and weakness of these different models?

Let's Disambiguate Some Terms

Let’s take a moment to get our terms straight and talk about different professions that deal with disability and accessibility.

What is CPACC and What Am I Doing?

I am planning to take the CPACC exam, and I am going to blog my way through the body of knowledge as I study.

2020 in Reading

Here’s what I read in 2020.

SFF Adventures: December 2020

Here’s what I’ve been reading, watching, and listening to lately in the realms of SFF: Kim Reaper, Adventure Time, Uprooted, and more.

Accessibility Updates

I recently made several accessibility updates to this site.

SFF Adventures: October 2020

Here’s what I’ve been reading and listening to lately in the realms of SFF: portal fantasies, Robin Hood, D&D, and more.

Holy Shit! Representation Matters! Or, How SFF Helped Me Realize I’m Nonbinary

I’m trans/nonbinary. I use nonbinary pronouns such as they/them, and I came to this bit of self-knowledge through the science fiction and fantasy (SFF) community.

Accessibility Adventures: October 2020

In August, I posted about how I’ve recently discovered and have been falling in love with the world of digital accessibility. Here’s what I’ve been up to since then.

SFF Adventures: August 2020

Here’s what I’ve been reading and listening to lately in the realms of SFF: Becky Chambers, tabletop RPGs, and more.

Accessibility Adventures: August 2020

I’m becoming an accessibility geek. It began when I started my new job back in January, and it’s accelerated over the past few months.

SFF Adventures: July 2020

Here’s what I’ve been reading and listening to lately in the realms of SFF: comics, short stories, blog posts, and podcasts.

Introducing Graph Paper

I recently finished designing Graph Paper, a Jekyll website integrated with Bootstrap and packed with all the features you’d expect in a modern website/blog.

Favorite 2019 Short Stories

Here are my favorite short stories from 2019.

2019 in Reading

Here’s what I read in 2019.

Recent Reading: July 2019

Here’s what I’ve been reading lately: short fiction, epic fantasy, nonfiction, and more.

Ebook Design Project: Plays by Roswitha of Gandersheim

Standard Ebooks is a volunteer project that produces high-quality ebooks, incorporating modern typography and design standards.

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

Or, the classic American tradition of wanting a bold program of social reconstruction but not being willing to cut the military budget or super tax the super rich to pay for it.

Recent Reading: March 2019

Here’s what I’ve been reading lately: science fiction and fantasy about imperalism, anarchism, Trump-era politics, and the end of capitalism.

Website Redesign

Over the last two months, I taught myself the Bootstrap framework for web development, and I used it to redesign my website/blog.

2018 in Reading

Here’s what I read in 2018.

Favorite 2018 Short Stories

Here are my favorite short stories from 2018.

Happy Public Domain Day!

For the first time in over twenty years, we have a plethora of new work entering the public domain!

Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault

On the face of it, this is a book about prisons, but it’s really concerned with systems of discipline and with disciplinary power, which are at play all throughout society — in prisons yes, but also in schools, in business, in government, in the military, and even in our private lives.

Recent Reading: December 2018

Here’s what I’ve been reading lately: Liu Cixin, James S.A. Corey, and Carrie Vaughn as well as queer and trans short stories and comics.

Recent Reading: July 2018

Here’s what I’ve been reading lately: genre classics and recent political nonfiction.

So Now I Review Short Fiction

The Skiffy and Fanty Show is a science fiction and fantasy podcast network and a blog. And now, I’ve joined the team! I’m writing a monthly short fiction review column for the Skiffy and Fanty blog.

Recent Reading: February 2018

Here’s what I’ve been reading lately: novellas, nonfiction, and plays.

2017 in Reading

Here’s what I read in 2017.

Recent Reading: December 2017

Here’s what I’ve been reading lately: Ann Leckie, James S.A. Corey, Rosa Brooks, and more.

Recent Reading: November 2017

Here’s what I’ve been reading lately: short stories, a memoir, a post-apocalyptic murder mystery, and a fascinating book about Islamism.

The Catholic Church in China

Reading Ian Johnson’s essay and watching this documentary have made me excited all over again to be heading to China next year.

Recent Reading: September 2017

Here’s what I’ve been reading lately: Seanan McGuire, Cory Doctorow, Paul Cornell, Brian K. Vaughan, and Pia Guerra.

Recent Reading: August 2017 (Round 2)

Here’s what I’ve been reading lately: Ursula Le Guin, John Green, Lawrence Lessig, and a Chinese political thriller that I highly recommend.

Recent Reading: August 2017

Here’s what I’ve been reading lately: novellas, nonfiction, and manga.

Recent Reading: June 2017

Here’s what I’ve been reading lately: Iain Banks, Martha Wells, SFF poetry, and more.

Recent Reading: May 2017

Here’s what I’ve been reading lately: children’s books!

New Blog, New Website

I’ve migrated from WordPress to Jekyll.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Left Hand of Darkness gets lauded for doing really cool stuff with gender. That wasn’t my experience of the book. It’s still a really good book.

Community and Growth by Jean Vanier

While it’s easy to pick up and read a short section, it’s difficult to read this book straight for an hour. You’ll have to keep pausing to reflect.

Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor

I will read whatever Binti book comes next.

Trump Wrecked My Story

I wrote this scene in the summer of 2015. If I leave the scene unchanged, it feels outdated. But the humor of the scene won’t work if I make my fictional president a capricious buffoon.

The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson

The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe stunningly succeeds as a feminist re-imagining of Lovecraft.

The Imperial Radch Trilogy by Ann Leckie

I have a new core pillar in my sacred halls of science fiction.

Recent Reading: December 2016

Here’s what I’ve been reading lately: queer theory, poetry, and Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.

Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov

The Foundation books weirdly feel both outdated and fresh.

Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons by David Bollier

Commons offer one of the most hopeful visions of the future that I have come across, and this book encapsulates that hope in an interesting, accessible way.

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu

All in all, a fantastic collection.

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche

Perhaps I have been reading too much SF lately, but this book didn’t work for me.

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

In all those portal fantasies we love so much, what happens after the hero returns home to our world?

Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet by Jeffery Sachs

An argument for preemptive sustainable development rather than post-hoc military interventions.

Children of God by Mary Doria Russell

How much can you hate on a book for not being the book you want it to be?

Purple and Black by K.J. Parker

Parker brilliantly weaves accessible, fun, and funny writing with interesting philosophical ponderings.

Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang

Ted Chiang is brilliant, and the image he crafts in your head during this story is startlingly original and beautiful.

The Devil You Know by K.J. Parker

The world’s greatest philosopher sells his soul to the devil, and the demon managing his case thinks he’s up to something.

The 2015 Rhysling Anthology: The Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Poetry of 2014 edited by Rich Ristow

Have you heard of the Science Fiction Poetry Association?

Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey

This series is stupendously fun.

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

This is well-written science fiction that’s imagining a future I’m not seeing elsewhere.

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle

Start with Lovecraft, toss out the racism, replace it with sophisticated racial commentary, and you’ve got The Ballad of Black Tom.

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

If you’re looking for a page-turning mystery-thriller, look no farther.

The Cook Up: A Crack Rock Memoir by D. Watkins

If you are interested in Baltimore, go read this book.

Fantasy Magazine Issue 58: Women Destroy Fantasy! edited by Cat Rambo, Terri Windling, and Wendy N. Wagner

My favorite story here is “The Dryad’s Shoe,” a reimagining of Cinderella that asks: what if Cinderella just wanted to garden?

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

“Dialogue is the essence of revolutionary action.”

Recent Reading: Short Stories

I’ve been reading a lot of short stories recently.

“Divided by Infinity” by Robert Charles Wilson

Wilson has a great talent for taking a large, mind-bending science fiction concept and weaving it around an intimate, personal story.

The Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley

Just go read this. I stormed through it in a week and found myself trying to sell it to a good handful of my friends.

The Colored Museum by George C. Wolfe

Plays always lose something when you read them instead of watch them, and this play loses more than most.

Putting Education to Work: How Cristo Rey High Schools Are Transforming Urban Education by Megan Sweas

It feels appropriate to have read this as my service year is winding down.

The Piano Lesson by August Wilson

This play is awesome.

The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life by James Martin, S.J.

This book did a good job of uniting, solidifying, and gently expanding what I knew of the Jesuits and Ignatian spirituality.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God is a story to be heard, first and foremost. It’s an audiobook or perhaps a back porch epic.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

I’m a big believer in short chapters; they make a book much more readable, and The House on Mango Street scores many points just for its structure.

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

I’m struck by how original I found this nearly 50-year-old staple of fantasy.