Ahhhhh! Summer in Australia. Why did I not know about you sooner?
Eureka!
I’ve been working on a card game on and off for the past few months. Partly as an experiment and partly out of laziness, I decided to “give it away for free”. In practice, this was more work than I expected. For one, I had to learn a little bit about copyright. Long story short, it is released under the license CC-BY4.0, which means—loosely speaking—you can do anything you want with it provided you cite your sources.
One of the big cons of this approach is that you have to find your own way to print your own cards, which is either cheaply done on a desktop printer (lame!) or expensively done on high quality cardstock (ugh!). I’m not sure a way around this.
You can find the instructions for printing and playing the game here.
Reading!
Children’s Literature Recommendations
Pig the Grub by Aaron Blabey
Fun. But would you expect anything less with a Pig book? All the kids love a good Pig story.
Ada Lace Sees Red by Emily Calandrelli and Renaee Kurilla
This is the second book in the Ada Lace series and I think this one is even better than the first! There are lots of relatable elements to this story. But the science—oh, the science—for me made it all the better!
Adult Literature September Reads
Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect by Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie
OK, full disclosure. I made a huge mistake in buying the audiobook for this one. There is just too many references to figures to follow along. I made it through alright by slowing it down and already having some experience with causal networks, but I can’t really recommend, or not recommend, this one. Some of the historical anecdotes were interesting, but it was at times hard to read (errr… listen) to the author’s self-pity about not being more recognised.
Through Two Doors at Once: The Elegant Experiment That Captures the Enigma of Our Quantum Reality by Anil Ananthaswamy
Hands down the best popular account of quantum physics. This tells in beautiful detail the key issues surrounding the controversies of quantum physics. The way the author does this all from the lense of a single experiment is inspiring.
Bare Minimum Parenting: The Ultimate Guide to Not Quite Ruining Your Child by James Breakwell
Comedy mixed with unintentional parenting wisdom. The jokes and style get a bit repetitive, but overall I enjoyed the laughs.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
Finally got around to reading this highly recommended book. Wish I had read it sooner. Every positive thing written about this book is probably true.
Currently reading: Woo’s Wonderful World of Maths by Eddie Woo
Writing!
Today is the day for ABCs of Engineering with Dr Sarah Kaiser. Check out my #12DaysOfEngineering over on Twitter.
While you are at it, pick up a copy of Blockchain for Babies with Marco Tomamichel.
The final cover for Cat in the Box (1 June 2019) is here. I’ve seen the internal illustrations and they are great as well! Looking forward to see this one hit the shelves next year! If you can’t quite read the book blurb, it says: Schrodinger’s famous paradox reimagined for the modern world, with more talking animals and fewer dead cats.
Arithmetic! (academic news)
Big news for the Ferrie group! Dr Clara Javaherian and Dr Shibdas Roy have joined as postdoctoral researchers. They will both be working on the AUSMURI project, which is about machine learning and quantum control. Stay tuned to hear about some exciting new science this year!
Events!
- I visited Booktopia, Australia largest online bookseller, got a tour and did a podcast: https://twitter.com/booktopia/status/1071275736118558722
- Vacation!
Up next!
Both Blockchain for Babies and ABCs of Engineering are released on 1 Jan 2019! But, seeing as it is still peak summer in Australian, we’ll still be at the beach 😁
