So, the BASH downloader worked well enough for what it was. Then I decided to do some functional upgrades. It got so complex for a BASH script that I decided to make it a C# app. The whole dotnet platform is kind of the new Java, so why not roll with it? Besides, I’m getting pretty good at this dotnet on Linux thing–all my servers that I run are Linux (mostly Debian). I used to be pretty big on PHP on that platform, but as dotnet has matured that’s gone by the wayside.

The end result was pretty good, I think. Fairly simple service-layer architecture, with one service for dealing with episode management, and one for managing the metadata. I have it set up as a scheduled task that runs every four hours on my Plex box. It’s done fairly well, after ironing out the kinks over a couple weeks.

The neat little part of it was Main was as simple as:

private static async Task Main(string[] args)
    {
        var serviceProvider = ServiceConfiguration
            .AddServices()
            .BuildServiceProvider();

        using (var scope = serviceProvider.CreateScope())
        {
            var episodeProcessing = scope.ServiceProvider.GetService<IEpisodeProcessing>();
            if (episodeProcessing != null)
            {
                await episodeProcessing.ProcessEpisodes();
            }
        }
    }

Much like the BASH script, it pulls from a list that I define–though, I threw that list into a SQLite db. Still thinking about how I want to manage the list. Possibly a web app, possibly an Electron app. A web app would be pretty simple, but I’ve poked at Electron a bit and I do dig how it’s pretty much a web app in spirit. We’ll see. It’s not like I add podcasts to my list very often, so I can ponder a bit.

This series Zahn has constructed has been a wonderful one. It has been a true pleasure to delve into the world and thoughts of Grand Admiral Thrawn.

While the scope of this particular trilogy doesn’t seem to hold, for me, the same scope and grandeur as the tales of Thrawn pre-Disney, and I also knew of his ultimate fate (to this point) in Star Wars: Rebels, the overarching trilogy was a great origin tale for he and the Chiss.

This particular trilogy holds the interesting distinction of being exclusively from the perspective of the Empire. Despite knowing it was headed by a despotic dictator in Palpatine, I got the feel of Thrawn and company as being the “good guys”. Definitely an odd, and fascinating, position to be in after reading everything Republic/Rebel/New Republic in perspective.

He showed loyalty towards the machine, but he also showed loyalty towards his crew—and the Chiss—at the same time. I didn’t get the impression of him as being one of the “boot-lickers” that was described in the original trilogy novel adaptation of “A New Hope”. Fitting for his character, as becomes obvious over the course of this trilogy.

I hope this isn’t the last we see of Thrawn.

Holy. Cow. Just enabled sudo via Touch ID on my MBA. This. Changes. Everything.

All I had to do was edit /etc/pam.d/sudo and add the line

auth sufficient pam_tid.so

Awe. Some.

Now all they need to do is add in something you “know”, and they’d have some relatively robust security going on there.

So, somehow I had avoided reading this one in high school. Friends have told me they had read it, but I don’t remember picking the book up in any of my CP English classes. I do remember some Ray Bradbury, Brontë, Fitzgerald, Shelley, and many other great authors. In a freak of circumstance, though, I had never picked up Orwell–even in my sci-fi literature class senior year.

In 2019, I have finally gotten through the novel. I now understand all of the references, and see crazy parallels in our own world.

Ultimately, the novel is about the dangers of totalitarianism. The story revolves around a man, Winston Smith, who becomes disenchanted with Oceania (a nation comprised of what was the United States, Canada, England and a couple of other countries) as it is and seeks to revolt against it. He meets a woman, and given the world in which he lives, does not trust her. But, eventually they are befriended and fall in love. Tragically, they’re separated by Big Brother and “cleansed” before final disposition.

The novel was quite compelling. Obviously, we haven’t come close to that world in the current day–and hopefully will never even skirt the edges of that kind of world. Politically, both of the major sides these days may accuse the other of bringing us there. I have a feeling, if we ever do, it’ll be because of both of them.

In any case, the writing was excellent. When I pictured the tech in this world, I pictured very much things that I would have imagined seeing in 1940s projections of the future. The telescreen, for instance, I imagined to be a gigantic television. Of course, if you look at the world as it truly is today, one might say they’d be smartphones. They have rockets, atomic weapons, pneumatic tubes for delivery of information. Obviously a bit primitive by our standards, but science in that age has a far different purpose in perpetuating the state.

The ending was somber, but I suppose I should have expected that. I had high hopes in the middle of the story that the revolution that Smith envisioned would come true, that he’d avoid the seemingly inevitable execution. I knew that someone would betray him, though I somehow thought it’d be Julia before O’Brien–love just seemed such an unlikely thing in that world, and so she seemed the most likely to have turned him in for his “perversion” against the state.

I’m only sorry that it took me this long to get to it; it really was a great story, and hopefully not prescient about the world to come (as I’m sure everyone who has read it has hoped since Orwell published it).

At some point soon, I want to read Brave New World. Apparently, the world ends up in very much the same kind of place but in a very different way. As opposed to brutality to institute totalitarianism, the populace is lulled into it by having all of their wants and desires met.

For now, though, I’m reading a nice Star Trek novel called “To Reign in Hell” about Khan Noonien Singh and his time on Ceti Alpha V. My pattern seems to be that every other novel I read these days is a Star Trek one (sometimes Star Wars, if something new is out). There are still four active series being written (TOS, TNG, VOY, DIS) at the moment, so there are always plenty of new novels there to read. Also, again anything Star Wars (yes, even Disney Star Wars) is something I gravitate towards. I’m also reading through Harry Potter–I’m through Order of the Phoenix, at this point. And, I have plenty on the horizon that I want to pick up.

Ahhh, how I love reading…

This may be the best Star Trek since TNG–in particular, tonight’s episode (“If Memory Serves”). This whole season has been quite the build-up, and far more consistent than the first season. I still think this series would have been better-served had it been anthological, as was one of the early ideas of Bryan Fuller–with each season being a self-contained story with disparate crews, ships and even time frames. But, it seems like CBS is investing in Star Trek, at the moment–there is a forthcoming Section 31 series, a Jean-Luc Picard series, and an animated series which follows the same spirit of the TNG episode “Lower Decks”. We’ll see how it all goes, but I do wonder if we’ll see the same kind of overload that I think is happening with Star Wars. Now that there aren’t going to likely be any movies for the foreseeable future, though, I’m glad that Star Trek is out there in SOME form besides novels.