New Orleans, 1834. Benjamin January is a free man of color and a Paris-trained surgeon who must support himself as a musician. His sister Olympe, a voodooi­enne, and another woman, Célie, are accused of murdering Célie’s husband, and Ben must save them from hanging. As a pro­fes­sion­al musician and a colored man, Ben moves between the high society of the old French in­hab­i­tants and the new American merchants, the poor white areas of town, the many slaves, and the small free black middle class. Hambly adeptly explores slavery, the uneasy crossover between French and American …continue.

A body has washed up in the canals of Venice, that of an American soldier from the nearby US base at Vicenza. Com­mis­sario Guido Brunetti doesn’t believe that it’s a mugging gone wrong, especially when he sees the fear in the eyes of the female army doctor who’s sent to identify the body. He digs and finds corruption among the rich and powerful, in a toxic coverup.

Brunetti is a decent and honorable family man, whose sense of justice is undi­min­ished by working for an in­com­pe­tent func­tionary in …continue.

San Diego cop Benny Freedman decides to meet his Belfast relatives for the first time. They disowned his Catholic mother decades ago when she married his Jewish father. It turns out that her siblings are still un­re­pen­tant bigots, but he finds himself drawn to two of his cousins, pretty young Catherine Callahan and Brendan O’Malley, a poet whose brother Sean has just been murdered. Cousin Benny finds himself drawn into in­ternecine feuding between the IRA and the INLA, as well as skirmishes against the British Army and …continue.

We saw Mad Max: Fury Road at the Cinerama tonight, as part of its Eight Days of Oscar—Fury Road having being nominated for ten Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. I have no idea if it will win any awards from the Academy, but it’s no ordinary action movie.

Action there is aplenty, a kinetic feast of racing cars and roaring maniacs that rarely lets up. Imperator Furiosa and Max flee across the desert, taking Immortan Joe’s five nubile wives to a better place. They seek hope, Furiosa seeks redemption, and Max seeks mostly to survive. Furiosa sets the plot in motion; Max is a loner battered by fate, grudgingly coming to the …continue.

London, January 1381. John of Gaunt‘s regency is in trouble, unrest abounds throughout the land, and uprisings are being plotted. Brother Athelstan and his friend the Coroner are invited to a per­for­mance by Gaunt’s players, the Straw Men, at the Tower of London. When a murder occurs during the play, Athelstan is required to in­ves­ti­gate. Several more murders happen before he finds the culprit.

Doherty pulls off both an intricate plot and a satisfying historical novel.

I visited a faux-Irish bar this evening where both three-leaved and four-leaved shamrocks were found in abundance.

The reason why shamrocks are associated with Ireland is that our patron saint, St. Patrick, used the three-leaved plant as a metaphor for the Divine Trinity, the three gods in one, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. (The Irish usually refer to the Holy Spirit as the Holy Ghost. I spent ages 7–18 at St. Mary’s College CSSp in Dublin, which is run by the Holy Ghost Fathers.)

A four-leaf clover is considered lucky because it is rare. It may be lucky but it is not a shamrock.

[Pre­vi­ous­ly published at the now defunct MetaBrite Dev Blog.]

I needed to sort a Python dictionary by value today, rather than by key. I found it confusing, so I’ll share what I learned.

Assume the following dictionary, where each value is a tuple of (ID, score). How do we sort by score; i.e., the second item in the value tuple? (For the purposes of this discussion, ignore the meaning of the dictionary’s key.)

>>> some_dict = dict(a=(123, 0.7), b=(372, 0.2), e=(456, 0.85), d=(148, 0.23), c=(502, 0.1))
>>> some_dict
{'a': (123, 0.7), 'c': (502, 0.1), 'b': (372, 0.2), 'e': (456, 0.85), 'd': (148, 0.23)}

Python dic­tio­nar­ies are inherently unsorted, unless you use Or­dered­Dict, which …continue.

Nick Sharman is a washed up London PI, living with two strippers and drinking himself into oblivion. He used to be a promising Detective Constable, and a bad case from that time comes back to haunt him. The teenaged daughter of an inspector died after being raped twelve years ago. His sergeant fitted up a local flasher and Sharman re­luc­tant­ly went along. Now Sailor Grant is out and wants to clear his name. Sharman refuses to get involved; Grant is murdered; and Sharman’s former sergeant beats him half to …continue.

The wife of a rich politician has been kidnapped by terrorists who want to exchange her in nine days’ time for one of their number who’s in prison. Actor Bob Farran thinks he can im­per­son­ate Tom Lacey well enough that Sally Morland will be freed and he can earn the £250,000 reward.

We spend three quarters of the book preparing for the im­per­son­ation, which gives Farran time to do it well. While the nine-day delay enabled the im­per­son­ation, it makes little sense for the terrorists to have asked for such a delay. The exchange and …continue.

Ten years ago, Rommy "Squirrel" Gan­dolph—­gen­er­al­ly regarded as a harmless thief not playing with a full deck­—­con­fessed to three murders. Now he’s about to be executed and Arthur Raven, his court-appointed attorney, believes his protes­ta­tions of innocence. The book follows Arthur, who finds an ally in Gillian Sullivan, the disgraced ex-judge who presided over Gandolph’s trial, and the prosecutor, Muriel Wynn, and the detective, Larry Starczek.

Turow digs deep into the characters of his four pro­tag­o­nists, as they struggle with each other and with the rev­e­la­tions of the case. They are all flawed, …continue.