Star Trek: Borg by Hilary J. Bader My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is the audio component of the FMV (full motion video) game Star Trek Borg which came out in 1996 (if I am not mistaken).  Basically, strip out all the little gameplay elements and what you have left is a nice little movie.  This is the audio component of that.  The video is available

The Missing Cryptoqueen: The Billion Dollar Cryptocurrency Con and the Woman Who Got Away with It by Jamie Bartlett My rating: 5 of 5 stars I came across this book recently, which apparently is based on a BBC podcast.  I don't know how I missed it originally, but I guess it's expected since I have treated anything blockchain, crypto, and NFT-related to be one giant scam. 

To Lose the Earth by Kirsten Beyer My rating: 5 of 5 stars That was a good 'finale' for the Voyager relaunch series of books.  I am not sure if this is a series finale or a season finale, but I am curious to see where things go from here.  It's interesting to see the connections that ultimately make their way to star trek discovery, with species 10-C

Protectors by Kirsten Beyer My rating: 4 of 5 stars Last book of 2021 😂Interesting story, and interesting to see another federation-type organization in the Delta quadrant but without all the tech of the federation. The story expands upon something (I think) we saw briefly screen. Cool idea, but I do question the "let's stay in the Delta quadrant and explore"

 Yes, I still use swarm (although I still prefer the old name: Foursquare). 2021, unsurprisingly, was another year of staying local.  The most frequented places of the year is all the dog park visits that I had for Fred 😂, and the places I went walking to be away from humans yet still stretch my legs a bit.

 'Tis the time of year when various social media platforms do a  year-in-review, or have different plug-ins that give you some stats anyway.  I'll start with Twitter's festive Christmas tree version of who I've (apparently) interacted with over the month of December.  I don't recognize some of these profile pics🤔

 Another Year In Review from a social site.  This time on Untappd, which I use to keep track of various beers I've tried (so that I can remember whether I liked or didn't like them when I see them in the store).  I don't expect of Untappd usage in 2021 since I've decided to take a break from beer in 2021, but we'll see.  Here's what happened in 2020:

 I usually post these a bit earlier in January, but here is my 2020 Goodreads year in review 🙂. I guess I met my minimum reading for 2020, even in a pandemic lockdown ;-)

 Happy New Year...even though it's close to the end of January 😀.It's been a busy month, but things are coming down to "normal" levels of activity.  After the crazy rush to finish my completed dissertation draft during the winter break, get caught up with the day job after the winter break, and get everything prepped for my teaching side-gig this spring, I had some time to update my website

The Orville #1: New Beginnings Part 1 of 2 by David A. Goodman My rating: 5 of 5 stars More of a comment on both 1+2 of this series.  Interesting story. Gives a bit of background on the "federation" equivalent in the Orville universe.  It's interesting that the old-style uniforms had rank insignia like TNG ;-). We also get to see sentient fowl, which was very Mighty Max :-).