Chris Brooks

What I’m Reading

• I’ve been making bread with my learnings from Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza. This book is fantastic and great for beginners like me. I first checked it out from the library then after making a loaf or four ended up purchasing the book.
• On the advice of an uncle I read Lords of the Desert: The Battle Between the US and Great Britain for Supremacy in the Modern Middle East and thought it was average. It fell into the trap that many history books do: too much “this happened then this happened” without a binding narrative to tie it all together. A bit too academic for my taste, though extremely well researched.
• I read most of The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money, mainly wanting to reconcile ideas with my own teaching approach. This is more focused on K–12 and general liberal arts education. I think Caplan has fewer issues with vocational and professional education. Main point: a BS/BA degree is primarily a signal to employers that the degree holder is capable of completing some amount of focused work. The degree itself is often not valuable otherwise.

What I’m Contemplating

• Is Ayn Rand important? – Headline is reason enough to read.
• The Mysterious Career of Matthew Slater, Special Teams Superstar – Love stories like this about special players.
• Why 5:30 Is the Ultimate Dining Time – Another reason: I got to bed about 9pm each night.
• How tax brackets actually work – Very 101 video but still perhaps helpful to some.
• John Dingell: My last words for America – Civil thoughts from a civil man.
• Why have countries moved away from wealth taxes? – Either good lessons to consider here, or perhaps good reasons to avoid it completely.

What I’m Watching

• A Separation – Outstanding movie by Iranian director Asghar Farhadi. I now want to explore the rest of his titles.
• Sholay – This was recommended to me a long time ago as a classic Bollywood film to experience. It didn’t disappoint, but like many Bollywood films this is loooong.
• Tokyo Story – The classic Ozu film about a pair of elderly grandparents visiting their children on a trip from the fishing village to post-war Tokyo. Subtle, heartbreaking at times, and especially poignant as a relatively new empty nester.
• The Great Escape – Amazon Prime has some great classic films available right now (hard to find!) and this was one of them. It seems like my viewings of this movie are always far enough apart that I forget the details of the endings of the various escapees.
• All The President’s Men – The second classic film on Amazon Prime that I watched this week during my cold-recovery movie binge. Wonder if there will be a similar move made in the coming years about the Mueller Report?

What I’m Playing

• Ken, Spence and I played A Feast for Odin again, this time using my own copy that has an awesome custom foam core insert built in.
• We had more time left on Superbowl Sunday so we then played Railways of the World. I made some stupid choices early on but still had fun playing. We used the wrong income track, which lowered and compressed the income scale. At least we were all playing with the same constraints. Fun game but also a reminder of how poorly done the human factors are in most of these Eagle games.
• Jacob and I teamed up against Rob and KC at Game On! last weekend in a 2 v 2 game of Holland ’44: Operation Market-Garden. We played from about 10am to midnight and go through turn 12 I think. This is clearly a 2 day game to get the entire experience.
• Jacob and I also played in the ASL tournament, so the rest of the weekend was all ASL, all the time. Mini game, Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Round 4.

What I’m Contemplating

• One Year of Early Retirement, Part 1: Biggest Lessons – I like reading these narratives, if only to compare notes and see if others’ “early retirement” feels as non-retirement as mine does (in a good way!).
• Am I financially independent? (And does it matter?) – I need to meet JD someday – we are in the same town. Lots to agree with here, particularly the hinting that a small income can have a huge impact on offsetting the risk of depleting retirement assets.
• How to save $1 trillion on defense spending – I could get behind option 3.
• Is Sunscreen the New Margarine? – I take vitamin D right now (shouldn’t most Oregonians?) but will keep an eye on this research.
• Capitalism and Inequality – AVC – Fred sums up my views on capitalism.

More on Teaching Process Improvement

• In Praise of GoodNotes – This is close to the method I use in class. I have an automated workflow that allows me to quickly upload my notes to Basecamp at the end of class. I’ve almost moved completely away from using slides.
• GoodNotes 5: The MacStories Review – The latest update is pretty sweet.

What I’m Reading

• Julie and I listened to Last Christmas in Paris: A Novel of World War I and adored it. The book might be good to read, but I would recommend the audio book as it has narrators for each part and the voice acting is spectacular.
• I also listened to Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done and it was much better than expected. The lessons here even carried over into some of my lectures, namely the idea of how a desire for perfection can be an inhibitor to taking risks on speculative projects.
• I continued the Broken Earth trilogy with book 2, The Obelisk Gate. I have some ideas about how this trilogy might end, but the journey remains worth the ride.
• I listened to Fascism: A Warning and it was worth my time, if only to hear a more modern definition of fascism along with current examples of fascist traits in world leaders.

What I’m Watching

• They Shall Not Grow Old – Peter Jackson’s documentary where he applies his wizardry to WWI footage to create a narrative about infantry serving on the Western front. The technical attributes were jaw dropping. They adjusted frame rates and added audio where it made sense. Felt like I was getting a better sense for how the soldiers related. Made them seem much fresher and younger, almost modern. Sadly the story itself wasn’t compelling. Didn’t get to know any soldiers or feel real attachment to them. Ken Burns should partner with Peter Jackson next time.
• Five Came Back – About five directors who “signed up” to make movies during WWII, sometimes putting themselves in harm’s way. Often restaging pitched battles to get the shots they wanted. The narration is what makes this film, particularly Spielberg’s, Kasdan’s, and Guillermo del Toro. It also created a new list of movies to watch for me, fortunately many of them available at my local library.
• BlackkKlansman – Julie and I were both “meh” on this. Maybe our expectations were too high? It felt uneven; like it started off trying to be somewhat serious and straight-line with the protagonist, but then tried to become a bit of a satire and farce. The characters around the police station made no sense to me. They were either too socially progressive or too over-the-top racist. I suspect this was Spike Lee’s intent, but it just didn’t work for us.

What I’m Playing

• I played Combat Commander: Europe with Peter and we are doing a rematch of the same scenario today, switching sides.
• Julie and I played Codenames Duet four times and finally got a win. Turns out we were playing the time tokens slightly wrong which made the game a bit harder. Still a great challenge and I suspect it scales well to up to 4 players.
• Of course I played some Advanced Squad Leader including continuing my Hatten in Flames campaign with Allen.
• Ken taught Spence and I how to play A Feast for Odin and I liked it so much I bought it at Guardian Games last weekend. Playing again this Sunday.
• Julie and I played King of Tokyo with Spence and Suzanne (twice!). Fun light game. We also played PitchCar (actually the older Carabande, but same game.)
• The game Russian Railroads has been on my “want to play” list for over 5 years and Julie and I finally played last Sunday at Guardian. Glad I played it but there are enough similar games that I think I like more (Viticulture, A Feast for Odin)
• I taught Julie the light 2 player game Patchwork and it was fun. Maybe need to get this one.
• Julie and I played Viticulture twice over the past two nights. Attempt 1 was frustrating for Julie – had been 3 years since she played and she was a bit tired and lost. She bounced back like a true champion last night and won the game.

Playing scenario 44 — The Gauntlet — with Larry today. Norwegians vs Germans.

We are out at the Oregon Coast doing some work to get our house sold (finally… we hope). There are been some king tides this winter and it is having a devastating effect. Several coastal homes have had serious damage, like logs and water coming up over their decks. We can’t even walk down to the beach anymore from our property.

What I’m Contemplating

• An Explorer Confronts His Last Canyon – Julie and I are deep into planning for our next southwest USA adventure, and another backpacking trip in Cedar Mesa is booked.
• The Great NFL Heist: How Fox Paid for and Changed Football Forever – Jacob sent this over to me. Great read.
• The OptionSellers.com debacle: How to blow up your portfolio in five easy steps – Friendly reminder that there are no shortcuts to investment success.
• The Yoda of Silicon Valley – I wonder if I should own these epic volumes. The idea of having them around is probably better than the reality.
• Petits Soldats, Grandes Victoires – Hex-based wargaming is older than we thought.
• How ‘Baldur’s Gate’ Saved the Computer RPG – Reading this inspired me to get back into Pillars of Eternity to finally finish that CRPG.
• One Giant Step for a Chess-Playing Machine – I’m a sucker for AlphaZero stories.
• The Moral Horror of America’s Prisons – How do we fix this?
• The inside story of Bandersnatch, the weirdest Black Mirror tale yet – The show was an interesting idea that to me just didn’t work as a story. Way below the Black Mirror standard set by prior seasons.
• Maybe Just Don’t Drink Coffee – I’m unlikely to stop drinking coffee but I am looking at a range of other harmful consumption habits, particularly alcohol.
• What Romance Really Means After 10 Years of Marriage – Julie and I both smiled at this article.
• How Mark Burnett Resurrected Donald Trump as an Icon of American Success – What a sham.

What I’m Reading

• I read Siddhartha and even submitted some typo corrections that I found. Good read but not life altering.
  • How Hermann Hesse became a hero of the Sixties counterculture – Learn more about the impact Hesse had in the 60s.
• Read some of The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist but bailed about halfway through. I love his “real” books but this transcription of a talk he gave was boring and bland.
• Read one of the best sci-fi books I’ve encountered over the last five years, The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1).
• Read Uprooted for some solid standalone fantasy.
• Jacob gifted me Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock for my birthday and it was a fun read. A bit disjointed at times as it is a collection of essays that don’t always hang together.
• I mostly read the new edition of Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, primarily the front matter and a few of the revised refactorings. I’m planning to apply some of these to a side project I’ve been working on to see how it hangs.
• I read most of WTF?: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us but could have done without it. Too much like a Wired article, and destined to be the opposite of evergreen in my opinion.
• Scanned through Wicked Cool Shell Scripts: 101 Scripts for Linux, OS X, and Unix Systems. Like the Refactoring book, no point in going through page by page but was helpful to scan it for ideas and mental notes for future use. Includes a nice library of utility scripts worth using.

What I’m Playing

Lots of games played over the winter holiday.

• Played Dead of Winter several times and while it was fun it won’t stay in my collection. I’m not a big fan of cooperative games with hidden agendas.
• Played 18Lilliput and probably messed up the rules, violating the certificate limit. Will try again soon.
• The party game hit was Just One and we played it close to 10 times over the holday. Great cooperative party game.
• I played Band of Brothers: Screaming Eagles on 2018–12–18 once and then taught / mentored two other games over the holiday. My favorite easy entry into the tactical wargaming world.
• Played 7 Wonders for the first time in a while. Julie and Dave stomped us.
• Did a quick stand-up game of Can’t Stop. Always a hoot.
• Tiny Epic Galaxies was in the game collection at the house we stayed in over the break so Jacob, David and I gave it a try. Solid game, maybe the best I’ve seen in the “Tiny” series.
• We had a big game of The Great Dalmuti. Always goes over well.
• I played the evil alien in Not Alone. Solid game.
• We broke out Charterstone and got most of the original players back together to play episodes 9 and 10 (so two left I think). Enjoying it but won’t be my favorite worker placement game.
• Nephew Geoff got Azul for Christmas so I taught him how to play.
• Dave really enjoys Codenames so we played that several times.
• Geoff gave me Captain Sonar for my birthday and we played several times. I’m awful at it, but it is an engaging if stressful real-time team vs. team game.
• Matthew loves Pax Renaissance so we played several times. So much game inside this tiny box. Finally played the expansion.
• During college bowl games Matthew and I played Innovation. I prefer the base game, low player count.
• Julie and I played our last unopened Timeline game, Timeline: Events. I like this series.