Wednesday What’s Up

January 10, 2018

What I’m Contemplating

Mark Zuckerberg, let Facebook rejoin the open web – Continuing the dialog on Facebook openness, Dave Winer points out only one of the reasons I’m mostly off Facebook. I go on from time to time to check in on a few groups I belong to because there’s no other venue (West Point Dads, a game convention group).
Patrick McKenzie on Twitter – Oooh, I loved this Tweetstorm. “The hardest problem in B2C is distribution. The hardest problem in B2B is sales.”
Kernel-memory-leaking Intel processor design flaw forces Linux, Windows redesign – This is the best technical description I’ve seen so far that I can understand. I’m following this closely because the design flaws are related to material I teach in the computer organization and architecture class I teach at WOU.
Love After Life: Nobel-Winning Physicist Richard Feynman’s Extraordinary Letter to His Departed Wife – This is true love.

The Best TV Shows of 2017 – One critic’s opinion, but some good validation here on shows I liked last year (Halt and Catch Fire, The Leftovers, Stranger Things) plus some good pointers to shows I must watch in 2018.
In its glowing two-part finale, everyone on Halt And Catch Fire gets to the thing – Julie and I loved this show and it just wrapped up and is fully available on Netflix. “The Computer is not the Thing!”

Flying Colors – I have about seven unplayed wargames in my collection that I’m going to attempt to play within the next 12 weeks, and Blue Cross, White Ensign is one of them. This review covers the overall system, and my game is a self contained expansion that was on sale at GMT.
The other games I’m hoping to play:
- Holland ’44 (playing at Game On!)
- South Pacific (playing on Monday with Chuck)
- Plan Orange (perhaps after Game On!)
- Jena 20 (maybe I’ll get Julie to play with me!)
- Target Arnhem (another light magazine game)
- Poland Strikes! (from Yaah! magazine, not sure I’ll even try this)
- Defiant Russia (I have this setup right now to play solo and expect to play tomorrow)

Julie and I played Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 and are in September. Big reveal this month and we are excited to play through the final four months.
We picked up Jaipur last night for the first time in quite a while and I got smoked 2–0 by Julie.

I finished River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life and can’t say I loved it. The first half was enjoyable and pulled me in, but the second half seemed scattered and the book overall was lacking in conclusion and wrap-up.