Media Diet: January 2023

This entry is part 1 of 6 in the series Media Diet

Inspired by Kottke’s media diet posts, I’m going to try and collect my own thoughts here. Also, the holidays is always a good time to catch up on watching/reading so there’s quite a bit to cover here!

Books

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers – A light second book in the series, I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first, which wasn’t amazing, but left the reader with some nice thoughts to dwell on. This book hinted that it was trying to do that again, but didn’t manage to pull it off.

So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport – I’ve resolved to read more non-fiction this year, and enjoyed this one. It’s very typical in the thesis/data/example mixture but is short and well-paced and makes a good case, especially to someone early in their career.

Kindred by Octavia Butler – My second reading of Butler after being disappointed in Xenogenesis, and I enjoyed this much more. Excellent prose and pacing, a single-threaded story that doesn’t lose track of itself, time-travel book that doesn’t get lost in the details, just a solid book all around. It certainly could have dug a little deeper on the hypothetical social issues or the other characters, but then it would have been a different book and been far less likely to pull it all off.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis. – A decent fantasy adventure. Not quite as charming as other entries in the series, but also somewhat (though not entirely) less allegorical.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis. – Underwhelming though satisfactorily final conclusion to the series. It started with a lot of promise but quickly stumbled into a predictable and rushed dash to wrap things up.

Artemis City Shuffle by Jessie Kwak – A fun, short and sweet intro to the series. Seems optional but if the rest of the series is similar it should be a fun ride.

Movies

Black Adam Meh.

Pale Blue Eye – Decent.

Glass OnionOK.

Games

Marvel Snap (mobile/Steam) – I started playing this a few months ago and it’s a solid addition to the digital card game genre. Fast-paced, highly variable but deep enough to stay interesting even after hundreds of games. The progression mechanism still feels a little rough but the game itself is fantastic. The meta is pretty good for a card game, I regularly see an assortment of decks, but it is has converged on a few mechanics, so hopefully they’ll stay ahead of that. They recently tuned (nerfed) a card that risked tanking the game (Leader) which was nice to see, so hopefully they’ll also tune a few of the dumber locations (District X) and keep the game fresh.

Dwarf Fortress (Steam) – I’ve only logged a few hours on the new version, but I played it years ago in the text-based interface. It’s a great game if you’re looking to be rewarding for committing to a long learning curve (which I’m not, at the moment), and the new graphical UI makes it much more appealing by shorting that curve.

Outpath: First Journey (Steam) – A demo for a future game, it feels promising as a blend of casual/survival/crafting genres. The low-res graphics are tiresome, the novelty of retro “8 bit” graphics has long passed, and requires a level of expertise to pull off these days, and this game lacks that.

Television

Yellowstone (Season 5, Part 1) – This show has always been kind of dumb but also kind of fun, albeit in a lazily violent way. Lately it’s been trying to be less dumb and as a side effect is becoming less fun. It’s safe to say that politics and intrigue are not Sheridan’s strong suit. The barometer of the show has always been Rip, and he’s transitioned very rapidly from a skilled gangster enforcer to … a dad.

Andor (Season 1) – An exceedingly well-constructed show, with several story arcs in series as well as an overarching one. The heist was cliché but sets everything else up and we get a whole bunch of new and detailed perspectives on the Empire and Rebellion that add more details to Star Wars canon than anything else since the movies.

Jack Ryan (Season 3) – Despite a credible star and decent marketing, I feel like this show always flies under the radar. It’s a good spy/action thriller that doesn’t necessarily stay true to Tom Clancy canon, but certainly does to the spirit of his books. I lump this in with the Mission Impossible movies as engaging, well-crafted , brain-not-quite-off action thrillers.

Podcasts

The Rest is History is a recent discovery and highly recommended. Their recent episodes on the origins of Nazism show how so many factors, some outside Germany and others even before it existed, played into such a terrible event.

Hardcore History is also always highly recommended. Similar to the The Rest is History’s series but in far more detail, “Supernova in the East” covers what led Japan into World War II. It filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge and presented a far more complete picture than most Americans (and possibly Japanese) students would get at school.

Upcoming

Some things I’m hoping to read/watch/play soon:

  • Bullet Train
  • Winter’s Heart
  • Ghost Pirate Gambit

52 Word Review: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Another Rian Johnson movie that falls short of its astronomical opinion of itself, Glass Onion was still somewhat entertaining. The charismatic cast, good scenery and pacing and interesting premise were held back by pedestrian writing, shallow “I’m so quirky!” characters and an ending that ran out of gas long before the credits.

EFS Baseball Hall of Fame, Part 1

Greatness in sports is an evergreen source of fun, research and debate for most fans, and the recent election of (IMO) borderline third baseman Scott Rolen to baseball’s hall of fame has sparked predictably lively discussions.

In my previous post I mentioned that I wanted a tiered Hall of Fame, so I’ve decided to start one. Bill Simmons did something similar a while back with his Hall of Fame Pyramid for Basketball, but I think I’d like mine to be more inclusive than just 96 players. Here are my rules:

  1. The player must be retired for 5 years, which is the same as the official baseball hall of fame.
  2. The player must have appeared in 1,000 games, or pitched in at least 200 games (this is currently about 3,700 players)
  3. Players who are selected are placed in Tier 1, the Hall of Stars. The target is about 10%. Players who are borderline may be deferred and will be re-evaluated in the future.
  4. For every 3 spots in tier 1, a spot will open in tier 2, the Hall of Fame. New tiers will be created with this ratio. This means based on currently eligible players that there will be 6 tiers.

I don’t have any magic numbers like 500 Home Runs or 300 Wins, although I’ll be surprised if anyone who hit those marks doesn’t at least make Tier 1. I am going to make non-scientific affordances to players who lost time to injury or military service.

Whenever I have time, I’m going to pick 10 players at random and research if they should be accepted.

Howie Fox (1944-1954) – Not Accepted. A very average starting pitcher who spent most of his career with the Cincinnati Reds.

Erv Palica (1947-1956) – Not Accepted. A slightly below average utility pitcher who spent most of his career with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Johnny Lanning (1936-1947) – Not Accepted. A slightly above average utility pitcher who played for the Boston Bees (Braves) and Pittsburgh Pirates.

Mark Sweeney (1995-2008) – Not Accepted. A below average utility fielder and frequent pinch hitter who played for a number of teams.

Greg Minton (1975-1990) – Not Accepted. An above average relief pitcher who played for the San Francisco Giants and California Angels. 1-time All star. Notable achievement: 2691?3 consecutive innings without giving up a home run.

Dick Radatz (1962-1969) – Deferred. An above average relief pitcher/closer who had several great years for the Red Sox at the beginning of his career, becoming the first pitcher in history to have consecutive 20-save seasons, but struggled after that. Member of the Red Sox Hall of Fame.

Frank Francisco (2004-2014) – Not Accepted. A slightly above average relief pitcher who played for the Texas Rangers and several other teams.

George Kell (1943-1957) – Accepted. A 10x All Star contact-hitting, excellent-fielding third baseman who played for a number of teams. Elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1983.

Greg Vaughn (1989-2003) – Deferred. A power-hitting left fielder and 4-time All Star who played for the Milwaukee Brewers and other teams. Probably not going to be accepted, he was an average fielder with a lot of strikeouts, but I’m not sure yet where the line is so we’ll revisit.

Cookie Lavagetto (1934-1941, 1946-1947) – Deferred. A 4-time All Star infielder with the Brooklyn Dodgers and Pittsburgh pirates. An average fielder and average hitter, though above average for his position. He missed 4 full seasons to WWII service, which probably wouldn’t have made a big difference, but we’ll come back to Cookie again.

Baseball Hall of Fame 2023

I posted a hypothetical hall of fame ballot way back in 2007 and decided to do this year’s version before they announce the result. There are 28 players on the list, half of them for the first time.

Scott Rolen – Almost
Todd Helton – No
Billy Wagner – No
Andruw Jones – No
Gary Sheffield – No
Alex Rodriguez – Yes
Jeff Kent – Almost
Manny Ramirez – Yes
Omar Vizquel – No
Andy Pettitte – No
Jimmy Rollins – No
Bobby Abreu – No
Mark Buehrle – No
Torii Hunter – No
Carlos Beltrán – Almost
John Lackey – No
Jered Weaver – No
Jacoby Ellsbury – No
Matt Cain – No
Jhonny Peralta – No
Jayson Werth – No
J.J. Hardy – No
Mike Napoli – No
Bronson Arroyo – No
R.A. Dickey – No
Francisco Rodríguez – No
Andre Ethier – No
Huston Street – No

Also, Fred McGriff was elected by one of the committees this year. To me McGriff represents possibly the best example of the “small hall” versus “big hall” points of view. The small hall thinks admission should be only for those whose greatness is beyond a shadow of a doubt, wheras the large hall thinks admission is a good capstone for a career full of solid contributions. There have been a little over 20,000 players to play major league baseball, and 270 are in the Hall of Fame, so about 1.35%, though if you filter out the number who only played a few games or even a single season, we’re probably in the 2-3% range. The small hall crowd thinks this should probably be closer to 1%, the large hall is probably more like 5%.

If forced to choose, I would probably land on the small hall side. I look at players like McGriff and Andrew Jones and think they were fantastic players that I would have loved to have on my team, but am I going to reminisce about how dominant they were? No. I’d actually like to see a tiered system where it’s not all or nothing, but we can give these players a more visible place in history while also recognizing those we felt we were lucky to see play, but that’s a post for another day.

The Yeses

As mentioned in 2007, steroids is still a factor, and in 16 years little progress has been made in how to handle that. My only two votes on this years ballots both had suspensions for PEDs late in a career that would have been automatic HoF status up to that point, but they will likely never get in from the writers’ voting as a result of the suspensions.

The Almosts

  • Carlos Beltrán might make it eventually after a long and solid career, but is likely in the penalty box for the Astros cheating scandal, so we’ll think about him next year.
  • Scott Rolen and Jeff Kent were great all-around players but I’d put them in the same tier as McGrifff.
  • Todd Helton played half his games in a hitter’s wonderland and put together a few great seasons and a few good ones, but not enough to make the cut for me.

52 Word Review: Everything Everywhere All At Once

A brilliant, crazy, fun, funny, surprising, heartwarming, bonkers movie that is about, and comes closer than possibly anything else could in two hours to answering the question of, the meaning of life. I might be permanently happier for having watched this movie, and grateful for the opportunity. My favorite movie in years.

Happy Blogday!

I started this blog 15 years ago today. I’ve been through various periods of activity and inactivity (I’ve posted in 12 of those 15 years), but even when I’m not writing, it’s very frequent that I think, “I should put that on my blog”. For some reason, even when I don’t do that, it gives me a little comfort, so I keep it running. Hopefully I’ll hit an active cycle sooner rather than later!

Polyglotism: Part 0

10 years ago, I started looking at the available languages, with an eye towards potentially adding them to my toolkit. I narrowed it down to 27 and then didn’t get any further. I’m going to reboot this project on a similarly exhaustive scope, but with a more relaxed schedule (i.e. this is going to take a while).

What hasn’t changed in the past 10 years is that I’m still not a language geek, and I’d be happy to solve most of my problems with one or two well-rounded languages.

What has changed is that I haven’t written Java professionally for over 4 years. The average number of languages I deal with in a given week between work and personal projects, has gone from slightly more than one to at least 5 (Go, C++, Python, JS, Java), not to mention any number of DSLs and things like SQL or bash.

The goal at the end of this, is simply to have (and share) a list of candidate languages that someone could find a practical use for in 2021, and some starting points for each.

Part 1 will re-compile the original list, adding new languages (like Rust, which technically existed at the time but was pretty invisible) and removing any that have fallen by the wayside since it was created. After that, I’ll start to dig into each one and make cuts where appropriate.

2020H1 Personal OKRs: Progress

As promised, here is my progress update on my OKRs. Without about 8 weeks to go, I’d say success has been good but less than hoped for. I can’t really pin it all on COVID-19, while that has been very disruptive I don’t think it’s really impacted these goals. What working from home for two months has done has shifted my computer work to some shop work, since I am at home for longer periods more since I have no commute.

Note: Scoring is simple unweighted average of the component pieces, rounded to 0.1.

0.3 – OKR 2020A: Reclaim Technical Familiarity

0.3 – KR1: Get a full stack project “running”

I’ve tinkered here and there but am not sure I’m going to have something running in the next 8 weeks, though that might happen if I make some tradeoffs.

0.0 – KR2: Publish 15 Technical Blog Posts

Not a one! Can I do two per week? Doubtful, but I’ll refocus and try to get at least one per week done.

0.5 – KR3: Learn (and do something useful with) a new language

I’ve done a bit of Go, but nothing useful. This is on the schedule though so I’d say I’m on track.

0.8 – OKR 2020B: Finish More of What I Started

0.8 – KR1: “Finish” my Woodshop

  • 0.8 – Finish Painting There’s a few spots left but they are not really blocking anything, and are better left for when I redo the stairs (which is next half).
  • 0.8 – Wiring – Subpanel is in, table saw has a dedicated circuit, and lighting is 95% done. There are a few circuits left to install (by the electrician) but I’m reconsidering making the investment at the moment.
  • 0.5 – Dust Collection – I got the larger (2HP) unit, but haven’t done any ducting yet, partly because the new sheet good project is in the way of it.
  • Bonus: +0.7 – I’m in the process of adding some sheet good and small-piece storage, which will go a long way to keeping things tidy.
  • Bonus: 1.0 – I finally pulled the trigger on getting the SawStop, which I’ve wanted for many years, and is now the centerpiece of the shop.

0.7 – KR2: “Finish” my Home Office

The space is much improved. There is very little random junk strewn about, though there are a number of bins/boxes that need to be sorted, but if I ended the half as things are now I’d be pretty happy with the progress.

0.5 – OKR 2020C: Improve My Health

What personal improvement list would be complete without some health goals?  These are not easy but seem to strike a balance of achievability and meaningfulness.

0.4 – KR1: Lose 20lbs

I’m down about 10, which is still pretty solid as a sustainable loss for 4 months, but I’d really like to stretch and hit that 20.

0.7 – KR2: Hit 150 Move Goals in Apple Watch

As of May 1, I’m currently at 111 with an active streak of 65 days, so I’m 11 ahead of schedule. It has raised my calorie requirement twice, due to the streak, from the starting 890, first to 970 and now at 1,060.

I am annoyed because I didn’t get my “Perfect Month” badge for March or April, I suspect there is a bug where you don’t get it if it raises your target and you didn’t hit that new target every day.

0.0 – KR3: Do 5,000 Pushups

I’ve basically done none of these, but partly because I’ve been using our new home gym and really enjoying it, when I’m not too tired from doing other physical work (e.g. the workshop).

Bonus: +1.0 – Set up the home gym

I didn’t expect to get this finished this half, but things worked out and we have a nice little spot with some barbells, dumbells, and an elliptical. I’ve been doing some circuit training and really enjoying it, perhaps even more than at a gym. We’ve also been taking family walks 3-4 times per week which has been great for everyone.

Infrastructure Theme

I think the adjustments have stayed within the theme, perhaps even moreso than the things that have fallen out. I have actually conciously thought about this as I’ve been going so I think this is a good part of the plan to keep for future versions.

0.5 – Final Score

I’m reasonably happy with the progress and if I keep tracking I should end up near a nice green 0.7, perhaps higher if I can make progress on the zeroes.

Be back in a couple of months with final results and new goals!