Chris Brooks Newsletter 017
Greetings from Rosemary Beach, FL where Julie and I are hanging with family for a cousin wedding.
1. 🚘 Where I’ve been traveling
I took a drive to Holland, MI in our van to get some work done near Volta HQ (they make the electrical system in our van). I broke the outbound and return into two days each, playing some golf on the way out (near Cleveland and in central MI) and returning through Canada for a change of scenery. The van work, replacing the inverter so that we could properly charge the batteries from shore power, was successful. That’s the good news! The bad news is that I discovered on the trip that our hot water heater was no longer working. I worked with the folks at Rixen (they make the furnace and water heater) and they quickly diagnosed the problem as a failed glycol pump. Rixen claims Storyteller installed it wrong; Storyteller claims Rixen gave them the wrong wiring instructions. Who knows… one good side effect of this (very annoying and time consuming) work is that I get much more familiar with the underlying systems and how to diagnose problems. Still, I’d rather stuff just worked. For a long time.
In late August I took a weekend to meetup with some new friends on a golfing adventure in central NY. Very handy having the van to sleep in for overnights like this.
2. 📖 What I’ve been reading
Articles:
- I’m still trying to figure out how to effectively circumnavigate the LLM / ChatGPT challenge as a college instructor for the two classes I teach that involve writing. This article about a high school English teacher’s approach is giving me some ideas:
I’ll focus on extemporaneous writing in the classroom, not the polished essays that students have long been expected to know how to execute. Instead of an eight-to-10-page paper on Moby-Dick, my students will respond to prompts in a spiral notebook; after a couple of weeks, they’ll take that writing and turn it into something to submit. They will be graded, of course, but not on whether the end product conforms to any standardized ideas about academic writing. If the conclusion doesn’t reiterate what was expressed in the introduction, that’s okay.
Books:
- Did you enjoy The Martian (book or movie)? Then you’ll probably love Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Can’t say much without spoiling, but similar “we’re going to have to science the shit out of this” vibe.
- Re-read Jeff Tweedy’s How to Write One Song.
3. 🍿 What I’ve been watching
Movies and TV:
- You must see the magical documentary Hallelujah - Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song about the song. I feel like I’ve always known that song, which is impossible because I probably first heard it in the mid to late 90s. There are reasons I feel this way, and I suspect you have your own personal memories attached to the song. Watch the doc, which is as much about the song (and the artists that covered it) as its creator.
- Julie’s dad had never seen Rudy so that was viewed last week before he moved out of the Keuka cottages. Always enjoy the movie, though in the genre I think I’d always pick Hoosiers to watch.
- On Hulu you can find McCartney 3, 2, 1, a meandering interview and music studio play with Rick Rubin. The episodes were notionally themed, but I found them disjointed and lacking cohesion. Still worth watching for the Song Exploder / Rick Beato style track isolations and dialog.
- Julie and I finished the painful but enjoyable series Succession. Painful because it can be hard watching such horrible people and family dysfunction, hilarious watching the Tom and Greg comedic chorus.
Some YouTube diversions:
4. 🎶 What I’ve been listening too
- If you know me, you know I love Wilco. And I love Wilco’s ancestor Uncle Tupelo, and sibling Son Volt. Jeff Tweedy, founder and front man of Wilco, has written two excellent books (Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back) and How to Write One Song). Somehow I missed the Ezra Klein podcast interview of Jeff, where Jeff gives Ezra some guided instruction on breaking through creative barriers. Minor spoilers: it doesn’t require taking substances or awaiting inspiration or finding your muse.
- About 10 years ago my gaming buddies and I were addicted to the Ascension deck building game. We played it briefly in real life at a game session, but quickly pivoted to the mobile app for async turn-based play. I would often have 3–5 concurrent games going on; I know some of my friends would have more than 10. I knew nothing about the creator of the game (and publishing company) until the recent Tim Ferriss podcast with Justin Gary.
- Julie and I went to a concert up the hill on a bit of a whim. Yacht Rock Revue over delivered and I hope to see them again.
5. 🎲 What I’ve been playing
More board and card games!
- On weekends where we aren’t hosting guests Julie and I will often hit one of the local breweries and play a light card game. Recently we played Red7 and Jaipur
- After a six month hiatus I resumed some online Advanced Squad Leader with friend Doug. We learned the game together back in 2015 and I’m glad we are back into it via the amazing VASL platform.
6. ☁️ Minimizing Cloud Dependence
I spent May through August gradually untangling myself from most of my cloud platform dependencies. My key advice is to question critical services you use (email in particular) and reply upon that are “free”.
A year ago this time we had to depart Keuka Lake for some west coast weddings, missing out on our favorite fall time. This year we get to hang out until October 20th and hopefully witness the color and climate transition.
-Chris