Chris Brooks Newsletter 023
We are back into camper van life, having spent a week with family in Napa CA sleeping in the van but mostly living in Jacob's house. On the road to Las Vegas, Green Valley AZ, and Scottsdale AZ.
1. 🚘 Where I've been traveling
We finished our Spain adventure with about 9 days of adventuring with my sister. This will catch you up from my last newsletter:
- Wrapping up Las Palmas, Gran Canary Island
- Marbella
- Ronda, and the joy of carrying the right kind of coffee from town to town
- Cádiz
- Sevilla
- Birdwatching in the Doñana Natural Park
- Barcelona
- Madrid and Toledo with my sister
2. 📖 What I've been reading
Articles:
- Dimspirations for daily life – to share with your nihilistic friends
- Hydro-engineering in the Netherlands – detailed and worthwhile read, especially after riding bikes over the storm barrier last year
- Perverse Incentives and DORA Metrics – Nerd alert! Some of my readers work in the software industry and might benefit from reading this. I thought it was going to be a takedown of the DORA metrics (which I'm a fan of), but was actually just a critique on one of them: change failure rate. Good points made.
- Why High Drug Prices are Good for Us Americans – read the comments as well.
Books:
- Yumi and the Nightmare Painter – Still working my way through the Brandon Sanderson secret novels. Brilliant love story.
- The Sunlit Man – Another secret project book by Sanderson, this one an action packed sci-fi thriller.
- Outlive – Finished but not done digesting it. I have detailed summaries, courtesy GPT-4, that I'm happy to share if you'd like me to send a PDF. Just reply and I'll share.
3. 🍿 What I've been watching
YouTube:
- Emma Stone is amazing (and so is Chloe Troast)
TV Shows:
- Enjoying but not yet through Masters of the Air (it ain't Band of Brothers, but what is?) and Constellation
Movies :
- For Whom the Bell Tolls – Julie and I both read the book, we were in Spain, so why not. Gary Cooper is very overrated as an actor, but the movie was pretty darn good. And because Ingrid Bergman was in it, we had to watch...
- Casablanca – Trivia: music director didn't like "As Time Goes By", wanted to reshoot all the scenes with the song (don't play it again, Sam!), but Bergman had cut her hair for her role in For Whom the Bell Tolls so it became unworkable.
- The Greatest Night in Pop – I have distinct memories of the "We are the World" global event; this just couldn't happen again. Too much of an entertainment long tail these days. Who really knew how hard Lionel Ritchie worked to pull all of this together, in an all-night session after the AMAs?
- Dune: Part 2 – Loved it!
4. 🎶 What I've been listening to
Not much on the music front! Friend Jim shared this low-fi acoustic LP from Drew Holcomb that I think is quite good. We saw his band open for Darrius Rucker last year, and I came away enjoying the opening act the most.
One of my favorite golf podcasts happened to interview Carl Weathers just before he passed away last month.
5. 🎮 What I've been playing
Still Baldur's Gate 3. In the final act.
6. 🏜️ What's Next?
We will lurk in the southwest USA for a couple of weeks before returning to Napa for future grandson Peanut's baby shower. Then do a 180 and head back to southern Utah for a camping and National Park adventure with camper-van best friends Jim and Jill.
I've got quite a backlog of non-travel related posts that I expect to get out in the coming weeks. Topics include nutrition and exercise, read it later services and workflow, and more on how I'm using GPT-4 these days.
-Chris