Jamie Todd Rubin's Blog, page 28

How To Fall Asleep Quickly: A Pavlovian Tale

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Last year I had a lot of trouble sleeping. At first I had trouble falling asleep. My doctor prescribed various medications, none of which worked well. After many, many months, I began to be able to fall asleep again, but struggled with something called “epic dreaming,” which I’d never heard of before until I read a great book on dreaming. There is no known treatment for epic dreaming, but those, too, eventually went away. For the last few months, I have been sleeping pretty well, but the most remarkable thing to me is that I have been falling asleep quickly. And I think I know why.

Back before our youngest daughter stopped napping, she and I would nap together after lunch every day. We did this for years. It was part of our daily routine and I looked forward to it. Indeed, when she grew out of napping, I continued to nap, and continue to do so today. One thing that I noticed about our naps was that I always–almost without fail–fell alseep quickly. Why was that?

The possible reason occurred to me what thought about how I described our naps to Kelly. I might say something like, “This was a one-song nap,” or “Well, it was a three-song nap today.” What I meant by “one-song” or “three-song” was how long it took us to fall asleep. You see, we had this playlist that we’d listen to when we went down for our nap. It was the same playlist every day, and I’d measure how quickly we fell asleep by how many songs I remember playing before I went out.

Once our youngest daughter stopped napping, I continued with the playlist for my naps. I found that over time, I seemed to fall asleep faster and faster. Today, it is not uncommon for me to fall asleep after just one-and-a-half songs. Sometimes, I fall asleep before the first song on the playlist is finished.

It worked so well, in fact, that when I went to sleep at night, I started listening to the playlist then, too. When I began doing that, I began falling asleep much faster than I usually did at night. It is usually not quite as fast as during the day, but at night, with the playlist playing, I usually fall asleep between 2-3 songs.

It seems that that playlist has had a kind of Pavlovian effect on my sleep. Hearing it, while laying down in bed, puts me out quickly. It is also remarkable how well it works. There are days when it doesn’t work, but they are few and far between.

I have a Siri shortcut I use when I nap. After laying down, I’ll say, “Hey Siri, let’s nap” which triggers Siri to do a number of things: put my phone into Do Not Disturb Mode, set an alarm for 5-minutes before the next meeting scheduled on my calendar (just in case), set the volume to a certain level, and start my napping playlist. I’ve created a modified version of this shortcut for when I go to bed at night. I call it my “Wind-down” shortcut.

These days, I am amazed at how quickly I fall asleep listening to the playlist. I don’t think it has anything to do with the songs on the playlist, as much as the habit and Pavolvian effect of it. Frequently, I’ll lay down for my nap, hear the first song, and wonder if I will be able to fall alseep with so much stuff on my mind. Often, I never even hear the end of that first song. It works for me, and I’m happy about that.

As I said, I don’t think it is the specific songs on the playlist that have a real effect, but rather the habit and repetition. Still, for those who might be curious, here are the songs that are on the playlist:

“Rey’s Theme” by John Williams“Into the West” by Howard Shore & Annie Lennox“On Your Shore” by Enya“Exile” by Enya“Mercy Street” by Peter Gabriel“When the Angels Fall” by Sting

The entire playlist is 32 minutes long, which is about how long my nap usually lasts. (I generally wake up when the playlist has looped over back to the first song).

I suppose the one down side to this is that on the rare occasion that I happen to hear one of these songs come on in the middle of the day when I am busy with things, I suddenly feel unusually tired and sleepy.

Written on March 1, 2022.

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Published on March 05, 2022 05:00

Breaking News Demonstrates the Value of Newspapers

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The New York Times app was a mess when the news Russian’s invasion into Ukraine broke. All of the information was listed under their “Live” section which was a list of short “up-to-the-minute” reports, often just a single paragraph. These were listed reverse chronologically, with several of them each hour. This was breaking news, it was news unfolding as it happened.

For me, it was also mostly useless.

The trend toward “breaking news” has, it seems to me, led to a steady decline in the value and content of the news being reported. Maybe I am old-fashioned, but I prefer my news to be considered, with sources confirmed, and additional analysis provided. That takes time. I don’t see the value of rushing to report news without confirmation from multiple sources, just to be the first to get it out there. I don’t see the value of a paragraph of reporting where the situation is changing rapidly and anything reported might be meaningless an hour later. What I find valuable is to sit down with a complete news article, one that refers to multiple sources to the facts that it reports, one that provides analysis that has been considered. These things take time.

Not even a lot of time, really. Journalists have been very good at providing in-depth coverage of some breaking event even with a day to do so. This is a value that printed newspapers provide that I think is overlooked. People point to the death of newspapers because the Internet and online news can be had much faster. But at what cost? A printed daily paper enforces a deadline that allows for a much more reasonable degree in the accuracy of reporting than breaking news on an app. A front-page, 6-column above-the-fold article on the Russian invasion into Urkaine is much more valuable to me than an unsubstantiated paragraph of breaking news the minute it happens.

I’m not saying that all such breaking news is unsubstantiated, but in the chaos of war, it seems that the easiest thing to do is to post observations and opinions in the heat of the moment without the time needed to chase down leads and analyze the information coming in. It is that time–enforced by the daily rhythm of newspapers–that gives the printed papers an advantage over breaking news online.

What good is “breaking news” if reporters have to trade accuracy for speed?

Of course, this could be done in an online format if the conditions supported a daily rhythm the way print media does, but online has come to be a synonym for now. When we accept breaking news, we run the risk of making that same trade-off: accuracy for speed. We may get some information now, but how good is the information we are getting? Some will be good, and some won’t be? How do we, the consumers of news, tell the difference?

Reporting in which leads have time to be tracked down, sources confirmed by other sources, analysis and context provided to the reporting seems much more valuable. What I can’t understand is why breaking news is accepted as readily as it is. I learned this lesson well after 9/11. Social media didn’t exist and online news was nothing like it is today. The big TV news outlets were the surrogates for what breaking news online is today. There was a lot of confusion and misinformation on TV. I remember going a nearby 7-Eleven each morning after the attacks and buying a copy of every newspaper they had: L.A. Times (because I lived in L.A.), New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, U.S.A. Today. I spent my days pouring over all of the articles and op-eds in these papers, pieces which has at least a night for thought and refinement. The news of the attacks looked different from the pages of those papers than it did from the “breaking news” the television networks showed all day long.

Even as I wrote this, on the third day after the invasion, it is difficult to find an in-depth article on the New York Times app. Everything is “breaking news.” This also seems to be the case with the Washington Post. The Wall Street Journal seems to have a led in-depth article on their app, but immediately after are the “latest updates.”

What, I wonder, is the value of breaking news? Why does it need to be presented as quickly (and incompletely) as it is? it seems cynical to say that it is there for nothing more than to attract eyeballs, increase clicks, and therefore, ad revenue. But I have to wonder.

In the meantime, it is not too difficult for me to pick up a few printed newspapers at the local 7-Eleven on my morning walk, and make my way through the more in-depth articles that span their frontpages. I don’t feel disjointed or out-of-the-loop by getting my news twelve hours after the “breaking” events. Indeed, I feel more informed about them than I might be if I followed nothing but the breaking news.

Written on February 26, 2022.

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Published on March 04, 2022 05:00

A Brief Outage Earlier Today

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If anyone happened to notice the blog down earlier today, I confirm that it was, in fact, down. It went offline around 10:45am ET and was back online about 10 minutes later. I don’t know the cause, but I was going to check with WordPress on it. This was the first outage I’ve experienced since I moved the site to WordPress hosting early last summer.

I didn’t see any major outages reported so it seems like it was just a hiccup. I only mention it here in case anyone was trying to access the blog during that 10-minute window, and was having problems doing so. Things have been running smoothly since. Carry on!

Written on March 3, 2022.

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Published on March 03, 2022 13:00

3 Elements of Good Fiction

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These days I mostly find myself reading nonfiction. I am interested in the world and how it works and nonfiction helps to satisfy that interest. This wasn’t always the case. I read a lot more fiction growing up. There were times growing up when I found nonfiction boring. Frequently the reverse is true today. I see lots of recommendations for novels that I can barely get into. After giving up on a few novels in recent months, I got to thinking about this. I thought about the novels that I raced through, and those in which I couldn’t make it past a few pages. In doing so, I identified three elements that will virtually guarantee I’ll finish a novel. These are (in order of importance to me):

A good storyAn entertaining storyGood writing1. A good story

Story is the most important thing for me. If the story is not interesting (or nonexistant) then I am really unlikely to finish a book. I think this is why I enjoy Stephen King novels so much. For all the criticism I read of his work, he knows how to tell a good story. It doesn’t matter to me how long the novel is. If the story is good, the longer the better. I want to be immersed in story. Brandon Sanderson is another great story-telling, and depsite his Stormlight Archive novels being over a thousand pages each, the story maintains them. I finished each of those books wanting more.

There are novels that I have wanted to read that just don’t have a good story. A good story has to hook me right away. I recently tried reading Ulysses by James Joyce, but there was no hook to it. I couldn’t find the story, and gave up.

I sometimes feel shallow when I think of this, but novels, for me, are really no different than TV shows for people who enjoy visual media.

Recently, I started re-reading Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan novels. These are examples of novels with good stories. I’ve binged nearly four of them in less than a week. It’s the reading equivalent of binging a series on Netflix.

2. An enteraining story

In addition to providing a good story, a novel needs to be entertaining. This is entirely subjective, and I’m not sure I could describe what elements make up an entertaining story. It’s like pornography: I know it when I see it. Intersting characters, novel ways of presenting scenes, vivid imagery, pacing, all of it comes together to make an entertaining story. Stephen King and Brandon Sanderson are masters of these elements.

3. Good writing

When I read a novel, I’m generally looking for the first two elements. I want to have fun. I want a good story and I want to be entertained. Good writing is nice, but not necessarily required. I thoroughly enjoy Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels, but I wouldn’t say that the writing is the best I’ve ever encountered. One of the reasons Stephen King has become one of my favorite novelists is because he’s got all the tools: good, entertaining stories with good writing. (For two understated examples, check out From a Buick 8 and Joyland.)

Craig Johnson’s Longmire novels are examples of good, entertaining stories, backed by good writing. Brandon Sanderson’s novels and Patrick Rothfuss’s novels hit all three of these buttons for me. So do Barry N. Malzberg’s novels.

Tom Clancy’s novels are great stories, with a lot of entertainment value, but I wouldn’t say he set the world on fire with the quality of his writing. It was good enough to get the pictures in my head and make for an enjoyable read, but nothing more.

Like I said, I’m pretty easy-to-please when it comes to fiction. I want a good story, one that entertains me. If there the stories happen to be well-written, that’s a bonus, but not a must. If I start a novel and don’t see at least the first two elements quickly, it is extremely likley that I won’t finish it. I’m okay with that.

Written on February 23, 2022.

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Published on March 03, 2022 05:00

Pronoun Use Cases

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I have found pronouns to be useful when people list them in their email signature or bio, or business card, especially if I don’t know the person. It is a quick and easy way to avoid making a mistake when referring to the person. I know how frustrating those mistakes can sometimes be. “Jamie” is an epicene name (my name is Jamie, not James) and as a kid growing up in the 1970s, I as well aware of the fictional Jaime Sommers (played by Lindsay Wagner) in the spinoff show The Bionic Women. Friends would occasionally tease me about having a girl’s name. (We were all young, not more than 6 or 7, and I knew no other boys named Jamie.)

Later, in college, I remember gathering the courage to send Piers Anthony a letter. He was a favorite of mine at the time, and not long after I sent the letter, I received a reply from him. It began, “Dear Ms. Rubin (I assume you are a girl)…”

The “pronoun” section of signature files and bios have been helpful because if you’ve never met the person with whom you are communicating, it can be hard to tell what their pronoun might be, especially for names that are uncommon, or unfamiliar to me. As this has become more and more the norm, I have relied on it in many situations.

The problem arises when commnicating about someone I have never met, whose name does not seem gender-specific, and for whom no pronouns have been identified. This happened recently and I was at a loss. How to refer to them? I opted to refer to them as they/them, which seemed reasonable, and no one complained. Later, when I finally met him, I had additional clarification.

I mention this because I find it pretty remarkable how seamlessly (it seems to me) the “my pronouns” concept has slipped into everyday use, and how convenient it is. It made me wonder how I would have handled this situation, say, ten years ago. I suppose I would have simply guessed, or asked someone.

After that letter from Piers Anthony addressed to “Ms. Rubin” sometime in 1993, I took to adding my middle name in formal correspondence, and in my byline. “Todd” is generally considered a male name. Thus, I have Piers Anthony to thank for my name appearing in places like Analog Science Fiction, and The Daily Beast as “Jamie Todd Rubin.”

I only wish that it were as easy to make clear how my name is spelled. J-A-M-I-E. It’s right there on my bylines and in my email signature and social media profiles. And yet, I get replies from various people multiple times a week with my name spelled J-A-I-M-E. , but it does no good. This misspellings keep coming.

Written on February 3, 2022.

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Published on March 02, 2022 05:00

Practically Paperless with Obsidian, Episode 20: Experimenting with the Dataview Plug-In

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Welcome to my blog series, “Practically Paperless with Obsidian.” For an overview of this series, please see Episode 0: Series Overview.

One of the things I have always loved about plain text files is that they are easy to manipulate. More than fifty years of effort has gone into reliable methods for parsing text from text files. It is for that reason that for a long time, I maintained my list of books I’ve read since 1996 as a plain text file with markdown 1, and wrote scripts to pull all kinds of data from that file. Other people know this, and Obsidian has a rich community of plug-in developers. It should be no surprise, therefore, that someone came up with a plug-in that allows you to query data from plain text files. Lately, I have been experimenting with the Dataview plug-in, looking for practical uses for querying my notes.

Before jumping into my experiments, I wanted to point out that there is quite a bit of discussion about plug-ins in the Obsidian community and if and how they make the overall system less future-proof. There are good arguments on both sides. Not long ago, I made a post to the Obsidian Reddit group on this subject, outlining my thoughts. Briefly, I found a balance that I am comfortable with and I have no problem using plug-ins like the data tool. Your mileage (and requirements) may vary. There are lots of good opinions. You can find some of them in that Reddit thread.

One thing I really like about the Dataview plug-in is that it is familiar. As a software developer, I’ve worked with dozens of programming languages over the years, but alongside almost all of them was SQL, and the Dataview’s query language is very similar to SQL, which make it easy to learn. The harder part was figuring out practical uses for the dataview. After experimenting for a while to get the hang of things, I came up with a couple of criteria to help identify practical uses for the Dataview tool, over say, a embedded search query. Here are a few of those criteria:

Use to access or summarize frequently-accessed data.Use in situations where the data is dynamic, and can change over time.Use to help automating a process

With those criteria in mind, I’ve managed so far to find three places to make use of the dataview plug-in that provide me with practical, everyday use.

1. A Plain-Text Address Book

I have a top-level folder called People, and under that folder, I have a note for any person that I interact with on a regular basis. These notes serve two purposes:

YAML frontmatter in each note allows me to capture “address book” information about the person in question so that I have that information at my fingertips. Sure, it duplicates some of what I have in the Contacts app, but again, this is plain text and I consider it my “authoritative” source for this information.The note itself serves as a place to link to when I mention the person elsewhere in my notes. The mention might be in a daily note, or journal, or some other note. By using a link to the person-note in my daily notes and other notes, I can see everywhere that person was mentioned by looking at the backlinks of the person note itself.

Now, I can open up the People folder and scan down the list of notes there, all titled in “Last, First Name” format, but all I can see are the names of the people. No other information. I have to click on a note to see a person’s phone number or email address, or birthday. What I needed was a dynamic index, and that seemed to me to be the perfect use case for the Dataview plug-in.

I created an “Address Book” note and in that note, I included the following Dataview query:

This generates a nice table of all of the notes under the People folder, displaying the name of the person (as a link to the note), along with their email, phone, and birthday. (Note: for the purposes of this post, I copied my People folder and then used a fictional name and contact info for each person to make things easy on me.)

When I change information in an individual note, it is automatically updated in the table when I look at the table. And from the table, I can easily locate a person and contact information. I’m sure this isn’t unique. I’d guess that this is one of the first practical ways that many people make use of the dataview plug-in.

2. A Dynamic Idea List for the Blog

Those who follow this blog for more than just my Obsidian posts know that I write about just about anything that comes to mind. I’ve got more than 7,000 posts going back more than 16 years now. Last year, I had a goal for publishing a post every day. This year, my goal was expanded to continue to publish a post every day, but to write two posts every day. That allows me to build up a backlog. But it also means I need a useful way to collect ideas to write about.

Typically what I do is jot ideas down in the Field Notes notebook that I carry with me everywhere I go. Later I transfer them into my daily notes. Or, if I happen to be sitting at the computer, the ideas go directly into my daily notes. The ideas go in the following format:

Since the format is consistent, this also lends itself to query that allows me to look for note ideas I haven’t yet written. Looking at how the Dataview queries work, I began to think of this query as “any task in my daily notes tagged with ‘post-idea’ that isn’t yet completed.” I experimented this with a straight dataview query, but I couldn’t quite get it to work the way I wanted, mainly because I couldn’t figure out how, from a TASK query, to filter out things by tag. Instead, I used a dataviewjs query. I created a note called “Post ideas” and then added the following dataviewjs query:

What the query does is it looks for all notes tagged with “#post-idea” where the text of the task also contains the tag “#post-idea” and the task is not yet completed. The results look like this:

There are several things I really like about this:

Because the ideas go in my daily notes, and the task query renders the name of the file that the task appears in, I not only get a list of un-used ideas, but I can also see how old they are beacuse they are listed under the daily note in which they were added.I have one place to go to get a list of ideas to write about.Once I finish writing a post, I click the checkbox on the task and it immediately drops out of the “not yet written” section of the Post ideas file and moves into the “Completed” section of the file.If I don’t end up using an idea (I don’t use all of them, just the good ones), I’ll cross it out.3. A Summary MOC for Services and Subscriptions

In Episode 18, I wrote about how I kept a folder with a note for each service or subscription we have. The YAML frontmatter contains information about the subscription/service like the monthly and annual cost, renewal date, etc. In addition, I use those notes to document any interactions I have with the service provider, so that all of the information related to the service is in one place and easy to find.

One use I found for the dataview plugin was to summarize all of these services in table form. This provides a nice summary index of all of the services and subscriptions we have that are currently active. If a new one is added, it automatically appears in the summary. If one is canceled, it drops off the summary list.

The note contains the following dataview query:

and the resulting table looks as follows:

This makes it easy to find everything we subscribe to. I can jump to a service by clicking on a note link to get more detail about the service.

I am still experimenting with the dataview plug-in, but these are a few of the practical uses that I have found, and that I use on a regular basis. Their dynamic nature provides simple automation that saves me a fair amount of time across several types of tasks that I perform several times each day.

In next week’s post, I’ll have something to say about tags and tag taxonomy, something I’ve struggled with since my early days using Evernote. See you back here next week.

Prev: Episode 19: Archiving Notes
Next: Episdoe 21: Tagging Notes, Or Enough Rope To Hang Yourself With

Written on February 27-28, 2022.

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These days, I maintain the list in a database mainly because it is easier to render on the blog. ↩

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Published on March 01, 2022 05:00

A Full Reading Day

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Every once in a rare while I get in a full reading day. Yesterday (as I write this) was one such day. The day before I finished re-reading Tom Clancy’s The Hunt For Red October. I remember it being a good book, but upon re-reading it, it was far better than I remembered. As I drifted off to sleep after finishing the book, I decided that I wanted more of the same. I told myself that in the morning, I’d begin re-reading Patriot Games.

The next morning, as it happened, was a Saturday. The kids had been asking for donuts for a couple of weeks, and so I headed out early to the local Dunkin’ Donuts to get some. It was cold, and the windshield of the car was iced over. While it defrosted, I began listening to the audiobook version of Patriot Games. It was about ten minutes to seven in the morning.

At 9 am the boy had soccer, so we headed out at 8:30 am for the twenty minute drive. His soccer practice lasted 90 minutes and it was cold, so I sat in the car while he practiced. I had my Kindle with me, and since I enjoy Scott Brick’s narration, I continuted listening to the audiobook version of Patriot Games while following along on my Kindle. By the time practice was over and we arrived back home, I’d listened for 2 more hours.

The book was just what I needed. I read more while I ate lunch, and then gave myself twenty minutes more as lay on my bed before taking my post-lunch nap. Once up from my nap, I came into my office, sat on my reading chair, and proceeded to read, more or less nonstop, for the next five hours.

I took a break for dinner, and once dinner was over, I returned to the book. I read for several more hours before finally calling it quits around 10:30 pm. When I looked at the Audible app, I saw that I’d read for about 8-1/2 hours total throughout the day. Usually, when I read this much, it is while driving to or from Florida, with the audiobook playing while I drive. It’s much rarer for me to read this much just sitting at home. But yesterday, I managed to do it.

To put this into some perspective:

Patriot Games is a 22 hour audiobook; the Kindle edition is 794 pages.These days I listen to books at 1.7x speedThat means that 8-1/2 hour of listening time got me through 14-1/2 hours of the audiobook.When I finally went to bed last night, I’d made it through 506 pages of the Kindle edition.

Indeed, for the first time I can remember since I began reading e-books on a Kindle back in 2008, I completely wore down the battery of my Kindle before I finished reading for the day. I’d started the day with a full charge, and sometime around 9 pm, I got a low-battery warning. I switched to the Kindle app on my phone for the rest of the night.

It was absolutely delightful to be able to do nothing but read all day. The problem with days like that is that they are few and far between. While I will likley finish Patriot Games today, it is extremely unlikely that I’ll come remotely close to another 8-hour reading day.

All the more reason to enjoy them when I can.

Written on February 20, 2022.

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Published on February 28, 2022 05:00

Runs Batted In and Surgeons General

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What is a four-letter word for a “baseball sluggers stat”? According to the New York Times crossword of Monday, February 21, the answer is “RBIS.” This is the answer that I recorded on my puzzle, because it fit neatly with the surrounding clues, but it is not, in fact, correct and it irked me a little that the editors of the puzzle, so clever and fastidious as they often are, got this one wrong.

The abbreviatation R.B.I. stands for “runs batted in.” The term is plural, except for when only one run is involved (rare with how RBI is used) in which case it stands for “run batted in.” Either way, the abbreviation is RBI, not RBIs. Adding the superfluous s makes the abbreviation expand to runs batted ins, which sounds like gibberish.

What makes this all the more puzzling is that “runs batted in” is not a unique grammatical construct. We don’t ask, for instance, “How many surgeon generals have their been since 2000?” Instead, we ask, “how many surgeons general have their been since 2000?” The precedent is clear, but when it comes to RBI, it seems to be a murky gray area.

More and more I’ll hear baseball announce refer to “RBI” and instead “RBIs” but sometimes they slip. Sportwriters and sabermetricians usually get the term right.

Does it matter? Probably not much. It seems ridiculous only if you take time to think about it, which often times we don’t. It is akin to referring to the cash dispenser as the “ATM machine.” That final “machine” is redundant but we say it anyway. In every day conversation, we frequently bend the rules of grammar and this is one of those cases. I can accept that.

What I cannot accept is this as a correct response on a crossword. There is a precision to crossword puzzles that doesn’t always exist (or is even expected) in casual conversation. The clue given is “baseball sluggers stat.” The obvious ones that come to mind are things live AVG, OBP, OBS, batting average, on-base percentage, and on-base percentage plus slugging. But these contain only three letters and the answer requires four. Runs batted in is another slugger’s statistic, but in this case, the appropriate abbreviation is RBI, also three letters, not RBIs, which as I have stated, makes no sense if you expand it out.

Crosswords, as I have learned, have their own grammar to them. A clue that implies plural means a answer that will be plural; a clue in past tense means an answer in past tense. RBI is the correct way to state runs batted in. The final S is wrong in this case.

Ah, well, it was a Monday puzzle, the easiest of the week. Monday puzzles are useful because I can complete them fairly quickly, giving me a quick mental win first thing in the morning. Maybe becaues they are easier, they are more lax with the rules, thus allowing RBIs to slip through.

Written on February 21, 2022.

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Published on February 27, 2022 05:00

Reading for the Week of 2/20/2022

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Here is what I read this week. Some of the articles/posts may require a subscription to read them. I also share my recommended reads on Pocket for anyone who wants to follow along there.

Books

Earlier this week, I wrote about the reasons I sometimes reread books. It was on my mind because I have been rereading Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan books. A better description might be binge rereading. As you see, I completed 3 of the books this week. That’s about 1,750 pages of reading in 7 days — or 77 hours of audiobook listening time (45 hours at my usual listening speed of 1.7x). That’s a lot, even for me. Indeed, I have been so focused on reading these books this week that even my writing for the blog is way down from normal. Fortunately, by attempting to write 2 posts a day, I’d built up a healthy backlog, but still, I ate into that backlog quite a bit this week.

You’ll note a pair of numbers after each title I’ve finished below in the following format: (10/1138). The first number is the book’s place in the number of books I’ve finished this year so far. Patriot Games, for instance, was the 10th book I finished reading in 2022. The second number is where the book falls in the list of books I’ve read since 1996. This re-read of Patriot Games was the 1,138th book I’ve finished reading since January 1, 1996.

Finished Reading Patriot Games by Tom Clancy (10/1138). Like The Hunt for Red October , this book was far better than I remembered it originally. It was also much more clear to me how the movie deviated from the book (for worse, as usual, but not terribly bad). The Cardinal of the Kremlin by Tom Clancy (11/1139). This book had a greater scope than the first two Jack Ryan books, and in that expanded scope, something was lost in the overall storytelling. It was still a fun read, but I didn’t think this book was as good as the first two. Clear and Present Danger by Tom Clancy (12/1140). Clancy tightened up the scope once again and this book had more of the feel of Patriot Games than Cardinal. Perhaps what was most interesting to me about this book was the development of John Clark. I’ve never read Clancy’s novels about Clark, but I am now looking forward to reading Without Remorse after I finish up The Sum of All Fears . Another surprise was how far the movie deviates from the book–more than The Hunt for Red October and Patriot Games. Whole plot segments are eliminated and others dramatically changes from what happens in the book.In ProgressThe Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy. A Short History of Ireland, 1500-2000 by John Gibney. I haven’t made much progress on this one because I’ve been all-in on the Clancy books. But I’m not giving up.Articles/posts

Because of all of that binge reading, I spent a lot less time reading articles and posts this week. Just another example of how time is a limited pool, and we have to pick and choose what is important to us each moment.

My Favorite Speech in Shakespeare (What Mark’s Reading, 2/18/22). For me, it is the St. Crispin’s day speech in Henry V.Solving Problems I Don’t Have by Melanie Novak (blog, 2/20/22). I’ve lost how many times I’ve been there, done that.Journalism Needs to Engage With Its Critics by James Fallows (Breaking the News, 2/19/22). Fallows has really been hammering on journalism–in a good way. We need better reporting and journalism. We should be constantly trying to improve the craft and avoid complacancy. #reportingIgnoring a Text Message or Email Isn’t Always Rude. Sometimes It’s Necessary by Erica Dhawan (NY Times, 2/21/22). I’m a big believer that email and messags, like phone calls, or for my conveience and don’t need to be answered or checked instantly. I’ve been trying (with limited success) to drill this idea into my kids. #productivityThe Lockout and My Deepest Fear by Joe Posnanski (JoeBlogs, 2/22/22). I’m becoming really frustrated with with the owners and players in this lockout. I just want baseball, and as I mentioned in a post earlier this week, I can always get it because baseball is a game played in history. #sports/baseballMy Notebook System – ratfactor by Dave Gauer (Rat Factor, 2/2/22). This was one of the best posts I’ve ever read on notebooks and notebook systems. I’ve written many post on the subject, but I wish I’d written this one. Dave’s post is comprehensive, clear, and just so good. If you are interested in notebooks and note systems, I urge you to take the time to read this one in its entirity. #theme/theory-of-notesThey Fled for Greener Pastures, and There Were Weeds by Julie Lasky (NY Times, 2/25/22). This one hit home because I’ve lived in relatively urban or suburban areas close to urban centers for most of my life, and it’s been a growing daydream of mine to move out to a rural area, which I frequently think of as greener pastures. Kelly, who grew up in a rural area has seen the other side of those green pastures and this piece captured a lot of that. #theme/lifestyleQR IQ by Mike Dariano (The Waiters Pad, 2/24/22). Once again, Mike has a novel way to apply to technology to small business–this time restaurants and restaurant menus–riding on the heels of how restaurants have had to switch to QR-code menus during the pandemic.Brandon Sanderson’s Advice for Doing Hard Things – Study Hacks – Cal Newport by Cal Newport (Study Hacks, 2/25/22). I really enjoy Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive. I am also an admirer of Sanderson’s work ethic. I have a fascinating with hard-workers and this piece by Cal Newport, summarizes some of Sanderson’s tips in a more generalized way so that they can be applied to more than just writers. #theme/theory-of-work #productivityWalker: Player Ranger – JoeBlogs by Joe Posnanski (JoeBlogs, 2/25/22). Despite my frustration with both players and owners, I think Joe makes a good argument that baseball player salaries are front-and-center because that is what the owners want; that is how they frame their arguments and what they want fans to see. #sports/baseball

Documentation efforts, Mobile Live Preview, & Improved Startup Time by Eleanor Konik (Obsidian Roundup, 2/26/2022). I’m interested in checking out the new and improved Better Word Count plug-in, as well as the Hotkey Chords Plug-in.It’s Hard to Care About Baseball Right Now by Molly Knight (The Long Game, 2/25/22). In W.P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe, J.D. Salinger gives a speech toward the end of the book (the speech’s essence is captured by James Earl Jones in Field of Dreams, which is based on the book). He describes how the baseball diamond in the cornfield will attract people. “‘Of course, we don’t mind if you look around,’ you’ll say. ‘It’s only twenty dollars person.’ And they’ll pass over the money without even looking at it — for it is money they have, and peace they lack.” With all that’s going on in baseball and the world right now, I thought of this speech as I read Molly Knight’s post. She seemed to read my mind when she wrote, “if you love baseball but you’re finding it really hard to care about it right now, that’s ok.” “It’s money they have and peace they lack.” Maybe it’s money that they (the players and owners) have and peace that we (the fans) lack. For me, baseball helps to provide that peace and I realize there is a cost to that. The question becomes simple in that light: is the cost worth the peace? #sports/baseball

Any recommendations for books, articles or posts I should read? Let me know in the comments?

Written on February 26, 2022.

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Published on February 26, 2022 13:00

Alternate Audiobook Narrators

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A while back I wrote about my favorite audiobook narrators. Today, I want to talk about narrators that don’t work as well for me. Let me be clear from the start that while sometimes an audiobook narrator’s performance is lacking, often a narration that turns me off has less to do with the narrator and more to do with the quality of the recording.

The first audiobook performance I remember being disappointed by was John Lee’s performance of Shōgun by James Clavell. I’d read the book years before I attempted to listen to the audiobook. It was a wonderful read, and once I began listening to audiobooks, I thought I could experience the book again, this time in audio format. I don’t know if it was the recording, or the delivery, but it was awful. I couldn’t make through more than a few minutes.

Sometimes, however, audiobook are rerecorded, and the first time I bought a second version of an audiobook, after already buying one, was when a new version of Shōgun was released with Ralph Lister narrating. It was a night and day difference in performance. Lister’s performance was mesormizing, and like the best audiobook performances, enhanced the book.

I have encountered other examples of alternate audiobook narrators over the years. The first audiobook version of The Hunt for Red October that I got was narrated by J Charles and was pretty awful. Later, when the Jack Ryan series premiered on Amazon Prime, a new edition of the audiobook was released with the always-reliable Scott Brick narrating. Again, it was a night and day difference. Scott Brick went on to perform Patriot Games and The Sum of All Fears as well. However, Michael Prichard narrates several of the audiobooks in the Jack Ryan series. He’s not bad, but the recordings aren’t very good–they probably came from tape. I wish that the rest of the series would be re-recorded using someone like Scott Brick.

The first of the Harry Bosche novels, The Black Echo was originally narrated by Dick Hill, who is a reliable narrator, and who for a long time was the voice of Jack Reacher in Lee Child’s Reacher series. A few years ago, however, a new edition was released, narrated by Titus Welliver, who played Bosch in the TV series. That was great narration.

But what if you could choose your own narrator?

I picture a future in which Audible and similar services will have a premium offering where a listener can select from a diverse list of narrators to read them any book they want. The premium fee will be used to pay for the “voice likeness” rights, and it will be AI that actually emulated the voice the voice actor in question. The performances will be entirely computer generated. It seems like the stuff of science fiction (after all, Connie Willis did write a book along these lines, Remake) but I think eventually this will be fairly common. Want Bing Crosby to read you The Hunt For Red October, pay the fee and collect your prize. Want Morgan Freeman to read Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization? An AI will take care of it for you, just as soon as you pay the fee.

So long as the actors and/or their estates are willing and getting paid for their likeness, I think this could be an novelty in the audiobook industry. Whether or not it would take is anyone’s guess. I also think it would encourage more new voice actors, if they knew they could sell the likeness of their voice the way many celebrities sell the right to use their likeness in video games.

I’d probably stick with the chosen narrator for a given book, the way I do today. But there would definitely be some books that I’d be will to pay for a “custom” narration generated by an AI.

Written on February 16, 2022.

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Published on February 26, 2022 05:00