Mar 16, 2023 ∞

oh no, I’m now looking at capacities app.

I really appreciate that they built in robust backup and export from the start.

Jan 22, 2023 ∞

📚 2022 Book Review

Welcome to my yearly summary of books!

Table of contents:

Intro - my process and tools
The Books - which books I recommend
Analysis - some introspection and goalsetting
Previously - links to prior years

Note: I will use Bookshop affiliate links when available, throughout this post. You don’t have to buy from my bookshop, but if you do, I put that money back into more books.

Intro

I use and recommend Libby for getting ebooks and audiobooks from the library. Most books I borrow digitally, but there are exceptions:

Books I plan to re-read
Deluxe or art-filled editions
Books I will use as a referenrce
Books I enjoyed and want to keep around

For those cases, I get physical editions via Bookshop. And lest you think I don’t really do physical books: my household has 15 brimming bookshelves.

I take copious highlights and notes, and save them to Readwise. Here’s how. Highlights and notes are especially important for me with digital books, where spacial-temporal recollection is not as easy, but spaced-repitition and note-linking can make up for it (and then some).

I track my reading in The StoryGraph. I prefer it because not Amazon and because it incorporates some data elements other than ratings which are useful for describing and finding books. I’m hoping micro.blog’s bookshelves feature continues to improve, so that I could rely on book tracking directly in my blog, as well. (Today, it doesn’t handle book search well nor let us use our own Bookshop links, but we’ll see what the future holds.)

I keep my to-read/wishlist as a Bookshop list, for ease of sharing and gift-giving.

The Books

Let’s start with the recommended ones, collected in this Bookshop collection or visually:

And here are all the books I read, individually, and in reading order (within rating):

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ :

The Six Deaths of the Saint (Into Shadow #3) - Alix E. Harrow (see also)

👍:

🤷‍♂️:

The Fat Switch - Richard J. Johnson (superseded by Nature Wants Us to Be Fat above)
Bury Your Dead (Inspector Gamache #6) - Louise Penny
Lexicon - Max Berry
On Juneteenth - Annette Gordon-Reed
Roadside Picnic - Arkady & Boris Strugatsky
The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Alex Haley
All We Can Save - Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katharine K. Wilkinson
Nimona - Noelle Stevenson
Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel
Ninth House - Leigh Bardugo
Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama - Bob Odenkirk
Everything Happens for a Reason - Kate Bowler
Persephone (Into Shadow #2) - Lev Grossman
The Little Book of Hygge - Meik Wiking

👎 (authors and links removed because I feel bad about even putting these in, but wanted to show the broader view):

Keeper of the Lost Cities (Keeper of the Lost Cities #1)
Tell the Machine Goodnight
The Prophet
A Calling for Charlie Barnes
The School for Good Mothers
The Garden (Into Shadow #1)

Did you read anything I did? What’d you think?

Based on looking at my list, is there anything you’d recommend?

Analysis

This was an mixed year for reading goals. I exceeded by book goal (55 out of 53) but missed by pages goal (15,868 out of 17,500). I’ll go for 60 books next year, but keep the 17,500 page goal.

Similar to my normal ratio, I read 63% fiction this year:

I continue to add to my intentionality in reading, seeking a variety of voices, formats, styles, etc. With such a long list of things I’d like to read, I’m also trying to be wiser about what I should read sooner than later such as things related to health or permaculture.

Here’s to a good year of reading!

Previously 📚:

Sep 12, 2022 ∞

I didn’t know about the artificial sweeteners part, but my experience aligns to the rest: after a handful of days without sugar and refined carbs, the urges went away.

Apr 26, 2022 ∞

📺 watched: The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window

This was hilarious, though I would say it was only about 5% more ridiculous than other Netflix originals.

Apr 23, 2022 ∞

📝🖋 Recommendations for a firm top-bound notebook that is B5 or A5 or smaller?

“Firm” meaning I can write on it w/o a hard surface like a desk.

Preferably something where I can write on both sides of the paper (unless this means a spiral-bound format that does not hold up).

Feb 17, 2022 ∞

TIL: “inspiresting”

Note: the linked essay is recommended reading, as well.

Feb 5, 2022 ∞

📚 Four Thousand Weeks: it’s as good as they say.

Nothing original, but a great collection of wisdom distilled from various traditions (faith, agile/lean, strategy, psychology, etc.).

Jan 30, 2022 ∞

📑 Sunday Quote

(see my reference and review)

Jan 27, 2022 ∞

New Readwise milestone.

Jan 25, 2022 ∞

🎥 Shang Chi was really good. Maybe the best marvel movie? Or maybe it’s just a huge relief after Eternals?

Jan 22, 2022 ∞

📚Finished Reading

Jan 10, 2022 ∞

2021 Recommendations Recap Recap:

Jan 9, 2022 ∞

2021 Recommendations - Listening 🎶🎙

As I mentioned in my 2021 Product & Service Recommendations, I primarily use Plex + Plexamp for listening to music (and Marvis Pro on the go), and track listens in Last.fm. I listen to podcasts in Overcast.fm.

I’ll cover a little bit about my listening habits, then share top albums and top podcasts.

Music Overview

Here’s a rough map of my top genres over the year:

If none of those genres are of interest to you, you may just want to skip down to podcasts, otherwise you’re going to be scratching your head (or even recoiling) at a bunch of “weird music”.

And here were the top 20 artists:

Thanks to last.fm and tuneR, I can see that three bands were new to my top 20 this year: clipping., Silent Planet, and Joyhauser.

I got tuned in to clipping. via a friend on Bandcamp, but as I mentioned in my 2021 Watching recommendations, became a fan after watching their NPR (actually!) Tiny Desk Concert. If you start to watch the video and are like “wait, I know him”, then you’re probably right. Hamilton, Snowpiercer, and Central Park are just a few of Daveed Diggs’s major credits.

Silent Planet has been a fave of mine for a while, so I’m surprised this was the first time they broke the top 20. In addition to making great music, frontman Garrett Russell is a brilliant lyricist, delving passionately and intelligently into political and spiritual themes. (You may remember I’m slowly working on a readthrough of all the books referenced in just one of their tracks.)

Joyhauser is simply great thumping beats for when you need to focus or keep moving.

Albums

Unlike my other reviews, I restricted my specific album recommendations to ones that were released this year, so as to not have an overwhelming list.

On Bandcamp

Aquilus - Bellum I: black metal, neo-folk
Boys Noize - +/-: techno, industrial
clipping. - Wriggle (Expanded): hip-hop, industrial hip-hop, horror
Dave Quam - Greasemania Vol 3: experimental, electronic
Dawn of Ashes - Blood of Titans (Remixes): industrial, aggrotech
Drumcorps - For the Living: breakcore, experimental
Faderhead - Years of the Serpent: industrial, ebm
Gelassenheit - Gelassenheit: black metal, christian
Gelassenheit - …Don Thyself in the Armor ov God: black metal, christian
Hollywood Burns - The Age of Saucers: soundtrack (to nothing), synth
Heliocentric - Ishmael: metalcore, djent
Keygen Church - ░█░█░░█░█░█░: electronic, black metal
Noise Unit - Deviator: ebm
Spiritbox - Eternal Blue: metalcore, djent
TesseracT - Portals: progressive metal, prog rock
Thou - Hightower: sludge, doom
Violence - Opus I: industrial, metal, crossover
Virtual Terrorist - Gutter Mixes Vol 2: industrial, noise

Honorable Mentions that are not on Bandcamp (boo!)

Between the Buried and Me - Colors II: progressive metal, jazz metal
- Note: some of their music is on bandcamp, but not this album, yet. Likely a problem with their current label
Bo Burnham - Inside: humor, satire
- Note: I also referenced the special in my 2021 Watching Recommendations
Demon Hunter - Songs of Death and Resurrection: non-metal-versions-of-their-metal-tracks
For King & Country - Burn the Ships Deluxe Edition: gospel, pop
Silent Planet - Iridescent: metalcore, homework core

Podcasts

The Ezra Klein Show: deep conversations on topics of the political economy
Just Plain Wrong: hilarious reviews of Amish fiction, from 3 Mennonite librarians
The Peter Attia Drive: health science interviews and deep dives, I am a paid subscriber
Risky Business: cybersecurity news
Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!: a comedic game show about the week’s news

Jan 8, 2022 ∞

🎶 Speaking of streaming services still playing Christmas music…

This is becoming my top fave, even surpassing the August Burns Red versions.

You know you need a booming black metalcore Christmas carol. #MetalMennonite

Jan 3, 2022 ∞

2021 Recommendations - Reading 📚🗞

Note: I’ve collected the recommended books from this post on this bookshop list, where possible. It is an affiliate link (though you can and should change to your local favorite bookshop), but if you buy any of them via my storefront, I will put that money back into getting more books and sharing the good ones.

I read 48 books in 2021. As I mentioned in my 2021 service recommendations I use StoryGraph to track reading, so you can see an overview of my reading there.

But just because I read a book doesn’t mean it was good! Here are the ones I recommend:

Fiction

A Memory Called Empire: this one had some elements that ended up intersecting in interesting ways with Foundation (the show at least)
Echo: a challenging and beautiful younger-reader book that I recommend listening to, as they do some interesting things with the audio
Anxious People: I started off disliking this one, but the things that annoyed me at first turned out to make sense as it went on, and it ended up being something I enjoyed very much
Altered Carbon: great start to the series, and it was good to see the written version
The Resisters: interesting mashup of baseball and speculative fiction
Parable of the Sower: another great series start, one that I had put off reading too long!
Abaddon’s Gate and Cibola Burn: Expanse #3 and #4, the former of which was a very rare 5-star book for me
Harrow the Ninth: #2 in the series…a very-challenging-but-very-rewarding “all the genres at once” book
The Testaments: #2 in the series, and a worthy successor to Handmaid’s Tale
A Canticle for Leibowitz: I was surprised this was written decades ago, as it feels like modern speculative fiction

Nonfiction

Ursula K. Le Guin: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations: full of her cutting insights and beautiful wit
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty: summarizing how political and economic are intertwined and how extraction leads to downfall
The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains: we are getting better at some ways of thinking and worse at others, and it’s important to understand the modes and tradeoffs
Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art: fascinating look at the development of our faces, how breathing affects health, and various breathing experiments & exercises
The End of Alzheimer’s: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline: while I’m not high risk (due to not having the genetic variants), I wanted to learn more about this topic, and this book is a very interesting deep dive full of detailed guidance and information that is relevant to any person’s health
The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century: the description of this book made me think I would hate it, but it ended up being one of the most interesting things I read this year
Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony: as a Methodist-turned-Mennonite, Hauerwas is probably “required” reading for me, but it took until this year for me to finally read this one
Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit: another classic that I finally read to get back to the principles that started a movement
The Fate of Food: What We’ll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World: highly speculative, but a fascinating overview of the various areas in which we’ll need to meet challenges

Periodicals

Plough Quarterly: I love engaging with their challenging blend of radical and conservative (published by the Bruderhof, an Anabaptist common-purse denomination)
Anabaptist World: similarly, the publication for my Anabaptist denomination (Mennonite)
New Philosopher: a thoughtful periodical with each issue being dedicated to a topic
Indianapolis Recorder: the best local newspaper

Further reading: 2020 Fiction Review and 2020 Nonfiction Review

Dec 31, 2021 ∞

📚🖋 Nice bonus item from PM Press for the new year.

The Future Is Unwritten journal with quotes on the recto pages.

Dec 31, 2021 ∞

It’s a shame they didn’t make any sequels to The Matrix. It was such a good movie.

Also a shame I keep having to make this joke.

Also, I find the lack of Juno Reactor just insulting.

Dec 31, 2021 ∞

2021 Recommendations - Watching 📺

Your local theater - enjoyed (even via streaming) renditions of Tuesdays with Morrie, Cyrano, and A Christmas Carol
See Season 1 - terrifying, mesmerizing, and incredible
Rememory - contemplative and crushing
Dear White People Season 2 - very well done
Resident Alien Season 1 - Alan Tudyk is great in this mishmash of all the genres into a single show
John Oliver on Raids - Raids are devastating and almost never necessary.
John Oliver on Sponsored Content - All ad-driven news creates perverse incentives, but sponsored content is particularly bad
Canadians rescue the USA national anthem - brilliant use of harmony
The Sinner Season 3 - more terribly haunting than the first two seasons, combined
The Commute: Walking 90km to Work - another incredibly documentary from Beau Miles
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 1 - in release order of Trek shows, this is my favorite, so far
Kim’s Convenience Seasons 1–2 - fun sitcom, though it got a little formulaic by season 3 and we got tired of the “people didn’t communicate” trope as the main plot driver
Endeavour Season 5 - I love the attention to atmosphere in this series. It feels like a (modern) history lesson every time, too. Warning: every episode of this show seems to end on a melancholy note, literally and figuratively.
I Am Mother - I’d love to discuss this sci-fi suspense!
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Season 1 - This felt like the most “comic book” of the MCU so far, due to the everybody having to fight everybody, etc. Great preaching from Sam at the end of the season.
Venom - utterly ridiculous and a lot of fun
Blade - rewatched this; interesting to hear Blade will be coming into the MCU
Fantastic Planet - totally original french animated scifi from 1973
Mr. Show Seasons 1–3 - some of this didn’t age well, but I love sketch comedy and their take on the Python-esque surreal sketch transitions
Tenet - this was an instant purchase
Line of Duty Season 1 - What a wild ride! I had to space these out because they were so provocative, complex, and intense. Season 2 not recommended.
A Black Lady Sketch Show Season 2 - Not as good as season 1, but still good sketch comedy
Love, Death & Robots Season 2 - Not as mind-altering as Season 1, but still full of incredible experiments
Self/less - Good, interesting. Would have been even better with more of a Christopher Nolan treatment and less of a Product Placement treatment.
🎶 Welcome to the Internet - “could I interest you in everything all of the time?“ Lots of good critique in this hilarious self-produced music video. Full special here.
Primal Fear - Very late to the party on this one. Surprised I didn’t see this back when it came out, as it was definitely my kind of movie. A little dated and a little predictable, but still very enjoyable and worth a discussion.
🎶 Tiny Desk Concert: clipping. - this is the first actual tiny desk concert, and the start of my obsession with clipping. (Stay tuned for Listening Recommendations)
The Suicide Squad - Ludicrous, gory, and hilarious. I’m not much of a DC guy, but this was some wicked fun.
🎶 Marc Rebillet and Madison McFerrin - incredible looping and improv chemistry
Middleditch & Schwartz - long-form improv comedy
Ted Lasso Season 2 - not as good as season 1, but still challenging, human, and funny
Foundation Season 1 - Unnecessarily brutal at at times (and I mean the storytelling, not the content…some details don’t need to be on the screen), but otherwise very good
Soul - Heartbreaking at times, but a beautiful movie

2021 Recommendations - Products and Services

Reading 📚📑

Your Local Library and Libby for borrowing ebooks and audiobooks
Bookshop for purchasing books and supporting your favorite bookstore
UpNext for read-it-later (note: I will likely move to Readwise Reader once I get through the waitlist)
Readwise.io to automatically manage & resurface highlights and notes from all of the above and more
Storygraph for tracking books
Inkl for lower-hassle news from a variety of sources

Further reading: 2021 Reading Recommendations

Listening 🎙🎶 and Watching 📺

Bandcamp for trying and buying music
MusicHarbor for finding out about new music releases for bands who have made the poor choice to not be on Bandcamp
iTunes match to make your music collection available across multiple devices
Marvis Pro for listening to that library on iOS
Plex for serving up your whole media library and Plexamp for an incredible listening experience wherever you’ve made that library available (note: I’m looking for Plex friends!)
Last.fm for tracking listening, including from Marvis and Plex (above) or from Web Scrobbler in the browser
JustWatch for seeing where a show or movie is currently available and tracking watchlists/watching without losing your place when a show moves to another provider
Overcast for podcasts

Further reading: 2021 Watching Recommendations, 2021 Listening Recommendations

Writing and Communication

Craft for fun notetaking, writing, shared documents, and impromptu websites
Fastmail for email, calendar, contacts
Micro.blog for blogging, microblogging, social media that’s not a dumpster fire, and (optionally, additionally) POSSE, a newsletter service, read-it-later service, bookshelf service, podcasting service, and video service
Mars Edit 4 for revising, tagging, managing, or deleting micro.blog posts or importing/adding a backdated post

Security and Privacy

NextDNS for blocking a lot of bad stuff (including trackers and ads)
Signal for direct messaging and calls
DuckDuckGo for search that respects you
A digital password vault
Multi-Factor Authentication for everywhere that supports it, especially for your main email provider that all your other accounts are tied to (note: avoid text messages as the 2nd factor whenever there are better options)
A couple hard drives and an alternate location (such as a family-member’s home or a safe deposit box) for periodic swapping of backups outside of your cloud storage

Other

Parcel for tracking packages and deliveries
CloudMounter for accessing cloud storage on your Mac
Magnet for turning OSX into a tiling window manager
Vivaldi for a full-feature independent browser that still works on most of the Internet

Luxuries That I Wish Weren’t

Levels for learning about how different foods, activities, and events affect your glucose and health
A periodic home cleaning service
A personal trainer to help with physical therapy and fitness

Note: This page contains affiliate links. I may receive a discount or commission for things your purchase. Nevertheless, these are real recommendations for products and services I have used.

Dec 4, 2021 ∞