If you have any complaints which you'd like to make, I'd be more than happy to send you the appropriate forms.
Saturday, July 22, 2023
Music: I Left My Heart in San Francisco
By now, we've all heard the sad news that legendary crooner Tony Bennett passed away yesterday, and I've been listening to some of his greatest hits. While Bennett had dozens of fine solo songs and famous duets from the Great American Songbook, his best known tune was arguably "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." It's a wistful ballad, and like Ray Charles's "Georgia on My Mind," it will be forever associated with a singular singer and a special place.
Miscellany: Brompton C Line Explore folding bicycle review
I like my Bike Friday New World Tourist bicycle well enough, but due to the clumsiness of the folding mechanism, it's really best for occasional car trips and long-term storage, not for daily intracity jaunts. So, I ponied up the $1500 (!) for a true urban folding bicycle - a Brompton:
Why did I go with a Brompton, rather than the inexpensive Chinese-made folding bikes on Amazon that cost a thousand bucks less? Well, the Brompton is hand-made in London, and it has the most compact, convenient fold (check out the video below). If you believe in the mantra of "buy once, cry once," it's worth the money:
Brompton rejiggered their model nomenclature a few years ago, and my model is now called the "C Line Explore." That means it has a steel frame and 6 speeds, provided by a 2-speed derailleur mated with a 3-speed internal hub. There are other (much) pricier variants, such as a titanium-framed model that shaves off 10 pounds and an electrified version with a detachable battery. Whether those are worth the money, given the stiff competition in electric mobility these days, is up to you.
Brompton's bikes do have some nice features. They all come with folding pedals, fenders, bells, and other niceties for urban commuting. They can fold partially into a handy "trolley mode" that allows you to wheel the bike like a cart through grocery stores and the like:
However, there are some practical drawbacks to a folding bike this small. The ride is worse than a normal bike or even my Bike Friday, due to the smaller frame and inherent compromises in the mechanism (I can go about 10 miles on this thing before crying uncle, and only at about 70-80% of the speed of a normal bike). Similarly, the thin wheels can't really handle off-road work, other than grassy lawns or packed sand/gravel.
Still, that's the price you pay for a bike that can fold into neat package under your desk in less than 30 seconds. If that sounds like something you want, there is really no substitute for a Brompton.
Writing a memoir inherently takes some intestinal fortitude. You are sharing some very private thoughts and moments for the world to examine, flagging them as noteworthy, and (unlike a traditional autobiography) aren't close enough to the end of your life to not care about the reaction. Easy Beauty by Chloé Cooper Jones must have been even harder to write, since Jones talks frankly about her rare disability - sacral agenesis.
Jones is a philosophy professor and writer, and her book recounts vignettes from her childhood and adult life: growing up with her inspiring but distant father, garnering unwanted sympathy at a Beyoncé concert, and coming to grips with being a mother and wife. My favorite episode is Jones's description of meeting Peter Dinklage at a party, a tragicomic scene for the ages.
Jones is a good, articulate writer, and she conveys her innermost emotions well. The problem with Easy Beauty is that Jones has (so far) not led that interesting of a life. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but her disability is not as debilitating as others in the grand scheme of things, and her travelogues in Italy and Cambodia don't amount to anything of note. I'm sure that in a few decades, she'll have more to say, so you might want to wait for that book.
Blizzard's Diablo III had a famously rocky launch in 2012, and a lot has changed in action RPGs since then. The free-to-play juggernaut Path of Exile and a slew of other fine titles have been released by other game studios, while Blizzard's fortunes have tumbled. Between the controversial pay-to-win mechanics of Diablo Immortal, internal turmoil from sexual harassment lawsuits, and turnover from the pandemic and the Microsoft merger, how did Diablo IV turn out?
Mostly good, I'd say. With development led by Blizzard Team 3 (and aided by Blizzard Albany f/k/a Vicarious Visions), Diablo IV plays like a mix of Diablo II: Resurrected, Diablo III, and World of Warcraft - dark and downbeat story and graphics, arcade-style GUI and simplified character progression, all combined with an MMO-style open world. If you have some friends in tow, you'll have a blast mowing down demons in a huge variety of environments.
Diablo IV falters if you don't have friends to play with, however. You lose out on XP and you can't use combined arms tactics with other characters (the game is designed for parties to inflict varied debuffs). Most importantly, if you're by yourself, the questlines are too thin to sustain the dozens of hours it will take to finish the story and hit the endgame content.
