GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Notes

  • My newsletters

    After doing a big culling last year, there are four regular email newsletters I still read.

    1. Seth Godin – daily blog, great stuff in general, usually focused on marketing from a very empathetic, respectful yet challenging perspective
    2. CJ Chilvers – a thoughtful writer whose approach on photography I really align with.
    3. MyModernMet – A great collection of art from all different disciplines
    4. American Life in Poetry – a weekly poem sent every Monday, curated by Tim Kooser, former poet Laureate.

    There is actually a 5th newsletter that I am provisionally following – Tim Ferris.  I’ve gotten a kick out of his content for the past month, but I’m not sure it will survive the next culling.  I like the stuff he puts on the newsletter, but he embodies a certain self satisfied attitude that doesn’t sit well with me.

    I do subscribe to all my old newsletters in a “read later” folder, but honestly I haven’t looked at that folder for half a year.  If I want to read randomly, there’s facebook, or better yet a massive pile of books at home and available at the library.

  • Bread, 09 September 2018

    This week’s bread was a pretty standard setup, but it went sideways since I overproofed it, again.  I’ve been on a bad run over overproofing my doughs, so this was yet another opportunity to try and rescue the final product.

    I mixed the dough before breakfast with my standard 4-3-1-.1+~30% ratio

    400g flour
    300g water
    100g starter (the usual 50/50 mix)
    10g salt
    60g rehydrated figs
    60g chia seeds soaked in 90g water

    So far so good, and the autolyse and the folds all went as planned.  However we had some friends drop by the house and the kids ran around the house all afternoon.  They didn’t stay for dinner, but the next thing you know its 5pm and the dough was already well overproofed.

    I tried to rescue it by adding 200g flour and 100g water, but after an hour it was still really slack.  So I kneaded in in another 100g flour, which helped a bit, but still was not feeling right.  After another hour I kneaded in another 100g of flour and waited.  At 9pm, I preheated the oven to 480f, dumped out the dough, preshaped, cut, reshaped, and then threw them into the dutch ovens and baked.  I made one additional mistake, I forgot to lower my temperature to 420f when I took off the lids, which meant the loaves ended up pretty dark.  I like the heavier toasted flavors of the crust, but it makes for hard cutting.

    Even though the loaves did not have an impressive rise, but the crumb was still moist and avoided being completely rock hard dense, so it was not a total failure.  In the future, when I try to rescue a loaf, I think I’ll just add flour without water.  And I think I’m going to change my standard baking process to just keep it at an even 450f throughout, instead of starting at 480f and then lowering it to 420f midway like I’ve been doing for the past month.

    When I first started baking, I made a slew of overproofed doughs and had no idea how to save them. After the successful salvage a couple weeks ago, when I didn’t only just add flour but also really kneaded the dough, it seems that I now have a way to save overproofed doughs.  Ultimately I’d still prefer to avoid having to practice this fallback process too often.

  • QBQ, John G. Miller, 2001

    Self-help books are my comfort food of non-fiction prose. Generally, I find them easy reads, tackle practical issues, and good for getting me fired up for a few days, occasionally leaving a nugget that will stay for a while. I’m only writing this review a week after I first read QBQ by John G. Miller, but I’m pretty certain this one is a keeper, which is a little surprising since this book is centered on the oft trod concept of “personal accountability”, without even trying to come up with some gimmicky counter-intuitive approach.

    The genius in this book its a concise memorable formula for a good self-question: “Who/How” + “I” + “Action”. I follow the news, so I know things out there can be really complex, but for any issue that directly affects me day to day, I agree with author’s basic black and white premise that there are incorrect self-questions (that result in inaction) and good self-questions (that get me moving forward). This clarity of this dichotomy and the simplicity of the QBQ formula is perfect for what this book is trying to do – catalyze action among its readers.

    Along with this basic clear formulation, there are two additional items which further recommend this book. The first is context – as America continues to lean further towards a service economy, this book will become increasingly relevant for those of us working in it. His examples highlight how excellence is accomplished in mundane interactions. Second, the book is succinct, and I mean that as a high compliment. I recently read another book that had a simple premise which was stretched out to three times its necessary length. Mr. Miller respects our time; his message is simple (though not easy) and he doesn’t wear out his welcome – this is a book you can give to a friend without hesitation.

    In all, it’s certainly worthy of a 5-star review. While there are folks in the world who are truly enslaved in circumstances beyond their control, if you’ve got the wherewithal to be reading customer reviews on Amazon, you’re most likely not one of them. This book is highly recommended.

  • Still Rockin’!

    This little guy. We made pancakes on July 4th, leaving just a little remnant left in the stainless steel starter bowl but forgot to refeed him. While I drove off to run some errands, my mother in law saw the “empty” bowl and tried to wash it out, leaving it to soak in the kitchen sink.

    So you could imagine the shock and horror when I came back and saw the bowl filled with dirty dishwater. But there was still some stuff crusted on the sides and a dollop of starter maybe the size of a small candy corn at the bottom of the bowl. So we threw out the dirty water and dumped 50 grams of flour and 50 grams of water back into it.

    Must have been a rough day for him cause nothing really happened that night (usually you get a nice ferment by eight hours), but I decided to wait till the morning to give him his last rites.

    I woke up the next morning planning to start anew but I looked in the bowl and l he was good – frothy and poofy! There was the minor issue of the gnarly dishwater soak, so I tossed and refreshed him a few times before throwing him into the fridge….and then pulling him out to make this lovely loaf.

    So for those keeping score at home he’s now survived death by boiling (threw in too hot water one day, but was able to rescue him by pulling off some dough before I baked my loaf) and now death by dishwashing. I had wanted to say “Don’t mess with Mr. Mianbaobao!”, but honestly, he can take it.

  • That Bread!

    I got out of Berkeley at the bottom of the dot com bust so I ended up working as a landscaping laborer. As could be expected I had a pretty hefty caloric demand but was light on cash. Furthermore our lunch breaks were also quite short (we bundled our paid breaks into a paid 30 minute lunch).

    So my solution was to bring loaf of bread with meat in a can, usually Vienna sausage but anything would do. I tried to upscale this simple menu by baking my own bread. But I didn’t know what I was doing and had very little luck, though I did end up making a sourdough starter that made some awesome pancakes for a while.

    Earlier this year, my wife read about sourdough pancakes in the New York Times.  The thought of sourdough rekindled the old nostalgia and so my girl and I made a sourdough starter, which then lead to the old bread baking thing getting fired up again. In the intervening years the whole hipster artisan bread baking fad had started including the major innovation of baking in a Dutch oven.  Conveniently we had acquired one on sale from the back of an Ace Hardware on Westheimer in Houston, even though it was used only once in the intervening eight years. Along with internet content, the library had Jim Lahey’s My Bread and Ken Forkish’s excellent Flour Water Salt Yeast cookbooks.

    It took a week of baking every day to accidentally make a decent loaf that wasn’t hard as a rock. We danced around the kitchen that evening. And then two more weeks of baking every day to start doing it consistently. Over the past eight months I’ve been banging out lean breads about once a week – water salt flour (and accents like raisins and walnuts) – hearty stuff with a hard crust and varying crumb cause I’m just aight. But after she started buying bread (hint, hint) I broke down and decided to make an enriched bread this weekend.

    Actually I forgot I was going to try an enriched bread yesterday morning until after the initial mix. But after all these other experiments and reading Ruhlman’s Ratio and Robertson’s Tartine books I’ve come to realize it’s all fairly improvisational once you got a feel for the basics so I threw in a little extra flour, milk, sugar, and butter. And after letting the guy proof all day I baked it at a nice sedate 350.

    I woke this morning and tried a slice. And well here it is. The bread I dreamed about making 16 years ago.

  • On Boardgaming

    I was asked on a photography forum to say a little more about the boardgaming hobby. Here was my response:

    How do I start? Well, one could go to the website boardgamegeek.com, but that place is UI disaster until you get used it (totally designed by engineers!)

    The best way to describe modern boardgaming is that it is an outgrowth of a lot of European (especially German) boardgame design from the 90’s and 00’s. Key features include a limited time length, no player elimination, and controlled interaction. In a word, anti-Monopoly (especially Monopoly as with its common house rules).

    The top standard of German family boardgaming is a prize called the Spiel Des Jahres (SDJ) and which judges games at a medium light weight level of complexity. Unfortunately the crowd in hobby sites (like Boardgamegeek) tends to favor niche stuff so their database rankings favor heavy complicated stuff (similar to how photographers lust over L glass even though most other humans would be more interested in the latest bedazzled iphone 6s case).

    Even though I consider myself a “serious” boardgamer, I personally don’t enjoy complicated fare. I grok the joy of a good brain burning puzzle, but I prefer the elegance of a pared down game where the interaction is the emergent outgrowth of an carefully curated set of simple rules.

    Modern classics for people looking to get into the hobby would be Settlers of Catan (the big hit kickstarted this whole eurogame trend), Carcassonne, and Ticket to Ride (which got me back into the boardgaming hobby after a decade long hiatus). I would also want to point out Pandemic and Hanabi which are both excellent cooperative games (where everyone plays together as a team to beat the game system).

  • the office restroom

    Lately I’ve been reading William Eggleston’s Guide and Stephen Shore’s Uncommon Places.

    Which led me to take a few photos that tried to capture that plainspoken ethos…from my office restroom.

    150821-i5c-5296
    150818-i5c-5218
    150818-i5c-5220

  • Tokina 500mm f/8, Cadatropic Lens

    When I first got my Nikon D40, I took a self portrait in the bathroom at Grant Street. I did the same when I got my manual focus 50mm lens. And then I got a 500mm f/6.3 lens which I’ve since given to my father. And thus ended that run of self portraits that was intended to celebrate each addition to the collection.

    But quite by accident I ended up taking a shot of myself with my Tokina 500mm f/8 lens. I had pulled out this lens due to the “watching/voyeur” assignment on OTP and I saw a glimpse of myself in the sliding glass door and took a couple shots of myself. Its not perfect, between the vanishingly thin DOF and the longish shutter speed, it wasn’t gonna be clean, but its good enough to kick up the collection again.

    Tokina 500mm f/8
    Tokina 500mm f/8

  • My old and new boardgamegeek profiles, 2015

    Here is my new profile on boardgamegeek.com

    I’m an architect in Las Vegas, with my wife and daughter.

    I like asymmetry and systematic variety.  A saber and a box of chocolates.

    This is the old one, a big sprawling mess and in serious need of editing.

    I’m an architect now living in Las Vegas. I used to think I was into intense games, but I’m starting to make peace with the fact that I’m more of a fluffy gamer. I like games that become relatively mindless with practice (such as Tien Len or Mah Jong). I enjoy heavier games, but they aren’t “relaxing” in the same way (duh?). I can put up with a lot of luck in my games, most likely why I don’t mind Risk or Monopoly (played per original rules).

    For what its worth, I just switched my rating system to the BGG standard. I don’t like the 10 point granularity, but I’ll live with it and I’m tired of trying to keep track my own stupid system. The only difference is for expansions, which are judged in how well they enhance the base game — which means I am kind of liberal with 10’s, even if I might not like playing the game or expansion all that much.

    It has been was kinda rough over the years…there are games that I’m supposed to enjoy that have dropped down lower and lower. On that note, my Top 10 list takes “nostalgia” into account – I’ll acknowledge the fact I don’t think it’s a great game in my ratings. However making me feel warm and fuzzy inside is part of the top 10 calculus.

    I have typically enjoyed elegant, streamlined, lighter games, but lately found myself interested in heavier games. I don’t mind a bit of randomness and chaos in my games, but I find myself liking it less and less. What I really love is controlled chaos, instead of pure strategy, I like directed improvisation. I think that is why I have enjoyed Troyes more than Caylus (I learned both games this year). A better example may be my love of climbing games such as Tichu and Tien Len. There are definitely times when you get dealt a crap hand and there’s nothing you can do about it, but in most games there is something you can do, even with a weak hand…or something you can screw up, even with a really strong hand. One thing I absolutely really dislike is having to plan too far into the future, chess being a prime example. This also includes most worker placement games such as Dungeon Lords, Glenn Drover’s Empires: The Age of Discovery, and Dominant Species all of which utilize the “place a bunch of workers first, then resolve everything at once” mechanism. Caylus gets a pass because of its elegance.

    Things I dislike in games: lots of moving parts, memory, and simultaneous action selection where there are dire consequences for guessing wrong (ala Witches Brew or Dungeon Lords). I suspect that I like auction games way more than I ought and dislike worker placement games more than necessary. I appreciate games with a strong spatial quality…maybe something coming from my architecture background – and I certainly love sleek “elegant” game mechanics and interesting graphic design.

    10 – I love it love it love it!!
    9 – I love it love it!!
    8 – I love it!
    7 – I really like it!
    6 – I like it!
    5 – Meh.
    4 – I don’t like it!
    3 – I really don’t like it!
    2 – I really really don’t like it!
    1 – I HATE it!

  • A Toolkit for 2-Player Gaming

    After my daughter was born, I have not had many opportunities to attend gaming events, so my life is now centered on two player games. This made me rediscover some old games and look at them in a new light. It might not be the same experience with two, but they can be fine games in their own right.

    This past week I drafted a conceptual toolkit for retrofitting multiplayer games to play well for two players. Not all the examples are super successful, but they were all successful enough for someone to propose on a forum, if not publish in the rulebooks.

    The toolkit can be broadly divided into two categories, SETUP CHANGES and MECHANICAL REVISIONS.

    SETUP CHANGES

    One Less Chair: This most basic of this category, almost not worth mentioning, is to just deal one less hand, such as in Poker…or Glory to Rome, Dominion, Hanabi, etc.
    Setup Mechanical Twist: Sometimes a game uses the same components and plays the same as the original game but includes a slight mechanical twist in the setup, for example, Spades for two which adds a drafting mechanism. Another example (though not for two) is in three player Tien Len where the last card dealt is thrown face up on the table and the player with the lowest card may trade for it.
    More or Less: Some games pretty much use the same components but deal out a slightly different amount of goodies, such as money in Caylus or the amount of available goods in Puerto Rico. Pandemic:OTB reduces the quantity of event cards. Hanabi changes the quantity of hand cards between 4/5P games and 2/3P games.
    Reduce Components: Sometimes you take out specific items from the multiplayer games as in Agricola, or in Hansa where you remove some colors of goods altogether.
    Add Components: And sometimes you add something totally new, such as in China: Das Duell. The original Mamma Mia! plays fine for two, but I’ve found the game greatly improved by playing Mamma Mia Plus, where the the expanded card mix compensates for the reduction of players.
    Modify the Map: And sometimes you change the board. Ticket to Ride does this by disallowing parallel track lays. Ra reduces the Ra Slot, TransAmerica only deals out the cards with the border. Power Grid reduces regions. Only one of each violet building is available in Puerto Rico.

    MECHANICAL REVISIONS

    Dummy Player: Though much reviled in general, it seems to work fairly well in some games. Dirk in Alhambra with is a primary example. Its also been proposed with positive reactions for Trias. And its been way too long since I played Nefertiti to comment knowledgably, but the official 2P rules in the expansion include a Dummy player. This unofficial Niagara variant proposes adding a third paddle (along with reducing the gems in the setup).
    Play Two!: This is the other obvious drastic mechanical revision fro 2P games. There are some strong proponents of playing Puerto Rico with two boards and its even been tried in Chudyk’s new game Impulse. The official Hare and Tortoise variant also does this (in my opinion it is brilliant, but it is not liked on BGG). This was also proposed for Trias, as well as High Society with a slight twist when a bad card comes up. I guess you could say this is also the way you would modify the number of players in Scotland Yard, though its core essence is a two player game that was designed to accommodate multiple players.
    Remove Mechanisms: Sometimes a mechanism is just unnecessary, Caylus dumps the turn order Mechanism.
    Add Mechanisms: I don’t think its particularly successful in Bohnanza, Uwe essentially added a new phase in the game to simulate trading. Also not particularly successful is the variant of Acquire where you draw a tile during a merger to simulate a dummy banker (this differs the main “Dummy Player” tool because it is random and is an instant non-permanent effect). I haven’t played it myself, but a promising Dixit Variant has the storyteller selecting a card, drawing five more off the top of the deck and adding three to the tableau along with throwing in a random card. And I’ve heard two player Niagara is playable by merely adding the Beaver Mechanism that comes with the Spirits of the Niagara expansion.
    Tweak Existing Mechanism: Fairy Tale has a billion variants proposed because the base two player game is unsatisfying. Most of them tweak the number of cards drawn and almost all of them involve discarding a card during each phase of the draft before giving the hand to your opponent. The most recently proposed Fairy Tale Variant involves drawing cards off the top of the deck each round. This unofficial variant for Basari (along with modifying the length of each round) does this by conflating the Jewels and Points actions to force more bartering.
    Action Quantities: The official rules for Trias reduces the number of actions a player may take from four to three. And Puerto Rico gives each player multiple actions before the round ends (and the official variant is structured to create a particularly significant change by removing the craftsman angst).
    Modify the Game Length: This was a simple variant proposed for Fairy Tale. And is also the source behind some of different variants for Puerto Rico, since the quantity of Colonists and VP’s affect the length and thus balance of the game. Love Letter changes the number of hearts you needs to capture before victory. And Troyes does this very neatly with their event card reveals.
    Change the nature of the game: Dixit isn’t really that competitive so someone decided to make it fully cooperative.

    I’m not particularly versed in boardgame theory so I’m certain there is a lot rough edges and maybe even a complete conceptual realignment in order before everything is said and done.

    If I’m going to be playing primarily two player for the next few years, this might be fun to explore. I know there is a good two player game in the Bohnanza deck, just waiting to be designed.