Read This, Not That

As promised, here are some of the most interesting/amusing/engaging books and movies I read and watched in 2017.

Book (nonfiction)

Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber (Daniel Charles) – If you’re a ChemE, you’d better know about the Haber-Bosch process¹. Turns out Haber was a very interesting person. He was German and Jewish, took part in developing chemical warfare during WWI, had a conflicted personal life, often struggled to gain recognition, and, yes, figured out the reaction to synthesize ammonia. [Bosch did the scaling up to the full industrial process.]

Promised the Moon (Stephanie Nolen) – Noteworthy because it looks at a different aspect of the space race. Instead of starting with the Mercury Seven and going through the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo programs, this book is about why/how women didn’t get to go into space.

Called Again (Jennifer Pharr Davis) – It’s about a woman trying to break the speed record for hiking the Appalachian Trail. Of course I had to read it.

Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting that Revolutionized Wine (George Taber) – The Judgment of Paris is the event that is regarded as the first time California wines were officially ranked more highly than French wines. While the Judgment itself is only a small portion of the book, the rest is a fascinating narrative of the development of wine production in California.

Soccernomics (Simon Kuper/Stefan Szymanski) – There aren’t many books about soccer, and while this book focuses mainly on the economics of the Premier League (I’d have liked to see more about MLS, but the league’s only 20+ years old now, so there’s much less data), there are a lot of interesting points about picking players, the effect of coaches, fanbases, and much more.

Book (fiction)

Attack of the Theater People (Marc Acito) – Shenanigans abound as a group of aspiring actors struggle to find work in New York City.

City of Tranquil Light (Bo Caldwell) – Loosely based on the author’s grandparents’ experiences as missionaries in China during the early 1900s.

The Cardturner (Louis Sachar) – From the author who brought you Holes comes a book about . . . bridge. No knowledge of bridge necessary. And yes, a book about a card game played largely in senior centers is interesting.

Movie (musical)

Into the Woods – I was pleasantly surprised by Disney’s adaptation of Sondheim’s musical. The set provides another dimension to the performance that can’t be achieved on stage and they manage to insert some lighter scenes into what could be a very dark second act. There are some roles and songs that are cut or reworked, but not so that Disney can insert their own material, so I’m not mad about it.

Rent – Another solid movie adaptation of a stage musical. [Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t particularly like it (46%), but they seem to mainly be complaining about the director. IMDb likes it fine (7/10), and Amazon really likes it (4.5/5).]

Movie (live action)

Pitch Perfect – I finally saw Pitch Perfect last year. It’s got college shenanigans + a cappella. What more could I ask for?

Hidden Figures – Snuck this one in on the last day of the year while I was home. Again, this looks at the space race from a different perspective than the typical progression to the moon. Instead, it highlights the roles three women played at NASA behind the scenes. They play up the dumb white male a bit at times, but I don’t mind. This movie also contains what might be my favorite quote from a movie I saw last year, spoken by Octavia Spencer’s character Dorothy Vaughn: “FORTRAN is a new and exciting language used by programmers to communicate with computers. It is exciting as it is the wave of the future.” Yes, Dorothy, I agree completely.

Movie (rewatch)

Mary Poppins – It’s a classic. Nothing else to say.

Fantasia – This is the movie that every elementary/middle school music teacher puts on for movie day in music class. I think this was my first time actually watching the whole thing.

Movie (animated)

Wreck-It Ralph – A bit of a different take on the idea of having the setting be inside a video game. It’s not all about gathering points or advancing through levels; there’s an actual plot besides that. I liked the characters, the animation is fun, and there’s even a bit of a twist at the end. Good job on this one, Disney.

Sing – The premise of the movie is American Idol for animals, and you can guess most of the plot from there, but the point of it isn’t the plot. Sing contains over sixty songs, ranging from opera and classical to 2016’s top 40 hits, and they’re incorporated well, which is really the strength of this movie. There are also a couple really funny scenes.

Moana – Yet another retelling of the classic Disney princess story, but it’s done well, and there’s a chicken in it.

(because animation) The Good Dinosaur – Plot is straightforward for a Pixar movie, but the soundtrack and animation are fantastic.

(because it’s Pixar) Finding Dory – It’s Pixar. There are a couple really great moments in the film, but the disregard for physics in some of the scenes is nearing Hobbit goblin cave levels.

¹3H₂ + N₂ ---> 2NH₃, in the presence of a metal catalyst and at high temperature and pressure.

Minutes, Miles, and Numbers

This is the time of year when I divulge how much little I biked, practiced the clarinet, read, and wrote last year. I did, however, watch a fair number of movies and TV shows. And yes, I really do keep track of all this information, because I like numbers and it makes it easy to give book/movie recommendations, which I was recently asked to do, so there.

Because of my tendency to leave for my class that was a mile away from my office five to ten minutes before class was scheduled to start, a few early December bike rides meant I rode my bike in every month of 2017. I only rode once in the months of January, February, and March (twice out of necessity, once on an unseasonably warm day to the farmer’s market), but once counts. In July alone I covered over a hundred miles on twenty-two days. A lot of those were short rides between my office and apartment, with longer rides across Ann Arbor on the weekends. My highest single day distance was 16.5 miles, on a day when I went grocery shopping and visited two library branches and the mall. Over the whole year, I biked 105 days (29% of the year) and rode 467 miles (about the distance from Boston to Washington, DC).

Biking mileage for 2017 by month

Since my return to concert band, I’ve been practicing the clarinet on my own again. I tried/try to be reasonably consistent about practicing. Looking at the graph below, there must have been something hard about our third and fourth concerts last year to get me to practice that much in March, but I don’t remember what. I definitely also took a break over the summer when I didn’t have any concert band music to work through.  Practice total for the year: 73 hours.  This doesn't include playing for fun, band rehearsals, or concerts.

Time spent practicing clarinet in 2017 by month

I also watched 62 movies, including close to two dozen musicals, and read 61 books, roughly a quarter of which were nonfiction and three quarters were fiction. I spent my summer reading research papers. My brain could take only so much educational material. Coming soon – a post with some of my favorite books and movies I watched last year.

Finally, I’ve been writing (or not writing) here for over five years now. The picture below sums up five years of writing.

Graph of blog posts vs month for the past five years
(Click to enlarge)

The Year in Ann Arbor [2017]

January began with a 5:30 flight back to Ann Arbor, followed closely by the start of round two of kinetics and heat and mass transfer. In between problem sets, I read thirty year old research papers and continued playing with the Ann Arbor Concert Band (AACB).

In February, classes continued, I watched the Revolution play in the Desert Diamond Cup via the internet, and I once again started working with Fortran code for my research project. #FortranLives

March brought fun with COMSOL Multiphysics, which was only slightly less temperamental than Aspen Plus. [Note: For non-science/ChemE people, COMSOL solves differential equations such as those for heat and mass transfer. Aspen is a chemical process simulation used mainly (exclusively?) by chemical engineers.] At the end of the month we took a road trip to Ohio to meet with some of our lab’s collaborators.

In April, the MLS season was well underway, with the Revolution drawing four of their six matches that month. I gave two presentations, wrote two final reports, and took a final exam in the span of five days, while also preparing for my doctoral candidacy exam (DCE). On Easter, I was given the responsibility of hiding the eggs for the Easter egg hunt.

The big news in May was taking and passing the DCE. The AACB also had its last concert of the season before breaking for the summer. I baked thumbprint cookies for a church Memorial Day picnic and backyard soccer game.

With June came the start of summer. I took a break from research for a couple hours to see the peonies at the arboretum, ate a vegan sloppy joe from a food truck, and visited my brother in Chicago to see him graduate. On the way back to Ann Arbor, my parents and I saw sand dunes, checked out the Meijer Sculpture Gardens, stopped by Holland, and paid another visit to Greenfield Village and the Ford Museum.

In July I biked across most of Ann Arbor. Multiple trips to the farmer’s market and library were made. Research also picked up, I actually (finally) started getting results, and I read thirty years of papers on the rheology of every salt/surfactant combination possible except the one I’m interested in. After much searching (and some help from a friend), I found an apartment for the next school year and was officially not homeless.

I was, however, temporarily homeless for a couple weeks in August. I was (very kindly) invited to stay with a family from church and ended up house and cat sitting for them. One of the cats ignored my existence unless he needed food. The other loved my feet and would not let me eat dinner in peace. After I moved into my new apartment, I made a trip to IKEA and got to assemble Swedish-named furniture.

The fall semester started in September. I only took one class, on methods and practice in scientific computing, which was almost more trouble than it was worth, but I did get to program in Fortran. #FortranStillLives At the beginning of the month, band rehearsals started up again, and I dutifully made my return to the band room; I also went rock climbing for the first time in over a year.

October was occupied with research, class, and keeping myself fed and clothed. I tried a couple more restaurants in Ann Arbor (One Bowl, Jolly Pumpkin) and baked brownies, bread pudding, and beer cake.

In November, I went to my first hockey game at Michigan and saw Michigan beat Ferris State 7-2 at Yost Ice Arena. Additionally, I gave my first group meeting presentation. There was yet more baking to celebrate lab birthdays and Thanksgiving with both church friends and my research lab.

December started with an 8:00 am phone meeting with our collaborators, successfully using a debugger to find a segmentation fault, and documenting our code, because best practices. I finished my one class with a final presentation and report, was kept out twice until midnight by church Christmas dinners/parties, and finally returned home days before Christmas. At home, I ended the year with a lot of eating, sleeping, and watching TV, including Jeopardy!, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and The Great British Baking Show.