Show Notes - Week of May 25, 2020

Greetings from 53.5° north latitude, the land of near-summer daytime temperatures, open playgrounds, and a populace inching towards showing their middle finger to the concept of social distancing. 

Thanks go out this week to the Public Sector Network for inviting me to deliver a speech on building a culture of security awareness in an organization. The slides are available here, but probably won't be all that useful without my narrative to accompany the deck. If you are interested in watching the security awareness videos referenced in the presentation, the full playlist is available at this link.  

Beyond preparing for and delivering that talk, it was a pretty quiet week. I was able to start and finish a Douglas Adams classic, tried a quarter dozen new beers, and learned (and relearned) and a couple new words. 

Let's get on with it. 

Reading Pile:
I took a break from the Patrick Rothfuss masterpiece this week because I didn't have enough mental energy to properly focus on it. I'll jump back into it this week, so it will be even later in June before I finish it.

Book #21 for 2020 in its place was a re-read of "Life, The Universe, and Everything" by Douglas Adams. This was definitely my least favorite of the Hitchhiker's series so far. It had some interesting conceptual twists but lacked the irreverant humor that made me laugh out loud while reading it that made the first two books so memorable. It might have been a better written book in some regards, and is probably more serious than the first two books. If that was intentional, I can imagine how much resistance Adams would have received in changing the style of his novels after the success of his first two books. I wonder if that was why he followed up the Hitchhiker's series with the Dirk Gently books. Maybe I should pick those up again. 

The point above about authors changing their writing style reminds me of a quote I heard from Neil Gaiman about eighteen months ago. He said that everyone pushes you to write something original and new, until they like your first book, and then all they want is more of exactly what you already wrote. 

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Twenty-one books in twenty weeks means I should be able to hit my target of 52 books this year when you factor in the group readings of War and Peace and The Count of Monte Cristo. ​

New Beers:
Two new beers this week, with one coming from a favorite brewer and the other continuing my foray into traditional European beers.

First up was the Life In The Clouds DDH IPA from Collective Arts. Before diving into this one, I had to figure out what a DDH IPA was. Thanks to Craft Beer Joe for deciphering the acronym to mean Double Dry Hops. The DDH process definitely explains the bold hoppiness of this beer, and why there was so much pineapple and citrus flavor. It was hazy but much more filtered than some of my previous selections. This was a very tasty beer that I would happily have again. (3.75 / 5)

Second up was the Destiny IPA from Fuggles and Warlock Craftworks in Richmond, B.C. This had a ton of taste, fruit, and hops. Seven hops varieties, and I was only familiar with four of them. Good stuff. (3.5 / 5)

The third beer this week was a European Pale Lager called Tatra produced by the marcro Zywiec. This was pretty decently tasty lager with a fairly crisp and slightly bready taste. Nothing to complain about. (3.25 / 5)

New Words:
Just a couple new words this week. Apparently Douglas Adams didn't have much to expand my vocabularly in his third book, especially since one was a repeat. 

retroussé
[ˌretro͞oˈsā]
ADJECTIVE

1. (of a person's nose) turned up at the tip in an attractive way.

sidereal
[ˌsīˈdirēəl]
ADJECTIVE

1. of or with respect to the distant stars (i.e. the constellations or fixed stars, not the sun or planets).