Colin's Column Book Club: Band of Brothers

The next book in our continuing series of our World War II history study is Band of Brothers. The author, Stephen E. Ambrose, is the same guy who wrote our first book Pegasus Bridge. I'm not kidding you, I will probably read everything he has written. He's that good.

Although we haven't finished reading Omaha Beach, we are taking a small detour for this one. A co-worker recommended the HBO mini series that was made from this book. So as I started watching the mini-series I became completely enthrawled with the story.

The story follows the 101st airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest. The men of Easy Company were all volunteers for the "Screaming Eagles" parachute regiment. We open up with the men in training at Camp Toccoa. They're soon shipped off to England to prepare for their role in the D-Day invasion. The rest of the story follows their involvement in numerous other battles, seemingly many of the major assignments and tough missions.

But the book and mini-series are more than just a historical record of what E Company accomplished. It is a first person view from the front lines, a broader perspective from the eyes of the officers. It is a tale of the drama and emotion of watching your best friends get blown up right in front of you. It details the hardship and misery of defending a line out of a foxhole in freezing temperatures with little to eat, no winter clothing, and fear of mortar shells. Ambrose does a wonderful job depicting the daily trials of the soldiers using first person accounts and incredible narrative.

I'm only about half way through the book and I've seen 8 of the 10 episodes from the mini-series. But I donated blood yesterday and almost passed out (another story of it's own) for the first time in my life because of the impact this story has had on me. I'm not kidding, I have thanked the Lord a little extra every time I have a warm meal and can wake up in a warm bed because of what I have seen and learned through this.

I'm not trying to go all ethical and serious on y'all, but the book and mini-seris are that good. I am always impressed with the ability of historians to piece together everything (even 60+ years later) to recreate the events. Ambrose has a great writing style that is both easy to read and intriguing at the same time. This is a great, great story and Ambrose and HBO have done an incredible job telling it.

(Disclaimer: Although the HBO mini-series is listed as "unrated" it has a lot of violence, obviously, and typical military speak. Be warned.)

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Other Related Links:
Screaming Eagle Vetrans Website - http://www.screamingeagle.org/
Lock 'n Load: Band of Heroes Wargame - http://www.locknloadgame.com/

ColinCam is back and better than ever!

ColinCam is back! I found a better site to host the ftp action of the image. It works much better now. I'll tweak the html and javascript to see if I can make the refresh cleaner or something. I'll see if I can run it at work tomorrow too.

Check it out: http://colinkun.fasthost4all.com/colincam.html

Park Pointe Ward Pinewood Derby

Friday night was our Elder's Quorum Pinewood Derby. I was in charge of organizing and promoting the event. I think we ended up with about 8 cars in the stock class, and 5 for the modified. Most of the modified car makers also made stock class cars, so we had about 12 participants overall.

We saw all kinds of shapes and colors, and almost everyone was using a different lubricant for their wheels. I chose the standard powdered graphite.

Mine is the green race car in the middle next to the car with the chicken broth strapped on top. I bought a pre-cut car from Robert's Craft store for about $8, sanded, and painted it with the only color of spray paint we had.

We used a point system and did 3 heats of three cars each. First place got 3 points, Second place 2 points, third place three points and raced so that everyone got three races. We then seeded the teams 1-8 according to their points. I ended up with the 5th seed.

From there, we did a bracket style elmination tournament matching up two cars at a time for a best of three races winner. My car was the only lower seeded vehicle to win one race, but unfortunately, we did not allow any lubricating between the races and my car fizzled and lost in a very narrow rubber match.

We had trophies for the winners. Ribbons for the modified class winners. And we did certificates for every participant. The modified class got a little intense because the makers had worked a lot harder to build their vehicles and there weren't really any rules. All ended well, but it got a little tense.

Fun time all around. I think we'll try again next year and hope to get more participants.

Post Halloween Candy Myth Test

Another fun link:

http://encarta.msn.com/quiz_196/Tricky_treats.html

Hmm, only 4 out of 10. Not very good. See how you do! Myth or no myth, candy is delicious.

Email Blender

If blogs aren't for anything else, they're at least good for a place to post links for interesting web sites. Here's another one: http://emailblender.com/

Fun stuff, yet again.

Colin's Column Book Club: Omaha Beach: D-Day, June 6, 1944

This month's book club selection is another from the World War II genre. Currently, our course of study is focusing on the European theater, primarily the D-Day invasion.

Beginning today, Tuesday, with the Preface and first couple of chapters, we will investigate and discuss the book periodically but without a set schedule.

Of course, comments are always welcome.

Colin's Column Book Club: Pegasus Bridge

I posted recently about my history kick, and part of that kick has involved browsing the history section at Borders and a run to the West Jordan library. Here's one that I found and highly recommend:

Title: Pegasus Bride: June 6, 1944
Author: Stephen E. Ambrose

This book is about a lesser known event that occured as the first victory on D-Day. Major John Howard lead an attack and seizure of two bridges behind enemy lines that proved to be vital for the invasion of Normandy. I join the many who have at least heard of and know about the D-Day invasions at Sword , Omaha, Gold, and Utah Beaches. D-Day is known as the single largest air/sea invasion in the history of the world and put the Allies in a position to move cross continent and push Germany back, eventually closing in on Berlin and taking Hitler's army out of the war.

However, the battle at Pegasus Bridge is a relatively unknow piece of that D-Day invasion. This book does an incredible job setting the scene for the battle, taking the reader through the training of soldiers, explaining the background of many of the key individuals involved, and even minute by minute detail of the actual landing of gliders and capture of the bridges.

I haven't read anything else by Ambrose, but you can bet I've got more of his books on hold at the library. This book was very well written, organized, and detailed. It was a nice 200 pages that moved quickly, never dulled, and captured the moment very well. I don't have any kind of thumbs up, 3 star, 1-10 rating or anything... but I really really enjoyed this book. Another thing about this book that made it nice, although very detailed and descriptive, the vulgarity and gory details that we are very aware of were left out for the benefit of the reader. Clean, concise, captivating, and just an all around great book.

My history kick

I can't quite place the exact beginning, but somewhere in the past couple weeks I have started up on this history kick. I think it started as a result of three different triggers: browsing a war book at Borders, finding a page from my grandpa's own war journal, and coming to the realization that I know very little about some of the most important things that have happened in this world.

Every time I need a break from work, I head across the street to Borders. Not too far away, but enough to get a little walk, some fresh air, and then the variety of items to browse and play with are enough to keep me entertained. But one day, I stumbled upon a book in the discount section called "Turning the Tide of War: 50 battles that changed the course of modern history." Very interesting summaries of specific battles, complete with diagrams, maps, etc. I found it all very intriguing because I really didn't know that much about most of those wars.

Sometime around that day (possibly before Borders, possibly after) I was rumaging through old papers in a box, mostly old elementary school art projects, old reports, stuff I hope to show my kids one day. But I found on the back of one of my sketches (a picture of my fictitional comic book character: eXtinguisher) a detailed account from a World War II vetrans' experience flying a B-52 bomber named the "Vicious Virgin." Intrigued by it and figuring it must be my grandfather's journal/memoir, I asked my dad if any such document existed. Regrettedly, he said nothing that he knows of, but he wishes he had obtained something like it before Grandpa died. Confused, I asked my dad what Grandpa's plane was named and immediately started a family mystery when my dad confirmed that indeed, Grandpa's plane was the Vicious Virgin. Now the hunt in on to find out where my found page had come from. Something exists, somewhere, and it is something my dad did not know about.

Between these two events an overriding feeling of ignorance hung over me. There's a heck of a lot of history that I know virtually nothing about, and should learn. Added to that feeling, a friend recommended a new historical war board game to me, Memoir '44. I've now got a full fledge history hunger, particularly World War II. Off to the local library, google.com, and my mom and dad's basement.

The end of a short era

Well, my short time in a corner office with a beautiful view out the window has come to an abrubt hault. Apparently, we are rearranging offices a bit and that means I'm out of my spacious corner cube. I'll need to snap a few pictures out the window to remember this view. It's always sad when the best view I'll probably ever have from my work place comes and goes at such a young age.

I'm moving now to a cramped little cubicle that is within site of a window, but about an eighth the size of this current one. Oh well... it was nice while it lasted and I knew it wasn't permanent.

Pictures to come soon.

Frapper

I am amazed at all the cool tools and toys that continue to show up on the net. Here's another one that deserves some attention. http://www.risingconcepts.com/frapper/

I created a lil' link for all you readers out there: http://www.risingconcepts.com/frapper/colinscolumnreaders

Colincam

Colincam has launched. Unfortunately, it's not streaming video, and only updates about once every minute or two... but it's up and running!

I waited a LONG 5 months for Comcast to make good on the promised promotional item, but it finally arrived on Monday. What was said to be 4-6 weeks turned into almost that many months! Rediculous.

The page will update while I'm at work, maybe a little at home, but probably not at night.

Sudoku

I love games like this. Logic puzzles, challenging yet still possible. Let me introduce you to my new friend Sudoku.

Sudoku (Japanese for 'single number'), as explained on Wikipedia.org, is much like a cross-word puzzle only using numbers. While there is no actual math involve, the puzzles involve logic and a process of fitting the appropriate numbers into only acceptable location of the grid.

According to one web-site, there are approximately 6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960 different puzzle combonations. That's 6 sextillion! Enough to do about infinity each day and never run out!

USA Today's puzzle of the day is a fun place to start your day off, get the brain going, and play along. You can even track how long it takes you to complete each puzzle.

Check it out!

A friend found this on Engrish.com. Hilarious!

My Blinker

There's a logical fallacy here somewhere, but I'm not sure what it's called. We all make this mistake, getting upset at the actions of one, but feeling justified when we do the same thing because we know our reason.

Example
When I drive, I go nuts when people don't use their blinkers. My wife is always telling me to "calm the road-rage" and to "pipe down, they can't hear you anyway." Changing lanes, coming to a corner, whatever the reason, you have a blinker so please use it! Or do they?

That's where I come in. Lately, my left blinker has stopped working. Suddenly, I'm the one changing lanes and turning corners without signaling but feel justified because my blinker doesn't work. How many of those people had a reason that just didn't know about, but were equally as justified for their actions?

It happens all the time, day in, and day out. You're in the store approaching a register when someone jumps in front of you, cutting you off, so that they get through first. Makes you mad, no? Or you're taking a nap when the phone rings, and you go through all the effort to answer the phone only to find out it's a wrong number. Furious! But how often are we the ones cutting people off because we're in a hurry. Who knows what trouble we've caused someone when we call a wrong number?

That's where a little patience and consideration come in. We don't know the story behind someone's actions, but we do know our own. They don't know our story, but they know their own. My blinker has reminded me that this kind of thing happens. I should be slower to anger and judgement and quicker to give people the benefit of the doubt, a little slack. We could all benefit from the lesson of My Blinker.

What classifies a 'good movie'?

There are many different aspects of a movie to be considered when concluding if a movie was actually good or not. Most people will ask if a movie was any good, not simply if you liked it or not. But good is such a relative term!! Let's break it down.

For a movie to be classified as good, it needs to have certain characteristics.

1. Rewatchability- First and foremost, a good movie needs to have rewatchability or the ability to re-watch a movie and get further enjoyment. Some movies are good to be seen only once. That doesn't mean it was painful to sit through the first time, but that future viewings will not have a very high return on investment, the law of diminishing returns. Most comedies seem to shoot for high rewatchability.
2. Quotability- When a movie provides one-liners and quotes that you can use, it was a good flick. Dumb and Dumber is a great example of a movie with good quotability.
3. Quality- The overall satisfaction that one leaves a movie with: believable characters, intense fight scenes, well placed jokes, emotion, and a smooth flowing plot. I'm not one to really break down the cinematic elements or level of drama because I have no background or experience in acting. But there is a general satisfied feeling that comes to you at the end of a movie. Even a sci-fi movie has to have consistency and quality to make it believable.
4. Afterglow- When a movie makes you think or evaluate your life, values, and relationships without insulting you, we call that the afterglow. The ability of a movie to make you want to be better or make a change is important too.

I think that these 4 categories pretty much cover the aspects that make up a good movie and serperate it from just an average film. You can like a movie, but without certain levels of any or every one of these, you shouldn't really call it a good movie.

A little change

I decided to mix it up a little. This blog has changed in name and format. It has become my general blog allowing me to add thoughts about any and every thing.

I have also created a new blog specifically for sports, sportsfanalysis.blogspot.com.