"The Eastern Stars" by Mark Kurlansky

The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Macoris by Mark Kurlansky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The subtitle of The Eastern Stars is accurate, but incomplete. As with just about everything Kurlansky writes, there's a whole lot of background leading up to the main theme. The book is certainly about baseball changing San Pedro, but it's also about everything else that impacted San Pedro and the rest of the Dominican Republic, as well as quite a bit of baseball history.

The early chapters are largely about the origins of the city of San Pedro, and how it became a production powerhouse in the sugar industry. That industry helped form the city's baseball roots in many ways, including factory-sponsored teams that were early places to discover talent. The middle and later chapters focus more on baseball, including quite a few stories of individual players. There's still plenty about the changes in San Pedro, though, and how the city has changed over the decades.

For me personally, the subject matter is a perfect match. I've visited the Dominican Republic a few times, and baseball is easily my favorite sport. I found Kurlansky's meticulously researched details fascinating: about the town of San Pedro and the Dominican Republic, the sport of baseball, and many of the key figures involved with both.

Having said that, I could see how someone who isn't quite as interested in one or both subjects might not find this book as interesting as I did. If you're not into either of those subjects, this book probably won't change your mind. But I think anyone curious about either the Dominican Republic or baseball history would find The Eastern Stars a good read.

Plex DVR - Not Quite There Yet

Plex is a media center application that I've had my eye on for some time as an option for live TV recording. It looks great and it's a whole lot less complex than my Kodi/MythTV DVR setup. I tried it out, and it's certainly easy to use, but just doesn't have enough functionality for me.

There are two major strengths to Plex, from my perspective. One: It's really easy to set up. Installation on my Linux box was extremely simple, there's a nice web user interface for configuring the system, and there's an app for my Fire TV. Even detection of my HDHomeRun TV tuner for the DVR functionality was seamless. Two: The interface is beautiful and very simple to use.

Sadly, all that simplicity means that there's a lack of functionality. In no particular order:

• The program guide is extremely limited. There's no grid-style guide to browse. You can see what's currently on, and search for specific future shows. But if you want to browse to see what's coming up tonight, or tomorrow, or next week, you're out of luck.
• No option for recording a specific time and channel. This means that if the program guide is wrong for some reason (which happens regularly when there's special programs like live sports or news specials), there's no way to record the program even if you know when it will air.
• Playback on the Plex Fire TV app is inconsistent. Some shows play fine, others are extremely choppy. I looked at all the settings and did some web searching, but all I could find was something about needing to transcode the video. Which makes no sense considering that the shows are all being recorded by the same Plex TV backend, so they should all be in the same format. No reason that some would need transcoding and others would not.
• Moving around within a recording is limited. You can skip ahead 30 seconds or back 10 seconds. I've tried hitting the skip ahead multiple times to go 3-4 minutes ahead, but it doesn't always work. There's also a delay on audio after you skip ahead.
• There's a beta option for commercial skipping, but it doesn't work very well. Worse, it actually cuts the "commercial" that it identifies out of the video file, so if it makes a mistake and cuts some of the actual program, it's gone.

On top of the limited functionality, the DVR functionality requires that you subscribe to Plex Pass. It's $40/year, roughly double what I pay for my current setup. (MythTV and Kodi are free, but I pay for program guide updates.)

So for now, I'm sticking with Kodi and MythTV. It's more complicated to set up (but I've already done that) and has some issues of its own, but it works much better for my needs.

Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History by Katy Tur

Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History by Katy Tur
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had no intention of spending much time looking back at the 2016 campaign. It was bad enough the first time through. But I was listening to NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me when they interviewed Katy Tur about Unbelievable, and it sounded a lot more interesting than I expected.

Largely this is because Tur writes as much about herself as about the campaign. Personal sacrifices made to further her career, childhood days in a news helicopter, the difficulties of being constantly on the road...there's a lot of personal reflection in the book. I'd have liked even a little more, as I thought the end of the book felt a bit rushed in personal terms. But then, life often works that way - there's not always a tidy ending.

There's quite a bit about the rigors of covering a political campaign and the internal workings of a major media organization. Tur is very honest about her own insecurities about her career, too. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised at how much this sounds like any other corporate world. When you see these folks on television, it always seems like they have it together and get along great. But behind the scenes, they're human too, and it's fascinating to see behind the curtain.

If you do want to relive many of the insane moments from the 2016 campaign, Unbelievable has that covered. And despite what I said above, I think this is a good thing. Tur describes feeling threatened at Trump rallies, being literally spat upon, and requiring a security detail just to do her job. She recounts innumerable "Lock Her Up" chants and shouted assassination suggestions. She talked with supporters who simply refused to think about Trump's disparaging comments toward women and minorities and foreigners. We need to remember that these things happened. Hopefully to prevent them from happening again.

Don't dismiss Unbelievable because it takes place during a campaign that you'd rather forget. I really enjoyed reading the personal perspective that Tur shares. And though the reminders of the worst moments from the 2016 campaign aren't pleasant, I think it's important that we remember.

Into the Abyss in Path of Exile

In early December, Path of Exile launched version 3.1.0 of the game, titled War For The Atlas. This comes with a new set of challenge leagues, as per usual. I've been spending a lot of my gaming time there for the last month.

This time around, the new challenge league feature is Abysses, which spawn randomly in nearly every area of the game. When you find one and run over it, cracks open in the landscape and a whole lot of monsters pour out. At the end of the crack line is a big sinkhole with tougher monsters, generally 1-3 rares. The abyss might end after one sinkhole, or it might continue on for more...the most I've seen is 4. You move along, defeating the monsters and following the cracks, and if you move fast enough and survive then you're rewarded at the last sinkhole with a loot chest called an Abyssal Trove.

Occasionally, you'll get a entrance to a new zone called the Abyssal Depths instead of a trove. It's populated by a whole lot of abyss monsters and eventually a boss area. Mostly the boss is a type of totem that spawns tons of monsters until you've broken it, but in higher level Depths you might see a unique boss. I've fought two of those, and they're certainly a challenge. Tons of abyss monster adds, several of the totems to defeat, and of course the boss itself.

I really like the abyss feature. It's difficult, especially in the very low and very high levels. At the low end, your character might not be capable of handling a big swarm of enemies. At the high end, the sheer damage output of the rare and unique abyss monsters can be overwhelming. But that risk is accompanied by some great rewards. The troves have decent items, there's a lot of rare monsters that can drop good stuff, and there's a whole new class of abyss items that have mods not seen anywhere else.

As the War For The Atlas title indicates, there's also some significant changes to the end-game mapping system. There's been quite a bit of rebalancing, with a number of new maps and quite a few modifications. The Atlas of Worlds now has two factions fighting over it: Elder and Shaper. On the atlas, you'll see background effects indicating where the factions have influence, and if you run a map in an influenced area then there are additional faction specific hazards and item drops.

I'm just getting around to the middle of the atlas. I progress pretty slowly in Path of Exile terms, largely because I play almost entirely solo self-found (no teaming, no trading with other players). But I'm starting to see those atlas factions, and they certainly seem interesting. A few maps have had demon portals spawning tons of extra monsters, I've seen enhanced boss fights, and I've collected a few items with mods I've not seen before. Looking forward to seeing what else is in store as I move along.

As far as characters go, I'm mostly playing two. A Sunder Duelist Gladiator and my usual summoner Witch Necromancer. The gladiator is insanely powerful, as long as you avoid certain specific situations (physical damage reflection and lightning thorns, for instance). Sunder is so good that I'm not sure why anyone would bother with any other melee skill. As for the summoner, there have been some quality of life improvements in this version that are really nice. Most notably, you don't have to resummon your spectres every time you log in! In both cases I had one death and had to start a second version of the character, but both of those are running strong into the 80 levels.

The Path of Exile designers and developers continue to work their magic every few months, adding new and interesting features to what is already the best ARPG on the market. (In my opinion, at least.) I'm not sure how long they can keep it up, but as long as they do, I'll keep coming back for more.