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Nice looking Fred's!

Somehow I lived until last night not knowing the great Rod Serling, of The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery fame, also had a short lived Western, The Loner, starring Lloyd Bridges. It’s available as a currently $10 DVD set on Amazon, but also on YouTube if others are as interested as I. The first episode, wordy for a Western, certainly feels very Serling. Love how the TV frame is tightly filled. First episode The rest https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnentduopWcJz29q7eTHh0MSFKoxeTClG&si=cfZ6oRZDWQFhMIOm

Sungazer - Perihelion Ex.

Vienna Teng - We've Got You ep Going with a friend to see her in my hometown (original, not current) this coming Friday. Beautiful, creative music, some humor, etc. Looking VERY forward to it! This ep has two "versions" of a song, then a combined version. Combined song:

Saint Coltrane: The Church Built On 'A Love Supreme'

ASCII city map update

Two Film Scores by John Lurie: African Swim and Manny & Lo Full

On the theme, and for those with long memories, a Fred's Streak.

Great day.

The return of Saturday za. I ran out of pepperoni, so I fried up some spam and smoked pork belly. caramelized some shallots and garlic. on a sourdough crust of course, cooked on the smoker. she'll eat.

. o O Even though I only have one Nikon body and it's about to turn 21 years old, I think I'm going to buy a Nikkor 35mm F/2.

Four! by Hampton Hawes!!!!!!!!! Full playlist

Those look great, Al! I had some sweet chili salmon last night, with a broccoli salad, fermented ginger carrots (!), and a Paneer Paratha with some tzatziki on it. Nice mix of tastes.....!

HE90 "clone" first prototypes up and running as of yesterday: The drivers are all PCB based with 2um mylar diaphragms. They are about 3mm lower in height than stock to accommodate the cable entry and move the connections to the bottom of the drivers. The housing is resin 3D printed but this is the old version which has now been abandoned for a new one that has yet to arrive. Cables are King Sound (as I had some in stock) and allow me to fit it all in the same housing size as the original. The earpads are ones for the T+A Solitaire that are not a great fit but dirt cheap... so work just fine for this role. I've ordered new genuine pads but I'm not sure if Senn have any in stock. Next up is to refine the headband design and start to work on prototyping the metal back shell. Now I just wait on parts as usual... As for the sound, far from finished, even in prototype form but a HE90 with actual bass response... perish the thought!! ;)

I didn't manage birria tacos but I had a brain wave the other day that came out great tonight. There's a market nearby owned by an Indian American family who also sell quite serviceable curries and other Indian food made fresh in house. Chicken Tikka Masala pizza is supposed to be the most popular pizza in the UK and I've had a couple of decent examples over the years so I decided to make pizza with the market's curry. On the left is a saag paneer supplemented with a bit of fresh mozzarella, and on the right is the CTM. I separated out the chicken then used the sauce as the base, layered on shredded mozzarella, sprinkled on the chicken and added red onion. Both were delicious and will be repeated in future.

Happy 91st Birthday Arvo. Arvo Pärt: Tabula Rasa by Gidon Kremer, Keith Jerrett (1984) https://open.qobuz.com/album/0002894812099 Example: Learning more about Pärt... Like Glass above, I do like me some Minimalism.

Early Lambdas seem to last forever but anything made after 1990 has issues. Some are major, some are minor but still there. The X9000 has all the issues of the 009 and 009S so it's more of the same really.

I have successfully gotten DeaDBeeF to scrobble played tracks to last.fm on OS X Catalina. This is more difficult than it sounds. I ended up asking three different AIs (Gemini, Clod and uh duck.ai) for help with the problem. Each one gave me a different answer that did not match my experience. Finally I solved the issue by downloading a new copy of the DeaDBeeF binary from a different site. That was it. "Downgrading" from W11 to OS X 10.15 has been a series of hoop jumping. The Goog full stop doesn't support such an old OS, so no Chrome (BFD) or Drive (kind of a BD.) Password management can be a headache. The Intel-based Mini is comically energy inefficient Even at idle, the case is significantly hot to the touch. Conversely, the Minisforum UM350 (visible in the background right, struggling to download a W11 update) has a mobile Ryzen 5 3550H in it and could probably run off a 9V battery. One major upside is that the System Preferences panel on Catalina is the old style one with big icons and a sensible layout, not the horrible new "mobile" one with which current versions of OS X are saddled. You know, because the Mini is a computer. Not a "device."

Incoming Sony post. A stack of 90s. There is an entire subculture built around vintage Sony kit, for some odd reason. A lousy photo of some great ES. A clever redditor took a Sony ST-80F tuner and installed a Raspberry Pi (when they weren't $300), HifiBerry DAC+ Pro, and screen. He made his own UI for the round display shape. Similarly, this guy modified an ES tuner with a Raspberry Pi, OLED display and rotary encoder. Also, look at that goddamn ES tape deck. I would [Note from Legal: REDACTED.] to own one of those.

Which Stax models were build to last a lifetime in your expertise? Would you say X9000 is the most failure prone one currently?

Jiminy, over 21 hours on Tidal! Music on TIDALBill Evans - The Complete Bill Evans On VerveListen to The Complete Bill Evans On Verve on TIDAL

Dang, I guess I do need that $5k trump check...