Leaderboard

I just went to a 120/6 stem. Got me a little more reach, and a little lower. My Ultegra group is working it's way through the covid affected international air shipping. Did 25 miles/1000 Ft of climbing today. Averaged 14.9mph. Still avoiding the small ring.

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett Started reading this one after blasting through Hammett's earlier novel, The Maltese Falcon (a bit of a disappointment). His writing style seems a lot clunkier than Raymond Chandler's or even Mickey Spillane's, but there is an energy and drama that keeps you going. Big points for being the first one, too.

Okay, so I got the Moog thing that Iain recommended, who here is going to tell me how to work it???

It's always a good thing to teach someone to Pootie Pie.

The Chinese gizmo finally arrived after I extracted it from UK customs. Interesting so far. Measuring in my office, which has the computer, UPS and monitor I get 350mV In the kitchen with none of the LED lights on, 100mV and with all the LED ceiling lights on, 145mV. So the switched mode supplies inject a decent amount of extra garbage into the mains. Plugged in to a Russ Andrews Signature Powerblock, 40mV. So the good news is that the power block - which among other things contains a bank of mains X rated capacitors between live and neutral - seems to be doing what it says on the tin. More playing around is going to happen....

I'll read both of them, The Killer Inside Me and maybe Pop. 1280 too. It's being made into a movie again, but the pandemic probably pushed the release date back by a year or more.

The film versions of those two were released the same year and the wrong one became famous. After Dark is still unknown and so good. Was in a different spot in my life when I read Thompson, but maaan did it resonate then. Like Bukowski/Fante-levels at the same time, but again I was in a different space (semi-emotionally trapped on a Great Lakes 1x1.5 mile island for several months). Just look at your image. The Killer Inside Me was probably his first great... and a pretty bad movie. From Wikipedia: The writer R.V. Cassill has suggested that of all crime fiction, Thompson's was the rawest and most harrowing; that neither Dashiell Hammett nor Raymond Chandler nor Horace McCoy ever "wrote a book within miles of Thompson". Similarly, in the introduction to Now and on Earth, Stephen King says he most admires Thompson's work because "The guy was over the top. The guy was absolutely over the top. Big Jim didn't know the meaning of the word stop. There are three brave lets inherent in the foregoing: He let himself see everything, he let himself write it down, then he let himself publish it."

I'm trading my Minibrute and Circuit for an Elektron Digitone. Should be taking possession tonight.

Gee, not one person could take the time to answer the dudes question and yet take the time to tell him to f*** off in German. I've been a comic for 40 years, got nominated for the Logie and my show once outrated Ricky Gervais but I still listen and respond politely when people want to tell me jokes I have heard 100,00 times. Doesn't cost anything to be courteous. Whose the first genius going to be to tell me to f*** off also in some exotic tongue? 🙂 Rob

I think I will do that for the living room so other people know how to use it.

That's a decent price for 64G. Crucial makes great stuff. I'm using their MX500 SSD's instead of Samsungs these days. I don't use OWC SSD's since I had to send a couple back in the early ssd days.

Yesterday I built two more Pootie Pies, one with a display and one without. So I now have four total. Using one of the display units in the bedroom with the SMSL stack and the other with the DAC Magic Plus on my desk. That gives me two headless units to use for testing purposes. If anyone wants to try one out, I can send it your way. All the units use RopieeeXL, so you do not even need Roon to use them as you can turn on DLNA, Airplay or Spotify to stream.

Since I know of nowhere else to post this, I am going to put it here, after singing a song into it and auto tuning the fuck out of it. #MusicMaking.

For anyone hoping to improve their photography during the pandemic.

Dinner for Lance last night.

Buy audio components with competently designed power supplies. A $3 inductor does way more than any of these cables or conditioners.

Photographing the Beauty of My Mother’s Decline “My mother doesn’t recognize her reflection, or her own image. Most adults avoid having their picture made. My mother is more childlike in that she has no concern. With my camera, I document the joy and the light of her last years of life — the ways that she circles back home, even as she is leaving.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/opinion/mother-dementia-photos.html?referringSource=articleShare

Helen Jones Woods, member of the multiracial International Sweethearts of Rhythm, dies of the coronavirus https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/obituaries/Helen-Woods-dead-coronavirus.html?referringSource=articleShare https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/08/05/899477501/helen-jones-woods-groundbreaking-female-trombonist-has-died-from-covid-19

113 confirmed dead, looks to increase. 4000 injured, looks to increase. Estimated to be around 1/3 the explosive power of Hiroshima. Ammonium nitrate storage facility, three thousand tons of the stuff. I'm almost shaking having watched that on the BBC news. RIP everyone in Beirut It has destroyed whole swathes of the city.