HiWire

Happy Birthday!

There was too much to address in cutestory's query, but: Keeping (or getting) your knives sharp is a combination of metallurgy (alloy, heat treatment, etc.), edge geometry, and consistency. It's easy to wipe out a good factory edge with poor sharpening (I have done it) and harder to improve a poorly-executed edge by skillful re-profiling and sharpening. It's better to start with cheap knives. A harder steel will keep it's edge longer, but an overly-hard heat treatment will mean that it can also be more brittle. Each alloy of steel has an ideal hardness range, depending on your application. Softer steel will get dull more quickly but it may be tougher in abusive situations (e.g., camp work, chopping, swords/axes, etc.). Different sharpener grits for different jobs, just like in wood sanding. Coarse grit to remove lots of metal (unnecessary for most knives), medium grit for a less aggressive re-profiling or sharpening a completely dull knife, and fine to ultra-fine for edge maintenance or a finer, more polished edge. Some people prefer a slightly coarser edge for more biting cuts into tougher material like wood or rope (the microscopic teeth on the edge will be more aggressive) and others like a very smooth edge for sashimi cutting, for example. Some people like to use a leather strop to finish the edge on a knife or razor. Explained here: https://www.sharpeningsupplies.com/Understanding-Strops-W111.aspx Edge endurance can also depend on the bevel type and angle... having more steel at the edge will make it tougher, but a thinner edge will feel sharper and cut more easily through softer material. You can see in the list of edge geometries at the bottom that the V (flat grind) is the simplest to understand and to sharpen properly, which is why it is the most common. This popped up on YouTube... not a lot of "super-steels" in here: https://youtu.be/MKMG-FdCGtM

... and there's a sucker born every minute. http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/shunyata-research-releases-full-suite-of-top-tier-reference-series-omega-digital-cables/

I just started playing Pillars of Eternity yesterday – what a great game! It's a spiritual successor to classic isometric party-based RPGs like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. It's a free download on the Epic Store until December 17.

Computing on a 1990 Apple Quadra 700: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/12/it-still-runs-on-your-imagination-passing-2020-time-with-a-macintosh-quadra-700/ ... and I thought I was hoarding old technology.

"For those with deeper packets..."

It makes the bits sound sweeter: https://www.hifiplus.com/articles/english-electric-8switch-streaming-audio-network-switch/ I think I'd save my money for a 10 Gigabit switch instead.

Driver's Seat – Sniff 'n' the Tears

I'm curious about how they sound – will they compare well against Sony, Bose, and Sennheiser, for example (at nearly double the price)?

20 hours battery life... that is a step up from the Airpods Pro (5 hours). I guess this is where the Beats acquisition starts to show. Pricey as usual.

I started reading Neal Stephenson's Seveneves again. It has a different urgency now, partway through the pandemic.

https://youtu.be/6e1q_unPddo Heart's Nancy Wilson teaches guitar ... and backstage (1977)

Orbital (1991) Listening to this now, I find it strange that I found it boring before. I guess I was looking for something lush and complex, which is not the point of this album. In Sides was my first Orbital album on CD and it took a while for me to go all the way back in their catalog.

Great article. It's dark out there but there are still rays of hope on the horizon.

Like a Matthew Sweet song!

Version 2.0 – Garbage

Dark Hearts – Annie

... back when digital compact cassettes were cool. Wait, DCC was never cool?

Happy Birthday!

Blue Lines – Massive Attack Referencing the Sony Boodo Khan headphones Heart Still Beating – Roxy Music

Walkman hacks (no soldering)... for a player I don't own:

Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny A genius book. I get the feeling that books as disparate as Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos (and Ilium / Olympos, of course), Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon trilogy, Walter Jon Williams' Aristoi, and even David Brin's Kiln People (and so many more), were directly inspired by Lord of Light.

Happy Birthday!

And it looks like the new MacBooks are reviewing well: MacBook Air: https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/macbook-air-m1-2020 MacBook Pro: https://www.laptopmag.com/apple-macbook-pro-13-inch-m1

Gene, it sounds like you need a local record store where you can sample the records. It sounds old-fashioned, but that's the only way to be sure when you're spending so much money. I've noticed a bunch of negative online reviews in the same vein over the last few years – it sounds like some of the labels are pushing records out without any kind of quality control – perhaps they are outsourcing the operation.