HiWire

Sometimes music pops into my head for no reason – I credit Girl Talk for singlehandedly informing most of my 80s (and 90s-early 2000s hip-hop) pop-listening habits in the last decade:

Happy New Year! 🎆

I'm looking at the Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol S88 (MkII)... what a mouthful, vs. the Arturia KeyLab 88 MkII for general messing around (coming from a classical piano background). I'm not sure how the instrument libraries compare. I may even be more excited about it than this guy (bonus weasel words inside):

Merry Christmas!

Happy Birthday!

In the grim darkness of the near future, there is only pork:

Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews The Jennifer Lawrence movie was based on this book (haven't seen it). I'm halfway through and completely engrossed. Great for fans of Le Carré, Fleming, etc. More spycraft and character-building, less Hollywood prurience.

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?