TMoney

Happy birthday, Esme’s dad!

Happy birthday!

I have no intention to use the case unless I need to transport them somewhere in my bag.

Gonna be hard for CDPR to ever attempt an ambitious game again at this rate. This might kill their studio in its current form. Sad to see.

It'll sit in a drawer until we can travel again so I didn't pay much attention to it.

So the Maxx showed up yesterday. I'm impressed. I think people who purchase them will be very happy. $600 with tax is a lot, but the build quality is impeccable and you pay a premium for how slick all the (cr)apple stuff works together. Switching from listening to a podcast on my phone to a YouTube video on the iPad to a work zoom call on the MacBook without pressing a single button is a neat trick. As for sound quality I think it meets expectations. It will not blow anyone on HC away with how good it sounds, but I also think it won't offend either. The tuning is fairly neutral, which is appreciated. Beats by Steve Jobs™ with a warmed-over bass-boosted response they are not, and that makes me glad. I'm not a lover of closed headphones when open headphones are an option. The usual closed headphone characteristics are all present in the Maxx. These are not a replacement for a proper headphone rig. My HD800S aren't going anywhere. My HD800S also aren't able to operate without being tethered to my ECP amps, which is where the Maxx come in. If you want to listen to something while walking around the house or the office or on the airplane then these will hit the spot. Their mass is such that I don't think they would be a good fit for exercising.

Happy birthday, man!

The visual bugs in the first two hours just repeatedly broke my immersion. I really don't mind waiting. World of Warcraft is so good right now that honestly it'd be hard for CPunk to pull me away from it even if it had launched in a polished state. Blizzard tuned everything to be harder and the gear grind to be slower. I love that.

I'm pretty sad to see what a disaster the CPunk launch has been. I'm putting the game aside until Q1-Q2 '21. I trust CDPR to make it right eventually, but it is just too buggy to want to play through right now. I can wait. CDPR's stock price is getting devastated as the state of the game is even worse than I had feared, especially on the consoles. Lifetime sales projections I'm sure are getting revised heavily downward.

RIP John le Carré. Wrote some amazing spy novels. One of the best in the genre.

The visuals in this game are just mind boggling. A few screenshots from the 4k Ray Tracing-Ultra preset I'm playing on. I'm getting like 50fps but it is hard to turn anything down, particularly the ray tracing. The difference is so dramatic that I think I'll just take the pain and play below 60hz. This is the best ray tracing showcase on PC right now, full stop.

WOW. It is beautiful. This art style is incredible. It also is absolutely pile-driving my PC in to the ground. Getting sub 60fps even with the 3080. RTX on ultra, natch.

To Tyll's credit, he predicted that we'd see the tech come much more strongly into the headphone space in the future when he was on his way out from InnerFidelity. Apple doesn't seem to be doing personal HRTF in the sense that Tyll predicted, but they do seem to be doing some kind of equalization based on sound interactions from inside the ear cups to fix sonic deficiencies and enhance noise cancellation. Makes sense. If you can't get there with electrical and acoustic engineering then use EQ to make up a lot of the difference. I think I might take the plunge.

Well this certainly looks interesting! I love the smaller AirPods for calls and podcast listening so I’m real curious how the tech they’ve done in that product translates to a full size over ear headphone. https://www.apple.com/airpods-max/

It'll run amazing on your 2021 iMac with M1X 32-core processor though!

RIP Chuck. He may be the "ace of aces" with "the right stuff" but it is hard to think about him the same way after the black astronaut candidates on a recent PBS special, Chasing the Moon, described how Yeager went out of his way to ensure a black man wouldn't go in to space in the 60s and 70s.

Reviews have me a bit scared of CPunk's launch state, though I knew from the delays that it was going to come in "hot" with tons of bugs and performance issues. CDPR would not delay a huge launch like they did so close to the goal line unless the game was in a state too embarrassing to ship. Tom's Hardware put out a performance guide and it looks like the game is going to be a resource hog like few other games other than Flight Sim. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/cyberpunk-2077-performance-preview Fingers crossed that it plays well, but I may delay playing it until 2021 to give them a chance to fix it up.

Angels in America I've heard from people for a long time that this is one of the best things HBO has ever done but I never got around to watching it before. Yeah... its pretty great. I don't think I've ever get tired of watching Al Pacino yell at people. Makes me want to see it on stage some day when our current plague is behind us.

Happy birthday!

❤️

Happy birthday, Bryan!

RIP Maradona. One of the 20th century's most electric athletes. His highlights are as breathtaking today as they were back then. The goal of the century might also be the 20th century's best sports highlight. HBO's documentary on him from a year ago was great. https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/diego-maradona

10%!!!!! If you told me there was an interest paying bank account in 2020 I'd think you were pitching a ponzi scheme!

This will tide me over until Cyberpunk! Orchestral cover of crazy train does get one in the mood!