TMoney

RIP Dr. Hawking. A remarkable mind, and a remarkable story of perseverance. Like many here, I've read his book and enjoyed it even if I didn't fully understand its content. I'm not ashamed to say that cosmology is mostly beyond me, but it is a fascinating subject. I always liked his guest cameo on the Simpsons:

Killed a man, stole his clothes, emoted, then won the game? YAYAYAYA.

Happy birthday to the greatest explorer the universe has ever known!

If your son has the game use family sharing to get it on your laptop and come try it with us. 3-Player co-op PvE is right up your alley.

Killing Floor 3 Surprisingly fun.

I'm with you on Saul. BB is probably the superior series for most but I enjoyed Saul more. It has a lot of charm for what it is.

Indeed, gentlemen. I think an LXStudio-based system may be in my future. http://linkwitzlab.com/LXmini/LXstudio.htm

I signed a lease on a house in San Rafael this afternoon. I'm excited... I've never had my own house before. Since college I've lived in a series of apartments. I still can't quite wrap my head around the fact that I'm not going to be sharing walls with anyone anymore.

The only wrong answer is Ziggy Sabotka. Bottom 1 character.

I've been re-watching the Wire for the first time. I can't tell you how much I've been enjoying going back through it. It really is/was a special show and I'm amazed how much it holds up to repeat viewing. If I were to redo my Top 5 character list then Stringer and Bodie make it on. Not sure who'd I'd replace. Stringer is such a good heel.

Happy birthday, Nate. Hope you guys are staying nice and toasty warm during the polar vortex!

RIP Dr. Bannister. A life well lived after a tremendous achievement on track.

Happy birthday, young man!

Steve Earle - I Feel Alright I've been rewatching The Wire and they use track 1 to close the show's 2nd season. So good.

Happy birthday, Naaman!

Happy birthday, Dan!

Oooooooooh, now that is news!

^ Oh hey, that looks familiar!

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday, Colin! I hear Brent is going to perform a Mexican Hat Dance to celebrate the occasion! What an honor!

Happy birthday, Steve! I hope it is a fun one!

Mosaic - via iOS app It doesn't quite hit the mark for me and felt a little gimmicky, but I always really appreciate outside-of-the-box approaches even when they don't quite succeed. It is a very cool idea and the app format works a lot better than I thought it would. Bloomberg described it as an app version of "Sleep No More," and having seen Sleep while I lived in NYC I think that is a pretty good comparison. HBO is making a linear version of it, but for me its the non-linear method that makes it fun. Very worthwhile to check out, plus, it is free. https://watchmosaic.com/

Here is to a quick recovery, Colin! In the meantime, I’m on my way to purchase a term life insurance policy on you.

Had a chance to play with HomePod yesterday. Some random impressions: It is really small. I knew it was going to be small from reading reviews, but it is even smaller that I thought. It is about the size of a cantaloupe. It feels like a bit of a beta product. We had a bunch of Airplay drop outs when we navigated away from the music play apps on our phones. Neither of us had Apple Music, but the iOS Tidal and Spotify apps worked fine over Airplay except for the occasional dropouts. I imagine a lot of this will get fixed with updates. This isn't replacing anyone's two-channel system. As a smart speaker, it is impressive and possibly the best sounding smart speaker I've heard. That being said, we tested it in a larger room and I thought it struggled. It is solid for what it is, but there is only so much it can do in a decent sized room. Apple really needed to have stereo functionality with two HomePods at launch. A bunch of reviewers mentioned that Apple demoed the stereo functionality for them and that it sounded great. I believe them and I think having a second HomePod in a stereo configuration might help a lot. One HomePod sounds big for a mono speaker, but it still sounds like a mono speaker. Overall, I'd say I'm lukewarm about HomePod. It is impressive for what it is, but don't go expecting a $350 smart speaker to work miracles. There is only so much it can do sonically in a moderate/large room, even with whatever DSP tricks Apple has worked into it. I get the impression that a lot of the reviewers who gushed about the sound quality don't know what a proper stereo rig can sound like. EDIT: Looks like Apple's staged tests for the media that the HomePod easily won against the other smart speakers might not stand up: http://pogueman.tumblr.com/post/170722337727/head-to-head-does-the-apple-homepod-really-sound