Knuckledragger

. o O I still have four NS-1000s, from the late 80s. They are in rough cosmetic shape, but otherwise work just fine. I have been in "discussion" with my sainted octogenarian mother as to why I need to bring ALL FOUR of them to the Vineyard when I move. It's a completely rational decision, I assure you.

Yikes, not good. I hope Tim and Apple un-fuck this shortly. I'm scrounging up cash (returning bottles and then knocking over the liquor store) to buy an M1 Macintop shortly.

Okay, I like this one.

Frankie and his hi-fi: I'm guessing it's a hybrid stereo/mono system vs "Dolby 3 channel." That a Mac pre, clearly. This article goes over some of the other kit. The, ahem, bowl of cigarette packs is a nice touch.

Neat. I still prefer the original because it has Lemmy playing poker with Pinhead.

Today in "Knuckles Should Not Be Trusted With Electricity:" In 2006 I bought an APC UPS after my craptastic power company destroyed a bunch of electronics. It was a decently high end model for the time. I've replaced the batteries on it a number of times over the years. I mentioned in Mindless that I bought a new set last week. The arrived a couple nights ago. I attempted to install them and realized they were too fat. Just a couple mm out of spec, but still enough that two of them would not fit side by side in the enclosure. I only grasped the extent of this problem when I had them most of the way in. Undaunted and dunderheaded, I attempted to attach the wiring harness. Third party batteries don't come with the two part APC wiring that's necessary, so I've kept the same pair since 06. As I futzed with the larger section of the harness a HUGE SPARK went off, making a loud crack and scaring the bejesus out of me. As a certain trio of car British idiots are fond of saying "the poo came out" (metaphorically speaking, of course.) I did have the foresight to attempt the battery replacement with the unit unplugged. While I readily confess I am "paste eating stupid" I am not quite at the "needs help getting the top of the paste jar" level. I extracted the oversize batteries and noted that not only were they a bit too fat, the terminal polarities were reversed from spec. It's a miracle these batteries haven't caused a house fire. I also noted that one end of the wiring harness was now blackened like a Metallica song. Amperage is no joke, even at 12v. Dejected and distraught, I put down the UPS and all four batteries and left them alone for the rest of the night. This afternoon I finally picked up the project, all but sure I'd be administering last rites to my trusted APC. I felt genuine sadness. A UPS is not exactly a device one grows emotional attachment to, but the truth is modern APC products are not nearly as good as their mid 00s ones and my experience with CyberPower has been mixed as well. Also buying a decent new UPS is an expensive endeavor. I figure $400 minimum. That's ahem about 1/10 of the budget for a new Macintop. Well, I am pleased to report that after cleaning off the singed terminal to the best of my meager ability and re-installing the old batteries (which are past life, but at least the right size and polarity) the APC kicked on with its usual chirp and appeared to be as good as ever. I am now going to buy name brand APC batteries ($100, come with a new harness) and leave an excoriating review of the third party ones I bought on Amazon.

For the last couple years, there's been a recurrent meme on YouTube. Artists are taking the opening lyrics (and I use that term loosely) to the 2007 smash hit "Low" by the rapper Flo Rida. The lines in question are performed by T-Pain and the army of autotune plugins he uses. I cannot stand Low. I NEVER liked it. That said, the "Apple Bottom Jeans" meme is one of the most amazing things I've seen on YouTube in years. The conceit of the meme is to perform Low in the style of a different artist, often from a specific time in their career. The whole thing works for two reasons: first, Low is merely the blank slate for the artists to work on and the bar of entry is so high. In that second regard, Apple Bottom Jeans is similar to the Hitler/Downfall meme. Advice animals this ain't. I know, I know. "Free Bird!"

Spent the better part of an hour monkeying with the Apple store website. A $2500 "starter model" sixteen incher turns into a $4000 laptop real fuckin' quick.

(Think about it.) HBD!

The internet is a strange and magical place.

Furthermore, https://great-characters.fandom.com/wiki/President_Merkin_Muffley

Someone needs to tell Tim Apple that brostep hasn't been trendy since he got his current job.

Last week I realized Steve Jobs had been gone for 10 years. Crazy to think that Tim Apple has been at the helm of AAPL for a decade. He's done a bang up job keeping the company in the black, but I miss the vision (warts and all) of Jobs. A joke we told in the late 1990s:

I hope Tim Apple gets this one right.

Oof. That might be a complete nonstarter. The target machine's SSD is not big enough for my data. RIP.

Voice = Spongebob Narrator "Two Months Later" I got an idea how to resurrect my radio show even without a laptop. Stay tuned.

For those of you playing the home game, my 2015 Macbook Pro went tits up a few months ago. Since then I have been wrestling with the idea of a replacement. Apple's current lineup is ...old and kind of crap. Their recent "California Streaming" event was a massive disappointment (I will not be doing my radio show from a smart phone, KTHX.) More broadly, I'm kinda done with Apple's anti-repair bullshit. I'm not done with MacOS, but I think for the next period of time I'm going to be sticking with stationary Apple products (I still have an iPhone, which I dislike but view as an inescapable evil like taxes and leaf blowers.) I have never owned a PC laptop. I don't particularly like Windows. I mean, it's fine for video games and a few specific audio apps (Exact Audio Copy, Foobar 2000) but as a primary OS? shudder With all of this said, I'm seriously considering making my next laptop a Framework. There have been a bunch of positive reviews of them from prominent tech toobers. A certain Bob-the-Tomato-sounding Canadian who is prone to making heaps of cash and dropping things liked Framework so much he invested in the company. I don't have the operating capital of that high pitched hyperactive YouTube content machine, but as I said I do have a strong need for a new laptop. Linus squeaks out some good points in this video and the other one he made. iFixit did a far less, ahem, infotainment focused review, but they also really liked it: So far I have one beef with Framework's design and it's not a small one. The keyboard: What. The. Fuck. Are. Those. Arrow. Keys. It's 2021, not 1985. This is a laptop, not a shitty wireless keyboard meant to be used with smart TVs. That arrow key arrangement is utterly unacceptable. I'm so bothered by it I'm almost not willing to make a purchase. Keyboards are an important matter for me. I learned to type on an IBM Model M in the 1980s and the buckling spring permanently affected the way I interact with and view keyboards. Also, I have freakishly large hands (Canon pro DSLR bodies feel too small for me) and tend type with entirely too much force. I have broken ...3 laptop keyboards, including my current one. Again, Apples "fuck you" attitude about repairs is sufficiently annoying that a model with a replaceable keyboard (even with horrid arrow keys) is basically a necessity to me at this point. Framework's prices aren't too bad either, at least for someone who has been in the Tim Apple ecosystem for the last dozen+ years. I have a few major fires to put out in the next week including property tax (see above), car insurance (ibid) and two Eat Static album re-issues (a man has to have priorities.) When the dust from the above as settled and assuming our short-bus-on-bath-salts elected officials manage to raise the debt ceiling and not crater the world economy, I'm probably going to buy one.

This is both absolutely amazing and utterly terrible. Tears for Fears were always miles above most 80s synth pop, in all aspects. Their songwriting, musicianship and lyrics have stood the test of time for nearly 4 decades now. Roland and Curt are both impressive live performers, even if they don't particularly like playing out. (Not entirely true, they love playing but they hate touring.) In this performance from 2014 they absolutely nail all of their classic hits and a couple album tracks. The problem is that the video director (I refused to call him a cinematographer) that Spotify hired needs to be taken out back by the chemical shed and shot. The bright lights on behind the band are a terrible idea. It's not artistic. It's blinding to both the studio and video audience. The use over overly long lenses, entirely too shallow a depth of field and constant rack focusing isn't artistic either. It's absolute crap. It's like if a new photographer who just got his first 50mm F/1.4 and refuses to stop it down ever was put in charge here. All of the shots from behind the audience, using their out of focus blobs as a framing device aren't artistic. They are endlessly frustrating tripe. The reaction shots of the audience, while a staple of every live performance ever, are executed so poorly here it's mind boggling. It's not easy to film a live music performance, but it's not exactly rocket surgery, either. Point camera at performers. Keep performers in focus. When editing, try to switch to performer doing most important thing (solo, singing, etc.) Maybe include some audience b-roll. Light the stage so that performers are visible, distracting background details are not, and NO ONE IS BLINDED (except for key moments.) The director of this video failed on every front. They should be sentenced to a life of only working on dish soap commercials. In spite the wretched production, I watched the entire video. I have always had mixed feelings about Tears For Fears. Their music is amazing, but for me it's a time capsule to a chunk of the 1980s where I suffered extreme trauma due to a confluence of terrible things happening at once. I've never fully processed the aftermath and I'm not sure I will be able to. Tears for Fears brings me right back some of the worst moments of my life, but I still love their music. They still have it as musicians, as well.