Hopstretch

I say, jolly good! Bis vivit qui bene vivit, and all that rot. Pip pip.

What is the take on the current Quad ESL models, other than that they're obviously a lot more expensive than the classics?

Ryan Adams -- Heartbreaker Limited Edition vinyl.

LogicBomb StringSimile, I presume?

Sonny Clark -- Cool Struttin'

Yeah. Boo. Back on track. Gold, bitches!

HF is all about the new new thing. And the 800s have stayed too expensive for the mass market.

Unboxed new integrated amp and speakers. Just waiting for the postie to drop off some Nugget speaker cables this afternoon and its gonna be happy new gear fiddly tweaking time.

Built To Spill -- Keep It Like A Secret Vinyl. All of these Warner reissues were done at AcousTech from analog masters and they really sound great.

Built To Spill -- You In Reverse Vinyl.

Ouroboros thread disappears down own throat. Nom nom nom.

Depeche Mode -- Sounds Of The Universe

No it doesn't. Because you, like all of us, will go Office Space on it in the backyard with a bat when your last kid is potty trained at last and then gleefully dance around its funeral pyre singing the "No More Shitty Diapers" song.

(Theme from "Shaft" plays faintly in background.)

Nice. He's a good guy, too. Helped a lot with setup etc. on the first table he sold me.

Not so sure about that tennis match Doug. Web technologies have already shown themselves to have a lot of disruptive power in the context of a command-and-control society like China. I think the Chinese government is going to be very, very unhappy about having Google outside the tent pissing in. From Google's point of view, I think they simply concluded (probably correctly) that China is a bad actor and the future profit potential is not worth the corollary risks -- economic and "political". Google has a lot to lose from the kind of state-sponsored economic espionage at issue here. I will bet you that none of their real secret sauce (algorithms, custom data center management code etc.) has been allowed to disseminate into the Google.cn organization because of the obvious personnel risks. I think we're seeing evidence of a new category of international relations that has been evolving for a while under the radar -- clashes of interests between traditional states and supra-national corporate entities. It will be very, very interesting to see what form hostilities take in these cases!

Craig Ferguson! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez3wFiB7H4A

Well played, sir scaffolder!

Boz Scaggs -- Silk Degrees Vinyl.

It saddens me. As a married schlub, Wayne was my icon of absolute freedom and unfettered self-indulgence. It's like seeing a magnificent panda wrest from his primordial bamboo thicket and set to capering for small coins in the dingy square of some dusty provincial hamlet. Or something.

Happy Birthday!

Amanda Palmer -- Special Edition: Who Killed Amanda Palmer

Funny thing is, it's a really solid album in the context of the period. A Flock Of Seagulls -- The Story Of A Young Heart Vinyl.