Anna Kodé has a piece in the New York Times (gift article) about the early Space Age Googie style of architecture. The article is filled with eye candy and visual delights from the style, some prominent artifacts of which were still around when I was young. It brings a tremendous sense of nostalgia.
Nick Heer from Pixel Envy points out that Dell hasn’t lost its branding charm. When configuring a laptop on the website, he got an error message, “Composite Rule Error: Invalid selection in Processor Branding.” He was further informed about the error:
The Chassis Option requires the matching Memory size. The 16gb Memory is only available with the Ultra 5 236V/226V and Ultra 7 266V. The 32gb Memory is only available with the Ultra 5 238V and Ultra 7 268V.
I have often marveled at the challenging model names that PC manufacturers give their products, which starkly contrast to those from Apple. Everyday people can remember the names of their Apple devices. Not so for most of what PC manufacturers come up with.
Maybe it’s a bit early to be making New Year’s resolutions. Though this used to be a popular practice, many now don’t even believe in setting stretch goals just because the calendar changes. I confess that I have waxed and waned in my observance of making annual resolutions. This year, though, I have something lined up that I think will actually improve my life in meaningful ways.
The embed function of Micro.blog uses quoteback.js. The results are quite nice when pasted into Obsidian.
Not too long ago, I posted about a shoegaze cover of a music charts staple from decades ago and, well, I was sorely tempted to do it again.
I came across a YouTube channel for a service called Musora which bills itself as “the ultimate music lessons experience.” Musora offers a subscription which will help you learn to play an instrument and your favorite songs. For $20/month (with an annual subscription), you gain access to a suite of interactive practice tools and a community of like-minded students.
One of my all-time favorite films is John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King. I was first introduced to the movie adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling short story from 1888 by my English teacher in my senior year of high school. Kipling’s novel encapsulates some of the folly and hubris of the British adventures in Afghanistan in the 19th century by infusing its characters with the attitudes of empire. In the film, Michael Caine and Sean Connery play British ex-military who dream much and doubt their abilities little. They set their sites on bringing the martial prowess learned in their earlier days to a remote area of Afghanistan known as Kafiristan to form their own kingdom.
Madonna’s most well-known album, Like A Virgin just celebrated its 40th anniversary.
Like A Virgin was the first record I owned, given to me by my parents for my 9th birthday. The subject might have been a bit mature for me at that age, but it hardly mattered because I promptly broke the stylus on the family turntable. I couldn’t even listen to my gift. Of course, the hit songs from the record were all over commercial radio, anyway, so it wasn’t like Madonna’s tunes were hiding in obscurity.
Roon Audio has a new feature that should delight headphone lovers — OPRA (Open Profiles for Revealing Audio). OPRA is an open-source repository hosted on GitHub that contains precisely crafted headphone curves for different headphone models (and you get an equalizer, and you get an equalizer…).
I love Roon, although I’ve had my share of technical challenges — today I need to bring up two issues on the Roon Community forum. The ability of the platform to continuously innovate ways to give audio enthusiasts a better experience is impressive.
I’m a bit surprised, but pleased, that Target carries Sr. Theresa Aletheia Noble’s Memento Mori gift set.
For my money, Garrison Keillor does the gratitude thing about as eloquently as one possibly could.
I sit and stare at the screen watching men crash into each other and I’m grateful for cowardice: I never played football so now I don’t have the aches and pains that my heroic classmates have. I fooled around with drugs in college but they were cheap crummy drugs, not the powerful chemicals of today that lead a person to make a life sleeping in the park. I’m grateful that I was born late enough so that when I developed mitral valve problems, open-heart surgery was rather common so I didn’t die in my late 50s as two of my uncles did.
I need to get on his level of thankfulness.
