Watching "The Ricklantis Mixup", with the Citadel of Ricks election/takeover, rather than any political shit from this shitty timeline.
Month: January 2018
Got the Snowy Saturday Music Blues
Gonna look thru the new blues section in Apple Music, see what's good. I don't vouch for any of these yet, will update with notes.
- Strange Angels, in Flight with Elmore James: Tribute album, so far impressed by Tom Jones (rather surprisingly) and Deborah Bonham, but a variety of covers.
- Black Coffee, by Beth Hart & Joe Bonamassa: Up through title track's good blues-rock, but then their version of Lullaby of the Leaves is great, guitar wailing and girl screaming hurt out from her gut.
- Charmed & Dangerous, by Altered Five Blues Band: New but not exceptional songs, guitar's better than singing or songwriting, mostly, but On My List to Quit is a fine song.
- Californisoul, by Super Sonic Blues Machine: Kind of a mess of blues, funk, and latin. Bar-band quality, certainly wouldn't buy an album but acceptable background music.
- The Sherman Holmes Project
- Good Morning Midnight, by Scott Ellison
- Stompin' Ground, by Tommy Castro
What to Watch When You're Watching Nothing
Dealing with family medical stuff this week, every damn thing has been piled up, I get zero time to work or play. When I can finally sit down, can't concentrate on a real show.
Netflix has "Slow TV: Train Ride Bergen to Oslo", 7 hours of a train through cold wilderness and tunnels. I just wish the town signs didn't BONG and the conductor would shut up at stops. Drink my coffee, try to read this Elmore Leonard book, this could be really peaceful.
Between interruptions, I've made it 105 minutes down the track in four days.
I tolerate but dislike cold, but I think I'd like Sweden or similar, out in the boonies with nobody around who speaks English or wants anything from me. ☕️??
Miitomo End of Life
When Miitomo came out, I thought finally, Nintendo had got a clue about online services, made someplace that could be a hub for your "Nintendo identity", let you make custom Miis to play in other games, or even use as avatars for other places, hook up chat and friends list for all other Nintendo games…
But, none of that happened. It stayed a small closed service that connected to nothing, never let you do more than change clothes, change the wallpaper and flooring of your tiny empty room, and chatter at annoying questions, the talking people do when they have nothing to say.
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp has its own much more primitive avatars and limited set of clothing, at least it's active for now, but there's very little "social" to it.
Some years ago, I went into Line Play with someone, and despite spending no money, just freebie coins, I ended up decorating this house, which is still there (had to stitch some screenshots together, there's no "photograph whole room", only a video capture). This is what Miitomo should've been like:
Books
"What is it?" "It's a book. A non-volatile data storage mechanism. Everyone should have one." —Blank Reg
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Stop Whining About Musical Abundance Wednesday Music
- Om Malik asks: Has music lost that loving feeling?: Betteridge's Law gives the correct answer, as usual: No.
- MG Siegler whines a few random setlists aren't random, "it's not the same": Pseudo-random number generation is in fact very close to random with modern seeding & algorithms, MG.
If you want to listen to an album, it's right there, in Apple Music, or presumably Spotify or whatever, which is why I mostly link to albums in my semi-daily music posts. If you want things outside your usual tastes, go hit Browse and find something. Or listen to one of Apple's "radio" stations; Zane Lowe just plays intolerable disco crap for ADHD babies, but there are others.
Anyway. Here's some hostile mechanical music to replace your whiny sentimental humanity:
1984
- Apple Introduces Macintosh: "See why 1984 won't be like 1984."
- Apple Announces HomePod
- HomePod arrives Feb 9, 2018
- Information Purification Directives. Big Brother is Watching You. Freedom is Slavery.
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See why 2018 will be like 1984.
Thunderstruck Tuesday Music
Computers Aren't Bad or Good
- Computers aren't bad or good, they're just machines.
- Programs aren't bad or good, they just do what the programmer typed.
- Programmers are bad.
Definitely Hysterical Saturday Music
- Def Leppard is finally available in digital! Hysteria's my favorite of their albums ("Armageddon It" in particular), but all the pre-'90s albums are fantastic, a good mix of NWOBHM blues-metal and pop, and the later ones are fine, just different without Clark. If anything, Rick Allen gets better without one arm slowing him down.