Oh dear. I’ve accidentally spent the last two nights searching for a new stereo amplifier. 📻

Photo of a black dog lying in the sun beside a sofa

Any sunbeam is her favorite spot. 📷

(Micro.blog Feb photo challenge #4)

Trees with sunrise light reflected in a windshield

Reflect

Micro.blog February photo challenge #3 📷

Photo of sunrise over an empty parking lot

Sunrise at the gym is a familiar and favorite sight.

February micro.blog photoblog challenge #2! 📷

Cappuccino in an orange cup, beside a stack of a Kindle, notebook, and paperback

(open)

I used soundiiz.com for the first time today, to import a playlist from Spotify to Qobuz. It worked beautifully and is a really impressive tool.

Still poking around last.fm and is it my imagination or is there no link to the actual user profile to be found anywhere? I’m sort of boggled. I can get to my profile because I happen to have it in browser history; but where is the link to it?

I’m currently exploring the time capsule that is last.fm – both the site/service as well as my listening history captured there. Using Roon & Qobuz means I’m sending tracks there again after a few years’ gap, and the lens it provides on my internet and social networks circa 2005 and on is really something. Really, the whole site shouldn’t exist anymore, it’s such a weird anachronism.

🎧 Well. I went out to the bookstore yesterday and came home with a NUC to put Roon on. I really would prefer something truly silent, and this one makes some fan noise. On the other hand, impulse buy. Time will tell whether this is actually a good idea.

🎧 Oh dear. Between trying out Roon and Qobuz I’m way down deep in the audio rabbit hole right now. I spent a chunk of yesterday reading about DACs, NUCs, and Roon configs, and today I ran across a guy comparing a set of $270,000 speakers to a set of $260,000 speakers. boggled

🎮 I started playing Control yesterday and it’s so good! Atmosphere, architecture, story, play – so far it’s hitting right on all my frequencies. I can’t wait to play more.

Just confirming, gang, that The Hold Steady’s “Constructive Summer” shouldn’t — nay cannot — be played at sub-100% volume?

screenshot from Roon showing the album cover and lyrics for Hem's song Lucky -- There's a man in a cutaway / Buying drinks for the room / All the cheer raining down on the day / Comes to nothing and leaves by the broom

Late Sunday evening, listening to this beautiful album that I haven’t heard in years. Roon surfaced it in my Discover view, and it’s perfect for tonight.

When the revolution comes, I’ll lead a special squad to wreck, just absolutely PC LOAD LETTER, these fucking gas pumps that play ads and “content” at me.

Image of the Roon application showing the cover of Rush's Exit... Stage Left

Binging Rush pretty hard, and by the way @jack has probably sold another listener on Roon today, too.

Photo of a lighted stage in the dark, with the Rush Roll the Bones art behind

Rush in Phoenix, July 27, 2017

Friends, it’s Friday afternoon espresso time. Join me, won’t you?

The whole family played Untitled Goose Game together yesterday. We wrecked that little village, folks. Wrecked it. 🎮 HONK

PC case with GPU and fans, and a Pearl Amiibo standing in the case

Succombing to my kiddo’s desires for a new way to play video games (secretly my own desire, too), we built this mid-range PC for Christmas. (I’m not telling the Xbox or my MacBook yet) It’s great fun to have access to my whole Steam library, and was really fun to build! 🎮

Photo of a bowl of dark brown broth with noodles, steak and cilantro

I’m calling this New Years Day pho a success! We enjoyed this amid an afternoon and evening of board games with friends.

Hey, I saw Star Wars last night so y’all can talk about it now, thanks for waiting.

Photo of a computer chip on a circuit board, covered in gray dry paste.

I spent a couple hours of New Years Eve taking apart my Xbox One X to clean up and replace this mess of thermal paste that was making the fan sound like an aircraft carrier. It even worked when I put it back together and turned it on.

Photo of an orange and blue sunrise reflected in a car windshield

Happy New Year

New Years Day pho broth production commencing.

Photo of Pink Floyd album Wish You Were Here.

Picked up some good albums at the hometown record shop this week. (Not pictured: New Pornographers’ Brill Bruisers and Neko Case’s Hell On.)