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All posts that do not belong in the categories of buddhism or philosophy goes in here. Please check tags for more details about what the post is about.
I have always appreciated Bono. The matter-of-factness of the lyrics of the songs he writes with U2 are astounding. And all the more I appreciate the song Iris which now makes a lot more sense.
He says he is at peace. And this is a just another fact to go along with all other facts he has discovered.
Every time I play Beck’s Morning Phase album I notice it always sounds crisper and more defined in through the Onkyo HF Player instead of Apple Music. It is the app and not the file quality because I bought the original download from Apple Music and not elsewhere. So the only variable is that of the app. In other words it is the algorithm of the app that makes the sound quality better.
While I enjoy the convenience of Apple Music it is ultimately the sound quality that is important. In general, the audio sounds flatter and with less definition in Apple Music. This is not noticeable except through contrastive comparison. But still I would probably enjoy it less subliminally as I do notice the difference. Apple Music sounds lacklustre.
Don’t live the lyrics of songs, or the characters of stories. Just don’t.
I am a big fan of automatic watches. I wear one, and I love the sheer love, quality and craftsmanship that goes into making these timepieces.
Seiko, particularly Grand Seiko, is a brand which I admire but would not buy at the moment. It isn’t the price tag, but rather it is the choice of font type chosen for its name logo and the use of Roman numerals on some of their timepieces. Simply, it isn’t modern. It says 20th century. And it says wear a suit. I’m living in the 21st century and I wear jeans more often than anything else.
One might not think of font type as important, especially when it is on a watch, but it does. It needs to match the rest of the watch as well as the body to which it is attached. To me, the font type on the Grand Seiko needs an desperate update.
There is no doubt Periscope is a great live-streaming app. The unparalleled interactiveness of the apps unlike any other similar apps will come to an end after 6 years from its release. at its best text comments and verbal replies can be achieved in under ten seconds, far quicker than any other live-streaming app. Perhaps equal in speed to instant messaging or Usenet (and likely using such technologies) it made text/video online conversation and dialogue enjoyable.
YouTube Live, for example, while does something is nowhere as interactively engaging because of the lag. I suspect the lag exists because older minimal (not minimalist) technology is used. The frustration not only shows in the broadcasters face but also in the viewers messages as well as them voting with their feet (that is, exiting the broadcast midway).
As I have said many times I would have paid for the service to broadcast. A monthly fee of, say, USD5 would have had me forking it out for its service. The exchange should have been between me and the service provider, not between me and the viewers with the service provider taking a slice of the action.
While the business model is similar to television (this reflected in its name PeriscopeTV) it really did not work that way. Banking on broadcaster content when broadcaster content has not the manpower, time and money invested in it, did not work.
But, in the end, whatever the reason that Periscope is coming to an end it is sad and will be truly missed.
Over the weekend I cleared out a bunch of stuff from the house – an electric guitar and its related gear, an old telescope, a dehumidifier, a bathroom scale, CD players.
Not so much was it about the money but what a waste it would be to just to dump them. While they were being evaluated at the secondhand store I checked out what they had. Just how much people are getting rid of things and the kinds of kinds that are gotten rid of is simply amazing. It seems guitars are hot items and so are dehumidifiers if the price I got is a reflection of its worth. It kind of makes sense that utility goods like dehumidifiers and fridges should retain value. They move and are sold. We do not escape material reality in any way.
But as I said, it wasn’t the money. It was therapeutic just to clear out the space called “home” and “mind”.
Seven of Nine is one of only a handful of the Borg species that has we know of by a name. One is another, a name given to himself. Picard as an assimilated Borg was named Locutus. By whom the name was chosen is, as far as I know, not stated.
But we must can assume that individualistic names is far from being a Borg thing. So does Seven of Nine mean that she is a seven of nine in a group, orderly and like a set? Or are the numbers nominal and the ‘of’ has no real meaning? Considering how many Borgs there are (assimilated) Single digit names seem hardly enough to cover all individuals in the Borg Collective. Likely there are thousands of individuals so there could be “1432 of 9” or “2 of 34254”.
Likely too is that there is no hierarchy. For example, I do not think Six of Nine out ranks Seven of Nine because of a one-digit difference. It would seem illogical to have a hierarchy in a collective of unranked drones. There is something socialistic or communistic about the Borg.
Likely, a short double-barrelled single-digit name is easier than “23482 of 967” as a name. As in real life uncommon names can either make it very easy or difficult to remember.
Another question is, do all individuals have unique names or do some have the same name like “David” or “John” in the English speaking world.
And is Seven her first name, and Nine her last?
So many questions so few answers.
I cleaned up my blog today.
I changed the title back to the URL, got rid of most of the pages, streamed lined the menu, removed most of the widgets and rewrote the about page.
What is left is effectively a timeline of 5 posts at the top and a simplified navigation of the essentials.
I had suffered from blog bloat without knowing it. lol
One does not realise just how bad the internal speakers of a TV is until one hooks up a sound bar or stereo. During this last Christmas holidays I hooked my stereo combo as a treat for the kids. Only then did I remember just how awful th sound quality had been all this time.
I opted for a sound bar for a couple of reasons. One a friend had just bought one for his new TV. Intrigued by it I had connected the idea that with the ubiquity of Bluetooth this would mean my sound bar could play music as well. Turning my lounge into an entertainment area was one goal. But better still I realised that the Apple TV hooked up to my computer was better served with the TV. That move was a game changer. Since I set this all up I can play music, watch YouTube and movies with the best sound possible.
The change in technology had been something hanging around my neck for a while. I simply did not know how to deal with it coming from the late twentieth century. With everything connected – the IoT – it means we no longer live in just a physically bound world. Or rather the way we bind to things is different. There was a shift in the paradigm. This was something I have had to struggle with and only now is beginning to make sense.
if it is not with your eyes,
then what is it that you see
the world with?
some say
you see
with your mind.
if so, then why did god
bother with giving us eyes
in the first place?
the “mind’s eye”
is a great metaphor, but
in there it shall remain.
for words can do this –
make things appear
from paper thin air
and their appearance, it
may linger in the wind or
on the page for far too long.
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