HiWire

The Ars Technica review of the 2020 27" iMac is up – mostly positive: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/08/2020-27-inch-imac-review-a-classic-mac-for-the-end-of-an-era/ Macworld: https://www.macworld.com/article/3570439/27-inch-imac-2020-review-the-latest-intel-imac-leaves-a-lasting-impression.html

Joe's Garage – Frank Zappa

Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster

First re-discovered this one years ago on Reverberation Radio: Golden Brown – The Stranglers La Mer – Avalon Jazz Band (Charles Trenet) I Love Paris (Cole Porter)

I'll read both of them, The Killer Inside Me and maybe Pop. 1280 too. It's being made into a movie again, but the pandemic probably pushed the release date back by a year or more.

Maybe this one (After Dark, My Sweet – 🥰 Rachel Ward) – I usually read the books before watching film versions: And this one (The Grifters): After reading The Maltese Falcon, I realized that a lot of the cheesy Sam Spade parodies are actually parodies of Spillane's Mike Hammer character (I guess a lot of screenwriters were too lazy to read the original material).

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett Started reading this one after blasting through Hammett's earlier novel, The Maltese Falcon (a bit of a disappointment). His writing style seems a lot clunkier than Raymond Chandler's or even Mickey Spillane's, but there is an energy and drama that keeps you going. Big points for being the first one, too.

AAA review as entertainment:

Macs can be picky about memory, too. I usually go with whatever is labelled "Mac or Apple Memory" rather than going by specs alone, as I've had some problems upgrading iMacs and MacBooks in the past. Since you can't alter memory settings on the logic board, there's no point getting overclocker memory unless it has a good chance of satisfying the basic requirements. In general, you don't want large heat sinks or spreaders that can get in the way of properly seating the memory modules.

The basic architecture (Navi) has been around since last July: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_RX_5000_series#Desktop Lots of reviews of the PC GPU cards since then. Apple has a custom clock and cooling solution, but the PC gaming benchmarks out there should give you a reasonable comparison, especially if you plan to run the iMac with Windows 10 in Boot Camp. PC Gamer on the 5500 XT: https://www.pcgamer.com/amd-radeon-rx-5500-xt-8gb-review/

It really depends on how hard you'll need to push graphics... even the 5300 is probably a big improvement from the GPUs in the previous iMac. The 5500 XT should be decent, but we'll have to wait until the performance tests are published.

Good idea. Benchmark tests, etc. should be available soon, as there haven't been too many other new Macs released lately. The super-annoying thing: in North America, at least, you can only choose the higher GPUs with the top system: Radeon Pro 5500 XT, 5700, and 5700 XT. The two lower configurations get the Radeon Pro 5300 with 4GB GDDR6.

Apple's Technical Specifications page says that the four SO-DIMM slots are user accessible. MacWorld: https://www.macworld.com/article/3199629/imacs-release-features-specs-pricing-faq.html MacRumors coverage: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/04/new-27-inch-imac-10th-gen-intel/ 😀

Apple just announced the new 27-inch iMac: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/08/apples-27-inch-imac-gets-comet-lake-t2-chip-a-better-camera-and-more/ The middle configuration looks like the best value (the 256GB SSD in the base config seems too little for a boot drive). The nano-texture (matte) glass display seems too expensive for what it is. The upgraded 1080p FaceTime camera and 3-microphone array are a small bonus.

The IT Crowd is real:

Happy Birthday!

Live in San Antonio – My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult

Thanks, everybody! 🥰 Celebrating with some Girl Talk – All Day

Somewhat related – Defining the '90s Music Canon: https://pudding.cool/2020/07/song-decay/ You may recognize the song, but that doesn't mean you have to like it 😈 There are some interesting spikes in the graph at the bottom that might demonstrate the associative soundtrack / meme value of some songs over their musical value.

Happy Birthday!

How did you find the recording quality? There have been a few complaints about the intentionally brickwalled mastering on their recent albums.

The Mirror Thief by Martin Seay Really fancy writing covering several time periods, from contemporary Las Vegas to Renaissance Venice... I can't remember having to reach for my dictionary so many times in recent memory.

Techmoan is a great champion of defunct media technologies. Thought you guys would be amused by this one – a giant audio cassette: