HiWire

I liked her baked eggs recipe. I'll go back and watch the rest of them, too. She's very charming and she presents well on the video. The first episode of Downton was very serious and melodramatic, but the second episode showed more comedic potential. I joked to a friend that I am looking forward to six seasons (and a film) of British people being mean to each other in the nicest settings. A brief meme search on Google also gave me the term "posh frock porn."

True enough. I've opened quite a few Macs, but none of the models after 2016. Not much point when everything is glued and soldered. Apple just announced a Radeon Pro 5600M 8GB HBM2 upgrade ($800 USD) for the 16-inch MacBook Pro – they are claiming up to 75% increased performance from the 5500M, which makes you think the 5500M was weak sauce. Not cheap, though. They'll probably offer the 5600M in the next iMac refresh.

Yes, I sometimes wonder what really goes on in the back of the Apple Store. I looked up the battery replacement procedure (suggested by OWC) for my MacBook and it was horrific – you have to disassemble almost the entire computer and use solvent to remove the glue. 😦

Her latest post was quite heavy: https://www.ladycarnarvon.com/algorithms/ The building and grounds look lovely – must cost a fortune to maintain. I'll stop by if I'm ever in the area. After watching a little of the second episode, I do feel that the show is subversively satirical, which makes it kind of fun to watch.

Partway through the first episode and I'm already thinking, "Serve yourselves, you useless fucks."

I learned a few things... I assume SACDs are similar to regular DVDs.

I only heard about the copyright strikes on his channel recently... it's tricky to navigate music rights at the best of times. 🥺 I watched his breakdown of Sting and the Police's song composition earlier this week. Fantastic stuff.

I enjoyed this one... even with the volume turned really low, my heart started beating faster as if a real set of drums was in the room... that's a crazy feeling when the drum sounds are going through your body

When he said the Jaeger's movement was relatively simple I was scared of what a complicated one would look like. I really like his conservationist approach to watch maintenance and restoration.

Hard to say. The lockdown affected a lot of the supply chain, so it's possible that shipments of the old iMacs have been held up as well.

I can't be absolutely sure – they might be different people. The channel info on YouTube is relatively vague (and the spelling of the channel is slightly different and there are no mentions of the YouTube videos on the Naked Watchmaker site): "The mission of The Nekkid Watchmaker is to strip away all the BS and snobbery in watchmaking and to encourage a new generation of watchmakers in to this wonderful art. In essence we are all Nekkid watchmakers. I'm a watchmaker specialising in service and restorations. I am a bit late to the youtube party but I thought I would start this channel for any watch lovers out there looking for some help, advice or just a discussion about watches. I have many years at the bench and also handle many watches each day, so I thought it would be a good idea to talk about some of the watches that pass through my hands. I will be doing reviews and tutorials on the subject."

I'll just leave this here:

One man's search for an elusive tune from 30 years ago (basically like every day of my life):

Best of the Corrs

Ray Chen: Tartini Devil's Trill Sonata arr. Kreisler (Ray has a 2-hour interview with Alice Sara Ott that I haven't watched yet) Bonus:

I have to dig out my copy of This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This! – haven't digitized it yet. Listening to it now and it reminds me a bit of '90s KMFDM (and Nine Inch Nails and the Beastie Boys), in a good way. Definitely paved the way for future sample-based musicians like DJ Shadow, The Avalanches, and Girl Talk.

I would look at getting a refurbished iMac directly from Apple to save a bit of money. Most of the Macs in my office are refurbished and they run without issues – Apple gives you the same 1-year warranty (here in North America) as a new Mac and I believe you can get AppleCare (expensive) if you want an extended warranty. In my opinion, some of the current Apple computers are handicapped due to Apple's refresh cycle or the manufacturing constraints of their suppliers – e.g., the AMD Radeon Pro 570 and 580X are actually old product and quite a way behind the state of the art, especially at the prices Apple is charging. The Vega is an expensive option and at this point it is also an old architecture. The Radeon Pro 5300M and 5500M in the 16" MacBook Pro are two generations newer (going from AMD Polaris to Navi) and perform like you would expect midrange mobile graphic processors to do in 2020. Check out AMD's upcoming 5600M and 5700M's specs to see what the new iMac GPUs might look like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_RX_5000_series#Mobile Dell's new mass-market gaming laptop has the Radeon RX 5600M (6GB) and you can check out its performance (definitely behind the Nvidia 2060) here: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/dell-g5-15-se-5505-amd-smartshift Perfectly adequate, but nothing revolutionary and running hot in a small enclosure. So, in my opinion, it would be a good idea to wait until the refresh, or buy a current or used iMac at a decent discount if possible, because they aren't worth what Apple is charging. Intel's current 10th-gen (Comet Lake) CPUs aren't a huge jump from 9th-gen, but Intel added more cores in the flagship CPUs and the Core i5-10600 has 12 threads rather than 6 because Intel brought hyperthreading back (your performance mileage may vary) as well as increased cache, going from 9MB to 12MB. There is a good chance that Apple will also include Wi-Fi 6, which will benefit you in the long run. Regarding heat – if the newer processors can get the work done faster, they'll spend less time at max power. If you're doing a long gaming session, however, you'd want minimal throttling and excellent heat management without too much noise – we'll have to see if the new iMacs can do that. I think they will definitely have a lot more graphic power than the current iMacs, but at a price. The other possibility is that Apple enlarges the display in the current 21" iMac chassis to the rumored 23", which might give you a middle ground choice. The 21" iMac has typically been a better value than the 27", but Apple has always handicapped it with lesser hardware. That being said, the 27" 5K displays in the current iMacs are fantastic and they do make the computers seem like a better deal compared to most PC monitors.

She's got the Björk bangs. I think her playing is excellent. Like most prodigies, her early education and accomplishments are exceptional... it's funny that you can be blasé about genius in the performing arts because it is so commonplace. I'll get her latest album (Nightfall – Debussy, Satie, and Ravel) and let you guys know if it's any good.

Beethoven : Concerto pour piano n°3 ( Alice Sara Ott / Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France)

A different kind of cooking show – nordic gold:

Tessa Lark She got an excellent review from The Absolute Sound, so I thought I'd check out her music before ordering the album: http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/fantasy-lark-yang/

From some Meowzaki film, I presume:

I got to 8 minutes. I finished The Road. Never saw the movie. I don't think The Road is the greatest novel ever written, but I also don't think these guys understand the concept of literary fiction. It's not a zombie novel. The minimalist writing style and repetition of the man and the boy's survival habits are the point of the novel. A good writer does not try to fill in every irrelevant detail, he allows the reader to use their imagination. If the Let's Read guys were looking for some kind of plot-driven adventure, they were barking up the wrong (dead) tree in McCarthy's ash-filled wasteland.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!