ironbut

I used to go to the one in Campbell all the time and the Sunnyvale one in a pinch. I knew a lot of folks in the Campbell area (used to live at the Upstart Crow coffeehouse there) and I'd run into some of them there sometimes. In fact, it was the last time I saw Lloyd (old member here) was there. I kinda dug the weird decor and the bargains on snacks and stuff that lined the checkout area. I really miss having a local electronics store (even Radio Shack was better than nothing) but there ya go.

I had a couple of SSD's fail in the early days of the species (always under warranty though). In the past few years I've stuck with Samsung and Crucial and (fingers crossed) haven't had an issue. I do manual backups and virus checks at the beginning of every month. My rig has around 7.5 TB of data and most of the time I can do all that in a little more than a hour. I follow a lot of audio archivists activities and read some of the research they put into their efforts to digitize their collections and maintain those archives. Some of these collections are stored on HDD (spinning) and are meant to preserve and make these assets available for research and the public. One of the big recommendations is to "spin up" all of the drives annually. They had discovered drive failures/data losses on drives that weren't accessed since they were first created during their mass digitization projects. Of course, most of us shouldn't have an issue with that since we should be backing up or using our drives more than once a year. Imagine spinning up The Library of Congress! Thankfully, another "best practice" for these archives is to store assets in 3 different places and preserve the original analog sources (although the most "at risk" media like lacquer disks that were quickly deteriorating were prioritized for the digitization) so very few priceless recordings were lost forever.

Happy Birthday Dan!

I've had a OWC Mercury Elite 3.5" enclosure for many moons that I use primarily for storage for my MBP when I'm away from home. Even though it's rolled around in backpacks and plugged into many "strange" Macs over the past decade, it's still solid as a rock. That one you linked looks like a winner for my needs at least! Thanks!

I don't have the Thunderdrive anymore but I remember that it had about the same fan noise level as my 2012 Mac Pro. I just measured that noise with a TEX 1150 SPL meter and it was 33dB IEC A weighted at 3 feet. Not very intrusive and if it wasn't for my nice quiet iMac, I probably would have kept the Thunderdrive Mini. One thing to note, spinning drives tend to produce more heat than SSD's. (so using standard HDD would require the fan more than SSD's) Which one is more sensitive to heat is another matter and one that probably depends on the unit in question. IIRC, M2/NVME type drives tend to produce more heat than packaged SSD's but that is more of a result of the SSD's package which has far more surface area to distribute the heat energy.

Happy Birthday!

When I got my iMac I needed a 4 bay dock. I tried the Thunderbay Mini T3 from OWC but I returned it because the fan noise was clearly audible and I do some live recording in the same room sometimes. Other than that, it was a pretty nice unit for the money. I ended up getting a rack mount Blackmagic Multidock which has no fan and is excellent but it isn't small and it's twice the price of the Thunderbay. I looked around for another enclosure without a fan and unfortunately, I couldn't find one. The heat produced in these units comes from the IC's that are used so the enclosures will act as Thunderbolt docks (USB, HDMI ports). The Thunderbay has a switch to turn off the fan but it will overheat if turned off all day. I may be needing another dock for a couple of drives (so far, the price of 4TB ssd's is still too high so I'm planning on 2X2TB ). For audio, I don't need super high speeds like video wants, so I will probably opt for a USB3 enclosure.

Yup,.. I just use retired spinning HDD's for my backups (except for the system drive). I like to have a dedicated one for each of my drives (eggs in one basket thing). My MBP is a late 2012 with a i7 so I'll be in the same boat as you one of these days. Maybe there'll be a Big Sur Patcher by then (in 5 years or so, I think I can say I got my money's worth though). BTW Looks like Apple finally put older version of OSX in the App Store https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683

I don't bother buying ssd's any smaller than 2TB these days. I run 4 external 24-7 (in a Blackmagic Multidock). The Crucial MX500 that I buy now are around $229 each ($200 on sale) so $100 per TB. That is insane IMHO! What a world!

Mojave does indeed support 32 Bit. My main Mac is on Catalina (upgraded in Sept 2020) and aside from a couple of apps that require Catalina, I'd have to say that I prefer Mojave. My MacBook Pro is still on Mojave and I still use it regularly . There are several 32 Bit only apps installed on it. Who knows when those apps (Metric Halo's Spectra Foo audio analysis/metering suite in particular) will finally get upgraded to 64 but I'm okay with it for now. Compared with HS, I think that Mojave is a little snappier and an excellent version of OSX. I would have been perfectly happy keeping that installed on all my machines if that was possible.

Happy Birthday Colin!

Live simulation of todays Mars mission. Don't forget to hit the "Live" button or if you missed it, "Replay". https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/mars2020/#/home?id=cruise_stage_separation&time=2021-02-18T11:17:32.914-08:00

I still hate that mutherfucker!

Happy Birthday Steve

Happy Birthday Ed.

RIP Rupert Decades of great analog gear (and loads of digital copies). If you're listening to music, it probably passed through some of his gear somewhere along the way. Patron Saint of Carnhill transformers.

You could hear a pin drop!

This looks like a great charity event. https://foodforlove.org/the-artists/

RIP Chick Corea!

Happy Birthday Jeff.

Plummer was so many amazing characters that enriched my movie watching life, I don't even know where to start! RIP Christopher Plummer

Had a buddy that spent a year or so quoting Barfly in our local bar. I always chalked it up as payback for all those years of torturing my mom.

RIP Cicely And I just listened to an interview on NPR last week. She had some nice things to say about Miles promoting her new book.

SoundCloud is just a social media site that hosts original music for creators. It lets me upload my music and share it with the player app you see. Hosting my music there has the added benefit of creating a reference date for ownership of the music without spending the cash to get a copyright. Better than nothing I guess?