Knuckledragger

Last Friday's show is up on Mixcloud: It's a long walk to get where I ended.

This is a long walk for something incredibly petty. I was logged in to my second "gaming" YouTube account, and reloaded the splash page. YT's algorithm (more insidious than skynet) suggested the following hour long video to me: I don't know anything about this guy nor his channel. At first I thought it bight be some crazy revisions history BS. It isn't. At the 15:43 mark, the Southern guy is in the middle of arguing about Yankee states having slaves. Screen shows this image when mentioning Connecticut: *sputter* THAT IS NOT CONNECTICUT. That's Sunderland, MA as seen from the top of Mount Sugarloaf. I've look down from that exact spot many times over the last 40 years and photographed it a few times as well. Taken with a film camera using expired Kodak Portra 400 in March of 2008: Meh HDR shot I made in 2009: Infrared shot I took in the summer of 2009 with my IR-modified PowerShot G2 and a wide angle adapter: Look, I never said I took NORMAL shots of it. Just that I knew the view instantly. Obviously, I left an irate comment on that YouTube video. I'll expect my noratized letter of apology any day now.

Test Tone @ Home live right now: https://mixlr.com/illuminator/

Welp. I scuttled the entire setlist I spent this week putting together (~85 to 90something BPM) so I can work in a deep house track with Julee Cruise on vocals (which is a breakneck 116BPM.)

I've hardly taken photos in the last however many years, but what I have been doing since I got this shiny M1 Macbook Pro is blowing the dust off my editing skills. July 1, 2006, the first week I had my EOS 30D and its "better" kit lens. October 4, 2006. Taken by a friend of mine with his Kodak V570 panoramic camera. A photo taken by an unknown person with an Olympus C3040 Zoom point & shoot, sometime in 2001. I found it in a folder of images all from the 00s that I had not thought about in over 15 years. I'm not entirely sure how I ended up with this one, but I suspect the woman in frame sent it to me in hopes I'd clean it up. Well, here I am a decade and a half later. The original jpeg was quite a mess: low resolution (far below the C3030Z's native 3.3MP), poorly exposed, set to sepia tone (ugh), and with a couple digital glitches in it. I fixed ...most of the problems. I ran it through Topaz Labs' Gigapixel AI software, which upscaled it hugely, then converted it to black & white in Photoshop, manually adjusting the settings. Finally I did a bit more work on the levels. I did not attempt to fix the jpeg glitches, but a friend of mine stepped up and made use of his Photoshop skills. I actually like the photo now, as a character study. May 26, 2008. This chucklefuck destroyed a tube guitar amp he borrowed from me. May 26, 2008. The fella on the left is now a moderately famous YouTuber, known for his extended reviews of the Disney Star Wars films. July 19, 2013. Taken on the side of the road in Hadley, MA. A farmer came by in his tractor, stopped it, got down and yelled at me for trespassing (I was 5' off the road.) I told him I was leaving and got TF out of there. May 19, 2019. IR 5D + 17-40L @25mm. I spent considerable time editing this photo then prompty forgot about it. November 6, 2021. Two antique lamps I restored plus a network switch. iPhone 6S. December 21, 2015. Same lamps during the day. May 18, 2019. IR5D + 17-40L @25mm. April 27, 2022. iPhone 13 in an Aldi Parking lot during the golden hour. July 6, 2008. Taken at a party in a club in Springfield, MA where I only worked once. April 25, 2019. Taken with my IR-modified 2001 vintage Canon PowerShot G2 and a wide angle adapter. I cleaned it up using Topaz DeNoise AI then loaded it into Luminar 4 where I made a bunch of tweaks and applied a lookup table. Lastly, I did a bunch of further editing in Photoshop. I did not attempt to correct the somewhat comical fisheye effect caused by the wide angle lens. It doesn't bother me too much. April 17, 2019. iPhone 6S. No edits at all. Februray 18, 2019. Very odd light in my yard. iPhone 6S. May 6, 2019. IR 5D + EF 50mm F/1.8 (Mark I). The sleepy little street I live on. Oct 9, 2009. The absolutely ancient mixing console from a now-closed nightclub. A re-edit of a photo I took with the mighty Canon EF 85mm F/1.2L USM that a friend rented and let me borrow for one evening. The 85L is one of those magic lenses that lives up to and even exceeds the hype surrounding it. Revisiting the image, I de-noised it using a Topaz plugin in Photoshop, made adjustments and applied a lookup table in Luminar 4. Then I imported the photo back in to Photoshop, further adjusted the levels and did a de-noise pass to remove posterization artifacts. There is "narrow depths of field" then there's "85L depth of field."

Russian oligarch’s $300 million yacht found hidden in a creek.

Test Tone @ Home live right now: https://mixlr.com/illuminator/

Chinese military secrets leaked on War Thunder game forum. It's actually six times now.

Oof. RIP Dave Smith. Sequential just announced his passing on their FB page. When Don Buchla was still alive, I referred to Dave as "the greatest working synth designer." When Don passed in 2016, I referred to Dave as "the greatest living" one. The man's work was amazing. He was hugely important in the development of MIDI. He founded Sequential Circuits. 20 years ago he launched Dave Smith Instruments where he released products like the Evolver and Poly Evolver. In 2015 Dave reclaimed the Sequential name and rebranded DSI accordingly. Currently the Sequential site has a popup stating his death. I presume they'll get a proper tribute page up as they are able to do so.

Pantera - Vulgar Display of Power (1992) I made myself sit through this entire albium. In a word, yick. I had some misgivings when it came out 30 years ago, and I had loved their previous release Cowboys From Hell. At the time, all of my metalhead friendss loved it so I assumed I was missing something. I bought it on CD and listened to it a bunch, but it never clicked with me. The problems with this album are numerous, and center stage is everything to do with Philip Anselmo. His vocals are absolutelty awful. His lyrics are as meatheaded as they are infantile. All his macho posturing is cartoonish and cringe inducing. He's too loud in the mix. In fact, the entire mix of this album is absolutely wretched. Rex the bassist can barely be heard. Vinnie Paul's drums sound kind of flat and compressed. Dimebag (at that point still Diamond) Darrell churns out amazing riffs (as he always does) but his guitar tone is just ...off on this release. The songwriting is weak. There are a few decent moments scattered throughout the album but it is by and large a complete miss. This is to say nothing of all the horrible things that would come out of Philip Anselmo's mouth later on (talking shit about former bandmates, advocating white supremacy, etc.) Pantera are credited for kicking off the 90s nu-metal and "mallcore" sound, which is either a good thing or utter damnation depending on one's perspective. Certainly this album was more or less the end of me caring about the band at all. I'd occasionally hear a Pantera song as the 90s wore on and my opinion was always the same "Man, those riffs are sick but everything else about this is just abysmal." Now here were are in 2022, Dimebag has been gone for 18 years. Vinnie Paul passed 4 years ago. Rex did a hard rock solo album a while back and apparently it's pretty decent. Phil hasn't been hit by a freight train yet and I view that as a great injustice.

Intercepted audio said Russian soldiers almost blew up a top general for ordering them to the front line, Ukraine says. 💣

I haven’t read the comment yet, but I definitely do since I’ve been studying the history of comments on Head-Case for the past several years, and I’m willing to find out more about it. Also, I hope you will explain in more detail what you meant by “AI language bot.” I don’t think I’ve met this wording/ concept anywhere else. By the way, are you posting your comments only on head-case.org, or do you also use any of the rest of the Top 7 places that have nothing to do with headphones? I use SomaFM and wonder if I could find your comment there.

Russia won't use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, says ambassador to UK. So they will on Tuesday.

Last night's show is up on Mixlcloud:

Test Tone @ Home live right now: https://mixlr.com/illuminator/

I expect someone who knows about amplifier topology and construction to show up in this thread and say something pithy and rude about the resistors on that main board.

The Onion RN:

Minus the one joke entry, I have done all but two of these.

Stolen from Jimmy Kimmel.

This is a minor point, but I really love USB audio devices that announce themselves correctly:

RESTAURANTS Starbucks will exit Russia after 15 years, closing 130 licensed cafes. I can't wait to see the new Russian knock-off.

Don't look now but the Evel Knievel of dirt bikes is is now "well into" his 40s.

w00t. After my first order getting utterly messed up, the OWC Thunderbolt 4 cable I bought off BozosPenisRocketsAndBridgeDemolition.com arrived today. Careful readers will note I bought a TB3 dock and not a TB4 one, but I still elected to get a TB4 cable. I did this for a couple reasons: First as Grawk mentioned in Jacob's Jacobless Jacobing, The TS3+ and TB docks in general are picky AF about wires. Secondly, I might end up with some TB4 devices in the future. The utter lack of drama in connecting the TS3+ dock was lowkey impressive. *boop* Power connected. External monitor comes to life. Turning off WiFi and the gigabit ethernet does what it says on the tin. I have not tested the optical digital output yet, largely because I cannot be arsed to dig up a cable of sufficient length and run it behind my desk. TL;DR: If you're going to make use of a Thunderbold dock, do not skimp on the cable. The OWC branded one I bought was about $60 shipped, and was much better reviewed than the sea of Chinesium ones that ranged from $15 to $40.

Test Tone @ Home live right now: https://mixlr.com/illuminator/