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Recommended

An Arbitrary And Not Comprehensive Ranking Of My RSD16 Purchases, ~48 Hours Later

Saturday was Record Store Day 2016, which saw local vinyl shops filled with limited new releases. I went a little nuts, and this is a fairly quick take on what I bought. Thanks to Turntable Lab for making the process painless, and to Dan Budiac for keeping me company in line.

lush-origami

#1 – Lush / Origami

Beautifully packaged, beautifully mastered, and the download codes contain a ton of demos and unreleased tracks. Glad I splurged on this.

whitestripes-peel

#2 – The White Stripes / The Complete John Peel Sessions

Didn’t even know this was getting released. Missed how raw TWS could sound.

RfaD

#3 – Clint Mansell feat. Kronos Quartet / Requiem For A Dream

One of the greatest all time soundtracks, with new material and gorgeous packaging.

tgt-tls

#4 – The Go! Team / Thunder, Lightning, Strike

Has been on my favorite albums list for a while. This would be higher if it wasn’t for the nitpicky issue of this being the other version of T,L,S. (There’s this weird thing where there’s two very similar versions of the same album with some differences in the vocals and samples, and I’m used to the other one.)

The Diary

#5 – J Dilla / The Diary

Didn’t realize this was going to be a vocal album. Digging what I’ve heard so far but I need more time with it.

Cassanova 70

#6 – Air / Casanova 70

Not normally crazy for splatter designs, but it looks nice in person and it’s a reissue of a classic Air track.

Chvrches

#7 – CHVRCHES / Every Open Eye (The Remixes)

Haven’t spent much time with this, but liked what I heard. Annoyed the download code doesn’t work (yet), and doesn’t have a fully design sleeve.

JK+DP

#8 – Junior Kimbrough + Daft Punk / I Gotta Try You Girl (Daft Punk Edit)

Not what I would’ve expected out of a Daft Punk remix/edit, but a solid 15 minute reworking of a soul classic. Nice etching on the B side.

if

#9 – If Music Presents You Need This: Eastern European Sounds (1970-1986)

Some interesting exotic tracks, but Alojz Bouda’s “Random (Naslepo)” was one of those songs you drop the needle on and immediately rip it back off the vinyl.

planetrock

#10 – Afrika Bambaataa & Soul Sonic Force / Planet Rock (Remixes)

A little underwhelmed with what I heard of the remixes. But one of those classic songs that felt mandatory.

disney

#11 – VA / Disney’s Favorite Songs

Was hoping this would be more than just a by-the-book compilation of well known Disney songs. Dig the cover art, though.

hellokitty

#12 – Hello Kitty / Hello World

It’s telling that no one submitted this into Discogs for a solid 24 hours out of embarrassment. Luckily, I have no shame. Mostly just bought this for Katie’s Sanrio collection – the songs are pretty awful.

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Endured

Desktop No More

About two months ago, my iMac died. Five years ago, this would have been a huge inconvenience. In 2016, it became a mild irritation (mostly because I was making good progress on Jonathan Blow’s wonderful The Witness) and an opening to reconsider my personal technology stack.

Since my dad first lugged home an SE/30 in 1990, I’ve always been a desktop-Mac-as-my-primary kind of guy. That poor abused SE/30 gave way to a pokey Performa, and a very early G3/233 accompanied me to college. I scrapped and saved for a G4 Cube mid-way my junior year, but by graduation I was tired of having an external monitor. Thus began a solid 14 years of an iMac on my desk. Every major model (outside of the “gumdrop”) worked into my cycle, including the bizarre but quirky “white half sphere” with the articulating arm display.

Helping to reinforce this was the side effect of Apple’s Intel transition: through Boot Camp, I could now run Windows, and therefore could run Steam. A new avenue of gaming opened up, and my replacement iMacs were almost always BTO options to max out the graphics card and RAM. It wasn’t top tier gaming performance, and it certainly was a premium above building a separate gaming PC, but I always appreciated having a single computer.

But back to January: the iMac went kaput (likely a hard drive failure, undoubtedly related to my inability to heed a recall warning), and I instinctively went to the Apple Store to start pricing out a new model. And then thoughts started swirling in my head:

  1. Over the average week, I was using my iPad Air considerably more than my desktop.
  2. The things I was using the desktop for was mostly Windows gaming.
  3. The Retina iMac had increased the cost of the line generally, particular at the higher end
  4. The higher end would be needed, as the only place you can max out the graphics card is the very upper end of the line
  5. Even after my educational staff discount, I was still looking at about $3,000 for a like-for-like replacement.
  6. While I do have a work laptop available for business functions, I’d need something to not lose my oversized Steam library and want something for day-to-day computing.
  7. I refuse to use Windows as my primary OS. Just out of principle.

After some soul searching and some research, I’ve settled on a new approach: an iPad Pro 12″ for the non-gaming, and an Alienware Alpha for the gaming. (I was holding out until last week’s Apple Event to see if the lineup changes might’ve changed my plans, but they did not.) Combined, I saved about $1,300 versus the traditional iMac plan, and spares me a separate iPad upgrade later in the year.

Given how Apple is now trying to sell the iPad Pro as a viable laptop replacement, I’ll be interested to see how this turns out. Check back in a few months for the oh-so-thrilling results.

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Enjoyed

Cutting The Cord: Thoughts On Playstation Vue

I still have faint memories from around age six of the day we first got cable. Mostly because I refused to go outside, watching every game show I could that afternoon on USA network, to the point where I got my television privileges removed for a week.

For about thirty years, I’ve had fairly consistent access to cable TV, even though I tend to not binge watch much of anything, and the onslaught of technological advancements over the last decade (everything from iTunes selling TV shows to streaming solutions like Netflix) have made it easier and easier to just not utilize it.

Three months ago, triggered by the sweet combination of “needing to get rid of the phone line we never use” and “Comcast jerking us around about previous item”, we decided to cut the cable, and try and make due with just streaming solutions. Front and center in this plan was Playstation Vue, Sony’s internet television service. (We already had heavily used Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime accounts.)

Three months later, I have no regrets, and only minor quibbles.

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