By Roy Mathur, on 2021-01-20, at 23:00:00--23:37:17, for Captain Roy's Rocket Radio Show, Listen
I pointlessly moved some furniture around the studio today hoping to create more space. All it is was make less space and screw with my feng shui.
You'll see kittens on my website, because I've used them as place holder images while I continue experimenting with an image thumbnail list for blog entries. It's still a bit rough, get I'm getting there. There's about a 1000 blog entries to sort out, so there formatting is important. My static site is so much faster than the old PHP and MySQL Wordpress site it's based on.
Studio mic preamp save time from all the bloody post processing I have to do to still only sound average.
NB In this epsiode I said I would start doing these again, but I only intend doing them regularly for the rewatch episodes, not these ramblesodes. Yes, I just made that word up and no, you cannot use it without paying me, despite the socialist/angry poor person/professional jealously rant you will hear me embark on later in this episode.
Even more noise than ever tonight. It sounds like a storm outside. Man, it is pelting down. There's an extra 10 dB of noise---sorry about that, but the window's right behind me, and I can't get rid of it in post without destroying the audio.
This is the preshow section, so let's go completely off-piste.
With Brexit, online ordering is going to be more expensive and that affects geeks like me, but the fishermen, whose livelihoods are at stake, and who, I'm not being unfair here, mostly voted for Brexit, seem a little perturbed that they've been sold down the river by the same chancer who lied about the extra NHS funding.
I sympathise with them, but they believed the Britain's version of MAGA-like lies about sovereignty, when almost 50% of us remainers did not. We knew that all Brexit would do is bow to the baser and deep-seated sentiments of xenophobia and post-imperial resentment of Brexiteers and destroy our economy and rights.
Whoever you are, whatever trade you are in, if you voted for Brexit, don't whine about it now. Either live with the mess you made or come over to our side.
If you voted remain, pressure all the parties to reverse it, because none of the three major English political parties---Conservative, Labour, or even the Liberal Democrats or Greens---want that right now.
See also: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-55177496
The racist orange man has left the building. Let's hope it is the beginning of the end for others of his ilk, including the Boris the lying chancer.
I think golf sucks unless it's PGA Tour Golf on the Mega Drive, but it also delighted me that the organisers of the PGA broke with whatever contract the had with Trump to use his courses.
I love that they did this, even though, compared to Facebook and Twitter, they fly under the radar as far as having a dodgy relationship with the moron. I'm also impressed that they decided to risk legal and/or financial repercussions to do this.
My new hobby is on hold until I complete my CD collection and lossless rips (and actually buy a Hi-Fi).
What records would I buy? I would replace some records I used to own and some I always wanted. There's a story behind each selection and they all mean something deeply personal to me.
They include, though are not limited to Nirvana's In Utero, a best of Chuck Berry compilation, Mozart's Requiem Mass, The Light at the End of the Tunnel by The Damned with the Peter Frame liner notes, Iron Maiden's Somewhere in Time and The Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden, Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring; the Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic in 1958, the sound track from Star Wars (a replacement for a cassette tape my mother bought me) and the list goes ever on.
The end of the universe's date in a tweet from me and featured in pod 366 is based on one theory for the end.
If you find that disturbing, don't worry, because another theory says it could be much later, as in the "big rip scenario 22 billion years in the future". Phew.
Or, sorry about this, much sooner, "2.8 billion years from now", according to yet another theory. Damnit.
Sources: National Geographic and New Scientist
Good old UK plod have lost a huge amount of evidence stashed in the PNC. Apparently, this could invalidate many court cases.
The BBC reported:
"The deletion of the records has been blamed on a coding error. This resulted in records that had been flagged for deletion being lost from the database before checks had been carried out to determine whether they could be lawfully held or not." The data purged included fingerprint, DNA, and arrest records.
Every time I hear how secure a system is, I know that it isn't. When you think something is secure, you are being complacent. Even if it's secure from deliberate outside intrusions, it's never going to be secure from sheer staff stupidity. If it's not the inevitable "fat-finger error", it's whatever berk has admin rights to your database. Years ago I worked for the government, and then for many years I worked in IT, so let's sum up the situation constructively: bloody muggles at the Home Office.
Vanced and Redpipe are third party YouTube front-ends. The first was recommended top me by a friend because of my complaints about Roku's crap YouTube app which crops the picture, buffers like crazy---even though I have a fast connection---and slams me with advertising. Given that that my primary use of Roku is to watch YouTube, that sucks.
Installing the Vanced Android app on my phone, then streaming to the Roku YouTube app solves the cropping and buffering, but the advertising issue remains.
I found that Redpipe won't stream to the Roku YouTube app at all.
I'm finished with TVs and streaming sticks. My next TV will be a big monitor.
In 366 I went off on one about other podcasters erecting paywalls. This stance is admittedly hypocritical of me because, as I writer, I do this all the time.
My problem isn't so much with accepting payment for work. I firmly believe creators should be paid.
My problem is why should people with no need for extra money be rewarded with even more money?
Paying creators and wealth inequality are two separate issues and for muddling them I apologise.
Tangent: it's funny how no one believes in socialism until they are strapped.
I'm annoyed because it feels as if some creators are sucking the well dry, but that's celebrity for you.
Oh, and if I meet any of you IRL, when this hell is over, please don't use my own words against me. Man, I hate it when that happens, and it happens a lot. I heard it said that it is a compliment when your own arguments are parroted back by someone else as if it were their own. Pah!
Ever have a stalker? I did. More than once. What can I say, I'm apparently irresistible. (Or a nut magnet).
Every now and then I get a mail from them and I keep it. The evidence might be important one day.
It's the weekly shopping slog tomorrow. I'm not looking forward to it.
With 2000 people dead in the UK in one day, popping down the shops feels even more like Russian Roulette than ever.