CRRRaSh! 365 Pleather Fetish

By Roy Mathur, on 2021-01-11, at 22:51:38--23:22:10, for Captain Roy's Rocket Radio Show, Listen

The Twelve Days of Christmas

If you haven't listened to the series of short pods I taped over Christmas, try them out. You might enjoy them.

As well as being Christmassy (and moany), I also talked briefly about geek stuff like: Star Wars, Prince of Persia, Kosmokrats, Dungeons and Dragons, Star Trek: Discovery, The Flight Attendant, Harper's Island, Disney, Jeremy Bulloch, The Sister, The Expanse, Wonder Woman 1984, The Wicker Man, Blake's 7, Doctor Who's the Master, Doctor Who: Revolution of the Daleks, Ubuntu, The Serpent, Jodie Whittaker, Barbara Shelley, Windows, Text Editors, Audacity, ActiveState, Dropping Another Phone Down the Toilet, and Google Amplifier, etc.

The Midnight Sky

A sick scientist appears to be the last man on Earth, when he makes radio contact with astronauts by returning from an expedition to an extrasolar planet.

George Clooney produced, starred and directed this film adaptation of novel about loss and redemption, dressed up as sci-fi. It looks cool, the acting is great, the FX---er---effective, the sadness really kicked me in the guts, and I liked it a lot.

Star Trek: Discovery

The Diehard tribute in the penultimate episode of the series came off as pointless, silly, and plain naff.

The finale? Jonathan Frakes is a good director, but the season three scripts he had to work with were pants. The show needs better writers or, if that's not possible, pivot the show to hard science fiction. I know Star Trek was never about science, it was about people, but doing that well is difficult and I haven't seen a new D.C. Fontana or Harlan Ellison in Star Trek for a very long time.

So if they can't manage it, they should go full on hard science, because no show currently does that and people like me have been thirsting for it for a very long time.

Ringworld

On a related side note regarding hard science fiction, I hope Amazon's upcoming Ringworld adaptation of Larry Niven's hard sci-fi novel series isn't crap.

Also, Louis Gridley Wu better damn well be played by an actor with substantial Asian genes.

IKEA Mammut

Let's go creative, but instead of talking about something I've been writing, we'll talk iconic design versus production reality for a change.

My Second IKEA Mammut stool cracked. I've bought a lot of things from IKEA over the years and, despite the Scandinavian’s store's cult status, a lot of that turned out to be sub-standard garbage that broke easily.

IKEA are an innovative and interesting company with some cool designs, but the reality is that many of their products are poor quality and of low durability. This was best parodied in the Friends episode when they try to assemble the "Sven" (Sorry, I can't find the clip. Wait, was it Friends or Seinfeld?)

NB/ The two Ikea Svallet lamps I bought recently still seem to be okay, but they are a little top-heavy.

Podcasting Headphones: Beyerdynamic DT150, Sony 7506, JVC HA-S160, No Name Foam Earpads, Brainwavz Earpads

The story so far... the excellent Beyerdynamic DT150 that fit my long elf ears went back because of the earcups were very loose, which led to endless adjustments.

The recently bought and returned equally excellent Sony 7506 went back last week because the earcups are small for over ears headphones and they hurt---you guessed it---my elf ears.

So now I'm back to my JVC HA-S160. I wish I could fine some brilliant studio cans, but I just can't, so I'll make do with the sub-GBP 10 on-ear cans. They are easy to drive and seem to pick up every click and pop imaginable on a track. The only trouble is they are fragile, getting scarce, and the pleather earpads, like all pleather earpads will eventually degrade.

I did, however, buy 5 pairs of foam earpads---not quite as great as the originals---for GBP 7.00 on Amazon, so that should make them last longer. I have replaced the earpads on both mine, and my mum's headphones, and they're okay. Their thinness even allows for a more transparent and louder sound.

If your pleather earpad coating is also badly peeling, but the cushions are otherwise alright, my advice is to use sticky tape wrapped around your finger, with the sticky part on the outside, to peel off as much of the remaining vinyl as you can, then suck out the bits that have fallen into the earcup with a hoover.

If your cans are beyond cleaning and are too expensive for cheap foam, Brainwavz makes sheepskin leather covered memory foam replacement earpads. I can't vouch for them, but they seem to get mostly good reviews.

You can also try that leather repair goo, but that is considerable more expensive than new earpads. And one last tip, oils, including the skin oil on your ears, eats pleather. Wiping the pleather after use will greatly extend their life. Pleather, pleather, pleather. Gods, I really love saying, "pleather".