Chip McDonald

Front line EMS, cashiers, waitresses and teachers are asked to be put into hazardous conditions, but without hazard pay. Nobless oblige applies; people "higher up" have gotten rewards for creating a situation where these people MUST do this, but they've ignored compensating them. My wife HAD to work in a non-front line job, but a technical situation where she couldn't lock down. People don't remember, but maybe for a week or so the topic of hazard pay was a national discussion - but they tamped that down real quick. And becauset of course no politician aside from Jacinda Ahearn had the spine to implement real proactive measures, to LEAD, these Karen encounters keep happening to people like waiters/waitresses. It's ridiculous.

Fascinating. I know John Landgraff of Landgraff Dynamic Overdrive fame was ultra meticulous in doing tests of his leds and matching components, to surprisingly sublime results. I wish there was more written/research done about both the sweet spots of components and their "operating windows". I know Jeorge Tripps and James Santiago gets into that, Mike Fuller, but it seems like so many pedal "designs" now are just minor changes to R/C values. Cork sniffery applied to leds should happen! / I used a Rockman X100 in jazz band in HS, and I used to go back and forth with the little trim pot on the back; was he trying to hit that value, or just wanting a single coil/double coil input offset? // hey.... how was that *plastic knob* on Rockmans *conductive*? When you touched them they hummed like the ground was being rerouted? Some sort of static effect? /// hey again... I still have that X100, but it just makes a self-oscillator tone when turned on now, like reversed-wah? //// Tom used those crappy switches because of cost, or packaging constraints (depth)? ///// Interviews with people are never technical enough!!!

Waitresses are putting themselves into a dangerous situation with a lot of people in a room, AND taking their masks off to eat. They should be getting hazard pay. Being vaccinated doesn't mean they're safe, just *safer*.

... and... the website barfed on my post, "Securi" protection activated? EDIT Blah blah blah voice recognition perfected by Google but walked back for some reason, blah blah, trained populace in the West creating an illusion of an "intellectual" society that aren't able to reason through the logic of getting vaccinated.... blah blah... 7 cases of triple-mutant vaccine escaping India strain reported in the U.S. last week, which puts us in the same predicament we were in at the start of January 2020 with a few cases in Washington state blah blah.. hopefully I'm wrong and there will be some residual lower viral load with the vaccines and some smart people still wearing masks/distancing despite "reopening"... blah blah... / must learn to write in a separate editor and copy/paste

So many of these faux pas. And so many basic, fundamental problems with products these days - corporate detachment from responsibility leads to this kind of thing. A band coming up with a new name: "let's search for it on Google, to see if someone else has it". "Oh, wait, it means "clean your urinal" in Thai, we can't use that". Giant Corporation: "let's name it "The LURIDOMINKYBILA"! Yeah!" "Ok, that's settled, I'm headed to Starbucks, any one else?".

I think we're in the last lull with the virus we're going to have, thanks to mutations and the lack of vaccinations. You're more optimistic than me about people adopting "new technology". People are eager to accept new technology *only when it will allow them to be lazier*. I used voice commands on my phone - at least until Google screwed it up about a year ago. I went years without actually touching my phone to make a call, or to search and play music. But at the same time, while I'm pretty sure I could have rigged Reaper to do a lot of things by voice command, it's just easier/lazier to click a button. Trying to *formulate a proper command": "turn on solo on track 14, then play" over and over, instead of clicking a button is effectively "un-short cutting" the macro action of the button. "Advances in laziness wins". I've actually made $400 on an initial $80 BTC "peasant investment", and just recent $100 on $10 worth of Dogecoin. As more vendors start accepting Doge - as I'm going to with guitar lessons - it will sky rocket, but the complexity of schemes to make your own coin, and to try to get fans/clients involved won't work because... it requires effort. Tutoring people through DAWs, and now trying to get students to use Facetime, Skype or Zoom has been an enlightening experience. Facetime wins, because it's the simplest of the 3. And I've had amazing technical difficulty with students that are *professionals in it* that can't get around their computer, or do basic troubleshooting; Training makes the Modern Populace seem more apt to take on tech advances, but the training creates an illusion: the training is just laziness in slow motion. It doesn't supplant intelligence or more importantly, *curiosity*. People that use tech routinely doesn't mean they have the initial drive, curiousness, to learn something new. They've been trained, or had to acquire skills professionally due to a job. New technology will only be adopted if it allows the user to be lazier in some aspect. Intellectual curiosity to match intellect itself is skill a very scarce phenomenon I think. Which leads back to vaccines: it's got to be made easier. We need "ice cream truck" vaccinations, door to door vaccinators. Some people will get vaccinated but are too lazy to bother.

Red leds breakdown voltage = 2.2 volts and junction capacitance. This is the kind of content I need, makes me think "what are the parameters governed by the color of the leds? Are there any that have a non-linear breakdown voltage? Does anyone make a pedal that parallels one with a ge diode?"....

Learned to drive in a '72 Dodge Dart coupe with a 318, fun car to have when driving a paper route. It was in mint condition, literally a little old lady owned it that ever drove it. Torque was often confused for power back then....

Yes. Dry wood is stiffer and in turn doesn't damp vibration as well. I've got a Montana division Gibson Gospel I bought at a store at worked at back in the 90's - that people looked over because it doesn't play well, but I liked how it sounded. It sounds better now, and the finish is tightening up on the grain, very nice looking. The lacquer on my Suhr is tightening up as well the same way; there could be something to the tension across the top of an acoustic with aged lacquer that creates a pre-loaded spring effect. Without a doubt, having been able to compare identical Warmoth necks, roasted/torrified wood is the "vintage guitar sound" difference. The roasted neck sustains longer, has a flatter overtone series through 500-2k acoustically, fundamental is louder. If you hold both by the headstock and rap a knuckle against them, the roasted neck rings like a marimba, the regular one goes "bonk". My now-vintage '83 Squier strat is maybe my best sounding guitar. I'd love to have another one just like it; I'm afraid to refret it and ruin the voodoo. So at this point I'm quite sold on, if I ever have money to spend on a guitar again, roasted basswood and maple.

But it sure beats the 14th. Civilization began with indoor plumbing, anesthesia and air conditioning. But we've entered a time when more people believe Earth is flat today than last century, there is lead in U.S. drinking water, invading and defacing the capitol is "patriotic", and people think wearing a mask during a pandemic is "sissy", among other things. We've moved backwards as a society since 2001. Contrarily, though - I watched the first episode of _For All Mankind_. And then contrastingly watched the Space-X launch from a few days ago: Men and women being suited up into spacesuits much more modern looking than the Apollo suits; Scenes of their families outside come to see them off, as they get into electric cars to take them to the launch pad; Sleek, modern gantry to the more post-Kubrick Dragon capsule; Flat panel touch displays inside, 4 member crew, room to move around inside the capsule; Booster returns to Earth and lands. Elon is doing about the only thing that is "modern" in the 21st century, except it should have been happening 40 years ago. /... and with a post about civilization I cross 5,000 posts?

I noticed last night Paramount had the "Star Trek Discovery: Shorts" episodes I hadn't seen. And in the one with Spock and Number One, based on a turbo lift failure, I noticed the pun-intended Number One problem I have with ST Discovery: They're taking a cue from Doctor Who and making the INSIDE OF THE SHIP LARGER THAN THE OUTSIDE. They show the exterior of the lift as being in some gargantuan chamber with other lifts 100 feet away, with a gigantic waste of space, in a cavernous area that would be comparable to the size of the dorsal section itself. And they've given the lift compartment a massively complex set of controls - for no reason. The OG Star Trek was internally consistent, which helped with the suspension of disbelief. But every time on Discovery they would show this "turbo lift subway" I would always for a moment think "ok, this is a new scene on a planet somewhere... wait...no, this gargantuan subway system is supposed to be on the Discovery/Enterprise". Completely non-sensical. It's either sloppy conceptualization, or *they just don't care*. Either way it wrecks it. Ahrghh. I hate the 21st century.

Ack, sorry. I glance in here when I have a student cancellation, end up finishing too fast. UX design: Amazon transport controls are.... abhorrent. There are so may wrong things about the user "interface" it almost shouldn't qualify as an "interface". It's not just Amazon that is guilty of screwing up their UX, Google, Spotify (new browser interface makes me click to search????) ... it's like none of these companies employees or CTO/CEOs actually ever use their own products.

My preferred car would be a Gordon Murray Automotive T.50 Nikki Lauda. Former Formula 1 engineer, who designed the McLaren super car, designs the ultimate driver-centric sports car. Bespoke Cosworth non-aspirated V12 powered, active aerodynamics, every millimeter designed with intent and performance ala a Formula 1 car: But I'm not a 1%er, I don't live in Monaco. Instead I have a 2014 Subaru BRZ. Ultra low center of gravity with a boxer engine, perfect weight distribution tested by Formula 1 drivers, rear wheel drive, Torsion differential, ultra smooth manual gearbox, lots of well thought out engineering details. Gets 30 mpg, and handling is routinely compared to the best handlig trans-$100,000 cars. Mine cost $12,000... The thing about my car is that for the hour I'm in it.... was, in it everyday before COVID19, it made getting to and from work a pleasant experience. The nimbleness in traffic makes me feel completely unsafe when driving other sluggish-reacting cars. Paid cash after saving for a long time. There is only one other purchase I've made that I felt so sure about and was as easy to decide/make, and I fully expect to get another one - I can't imagine a more suitable car. It would be like getting a pair of ATC monitors for the cost of some JBL 305s. Easy, cost effective and satisfying. The most cost effective and fun sports car of all time.

I thought about doing that for _Force Awakens_ ; it made me so mad from the start with the dumb non-Star Wars universe answering machine joke that I thankfully remember very little from it - except some of the CGI looked good. Or at least "fanciful". But see... this is DISNEY. They have the budget, Star Wars has the name, to attract the EXACTLY PERFECT Young Han Solo. Instead they picked Young Jack Black? The trailer for it told me "it's not worth ruining an evening watching this". Contrarily, Star Trek Discovery did a fantastic job of casting an actress to play a main character as a child, and so did The Expanse for the son of two characters in the series. Almost spookily so. For their budgets, they *should* IMO.... I remember thinking on _Force Awakens_ I wished all of the tempos had been about 10% slower, and the dynamic range something lower than -1 LUFS. "Let's have BIG EXPLOSIONS!!!" "YEAH!!! More than ANY OTHER MOVIE!!!" "YEAH" "LOTS!!!" "Let's make it... LOUDER!!!" "YEAH!" "Ok, I'm sure the sound department will have no problem with this! John WIlliams will love it!" I knew what I was in for. I actually wore ear plugs, and my Radio Shack db meter. I can't remember what it was hitting, but over 102db consistently in the theatre I was at, 1/3rd of the way back. No subtlety anymore. Hmm... I just blew half of my stimulus check on a refurbished M1 Mac Mini, that might be a good excuse, thanks for the head's up Craig! Binge watching F1 _Drive to Survive_, then unsubscribing. Committee decision: "We need to freshen up the 'ol Netflix interface.... any ideas?" "How about... add sound to the previews!!!!" "Yeah!" "It'll get their attention, add excitement" "YEAH!!" Rundling is destroying everything from plugins, newspapers, websites to streaming. They keep wanting to push the limit of the consumer. X-Games for the "capitalists".

Charlie Chaplin Burt Bacharach Lennon/McCartney Trent Reznor Roger Waters Bernie Taupin Chris Cornell Neil Young Farrokh Bulsara

God yes. We dropped out after the first few episodes of Season 2. Really shitty predictable last-minute-high-speed-passed-out-captain-rescue, followed by another episode of pseudoscientific bullshit babble, and we just couldn't take it anymore, story arc be damned. It's so all over the place from a writing standpoint. It's this, condensed: (CONFERANCE writing session) "What if... I dunno... THIS actually happened, and they did THIS fantastic thing!" "Ok... we could go there... but then, we'd need THIS fantastic thing to happen, and ..." "... and we'd need at least one battle scene, that has to be INCREDIBLE!" It's frakking index card-stuck-to-a-white board writing by committee. What no doubt ruined the horrid Star Wars sequels. It's like I could hear them thinking about a minute before anything happened, because THEY'RE GOING TO GO THERE. And in the process they threw out all of the things that gave the OG Trek character - because, again, they WENT THERE. It's like a writing singularity of "let's DARE to have them do the IMPOSSIBLE thing". "THEN the MEGA SPACE BATTLE HAPPENS!", "THEN.... a truly EPIC hand to hand battle ensues", "against the Klingons? Aren't they bigger, stronger and badder?", "yeah, but..... SUPER HEROES!!!!", "THEN, time travel paradox", "THEN.... The OG Trek took liberties with physics, BUT stayed consistent within the established constraints. _Discovery_ just invents new physics McGuffins, new powers for characters, ironic twists to everyone on the bridge crew, more and more soap opera drama... and the Obligatory 21st Century Sensational Entertainment Torture Porn Scene, using gruesome torture to elicit emotion from the audience THE WRITING SHOULD. Ahrrghrg. Great writing by *actual, legit sci-fi authors* allowed the OG Trek to carry on with Gorns in rubber suits, stock footage, cheezy sets. I have great hope that Ron Moore's participation means it's good, but I can't afford to simultaneously subscribe to multiple media services (that's another thing: everybody has HBO, HULU, CBS, Paramount, Apple Tv, .... I am SO incredibly poor, geez...).

That's a great trick, lends personal interpretation to it. But holy frak, I've been listening to them since I was 10 years old, and I still probably can't connect the title of more than 10 LZ songs to the music. It's like they were constructing one long story out of song titles: "The Stairway to Heaven is located Over the Hills and Far Away, just a Misty Mountain Hop away. But I've got to Ramble On now because I'm feeling a bit Dazed and Confused because I've been Trampled Under Foot. I think I'm Going to California, but I'm afraid I'll be treated like and Immigrant from Kashmir singing a song, having crossed the Ocean trying to escape the Gallow's Pole In My Time of Dying. Even though it's been Ten Years Gone Since I've Been Loving You, it's Nobody's Fault But Mine that I only have Four Sticks, and regardless of What Is and Should Never Be, or How Many More Times You Shook Me, I'll just feel like a Black Dog, just a Fool in the Rain".... Ok, that's all I've got. Writing that out, I could probably scratch through playing all of those songs, but I'd need the bass player to yell the first lyric at me in order to not train wreck the beginning.

I think the Line 6 DL4 is the greatest, most well-thought out pedal of all time. The Omni Channel makes me think that about plug-ins, it's GOAT of plugins IMO. There's nothing about it that makes me think "I wish they'd done "this" instead" or "that's a throwaway feature". Everything sounds natural and useable, does what you expect. A true "channel strip" work flow.

I would love to have a Porsche GT-2/3/x whatever in borealis arancio orange. I can't imagine dinging it up to make it look like it's been rally racing. But then, I can't afford even the wheels on that car. For someone that can have 5-6, maybe it's "amusing" to have a pretend "battle damage" race car. I'd feel so ridiculous driving such a thing, and totally embarrassed if I encountered an actual race car driver in it. Paying $$$$$$ for a custom beat up guitar is exactly like that to me. If anyone wants to buy some authentically "reliced" guitars for a marked up price, let me know.

Exactly. It's like you're showing off X-rays of bone breaks for when you fell off the 12' half pipe... except you don't actually skateboard and it's Tony Hawk's x-rays. "Narcisist visual shredding". You don't care if someone thinks it's not real, you're just wanting to get the kudos from those that *you* think *might* think it's real. The orange suntan of guitar.

Good tip, I need to remember M/S for taking the middle out of reverb, that seems really obvious. Gah. I love the M/S eq in Waves _Omni Channel_. Simple to implement, simple to ignore otherwise. Handy for putting the focus on the "C" in LCR, de-emphasizing the CINEmatic steREO of drum sample overheads, getting a "mastered for phono record" bass spectrum.

Depends on the circumstance, what it is. I posted some photos of Formula 1 cars on a message board a long time ago, and they "magically" ended up on a couple of F1 news websites. Watermarking would have prevented that, but it's not like I'm making money from it so I suppose there is no point?

PS CS has their new Super Resolution AI enlargement feature.

They used reverb and delay throws where a background vocal maybe would go IMO.

I don't understand how people manage to watch ALL of the latest movies, series, etc.. I know people that talk about all of the comic book movies, tv series, Netflix series... I just got around to watching all of _Parks and Recreation_ a few years ago, years after the rest of the world; I remember when people in the band I was in, when it was on was talking about it. People are so cavalier about what they watch, and I'm like "yeah, but is it REALLY good?" - because I don't want to waste time watching an entire movie because "you, it's a pretty good flick". There is too much greatness in cinema to bother with being burned by "yeah, watch this movie, it's great!" and it's just mediocre or horrible. I'm a Star Wars fan, and a 10 year old Chip wouldn't believe one day I would say "there's a Han Solo movie I haven't seen, AND I refused to watch the latest Star Wars movie". And now that the COMIC BOOK BATTLE SCENE is influencing seemingly all things, I'm going to continue to be an old curmudgeon. This really isn't what I expected the 21st century to be like.