🎵 Album of the day: “U.F.O.F.” by Big Thief. I found it on several “best of 2019” lists. It’s a quiet folk-rock album, with ruminative lyrics and a sound that borders on dream pop in places. I’m not sure if it really speaks to me, though.

I’m releasing updates of two of my apps this week, with very minor updates. I have found it hard to sit down and work on new features or the next version of any of my apps for the past couple months. One thing that keeps happenings that I get caught up in indecision about what to do, how to design it, and how to code it. I’m hoping to move past this phase and get back into a flow state soon, but first, I have to push forward.

If I were smart, I would listen to every album on this massive list-of-lists, over the next few months. I kind of like the idea of all the critics' top albums in one place a lot better than a single, definitive list.

LogMeIn is being acquired by a private equity firm. I hope this doesn’t make LastPass, which LogMeIn acquired in 2015, worse or more expensive.

🎵 Today’s album: “So” by Peter Gabriel. It’s a masterpiece. I kind of forgot that, and had not listened to it in several years. I barely know what else to say.

Maybe I am unplugged from things because of my age or something, but it seems to me that hardly anyone is excited about the new “Star Wars” movie coming out this week. I’m not excited either, but I want to see it eventually. I’m wondering if the drastic tonal shifts in “The Last Jedi” killed fans' enthusasiam the franchise.

I have reached the time of year in which my hands are so dry that fingerprint sensors no longer work for me.

I really like this video in which audiophile YouTuber DMS describes all the jargon you need to know to decipher hifi headphone reviews. I wish I had seen this six years ago or so when I first got into good headphones.

📺 “Watchmen”, which ended last night (spoilers ahead if you read the linked article) is easily the best sci-fi/fantasy show I’ve since since “Westworld” season 1. I actually hope HBO either (1) doesn’t make a season 2, or (2) gives several years for something that equals it to be developed, because “Watchmen” was just perfect.

The reviews for “Frozen II” might be lackluster, but I really liked it, and think that the songs, though few in number, are great. I think I preferred them before I saw the movie, but that’s just me.

🎵 Today’s listen: Hawksley Workman’s “For Him and the Girls”. The songwriting is strong and eclectic, some of the hooks are really catchy, and he played all the instruments and recorded it himself. The top track for me is “No Sissies” though I’m not sure how well its title has aged.

The real problem with robocalls, contrary to what is in The Verge today, is that they have undermined the usefulness of the telephone. Do you pick up the phone for “unknown caller”? I usually don’t. All phone calls have become suspicious for me, unless they are pre-scheduled meetings.

Van Halen’s “1984” is a great album and still holds up today, I think, even with all those synth lines. It certainly sounds great all the way through. It’s a shame about rock being dead and all…😅

Plex is a great music player on iOS. I’m playing lossless tracks (from my old CD rips) stored on my home server, over the network, over AirPlay, controlled by my iPad. I love seeing the song’s waveform on the progress bar, and reading the rich metadata about each album I listen to.

I’m spending some time pruning my music collection, which I barely listen to anymore, but is higher quality (all CD rips or 24/96k files!) than Apple Music. It has been so long, though, that I forgot most of my file renaming and converting tricks.

It looks like FreeNAS is, eventually, going to run on top of Debian Linux, not just FreeBSD. VP of Engineering Kris Moore posted today:

[…] we’re going to be hard at work in 2020 to make our 12.0 code portable across multiple OS platforms. The middleware at the core of FreeNAS is already pretty portable today, and we want to start extending its reach.

That’s pretty cool. Good on them to unbolt their software from the underlying OS. I think it will give them a lot more flexibility going forward. I don’t know if I will run FreeNAS on Linux anytime soon, though. I learned to adore BSD’s stability and simplicity from running FreeNAS, but it has made it harder to virtualize and/or run some useful services on my hardware.

Kris Moore went on to clarify:

FreeNAS as it exists will continue on FreeBSD for 12.0 and beyond. This will be bringing some of the same software-base to Linux to unveil some new products that are Linux-based in the coming months. If you currently are happy with FreeNAS as it sits today, you can expect to keep updating it on BSD going forward.

All of this sounds good to me. FreeNAS has been a great platform for me for many years now.

Social media is a scam. Who knew?

Davey Alba reports in the New York Times:

[…The] report also brings renewed attention to an often overlooked vulnerability for internet platforms: companies that sell clicks, likes and comments on social media networks. Many of the companies are in Russia, according to the researchers. Because the social networks’ software ranks posts in part by the amount of engagement they generate, the paid activity can lead to more prominent positions.

No kidding that engagement is fake. Paying for fake “Likes” is the same kind of thing as paying for fake clicks, which is a scam performed to goose online ad revenue.

Samantha Bradshaw, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, a department at Oxford University, said easy social media manipulation could have implications for European elections this year and the 2020 presidential election in the United States.

“Fake engagement — whether generated by automated or real accounts — can skew the perceived popularity of a candidate or issue,” Ms. Bradshaw said. “If these strategies are used to amplify disinformation, conspiracy and intolerance, social media could exacerbate the polarization and distrust that exist within society.”

Of course, paying to amplify a message will, indeed, amplify it, even if that message is false or destructive to the fabric of society. It’s too bad that social media is so addictive. It is cause so many problems.

Our dishwasher broke over the weekend. I washed dishes for hours Saturday and Sunday, and we are still behind on it. I’ve got my fingers crossed that it can be fixed today. I’m tired of, and don’t have time for, this drudgery!

The rumor that Apple’s 2021 iPhone will have no ports disturbs me for one big reason: CarPlay. No cars that I know of support wireless CarPlay (did that even ship?), and phones often need a charge on a long car ride. Apple could solve those problems with some kind of adapter, but who wants yet another dongle?

If AirPlay 2 really is cracked, and will work soon in shareport-sync on Linux, that is pretty exciting for me. I have been really enjoying pushing all my audio from all my devices (iPhone, two iPads, and a MacBook Pro) to a single Linux server, running shareport-sync, connected to my external DAC/Amp. Uncompressed audio goes over the network via the AirPlay 1 protocol. AirPlay 2 is better for multi-room audio, and has a shorter delay.

Today I learned that the Beatles' “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” is widely reviled. From the Wikipedia article:

“Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” is often the subject of ridicule. In 2004, it was included in Blender magazine’s list titled “50 Worst Songs Ever!"[61] and was voted the worst song of all time in an online poll organised by Mars.[62] In 2012, the NME’s website editor, Luke Lewis, argued that the Beatles had recorded “a surprising amount of ropy old toss”, and singled out “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” as “the least convincing cod-reggae skanking this side of the QI theme tune”. That same year, Tom Rowley of The Daily Telegraph said the track was a “reasonable choice” for derision, following the result of the Mars poll, and it subsequently came second (behind “Revolution 9”) in the Telegraph’s poll to determine the worst Beatles song.

I always liked that song, and never thought of it as anything other than a light, fun song that is supposed to be—big shock here—light and fun. I’m more apt to be critical of art that takes itself too seriously.

Peak TV is exhausting to me. I recognize about half of the titles on this best-of-2019 list, and I listen weekly to a TV-related podcast.

🎵 I’m changing pace today with a classic rock album: “The Kids are Alright” by The Who. I’m very familiar with some of the tracks, of course, but I don’t think I’ve ever listened to this album.

🎵 I’m taking the “COMPLEX Best Alternative R&B Artists” playlist on Apple Music out for a spin today.

I have been eyeing the JDS Labs Element II desktop DAC/amp for about a week now. It looks great (I want the huge volume knob), it has all the power I would ever need, and it has gotten some great reviews regarding its sound quality and the excellence of its amp. I have almost bought it twice, and have almost bought its cheaper, older sibling, the famous Objective2+ODAC once from JDS and once from its other US manufacturer, Mayflower Electronics.

The main thing holding me back is that I already have a pretty great DAC/amp, the (discontinued) Oppo HA-2se. I want to upgrade to a desktop model mainly to have more sturdy piece of equipment at my (admittedly already crowded) desk. I have had problems with my Oppo sliding off my desk. I wouldn’t mind higher quality DAC and amp, though I probably wouldn’t be able to tell if it is any “better” than what I already have. Lastly, I think I just love audio gear. I would love to test a bunch of it and have a few pieces I really like around the house so I can use them all the time.

I have to stay strong, though, and avoid spending more money on my audiophile hobby, because I think my current equipment is already delivering me as much quality as my somewhat damaged ears can discern.