August 2023

Albums

Nirvana – Unplugged in New York

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While I have a lot of “favorite albums”, there is one that I have fairly consistently considered my absolute favorite, and it’s Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York. Originally recorded as part of MTV’s Unplugged show. It was the first Nirvana album released after Kurt Cobain’s death. There are quite a few of these types of albums from MTV’s Unplugged show by different bands. From back when MTV actually played Music all the time.

I just love everything about this album. I love the goofy chatter between the songs. I love the fact that there are plenty of electric effects and an electric guitar in Nirvana’s “Unplugged Set”, because Nirvana doesn’t care apparently. I particularly love that it’s not just an acoustic greatest hits album. I think at least half the songs are covers and most are not their “top hits”. Come As You Are and All Apologies are probably the only real big hits on the album, though there are a couple of others. They aren’t even necessarily covering the big hits of other groups either.

While I really like every track, the covers may actually be my more favored tracks. The Man Who Sold the World, originally by David Bowie is excellent. Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam is great as well. There are three covers of Meat Puppets tracks, Plateau, Oh Me, and my favorite of these three, Lake of Fire. Members of the Meat Puppets also participated in this set.

The set ends with another non-Nirvana track Where Did You Sleep Last Night which is a folk song done by a variety of artists over a period and also goes by several other names. The whole, “angsty 90s Cobain” really shines through on this track and I really like it as well.

The set opens with About a Girl, which as Cobain comments, “this was off our first record, most people don’t own it,” which is certainly accurate as Nirvana wasn’t really popular until Nevermind and then later In Utero. It’s a nice and interesting throwback to the band’s origins. The last track I wanted to throw out as one of my favorites from this album comes from In Utero, Pennyroyal Tea, despite its kind of random and rambly nature, really fits this format well.

I think one thing I really like about this album is just how much it’s Nirvana’s messy and gunge style, cleaned up in a slick format, which still keeps the messy and grunge feel. I don’t really know how else to describe it. That isn’t to say Nirvana isn’t a great band, but I really feel like this album lets them really show a great other side to the band and everyone seems to be generally having a good time making this music as well.

Link List

Thursday 2023-08-24 – Link List

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Blogging Intensifies Link List for Thursday 2023-08-24

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24-Aug-2023 – Introducing Code Llama, a state-of-the-art large language model for coding

Brief Summary: “Introducing Code Llama, a state-of-the-art large language model for coding
New LLMs from Meta built “

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24-Aug-2023 – Orla Gartland has released a new video for ‘Kiss Ur Face Forever’

Brief Summary: ”
Orla Garland has released a video for ‘Kiss Ur Face Forever’.

Following up on 2021’s ‘Woman On T”

Opinion/Editorial/Life

Why Can’t I Hold All These RSS Feeds

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I’ve mentioned my woes with my RSS reader off and on in posts here, but I almost had another one. Thankfully, I learned my lesson last time. I ended up breaking my Fresh RSS install. I came across this post on Hacker News, where someone had asked for people to post their personal blogs. Someone had set up an OPML Feed for this list and stuck it on GitHub. I thought to myself, “Why not, I like these types of people, surely there are some good things in here”.

So I hooked the OPML up to my Fresh RSS. This tripled how many feeds I was subscribed to. It also broke my reader. I don’t know exactly what happened, but it stopped updating feeds, and would not even load the main page. I did some investigation and found that one of the SQL tables had become corrupted. THANKFULLY it was not the one with the feeds themselves. Literally everything else can be rebuilt if needed, easily, but recovering the feed list is paramount. I immediately created an export dump of the feed list. After some troubleshooting, I completely deleted the Fresh RSS database, then reloaded a months old backup, then reimported the recent feed list tables.

The only thing that was missing, I had added some categories since the last backup. I created some dummy categories, “Category 32, Category 33”, that sort of thing. Due to the relational way databases work, feeds automatically fell into these categories, which allowed me to figure out what the actual category name was. For example, one has some comic and book feeds in it, so clearly, this was originally my “Books and Comics” category.

Eventually, I’ll weed some of these feeds out. There are some in languages I don’t understand, nothing personal, but I have plenty to read without hassling with translations. Some feeds tend to post TOO MUCH and dominate the RSS reader. I’m pretty relentless about chopping these and Hacker News is pretty much the only one that floods, that I allow to remain. Techmeme and Slashdot are sometimes borderline but not usually, so they get to stay as well.

Everything is sorted into categories, and I usually read through in category chunks, and no, I don’t read everything, I skim for interesting headlines or updates from my favorites and read those. I can’t find a good number for how many feeds but I think it’s just over 1200 now, sorted out across categories. Currently, I use the following categories.

  • Anime/Japan
  • Books and Comics
  • Food
  • Friend’s Blogs
  • Games – Deal and Bundles
  • Games – Tabletop
  • Games – VG News
  • Games – VG Reviews
  • Language Learning
  • Lifestyle and Family
  • Movies/TV
  • Music
  • My Blogs
  • News – Conservative Bull Shit (Currently all Muted)
  • News – Illinois/Decatur/Local
  • News – Liberal Opinions
  • News – US News (Empty, they all end up in World)
  • News – World
  • PersBlogs – Tech Enthusiasts
  • PersBlogs – Toy Collectors
  • PersBlogs – Gaming
  • PersBlogs – Nerd Blogs
  • Photography
  • Science/Space
  • Second Life and Virtual Worlds
  • Tech – Coding and IT
  • Tech – Crypto Bullshit
  • Tech – General
  • Tech – Security
  • Tech – VR/XR
  • Toys – Transformers
  • Toys – LEGO
  • Toys – News
  • Uncategoriezed
  • Webcomics
  • Writing and Writers

This is essentially the gamut of my interests, and sometimes if a category becomes too unwieldy, I’ll break out some of the feeds into a refined category. Which is where the prefixes come from (News, Tech, PersBlogs, Toys).

I mentioned before, I mostly read in the category view. Anything I find interesting I’ll tag with either BI or Lameazoid tags, and then my news digest script goes to work, I think at 11 PM each night. I don’t always check it every day, which is fine, sometimes I check it 2-3 times a day. Often while eating breakfast, sometimes again in the evening.

Link List

Wednesday 2023-08-23 – Link List

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Blogging Intensifies Link List for Wednesday 2023-08-23

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23-Aug-2023 – Netflix Password Crackdown is Working as It Adds 2.6 Million Subscribers in July

Brief Summary: “There’s an old adage that says to not listen to what people say but pay attention to what they do. W”

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23-Aug-2023 – Improving a Kodak Film Digitizer

Brief Summary: “Despite the near-complete collapse of its ecosystem in the face of portable videocassette camcorders”

Opinion/Editorial/Life

Totally Not Wildcard Wednesday!

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It’s time again for Wildcard Wednesdays! Ok no, I’m not actually calling this that. I have mentioned, I love alliteration and “theme days” but that’s kind of dumb. I have been using Wednesday as a sort of wildcard day to write about “whatever”. I created a vague “schedule” for Blaugust, as part of a way to keep myself motivated.

  • Sunday – Personal Series post
  • Monday – Youtube Videos
  • Tuesday – Blaugust related post
  • Wednesday – Wildcard Wednesday!!! (NO!)
  • Thursday – Code project, or some project, maybe, at least something “techy”
  • Friday – Music Album (I was already doing this)
  • Saturday – Journal/Weekly Wrap Up

The problem now is that I’ve started this little discussion about the blog itself, so now I’m kind of locked in, because if I start talking about something deeper well, it’s awkward. The original sort of idea was to use this space, on Wednesdays, to just write about more serious topics, thoughts on world issues and politics. I’m still kind of apprehensive about adding that sort of content here. I’m not really sure why, because I talk about it, about everywhere else.

I’m not even really talking about necessarily direct “left and right” political talk, more just general, “society is going to shit” and “climate crisis” sort of talk. Though a lot of this is hard to discuss without at least mentioning politics because somehow the concept of “for the betterment of everyone” has become a political issue. It’s also all become incredibly entwined with religious identity. I mean, the history of mankind is littered with people doing shitty things in the name of religion, so it really should not be a surprise.

Personally, I’m a bit out on the whole with religion. I like to think I am a bit more, “spiritual” than “religious,” if that makes sense. I have not regularly attended church in over 20 years, possibly 25 at this point. I do kind of find the idea of a sort of, community group like a church to be somewhat appealing, I just don’t care for all the bull shit surrounding it. There’s a meme out there from some Tweets, where someone says something like “How does an atheist know the difference between right and wrong”, and the response is something like, “If you need the fear of eternal damnation to do good, you’re not good.”

It’s also increasingly just, perverted, to serve this weird agenda of keeping the population docile and shameful of having literally any enjoyment in life. It’s weird. It’s used to put down so many people, and people doing things that in the end, don’t affect anyone else. Most often these days against LGBT folks, but often others.

What I like to say in response to this sometimes is, “Stop passing judgment over people in the name of God. If there is a God, that’s his job to decide, not yours.”

Basically, stop shitting on people in the name of religion. It’s a bad look. This is just one of many reasons that people are increasingly shunning religions, especially old-school shame-based religions.

Oops, looks like I did it, and did it anyway, I posted a society based rant after all.

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