While the speakers take a few days more to arrive, the AudioEngine D1 digital to analog converter that I mentioned in my previous post has arrived today. Setup couldn’t have been easier: plug it into a free USB port, change the output device in the system’s sound settings, done.
Tech
The Subwoofer Is Dead
Today I noticed that my music and sound was awfully tinny — the subwoofer of my trusty old BlueSky Exo² audio system had stopped working. Since this is an integrated system with the amplifier inside the subwoofer, passive desktop speakers and a remote to control volume and sub level, I can’t just exchange the subwoofer, so I need something new.
WordPress Into Fediverse?
With Twitter’s demise, Mastodon and the entire Fediverse that is based on the ActivityPub protocol have gotten a lot of attention*.
No Thanks, Elon
On the day that the @realDonaldTrump account was reinstated on Twitter, I deactivated my account there*. Elon Musk arrived at the conclusion to reinstate him after a “vote” that, according to himself, ~120 million people saw — but only 15 million actually bothered to vote. The rest, like me, have Musk either muted, or blocked, because he’s just insufferable.
foobar2000 Mac v2.5
Today I am the happiest Apple Mac user I have ever been, and the reason is that foobar2000 version 2.5 (currently in beta9) has a media library. It is no longer a standalone player (with file reorg features), the media library comes with an album list, filters, a facets UI, ratings, auto-playlists — in other words, everything that I have been missing in a music player since I switched to a Mac, in December 2019. 🥲
Scanned & Flagged & Deleted
Ironic how everyone was crying out loud when Apple merely announced that they would scan photos stored in iCloud for child abuse — when Google has been employing such technology for a much longer time already.
WordPress Galleries & Retina Displays
One thing that has bugged me a little bit ever since I switched from a standard 16:10 display with a “2K” resolution to a high-DPI display (“Retina” in the Apple world) with a 5K resolution was the lack of acuity of the photos on my own damn photography website.
503 Errors By The Dozen
After I moved this personal blog from wordpress.com to my own hosting account, I had purchased a “redirect” option to make sure that no readers would end up on the old site, which isn’t updated anymore (if you’re still reading alexkunz.wordpress.com or your RSS feed reader is pointed to the feed on that site, please update your bookmarks).
Do The Internet a Favor: Switch to Firefox
Yesterday, I saw with some astonishment that Microsoft’s Chromium-based browser “Edge” has surpassed Safari in popularity, and is now in the 2nd place in desktop browser market share.
State of the Word :P
The pricing for new wordpress.com hosted sites has changed: it’s either the free plan now, with no option to remove ads*, or $15/month for a “business” plan. There’s nothing in-between.