A perfect album. It gets a better “surround sound” effect from 1967-era analog stereo panning than most albums do from Dolby Atmos.

The Prince of Persia art for Super Famicom is super different than the Super Nintendo equivalent

Star Wars: A New Hope on Video CD, a pre-DVD format that was most successful in Asia. Think slightly-better-than-VHS quality with CD audio. As far as I can tell, this is the only digital release that includes the 1997 Special Edition extras but none of the 2004 revisions.

Amazing set for only $30:

• 5x Super Audio CD (SACD) with 5.1 mixes
• 2x Blu-ray Pure Audio with one included performance video

SACD is a 1-bit format with an extremely high sample rate (2.8224 MHz) and up to six channels of discrete sound. It never really broke through but has a niche following

Made an all-organic matcha latte:

• organic powder, oat milk, and sugar
• used an electric milk frother to dissolve the powder clumps in hot water
• flash-chilled it in a HyperChiller

That Dark Souls feeling when you approach a place you’ve been before, but from an unfamiliar angle, and it takes a second to realize where you are, except in real life…

I remember the day I bought this album, on an impromptu afternoon walk through gray rains to a record store tucked away quietly off the busy university thoroughfare. 40 year anniversary this year; it exceeded even my high initial expectations, it changed my life.

The song lyrics I think about the most in random moments are:

Just drop me off, yeah right here by the roadside/It’s a nice night to walk and I could be alone/Alone with my thoughts, alone with my cell phone

From “Any Open Door” by Travis Morrison

That oily sweat-tingling feeling from unexpected autumn warmth—when it’s hot out but oughta be cold, and your brain turns into a fruitful bough by a well of water for sweet-teeth—is dark liberation, a cheater’s affect that feels so righteous as you flaunt the sunglassed archers, the Agents of S.A.D.

Two screaming album covers for albums without much screaming on them

Some throwback listening 💿

Basking in the fall sunlight

Even my 🐈 enjoys Super Turrican: Director’s Cut, a restored genuine Super Nintendo game that’s bundled with the Analogue Super NT retro console.

Some cassette tape listening

There’s so many reasons to hate “obesity” discourse, including how it makes eating less fun by assigning a quasi-religious moralism—and from people who’d never consider themselves religious fanatics—to it. Yes, tell me more about how something is “sinful,” “empty,” “guilty,” or “cheating.”

Collection of Super Famicom games

Amazing that Tactics Ogre came out in 1995 for the Super Famicom. The depth of its gameplay is way beyond anything else on the system or on many more “advanced” systems, too. The Reborn remaster spruces it up, but it’s still mostly the same basic 28 year old game underneath, and that’s incredible.

This morning’s listening:

Unless you exert conscious effort, you’ll deem the music of your youth as the “greatest” ever. Relatedly, music that others see as “great,” but that you aren’t nostalgic for, can seem mystifying—that’s happening to me with the current anniversary tours for The Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie.

There’s a lot of media hype about Wegovy that doesn’t grapple with how at its core the drug seems to induce the same harmful weight cycling as every other miracle weight-loss “cure.”

Three versions of Pink by Boris:

• 2006 🇺🇸 CD
• 2006 🇺🇸 LP (different sequence, longer versions of 3 songs)
• 2016 deluxe 🇺🇸 CD (extra disc of bonus songs, 🇯🇵 cover art)

The Analogue Pocket has 100x (not a typo) the resolution of a Nintendo Game Boy Color (GBC). Here’s the title screen for the rare GBC title Metal Gear Solid, running off the original cart on the system.

@mejh thank you!

@jimmitchell finally coming back to this; this IPA is less assertive than the Fruit Force one bundled in the variety pack with it (the other two are Fat Tire and Mountain Time). Kind of “mellow.” That makes sense b/c it’s “only” 7.1% ABV. I liked it but not as much as the Fruit/Juice Forces.

@davids I tried repeating this to myself but succumbed anyway haha

@spgreenhalgh yup I agree it’s easy not to check. I kinda like that because I can dip in and right back out every now and then, without feeling like I’m pulling a dopamine slot machine like I was when refreshing Twitter to address my FOMO

@spgreenhalgh has this exact feeling when I deactivated my Twitter account. I’m mostly down to feed reader + Mastodon and a once-daily scan of Apple News. Any more than that seems overwhelming

@leoji like 7 states have the (northern) cardinal as the bird…copycats

@leoji it was convenient that the state I moved from (Kentucky) and to (Illinois) 15 years ago had the same bird 😄

@Alligator same! Can’t believe I didn’t discover it til relatively recently

@jimmitchell nice I’ll look for that one. I’ve only tried the Juice Force and Fruit Force IPAs so far. I got a New Belgium variety pack that also came with this one (7.1% ABV) that I’m looking forward to.

@BrandonWrites neat, Blu-ray still offers better quality than streaming a lot of the time. I’ve got an old Sony 1080p one, plus a Panasonic one in the living room TV for 4K discs. I’ve sometimes looked for an early 2010s/late 2000s one with 8 RCA audio jacks for playing Super Audio CDs

@jean this looks tasty, I’ve always been curious about radlers

@Denny I think you’re doing the right thing. I ditched WP a while back and it’s been a relief not having to think about hosting or using a complex CMS

@CharmsFamily neat drawing! I’ll have to see if my nephew and niece are into this show

@BrandonWrites what you’re saying about new-arrival drama has been spot-on for Mastodon:

It makes you wonder if you’d really want the folks who leave these platforms to join alternatives to stick around

Many complained about how Mastodon wasn’t Twitter, then praised Bluesky and it was tiresome

@jemostrom very nice photo

@chrisd even for the pretty penny I paid for it at the time, it’s somehow less than a region 1 copy of vol. 5 alone haha. Same Aussie distributor has done region 4-exclusive boxes of some other Adult Swim series.

Here are the component and S/PDIF cables I had mentioned in the original post:

@BrandonWrites nice post, I agree about the “big abandon spaces that sci-fi films of the 90’s utilized pre-CGI” and the power of good practical effects. Somehow I hadn’t heard of Screamers but I’ll have to check it out now!

@marc0janssen 🤞here’s hoping!

@marc0janssen beautiful cat

@marc0janssen thank you for confirming!

@BrandonWrites thank you! I really appreciate that and I’m glad you enjoyed it

@jamesshelley happy to do it! I’ve got some other nuggets from back then I can post in the future, such as the fully intact mock-tabloid that came with my floppy version of Space Quest V: The Next Mutation and served as copy protection for it.

@DaveyCraney it was a revelation for me too, one of the best Safari extensions

@BrandonWrites Nice! It’s called Last Window: The Secret of Cape West

@BrandonWrites same, I bought it on a whim knowing nothing about it and it really blew me away. Liked the sequel too—good thing DS is region free because that one only came out in Europe and Japan and I’m in the US