I’ve talked a lot about how music is a time-travel machine.

Today what hit me while working The Re-Rip Project and the compilations of various EDM genres is how long I spent preferring electronic music at 120 BPM or faster. For about 15 years it was my thing. It seemed like a reasonable place to end up after listening to 80’s synth-pop, and a little Acid House, New Beat and Industrial.

From my contemporary reading of Mondo 2000, Rolling Stone, and Wired, I was aware of the developing Rave Culture and Club Kids. But it wasn’t until the Cool World movie exposed me to a few early Moby tracks that I dove in head first.

It was probably the one time in my life when I felt in tune with something cool happening in pop culture. Before long the record store I worked at had a Techno section next to the Imports. Techno came and went, Acid Jazz and Trip-hop and Chillout all tried to happen. The term Electronica gave way to EDM. I passed through Trance and Jungle and Breakbeat and Garage and Dubstep sub-genres before I found Chill and Downtempo. Then I stopped working at places that carried music and major retail stores stopped carrying anything but Top 200 charting artists.

I still enjoy electronic music in doses, but I have no idea what the kids think is cool anymore, or if it’s even a thing.

Also I signed up on Discogs. They have cover art for all of the obscure stuff I own.

Forgive me if I remember stuff wrong. Also Douglas Coupland is way overrated.

I’m confused. If I meet the requirements to generate a passkey, why do I also need to enter a one-time password or confirm in an app on another device?

Seeing others work on their online presence inspires me. Have been looking over my stuff and fixing some details.

Signed some Christmas cards today. I swear a good third of them look like I have not mastered fine motor control or have not learned all of the letterforms—as I approach the sixth decade of signing my name.

Went to Apple to have them repair my iPhone. Have been living without the back camera for some time. But increasingly it was more and more troublesome. Thankfully, I was covered by AppleCare and it’s all over but the restore.

Watched the first two episodes of Agatha All Along tonight. Looks like a fun series. I’m hooked.

Sometimes changing your blog theme is the right amount of fun challenge.

In the long list of headlines that make me feel old:

The first Lamborghini Countach was made 50 years ago

I was made more than 50 years ago.

Image Playground categorically refuses to deal with the fact that I have a full beard and will not accentuate it. But it will try to render me with a goatee or terrible mustache or some small amount of growth that a young person might consider “trying to grow a beard.”

When your collection of stuff reaches a certain point, you realize you’re a curator, conservator, docent, archivist, guard, exhibition designer, etc.

All Of Us from Spoke’s album “Done”. Also appears on the album All We Need Of Hell

Watching The Song Remains The Same for the first time. I was 8 when it was released theatrically.

I just heard myself say “What’s the temp out side? The air sounds cold.” It’s eight Fahrenheit, for reference.

Darling Buds So Close

When your shuffled playlist brings back something you forgot you loved. From the Crawdaddy album released circa 1990.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’s stop motion animation was released 60 years ago. It feels like one of the few things left in popular culture that’s still older than me. Not by much, mind you. But still.

Ordered a pair of Shokz Openfit earbuds for work, based on the recommendation of a colleague. I’m impressed. I have an OpenRun bone conduction headset and these buds have better bass while not requiring anything in my ear. Great for surreptitious tunes while maintaining readiness for Teams calls.

I was confused about how Plex orders files associated with TV series. A little searching lead me to find Plex sorts based on TMDB, which is similar to IMDB. Plex respects parts of your file names. If you name episodes based on TMDB, results are much better. SxxExx maps to TMDB season and episode.

In the CD Re-Rip Projects, I’ve finished the strict alpha portion with music artist by album. Now I have some classical CDs, soundtracks, and lots of compilations. Looking at how the music is shelved, I think I understand what I did, but I may have to re-engineer or re-organise.

Fun thing about the re-rip project is time travel. Put a CD in to be converted and I thought, did enhanced CDs exist when this was released? Sure enough, track 15 was a data track. Of course! Anavoog.com from 1998 included a video and pictures. The site is still live. She’s on Instagram.

Happy Thanksgiving! Grateful for my family. Grateful for love. Enjoying a slow day listening to good music, drinking good coffee, and eating good food. Wishing you the best.

So hard to love watching the Vikings play. Relieved that we won, but was so frustrating to watching a 10 point lead evaporate in the last 70 seconds of regulation play. Won by a field goal, though. Skol!

Cornflake Girl by Tori Amos

Stark examples of the benefits of vaccines: Battling Infectious Diseases in the 20th Century: The Impact of Vaccines

Meanwhile, Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street is now playing in the assortment of high-rated tracks I have running. Is anyone doing anything like that anymore?

I love the shoegaze and the _nu_gaze. When the guitar chords and loops get super dense in a wall-of-sound kind of way is when I love it most. The baseline and the drums carry me through. Someday if I have time and budget, I’d like to experiment with filters and reverb and a noise generator.