Technological/practical "backward steps" we all just accept now

on hold. not sure what this music is.

it's sort of nondescript electronic. not too bad for hold music actually.

it would be quite good if more hold music was vaporwave, to close the circle a bit.

he's going to send an engineer round! direct action! 35 minutes and counting on the actual call.

i've got fucking Heartbeats by Tom Walker in my head now. They will pay for this.

I'LL BE THERE IN A HEARTBEEEAAAAT.

and finished. time for a cup of tea. shout out to the last guy who I spoke to who was lovely and very helpful. i said so, and he said he was very grateful to me letting him know that and he appreciated it. little tear in my eye now. we had some good times.

John Lanchester picked up his bespoke mobile phone device and dialled the number for Virgin Customer Services...

... using the electronic keypad the digital display of the phone provided.

fizzles calling VM CS easily merited being the 200k thread tbh

“ I feel like there isn’t enough attention given to the fact that all these high tech, self driving transportation options are ultimately going to translate into restriction of movement. “Firewalls” that can’t be crossed and “regions. Seems like it should be a bigger concern.

― Manitobiloba (Kim), Wednesday, September 4, 2019 3:27 PM (six months ago)”

When I wrote that six months ago, I wasn’t exactly sure what the triggers for such a thing might be, but I sure have been thinking about it again in the past week or so.

I was gonna comment on the audio issues of Zoom conference calls -- but damn, that sounds super prescient, Kim!

I’m half waiting for the call in coming months that my car needs a software update. Actually heck, I’m not sure the car even needs to physically go in for these things anymore.

My car can access the home WiFi from the driveway. Oh brave new world etc

new br / dvd player is half the size of the previous one but has no display and no way of seeing where you are within the film whilst watching the film. (also, no audio out for connection to amp, despite having cd playing options)

(the last one suddenly started saying 'blocked' last time i went to use it. no eject, nothing. it was 75% air inside, just two small pcbs, the drive and the led display)

Yeah, mine did the 'blocked' thing, I found a way to unblock it on the ternet.

when recording music on a laptop (or even a phone), using any bluetooth device will throw the recording out of sync due to the latency, requiring you to manually fix the syncing.

so you wind up going back to wired devices anyway

Ha, yeah, we tried to do home karaoke using an iPhone mic app and bluetooth speakers. That lasted all of about 45 seconds.

when I used to do elaborate vocal harmony recordings in 2002-2006, I used an old vintage wired mic, my desktop, etc, and CoolEditPro, and it was fairly easy.

now I give up in 5 minutes cos there's the syncing problem and about a million others.

all of my happiest audio editing experiences took place in CoolEdit 96 and a circa 2001 version of Sonic Foundry ACID. bought a recent ACID license a couple years back to be able to play all my old tracks and the interface was so overstuffed with tools and junk that i couldn't even get comfortable doing really basic stuff. IIRC i could still get CE96.exe to sorta run up through Windows 7 or so. beautiful little program.

rip Deck II

whoa there was a Deck III!

https://www.macintoshrepository.org/14077-bias-deck-3

Wanna talk history, Deck was developed out of an old sequencer called Dr T’s Beyond which I used on my Mac plus, back when Vision and Performer (non audio versions) were too expensive. So it was always wild seeing elements of the beyond interface show up in Deck.

I loved that world. Here's another one:

Soundedit 16.

I did a lot of audio recording and editing on a Windows 95 PC with Cakewalk Pro back in the day. Also, playing keyboards through a MIDI to serial port cable using softsynths. I imagine the latency on modern PCs would be excruciating.

ooooh I remember Soundedit 16! ... also, recently explaining to someone why crossfade edit icons look the way they do because they are signifying the angle you would splice actual tape to achieve the fade effect ... because I learned audio editing on an Otari 1/4" reel to reel.

MX 5050?

IIRC i could still get CE96.exe to sorta run up through Windows 7 or so. beautiful little program.

I've sat fucking around with the Windows backwards-compatibility settings so many times trying to get this to run again. There's never been a better straight audio editor. Would pay £20-30 no problem for a 2020 rerelease as long as it was exactly the same in every detail including the name.

same. absolutely. anything else i've ever used to try and clip and clean up .wavs, or get shit to loop nicely, or whatever, the interface itself is so in the way, the way you click and select things is never quite right, etc.

we've mentioned it upthread but USB ports vanishing from laptops is the bane of fucking existence

my laptop purchased earlier this year has a USB port ... though previous one had 3.

though the fact that most laptops don't have 10 key number pads is absurd to me

yeah modern laptops basically require an additional $50+ multi-port USB-C adapter widget if you want to connect them to anything else besides the charging cable

oh i take it back, mine has 2 usb ports, an hdmi port, a headphone jack, and a couple other things ... I purchased it new in January ... what is this definition of "modern"?

though the fact that most laptops don't have 10 key number pads is absurd to me

<3 you!

we've mentioned it upthread but USB ports vanishing from laptops is the bane of fucking existence

― Specific Ocean Blue (dog latin), Friday, October 9, 2020 6:51 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Apple are terrorists against functional interfaces

Also ditching breakaway magnetic power adapter plugs for flimsy usb-c power adapters

true, but how much of the market for laptops does Apple have? (just out of curiosity, i have no clue)

I'm a Windows person because of work software, though the fact they are approx. $1000 cheaper is also a huge factor

windows laptops are $100?

lol @ you comparing a 17" PC laptop with a decent graphics card to a baby mac with a screen so small you can't really do much on it

true, but how much of the market for laptops does Apple have? (just out of curiosity, i have no clue)

I'm a Windows person because of work software, though the fact they are approx. $1000 cheaper is also a huge factor

― sarahell, Saturday, October 10, 2020 1:17 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Think probably 10%ish?

yeah ... I mean, I get that Apple tends to predict design changes to the PC market that come later tho, just that there are large segments of users that are very very very set in their ways in terms of design and functionality and ... maybe I overestimate the market share of those users

like maybe if Covid eradicates the majority of baby boomers, then Apple's anti interface posse will win?

give a few more minutes and I will become old man yells at cloud computing

xpost yeah that's what I was getting at - apple ditching something usually portends an eventual fall from grace for ports

Other brands already following. Dell apparently makes a recommended USB c hub for just that purpose.

i have a 2015 macbook which still thankfully has 2 usbs and the magnetic charger thingy. the small screen is a feature 4 me bc it's easy af to move around/carry.

a future with no ports is one where i go off-grid probably

I do appreciate the invention of the wireless printer

thousandth post

1001 posts