Just… stuff. « DHRYLAND

Blog Questions Challenge Part 3: Music Edition

by Dhry

What Are Five Of Your Favorite Albums?

Jon Hopkins – Opalescent
His first and IMO his best album. Many years ago, on Twitter, I asked him whether we’d ever get a similar album out of him since he had since switched to this weird repetitive microhouse stuff which apparently everyone EXCEPT me likes, and he replied saying that he would never, EVER make another album like it – which disappointed the hell out of me.

Ulrich Schnauss – Far Away Trains Passing By
After first hearing what turned out to be one of my favourite tracks of all time, “Between Us and Them” a looong time ago, I bought this album and have listened to it regularly since then. Many catchy tracks on it, all instrumental/synth. Similarly the album he released after it, A Strangely Isolated Place.

Yanni – Dare to Dream
Have been a fan of Yanni since the late 80’s. This is one of my favourites from the 90’s and it was a refreshing change from the compilations that he’s made over the years of tracks that showed up on earlier albums.

Vangelis – Blade Runner OST
The absolute greatest soundtrack of all time from one of the greatest composers of all time IMO. One of my friends once told me that he used to fall asleep every night to this album, and I listened to it a few times after hearing that. Now I see why. Very emotional and peaceful – if you have someone that means a lot to you, especially someone who is no longer around – and you listen to this album, it might reduce you to tears occasionally. I know it did with me.

Christopher Franke – Pacific Coast Highway
Just great driving music. Others’ opinions may differ on what constitutes “great" music for driving, but I usually don’t have music playing at all in the car because it’s too distracting – same when studying. I get too easily caught up in the beat and lose sight of what I’m actually trying to do which is never good when you’re in a car! This music goes straight into the background but is still enjoyable and that’s actually a pretty difficult thing to achieve for me.

What Are Five Of Your Favorite Songs?

Oh boy. There are a LOT of favourites. This was hard to distil down. Maybe I might post a second blog with a longer list.

Ulrich Schnauss – Between Us And Them
I never thought that the Tangerine Dream song I list below (loved since I first heard it in the late 80’s) would ever be knocked off of the #1 spot of my favourite tracks of all time until I heard this in the early 2000’s. I was on a music forum and someone said that this was the greatest track ever. I listened to it and.. have to agree. This track provides everything. Emotions. Workout track. Just get some idle energy out and robot dance by myself in the kitchen to it. Driving music (on long stretches where I can afford to be distracted). I absolutely love it. Listening to it as I write this, and I might just have it on repeat for the rest of the day.

Tangerine Dream: Song of the Whale Part II: To Dusk..
Many years ago I met one of my best friends, Julian, and it turned out that he and I shared similar tastes in music – over thirty years later, we still do. He lent me a whole heap of CDs back in the day, and when I first heard this track on TD’s “Underwater Sunlight” album I couldn’t stop listening to it, in the dark, on headphones. It transported me then, and it still does to this very day.

Matthew “4Mat” Simmonds”: My Beautiful Empty Heart
This is breakbeat chipmusic. It might sound wacky to some people, but I have listened to it over and over and it is completely unique and has an emotional vibe which you might not pick up on until after a few listens. It’s worth a few relistens. I hope it strangely grows on you like it did me.

FM-84: Running in the Night
Eighties synthwave. There is also a different, live version (done in support of a COVID-19 relief fund) which I think is even better than the one on the album. I’m not typically a fan of lyrics/vocals but this is one of the rare exceptions.

Jerry Goodman – Tears of Joy
Ever since I first listened to this track I have been in love with it. The confusing time signature of the piece just blew me away when I first heard it, especially since the song is played live and I couldn’t understand how the band was playing such a technically weird track. One of my favourites for many years, since I first heard it in the late 80’s.

Sorry, there’s a sixth.
Yanni – The End of August
I’m a piano fan – have always wanted to learn to play and I hope one day to achieve that dream. This is my favourite piano piece of all time.

Favorite Instrument(s)?

Piano and synthesizer.

What Song Or Album Are You Currently Listening To?

Ulrich Schnauss – Between Us and Them
I loaded it when finding links on YouTube to my favourite tracks in order to post in a paragraph above, and it’s still playing in the background. I don’t often listen to music these days as I have a lot of things to attend to lately, but while writing this blog post I don’t mind a little audio accompaniment.

Do You Listen To The Radio, And If So, How Often?

Never. There is literally nothing I have ever found on any radio station I have ever liked, since I was 16 and discovered instrumental synth music.

How Often Do You Listen To Music?

Not very often these days, unfortunately.

How Often Do You Discover Music And How Do You Discover It?

I don’t really go looking for it lately. I have many, many albums on my PC. Actually I still have a giant number of physical CDs from when I was in Australia – I took them out of their jewel cases, stored the inserts and then brought them to the US when I migrated here in 2002, and they are still sleeping quietly on tall spindles with the inserts nearby, waiting for the day (which will probably never come) when I reconstitute them into new jewel boxes and arrange them back on a display shelf.

What’s A Song Or Album You Enjoy Tat You Wish Had More Recognition?

I literally don’t wish anything I listen to had more recognition. I’m not one of these people who go constantly telling everyone what my favourite album or song is unless I’m asked. I’ll quietly enjoy something or ignore it no matter where I am. This blog challenge is one of very few times that I’ve ever ventured forth prosaically to announce my likes. Although a few years ago I remember someone on a social media site asking what the absolute favourite track of all time was for their friends, I chimed in there and that’s where I learned about this amazing guitar piece called Ocean by John Butler. The man is immensely talented and while I’m generally not an acoustic guitar fan, listening to this literally made my jaw drop and my eyes glaze over. I suppose I wouldn’t mind if other people took a listen to it to see if it inspires them too.

What’s Your Favorite Song Of All Time?

Already answered – the top response in the first paragraph of this blog post. Schnauss.

Has Your Taste Of Music Evolved Over The Years?

Absolutely it has. When I was about 16 I had a revelation when doing some homework study. Back then I listened to the radio (“Rock of the Eighties” 2SM in Sydney, Australia) and also had a few cassette tapes of classic 80’s music of the time like Cyndi Lauper, Icehouse etc. One day I thought to myself, if the lyrics of a song were to be removed, much of the music of the day sounded very similar. Base drum, snare drum, electric guitar and.. you know, not very creative. I didn’t know what I was looking for, though, until one day in music class at school, a friend brought Jean Michel Jarre’s “Rendezvous” in and the class listened to Rendezvous IV. I knew then that that was my jam. That track propelled me into a decades-long enjoyment of instrumental music. Originally synth, because of the hiss/pop/crackle-free perfection of digital audio, but from there I went to new age (Yanni, Windham Hill, Narada and other similar labels), and then a little smooth jazz, and my most recent taste swings toward eighties synthwave like FM84 and Morgan Willis.

Blog Questions Challenge Part 2: Technology Edition

by Dhry

When Did You First Get Interested In Technology?

TL;DR: 1978.

To be clear, this is not something I’m answering in the context of “computers” specifically. I’ve loved electronics, in general, ever since the first time that I played an electronic game. For me this was Merlin when it first came out (which apparently was 1978). I got my very first game console – a Pong-style unit that plugged into your TV set and had two paddle controllers and multiple game modes that you could switch to, all variants of Pong – like Squash, Football, Tennis and some others. I also had an electronics kit that you could put together yourself – real early stuff, I recall it had these tiny coil-springs on a PCB that you could bend to the side to insert resistors and wires and whatnot without soldering. It was a battery-less “crystal radio” kit, you were supposed to be able to hear actual radio broadcasts over-the-air faintly in the earpiece. I never did hear anything, but loved messing with it anyway. Looked something like what’s shown here. Got my first computer (a Commodore Vic-20) in 1981 and that was the start of a story that is still being written to this day.

What’s Your Favorite Piece Of Technology All-Time?

I will NOT say “my Nespresso Vertuo machine”. Think think think.. hmm. I’d say probably my iPhone. I spend a lot of time on it doing a lot of stuff. It’s absolutely indispensable. Beyond that, don’t laugh – my Brother PT-85 P-Touch labeler. I’ve had it since the late 90’s. I have made trillions of labels with it, for everything imaginable. It still works perfectly. Anything electronic that could have almost daily use, that still works as good as the day I got it, has to warrant top placing here.

What’s Your Favorite Piece Of Technology Right Now?

Sigh. My phone. Really can’t do without it. Next would be a PC – meaning a personal computer, OS-agnostic. I have a Mac M4 Mini in the lounge/kitchen area which I set up based on one of the guidelines in “Atomic Habits” which suggests that you should modify your environment so that habitual actions become easier (== more subconscious incentive) to perform. If I relied on just using my monster PC in the back room mancave, or my phone (on which I honestly hate entering longform posts/emails), I’d probably never have gotten around to writing the answers to these blog challenge questions. Or doing a lot of the jobsearch and other stuff that I need to do on a daily basis. But because the PC is right here on my way to make coffee, get a snack, open mail – sheesh, 90% of my time in the house is spent in this area, I use it all the time. So I’d have to say a desktop computer is a close runner-up.

Not specifically a Mac. This could be a Windows PC or anything else. Just something I can hook a mechanical keyboard to and work on instead of thumb-bumbling on a phone.

Name One New Cool Piece Of Technology We’ll Have In 25 Years!

For a while I’ve been thinking about the whole hybrid/EV thing. Battery operated vehicles. Limitless solar power is the key here, but even the solar panels on the most recent Prius vehicles can only provide enough zap to power the AC – and maybe add an extra 4 miles of range after sitting all day in the sun, at time of writing anyway. EV charging isn’t ready for prime time yet IMO, and won’t be until you can recharge the vehicle from empty to full at the same speed you can fill a gas tank from empty to full. Hell if I’m waiting an hour sitting at a Circle-K to charge my damn car!

I’ve been thinking about ways that vehicles can charge faster, or at least more continuously. Magnetic induction while driving maybe. Induction-field strips down the sides of highways that spin magnets or whatever on the side of your car to slow charge while cruising. Or how about “proximity power sharing”? Vehicles with 90% charge or more that come into proximity with yours in a parking lot or even stopped at traffic lights can somehow passively “share” up to 10% of their charge with you until you get to 75% or more. They can have the same benefit when they run low – charge faster than solar, charge even when cloudy or rainy. There’s a shitload of solar power out there that is being wasted and there has to be ways to maximize the amount of energy that can be trickled constantly into your vehicle at rest OR in motion. I hope that this sort of technology will be in our future so we never need to wait to charge our cars and most importantly we never need to pay to do it either.

Blog Questions Challenge Part 1

by Dhry

Why Did You Start Blogging In The First Place?

I suppose for the same reason that many other people did. I needed a general place of my very own to write about things. Give my opinions, speculate, just talk about stuff without being censored or having to kowtow to the content rules of social media sites run by someone else.

What Platform Are You Using The Manage Your Blog, And Why Do You Use It?

WordPress. Have used it for almost two decades. We started off with MoveableType back in the day, but I just didn’t like it. WordPress is incredibly flexible and user friendly and I particularly like the ability to post vix the xml-rpc interface meaning I can use a standalone client like MarsEdit on Mac or OpenLiveWriter on Windows. I really dislike entering blog posts via a browser. Lost too many posts back in the day from the site timing out before I clicked submit. I know that that issue has been mitigated for a long time, but the distrust is permanent. Even when writing wikis for work or some other system that doesn’t have a local client interface, I will still write my text in a text editor or something beforehand, and then paste it into the text field on the website.

Have You Blogged On Other Platforms Before?

No. I’m not really a “blogger”. I just post random stream of consciousness stuff on social media sites. It’s why my own site, Dhryland, has lain almost completely dormant for years.

How Do You Write Your Posts?

Local client. MarsEdit currently for Mac.

When Do You Feel Most Inspired To Write?

There aren’t particular times of the day or events that trigger inspiration. Not on the main blog anyway. As far as Mastodon or other social media, it’s whenever I have something to share (like a URL or political opinion) or some other random thought pops into my head.

Do You Normally Publish Immediately After Writing, Or Do You Let It Simmer?

I never let anything “simmer”. Pointless for me. The thought may simply disappear from my head if I do that. Or change. Both of which I usually don’t want.

What’s Your Favorite Post On Your Blog?

I honestly don’t have one. I’d have to look through my historical posts and I don’t generally do that. It’s written, it’s published, I move on to the next day and the next thought.

Any Future Plans For the Blog?

None. I may keep writing in it. I may let the blog get covered in cobwebs again (it’s happened before). Or I might just shut down the WordPress instance on the site completely and keep the domain for email like I’ve done for a loooong time.

Enabling ESNI in Firefox

by Dhry

For those of you using Firefox, you can make your browsing more secure by doing the following:

Update to the latest version of Firefox.
Type about:config in the URL bar to get to the configuration screen.
Type esni in the search field and look for network.security.esni.enabled
Doubleclick this row to change it to true. What this means is: The Server Name Indication (SNI) exposes the hostname the client is connecting to when establishing a TLS connection. Doing so can compromise your privacy. Encrypted SNI keeps the hostname private when you are visiting an Encrypted SNI enabled site on Cloudflare by concealing your browser’s requested hostname from anyone listening on the Internet.
Type trr in the search field and look for network.trr.mode
Doubleclick on this and change it to 2 – this switches all DNS calls to be made over HTTPS.
Restart Firefox (probably not necessary but do it anyway) and browse to https://encryptedsni.com then click on Check My Browser to test the browser’s security. You can visit this site with your existing browser and test it to see what’s secure and what’s not.
Doesn’t require Firefox -> permanently change your Primary DNS server to 1.1.1.1 and your secondary to 1.0.0.1. On your phone, on your router, on your PC, everywhere. These belong to Cloudflare. 1.1.1.1 supports DNS over TLS assuming you are using a client (like Firefox) to take advantage of that functionality.

I use Chrome and unfortunately this functionality doesn’t exist in that browser at time of writing (although I *am* using Cloudflare’s DNS). But any steps you take to protect your privacy on the net are good steps. Might need to temporarily switch to Firefox until this stuff makes its way Chrome-side. TL;DR: Your ISP and other enterprising internet entities can see every website you look up; using these technologies allows you to shield your activity so The Man don’t see you.

Happy New Year!

by Dhry

Happy New Year all. Guess what my new year’s resolution is? Open-mouthed smile

Open Live Writer

by Dhry

Man, it’s been FOREVER since I posted on this blog! Really need to get a few things updated on it, life basically took over and I’ve found I just didn’t have the time or motivation lately. However, today I discovered a product called Open Live Writer, basically a fork of the Windows Live Writer code, and that’s what I’m writing this entry with. Looks and works pretty much exactly the same as WLW. “Open Live Writer works with many popular blog service providers such as WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Moveable Type, DasBlog and many more.”

Open Live Writer

Aussies, please sign this. You DON’T want the Patriot Act over there. Trust me.

by Dhry

Internetism

by Dhry

Saw these in Micaël Reynaud’s Google+ feed. Freaking awesome. Lots more there too..

Thanks, Tony!

by Dhry

I wanted to post a quick thanks here to my long-time friend Tony. Years ago, Tony told me that I should register dhryland.com (I had been running the site in various forms since 1997 but always off some other hosting location such as Geocities) and eventually he went and registered it for me. He has owned the domain since 2004 and we only recently transferred it to my ownership. Ευχαριστώ πάρα πολύ, Tony!

Diablo III for PC: countdown

by Dhry

I will seriously buy ALL the Monster energy drinks from the local Frys and take a week off work when this thing comes out.

Amusing how my blog has regressed to be a game countdown. I promise I’ll have something sensible and useful posted on here soon. I’m sure it’ll be the first time for both.