Sam Lin

It's a beast, has fed a whole lot of people. That's a large (22") WSM dwarfed next to it. Rotisserie has never been used. But everything else has!

Oops, RIP thread is here in Daily Texan: https://www.surlyhorns.com/board/topic/31318-rip-cormac-mccarthy/

Coco was a masterpiece.

Buy high, sell low. Pro strat for avoiding capital gains tax.

RIP Cormac McCarthy. 89. https://www.wsj.com/articles/cormac-mccarthy-renowned-american-writer-dies-at-89-82841edb?mod=hp_featst_pos3

That's a clever idea; home "ear impression" kits have been available for quite some time now, but this packages it on a headphone and uses UV cure to make it much more forgiving on timing. I wouldn't recommend it simply because the earmold is one piece with the earbud; if the earbuds die you are stuck throwing the whole thing away, while an aftermarket earmold, you "socket" the earbud into it, so you can swap out the earbud with another of same casing if one dies or you want to upgrade. I've also seen many people offering "custom molded earplugs" using similar kits at gun shows: https://earinc.com/product/ez-impression-kit/ I generally don't recommend them. 2 reasons - one is safety, a proper earmold needs a deep ear impression, which has real risk of getting molding compound close enough to the eardrum to cause damage. You really need a foam blocker to prevent this. The other is performance - a proper ear impression needs to be open mouth (bite on a 1" block as you take the mold and don't move until it sets) and needs to be proper depth to seal, and the molding technique affects how well they fit. I always go to an audiologist to do mine, and even with those professionals they've had to redo the earmold once or twice due to poor fitting results. If you're comparing to generic eartips, even a poor earmold will be a huge improvement, but if you're going through the expense and hassle of a custom earmold earphone anyway, then I'd advise paying the bit more to be sure of a great result. Photo of one of my earmolds - you can see the foam blocker and extraction string, and just how much of the ear canal gets molded.

I've done the room correction portion a few times, but at the consumer level, meaning I used a lot of the "autotune" abilities instead of digging into an EQ myself band by band. For a Dirac or Audyssey autotune, it's really just a matter of getting the mic to the right positions (you want to do multiple positions bracketing your listening ear position to get the best results), and making sure the room is really the same way that you'll be listening to it (IE if you'll be sitting there, you sit there. If you'll have listeners with you most of the time, have people sit in those positions. If your blinds will be closed for movie viewing, shut the blinds! For your speaker build and miniDSP, you really <really really> should join the DIY Loudspeaker Project Pad group on Facebook. Those guys go deep info crossover design and there's a ton of fabrication experience there too. This includes if you need to find a local CNC, sometimes you can post and find a local willing to help you out. Also would be worth checking out the RTA in Cars FB group if you want to nerd out. Though it focuses on car environment, the DSP/EQ info in there for "cabin tuning" can directly apply to house room use. It's all about doing mic traces, time/phase alignment, and adjusting DSP. Some really great how-to in there that will walk you through from zero knowledge, just the desire to learn.

I've mentioned them somewhere else in a headphone thread, but your posts really make you sound like the right candidate for some custom earmolds. It's not cheap, but it gives you perfect fit which really helps bass performance, and more importantly is comfortable for as long as you want to wear them and doesn't move no matter the activity. Not recommending these guys, just giving you an example of what they look like and cost. Cost to have a local audiologist do an impression is roughly 100, cost of the custom earmolds is around 150, total 250, and they only fit the specific shape of earphone, so you can't later switch makes easily (but you can switch within a brand IF the casing is the same, like Shure 215/315/415 all use same, Etymotic ER generally all use same, etc): https://www.pilotstuff.com/averysound/custom-audio-earpieces.html Again, not cheap, but if your ear canal is a really tough one to find a decent off-the-shelf fit, and it sounds like it is, and you listen a lot, it may be worth the money.

Are you totally averse to doing it yourself? Newer home theater equipment nearly all has pretty good ARC (automatic room correction) capability, you just set up the mics and run the sweeps. It works quite well, will get you 80-90% of the way to a pro tune. Audyssey is probably the best known, but there are plenty of brand-specific names for it. See if your receiver/processor have the capability already. https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/automatic-room-correction/ If you want to nerd out and dig in, MiniDSP has a pile of great technical writeups on its site, you'd want to buy a decent calibrated mic for ~100, but the software is free. https://www.minidsp.com/applications/digital-room-correction/drc-basics Mouse over the Applications tab on top to see all the articles, screenshot here:

We've had this Kitchenaid since ~2009 and it's still in great shape. Under a covered patio and it's AZ so it never sees wet. Is really well built, heavy gage metal, valves still feel tight. Only thing that has broken is the metal mesh above the sear burner, but we never use it, so it's a non-issue. I'd try contacting KitchenAid for parts first.

Work that could have been done between, say, 8 and 10:30 am?

Quite a few recent James Beard winners scattered around LA now.

Stayed at that Hyatt a few months back, got lucky and saw two carriers in port, one headed out during my stay: Did not have breakfast.

The High thread is that way --------->

Then there's this, Diablo 4 race event to lvl 100 on permadeath. Guy wins, then server disconnects so his player is killed for "disconnecting." https://kotaku.com/diablo-iv-hardcore-level-100-race-disconnect-carn-1850514675

I watch a lot of gameplay and speedrun videos now, as a way to learn more in-depth aspects of a game and also appreciate what a truly skilled player can do. A lot of times I much prefer to watch an expert play than to play myself any more. It's like watching a performing art. Particular shoutout to GDQ, Games Done Quick. They run physical events, livestreamed, a couple times year, where they get the top speedrunners for a pile of games to do speedruns in front of a live audience with livestream. The runs are commentated by other top streamers, so in one stream you quite likely have all the top experts in the world for a game, and between the gameplay and the commentary you learn SO much about a game. They add special goals to each run if certain donation targets are met (for example, they've had the player do a section blindfolded), and all donations go to charity. Sometimes the audience becomes a part of the stream, everyone sings one of the songs together, or a couple cosplayers impromptu act out a scene of the game while the player is going through it. It's just a wonderful gaming event with a wonderful community and shared single purpose. If you are searching, they do SGDQ for Summer Games Done Quick, and AGDQ for Awesome Games Done Quick. https://www.twitch.tv/gamesdonequick https://www.youtube.com/@gamesdonequick For Faster Than Light (FTL), Twitch streamers Holoshideim and Rand118 are the top in the world. Holoshideim holds the record for longest string of wins on Hard mode, no Pausing. This game is insanely hard. New players take many tries just to beat Hard once, and that's with pausing to think about the next action and plan for enemy reactions. Holoshideim won 100+ games straight with no pausing. For Fallout, Many a True Nerd. Just a guy who absolutely loves the games, and it shows. He explains, he demonstrates, he has hilarious screwups, it's just contagious fun watching him play. He notably did "you only live once," playing through the entire game using only one life bar. He also has done "kill everything" runs that are great fun to watch. He also streams other games, his Subnautica stream was a hilarious pile of mishaps. ARS Technica has a lovely series of journalism-style articles and interviews talking about popular games and digging in to what makes them so good. For example: https://arstechnica.com/video/watch/how-immersive-stories-deepen-the-horror-of-games-like-soma-and-amnesiac-rebirth They've also done a series called War Stories where they go back and talk to developers of successful games and share some of the stuff that happened in development. Example: https://arstechnica.com/video/watch/war-stories-ultima-online-the-virtual-ecology Isn't that redundant? Watch Many a True Nerd on YT if you want to learn more about Fallout than you ever wanted. He explains game dynamics, he shows little bits of story that are super niche situations, it's just a way for even a die-hard Fallout fan to discover even more about the game. And even now he still learns new things, and he's been a Fallout "specialist" for 10+ years.

There is definitely not a camera setup.

Nope, not for the apple anyway.

Neighborhood FB is the gift that keeps on giving:

No. And if you get to the corpse quickly, it's still warm! https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/06/dead-duck-day-marks-that-time-a-scientist-witnessed-gay-duck-necrophilia/

No disagreement here. That's a very odd policy to allow, most of the time the retake "overwrites" the original take.

Getting on a tangent, and a bit philosophical, but I don't agree with this. It isn't so much to learn as to get in the habit of learning (most of the actual info we learn in school is not applicable to work or life later, excepting certain occupations and the pub trivia circuit). Being forced to make new work for identical assignments isn't helping that one bit. And the time wasted in busywork for an identical assignment is time taken away from other activities that may actually be new "learning."

Neighborhood FB group:

CSB tangent: HSBC had the only campus bank at RPI so had a stranglehold on the student population. Absolutely horrible service, zero attempt to help the customer, and endless rape on fees because they could. They definitely lost me for life in the first month.

They make silicone ones that are supposed to be non-stick. Never tried one myself.