Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

I remember that some of these sample packs were quite good. Recorded in different acoustic environments and then you can tweak it with the software.

I dont know If I have time for it put I'd like to mix some electronic track at some point. We did a mix with a buddy on his Korg synth (not as raw as the Nord Lead 2 with R2R chip we had but it did the trick) and now I think I want to mix some beats myself. More involved than just listening to the stuff. Btw, real electronic music is the most under presented form of music today. The Tidals and Deezers are near empty of creative electronic music. It is all semi-under ground. It sounds good and gives me a peace of mind. Among others, I still dig the ambient genres like Solar Fields and Aes Dana. Great for background and productivity.

 

Honestly public transport in the UK is something that so often gets taken for granted, and I know that it's got its own problems (especially with recent strikes but tbh that's hardly specific to transport), but god damn, having spent time in both the US and UK, it's quite a different way of getting about.

In the UK, having a car is basically entirely optional unless you live somewhere rural. In fact in London a huge proportion of people don't bother because having a car is more of an inconvenience than anything.
Places like London have an underground network that can get you anywhere incredibly fast, and the national rail network can get you from anywhere to the smallest town in a matter of hours. And if for some reason there isn't a train going where you need to go (which is unlikely because due to the way the network is setup, even the quiet and unprofitable routes still operate regularly, in fact some of the laws around that haven't been updated and so some train operators literally still run trains past disused stations because they're obligated to do so), then the buses in the UK are typically really good and cover everywhere too.

Contrast that to somewhere like LA where having a car is simply mandatory unless you Uber everywhere (and that doesn't really count as 'not using a car' anyway ).

If my actual workplace wasn't rural honestly I don't think I'd keep my car at all

 

Is there? That I don't know about. I guess that the chain is named after the food.

There is this thing called string hoppers. It is like a kind of noodle, made from rice. Why string, is obvious; why hoppers, no-one has ever been able to tell me! In Tamil it is Idyappam.

There's heaps of ordinary places to eat ordinary Tamil food, very cheaply, no booking. But not in central London.

There are one or two expensive places. I was entertained by a real Rajah at one such Kerala restaurant. But the rest of us would normally go to East Ham.

That's it then. We are all doomed!

 

Yeah, Hoppers has, I think, 3-5 locations and around central. I've had two good meals there, one solid, one just okay. I think it comes down to what you order.

Now I have to get out to East Ham!

 

It's been kind of wild to see my credit card statement go from Uber, Uber, Uber, Uber, Uber, Lyft, Lyft, Uber--in Chicago and LA--to just the occasional Oyster top-up.

The train strikes have been a pain. Hopefully that will resolve eventually.

The Swiss train system was something to behold. Italy has pretty amazing trains, too. High-speed, especially, is a total revelation coming from the US. Imagine being able to go between Chicago and NYC in, say, 5-6 hrs as opposed to 20. That's easily achievable, given the political will, but the problem is that the tracks are owned by the freight companies, so Amtrak doesn't even have priority/right of way.

 

Political, but hey... The privatisation of Britain's rail system was a piece of sheer vandalism by a political party that knew it was about to be defeated. A kick in the face on their way out.

If you think the rail network is good, and goes everywhere, take a look at how it was before there were huge cuts in [about] 1967!

I used to live in Manor Park, and, before that, Forest Gate. Just up the road. But I left in 2005, so check sources before going.

When I first took my wife-to-be from India, to visit, she looked at two adjacent food/general shops in High Street North and said, "Amazing! I can shop in in Tamil in this one, and Malayalam* in that one. In London!"



*Kerala language

 

And trains are pricier than they ought to be, too. No illusions that it couldn’t be better, but compared to the US, it impresses

 

I've had some similar experience even traveling in 2018/19 vs 2015/16.

My understanding is the current (or soon outgoing) administration spent quite a bit of money marketing Taiwan as "a separate place". Particularly with the food. Strongly suspect concurrent chip wars and shortages have probably also contributed to this awareness.

 

@Psalmanazar

I wonder how these sound like. Genelec 1237a. They have both Digtal and Analog input. Maybe they have the crossover in the input via IC and bypass A/D D/A conversion. If thats the case these would be a viable option. Genelec uses custom Seas drivers so this part is probably quite good. The "compromised" 2-way 8" woofer does quite a lot for it size already.

 

Seas do not offer 12" on their website but there a lot of other companies that do. Just checked Scan Speak woofers. Scan Speak is expensive but you get your moneys worth in KG.

 

To my dismay, I have to agree with Trump and Biden on this - our major and international airports are 3rd world and horrible, even compared to major airports in actual 3rd world countries. Definitely behind other developed nations as well. I will say our small and medium airports are on average a bit better.

This is nothing new per se... but going to LAX today and thinking back on ohare (which I don't fly into anymore so maybe it's better now??), laguardia+jfk, orlando, etc etc reminded me of this. Also reminded me of the times I've had visitors from different countries, rich and poor, come to the US for the first time and flat out ask "I thought the US was supposed to be a developed country how are the airports and cities so shit here".

Is stuff like this why Trump won saying "hurr hurr things suck make better" and Obama won saying "hurr hurr hope for change guys"

 

DIA in (ok 30 miles outside of) Denver is functionally very good ime. The possessed horse? Not so sure about that. But it didn't keep me from getting anywhere.

 

I haven’t been to every large domestic airport, but of the ones I have been to, Denver and Minneapolis were probably the best run ones. Atlanta wasn’t great, but was definitely ok as well.

None of these have the wow factor that airports in other countries sometimes have, but I have minimal complaints with these airports unlike the majority of other large US airports.

 

Most of our major airports opened in the 40s and 50s, earlier than many major airports around the world, and we don't really fix up our old infrastructure the way some other countries do. Many active terminals are still the ones built around that time, with additional newer terminals operating alongside those. Of course that's only part of the problem, the other part of the problem is how often the entities running our airports are just generally corrupt, inefficient and incompetent, and deeply insulated from most pressures to change.

 

LGA is actually pretty nice now having completed a multi-year, $$$ overhaul of the terminals and surface infrastructure leading in and out.

 

this is probably a little offtopic, but this sbf stuff has had me thinking about something i think about all the time. i may have mentioned it before. i was in a cult for a bit when i was younger, which is something i do not talk about often, but it did happen. i have come to the conclusion that a lot of what ails society and the economy is "cult power". that is to say, no matter how well you design a political or economic system, you can't engineer out at least one motherfucker being really good at talking. what's really important is to have a strong, stable, and grounded social, emotional and psychological support system. that is the best defense against it, and i think the greatest ill of the way society is currently structured is that it robs people of that. i think if we had a lot more of that, we'd have a lot fewer of these sorts of things happening.

 

I wanted to input here on a topic regarding energy, EVs and modern political trends.

Context.
1. Recent news. EU is withholding internal combustion ban (Brussels). I'd say a smart decision.

Why is it smart decision? I did a simple calculation about power consumption regarding EVs (electrical vehicles).

Let's say a modern ~1+ million community / medium size city has peak power consumption.. around 1.0- 1.5 GW (gigga watts --> Power and not energy in kWh) without EVs.

Lets say you have an active fleet of 500k vehicles. How much power is needed to charge these over night?
500 000 * 10kW = 5 000 000kW => 5 GW.
Ok so take 30% off that (lets say maximum realistic peak from charging).
Thats 3.5GW of power. Now add this to the regular power and you get 4.5GW to 5GW of power consumption (peak).
What is the ratio of more potential power sources and grid power handling needed? (say over 1.25GW) 5GW / 1.25 = 4
4 X the normal power consumption at peak. Policies are gona fix that ? Unlikely.

Its way more realistic to burn some biowaste as internal combustion fuel as in piston engines + EVs + hybrids + hydrogen. Context here. Australians hiking on a desolate island see crap all over the beaches. Turn all the man made garbage to energy. We have diesel made of recycled waste that they claim has relatively low footrpint.. Maybe this one of the solutions.

 

Give it some time to scale and we may see synthetic carbon neutral liquid fuels that we can continue to burn in our combustion engines. Porsche is leading the way on this.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/1...gasoline-factory-comes-online-today-in-chile/

 

This looks like something.. Co2 + H to methanol is all synthesized.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/04/porsche-invests-75-million-in-chilean-synthetic-fuel-startup/