RIP In Peace: DFJ 433T

August 9, 2024

Hello! We've got it all this week: music, videos, embedded images, and even an almost imperceptible splash of colour!

I enjoyed most of another week of music. The "mostly" has resulted in a new "Consume" Sub-section in the newsletter, where I'll present a couple of great tunes I've been listening to and one I just can't.

The new sub-section is named "Bop-Stop-Bop" because I'm fifty-two with the mind of an eight-year-old.


-[ Newsletter Meta ]-
Better

I have been using too many lines in this Newsletter explaining how the sausage publication is made and distributed. The Newsletter got a little too bulky, talking about itself. That changes now, as I migrate all that essential newsletter side-quest content to the newsletter-meta tag on my blog.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.


-[ Consume ]-
Rusty Rails Unveiled

Until this week, I had no idea what a "rusty rail move" was and didn't realise I needed to know, but I did, and now I do, thanks to What is a rusty rail move and why do we do it? by London Underground (Tube) Driver, Dale Chambers. I enjoyed the first-person view from the cab and the commentary about Dale's job.

Having scanned a few of his videos, Dale is (with respect) not a professional videographer, but he's making interesting videos. I love his incremental improvements and community engagement. Having a window into other professions will always be interesting to me. Good work, Dale!

One day soon, maybe a new "Train Simulator" game will have as much visual fidelity as these videos, including more texture variety, unique station furniture, dirt on the windscreen, and indistinct reflections of the driver in the glass. I can dream.

Has anyone attempted a first-person Streetview "Railview" scan of an entire rail network - in any country?

Bend it like Jeremy

Matt Parker and Steve Mould collaborated in an informative and fun way to explain why tourists in Greenwich, London (UK) are taking their photos in the wrong place. I love the trope of throwing to a future (and past) self in a video, especially with bemused co-presenters. Steve Mould is good at "bemused".

With impeccable timing, Captain Disillusion is back with another great trick-shot debunk video in which, by happy coincidence, he throws to his "assistant," Alan.

Both of which reminded me of the original "talking to oneself" masterpiece, A Conversation With My 12 Year Old Self. It's a clever, short, entertaining tale featuring a "found-footage" video of Jeremiah McDonald, aged 12.

Jeremy later reprised that mechanic with another video, awkwardly, filmed either side of :: THE EVENT ::. <blink>STAY INDOORS</blink>.

I love time-travel-themed movies and TV Shows, but I also appreciate shorter, sometimes factual videos with a timey-wimey bent. Got any similar recommendations for me?

AuLoNoPoLiMo

Last week, I mentioned that I'm going Podcast Cold Turkey for 31 days with "August Local No Podcast Listening Month," or "AuLoNoPoLiMo" for short.

Here are those continuing adventures, cleverly dubbed "No Cast auGast" by Chris Jones (creator of Terminator and (more recently) Hammerspoon).

Chris also asked what I might give up in other months.

Suggestions welcome.

Strictly Mash

AKA "Mashing with the Stars" for my USian subscribers followers friends.

Over on "Engagement Bait Central," Threads; everyone's favourite UK-based, long-haired, geeky park-bench-and-doctor-who-enthusiast, Terence Eden posted this live mashup video with the caption "Start your day with this energy."

I love it.

Give it a listen and watch.

Despite being a chronically online "Gen Xer" and the video being thirteen years old, I'd never seen or heard the track. The Ithaca Studios channel has a playlist with a few more bangers to start your day. If that's your thing, they're also on SoundCloud.

I have always enjoyed mashups. As a kid, I made mix tapes, blending tracks and looping sections of songs I liked. There are probably some vintage popey mixes on an old C90 cassette tape, slowly rotting away in the loft. Best place for it, honestly.

One of my all-time favourite non-popey live mashups is Pop Culture, by Madeon, also from 13 years ago, and is still the most popular video on their channel. It helps that I enjoy most of the included songs in that mashup independently.

Pop Culture uses samples of Dare by Gorillaz, Daft Punk's - Around The World, and Gwen Stefani's - What You Waitin For, which are all bangers, along with thirty-six more tracks. The video description has the complete list. Nathan Barnatt made a superb music video for it, which is an even better way to consume that tune.

When I worked at Canonical on the Ubuntu Touch (phone project) team, I would watch both of those videos regularly to "test" the built-in Media Player app.

Below is a screenshot of Nathan's video playing on an LG (Google) Nexus 4 E960 running Ubuntu Touch. I captured this moment at 14:19 on Monday, October 7, 2013.

Nathan Barnatt Madeon video on my phone

No need to rotate your newsletter viewing device or bonce to see what the BBC's Evan Davis was tweeting me about in that screenshot, I'll save you the effort. He wrote:

"@popey I think the programme has enough gay men already"

I'll also save you the effort of visiting the Internet hellscape to find out why he might say that to me!

@ruskin147: "Just spotted @EvanHD in #SCD audience - surely a cert for next year's Strictly?! Though John Humphrys might also be fab..."

@popey: "@ruskin147 I would totally phone in for @EvanHD :) Make it so BBC!"

@EvanHD: "@popey I think the programme has enough gay men already"

@popey: "@EvanHD That's a politicians "no" if ever I heard one! Looking forward to your u-turn next year! :)"

They were simpler times back then.

I sometimes wish I'd put more effort into that reply, though.

The observant hellscape visitors will have noticed that Evan's Tweet is timestamped on Oct 6, 2013, at 11:15 AM, some 27 hours before my screenshot. Perhaps this is why Ubuntu Touch wasn't a market success. We can only speculate.

Although now I consider it, I can see significant benefits to slowing down social media response delivery by about a day. Wait, that's just replicating early 1990s email over dial-up.

Mitchell & Webb took this even further and nailed it in "That Mitchell and Webb Sound," Season 1, Episode 5 (from 13m31s to 16m20s, 'Correspondence Golf,' but you should listen to the entirety of every episode).

Bop-Stop-Bop

Three songs I've been listening to again, two of which are certified bangers and real personal nostalgia triggers. Another, which I loved back in the day, but now, as they say, "I can't even." I'm surprising myself by admitting having such amusingly lousy taste. I'm putting the "Stop" as a "Cringe Sandwich" in the middle because I try to keep things positive around here.

popey, polishing a car before carelessly stuffing it into a pole



-[ Create ]-
Pod. Man.

I previously mentioned my new-found appreciation for Docker. Well, things don't hang about round here!

Friendship ended with Docker. Now Podman is my best friend.

I was running Anchore Enterprise using Docker on macOS and Ubuntu. When someone on Mastodon mentioned Podman, I thought I'd give the same container setup a try without Docker installed. It Just Worked(TM). For me, that was a good sign.




-[ Contrafibularities ]-
Thanks for the Hellscape, Stuart

Many thanks to nerd-snipe target extraordinaire, Stuart Langridge for fixing my terribad HTML, CSS and JS to make an MVP of the "Internet hellscape" interstitial page I used above.


I hope at least one reader is compelled to check my "Give It Up" timings. Also, I know my place. I'm far too old to be calling something a "Bop". I suspect "Cringe Sandwich" might have to be the permanent name of this potentially recurring sub-segment during AuLoNoPoLiMo No Cast auGast. Thanks for reading.

-- popey

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© Copyright 2024 Alan Pope. All rights reserved

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