Dave Garrett

Apologies for the delayed reply. The server refers to the machine on which you have installed the Plex Media Server software. This could be a separate, dedicated machine, depending on what your intended use case is, but I have it installed on my regular Windows desktop machine, which is fairly old and far removed from current performance standards. Plex transcodes media files on the fly depending on available bandwidth and the device you're accessing the files on (another computer, a TV connected to a streaming device such as a Roku with the Plex channel installed, a phone with the Plex app, etc.). This can be CPU-intensive, so folks that are running a Plex server with multiple users accessing it to view high-resolution video files are probably not going to want the server running on the same machine they're using all day. In my case, I use Plex infrequently and I'm never using my desktop for other things at the same time I'm streaming video to my Roku, so I can run the server on my desktop with no problems. It's quite common to store a Plex media library on an EHD or a NAS, but my understanding is that while it's technically possible to install and run the Plex Media Server software on an external drive as well, it's not really recommended due to performance issues. All of my (admittedly limited) experience with Plex has been with using it to stream video, but I'd imagine that using it to stream music files probably doesn't require nearly the horsepower that using it to stream video does.

Plex offers this functionality. Here's a piece from last year comparing Google Play Music and Plex: I ditched Google Play Music for my own Plex server: The good and the bad

Not going to say that kind of functionality doesn't exist somewhere in BoldGrid, but in my (admittedly limited) experience I've never run across it. The Esquire Covers site appears to have been built by a professional web developer, judging from the credit at the bottom of the main page, so there may well be some custom code involved. Sites built with plug-and-play tools like BoldGrid tend to have a more basic look and feel and a few canned bells and whistles. BoldGrid's main selling point is pre-built modules/templates that require no HTML coding, although for those who are comfortable with coding, it's very easy to toggle between BoldGrid's drag-and-drop Visual Editor and the raw code editor.

I've envisioned Mankiewicz eventually growing into the "elder statesman" role on TCM that Robert Osborne held (although, really, no one could ever completely fill Osborne's shoes). I'd likewise hate to see him leave TCM, but I bet he'd get paid more as host of Jeopardy, and given the slash-and-burn approach AT&T has taken since acquiring Warner, it's anyone's guess how long TCM will continue to be around in its current form.

My company uses WordPress, but with BoldGrid, one of the plugins that sits on top of WordPress and allows you to build/maintain sites via a drag-and-drop visual editor: BoldGrid You can test out building a site on BoldGrid's site to see if you like it, then transfer it to a hosting provider when you're ready to do that. We went directly to one of the hosting providers linked on BoldGrid's site, InMotion, and built the site there after setting up an account, so we skipped the transfer step and just published the site when it was ready. My perspective is probably a bit skewed - I have a tech background, but almost none of my past experience is related to website design/building. Still, BoldGrid (and similar plugins) seems to make it relatively painless for novices to get a basic site up and running without a steep learning curve.

I didn't know that Art Fleming had also died as a result of pancreatic cancer. Coincidence, or little-known occupational hazard of hosting Jeopardy?

"This product is no longer available". Apparently it didn't take long for someone to open up their checkbook.

I had a Vespa 125 in college for a while that served me well as a low-cost, two-wheeled commuter before I jumped fully into motorcycling with a 400cc Suzuki. I spent years with a bike as my only transportation, and my last one was a modified '81 Honda CB750F (last of the great air-cooled Honda fours). I still have that bike but it hasn't run in well over ten years after I had to put it into storage due to my living arrangements at the time. At minimum, it will need to have the carbs and brakes rebuilt before it's roadworthy again, a project that I keep intending to tackle before I get too old and infirm to ride safely (although I was suitably impressed a while back when I saw an article in a bike mag about an 80+ year old British guy who was still riding his Vincent Rapide on a regular basis).

To paraphrase something I saw elsewhere, wearing a mask isn't a political statement, it's an IQ test.

I liked last year's version better.

I likewise refused to pay another $10 a month to keep TCM when Comcast/Xfinity moved it to the premium sports & entertainment package. And it really pissed me off to do without it, as TCM is one of a handful of channels that I watch for at least a little while almost every day. However, my two-year service agreement (and the associated bundle discounts) expired last month, and after dropping by one of their storefronts to see what deals were available, I wound up bumping up my internet package to gigabit speed, dropping the phone service (which I rarely used anyway, and only had because I was able to get a much bigger package discount with it than without it the last time I renewed my agreement), and adding the sports & entertainment package to get TCM back. More significantly, those changes cut my bill by almost $50 a month, which is how I was able to justify adding TCM. This time around the agreement term was only for one year instead of two, but the rep claimed the pricing would stay in place for a second year after the one-year agreement term. So if you're on a service agreement nearing its expiration, it's worth checking to see if a similar deal's available in your area. I've gotten much better results in general from in-person discussions at their storefronts than trying to deal with their frequently-clueless CSRs over the phone.

You may already be aware of this, but in the event you're not: Rip It Up and Start Again: The Footnotes

Library of Congress: National Jukebox

Quite true, but I would hazard a guess that many people, even those who know better, are nowhere near as diligent as they should be when it comes to keeping backups of their digital data current. If you have a bunch of external USB drives sitting around that only get backed up occasionally, if ever, I would posit that the risk of one of those hard drives failing is far higher than that of CDs getting damaged, lost, stolen, etc. Hard drives have a finite lifespan that, all other things being equal, is much shorter than that of a CD. There's also the issue of user error as related to specific software used to manage digital music libraries, leading to the loss of digital music files. As an example, I've seen more than a few complaints from pissed-off iTunes users who accidentally nuked their libraries when something in the feature set changed during one of Apple's upgrades and they weren't aware of the consequences. That's not going to happen with a CD.

That may well be. The link I posted earlier had something that appeared to contradict this, stating that the dye color was a cosmetic issue, but I'm somewhat skeptical since they didn't really provide anything to back that assertion up. I think a bigger issue is that the shelf life claims are based on accelerated aging tests rather than real-world use. I've frequently seen claims of a 300-year shelf life for Mitsui Gold CD-Rs as opposed to a 100-year shelf life for garden-variety CD-Rs. Such essentially unprovable claims instill a false sense of security in users. What's downplayed, if it's mentioned at all, is that the dyes are photosensitive and if they are exposed to direct sunlight for any length of time, they will degrade to the point that the disc becomes unreadable. This is obviously not the case with pressed CDs.