Kevin Bresnahan

WTF are "social justice warrior circles"? First "cancel culture wokies" and now this? Stop making up stupid terms to try and generalize things you don't like. Not only are you painting with a broad brush, you're showing yourself to be pretty damn heartless. FYI, a lot of us really appreciate the #MeToo movement, myself included. Just because we think it's something whose time is long overdue, doesn't mean that we are suddenly some type of social justice warrior or we just "woke up". We've been aware of this for a long time. My awareness and desire for change was heightened when I had two daughters more than 30 years ago. Shit has happened to women for a long time and it should not have required anyone to "wake up" to realize it was wrong and needed to be stopped. #MeToo should never have had to be a movement. It should have always existed. But here we are. I guess more than anything, we can thank Bill Cosby.

Sorry, but in my eyes, the only "whore" in this situation is Steve Coleman. The dude saw a cute young girl (alright - legally a woman) and all he could think about was getting in her pants, not her potential as a saxophone player. Having said that, I do have a problem with her purposefully trying to ruin his life by exposing their relationship - a relationship that she willfully entered into and kept going for a long time (almost 6 years) by threatening to go public if he broke it off. She followed through on that threat and got away with it due to a law that was created to help protect women from unwanted sexual contact or caught in abusive relationships. This was neither. Her ability to use this law to punish Steve Coleman has exposed a problem with that law. When several women were able to finally speak out about sexual predators like Bill Cosby & Harvey Weinstein and get their day in court, I cheered them on. I don't feel like cheering this woman on.

This law was changed to allow for "opinions" to be protected speech in cases where it involves a "non-public" figure. Don't you think it's wrong that Steve Coleman has been denied that classification? I think the protections for a public figure should apply here. Clearly, he is a public figure and it is likely that his career and ability to work will be affected by what she wrote. The term "public figure" should not be reserved for politicians.

https://www.bakerlaw.com/news/victory-for-speaking-out?utm_campaign=march_2021&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=pro-bono' It looks like Coleman lost because New York just passed a new #MeToo law, not because of anything in this he said/she said case. To wit: "The decision is one of the first to apply New York’s recently expanded anti-SLAPP statute (“strategic lawsuit against public participation”), in a defamation case involving a non-public figure. It upholds essential First Amendment rights, particularly for people who speak up about abuse and harassment." So basically, in New York, you can legally accuse someone (who isn't famous i.e "rich") of sexual harassment, whether it's real or made up. It's now protected speech. I think it's pretty sad that Steve Coleman's fame as a Jazz artist is so low that he has been classified as a non-public figure. I mean hell, just the fact that we are talking about it here would seem to indicate that he is, in fact, a public figure. He's just not rich enough, I guess. This whole thing is truly messed up. From a 52 year-old man thinking it's a good idea to have a sexual relationship with a 17 year old (student no less), to said student threatening to expose this inappropriate relationship so that he would continue it. Dude should've kept it in his pants, no matter what she was doing.

The bandcamp site for Space Walk has some of the music up for streaming. It sounds the band was recorded in a Tube tunnel.

My wife works in a school system and she said that there is a science class at the high school where 8 out of the 20 students in that class are sick with COVID. This is the same school system where a group of unmasked parents protested at the school committee meeting last week to demand that the schools drop their mask mandates. It got so bad that one of the protesters got arrested. Let me repeat - 8 out of 20 kids got COVID. Whatever happened to parents wanting to protect their children?

I am of two opinions here. One side of me says that these anti-vaxxers are getting to drop their masks because people like me went and got vaccinated, so that part of it bugs me. The other side of me says that masks are now for their protection, not mine, so if they want to continue to risk getting COVID by not getting a vaccine and not masking up, then they're only putting themselves at risk, so why should I care? More than anything, I'm interested in seeing how my company handles this whole thing. I work with a few people with extreme opinions about this (the political nature of these opinions precludes me from going into details), so there will likely be some push back on the mandatory reporting of your vaccination status.

The company where I work just announced that starting next Tuesday, June 1st, anyone who has been vaccinated can shed their mask and no more 6 foot keep-out circles. So how will they know who is vaccinated and who is not? They are requiring everyone to register their status (with HR - no one else will know). I am still wondering how they are going to enforce this. I can almost guarantee that the ones who have refused to get a vaccine will be the same ones who will refuse to admit it or they will lie about it. I also know for certain that they will also refuse to wear a mask because they try to do it all the time already. I wonder if my company has the cahones to stand up to them? We shall see.

I finally broke down and ordered the Joe Henderson Mosaic box. Too many reviewers are going on & on about the great audio and I had some PayPal credit so it's on the way.

Did you not like the Connoisseur CD of this material?

Reservoir Records is one of my favorite record labels. I really like their Nick Brignola catalog. Thank you Mr. Feldman for the great music.

Good? Depressing maybe. It certainly rings true that old adage, "How do you make a million bucks selling Jazz? Start with two million."

The rumor mill (actually, the Steve Hoffman forum ) says that cartridges with a higher tracking force seem to fare better. Well, I just happened to pick up a Denon 110th Anniversary DL-103R cartridge last month and that cartridge tracks at 2.5 grams, 2/3rds higher than my Ortofon 2M Black cart, so I stuck that on there (hooray for turntables with swappable headshells) and it plays straight through without any problem... except it really doesn't sound as good to my ears. Bummer. I was hoping to have this cart as a backup (always a good idea with vinyl playback systems) but now I may just buy a back-up 2M Black stylus.

Andrew Hill - Passing Ships (Blue Note). Listening to Side 1 to see if my turntable/cartridge can pass the torture test that is "Plantation Bag". Apparently, this track presents tracking challenges to some turntables. On first listen to this, they really did a nice job in the mastering studio in creating a lively analog master tape to cut with. Well - my turntable failed that miserably. Weirdly, it wasn't Farrell's sax solo that got me. It was the piano solo near with the trombone/bass clarinet fills distoring like heck. Sounds like crap.

Did Bird actually make that gig? He was supposedly pretty unreliable by then.

Look at that old digital watch - it's huge. I wonder if it's one of those red LED watches where you have to push the button to turn it on or an early LCD where there was a button to turn on a light behind it?

Although I never got a chance to see & hear him live, I do enjoy this one:

I just received this on vinyl. I hope to spin it soon.

Yes, I am an engineer and a self-professed nerd, but even I have to ask questions sometimes. I am new to this world of the Raspberry Pi and I am trying to learn as much as I can so bear with me. Connect the RPI to the internet - Check. I am using an Ethernet cable. I don't want to use this as I'd rather go wireless, but I think I'll have to at first. Control it using VNC Viewer - What is VNC? (quick Google search ensues - ahh, there it is) and how do I control my RPI with this app? Do I log into my RPI (get out that HDMI cable I didn't think I needed) and install VNC on there or do I install it on a laptop on the same network? From my Google search, I see how I would do this on my laptop but no one has shown me how to install anything on my RPI. I am very familiar with sudo apt-get, as I have been using Linux Ubuntu & Mint desktops for many years. When I logged into my RPI a few days ago, all I got was a command prompt. I assume if I need to install anything, I am in sudo apt-get land? Edit: VNC Connect appears to cost $3.39/month. I'm not planning to use this RPI music player that much so I am not looking to pay $40/year for an access program. Set RPI to a static IP - How do I do that? Do I have to use VNC? What is the reason for this? I get that if I don't set it to a fixed IP address, it can change every time I turn it on, but Volumio seems to find the RPI automatically so the IP can change, can't it? Use pi OS from JRiver - I have looked into JRiver for years now. Many years. The cost has always kept me away. Is IdPi free? (Google search ensues - no it's not). It looks like they only sell it imaged onto a micro SD card... can't I just download an image and flash my own card? Does this require a fixed IP to work? Is the phone interface easy to use and is it fast? Does JRiver offer a cell phone app (search the Pay Store - ahh, there it is). But is it faster than the Volumio app (which is dog-slow)?

Wow, is Volumio slow. I don't think it ever completely built my library before it stopped responding. I had to reset it several times before I could get a list of all of the artists and albums in my library. I may have to switch over to Moode if this is it for Volumio. Sadly, I would rather boot up the Linux laptop than use this set up as it now stands.

Success! Playing music through the Raspberry PI as I type this. The Samsung app is slow as hell though. I hope it's just because it's just been set up. If it's this slow, I may go back to Moode just to see if that browser GUI is faster. BTW - I did hook up that mini HDMI to HDMI cable and booted the RPI to a login screen. It does not appear that I was able to do anything there except command prompt stuff. To do what I am doing, I don't think I needed this cable.

I wonder if I got a RPI card with a bad wireless chip? The Volumio network keeps popping up and then disappearing. I'll probably have to bring it up to my router and hook it up via ethernet. EDIT - now I get it. The RPI has to be connected to the internet. Your phone needs to be connected to the RPI. Confusing. I will take it up to the ethernet connection and see if that works.

First attempt with headphones... I attached my external hard drive and all I get is the spinning dots. I wonder if I'm stuck in a loop? I'll try re-booting after another 2 or 3 minutes. Not a great first try. This thing gets pretty warm. Not hot, but warm.

I didn't realize that Blue Note had messed with this cover so much over the years until I saw this. Font styles and font colors change. For the CD cover, the sidemen are all deleted. No matter - what a great date.

I was wondering how the headphone jack would work... I have never really gotten good results from a headphone jack into a line in on a preamp. I've seen this happen in the past when I hooked any headphone jack from a walkman type player to a line in on my preamp. They never seem to sound "clean" when you turn the volume of the walkman up to the max. I think it has something to do with the headphone jack's output impedance not matching what your line in "wants". Most preamp line in jacks have an input impedance of 1.5 to 3 kilohms. The RPI headphone jack output impedance is 69 Ohms. That is quite the mismatch. I hope to avoid that by driving my DAC input via USB. If you are thinking about adding a DAC HAT, look at the HiFi Berry cards. Good "bang for the buck". Try this card: https://www.hifiberry.com/shop/boards/hifiberry-dac2-pro/ They also sell cheap cases to accommodate their card/RPI combo. Here is the case the offer with the DAC2 Pro: Black is $2 cheaper.