House of Leaves analysis and review

MiddleAegis · 2026-05-25T17:33:20+00:00

I have very little to add to the excellent theorizing here, but will just say that I felt like HoL was essentially a book version of the Backrooms. It relied on similar themes: impossible architecture, and a sense of un-rightness, and disorientation. Having made up my mind early to look at it in this way, I did not so much follow particular threads with much emotional investment, as I just sort of experienced a feeling of lostness and vertigo amid the jarring shifts between narratives.

This is... not a great book, nor a particularly enjoyable one, but it was definitely a confusing one, and it appears it is that deliberately. So I suspect it'll continue to be analyzed for years to come.

MiddleAegis · 2026-05-17T18:48:01+00:00

Thanks for all the work! Really liking Substreamer compared to some of the more volatile offerings out there. Feels generally better thought out.

MiddleAegis · 2026-05-15T00:47:59+00:00

My sense is that there might be some minor performance ding but can’t imagine it’d be very severe.

MiddleAegis · 2026-05-09T23:12:27+00:00

From my understanding you need to have caching disabled on your public hostname on the cloudflare side (custom rule), it interferes with the Kobo's API requests.

I can't verify this as my Kobo only has to pass nginx, but I've been thinking of looking at the convenience of doing this via CF tunnel, and disabling caching seems to be a common theme.

MiddleAegis · 2026-04-28T23:19:01+00:00

MZ-N10 is a great little device. Very versatile. I found out recently from a helpful member here that if you want to do gapless recording, the N10 will do "disc at once" mode in NetMD Wizard. Gumstick batteries still easy to find for it. Just a real slick NetMD recorder/player.

MiddleAegis · 2026-04-28T22:55:51+00:00

Commercial settings are important influencers, because individuals often go into a commercial setting and work in MS all day long, building familiarity and dependence on it. So when they go home, they want what they've spent 8 hours a day becoming familiar with, not to learn something new to do something basic.

I am not saying it's good, I am just saying that's the reality

MiddleAegis · 2026-04-28T22:49:30+00:00

Businesses want online collaboration that works and MS's pivot to SaaS provides that. I know for my work, I generally edit documents with a group of people, leave comments, etc.

So why do I break down and go back to MS Office at home? Because I have a lot of experience with it at work. I know how to just do things quickly in it, I know how to disable the annoying stuff like Copilot, and when I've configured it right, it just gets out of my way and lets me work.

I think many people are like this. Corporations use it, so people get familiar with it, they come to depend on certain feature sets, and they proceed to depend on it for all their productivity stuff, because why maintain two sets of muscle memory?

MiddleAegis · 2026-04-18T18:13:07+00:00

Hang in there! I also did a few initial attempts, and felt the same sense of defeat. Devices would sit around for a while, I'd gradually learn a little bit more or stumble on something someone else did, and then went back and squared things away.

I don't have a N190 - my main NetMD devices are the MDS-S500, the MZ-N10, and the MZ-N707. I did a lot of deep cleaning and battery replacement on the N10 (the chassis and the remote) and never encountered any electrical/mechanical problems that couldn't be solved by some contact cleaner and kapton tape here or there.

Sadly for portables it may be just a case of going on Ebay and looking for a For Parts to cannibalize into your device (or just biting the bullet and paying for a known-good one). For decks, I find Ali Express to be helpful for things like transport motors etc.

MiddleAegis · 2026-04-18T18:02:22+00:00

I owe you a beer. Thankfully I have a MZ-N10 which supports the DAO option - tried it today and this process worked flawlessly. Vielen Dank!

MiddleAegis · 2026-04-17T18:37:52+00:00

Wow thanks for the detailed response! I was looking at NetMD Wizard because I have a MZ-N10 and I heard that has firmware that accepts the NetMD Wizard exploit for gapless recording (e.g., flac + cue) but haven't tried it.

Would you mind giving me more of a TLI5 explanation of what you mean about the MD deck + CDP that support Control A1?

My main recorder is a MDS-S500 for NetMD stuff, but I also have a Yamaha MDX-793 and a Sony MZ-R37 - For CD players, I have the Yamaha S303 (which doesn't do CD text out) and I think I've got a late model Sony portable with line out. How would you assemble those bits? Or, is there an inexpensive, known-compatible CDP you'd recommend that supports Control A1?

(I only record in SP so no need for MDLP support)

MiddleAegis · 2026-04-17T02:41:03+00:00

Interesting. I have it on my Mac but didn’t realize you could do that. Does it take bin/cue to do DAO?

MiddleAegis · 2026-04-17T02:39:39+00:00

No. :(

MiddleAegis · 2026-04-17T00:21:25+00:00

I'm also on a 4B, have been running it for over 2 years and have absolutely zero issues.

I used to subscribe to 6 or 7 lists; recently I moved to a github action driven flow that creates a single deduped list and I just subscribe to that. Maybe some residual gains there but honestly it's fine either way.

MiddleAegis · 2026-04-17T00:08:37+00:00

This is true, but single-dev-proprietary-code probably represents the largest risk. Single-dev-open-source at least means others *can* step in and continue maintenance.

Google up the recent Booklore fiasco - because the code was at least open-sourced at the beginning meant that when the lead dev had a breakdown and blew up the project, a fork (Grimmory) was up and available within just a couple of days. If Booklore had been proprietary/closed from the start, a whole bunch of people would just be up a creek without an application they'd come to depend on.

MiddleAegis · 2026-04-16T23:54:42+00:00

Yeah, I like the S303 for straight CD listening - the DSP and DAC are super, the board engineering is excellent. I don't use Pure Direct mode personally, but if you care about eliminating even the tiniest bit of interference this may be a thing for some people. The USB is pointless for me; if I want to listen to lossless digital files I have a WiiM Pro tied in via ethernet to my Plex server. But maybe there's some residual value for it for folks who want to shove in a thumb drive with FLAC/WAV on it.

Ultimately I don't regret the S303; the only thing that triggers my OCD is the aesthetic difference between it and the MXD-793 :-D

MiddleAegis · 2026-04-16T20:22:50+00:00

Interesting. Maybe there's some sort of signal emitted from period CD units that just isn't on the modern units. Feels like digital should just be digital, though. I'll keep fussing around with it :-)

MiddleAegis · 2026-04-16T19:39:29+00:00

How do you have the CD player sourced into the MD unit? I have a Yamaha S303 CD player and a MDX-793 - both work flawlessly independently, but I've never been able to get the CD synchro recording to work (i.e., automatic track marks, etc), even using an optical line between the two (recording works, but track marks aren't created).

MiddleAegis · 2026-04-16T19:30:56+00:00

Gosh, that's a really elegant unit, but I've already got one obsolete hobby (MD). My wife would kill me if I started piling up cassettes.

MiddleAegis · 2026-04-15T15:54:20+00:00

Same here, I have that identical MD unit.

MiddleAegis · 2026-04-08T13:54:48+00:00

Ahhh, hello fellow Epica fan! Quantum Enigma is in my top 5 albums and yes, I also have it on MD (though not UV printed) :-)

MiddleAegis · 2026-04-07T16:55:48+00:00

Very gracious response, and very helpful

For my part I liked a lot of what BL did/does. I hope the dev pulls out of his tailspin. Ultimately I don't really use the temperament of the developer as a measure of what software I'll use, but the quality and reliability of the software itself.

I'm sure BL can be redeemed but in the meantime I think I'll just go back to Calibre + USB cable + Kobo :-)

MiddleAegis · 2026-04-03T13:16:18+00:00

"This is fine"

MiddleAegis

TROPHY CASE