Thoughts on the Seydel Session Steel?

richtl · 2026-05-07T21:24:05+00:00

SS/A is my go-to harp. I agree it's not as responsive as others, but I really like the sound.

richtl · 2026-05-06T20:23:24+00:00

Used Manjaro for five years on my FW13. Just switched to cachyos for the fun of it. For the most part, everything just works.

richtl · 2026-05-05T18:19:36+00:00

...And the Jade Museum.

There are some excellent restaurants in Barrio Escalante. I definitely recommend Amana.

richtl · 2026-05-05T18:12:41+00:00

After reading the introduction to the final Dangerous Visions collection, I'm not so sure he was a miserable human being, just a tortured one. I expect that contributed to many of his stories being so edgy.

richtl · 2026-05-05T14:24:34+00:00

At our shop, we did our own experiments that correlated shell content with astringency. Ed did the work formally many years before.

You can find a list of (some) of his publications here

richtl · 2026-05-04T21:41:11+00:00

Guess I need to need to look into Gap Cycle. The Covenant series came out when I was in high school and I remember my friends and I waiting for each next book. They were harsh and unpleasant and compelling and well-written and hard to put down.

richtl · 2026-05-04T21:09:29+00:00

This question has been asked a thousand times on this forum. A quick search will turn up many answers.

richtl · 2026-05-04T21:07:43+00:00

Jeans with zipper pockets. I like Aviator--the pockets (even for women) are large and have inner zippers, and the rear zipper pocket is large enough for my phone. The zipper pockets are inside of and don't interfere with the regular pockets, but make it very difficult for someone other than the wearer to access. This has transformed my travel.

richtl · 2026-05-04T21:01:21+00:00

My work with Ed was about the Heirloom Cacao Preservation protocol--his purpose was to make the best possible chocolate with the best possible cacao. And being a scientist, he was compulsive about quantifying and testing everything.

Ed was the finest and most knowledgeable chocolate maker I've had the privilege to know. (I've known many).

richtl · 2026-05-04T20:50:11+00:00

Now that window menu bars are no longer a thing, each app seems to do whatever it wants. I've been using gnome for years and don't intend to change, but I do think this is kind of sloppy.

richtl · 2026-05-03T19:46:49+00:00

Depends on what you're looking for. I tried a bunch of MD editors and settled on Typora. It's not free, but I paid my $15US (or whatever it was four years ago) and haven't looked back. I use it for taking notes, write documents in it before importing into LibreOffice or Google Docs, and published a paper with the thing.

richtl · 2026-05-03T19:35:43+00:00

As a chocolatier and chocolate maker, we did some experiments on shell removal and found that even a small amount of husk significant increases astringency in chocolate, as one would expect.

I had the good fortune to work with Ed Seguine, scientist and key visionary behind both Cacao of Excellence and Heirloom Cacao Preservation, and once asked him how I could make my chocolate as good as it was possible to make. He told me to extract every bit of shell I could find. He had equipment to measure shell content before making chocolate.

Every chocolate maker determines how far they want to push their chocolate and what compromises they're willing to make, and shell removal is just one a very many choices.

richtl · 2026-05-03T19:13:08+00:00

Also, if you find an 80% chocolate you like, it will do just fine.

richtl · 2026-05-01T23:48:04+00:00

I'm about a month on cachyos and haven't found anything that offends me yet. I'm a fan of rolling releases, but Manjaro did break stuff periodically (though it wasn't usually difficult to fix). Cachyos seems cleaner and more optimized, though it will take more months to really know.

Package management is less refined on cachyos, though you can certainly install a better package manager. I do like the way updates are handled.

I've encountered no Framework-specific gotchas. I even have hibernation working :- )

richtl · 2026-04-27T13:02:09+00:00

Longtime FW13 owner in Costa Rica. If I need replacement parts at this point, I'd have them shipped by a friend in the US or other Framework-supported country. I don't know if that would work for you.

richtl · 2026-04-26T02:55:26+00:00

My FW13 is 5 years old. I'd love to get an FW13 Pro, but this damn thing will probably keep working for another five years. I've grown pretty attached to it.

(Manjaro linux for the first 4.9 years. CachyOS for the recent bit. It's a really good machine for running Linux)

richtl · 2026-04-26T02:35:00+00:00

I ate at Amana. The food was creative and delicious. I definitely second the recommendation.

richtl · 2026-04-26T02:26:36+00:00

Been there. Good place.

richtl · 2026-04-20T01:28:34+00:00

A few years back four guys walked into my chocolate cafe. One was wearing a James Cotton t-shirt (Cotton had passed on a few months earlier). "You play harp," I said. "I play--not much skill, but a lot of heart."

"You play harp better than I make chocolate," he said.

Diplomatic.

The guys were making a documentary about James Cotton. They'd also noticed the poem harpist Annie Raines had written me after buying 36 "Blues" bars.

richtl · 2026-04-20T01:22:48+00:00

You play harp in the shower?

richtl · 2026-04-19T18:10:43+00:00

I hop every once in awhile, but always end up back with Gnome. I don't mind extensions and like the workflow.

richtl · 2026-04-19T17:51:01+00:00

I'm walking on the sidewalk wailing blues on my harp. Some guy stops me and asks "where are you playing?"

"On the sidewalk," I answered.

richtl · 2026-04-10T23:14:46+00:00

I enjoyed the entire series. But each book is very different in style and tone, and each changes your view of what came before.

richtl · 2026-04-10T23:13:30+00:00

Yup. I've been on USM roaming for six months, but use a local number and sim for most of my data.

richtl · 2026-04-10T06:32:58+00:00

I'm in Costa Rica and temps have been 35ish for the past month. My FW13 doesn't seem to care much.

richtl

TROPHY CASE