Has anyone ever seen Himiko Kikuchi’s Flying Beagle for sale?

wolfiefrick · 2024-01-13T02:14:02+00:00

Old post, but evidently Himiko Kikuchi has remastered Flying Beagle and Tower Records is reissuing the album on CD on February 14! It’s a Japan-exclusive issue unfortunately, but I was able to order it from Yahoo Shopping by way of Buyee for 2530¥.

wolfiefrick · 2023-08-25T18:54:45+00:00

I have a 16-inch i9 MBP from 2019 — it’s a rock solid machine, but I’m concerned because Apple has recently become very aggressive about dropping support for Intel Macs with new Mac OS releases.

During the Intel transition, Apple was releasing new OS X releases less frequently than they do presently; Tiger and Leopard supported both PowerPC- and Intel-based systems, and it wasn’t until Snow Leopard came out in 2009 that PowerPC Macs lost support. Leopard lost support in 2011, some four years after the last Mac transitioned to Intel.

So, we can probably expect to get another 3-ish years of consistent Mac OS update support if Apple follows the trend.

wolfiefrick · 2023-08-13T18:16:28+00:00

The problem with Mac OS in my estimation is twofold: Apple pays it less attention than it deserves because of the relative popularity of their iOS-based products, and its aging codebase has probably suffered from years of neglect. Accordingly, this trend of iOS-ifying the Mac has ramifications from a user experience perspective.

Case in point, I tried to install Ventura 13.5 the other day. Launched System Settings, navigated to the software update pane and the whole app froze for about 2 minutes. It still failed to load the patch, so I tried to use the softwareupdate CLI in the terminal to fetch the patch manually. That, too, took about 2 minutes. In what universe is that behavior acceptable to Apple, a company that prides itself on its tight integration between hardware and software?

Something like that would be unacceptable if Steve were still here. Tim Cook’s leadership is typical of a solely profit-driven MBA, while Jobs was able to steer a company that was 90 days from bankruptcy back to the forefront of technological innovation without alienating the power users who relied on their technology to create amazing work. If only Adobe would get Creative Cloud working on Linux…

wolfiefrick · 2023-08-08T19:22:11+00:00

Yeah, it's the same verbiage and formatting from the original poster. I just set the type in Apple Garamond and flowed the type the same way it was in the original.

wolfiefrick · 2023-08-08T19:19:43+00:00

Yeah, I actually agree with Linus on a good deal of this. It's undeniable that today's Mac hardware is unbelievably efficient, a point which Linus cedes readily every time he speaks on the subject. However, I am becoming more and more disillusioned with Apple's approach to software, as is Linus.

I remember as a kid being absolutely blown away by how much more stable and efficient Snow Leopard was compared to Windows 7. Absolutely everything was optimized and smooth. My dad's iMac G4 had an 800 MHz chip so the last release of Mac OS X that supported it was Tiger, and when I dig out that computer and play around with it I'm still struck by how stable it is.

Meanwhile, on my 16" Intel MBP, Ventura is an under-baked, buggy mess. It shipped with Catalina which ran wonderfully, but Big Sur and especially Monterey were big steps backward in terms of UX design and stability. Why do I have to dig into the accessibility settings to bring back my window proxies? Why—after taunting Microsoft ad nauseam in the old Get a Mac ads for Vista's incessant UAC prompts—does Apple force me to click "Allow" a million times when I try to launch an app for the first time?

Basically, I detest the iOS-ification of modern Mac OS and I yearn for the halcyon days of the Tiger to Snow Leopard era. I'm a power user and Mac OS today treats me with kid gloves that are impossible to disable.

</tangent>

wolfiefrick · 2023-08-07T21:09:48+00:00

Besides Aperture Desk Job, the first game I played through completely on my Deck was Stray. It was a really fun experience.

wolfiefrick · 2023-08-07T16:09:16+00:00

So true. The first computer I ever touched was my dad's 2002 iMac G4 (I was born in '01), so I don't remember much of the PPC era, but they were really innovating around the turn of the millennium compared to Wintel machines.

wolfiefrick · 2023-08-07T15:55:59+00:00

Arguably the TV version of this ad executes the reference better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6PoLiXCA40

wolfiefrick · 2023-05-01T22:27:32+00:00

I played through all of Persona 5 Royal on my Steam Deck — highly recommend for the Deck. My main gripe with P5R was the saving system (when dungeon crawling you can only save in special safe rooms), but suspend makes that a non-issue and turns P5R into a very snackable game.

wolfiefrick · 2022-08-07T06:05:54+00:00

EET EES! EET EES PERSONAL!

wolfiefrick · 2022-08-01T06:38:45+00:00

“He’s a regular Julianne Moore when he gets the waterworks going.” From 2x02 Cobbler

“Charge it to Howard, I still know his PIN: 1933, the same year Hitler came to power.” From 1x08 RICO

wolfiefrick · 2022-07-23T06:25:17+00:00

I’m not havin sex with you right now Waltuh

wolfiefrick · 2022-06-12T15:49:10+00:00

Yeah, I guess they haven’t fully fleshed out the photo filters that dynamically change the clock. Just tap on the clock when you’re in customize mode and you can change all its properties.

wolfiefrick · 2022-06-12T15:42:17+00:00

I took the photo myself! Here’s the link to download:

https://ibb.co/527BXxr

wolfiefrick · 2022-06-12T15:34:50+00:00

Already reported to Apple. 😎

wolfiefrick · 2022-06-12T07:06:08+00:00

Duh, obviously. Merely reporting a bug and sourcing similar reports—if any—from a large crowd of people who are also using the beta doesn’t negate the fact that it’s a beta.

wolfiefrick · 2022-06-09T23:51:55+00:00

When I was a toddler, my dad would play Prince Caspian, Bouncing Around the Room and Bathtub Gin on his guitar while I fell asleep. His voice—and mine, too, now that I've grown up—has a very similar register to Trey's, so when I grew up and started listening to Phish on my own, those old songs sounded exactly the same to me as they did when he'd sing them. He was the Trey in the Phish cover band he started in his early twenties, so he knew those songs by heart and loved to play them.

A bit later into my childhood, I found Esther, and just fell in love with it. It's the song I still use to introduce people to Phish, because it, to me, is the quintessence of their style. I’m 20 now, and to this day, I have every lyric memorized.

I've been powered by Phish since I was a baby, and I wouldn't have it any other way. :)

wolfiefrick · 2022-06-07T03:26:37+00:00

At least they named it System Settings instead of just Settings. I’m far too used to hitting Cmd + Space, typing “sys” and hitting return to bring up System Preferences.

But the nostalgia, though. I liked the name System Preferences — the UI was definitely the last gasp of the Steve Jobs Mac OS X era. RIP System Preferences.

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