hankgreen.com/smush · Aug 24
674 pts · PERFECT 💯
🥞🥞🥞
🥞⭐🥞
🥞🥞🥞

For me this week:

• Absolute Green Arrow #4
• End of Life #7
• Uncanny X-Men #34

hankgreen.com/smush · Aug 16

397 pts · ★★ pangram first · frik! 😤 · no hints · 2-day streak  
🥞🥞🥞  
🥞⭐🥞  
🟨🥞🟨  

::: spoiler score breakdown from other people
Interesting one today, the bar graph of other people's scores shows that basically no one got a perfect game. Usually there are two separate distribution humps, one around 350 for people who didn't get a perfect game, and then one around 850 for those who did. But today there's just the 350 cluster.
:::

I've been trying to figure this out by looking at Rockbox's manual, and haven't been able to find a clear answer. Can you search for song titles and artists by name?

I have a Hiby R3 right now, and the text search feature is annoying me, so I'm hoping that Rockbox does better.

For example, on the Hiby, if you have some songs by The Beatles, if you search for "beat," it won't find them. You have to search for "the beat" instead. It only matches characters from the beginning of the name.

I'm planning on getting a Hifi Walker H2 and installing Rockbox on it, but I'd like to know how well searching works first. Does anyone have a Rockbox device here?

hankgreen.com/smush · Aug 12  
890 pts · PERFECT 💯  
🥞🥞🥞  
🥞⭐🥞  
🥞🥞🥞  

My second perfect. I also found the "editor's choice" word. I haven't found one of those before.

What's on your list this week?

For me:

• Absolute Batman #23
• X-Men #35
• X-Men United #6

My first perfect!

hankgreen.com/smush · Aug 4  
858 pts · PERFECT 💯  
🥞🥞🥞  
🥞⭐🥞  
🥞🥞🥞  

Jack White's latest album, Frozen Charlotte, is exactly what I had hoped it would be. Classic blues rock sound that you want from Jack White, fitting right in with the best of his other albums, while still being varied enough to stand apart. Sounds like the kind of thing you've heard from him before, without at all sounding like "more of the same."

I think the two singles released, which are also the first two tracks on the album, are still my favorites overall. However, "Dollar Bill," "Thick as Thieves," and "All Alone Again" are definitely right up there too. None of the tracks are duds, not by a long shot.

The lyrics are simple and punchy, as White's usually are, but a few tracks have some memorable lines in them. Every one of them has a memorable guitar riff, for sure.

The record itself will be the bluest blue thing in your collection.*

* wait... because it's blues? Did I just get the pun? Oh my god.

(Start the video at 11 minutes, 50 seconds in; that's the part I'm quoting.)

I follow this bot on Mastodon, @[email protected]. It'll post what's playing on https://retrostrange.tv/, which is a stream of public-domain videos from a few decades ago.

One that just came up was a short film about science fiction writer Ray Bradbury from 1963. I just happened to click on it right as he was saying:

Our automobiles slaughter forty thousand people a year, maim a hundred thousand more, and bring out the worst in man. Any society where a natural man, the pedestrian, becomes the intruder, and unnatural man encased in a steel shell becomes his molester, is a science fiction nightmare.

It was really interesting to hear this sentiment expressed in America in 1963, a decade in which I always imagined car ownership to be seen as a modern ideal and a cultural mainstay. Was surprised to hear him say that in a black and white video from that era.

New releases tomorrow! What's on your list?

Just one for me this week: X-Men #34.

Interesting and short interview with the maintainer of frutigeraeroarchive.org.

A quote:

Does it feel more alive for me personally? I can say yes to that, as it comes from an era where we were all more optimistic about technology and what it would do in our lives. I would say our outlook in recent years has changed drastically, with companies becoming more and more greedy, more of our data being harvested, and the rise of AI. I have nothing against flat design itself however I have to admit it is more lazily done most of the time than even a basic skeuomorphic interface, and requires basically no effort to pull off correctly.

Interesting and short interview with the maintainer of frutigeraeroarchive.org.

A quote:

Does it feel more alive for me personally? I can say yes to that, as it comes from an era where we were all more optimistic about technology and what it would do in our lives. I would say our outlook in recent years has changed drastically, with companies becoming more and more greedy, more of our data being harvested, and the rise of AI. I have nothing against flat design itself however I have to admit it is more lazily done most of the time than even a basic skeuomorphic interface, and requires basically no effort to pull off correctly.

I absolutely love Bob Cromwell's website, where he posts regular HTML pages with photos of places he's been. You can follow his blog on the fediverse, @[email protected].

Some of his posts have great historical information, too, such as this one: https://cromwell-intl.com/travel/greece/korinthos/ancient-korinthos/?s=mc

The website itself perfectly encapsulates the feel of the late 90s/early 00s web for me. While web 2.0 was just starting around then, there were still plenty of personal sites like this one at that time.

I hope it's Bazzite.

Was listening to this during work today. I haven't actually played this game, just listened to the soundtrack many times. I've played the original Dreamcast game, but not the Xbox sequel. I hear Xbox emulators work well these days, though, so I'll have to check it out.

edit: Oh, the gameplay footage in the video I linked to is from an emulator. So it's definitely playable.

Hank Green has come up with his own variation of Connections. There are only three words in each category, and one of the words will be used in all four categories. When you figure out which word should be used in multiple categories (because you've selected that word twice), that word will move to the center of the grid.

After trying a whole bunch of pocket notebooks, the Apica A7 has become my go-to.

It’s 2.8 x 4 inches (10.2 x 7.1 cm), which is quite a bit smaller than your typical Field Notes-sized notebook. However, I’ve come to really like it better at this size. I’m rarely writing prose in these notebooks; I’m always writing short lists. So I usually don’t take up a full line anyway. This tiny size leaves less wasted space on the page. It’s also small enough to fit in a shirt pocket, whereas Field Notes often doesn’t.

I’ve also been using the regular old Fisher space pen with it. I usually prefer something I can use one-handed, like a clicky or bolt-action, for my daily pocket pen, since it makes jotting things down that much quicker. But the size and simplicity of the space pen’s design is just really satisfying sometimes.

After trying a whole bunch of pocket notebooks, the Apica A7 has become my go-to.

It's 2.8 x 4 inches (10.2 x 7.1 cm), which is quite a bit smaller than your typical Field Notes-sized notebook. However, I've come to really like it better at this size. I'm rarely writing prose in these notebooks; I'm always writing short lists. So I usually don't take up a full line anyway. This tiny size leaves less wasted space on the page. It's also small enough to fit in a shirt pocket, whereas Field Notes often doesn't.

I've also been using the regular old Fisher space pen with it. I usually prefer something I can use one-handed, like a clicky or bolt-action, for my daily pocket pen, since it makes jotting things down that much quicker. But the size and simplicity of the space pen's design is just really satisfying sometimes.

Tomorrow is Wednesday! What's on your list? For me:

• Absolute Green Arrow #1. Looks like another income swap in the Absolute universe... I'm in.
• End of Life #4
• X-Men United #3. I was on the fence about this series, mainly because it being set in their heads, in a psychic location, seemed like just an easy way to have characters join up that's aren't physically around each other in their regular series' right now. But issue #2 was fantastic, and I want to see where this is going now.