Decided to take a break from spotify and try out some real lossless music streaming from Qobuz, the French streaming service - heard about it a lot and decided to try it out for a month or so. So far so great.

Really great selection of classical and a curated feeling about albums they show you - not as frequent as spotify but very good.

So sad to report one of my passive speakers for my hi-fi system really has finally died it seems. It survived so many floods and damage over the years but I really can't get it to work.

I hated the sound of just the right speaker so bad I dusted off my Google Home speaker that I haven't used in over 5 years to take over music duties. I don't like no stereo sound but it is designed to work alone, sounds good with FLAC files and is room filling. The right side Kenwood from the receiver wasn't cutting it.

Where do I even get passive speakers that aren't made for a bookshelf? They are all too tiny these days. 

My most favorite computer I've ever owned (that I am typing on now) is my 2016 Pixel book Pro I got on a great black Friday deal on Google. 

I wasn't going to buy it at first, but then I just decided to go for it. I've written so much on this little machine, but it has been pushed to the back burner sadly though the acquisition of so many other great computers: A couple of Lenovos from work, and now an Apple Macbook Air 13 inch just acquired from work in the spring. I also have a pretty nice tiny Samsung laptop with an amazing AMOLED screen that I sometimes travel with. 

This computer is outdated, screen wise. It has a very blocky, wide bezel screen that is easy to see but isn't in the modern proportions we'd expect. My Air feels "wider" somehow. This screen also looks a little pixelated too. But it has a huge advantage: It's a touchscreen, and also is much easier to read for typing. 

The battery has been through a lot so now only holds about 4 hours compared to when I first got it 9 years ago where the battery would claim 8 hours left but really go for days without a charge. 

Another huge advantage is that I don't think this computer tracks me as much as my work laptop. I'm quite cautious, maybe overcautious about what I write on my work computer. We have quite the adversarial/wartime relationship with the administration so I wouldn't put it past them to track every keystroke we make on our work machines. Before you ask: No, I am not posting this from work wireless - I'm at home for this post!

Most important: This keyboard. It's the most fun, easy, smooth, and joyful typing experience I've ever had! 

I've written countless papers on this machine including writing one of those grail-projects that you never think you'll ever see in print, my essay on Allen Ginsberg's poem "Wichita Vortex Sutra." I wrote it in 3 sessions over 3 days next to a sunny window during lockdown in 2020. 

The keyboard flies but most importantly it doesn't get in the way. I don't think about it. I'm just looking at the words I'm thinking appearing on the screen. There's nothing quite like it and I've been at pains to find a similar keyboard for my desktop or for any other machine so I can have this same typing experience. 

This machine also sideloads apps through a Linux of some kind, so I can run MS Word if I don't want to or can't use Google Docs. There's no lag in any of the side loading software.

All in all, the best computer I've owned is this one. But this summer it will lose its security upgrades. So I have to decide what's next for this machine. Perhaps Linux alone? Or maybe I can get away with Chrome OS for a while yet without the updates. I think Linux is the safest option but I do not look forward to all the hardware compatibility issues and loss of power efficiency that I know I'm going to face in such a transition. This thing is designed for Chrome OS so there has to be a loss when swapping operating systems. 

I'll post here during the transition but that's months away. I think I'll just enjoy this little laptop a while longer!

Here's my April Listening stats: 

https://www.last.fm/user/Professor_Steve/listening-report/year/2025/month/4

It seems I'm not as full speed ahead as I was in January, I wonder what accounts for that? 

There's not a lot of great stuff coming out right now in my preferred genres, but I'm finding interesting stuff to play. Now that I'm home most of the time, I think that the numbers should go up!

Week Notes for May 4th 2025

• Finished my essay for a book on teaching that will be published probably in a few months in Italy. I'm thinking it is ok but could be better. 
• Wrapped up the spring term. That means that this fall will be the start of year 19 of working as a professor. 
• Started working in earnest on my summer projects, which include two big video lecture series. We'll see if anyone watches them. 
• My essay that is over a year old came out in Argumentation & Advocacy What a long process that was! Taylor & Francis isn't interested in being a good publisher, they just want to make free money off of academics. We let them!
• Read Jefferson Fisher's book The Next Conversation and I'm going to make a YouTube video review of it. Spoiler: It's terrible.
• Starting to read the most recent biography of Alexis de Toqueville

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/man-who-understood-democracy-life-alexis-de-tocqueville

Here's this week's Music Listening see what you think. Obsessed with Ariana's new album. 

https://www.last.fm/user/Professor_Steve/listening-report/year/2025/week/17

The second time you do something is hardly a tradition, but it is definitely a step toward a tradtion!

Week Notes for April 27th

This week's listening stats.

• Listening is always off kilter due to how Last FM does the listening tracking (Thursday to Thursday) but maybe it will catch up one day? Who knows? This is just through the 24th. I definitely need to shut down the Google Chrome plugin for Last FM as it's ruining my stats by putting in interviews and other non-music choices I make on YouTube. 

• This week's listening brought to you by the Coachella YouTube live feed, nice weather, new porch furniture, a bluetooth speaker, and oh so affordable Kirkclaws (Costco branded whiteclaws). 

• I have been sick since Tuesday night. I think I got some viral bug from one of the many children who were at the house on Easter. The incubation period holds up and I didn't follow my rules for eating at an event where children are present, so that's a great way to catch something.

• I took the week off to recover plus I didn't want to be "that guy" who gets everyone sick the last week of the semester as the stress for finals starts to ramp up. People are going to be wrecked anyway; why contribute?

•  I'm trying to figure out how to address these new and decidedly poorer quality students that we are bringing in these days. They have been well-trained to be incapable. I'm starting to make a summer to-do list already for my fall courses.

• I finished moving all my files into a decent order on my NAS and started cleaning out duplicates and broken files. There are a lot. As of today the total storage of the NAS has changed from 8.2TB to 7.9TB. That's significant and shocked me once the NAS wiped the recycle bin. A little goes a long way. My strategy has been to delete about 10 or so things whenever I'm taking a break at the computer. 

• Finding all kinds of great old images I didn't know I had! Here's a sample! 

  

  
• Finishing an essay I've had months and months to work on as the deadline keeps getting pushed back. I'm still not happy with it but I really only have today and tomorrow to finish it up. Been typing away on it during the week.

• Playing a lot of No Man's Sky, amazing game always

• Reading an interesting book on Translation and Henry Giroux's new book on teaching

I have spent a significant portion of being sick with a cold watching some of these playthroughs of the games that defined my sense of what a video game should be. Sierra games!

All of these are worth watching.

My friend Alan clued me in to the new trend of posting week notes on a blog just to make a list and talk through what you did. It's sort of a throwback in my mind to the earlier days of blogging when the writing was an "open diary" or "open journal" rather than what it is thought of today - a form of publishing. The vibes are very different between the two. This practice is a recovery of blogging's origins as a "web log," an online journaling practice that just allows you to dump everything that happened, everything you did, and everything that can't easily be classified between the two.

There is a humorous timeliness to the recovery of this kind of post thanks to Elon Musk. But this is a reduction and a simplification of human effort and experience. I don't think the Week Notes is meant for that. Instead it should be thought of as a way to reflect on what you did, tried, didn't do, etc. It can be expansive and constructive rather than an account, testimony, evidence, or proof that you are worth something to someone, anyone. That dark way of thinking about accomplishments pervades our lives. Maybe actual blogging, week notes, can chip away at that. 

Here's my first attempt!

Last Week's Soundtrack is down from the previous week mostly because I wasn't listening to a lot of music! I only listened in the car or the gym. Last.fm is very good for seeing your music habits in the micro and the macro.

I moved all of my files off of my 5TB OneDrive provided by my university after I realized they would probably claim ownership of my writing, or delete it, or mess with it if they felt like it. This was a huge ordeal. I did clean off a lot of duplicates and now I'm in love with the Synology interface and software on my NAS more than I thought was possible. 

I spilled about a pound of fancy coffee all over the floor one night before bed and my auto-delivery scale didn't trigger, so I'm drinking my emergency Costco coffee - and it tastes great! Is it quality or is it just change?

I edited the PR copy for my forthcoming book and suggested an alternate subtitle for it. Still considering re-writing the conclusion but why mess with what works? The word count is tight and I just know that if I were to do that I'd be at least 2k over what they want. I can just wait for the second edition, which they seem to think will happen. They know better than me! The second edition would be in 2028. 

I sold my PS5 to my good friend and shipped it off. It didn't feel weird at all; it felt good! I realized that in a shared house you can't play a TV dedicated console ever. Plus the only thing I used it for was playing Fallout 76, a prior gen game. Once No Man's Sky allowed cross save, I moved everything to Steam and said by to it. Maybe I'm too old for consoles? I am eagerly looking forward to the new Pokemon game on Switch though.

Regularly making two 45 minute podcasts a week and it's fun. I realize I can just kind of chat about ideas and it is pretty good quality. You don't really need much in terms of a producer role. Podcasts are conversations!

Ok well that's the first attempt. Let's see how this next week goes. I wonder if I should arrange them around the Last FM conception of a week (Friday to Thursday). Kinda weird. Thoughts on this welcome!

Support the blog!