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| 2024 | one thought at a time |


"Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.
(Ozzy Osbourne)


03 | March

28 | Two days ago, Affinity announced that it had been bought by Canva. Since then, they have been living a PR nightmare. After their CEO spouted the usual management gobbledygook about "synergies ... nothing will change ... bla, bla, bla...", users have been attacking them for shafting their loyal user base without which they would never have gotten as far as they did. Because they were not subscription-based, they became everyone's alternative to Adobe. Barely one day later, after all the massive backlash, they were forced to post "pledges" stating, f.ex., that perpetual licenses would remain, but - still - nobody believes them because they have seen it all before so many times and from the myriad of comments around the web, you can tell that people are seriously tired of these money-grabbing mergers. To understand where all the hate comes from, to have a good laugh and see what happened to tons of other companies, check "Our Incredible Journey."

27 | And, because I've highlighted some quotes these past few days, here's another one by Tom Waits I always thought was spot-on: "The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering."

26 | "You need wisdom to deal with information". That's the one thing people just refuse to understand. It is NOT and NEVER enough "to know where you can find something (on- or offline)", you need the background knowledge to be able to see the larger picture. If you don't dive into the history of problems, conflicts or, really, anything, you will never understand what anyone quickly shot from his or her hip the day, week or even year before. People and, indeed, our educational system over here, have dropped this fundamental approach to learning completely, and they are the worse for it.

25 | This quote sums up my feelings perfectly: "Back in the day we used the internet to escape from real life, today we use real life to escape from the internet."

24 | NASA is trying to fix Voyager 1. The fact that "[...] Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, it takes 22.5 hours for a radio signal to reach the spacecraft and another 22.5 hours for the probe’s response to reach antennas on the ground" doesn't exactly make the engineers' work easier.

23 | I just noticed that I have 2812 films at home and watched a lot more than that up until today. One might think I spent my entire life in front of a movie or TV screen, but I didn't. I just started early.

22 | Lol. In the past I would have needed me one of his creations, today I don't care. "How Ghana's top fantasy coffin artist has put the fun in funeral. Accra exhibition to celebrate work of Paa Joe, the master craftsman behind some of the most extravagant caskets in the world."

21 | As of today, "NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is on Unsplash."

20 | Many years ago I bought a Beyerdynamic T90, which I was and am a big fan of. The problem is that when compared to other headphones I have, the build quality just didn't hold up. The headband has disintegrated completely ... and there are no replacement parts for it. I wonder why renowned companies leave their customers out in the rain with defects like that.

19 | Here it is then, Rick Beato's anecdote-filled interview with George Benson, one of the greatest guitarists next to Wes Montgomery and Charlie Christian.

18 | Today I found out from my good friend, Dave K., that Michael Patrick Kling passed away far too early. We attended school together in Copenhagen, Denmark, and although I didn't have as much contact to Michael at the time, these kinds of news hit hard. In a reply to Dave, I wrote this:"We have a saying/proverb here which roughly translates as 'the impacts are getting nearer', meaning impacts of shells like in a war. What it means is that death always seems very far away until people near and dear to you, in your age group, or just friends and acquaintances start passing away. My dad talked about that a lot the last ten years or so. In the end, he and another guy were the only ones that were left from their time together as children/pupils nearly 75-80 years before."

17 | This evening, my wife's choir in Karlsruhe performed "Israel in Egypt" by Georg Friedrich Händel. A sold-out, wonderful performance. Of course, it wasn't video taped, but if want an idea what it was like, here's a performance by Thomas Hengelbrock & Balthasar Neumann Ensemble.

16 | I just read an article (only available in German) how difficult it has become for artists to not have their art stolen by random people to be sold on sites like "Shutterstock". In this case, Swiss photographer Stefan Forster suddenly saw his film material being used by a TV station that had licensed his clips from Shutterstock. The problem is that Forster never sold his material and never granted a license to anyone. But, as the Internet works today, he simply cannot find anyone to address his complaint to and going to court is simply too expensive. Those monster stock material sites know that and just shrug it off (= ignore any complaints completely).

15 | My answer would be "Yes!", but what do I know: "Setting the stage: Should there be an Oscar for title design?" Art of the Title’s Lola Landekic speaks to the graphic designers behind titles and posters for some of this year’s biggest films, exploring the process and changing landscape for these creatives setting the tone of films through typography.

14 | I thought this was fun to listen to: "'I'm a Barbie Girl', but in the style of 6 classical composers," by Joseph Castanyer. If you don't know this (absolutely horrible) tune, here's the original.

13 | One of my favorite websites (a private one that I'm not goping to link to) has announced that it will close down in early April. It was one of the last ones left from what I would call the "golden age" of websites and forums. Engagement has gone down considerably as people flocked to (absolutely useless) social networks. It's the way of the world ... but a sad moment in my internet "history". That website ran since the middle 1990s and a lot of knowledge will be lost forever.

12 | I can't remember if I linked to this before, but "In2White" is absolutely insane. The website has been online for quite a while and on any of my browsers, the text links don't work anymore, but the main attraction does ... just start zooming in ...

11 | Before the rabble arrived, the Internet actually used to be a nice place. It is absolutely insane what you can (or have to) read on social networks nowadays. Most people do not even have the tiniest fragment of a moral compass anymore.

10 | Lately, I have rediscovered a lot of music I overdosed on decades ago. George Benson, Michael McDonald, Harry Connick Jr., Randy Crawford, and many others recorded some excellent albums and, additionally, some excellent ones after I had abandoned them way back when.

09 | I don't know what it's like in restaurants in your country, but here in Germany space per guest is shrinking rapidly. I often wonder how a couple of normal-sized people can sit at a table which isn't much larger than an open magazine ... and about 10 inches away from adjacent tables. I avoid those kinds of restaurants like the plague.

08 | The new Judas Priest album, "Invincible Shield" is pretty damn good. The "deluxe" edition has three more tracks than the standard one. I hate when they do that on release day.

07 | This made me laugh: A compilation of 5 remastered Cerveza Cristal beer advertisements which originally aired in Chile in the early 2000s and were injected directly into the movies!

06 | I've run into some minor problems adapting to the DNS-changes my provider needs me to implement. If you are experiencing any problems, check back a couple of hours later and things should be OK.

05 | Here it is, Rick Beato's interview with one of my favorites, Michael McDonald. Close to two hours of interview goodness.

04 | Christopher Walken in Dune II? Not my cup of tea (although I love the guy). That's one actor I would not have cast in this film.

03 | I have just been reading up on the clusterf@ck that was the demise of JazzTimes, a magazine I used to read regularly years back. The short: it was sold to "BeBop Media" and landed in the hands of a lunatic who then managed to run it (along with other magazines he bought) into the ground in, what, a few weeks? I'm not going to link to any of it here, but if you can get your hands on the last two issues ... do! Those issues are better than any comedy programme that you can watch nowadays. Insulting your readers, crapping on anyone that worked on the magazine the previous 50 years, call all white people "gatekeepers", fire everyone, turn the design and writing department over to (unpaid) students, make fun of everyone who complained on X (formerly Twitter) and then ... disappear. That's the 21st century for you.

02 | I'm just listening to the new Albert Cummings album, "Strong" and am really enjoying it.

01 | March, April and May are not going to be much fun and I'm not looking forward to them. A solution for my mom is still far off, I need to continue with surgery on my teeth, my wife has a sh*tload of work coming up and, lately, I've had the feeling that a bunch of things will start to go wrong as they have several times these past many weeks, throwing sand into gears that are otherwise turning smoothly.


02 | February

29 | February was a difficult month because I spent days - if not weeks - tyring to find a solution for my mom who has problems staying in the house she lived in more than two decades. Music kept me going and this month I spent listening to, in no particular order, Hyperion's wonderful 86-CD series "The Romantic Piano Concerto" with lots of little-heard gems, lots of jazz records - especially piano trio recordings - released by the wonderful Japanese "Venus" label, Mosaic Records' fantastic "The Complete Pacific Jazz Recordings of Art Pepper", all 11 CDs of Clifford Brown's "Complete EmArcy Recordings", Philip Sayce's new release "The Wolves are Coming", the 2023 double-CD "Charlie Watts - Anthology" featuring his jazz recordings, Oscar Caceres 25-CD boxed set "Panorama De La Guitare" from 2018 by Erato/Warner, and the two Rival Sons albums from 2023, "Darkfighter" and "Lightbringer" (which could easily have fit on a single CD).

28 | In the early days of web development, I was an avid follower of various luminaries of that time. One of them was Molly E. Holzschlag, a person who always seemed to have time for this odd German guy who was a teacher and not a web developer. We clicked on many issues, especially on web standards that she was tirelessly promoting. I won't get into all the details, but we spent a lot of time talking online. Then Molly became very, very sick, frustrated and at times very angry. Still we talked on and off and I tried to lift her spirits a little here and there. Because months would pass between online conversations, I simply missed that she passed away far too early at 60 not so long ago. It was something everyone expected, but it came as a shock to me. Then I searched the web for obituaries and ... Eric Meyer's "Memories of Molly" and Meryl Evans' "In Memory of Molly E. Holzschlag, the Fairy Godmother of the Web" stood out. When I read around the various blog posts in memory of Molly, I felt a kind of sadness for a time long gone (and web standards that still don't exist today).

27 | Want to have another scary look into the future? "High-speed humanoid feels like a step change in robotics".

26 | I cannot overstate the glorious joy I felt when Google's AI turned out to be shit.

25 | The "AI Comic Factory" is a fun toy to play with and, depending on the story prompts you enter, it actually does a pretty damn good job.

24 | By now, Rick Beato has interviewed all three members of "The Police". The last interview, which just dropped a little while ago, is the one with the always quirky Stewart Copeland. Highly recommened. P.S.: Rick has interviews with George Benson and Michael McDonald coming up soon. I'm sure those will be stellar as well!

23 | You might have seen this already, but it is, to me, a very sad story, despite the dedication and the unwavering work ethic connected to it. Ken Fritz spent 27 years putting together what he considered to be the best stereo system / music room on this planet. He invested in excess of $1.2 million and put a lot of strain on his family, especially his kids. When he was finally done, he became very ill and had hardly any time to actually enjoy it. Ken developed ALS, passed away and all the equipment he had built and put into his music room was auctioned off for a fraction of what he had invested. I was reminded of the whole story when I came across this post on Aftermath, "What Happened To 'The World’s Best Stereo System'?" I would have loved to listen to some of my favorite LPs on his system.

22 | One of my important external hard drives died on me from one second to the next. I have backup redundancy baked into my strategy, but hard drives are so expensive nowadays that I don't feel like shelling out the cash for a new one just yet. Time for two days of "re-juggling" the contents of a shelf-full of drives. And, no, I don't have a noisy NAS system around my place. I'm old school.

21 | I had almost given up on any good films being released and then I came across "Zone of Interest". A film about "Rudolf Höss", the commandant of German concentration and death camps of Auschwitz, might not be your cup of tea, but every aspect of the film - sound, picture, editing, directing and acting - is excellent throughout. Very highly recommended ... if you can stomach the evil constantly present in the mundanity depicted.

20 | Windows 11 and its totally fucked-up update routines is such a total pain in the ass. I've had three updates stuck for days now and I wonder if it is all the Dorito dust raining all over the operating system every single time they touch it that gets in the way of the programmers doing their job. Total asshats.

19 | Taking care of business for my mom who has again had to deal with lots of problems recently.

18 | We love puzzles but don't attack the many we still have to do often enough. We both get caught up in whichever one is on the table and, of course, that is more than detriemntal to my wife's day job. "Dissected Maps: The First Jigsaw Puzzles" threw me down into that rabbit hole again, from John Spilsbury, who invented the damn things, all the way to a French couple currently tracing their work on a 40.000-piece puzzle over on Instagram.

17 | As you all know, I love Rick Beato's interviews with world-renowned (and any other) musicians. The more he publishes on YouTube, the more other musicians notice that it might be a good idea to actually be interviewed by him.Every single second of "Brad Mehldau: The Greatest Jazz Pianist of Our Generation" is an absolutely fascinating interview with someone who really appreciates the knowledgable questions and opens up completely.Today, "fake news", uneducated journalists, agendas and whatnot completely dominate the publishing sphere, but Rick Beato is the real deal. He really wants to know things, is genuinely interested, has himself a wealth of musical knowledge and respects the people he interviews.This one here is the epitome of what good interviews should achieve and Brad Mehldau has the eloquence to deliver.

16 | I hardly buy any CDs anymore. I used to love to buy good boxed sets at discount prices but, and the fact has been lamented by many people on the music forums I frequent, those times are long gone, What used to cost $50 costs $ 250-$500 nowadays ... and isn't worth that kind of money. So, I refrain. I have everything I need and I do not need to pour money into the pockets of overweight shareholders.

15 | I've reached the age at which one gets rebellious. Netflix, Disney and other streaming services have such devestatingly bad business plans that they are all beginning to afix thumbscrews to their users. Ads, price hikes, cancellations of formerly perfect subscription plans, etc. Cory Doctorow calls this "enshitification". I concur and have reached a point at which I just cancel ... to never return. Alas, most other people do the herd thing and just bow their heads and nod.

14 | I save random quotes here and there that rang true with me when I encountrered them and in light of recent worldwide developments, I think this one, which I pulled off Twitter months ago (I don't haver the source anymore and am too lazy to look), is pretty apt: "People can get desperate enough to want to blow things up and see where the pieces land."

13 | Before we went to Muncih, I decided to redo my entire CD collection, organizing it differently and (re)integrating (empty) boxes that had been stored in the basement. The result was that I had to move 14000 CDs altogether 7 (!) times until I was satisfied with the result. Today I noticed that I had made a mistake and had to go for the 8th round. Just call me "anal" (and send a postcard to Sigmund Freud's grave).

12 | This year, we were somewhat more adventurous in regard to eating well, and besides the obligatory visit to "Braunauer Hof", a Bavarian restaurant we frequent every single time we visit Munich, we enjoyed Afghan dishes at "Chopan" and original south-east Asian dishes at "Spicery," just a few hundred meters north of our hotel. Another restaurant we (= my wife) discovered just in time, was one called "Klinglwirt", a Bavarian restaurant with excellent reviews (Falstaff, etc.) and an authentic atmosphere to boot. Great place!

11 | The "Lehnbachhaus" is probably our favorite museum in Munich. "The Lenbachhaus collects, conserves, studies, and presents the art of the nineteenth century, the Blauer Reiter, the New Objectivity, as well as international contemporary art." This year, we really enjoyed their exhibition presenting Günter Fruhtrunk's early years in Paris (1954/1967). His geometric and colorful paintings from that era were absolutely spectacular.

10 | When in Munich, we always frequent a couple of department stores which are way better than anything else around Germany. "Ludwig Beck" has - by far - the best CD and LP department (plus a fabulous "Papeterie"), and "Oberpollinger" has an excellent small restaurant and a wonderful kitchen/china/etc. department. Both of those we spent plenty of time at.

09 | The trip to Munich went well, especially because we upgraded to a first-class ticket for next to nothing. In Munich, we have had a favorite hotel for nearly two decades now, "Holiday Inn Munich City Centre". It's not the best - but a very good - hotel in town, but it's situated perfectly so if the weather is bad, you don't need to "surface" at all. You can access the subway right from the hotel and reach just about any place of importance without getting your feet (or anything else) wet. Recently, they have renovated a large part of the hotel and we - again - felt very comfortable there. Home away from home ... and all of that.

08 | Very early tomorrow morning, we are going to head to Munich for four days to escape the carnival mayhem around here. So, until next Tuesday there won't be any updates but, when we return, I'll fill in February 9th to February 12th with the exciting things we did, found and bought there.

07 | Ian Stone: Israel vs. Palestine:"They all blame each other, don't they?
- 'You started it.'
- 'No! You occupied our land in 1967.'
- 'Well ..., well, we did that because you attacked us during the Six-Day War!'
- 'Well, the reason we did that is 'cause you were given our land by the British that was legitimately owned by us.
- And the Israelis go, 'well the reason we were given the land is 'cause of all the suffering of the Jews during the Second World War' and I thought ... 'Ah, fuck, it's the German's fault!'"

06 | Ian Stone: Multiculturalism Has Failed:"Suella Braveman, our home secretary, do you know about her? Oh. My. God. A woman who is making us pine for the halcyon liberal days of Priti Patel. Jesus, what is wrong with her? 'Multiculturalism has failed?' You ARE multiculturalism! You're Indian, married to a Jew and living in Britain! What the fuck is wrong with you?Suella Braveman wants to make this country so inhospitable that all those people on the boats won't wanna come. Now, I don't know if you know the five countries where most of those people come from, right, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Syria, Sudan and Iran. Do you think people from those five countries, people who cross continents, will be put off by not being able to get a doctor's appointment for a week and a half? Do you think they'll come sailing into Dover and 'WHAT? A BUS REPLACEMENT SERVICE? Oh no, I told you we shouldn't have come on a Sunday!'"

05 | Ian Stone: The Liberal Democrats:"The Liberal Democrats. I watched Ed Davey stand up at his conference and say 'The Liberal Democrats will fight organized crime!' And I thought, 'I think organized crime might win.' I was just imagining a load of Mafiosi in a basement 'OH NO, THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS ARE OUTSIDE! There's 14 of them. Oh, is it 15 now, is it 15? 15 OF THEM! Are they armed? - Yes, with righteous indignation!'"

04 | Ian Stone: American Elections:"Can I ask you a question about America? Don't you think American elections are far too important to be left in the hands of Americans?"

03 | Ian Stone: Rock Against Racism:"I did a march in London years ago, 'Rock against racism'.Some of the older people might remember that. Billy Bragg played, The Clash ... We marched from Hyde Park in the centre of London to Hackney! Yeah, some of you know, that is a long way. Honestly, half way through the march, I'm thinking, 'Well, racism isn't that bad! Can't we get a cab against racism?'"

02 | Ian Stone: Living in Britain:[speaking to a member of the audience]
"You like it in Britain? You like it here?
"Yeah, err, I do ... it's fine you know ... ".
What's your name, son?"
"Salim."
"Salim. Listen Salim. We think this country is shit. We just don't like to hear it from foreigners. You know what I mean? I mean, and it is shit. It is, isn't it? It is shit ... that's why comedy works in Britain, 'cause things are shit. And me and other comedians will get up on stage and go 'Hey, aren't things shit? And everyone sits there and goes 'Yeah, they're shit' and we'll have a laugh, don't we? You don't get decent comedy gigs in Switzerland, do you? People walking on stage going 'Hey, aren't the trains punctual?

01 | How about we start this month off differently? I'm a huge fan of Ian Stone, a comedian hailing from Britain and someone I discovered on Instagram. I love his positive vibe, the devilish grin he can put on and the banter he loves to get into with his audience. Here's the first one of several to come:Ian Stone: Chinese Spies:
"'The Chinese are listening to our phone calls'. Are they? I couldn't give a shit. Most of my phone calls are just ordering Chinese!"


01 | January

31 | Note: I've had some trouble posting these last 10 days or so. The backend of this website is undergoing some major changes, all of which are a pain in the neck for me to adapt to and involve a lot of repetitive and moronic work.

30 | As regular readers know, I've been a fan of Stephen King's work since things really took off for me when I bought (the hardcover of) "IT" ages ago. I never bought hardcover copies of his books before "It" because the prices were and are just way out there (SK fans are generally nuts). From March onward, some of the classic HC titles will be reprinted by Hodder & Stoughton (UK): "Hodder to Publish 50th Anniversary Classic Edition of Stephen King's 'Carrie' in March of 2024 with New Introduction by Margaret Atwood."

29 | "Minibricks" makes some fascinating museum miniatures and realistic dioramas.

28 | In regard to yesterday's post, a brief update on the two series we watched, "Reacher" and "The Lincoln Lawyer" (both season two). In summary, we thought both were majorly lacking in comparison to their respective first seasons. The stories were "meh" and the character development / portrayal often did not work. They weren't a total waste of time, but ...

27 | For a short while, I thought - just for the fun of it - I would add two pages to my website entitled "currently listening to ..." and "currently watching ...". After a couple of posts, I've decided to remove those two pages again because I started using images that I grabbed from other websites and whose copyright I don't have. So, I decided against doing that kind of stuff which will eventually cause me major headaches.

26 | "Redesigning Cormac McCarthy’s Brutal ‘Blood Meridian’." Fascinating read.

25 | The little one that could: "After Three Years on Mars, NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter Mission Ends."

24 | The upcoming issue of Germany's major PC magazine will have a longer article outlining the problems with smart technology losing its smartness when its manufacturers switch off all cloud functions (because, usually, the underlying business plan sucked). It's happened a lot these last few years and we need laws to cover consumers who invested a lot of money into these devices.

23 | "Lee Sklar - 'The Interview' on Sunset Sound Roundtable"

22 | There's been lots of (both positive and negative) talk about this one: "T-Pain - On Top of the Covers (Live from The Sun Rose)". He's got "Don't Stop Believin" (Journey) and "War Pigs" (Black Sabbath) in there. Fun stuff.

21 | "Coca Cola - Masterpiece". Here are both the commercial and the "making of" videos. Great work!

19 | I've read lots about the death of Rock music these past many years, but this recent Rick Beato video featuring a conversation with Jim Barber (former A&R executive at Geffen Records), "How Corruption and Greed Led to the Downfall of Rock Music" outlines pretty well how it all went to shit end 90s/beginning 00s.

18 | I had never heard about this wonderful animated film from 2013, "Minuscule Valley of the Lost Ants", but I really enjoyed it. Great work!

17 | The "ice storm" wasn't worth writing home about from our perspecive, but a little north of here it caused a bunch of accidents for people who were "surprised" about it despite the media having talked about nothing else for nearly a full week.

16 | Great weather today although for tomorrow, weather services are falling over themselves to warn especially my part of the country about ice rain which, apparently, is supposed to hit us quite hard starting tomorrow morning. Should prove interesting. I'll take a photo if things come to pass.

15 | Time to get with the program. I think I'll give ChatGPT a try these next few weeks to see what it can do.

14 | We booked a trip to Munich again for a couple of days in the second week of February, just to get away from the carnival madness that grips entire parts of the country every single year.

13 | Ah, OK. That'll do it ... "Google wrote a ‘Robot Constitution’ to make sure its new AI droids won’t kill us."

12 | ... and while I was at the doctor's office I caught a stomach flue which is apparently going around the area I used to live in.

11 | Today I found out that my doctor of 28 years went into retirement on December 31st, 2023. She had told me almost two years before that it would happen "in the near future" and towards the end she only treated me and a few other regulars, but I was unable to thank her for her help in the end because I hadn't seen her since October of 2023. She quit, sold off her place and furniture and moved elsewhere.She was a fabulous general practitioner, a bit rough around the edges and very direct at times, which I appreciated, but I will be forever in her debt because where tons of specialists failed for nearly three years way back when, she needed a single weekend to diagnose those things that were wrong with me.I remember her telling me after my first visit and after I had spent an hour or more outlining those things that were tripping me up regularly: "Give me this weekend and let's meet on Monday morning. I need to do some reading and thinking".She then told me what she thought was wrong with me, sent me to three different doctors, each one a specialist in his field, and all three confirmed that she had been spot on (and wondered why the previous "specialists" hadn't caught those problems).It will be very difficult - if not impossible - to find a new doctor around my new place to replace her. She was an old-fashioned doctor with tons of general experience from a lifetime of treating patients and had a knack for seeing the "whole picture" the specialists were always reluctant to focus on (because, I assume, they simply didn't have the knowledge or will to do so).They don't make them like they used to. I'll miss her.

10 | I've added two new pages to my website, "currently listening to ..." and "currently watching ...". You can access then from the homepage. I thought I'd remove posts regarding music and films from my microblog and flesh out those two new pages as I go along. Note: I decided to remove those pages again (see my January 27 post).

09 | Uhm, in regard to yesterday's post, I have to agree with some critics I briefly quoted. As it stands now, in its theatrical cut, "Napoleon" is a rather disjointed epic which leaves quite a bit to be desired.I think I know how Ridley Scott ticks, as I have watched all of his films several times, and there's a coherent film in there which, I hope, will raise its head with the imminent director's cut.Historical accuracy aside (which you can't really find in this film either ... not that I expected it ... it's a film, not life), the theatrical version suffers from cuts (jump cuts, really) which don't make all that much sense unless you have read a ton about Napoleon, which I have.

08 | As usual, Ridley Scott got some nasty reviews for his latest film, Napoleon. Critics called it "flavourless", "Mr. Scott's Waterloo", a "misfire", a "belabored 158-minute movie", "dull", "plodding", "slow" and "underlit", and those are some of the nicer "accolades".If you have the time, check what critics said about the theatrical version of Kingdom of Heaven ... those were even worse. I remember when the director's cut was then "reappraised" by critics many years later, deemed excellent, and it has been one of my favorite films since that cut was released.Still, I'm really looking forward to watching the UHD version of Napoleon tonight or tomorrow.Today, I searched around for a director's cut of Napoleon and, indeed, Ridley Scott is hoping this 4+-hour version of the film will be streamed by Apple TV soon.

07 | Have you ever heard of Lucy? I came across her by accident just today and here are three videos you should watch, her first appearance on Channel 4's The Piano, her final performance at the Royal Albert Festival Hall on that same show and her playing Bach's Prelude in C at King Charles' Coronation concert. What a spectacular talent.

06 | Whereas Scandinavia and the whole north-east of Europe are already in a freezer with up to minus 44°C, the cold will also reach us next week, albeit with only around -5°C to -10°C. Finally, some cold (and dry) days coming up.

05 | One would have thought the "Loudness War" was over, but the 2023 reissues of the red and blue Beatles compilation albums in their new configuration show that it isn't. Whereas the LPs sound wonderful, their CD counterparts are squashed to death. Sad.

04 | Mobile Fidelity's SACD reissue of Van Halen's debut album is the best this album has ever sounded in the digital age. Their 45 RPM one-step double LP reissue of this album is also spectacular.

03 | It's about time. "2024 may be a year of reckoning for Apple’s $85 billion services business."

02 | Is this going to be a trend? "AI-created “virtual influencers” are stealing business from humans." "[...] Their emergence has led to worry from human influencers their income is being cannibalized and under threat from digital rivals. That concern is shared by people in more established professions that their livelihoods are under threat from generative AI—technology that can spew out humanlike text, images and code in seconds. But those behind the hyper-realistic AI creations argue they are merely disrupting an overinflated market. [...]"

01 | Happy New Year! Last night we had a spectacular 360° view from our roof terrace and the people around here apparently did not think much of the government's plea for fewer fireworks this yerar. They went the opposite way and lit up the sky, for hours.

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