Winding down the year by looking back at the tech that’s made me happiest.
Published work, shop talk, and stray thoughts.
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Fubo’s cheaper plan, YouTube TV’s price hike (Cord Cutter Weekly)
If you have no interest in watching regional sports networks, Fubo no longer requires you to pay for them.
The post Fubo’s cheaper plan, YouTube TV’s price hike appeared first on Cord Cutter Weekly.
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Sure, what the heck, let’s try reviewing the yacht rock documentary
Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary on HBO is good in the way that yacht rock itself is good: Relaxed, easy-to-digest, and more insistently about the music than you might expect.
It’s also delightfully pedantic, clarifying from the jump that the name “yacht rock”—bestowed retroactively on the genre by a send-up web series from the late aughts—does not reference what you might queue up while sailing, but rather the expense and sophistication apparent in this music’s production.
It also establishes that Steely Dan is not so much yacht rock as it is the progenitor. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker’s studio craftsmanship and deployment of jazz harmony—plus the specific session guys they enlisted to achieve their vision—wound up seeding the genre. Most of the film is spent retracing the connections between artists like Michael McDonald and the brothers Porcaro while defining the specific sound they created. (One of its pithier observations: The lyrics, in which lovelorn men speak of their follies and foolishness, were trailblazing in their vulnerability.) It concludes by charting a path to the future, in which yacht rock hits turned up in hip-hop samples and ultimately inspired the likes of Thundercat and Questlove, but only after MTV rendered the genre obsolete.
Like any documentary, the omissions in Yacht Rock are as notable as the inclusions. This isn’t Behind the Music, so almost zero attention is paid to the musicians’ upbringings and personal lives. And while the film acknowledges that music from Black artists inspired the genre, it gives only a cursory nod to those who also made music within it, like George Benson and Al Jarreau. Distinguishing between Black and white yacht rock might be a study unto itself.
What you get instead is an obsessive focus on what makes the highly particular sound of yacht rock worth celebrating nearly five decades later. It has nothing to do with nautical attire and sunglasses.
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New guides and tutorials to check out (Advisorator)
I’ve updated Advisorator’s guides section so you can more easily browse by topic.
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Bandcamp Friday haul (12/6/2024)
- Nate Smith: Kinfolk 2: See the Birds
- Kamasi Washington: Fearless Movement
- Cory Wong: Power Station (Deluxe Edition)
- Cory Wong & Dirty Loops: Turbo
- Yeo: Desire Path
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Samsung TV tips and an Apple TV take (Cord Cutter Weekly)
I now have a Samsung TV in my basement and am figuring out how to make the most of it.
The post Samsung TV tips and an Apple TV take appeared first on Cord Cutter Weekly.
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Turns out the definitive harmonic analysis of Crash Test Dummies’ 1993 radio hit “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” can be found on … Ubisoft’s Rocksmith website? https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/rocksmith/plus/news-updates/4LocpYK6pH3nkS3eZxT63o
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For the Love of God, Visit Someone’s Website
Yep, I’m riffing on Gita Jackson’s excellent Aftermath piece, “For The Love of God, Make Your Own Website,” encapsulated here:
Unfortunately, this is what all of the internet is right now: social media, owned by large corporations that make changes to them to limit or suppress your speech, in order to make themselves more attractive to advertisers or just pursue their owners’ ends. Even the best Twitter alternatives, like Bluesky, aren’t immune to any of this—the more you centralize onto one single website, the more power that website has over you and what you post there. More than just moving to another website, we need more websites.
If you have the technical wherewithal, you should definitely make a website, even just a static one using Blake Watson’s most excellent HTML for People guide.
But whether you make a website or not, the essential corollary is to visit other people’s websites, directly and intentionally, or at the very least via an RSS reader. Take some of the time you’d normally spend scrolling through social media, and spend it on people’s websites instead. Let yourself fall down a rabbit hole of links again and remember what it was like to discover a new part of the web.
Here are some off-the-beaten-path websites I’ve been digging:
- Virtual Moose: Neat indie games and links to other parts of the indie web.
- i am a rat: An unusual indie game recommendation every day.
- GamingOnLinux: A scan-the-headlines kind of site with a lot of informative game launch news whether you have a Steam Deck or not.
- The Hiro Report: Weekly apps and tech recommendations in a breezy style.
- App Addict: Indie app recommendations for Mac and iOS (but mostly Mac).
- Morning Music: Daily songs with an emphasis on jazz fusion and smooth jazz, a lot from from Japan.
- Pinstripes Nation: Reminds me of Apple news reblogs that were so prevalent back in the day, but for New York Yankees news.
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Your laptop CPU cheat sheet (Advisorator)
If you want to go down a tech rabbit hole that leaves you utterly confused, try understanding what processor you’re getting in a Windows laptop.
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How I turned my blog into a social media hub (FastCo)
Tools like Micro.blog help you post on your website, syndicate to Bluesky, and more.
A few months ago, I decided to start blogging again.
– https://www.fastcompany.com/91235471/how-i-turned-my-blog-into-a-social-media-hub?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss
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Black Friday deal edition (Cord Cutter Weekly)
A quick roundup of ways to save on streaming right now.
The post Black Friday deal edition appeared first on Cord Cutter Weekly.
