Dave Garrett

http://popvssoda.com/ A perennial topic of discussion in our house, as my wife is from Missouri, where "pop" has a comfortable lead over "soda", whereas in this part of Texas, "coke" is used as a generic term by a significant majority of folks.

Going on a school outing to see the Freedom Train when it made a stop here. http://www.freedomtrain.org/american-freedom-train-home.htm

Reading this, I'm reminded of nothing so much as Joe Bussard complaining that everything recorded after 1933 sucks. It would be foolish to expect everyone to fully appreciate Prince, but music isn't a zero-sum game, and I'm personally glad that there's room for both Prince and J. J. Johnson in my collection.

Saw this on another forum when someone in Detroit mentioned the upcoming screening there. It's getting a wider release on May 1 after several festival screenings over the past couple of years. More info at http://www.rahsaanfilm.com/

Ran across this video on Facebook of a 1990 soundcheck in Osaka, and thought it was a very interesting contrast to many of the other videos that have been circulating since Prince passed: https://www.facebook.com/steve.purcell.14/posts/10208003651783349

Ran across this blog post from 2012 containing a bunch of flyers from AACM gigs in the 1970s, and thought there would be some interest here. Couldn't find any previous posts mentioning this. http://gemsofjazz.blogspot.com/2012/10/great-black-music.html

Not sure about a two-sided recordable DVD, but I've used dual-layer blanks before in such instances. ImgBurn used to be great for dual-layer burning, as it will suggest several places where the layer change could go and allow you to select the optimal one. Unfortunately, I can no longer recommend ImgBurn when it comes to good freeware for DVD burning, as the last version of the installer that's out there appears to have been infected with malware for some time now.

It wasn't just the playoff run last year that was an issue, it was the combination of the (unexpected) playoff run and other events that they'd already committed to. As part of reworking the project plan, they almost certainly assumed a deep playoff run this year and presumably haven't scheduled any other events that might impact the renovation timeline.

I was pulling for Villanova, but the game turned out to be much better than I expected. And although the way they won it will probably not erase 1983 from the highlight reels whenever the topic of buzzer-beaters comes up, Jenkins' ice-cold dagger certainly won't dredge up unpleasant memories in the future the way Lorenzo Charles' dunk does.

The remastered Dick Van Dyke DVD set uses the same transfers that the Blu-ray set did, just in SD rather than HD. It's "remastered" only in comparison with the older DVD sets that were previously released. The question has been asked more than once as to who's going to pay twice the cost of the Blu set to get the new DVDs. Even if you don't have a Blu-ray player already, you could buy one and the Blu set for less than the cost of the new DVDs. Dick Van Dyke is one of the shows that was filmed on 35mm film, and the Blu-rays look amazing.

That's just one piece of the center field renovation that's planned. They opted to postpone the renovations another season because they weren't going to be able to get everything done before the home opener this year. The timeline got shortened due to last season's playoff run and some other events that had previously been scheduled for the park.

Astros social media folks having some fun after their opener with the Yankees was rained out today at Yankee Stadium:

Got an email today about another Black Saint sale at Import CDs, this time including the most recent batch which were released last November (those are 42% off suggested retail): Black Saint sale

Certainly listened to "Karn Evil 9" and the like a fair amount when I was growing up, but was also a fan of his pre-ELP work with The Nice. RIP.

From last night's Late Show with Stephen Colbert:

It is indeed the same set, repackaged in a "fatboy" 4-disc jewel case; I'm guessing the booklet is likewise a smaller version of the one in the longbox. The longbox set is the one I remembered as being considerably more expensive. When I realized the newer one was a different version, I initially thought it was one of those overseas PD releases, but a quick trip to Google to research the label it was issued on (Gusto Records) revealed that they're a Nashville-based outfit that owns the King catalog (as well as the catalogs of Starday, Musicor, Federal, and several other labels). The Amazon seller appears to be the label itself, as the note that was included with my copy was on King letterhead and included a kingrecords.com contact address. I also got a complimentary cassette - Groove Power: The Best of 80s R&B.

True, but I'd bet not many of them have been given almost ten years after an honorary Oscar (Morricone's was awarded in 2007).

Had that one on my list for quite a while, but last time I checked it was significantly more than that.

Plex Media Server automatically transcodes FLAC/ALAC files to mp3 for streaming to mobile devices, but it doesn't allow you to stream uncompressed. Still, it might be one part of a solution if you had something else to handle the lossless streaming. Plex's inability to stream FLAC/ALAC without transcoding to a lossy format has been brought up before, but the developers indicated that changing it was a pretty low priority that wasn't likely to see the light of day any time soon. Probably understandable since my impression is that a lot more people (myself included) are using it to manage video files than audio files.

Not a universal remote, but if you have a smartphone, Roku has a very nice remote app available for both iOS and Android.

PM with question.

Damn Few Left

I use a multi-button Logitech wireless mouse with a scroll wheel, and apparently something in Logitech's software doesn't always play nice with Chrome (or vice versa), as the zoom level occasionally increases or decreases at random on the page I'm currently viewing. It doesn't seem to be related to whether I'm using the scroll wheel or not, and it doesn't happen with any other browser but Chrome. I gave up after attempting to troubleshoot it for a while and just learned to live with it. In Chrome, switching back to the default page size is a one-click task, so it's more of a minor irritant than anything else.

Well yeah, there's a much longer list of lottery winners who've either gone bankrupt or died a premature death than those who've actually invested their winnings successfully. I was looking at it from the standpoint of what I'd do, not so much what others have done. I agree there are a lot of variables to consider, but I don't think it would be that difficult to beat inflation. I also think one has to consider the risk of the lottery (or the state) becoming insolvent or otherwise curtailing payments at some point during a 30-year timeframe, as recently happened in Illinois.