Day 21, COVID-19 Lockdown

Monday.  13th of April.  21st day of stay-home orders.  Another three-quarter of an inch of rain yesterday afternoon; an inch and a half of rain for Easter Sunday.

Rain totals for Sunday, April 12, 2020

Starting out cold and sunny today, 29 and bright! SamTheDog woke the wife and I up at 4:30 this morning - not to warn of a threat, but so he could go potty.  I was able to get back to sleep, but not the wife, so she made coffee this morning.  A nice treat to wake up with the alarm, and smell freshly brewed coffee.

One of my unusual hobbies is collecting every mix and edition of the song, 'Relax', by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.  Currently, I have 30 mixes; a couple may be mistitled duplicates.  The record label was bad about calling different mixes the same name, and the only way you can tell for sure is by looking at the original vinyl.  I don't have the original vinyl for these; most came on CD or other means and are collected up in my digital audio collection.  Today, the wife brought it up again and I went and checked Discogs.com.  I found a new mix (Relax (Warp Mix)) - but it's unobtanium. I found a 2009 UK remix release with one copy available as a radio promo Cd-R and bid on it.  And I found a limited edition German CD-single with Relax (MCMXCIII).  Put a purchase request in on that CD.  If I get both of those discs in that will take my collection to 41 or 42 versions of 'Relax'.

All 30 mixes of 'Relax' by Frankie Goes to Hollywood I have.

German CD Single I put in to purchase:

And UK promo disc I put a (rather unfortunately high) bid on.  I will need to sell more motorcycle spares to cover this.

The seller of the German CD contacted me and we arranged payment and shipping. Impressive.  The Internet makes the world small.  I used Google Translate to (hopefully) clearly communicate with them.

(7AM,  Tuesday) Forgot to close this out last night; so, 

Warm Regards,
Your Scribe,
Will England

Turn off Shuffle in Tidal App

The Tidal app is excellent for finding and playing high quality streaming music.  It's a bit less intuitive when it comes to some of the controls - shuffle for instance.  When viewing an album, you have a large Shuffle button to tap - and that sets the playback to shuffle through all the songs in the album.  Great.  But what if you want to listen to the album in order?  No button found on the album page. 

How To Turn Off Shuffle In The Tidal App

To turn off shuffle for an album in the Tidal App, you need to go to the 'Now Playing' screen - tap the song playing at the bottom of the screen to get to the Now Playing screen.  There, you will find a Shuffle toggle:

Tidal Now Playing Screen, with Shuffle button toggle highlighted

Tidal Now Playing Screen, zoomed to play controls, with Shuffle button toggle highlighted

Tap the shuffle icon to toggle Shuffle on - or off.  White is On; faded grey is Off.

I had to look it up, so I thought I'd document how to turn shuffle off in the Tidal streaming music app.  Hope this helps you as well!

Will England

Introducing the LG G8 ThinQ - Sprint Product Ambassadors

A phone you don’t touch.  A phone with no speaker.  A phone that supports the fastest, widest LTE network.  The LG G8.  This is one amazing phone.  I’ve been using LG phones – and getting them for my family – for years, the G6, G7, v30, v40, etc. – and this one has features to outsmart and out work them all.    Running the latest QUALCOMM 855 chipset, supporting up to 2TB of storage for lossless audio storage and more.

The 6.1” screen itself is the speaker, combined with an integral bass chamber for low end reproduction, the sound from the LG G8 is nothing short of phenomenal for a handset.  But it really comes alive when you connect it to a high end set of Bluetooth headphones; the LG G8 supports the aptX protocol for high bitrate streaming to your Bluetooth devices.  Connect to the (still included!) 3.5mm headset jack and you experience lifelike surround sound in your headset.  The digital to analog converter remains best in class.  LG has partnered with Meridian, one of the big dogs in audiophile and high end audio, to tune the sound output on this phone, along with Dolby DTS:X 3D sound for the simulated surround from your headphones.

Once you buy this phone, you will quickly become a customer of Acoustic Sounds and HDTracks, two of the biggest vendors of high-resolution lossless audio.  You will find your old catalog of MP3’s start sounding tinny and find all sorts of new amazing music.  For the deep catalog, you can get great tracks from Bandcamp as well, again in lossless FLAC files.  Combined with the free subscription to Tidal that Sprint offers with their unlimited plan, you will rediscover your love for music with this phone, and find artists and tracks you’ve never heard before.  I’ve purchased over 480 new tracks, some 43 GB of uncompressed music since I started using the LG phones with their amazing sound quality!

Beyond the sound, the LG G8 offers touchless commands, super fast data speeds on the Sprint LTE network and a 6.1” edge to edge display using the latest in OLED technology for an immersive experience in movies, videos, games and more.  Stay tuned for demos and videos of the coolest new features of this brilliant phone!

• Will England, Sprint Product Ambassador
• Originally posted on the Sprint Community

The Product Ambassadors are Sprint employees from many different parts of the company that love technology. They volunteer to test out all sorts of Sprint devices and offer opinions freely to the Community. Each Product Ambassador shares their own opinions of these devices, therefore the information in this post does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Sprint. The PA's do not represent the company in an official way, and should not be expected to respond to Community members in an official capacity. #sprintemployee


Links to external vendors not sponsored by Sprint, nor endorsed by Sprint.  No compensation was received for any external content or downloads.

Gangnam Style - with lyrics

Ganganm Style has hit bigtime - it was on Good Morning America this week.  Nice to see KPOP and dubstep hitting the mainstream...  

Lyrics:

Oppa is Gangnam style
Gangnam style

A girl who is warm and humanle during the day
A classy girl who know how to enjoy the freedom of a cup of coffee
A girl whose heart gets hotter when night comes
A girl with that kind of twist

I’m a guy
A guy who is as warm as you during the day
A guy who one-shots his coffee before it even cools down
A guy whose heart bursts when night comes
That kind of guy

Beautiful, loveable
Yes you, hey, yes you, hey
Beautiful, loveable
Yes you, hey, yes you, hey
Now let’s go until the end

Oppa is Gangnam style, Gangnam style
Oppa is Gangnam style, Gangnam style
Oppa is Gangnam style

Eh- Sexy Lady, Oppa is Gangnam style
Eh- Sexy Lady oh oh oh oh

A girl who looks quiet but plays when she plays
A girl who puts her hair down when the right time comes
A girl who covers herself but is more sexy than a girl who bares it all
A sensable girl like that

I’m a guy
A guy who seems calm but plays when he plays
A guy who goes completely crazy when the right time comes
A guy who has bulging ideas rather than muscles
That kind of guy

Beautiful, loveable
Yes you, hey, yes you, hey
Beautiful, loveable
Yes you, hey, yes you, hey
Now let’s go until the end

Oppa is Gangnam style, Gangnam style
Oppa is Gangnam style, Gangnam style
Oppa is Gangnam style

Eh- Sexy Lady, Oppa is Gangnam style
Eh- Sexy Lady oh oh oh oh

On top of the running man is the flying man, baby baby
I’m a man who knows a thing or two
On top of the running man is the flying man, baby baby
I’m a man who knows a thing or two

You know what I’m saying
Oppa is Gangnam style

Eh- Sexy Lady, Oppa is Gangnam style
Eh- Sexy Lady oh oh oh oh