SRO

Today’s episode is all about audio.

I mean, the show is delivered via audio, so maybe they’re kind of all about audio in their own way, but this show is all about audio or audio adjacent topics.

Let’s do it.

Your daily Lex.

I, um, I’ve been working to whittle down on some of the wiring on my desk, Matt, how he had posted on mastodon in the past couple of weeks about eliminating all the wires of the visible wire clutter on his desk, uh, the wire clutter.

It’s a great site owned by the New York times, but so he was eliminating wire clutter and it pointed to a YouTube video that he saw that inspired him.

And, uh, he was going deep on.

All the different things that he did to do this involved, like drilling holes in your desk and mounting power strips on the underside of your desk and running things down the legs of your desk, et cetera, because of the way my desk is built in, I can’t do all the things that he’s doing.

I can do some of them and I, but it got me thinking about wanting to minimize some of the wire mess on my desk.

That’s coupled with, I have what turns out to be a fairly pricey, uh, USBC hub on my desk.

Um, I actually got it when I was working, uh, at a big company.

Um, and it was not a thing that they wanted back.

They said not to return it.

I had to return the laptop, had to return chargers, but keep that thing.

Uh, I think it’s maybe dying.

I don’t know, but sometimes my, uh, ethernet connection just dies.

Uh, but only when plugged into that thing.

And if I unplug and replug, it’s fine again.

Uh, and I was like, well, I have other smaller, less expensive, not powered, uh, USBC hubs.

Let me try one of those.

And those all seem to be working just fine.

And my ethernet does not drop out.

So I, as I was getting rid of that, I was looking at how I have this set of speakers, actually speakers recommended to me by Paul Kavasis.

Uh, and they plug into your Mac via USB, but they only use the USB for power.

Uh, they separately need to use, um, you know, the headphone output from your Mac to actually get the sound, which is their biggest weakness.

And I just didn’t like how the wires were stretching across my desk from this thing after a while.

So like, Oh, maybe I’ll use a home pod.

So today I was using a home pod to listen out, but from my Mac.

Great.

Um, the only problem was, uh, sometimes you want to be able to hear stuff in stereo, so like maybe I’ll order a second home pod, which I did.

Then I had a FaceTime call and the FaceTime was unusable because of the delay between the Mac and the wireless home pod, you can’t connect to home pod directly to your Mac.

It doesn’t work over USB.

It only works over AirPlay too.

Uh, and.

It kind of sucks that it’s totally unusable for zoom calls, uh, or FaceTime calls, uh, and it is totally freaking unusable.

And I was complaining about this, a Mastodon and, uh, uh, the, the kind Mastodon, I’m not stalling while I look it up, the kind Mastodon user, uh, Colin, who has his own Mastodon domain that he calls hoagie.fun.

Uh, he’s apparently in Philadelphia, but Colin was like, you should get this thing, uh, which I did.

Uh, so I have ordered now the creative stage air V2, which can use USB-C both for power and for transmitting audio from your Mac, you know, for, for carrying the audio from it, you get it.

So using the same cable for both power and audio, uh, helps on the decluttering side and, um, since it’s plugged directly in should not have the delay issue.

So that’s, that’s like a bonus topic that I was going to talk about.

I was even planning to get to, but it was just the thing that’s pissing me off.

I’m going to return the second home pod mini I ordered, I think, because I don’t need to own pod minis home pods mini if I’m anyway, you get it.

So, uh, anyway, there was that, but I also wanted to mention concerts.

I like going to concerts.

I don’t go to as many as you know, I might like, cause they’re expensive.

You gotta be a dad and you know, I’m not going to go with my kids to most of the concerts cause they don’t like the same bands as me.

Fine.

But, uh, you know, one of my, my all time favorite band is they might be giants.

And when they do concerts, they typically do standing room only venues.

And I’m six two.

I get to shows early a lot of times I want to be closer to the front and then inevitably somebody short will be behind me and they’ll be like, Hey, can I get in front of you?

And that’s a really tough one that I struggle with.

Um, if everybody keeps asking me to do that, uh, because I continue to be taller than many of the people behind me, um, as I move back, then eventually I’m in the very back of the audience and that’s, doesn’t seem fair.

Cause I want to be close and I want to, you know, uh, I got there early, maybe to be close.

And, uh, so I, I struggle with it.

So when people are behind me, it’s like, I know that you’re short and I am sorry that you’re shorter than I am, but, uh, what am I going to do?

I do slouch in movie seats, movie theater seats.

Cause I want to make sure that people behind me can see, I remember being a kid when I couldn’t see over the head of the person in front of me, that sucks.

Uh, but you know, it’s also a concert where you want to hear, I don’t know.

I struggle with it cause I don’t want to move, but I also don’t want to be a jerk.

Um, I was at the stone pony, the famed venue in New Jersey where Liam was playing.

And, uh, there was a, a woman who was actually like a decent distance waiver.

It was not a jam packed show, but she kept bumping into me with her arms, which was annoying.

Then as she bumps into me harder, I turn and this time it actually wasn’t her.

It was her daughter who was also an adult.

Cause this was a grandmother and the mother was coming up with a stool for, uh, her mother to sit on.

And she’s like, can I put this tool in front of you for my mother to sit on so she can have a better view?

And I was like, yeah, that’s fine.

It’s it’s not jam packed.

I can still see Liam just fine.

I can see over the mother standing or the grandmother.

I can see over the mother sitting.

So it’s fine.

So that one was okay, but it got me thinking about this SRO venue thing and how one handles being tall.

I don’t know.

I, uh, I don’t know.

I don’t know what the right answer is.

I just know that every answer I do feels wrong.

Not moving feels wrong and moving because a short person got there late also feels wrong.

So now, you know, happy Thursday.

Lex