Out With the Old, In With the New

I go way back with music on Apple devices; I owned multiple iPods going back to the iPod classic (Click Wheel), ripped 600+ physical CDs, and I joined the iTunes store in October 2003.

(Why yes, I do have 27 years of personal email archives.  Doesn't everyone?)

Today, the Library has 9,608 items using 68 GB.

This relationship has not always gone smoothly. I distinctly remember years ago after a software upgrade of my iOS device or MacOS, my iPhone had Biblical performance issues when initializing. When moving from iTunes to Apple Music, Apple broke automatically adding user ringtones to devices, and since 2015 the push for Apple Music over Libraries of user owned music has driven me nuts for years.

Consider my current iPhone settings:

Note how Apple Music is clearly set to not show.  (And no, I don't belong to it!)

However, in the actual Music App, search still shows an entire screen full of selections from Apple Music:

Quite frankly, I have no idea what the "Do Not Show Apple Music" toggle does at all.

This week, I finally sufficiently got sick of accidentally searching Apple Music instead of my own Library that I did a little research and found the iOS app Marvis Pro.  

Marvis Pro:

• reads (and updates) the user's music Library synced by the MacOS Music application.
• favors the user Library over Apple Music.
• has more powerful display options:
• displaying more information about tracks and playlists
• (for example) setting any playlist to display as Albums, not individual tracks,
• sorting
• works with various functionality in the Apple Watch Music Apple and other Bluetooth devices (like our Audi A4) to play music.  (This is similar to other apps like Spotify and Podcasts)

Now, if I could just tell my iPhone to never open the Apple Music app again …

Field Expedient Hardware Modifications

 The MINI Cooper S has a never needed its Sport Mode (just keep the manual gearbox in second gear), and the Audi has also has one I do use on the Ramp of Chaos (Washington Route 202 onto Washington Route 522 West). Some of the more witty plush creatures around here think the new chairlift needs one for when I'm in hurry.

Nope. Nope. Nope.

I offer you exhibit one of what can go wrong:

A Software Safari in the Land of Intel

I think I seriously Crossed the Streams … and I liked it.

My favorite Tetris game is from the ~1990 MS Best of Entertainment Pack for Windows 3.x. It runs well on Windows 98 SE and even on Windows 7, but forget about it about on Windows 10. (Windows 10 doesn't do 16 bit apps.)

Unfortunately, I haven't had a machine on my desk which will run Windows 98 (real, virtual, or emulated) since I switched away from my Intel-based iMac to the Mac Studio two years ago.

Until now. (And no, I didn't buy an obsolete Intel box on EBay.)

The x86 emulator Bochs is described as the slowest of the popular emulators because it's the most accurate; I'll take that trade off. I installed Bochs on a Raspberry Pi 4B. Suffice to say having the 4B emulating processors popular 26 years ago (~12 iterations of Moore's Law) might be heavy lifting, but the machine is up to it.

So I now have Tetris (and Solitaire and …) on Windows 98 SE on an emulated Pentium MMX host on Bochs on X Windows on Linux on an ARM single board computer. I actually installed most of the games I had in CD images on disk; testing will continue. :-)

Footnote: The 2 GHz 8GB Raspberry Pi 4B with a 512 GB SSD is the size of 5 stacked CD classic jewel boxes.

Riding the Rail

The stairlift has proved useful. I wasn't sure it would, but two  round trips on it downstairs & back for meals me left feeling me less drained than I have been lately.  

In other words, it was not a really expensive mistake!

The top to bottom trip takes 105 seconds, I timed it when remotely parking it to charge in the front hall for the night. 

That space in the front hall will normally be more out the way than the landing park/charge space (even after they move it), but if we have actually have people using the front door that will change *real* quick.  

(It also can park/charge just outside my office, but that's only good if Katherine doesn't need the stairs. That works tomorrow morning, when she's gone to Aikido for five hours.)

MIssed it by that much!

The Stairlift is installed, inspected, customer ridden … and wrong.  

Per the diagram, when charging the chair on the landing it is supposed be almost in the corner, inline with the bottom half of the stairwell (effectively under the window in the photograph below). 

The charging station is actually almost in the exact middle of the landing, directly across from the center railing/pony wall.  In other words, it's a choke point. (It failed the laundry basket test.)  

I can't sign off on it (and thus will be locked out of it) until we have this resolved (or have a binding promise of same).

UPDATE: We paid ~86% of the total and I signed off on it.  They will be back next week to move the charger.

Stairlift as Designed With Offset Charge Station on Landing

Stairlift as Installed with Centered Charge Station on Landing

It's Here! It's Here!

The stairlift is being installed as I type. It's uglier than I expected. Mostly, it's heavier construction than I  anticipated (which is a good thing) and is effectively freestanding; it gets screwed to the stairs not to support it, but to simply keep it from shifting.

(When The Bomb gets dropped, you can add the stair lift along with Cockroaches & Keith Richards to the list that will be still be around afterwards.) 

Almost … almost

The dumb waiter (AKA the stair lift) should arrive at the vendor (Mobility Concepts Inc.) today; they called this morning and scheduled the install for next Friday, the 13th. They start at 8 AM; it should be all installed and inspected by the state at ~ 1 PM.