New Toys

NoCoPilot wrote:

"Alexa, raise the temperature to 68."

My thermostat has been disconnected from Alexa since the last software upgrade. Both still work, but they don't talk to each other anymore.

So this morning I "disengaged" the thermostat in the software, and looked EVERYWHERE for a routine to reconnect. Nada.

Then just now (a couple hours later) I got an e-mail from Mysa saying "we noticed your thermostat is offline" and giving me directions on how to reconnect. And it worked.

Big Brother is watching.

Yeah well it still doesn't work.  The Mysa app works.  The Alexa app sees the Mysa thermostat, and says they're "linked."

But I still can't control the heat with my voice.

Dunno why, dammit.

My old white MacBook (2008) is a dinosaur, still works 100% but runs such old software that almost nothing will run on it.  The Safari browser that it came with will work only on Google, Safari, and a couple other websites because it is so out-dated.  I have used the unit occasionally for playing DVDs in my lap -- that's why I bought it -- but it won't play Blu-rays and it would be nice if it did more stuff, like Pandora.

I looked up which was the last Mac laptop to include a built-in DVD drive and it was a 2012 model -- which is now officially "obsolete" and thus unsupported.  No reason to jump from one sinking ship to another.

To that end:

• Today I ordered an external Blu-ray drive that claims it'll work with iOS 10.7.  We'll see.
  
• I went looking for a version of Firefox that'll run. None of the official supported Firefox versions go back 16 years, but I found a "Firefox Legacy" site with a specially-modified version that'll run.  I'm still playing with it -- trying to find passwords I haven't accessed in 15 years -- but it looks promising
  

As a former computer tech, it's kinda fun to be running the latest & greatest (Mac Studio, running Sonoma 14.4.1) while simultaneously trying to re-animate one of the oldest products.  Maybe I need to look for a Mac+ or an Apple II.

Okay nice Pandora works really well with Firefox Legacy.  So does UD, although I cannot remember my password and can't figure out how to recover it. This old monster may have some life left in it afterall!

I tried hooking up one of my spare Apple Superdrives (CD, DVD) to the MacBook but they're not recognized.  In the fine print the Superdrives say they'll work on "any Mac without a built-in optical drive," so maybe that's why.

Probably the same deal with the BR drive (but it was only $40). I can always use it on the Studio (which has an amazing display screen).

NoCoPilot wrote:

Listening to an environmental recording this morning, using my Boomerang, and the stereo effect is quite remarkable.  You not only get a full-field left and right directionality, you also get a paradoxical up and down directionality.  There is no up and down information in the original music file of course, but because the tweeters face up in this thing and the woofer (bone conduction) faces down, you get height from your collarbone to your ears.  It's really an amazing illusion.

Dubbing another cassette, so I'm using my boomerang to listen to music off my iPad again.  The source is a pretty dense production, with some talking mixed in with the music.

On speakers the speaker pretty much disappears, lost in the thicket of sound.

On the Boomerang however, the sound field is horseshoe shaped, with the bass left and right resting on my collarbone and the treble meeting in the middle, about 6" higher, in the middle on my head.  Because of this distance the vocals are clearly audible, clearly distinguishable, and clearly discernible.  Quite remarkable, the 3-dimensional definition of this Boomerang thingy.