Bzangy Groink

Category: Geek

  • I Know You’re Out There…

    LHC: “BRANE AND BRANE! WHAT IS BRANE?” #HandtooledNicheMerriment

  • The Fairchild Story

    Over the last few years, my lawyer and I have tried to find someone to do the Fairchild Semiconductor story but nothing. I really feel it could be a brilliant true-life drama series because, as you know, the story has sooo many fantastic characters and plot points. Ahh, maybe one day, a lavish Apple series…

  • Where Everybody Knows Your Name

    shitposts comes back a few days later to bizarre epistemological arguments between commenters to said shitpost The level of geekery/pedantry on Mast is simultaneously the most charming thing ever and also the most enervating. I really hope alien anthropologists are storing all our nonsense away somewhere. It’ll be a cute exhibit when we’re gone: here…

  • Vocab Owl? Voca Bowl? Vo Cabowl?

    Whatever, I got this: No, I’m not Stephen Fry because I’m against genocide and babies being bombed. Anyway, test your wanky wordniness below. https://vocabowl-870366514258.us-west1.run.app

  • Black Ice Ahead

    Hey, are you NOT feeling paranoid today? Boy, have I got the solution: And I was thinking… …we don’t have AI at the moment. We have some stuff that’s maybe approaching the processing an individual ant does but nothing even approaching an ant colony. BUT somewhere, someone is working on real AI. And when they…

  • Fission Hates Swedish Indiepop

    In other news – after wasting my afternoon, I can now tell you that Rogue Amoeba’s Fission destroys metadata from audio files. I was trying to transfer the above from an old CD rip I did I can’t remember when. And my rips were in APE format. Roon doesn’t play APE, but it will play…

  • Wild? I Was Livid!

    I hate clicking a link and it leads to a paywall or Medium or some other anomic nonsense… BRING BACK BLOGS! (and, yes, I realise a lot of us have had them since the ’90s and still post on there – I’m about to copy this to mine.) (bzangy.com, thank you for asking)

  • Geekaroony

    I love Roon for credit-diving. Give me proper old-school album liner notes vibes. <3 oh yeshhhh mmmmmmm … KRSpy

  • Instagram Is Dead, Long Live Pixelfed!

    (This was to Evan on Mastodon)I had a beautiful moment the other day, Fediverse-related. I was scrolling through Pixelfed and I had this weird moment of deep, deep deja-vu. And I realised it was because it felt like old Insta, pre-Zuck Insta. No ads, no bullshit. So, I wanted to thank you [Evan Prodromou] and…

  • Bezos Is A Bond Villain

    Yup, you’re not paranoid – they are out to get you. I’ll be 60 this year. I grew up with Commodore PETs, BBC Bs, Dragon 32s, Orics, Spectrums, TRS80s. And on the OS side, CP/M, GEM, BeOS, OS/2 Warp. A time of huge diversity, it seemed like everyone was starting something. Look around now.

  • Prose About Cons

    In 2026, I’m gonna go to more #cons and do more #cosplay. I had some amazing times at #DestinationStarTrek before Paramount nuked Euro cons. I’d like MORE!

  • Mishra’s 80% Rule

    During a gentle convo on Mastodon, I had to define where I stood on the hive mind of Pluribus, the new AppleTV show. This is where I believe Mishra’s 80% Rule applies. Which is that 80% of people are twats. Not the same people all the time, it varies. So, when you get onto an…

  • Totally Predator

    I’m still really chuffed that Dan Totally Rad Show, #DanTrachtenburg, is now Dan Totally Brilliant Director Of Prey, Black Mirror, The Boys etc. ? The only warm geeky feels I can compare it to is when #ComputerChronicles used to be hosted by #GaryKildall.  #CP/M #DOS #CLIs 

  • Open Broadcaster Software

    How fucking amazing is #OBS ? If you’ve ever used it, bung them some money here: https://obsproject.com/contribute OpenBroadcasterSoftware #Twitch #YouTube

  • Beekeeper Unleashes The Bees

    In *today’s* #WatchDogsLegion was a prophecy, not a video game:  (Source: Vice)

  • Take My Money!

    I always marvel at how bad capitalists are at making money. I would THROW money at people offering city packs DLC for Watch Dogs Legion. The same as I want to buy #TheYearMyVoiceBroke on Blu-Ray, but nope. And it’s not on any legit download service I use. And, yes, I could pirate it but I…

  • More On Mint

    (Replying to someone on Mast about Linux Mint.) Honestly, it’s the best experience I’ve had with any Linux, going back decades. I’d always bung one (like a Red Hat or a Suse) on a PC to fiddle, get frustrated and then stick Windows back on. But Mint is sooo slick, sooo user-friendly and so… invisible?…

  • Another World Is Possible

    Just think how gaming might have been if Halo hadn’t been such a huge Mac hit? What if Bungie hadn’t been a Mac-based company? What if Myth or Marathon had ended up on that thing M$ nearly made, that Direct X crate?  Crazy, innit?  Anyway, neither could have beaten the Nintendo Playstation, eh? 

  • Kobo Rules!

    Even leaving aside the evil of Bezos / Amazon, the Kobo Libra Colour just trounces Kindles. Sooo much better, wish I’d switched years ago! Hmmm… here’s my thoughts so far. I think the screen for pure b&w (well, let’s be honest, it’s dark dark grey on light grey as it’s eink) is better than my…

  • The Tech Priest Caste

    I had LG phones for ages, always pinging the back off to swap a dead battery with a spare I’d brought along. What, exactly, is so unwieldy about that? Don’t ever get me started on Apple’s omission of micro SD slots. ? I feel like Apple are reacting as a glom of separate organs, all…

  • My Dream Computer

    Okay, I am a comp tech idiot, here’s my “design” for my dream computer, which I’ve obviously nicked: It has a shitload of USB Cs on the back, both to power it and to interface. Has a built-in rechargeable battery. Sends its picture out over wireless HDMI. All the normal WiFi, Bluetooth shit. Comes with…

  • Headmusic

    I know some people can choose to hear music in their heads (no external input) and some can’t.  What I’d love to know is how detailed is the music you can hear, if you can hear it?  I feel that as the decades have rolled by and I’ve recorded more music, my headmusic has become…

  • Hexadecimal Vibrato

    Every now and then, I look at trackers and then I come to my senses and then go nope.  More power to you if you like your vibrato values in hex but very, very nope.  I mean, they’re a step forward from the MC4 and 8 but that’s about it.  #DAWs #Sequencing #CVGate #MIDI 

  • The Computer Chronicles

    Remember those telly days when the bloke who invented CP/M would just be on air, casually chatting about dot matrix printers and this crazy new thing called MIDI?

  • More Llama Power

    If you *are not* doing beatmixing, the best DJing platform ever is: WINAMP 2.73 + a shitload of plugins and then whack Milkdrop over the top of it all.

  • Own Your Kindle Books

    I spent way too long last night downloading my Amazon Kindle books but it feels good to know that I do actually own them now, whatever shit Bezos gets up to in the future.  Amazon are stopping this kind of backup on the 26th so protect your precious books while you can!

  • The End Of Star Trek Prodigy

    I just shed a little tear because I am going to miss #STProdigy. There were some truly great bits of Trek in there and I like that it kept the original utopian Roddenberrian vision going. I’d rate it below #StrangeNewWorlds but slightly above #Discovery and way, way, waaaaay above #Picard in terms of #NuTrek

  • Don’t Sign Up With Surfshark

    Fuck me – trying to get a refund from #Surfshark is a complete pain in the arse. They have a retention squad as determined as #VirginMedia. I would thoroughly NOT recommend them to anyone based on the insane amount of captchas when you use them and the ‘free trial cancel easily’ is not true. They…

  • Teenage Engineering K.O. II

    So, today, this wonderfully stupid doodad arrived: And, after a little confusion cleared up by watching this vid: … I got into fun mode and I’ve been dicking around on it since I got home from Cafe Palestina. It’s huge fun and the built-in speaker makes all the difference. As soon as I have to…

  • RIP Gordon Moore

    Very sad to hear of the passing of Gordon Moore, the originator of Moore’s Law and one of the founders, along with Bob Noyce of Intel. Here’s both of them in 1960 along with the rest of the Traitorous Eight, the founders of Fairchild Semiconductor.

  • Linux Is MINT!

    Apologies if this is a repeat post – I’ve been a bit brain foggy today. BUT I’ve now been running LinuxMint on my 2011 MacbookAir for a couple of weeks and it’s BRILLIANT! The laptop is once again snappy and responsive and the whole gooey is, frankly, lovely. If you’ve got old comps that aged…

  • Re-Installing OSX Lion Eleven Years Later

    Hooo boy – re-installing Lion on a 2011 #MacbookAir is *not easy!* The laptop can’t do it via network because, apparently, Apple let some file certificates lapse in 2018. You have to dl a Lion install, open up the pkg and fish out InstallESD.dmg, THEN burn that to a USB stick with Balena Etcher Wish…

  • Enormous SSD

    New Macbook Pro means new backup drive… Every now and then, I have to stop and think, “I’m storing four terabytes of data in a stick of chewing gum.” What a world.

  • Fairchild Semiconductor Pitch

    Fairchild Semiconductor is a soundtrack album I wrote for a TV show that does not exist. Yet. We do not live in a universe where there’s a lavish TV series about Fairchild Semiconductor. But we should and I want to do my utmost to make that universe this one. When I first learned the Fairchild story, it…

  • Star Wars Fan Art

    More Midjourney tomfoolery, this time to generate some dogfights and laser battles from one of my fave sci-fi universes. PEW! PEW! PEW!

  • Tekkonkinkreet Fan Art

    I love Tekkonkinkreet, it’s one of my fave ever films, not just fave animes. So, I generated these with Midjourney to help remind me of that awesome world. I wish I could visit it. Maybe in the future, when some Midjourney descendent can render real-time 3D VR?

  • Promoting With Midjourney

    I made my mate Hazz some logos for her gig promotion company. I used Midjourney AI for the backgrounds and Canva for the text.

  • Did Midjourney Just Communicate With Me?

    It’s only a matter of time now, people. And let’s face it, our silicon children couldn’t do a worse job with planet Earth than we have.

  • When I Invented Silent Gigs / Discos

    Have a look at this interview from March 1997: (Source: New York Times) If you look up Silent Disco on Wikipedia, you get this: In May 2002 artist Meg Duguid hosted Dance with me… a silent dance party at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago where she created an outdoor club installation complete with velvet ropes and glow rope…

  • Why Your iPhone Should Cost £44 Million Pounds

    I was chatting with my niece about the London Science Museum and I said that my fave exhibit is the Cray X-MP. She’s just got a brand-new iPhone 12 so I thought it might be fun to compare their stats. This is the result: I’m quite surprised Apple don’t charge that much.. 😛

  • Asterpoops

  • The Genius Of Turing

    (In response to a thread on Tumblr) The appalling homophobic hatecrime that was carried out by the British government against Turing must never be forgotten.  If you really want to delve into Turing’s life and also realise the horrendous extent of the straightwashing surrounding his history / erasure from history, please, please read this book: …

  • Cyberpunk 2077 – A Review After Playing for 130+ Hours

    Well, I finished it. It had a nice, elegiac ending. It’s such a mixed game. For the graphic designers, I’d easily give them 11/10 as there’s so much work and love gone into every little detail of the game. It’s just sad a lot of it takes time to rez in or disappears in front…

  • My First Stream

    So, now I can officially say that I am a STREAMER. Two hours of me chatting rubbish and mucking around with synths – I don’t think Netflix will be calling me just yet. And, for some reason, I muted ALL AUDIO for the first 23 minutes. I apologise to the three people who stumbled across…

  • Cyber.Cafe

    I appear to be disappearing down a ’90s nostalgia rabbit hole. I used to LOVE cyber.cafe – so much so that I chose to go on this show instead of the hugely popular TFI Friday. I mean, that kind of says it all, doesn’t it?

  • Computer Chronicles 1990

    This fine morning, why not keep abreast of the news from THIRTY YEARS AGO! APPLE ARE SUING MICROSOFT! BUT WINDOWS 3.0 IS COMING, EVERYONE! YOU MIGHT NEED TWO MEGABYTES OF RAM!!! Fucking GARY KILDALL is one of the hosts. This is like having Jesus pop in on Songs Of Praise! In other breaking news, Microsoft…

  • Vid Shits

    Not bad!

  • My Very Short Review Of The Sony Xperia 5

    I had high hopes for this phone, I’m looking to replace my Samsung Note 10 Plus because the in-screen fingerprint sensor basically is shite. So, unboxed the Sony, lovely lovely, booted aaaaand… What a wonderful start! Okay… let’s reboot. Hmmm… seems a bit hot at the back. Ah, I’m sure it’ll be okay… …..aaaaand back…

  • The Fat Trekkies Guide To DST

    I’m a huge, fat Trekkie. I am not merely plump, I am massive. My weight wanders, as with a lot of very obese people but it’s always in excess of 350lbs / 25 stone / 159kg. I’ve loved Star Trek since I was a fat nipper and so I feel qualified to write this. Going…

  • Helping Google With Their Vids