This week’s random photo comes from the wall of the men’s in an unnamed, Brooklyn bar. Regular readers will undoubtedly know the place. Glad to see that they used union printers for these stickers.

The holidays are now officially upon us. Just for fun, I’m going to keep a running count of how many times I hear All I Want for Christmas is You between now and the 25th—I think I’ll hear it at least 10 times. I broke a long-standing, personal tradition of buying nothing on Black Friday. The rationalization was that I saved hundreds of dollars on something that was truly needed (just not at this moment). While this made financial sense, dismounting my high horse is painful.

Given the long weekend, I hoped to make some progress on a couple projects. That didn’t happen, and not just because I was spending time spending money. Now, there is something to be said for rest and relaxation, but I feel like I squandered some time when I could have been establishing forward momentum.

I did manage to “fix” one thing that has been on my list though. Over the past few weeks, one or two of our jams were plagued with really poor audio quality—the musicianship was, of course, stellar. I’m not sure if it was the server configuration, or network congestion. Since I can’t do much about the latter, I updated my Jamulus server docker image with the hope that it might improve things. Rather than building from source, I’m now using a precompiled distribution. In theory, that really shouldn’t make a any difference. But, I wondered if I might be doing something wrong, especially with the dependencies. The initial test sounded great. The real test, however, comes when we all connect to jam. Wish us luck.

---

Links

• David Lerner, a Mr. Fix-it of Apple Computers, Dies at 72
  If you were a Mac user in NYC in the 90s and aughts, you may have found yourself at Tekserve on West 23rd more than once. Lerner co-founded the business in 1987 and over the next 29 years, it became a New York institution. I was especially fond of their take a number system that repurposed a few old, classic Macintosh computers. RIP David.
• Hip-hop legends Arrested Development Falmouth DIY to rescue via Dave Slusher – Hacker/Maker
  Repair café to the rescue!
• …the Hardest Driving Test in the World.
  The Knowledge, sounds brutal. I’ve read that it’s so much information to absorb, that it actually changes people’s brain structure.
• Money for Something: Uber is Driving The Race for City Council Speaker
• The hottest clubs in NYC these days are volunteer trash pickup groups
• Live Train Departure Screens Keep You Abreast of Transit Developments
  I really like the aesthetic of these desktop departure displays. Plus, they include a wireless charger in the base. Very cool.
• Stuff I built just for me in 2025
• I’m a Concert Pianist. This Is Why I Seek Imperfection.
  “This fetishization of perfection might not be surprising, but that doesn’t make it any less damaging. You cannot learn or grow while trying to appear as if you have everything figured out. You cannot talk to God by trying to avoid doing something wrong. Perfection is stagnation.”