QuantumBamboo

Fat tube severing Mum tea

Ah Morcheba! Now that’s a band I’ve not heard in a while!

Another album feature I enjoy is the “bonus” track at the end after an absurd length of silence. 1977 by Ash comes to mind. Nothing like going to sleep with an album on to be suddenly woken up by drunk people puking.

As well as transitional tracks, I love it when tracks genuinely feel like they exist as part of something larger. Whether through transitions within the tracks (Nonegon Infinity by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard takes this to the extreme) or by essentially turning the album into one long almost operatic piece (like Colours by Between the Buried and Me).

If seeing a tiny squiggle makes OP think they’ve taken crazy pills… Genuinely had a moment where I thought I had gone completely insane.

Yeah I almost exclusively listen to full albums. Definitely helps give context to the music and understand the artist better. I also agree that you should give it a few listens. Some great albums need you to dial in before you really fall in love with them. It’s a more active process than just listening to an unending algorithmic recommendation stream, but the effort is rewarded!

I’m more concerned that streaming platform algorithms prioritise passive listening (maybe not more concerned… I’m not sure how concern is quantified). It goes against their business model to risk serving users music that might actually push, and thus potentially expand, their taste. Music that is challenging may cause a user to stop listening. Better for the auto play algorithm to serve up safe bets, homogenising the general popular music gene pool. Like serving endless Big Macs in case tom yum is too spicy or lamb shoulder is too rich. As a result, the way to find success in the era of streaming platforms is to play G-D-Em-C and sing about the boy/girl you like/liked. This causes a feedback loop where bland music leads to bland tastes, which leads to bland music…

I worked with Creo for years, and ProE before that. I still have nightmares about the cascading unresolved reference screens. I’ve never used NX, but my understanding is it is AAA, though not super user friendly by default. I’ve pretty much exclusively used Solidworks for over a decade now, and I have to say that it’s generally pretty well behaved, and I’ve never really found I couldn’t do what I wanted to in it. Thus it has become my crutch.

I would agree that FreeCAD is the best, but it’s not slick and doesn’t feel particularly robust. Don’t get me wrong, I have no rose tinted glasses on when it comes to Solidworks, but it’s generally very usable and very powerful.

Solidworks - A reliable FOSS 3D CAD package would be amazing… Parametric Blender? Photoshop/Illustrator - I know how to do 50% of what I need to in GIMP/Inkscape, but I lean on Adobe usually!