John Spahr

      Just because something is flashy and cool doesn't mean it's better. You don't need me to tell you this, but Apple is smart with marketing. When I was in Paris last summer, giant ads hyped up AirPods, making the marketing presence surrounding that product especially evident. I fell for the hype and have owned two pairs of AirPods: the second and third generations. However, I can now safely say while my first pair was fine, I sincerely hate my AirPods 3. Here's why.     I'm an Apple fan, make no mistake. I am writing this on a 2020 MacBook Air while listening to some tunes on my iPhone 14. However, these tunes aren't coming through my AirPods. Instead, they come from a random $20 pair of earbuds, the KBEAR KS2s. Other than being wired, they are superior to my AirPods in every way. For one, the AirPods 3 don't stay in my ears well, so their sound quality is greatly diminished from this alone. I cannot speak for how they sound for someone with different ea...

     I have Spotify Premium. I like it; it's fast, its catalog is huge, and it's a great place to discover new music. However, in today's digital world, there has been a resurgence in the tangible, physical media that came before Spotify and Apple Music. Nowadays, you can find vinyl records, tapes, and CDs for sale at all sorts of places. To me, CDs stand out especially due to their easily archivable nature (e.g. throwing them on an iPod Classic) but also their impressive audio fidelity. They sound great!     I have a shelf of CDs that I use in my Technics 5 disc changer (SL-PD887) and my 2009 Honda Accord. They're very compact compared to vinyl, while also making a lot more practical sense than tapes. Granted, each of these formats is unique and deserves a place in your tower of power. However, if you too are tight on money, CDs have one final trick up their sleeve: They're cheap. Seldom will you buy a new CD for more than $20, excluding box sets and rare relea...

Hey, everyone. Yesterday, I took my Sony Mavica FD-75 to the park and got some neat shots. I used standard resolution for most of these photos and captured the events of the evening, as I had some fun hanging with friends. So, what are you waiting for? Check these pictures out!

I've been wearing my Pebble Time Steel a lot lately. I have all the different models of Pebbles and each certainly has its own pros and cons. Time Steel's main cons are that it's heavy and expensive. However, its pros far outnumber its cons. It's built like a tank, has incredible battery life, features an awesome 64-color screen, and basically offers the definitive Pebble experience. That said, if I had to pick my second favorite Pebble, it would likely be the Time Round. If that watch had better endurance, it would likely be my favorite Pebble. Admittedly, other Pebble models such as the Pebble 2 and standard Time are quite nice in their own rights, but the Time Steel feels like a watch that means business. It strives to be the absolute best Pebble it could be and achieves this. Thus, though I do adore all the Pebble models, the Time Steel is what I would consider the quintessential Pebble. If the Pebble Time 2 had been released, though... Well, that would be a differe...

Howdy, everyone! A few days ago, I wrote a post about my recently-acquired Sony Mavica FD88 , an absolute nugget of a camera. In said post, I mentioned that I also had a slightly less capable Mavica FD75 in my collection. So, in recognition that my last post was a bit lacking in the photo sample department, here are some fun FD75 shots that I took this weekend. Enjoy! Wow, that's a lot of photos in no particular order! Anyway, I hope you found this post interesting, and thanks for stopping by.

Hi, everyone. If you're interested in retro digicams, there's a good chance that you're already familiar with the Sony Mavica. In fact, I'd wager that if you're reading this post, you probably know what exactly makes a Mavica… well, a Mavica! For the uninitiated, though, the Mavica was one of the early successful digital cameras, utilizing the ubiquitous floppy disk for storing photos. Depending on the quality you shot at, you could fit anywhere from 5-45 photos on a single disk. Nowadays, the concept of shooting to floppy might seem absurd, but unlike its contemporaries, the Mavica didn't require any drivers or special software to view your photos. All you needed to do was to take your 3.5" floppy out of the Mavica, put it in your computer, and all of your shots were there to be copied, edited, or deleted. This simplicity was simply unheard of in the digital camera space until the Mavica debuted in 1997. So, when I acquired two working Sony Mavica cameras,...