Gone

And so, the Pope has died.

I have mostly admired the man, even though I am a rather staunch atheist. My admiration comes from his earlier years, his work at bringing about change in a peaceful manner (as opposed to the drunken cowboy in charge of our country). It's only the most recent tirades against homosexuality and equating it with terrorism that kicked my respect for the man down quite a few notches, but I still wonder how much of this is done more from external influence than of his own convictions. Especially given his advancing age and medical conditions. The Church needs to evolve with societal and environmental change, and it mostly has, albeit on a very slow scale. Recent developments seem to have been more in keeping the church more in the past than being progressive.

Now comes the ancient rituals of bringing in his successor. It should be interesting to say the least, and I can't help but wonder how much of a role that pure backroom politics will play into this, and what sort of successor come about. I have a feeling this one will be a hardliner. That will make my life that much more difficult, as it will a lot of my friends. But I will soldier on.

Sub woof

My studio PC being the enigma it is needs a new set of PC speakers. The actual monitoring I do via headphones, but for everyday playing of music and occasional games and movies I watch on here I have been using a set of old Creative 5.1 speakers which worked good for that purpose. Alas, the subwoofer is slowly beginning to flake out (voice coil is rattling). I'm thinking of replacing these with a set of Klipsch 5.1s, since my 4.1s on the other PC have been fantastic. I've also been keeping space for a pair of Roland, Yamaha or Tannoy studio monitors. I dunno. I have too many other projects and things on the roster to be worrying about fluff like this.

But that rattle is currently driving me NUTS!