Gravity Blanket

I bought a Gravity weighted blanket a few months ago. A few people have asked me my opinion on it, so I’m putting down my thoughts here:

Pros:

• It’s like a big hug every night. Comfortable, no off-gassing smells, well-made.
• I go to sleep faster and stay in bed longer with it on.
• Cover is washable.
• Even the cooling version is warm in the winter. (in a 65-67F / 18-19C household) If you’re used to wearing pajamas, you may want to sleep without them. If you keep your house above 70F / 21C, you may not want a weighted blanket.)
• You may be able to get a discount on Black Friday or by emailing support politely.

Cons:

• If you’re over 5’10”, you should probably get the King/Queen version. The Standard version is just too short. My feet kept sticking out, and I had to return/exchange it (and pay $55 return shipping).
• The King/Queen version is expensive. ($265 + tax when I bought it)
• It’s heavy: 35 pounds, and can be a bear to move.
• Comes with suffocation warnings for children under a certain age – that’s how heavy it is. This is an adult blanket.

Despite the cons, I’m glad I got it. I was going to get another big plush Korean blanket (which is pretty heavy itself at around 15 pounds) but decided on Gravity and it’s even better.

Error: Windows Could Not Prepare the Computer to Boot into the Next Phase of Installation

I kept getting the above error when installing Windows 10 and Windows 11 from two different USB sticks onto a ThinkPad X1 Extreme laptop. I had followed the process outlined at FreeCodeCamp for creating the USB sticks from a Mac.

Finally, I figured it out based on a comment on another board: During Windows setup, delete all the partitions except for the first one. Now installation proceeds, to a point:

Then I got the error “Windows could not update the computer’s boot configuration.” To resolve this and the previous error, I reset the BIOS to the default configuration, and crucially, used MBR to format the USB stick instead of GPT. ( diskutil eraseDisk MS-DOS "WIN10" MBR /dev/disk2 )

Now Windows installed successfully!

Apple Music vs. Spotify Discover Weekly vs. Amazon Discovery Mix in 2021

Decided to give these services another shot in November 2021.

• Apple Music’s New Music Mix gave me 25 genuinely new songs, 9 of which I liked, a 36% success rate.
• Spotify’s Discover Weekly gave me 30 songs, some dating back decades, 5 of which I liked, a 17% success rate.
• Apple’s selection was a variety of progressive house, techno, dance, electronica.
• Spotify’s was entirely drum and bass, even though I’ve listened to plenty of other music using their service. (But had checked out another Spotify drum and bass playlist recently.)

I used Spotify’s web player, which gave me no ads during the entire time I listened. (using their free plan.) For Apple Music, I used the generous free trial (2 or 5 months) given by the Shazam app. The Apple Music player on the Mac is janky – with odd back navigation. You also can’t drag their New Music mix to the sidebar, unlike Spotify where Discover Weekly is easily findable.

I also tried Amazon Music’s “Discovery Mix” and “You Might Like”. Stunningly, out of 25 songs in the discovery mix and 30+ in the “You Might Like”, not a single song was good. It’s like Amazon didn’t even look at my Amazon Music library to discover what I like. It was all random garbage.

I’ll give the win to Apple Music this week, as they overall had the most new music I liked. I even loved one of the 9 liked songs they recommended. (For the record, I loved two of Spotify’s, but Apple just found more new music that I at least liked.)