Month: October 2011

XPerienced system

It was ten years old today that Windows XP went on sale to the public. Prior to its release I’d been running XP at work for a year in beta form, and knowing it would be a winner I bought a Compaq Presario 5300 desktop computer for Carol on October 25, 2001, as an early birthday present. Three years later, it became Eric’s system when I bought Carol a Compaq Presario 2210 laptop computer. Like the desktop computer it has 512 MB memory and a 40 GB drive, except the desktop came with only 256 MB and 20 GB.

Over the years I’d purchased two Dell desktop systems, and both suffered major motherboard failures, which means I’ll never buy another Dell. Meanwhile, both of the Presarios continue to chug along. Carol is still using the laptop and has no complaints and the desktop, with a USB hard drive attached, is in the basement ripping CDs and running Logitech’s free music server software.

Logitech Squeezebox Server

Microsoft will continue supporting Windows XP through April 8, 2014. There are two Windows 7 64-bit systems in the house now, but I have never used Windows Vista at home. Having used Vista at work, I knew it was a clunker.

P.S. This is post number 2500.

Hergé today, gone tomorrow

Tintin is huge! Created by the late Georges Remi, aka Hergé, spunky and intrepid boy reporter Tintin is hugely popular everywhere — except in the United States. Way back in March 2007, I noted that Stephen Spielberg intended to produce a Tintin movie, and I posted a bit of video from the documentary Tintin Et Moi.

[flv:http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Video/2011/Oct/Tintin.flv 400 250]

For some more background on Hergé and Tintin, watch this short video with Michael Farr, author of the excellent book, Tintin: The Complete Companion. I own a copy of the original 2002 edition. The book has been out of print, but it’s scheduled to be republished.

As things turned out with The Adventures of Tintin, Peter Jackson produced and Spielberg directed. The movie opens this week exactly where it should, in Europe. But even if it’s a blockbuster success there, will it catch on here in America, when it’s released on December 21?

http://youtu.be/nlE4kXKwG7Y

Despite excellent early reviews for The Adventures of Tintin I’m not a fan of this sort of motion capture animation, but seeing the name Steven Moffat in the credits gives me hope. Moffat is an outstanding writer, whose work on the BBC’s Doctor Who is some of the finest, most enjoyable television I have ever watched.

http://youtu.be/vY_Ry8J_jdw

BBC Radio 4 Extra is running audio dramatizations of Tintin adventures that you can hear at this link. And while you’re on Radio 4 Extra, don’t miss a repeat presentation of Brian Sibley’s outstanding adaptation of the Titus Groan books, by Mervyn Peake and his wife Maeve Gilmore.

Hi-Five for Hi-Fi

The death of pioneering radio producer Norman Corwin, age 101, received some attention this week, but I’d like to point out another recent death. Edgar Villchur, only seven years younger than Corwin, was a pioneer in home audio. Villchur can take some of the credit — some would say blame — for the home hi-fi craze in the 1950’s that drove many a wife crazy, if not out of the house.

Villchur started Acoustic Research in Cambridge, MA, and his sealed box design, the so-called acoustic suspension speaker, proved that low frequencies could be reproduced in a home without a gigantic cabinet like another legendary speaker had, Paul Klipsch’s Klipschorn. The trade-off was efficiency. Acoustic suspension speakers require a lot of power.

In 1957, the year before Villchur introduced the legendary AR-3 loudspeaker, Herman Horne on Hi-Fi was a 3-part parody on The Stan Freberg Show, a radio series on CBS. The entire run of the show is on archive.org, but with only so-so sound quality. I’ve assembled the Herman Horne segments, taken from the Smithsonian Historical Performances CD collection of the show, and it’s obvious that only part 3 came from the original magnetic tape.

[audio:http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Oct/HermanHorne01.mp3,http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Oct/HermanHorne02.mp3,http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Oct/HermanHorne03.mp3|titles=Stan Freberg: Herman Horne on Hi-Fi,Stan Freberg: Herman Horne on Hi-Fi,Stan Freberg: Herman Horne on Hi-Fi]

Note how Freberg changed the voice of the character, making it more comical in the second and third installments. A lot of what he made fun of about audio fanatics is still quite true today. I think the only real difference is there isn’t much of an emphasis on sound effects.