Author: DOuG pRATt

I’m a Tron Boy

Oh, darn. Cindy Morgan has died.

https://www.slashfilm.com/1486721/cindy-morgan-tron-caddyshack-dead-69/

I once saw Cindy at a show outside of Boston. Nobody else happened to be at her table, and we were able to talk for a long time. She was immediately bright and funny and flirtatious. “You aren’t a Caddyshack boy. I bet you’re a Tron boy!” I laughed and said she was right, and that I was a Tron fan.

When I told Cindy I’d never seen Caddyshack, she opened her eyes wide in exaggerated amazement. “Oh, so you’re the one! You must see it! You get to see a lot of me! A LOT more!” (Cindy has a nude scene.)

She asked my age, and we were only a year apart. Something else we had in common was being born near Chicago. We chatted as Cindy autographed a photo of herself for me, and I heard about her childhood, growing up in a working class family. We’d both been in broadcasting, where I had worked on air with a woman, so there was another point of common interest. As you can tell, it was a memorable conversation, and I’m saddened by Cindy’s passing.

Getting the Kinks Out

Andrew Sandoval is well known for his association with the Monkees. He has also worked extensively with Ray Davies on reissues of the Kinks catalog. Andrew’s favorite Kinks album is The Village Green Preservation Society, and I own Andrew’s deluxe vinyl box set from five years ago. It’s still available, but the price tag will make you gulp hard.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07GJ397BS/

Here. You can listen to the official online copy for free, with some extra tracks. The opening of “Do You Remember Walter” reminds me of the opening to ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky”. I doubt it’s entirely coincidental.

Muswell Hillbillies is my favorite Kinks album. I like it so much, I have a copy in 24-bit/96 kHz lossless FLAC format. This playlist is likewise an extended edition.

A Slight Oversight

Once again, Vint Cerf didn’t mention the ARPANET, the packet-switched (as distinct from circuit-switched) technical foundation upon which the Internet was based. In grad school Cerf had early exposure to the ARPANET, but he was not one of the visionaries behind it.

Vint’s significance in the development of TCP/IP can’t be overstated. He is a legendary development programmer, and as he says he approached the Internet as an engineering challenge. Cerf should give credit for the vision where it’s due, and that should certainly include the late Bob Taylor, one of the originators of the ARPANET project.

Cerf and Kahn started working at DARPA in 1973, after Taylor got the ARPANET going and had left for Xerox PARC. Taylor headed up the Alto project, which was the thing that blew Steve Job’s mind by having a GUI with a mouse, an early version of Ethernet, laser printers, and e-mail. After Xerox, Taylor moved on to Digital Equipment Corporation.

At DEC, Bob leveraged Tim Berners-Lee’s invention of the Worldwide Web by coming up with AltaVista, the powerful search engine that was influential on a startup called Google. Since 99.999% of everybody thinks the Web is the Internet, rather than the biggest part of it, an occasional mention of Tim by Vint would also be appropriate.