The Beatles famously spent time with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Pete Townshend was influenced by Meher Baba. Chick Corea gave credit to L. Ron Hubbard. John McLaughlin’s guiding light for a time was Sri Chinmoy. I’ve been listening to my old Mahavishnu Orchestra albums. Jazz Fusion meets Progressive Rock.
Author: DOuG pRATt
Tuneful Tone Deafness
Everyone talks about Beethoven composing music after going deaf, but so did Smetana. Here’s an example, played without benefit of sheet music by the Smetana Quartet, no longer in existence.
Tech Tweaks
Computer Tech – 1
Did PHP 8 make this site faster and more responsive than it was? In the past, Google’s speed tests have rated it from poor (42) to no better than average (67). The results are still variable, but they now include hits in the excellent range.
Computer Tech – 2
Nine years ago (NINE YEARS??) I posted this item about what was then my new netbook.
Now retired from general use, the netbook (now running Windows 10) is my Logitech Media Server. Checking on it last summer, I could hear the fan was running at double speed, so I wasn’t surprised by the heat coming out of the side vent.
The workaround was as low tech as it gets. I flipped the netbook over for passive cooling from the bottom vents. This time of year, at times the fan doesn’t even need to run, but I do need to check occasionally for dust in the vents.
TV Tech – 1
Six years ago (SIX YEARS??) I wrote about getting a cheap Personal Video Recorder.
I later replaced the Mediasonic Homeworx with a vastly superior TiVo DVR that continues to work well. The PVR sat in its box for years, until I recently pulled it out for use with my bedroom TV, so I can pause live television. The TV is a 12-year-old 32-inch Samsung I bought for my offspring, who no longer needs it.
Being pleased with the Roku streaming stick on the porch TV, I bought one for the bedroom. So the TV went from having no HDMI devices to having two of them. Then the Roku’s sound went out. Not muted, but silent.
Hmm. I swapped its HDMI port with the PVR. The PVR had no sound. Then the Roku had no sound. I moved the Roku to the third HDMI port, and it likewise went quiet. The sound was fine when using the TV tuner.
Hmm. I went online and found how to enter service mode on the TV. I did a factory reset, and the sound returned on the HDMI ports. But then the Roku flashed a message saying its HDMI port had a problem. It suggested trying another port, which I knew was pointless.
Hmm. Would a firmware update fix the problem? Given the set’s age, I doubted Samsung would have one available but, yeah, they do! I put the file on a flash drive, ran the update, and that was the end of the problem. Kudos to Samsung! For the heck of it I checked the porch TV I bought ten years ago (TEN YEARs??), and it came with Samsung’s final firmware release for the model.
TV Tech – 2
Regarding Roku, it has a problem that Amazon’s Fire TV doesn’t. The current models of both products support 5 GHz WiFi, but neither device supports Dynamic Frequency Selection for 5 GHz WiFi. Fire TV is okay when the router tries to negotiate DFS, but Roku chokes on it sometimes. The result is the SSID’s for 5 GHz networks disappear.
The solution is to disable DFS on the router, which should also be checked to see if the Roku has been blocked, after repeated failed attempts to connect. This may or may not be something an average Roku user is willing or able to do on their own. It would be much better if Roku had a firmware update to properly handle DFS negotiation.
Medical Follow-up
Back on 2/22/22 I posted this item:
The bacteria did not come from the food, according to medical experts. The Boston Globe article at that link is behind a paywall, so I’ll use a couple of quotes.
“There’s absolutely no history in the medical literature of this kind of bacteria being transmitted by food,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. “It’s baloney.”
“It was completely irrelevant to this patient’s presentation,” said Dr. Eric Rosenberg, director of the clinical microbiology laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital.
It’s a Crumb-bum-bummy Day
Robert Crumb, beloved illustrator of images deemed by many as racist and sexist, returns. This time with a musical indulgence of one of his fetishes. Follow the link for more photos and a playlist.
https://eastriverstringband.com/radioshow/index.php/2022/03/01/otrs-127-r-crumbs-record-room-part-56-i-like-big-butts/
Steal This Podcast
A podcast series on ransomware from MIT Technology Review and ProPublica. The end of Part 1 automatically leads to Part 4, so I’ll post them in the correct order.