Author: DOuG pRATt

Emitt’s Merry-Go-Round

On my Logitech Media Server network I’m listening to Barnes Newberry’s online radio show, My Back Pages. Barnes played a couple of songs by Emitt Rhodes, who’s one of those musicians that seemed to have all of the ingredients needed to be a big name, and yet superstardom eluded him. Rhodes did some excellent stuff, and I remember alternative FM station WBCN in Boston playing his solo album, with the song Fresh As a Daisy.

Emitt was only seventeen when his band The Merry-Go-Round had a minor hit with She’s a Very Lovely Woman, and it holds up very well today.

A knight without armor in a savage land

I’m having a Have Gun – Will Travel marathon on the Roku. Netflix has HG-WT through its deal with Starz — a deal that expires on Wednesday, so I’m going through as many episodes as I can before then.

Most of what I’ve read about the Netflix-Starz contract focuses on the loss of recent hit movies, but my preference for casual viewing is for TV shows from the late 50’s and the early 60’s, like Have Gun – Will Travel, and Leave It To Beaver. (I like The Dick Van Dyke Show, but don’t revere it as others do.) How much money can there be left in owning the distribution rights to a 50-year-old TV series, anyway? It doesn’t appear that any restoration work was done on Have Gun – Will Travel, so any money it makes now must be pure profit.

This is my entertainment center, in the corner of the 4-season porch, where I do most of my TV viewing.

I’ve been considering replacing my 13-year-old Sony 32XBR100, but being the best conventional NTSC TV ever made for consumers it’s perfect for SD 4:3 material. If too much of the good, old stuff disappears from Netflix, and/or Turner Classic Movies goes HD, I’ll see about re-purposing the venerable, and extremely heavy, Sony as a setup for classic video gaming and getting a flat panel TV for the porch.

‘BZ Boston notes

Back in September, WBZ 1030 AM in Boston celebrated its 90th anniversary. On WBGH TV, Boston’s PBS station, veteran ‘BZ announcer Gary LaPierre, now retired, talked about his start at the station, only a few months before the Beatles came to Boston. Note: Paul and Ringo are still working!

[jwplayer config=”wide” mediaid=”17585″]

Another great veteran of WBZ radio, Dave Maynard, died recently. After retiring, Maynard’s familiar voice continued to be heard on the station, doing commercials and promos.

Samjay pointed out that the thing everybody uses to set their car’s dashboard clock, WBZ’s on-the-hour tone, is gone. I had noticed a while ago that it was about ten seconds late, and under the assumption it had mistakenly been put before the delay circuit, I sent a note to the station asking about it. Not much later, the tone once again was synched with the radio-controlled wall clocks in my house, but now the tone is gone. Whuzzup with that?

Follow-up: I wrote to the WBZ engineer, and didn’t receive a reply, but the time tone is back. It’s not hitting exactly on top of my radio-controlled clocks, but I’m not going to quibble over 8-10 seconds.

Created in America, Made in China

China has come a long way, very quickly, from supplying McDonald’s with Happy Meal toys covered in lead paint. Last week, WBUR’s (Boston University Radio) On Point with Tom Ashbrook had a show about corporate espionage by Chinese hackers.

[audio:http://audio.wbur.org/storage/2012/02/onpoint_0216_hacking-americas-future.mp3|titles=On Point with Tom Ashbrook – China hacking]

Listening to this exchange was, for me, frustrating. There’s a lot of alarmist talk in the show, but why was it okay for American corporations to send their manufacturing jobs to China in the first place? Why, only now, with the theft of proprietary information, is China being seen as a threat? And if these victimized companies have such sophisticated intellectual property, why couldn’t they invest more in better protection against online attacks? In the old days, employees would have to be moles, or be corrupt and willing to sell secrets, for serious damage to be done. Now, just having an Internet connection is all it takes? Seems to me this is a case of reaping what you sow.