Author: DOuG pRATt

Aspiring Netbook

I don’t own an iPod, nor do I have satellite radio, but I’m otherwise technologically up to date. For $250 at BJ’s Wholesale Warehouse, I bought an Acer Aspire One netbook, running XP Home with 1 GB of memory and a 160 GB drive.

I’m very impressed. Everything runs smoothly, including video that sputtered a bit on the SSD version of the Aspire One that I tried last week. This post was done entirely on the netbook, except shooting the video clips; which, come to think of it, I might have been able to do with the built-in Webcam and a mirror!

Here are some examples of video playback. First, from this page on my blog.

[MEDIA=32]

One of the things I wanted to do with the Acer Aspire One was manage my Netflix queue for the Roku Media Player, but Watch Instantly also plays fine on the netbook. Here’s a bit of Supersize Me on Netflix Watch Instantly.

[MEDIA=33]

‘Verliefd’ with K3

My not-so-secret shame, the Flemish girl group K3, will soon be gone, with the departure of Kathleen Aerts. The signs have been there for a while. Videos began to disappear from YouTube, including this one, which happens to be one of their very best.

[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/K3/Verliefd.mp3|titles=Verliefd (In Love) by K3]

‘Verliefd’ (“In Love”) is Karen Damen’s favorite K3 song, and it’s the second song by the girls that I heard back in June. The harmony that kicks in at :40 totally knocked me out and I was sold on K3. Here there be Pop music magic.

http://youtu.be/m3qOehRQ-rU

Ape Real Full

I haven’t gone out of my way to find good online April Fool links to share, but here are a couple. This one was pointed out by Bismo…

http://www.expedia.com/daily/mars/flights-to-mars/?mcicid=Mars_home_us

… and this one I spotted on one of my RSS feeds.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/01/guardian-twitter-media-technology

LOL funny: “JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?”

45 is 60

Today is the 60th anniversary of the humble, yet mighty, 7-inch 45 rpm single. It was developed by RCA, at the same time CBS had come up with the 12-inch 33.33 rpm LP.

Originally there was competition to see which format would dominate, but each found its best use — singles were for kids, and albums were for adults, although that changed after The Beatles made albums the thing to have for anybody over 13. Stereo came along in the late 50’s, but mono would still prevail for nearly another ten years after that, until the rise of alternative FM radio crushed AM for music, and transistors made stereo record players cheap.

The combination of magnetic recording and vinyl records was a huge advance in audio technology. It replaced 78 rpm shellac disks and dominated home music listening for the next forty years.

Bismo recently asked me to convert a couple of 45’s to MP3, and this is them. First, the flip side to the Blue Brothers 1978 single, “Soul Man”…

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/MAR/Excusez_Moi_Mon_Cherie.mp3]

… and a real rarity, Stars on 45, featuring The New Sam & Dave Revue.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/MAR/New_Sam_Dave_Revue.mp3]

My achilles is my Achilles

The header at the moment shows the Boston Marathon course elevation. If your computer’s monitor maxes out at 1024 pixels across you aren’t seeing all of it. To do that you can click this graphic.

Boston Marathon course elevation

I want to use this header as an annual tradition, but I’m not getting off to a good start, because I won’t be running the Boston Marathon this year. I was on track to do it, but then my Achilles began to act up and it kept getting worse, even with ice and ibuprofen. The podiatrist said the sheath-like tissue around the tendon is badly inflamed and there’s nothing to be done but what I’ve been doing, and wait until it heals.

So, having taken myself out of the running, this morning I helped staff one of the running club’s water stations for the obligatory 21-mile practice run from the starting line to the top of the notorious Heartbreak Hill. Bill Rodgers, the legendary Boston-based marathoner, was supposed to be running with the club today, but to everyone’s disappointment he ran the course yesterday, to avoid today’s heavy rain.

Where’s Denro?

If you scamper over to the AAUGH! Blog, you’ll see where the ever-vigilant D.F. Rogers has caught and corrected Nat Gertler in an error about Charlie Brown’s All Stars.

Dennis has further defected from DogRat to make an appearance on the web site of Fred Hembeck, cartoonist of comic book topics. Den caught up with Hembeck at The National (aka: Big Apple Con) last November when I wasn’t looking, and he promised Fred he’d pull up some old fanzine drawings going back nearly 40 years. Click this link, and look for the section called “Yesterday and Today” (Fred has got to get himself some permalinks).