Author: DOuG pRATt

What’s Wrong?

Still having no luck with uploading big files. But a support person was quick to reply via email and direct me to the notice shown above. This is the first real outage I’ve had with them. The problem is with the network between Phoenix and LA, where there are ongoing power problems.

Usually when this sort of thing happens it affects everything, but in this case only File Transfer Protocol is broken. It makes no sense that only FTP would break, so my guess is they disabled it intentionally across-the-board, to allow the other services to continue working.

Technical Difficulties

Kamen1.gif

There’s a problem with my Web site hosting service, and I am unable to upload large files, such as video clips. In the meantime, click on the thumbnail picture to go to the gallery. An EC comic book sci-fi story is there, with the sort of O. Henry “Gift of the Magi” twist ending that EC was known for. All that’s left of EC today is MAD Magazine.

Note the name of the artist. Jack Kamen. When I’m able to post videos again you’ll see why the artist is noteworthy.

When I Was 17…

If the space below is blank, blame YouTube.

After Frank Sinatra died, already 8 years ago, CBS ran a special on him that included this remarkable footage from 1965, of Sinatra recording “It Was a Very Good Year.” Walter Cronkite narrates.

The audio player below has the song in stereo. Let it play all the way through and you’ll hear an earlier version of “It Was a Very Good Year” that was done as a folk song.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Sounds/Wordpress/NOV06/Sinatra.mp3,http://www.dograt.com/Sounds/Wordpress/NOV06/KingstonTrio.mp3]

Post-Victory Colbert

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/Colbert/Colbert11-08-06.flv 400 300]
Here’s today’s obligatory sampler from The Colbert Report. After a very amusing exchange with Jon Stewart during the pass-off from The Daily Show, Colbert talks, and sings, with a previous guest — John Hall from the 70’s band Orleans, now a Congressman-elect. The complete show is available at Comedy Central.

Edit: If you happened to see the John Hall segment, you noticed an audio sync problem. So I’ve replaced it with The Word segment, which is funnier anyway. Some great pantomine acting by Colbert.

Earthlings Prepared for Outer Space!

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/NOV06/ThisIslandEarth.flv 400 300]

My twinster Jean mentions here a bad 50’s sci-fi movie called “Queen of Outer Space.” Being the age that I am, I love 50’s sci-fi movies. A memorable screening I recall of one such movie, “This Island Earth,” from 1955, was in 1980, at a science fiction festival at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. The scene I’ve posted here got big laughs out of the audience.

In April, 1986 I bought my first Laserdisc player, and “This Island Earth” was one of the first discs I owned. Today, I use that same player for capturing video on the computer. I pushed up the bit rate on this video to show that a 20-year-old disc on a 20-year-old player looks not too bad.

The technology was introduced in the U.S. in 1980 by Philips of Holland, which later sold the format to Pioneer in Japan. I had written a paper in the 11th grade about the development of video discs, and I was really taken with the superiority of LD over VHS. LD never caught on with the public at large, but Philips was able to apply its optical expertise to the creation of CD, with Sony handling the digital side of the format.