Just as I know my next car won’t have a CD player, my next phone won’t have an analog headphone jack. Having no interest in a wireless headset, for a mere $25 I’ll get prepared now by giving this thing a try.
I’m in IEM
Category: Tech
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.
Don’t Call Them Earbuds
I’m abusing the headphone jack on my laptop PC by playing two different pairs of In-Ear-Monitors, or IEMs, at the same time. I’m abusing my ears by going back and forth between them.
Positive reviews on AudioScienceReview for inexpensive “Chi-Fi” IEMs made me curious, resulting in this post from a month ago.
A guy in Singapore who goes by the handle Crinacle is a leading reviewer of these products. His influence extends to him collaborating with manufacturers to evaluate and fine-tune the sound of their IEMs.
After listening to the BLUE set with his name on it, I was curious about the RED set. The models are identical in design and construction except for the sound, with the RED tuned to Crinacle’s preference. As expected from the reviews, it’s more balanced sounding than the BLUE.
That would typically be my preference, but I feel that something of the baby was thrown out with the bath water, and I actually prefer the brighter BLUE with its excellent deep bass. The extension piece on one of the cables is a bass boost for the RED that I think muddies the sound like the loudness buttons that used to be standard on amps and receivers.
Unlike some other hobbies and pastimes, where the next generation of fans failed to show up (stamps, coins, bowling, et. al.), many young guys are actively involved in appreciating audio and music. Being young, there are some snarky reviews of IEMs on YouTube, but the overall tone is positive and fun. As is seen here, where the youngsters are questioning an elder audio expert, while remaining respectful.
Follow-up: Both of these IEM’s are keepers. The extra $5 for the RED edition seems to be for the booster adapter. Curiously, on the Lenovo laptop it makes the sound a little muddy, but with my phone it seems to have no effect. Maybe it’s an impedance thing.
There’s No Stopping Progress
Nobel Prize economist Robert Solow has died. Solow was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Obama. It’s an honor that was subsequently tarnished by Trump giving one to Rush Limbaugh.
As [Solow’s] work shows, technological advances, broadly defined, are responsible for the bulk of modern economic growth
https://news.mit.edu/2023/institute-professor-emeritus-robert-solow-dies-1222
Solow’s obituary in The New York Times has this amusing quote about John Kenneth Galbraith.
Mr. Galbraith “mingles with Beautiful People; for all I know, he may actually be a Beautiful Person himself.” But the book, he said, “is for the dinner table, not for the desk.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/business/robert-solow-dead.html
I think Solow’s “beautiful person” crack may have revealed a bit of the old M.I.T. vs. Harvard rivalry. Meeting the very tall Galbraith was a pivotal event for me in deciding to make Economics my college major.
Coincidental with Solow’s passing, last night’s PBS Newshour has this segment on AI’s potential effects on employment. It was mostly recorded at Boston’s Museum of Science (which is actually in Cambridge), where one of my sisters works developing educational materials.
For a deeper dive into the work of Robert Solow, there is this interview from just six months ago. It was conducted by his former student, economist Steven Levitt.
What Year is This?
I’m listening to AM radio and reading a print newspaper.
The Little Generator That Could
We’ve had the second storm of the season that, in the past, would have been a blizzard. Instead, it’s 60 degrees with high wind and heavy rain.
The power went out this morning and the utility doesn’t have an estimate when it will be restored. I fired up the portable generator and recharged my phone, which is now running as a Wi-Fi hotspot for the new laptop PC.
Yes, the garage floor needs to be resurfaced. It’s on the list.