Category: Tech

Oh Allison … His Ears Were True

Roy Allison, 1927-2016

I’m in my second round of physical therapy for a bad ankle, worn out by more than 30 years of running. The place I’m going to happens to be around the corner from 7 Tech Circle, in Natick, MA. This is an address that was familiar to me nearly 30 years ago. It was the original home of Allison Acoustics. 7 Tech Circle is a modest building, as seen in this aerial photo.

I own two pairs of Allison loudpeakers — the Model 3, purchased in 1979, and the LC-110, that I bought in 1988. Both pairs are still working perfectly. Roy Allison isn’t a household name like Amar Bose, but he is a legend in audio circles, especially in the Boston Area.

Before starting his own company, Allison designed speakers for Acoustic Research in Cambridge, MA. Motown Records went through many pairs of AR3 speakers when monitoring and mixing recordings in the 60’s.

Allison speakers sound very open and natural, favoring dispersion over detail, so they aren’t ideal for punchy studio recordings. But their virtues are immediately apparent to anybody who is familiar with live Classical music.

Besides having an excellent ear for neutral sound reproduction, Roy Allison is a true gentleman. He helped a competitor, Andy Kotsatos, start the still-extant company Boston Acoustics. (I also own a pair of Boston Acoustics A40 speakers, purchased in 1983.) Allison was put out of business during the recession of ’89-’95 in Massachusetts, when his bank called in his loans. Those were tough times around here, believe me, while the minicomputer industry was in its death throes, before the Internet boom saved us.

Roy Allison regrouped and formed a new company called RDL Acoustics, but it didn’t last long. Today he’s retired in Florida, but he’s lent his name to a new line of speakers. They sell replacement drivers for the original series, and every so often I tell myself I should buy a pair of woofers — just in case!

Going Out Of Style (Sheet)

Well, that was fun. Wasted too much time searching for a solution to the rendering problem in Internet Explorer 7 that was chopping off the bottom of the title — my name! — that I intend to replace with a picture eventually, anyway.

None of the discussions I found nailed down the problem, so I figured it out on my own. What fixed it was adding some padding to H1 headers in the cascading style sheet:

#header h1 {
/*display:none; This will hide the text in your header */
padding-top:50px; padding-bottom:10px;
}

The “hide the text in your header” comment was an obvious hint!

Wii-ality

Wii Hands

In the Wii hours of this morning Eric’s Christmas wiish came true at last. Those are his hands clutching the Wiimote — that’s Nintendo’s pun, not mine!

Thanks to this Web site, Carol was confident the local Target store would have the Wii in stock. She was number 9 in line for 70 units — by far the largest shipment since the day the Wii was released. If the Wii had kept its original name, the Revolution, Carol would have been Revolution 9!

Sensor Bar

The motion sensor bar fits perfectly on Eric’s TV. The digital camera captures the bar’s infrared light.

Hackers On The Net – 4

One popular new feature on the Net is [the] Associated Press service. From anywhere on the Net you can log in and get the news that’s coming live over the wire or ask for all the items on a particular subject that have come in during the last 24 hours. Plus a fortune cookie. Project that to household terminals, and so much for newspapers (in present form).

Stewart Brand
Rolling Stone
December 7, 1972

In 1972 a truly astounding educational film was made, with the thoroughly boring title, “Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing.” It’s a bunch of academics and engineers in Boston explaining how they were changing the world forever.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/DEC06/ComputerNetworks.flv 440 330]If you’re not into technology, probably only the last few minutes of this 25-minute film will be of interest. The original format of this video prevents me from extracting excerpts, but I can offer you a few minutes of audio. Listen to this, and keep in mind that it’s from 1972. The voice at the start and the end is J.C.R. Licklider, who died in 1990.

Hackers On The Net – 3

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/DEC06/iPod.flv 400 240]

Here’s a brief bit of video about the iPod. Watch that, then read this quote.

Since huge quantities of information can be computer-digitalized [sic] and transmitted, music researchers could, for example, swap records over the Net with “essentially perfect fidelity.” So much for record stores (in present form).

Stewart Brand
Rolling Stone
December 7, 1972

When vinyl was king, and FM Album Rock had yet to completely take over from AM Top 40 radio, Stewart Brand made the conceptual leap past CD, all the way to Napster.