Category: Tech

“You-do-it” No Mo’

For ten years, my commute took me along Route 128, no longer dubbed “America’s Technology Highway.” On my way home, if I wasn’t stopping at Sight & Sound, the LaserDisc store in Waltham, I would sometimes hang out at You-Do-It Electronics in Needham.

As you can see, there’s a TV transmitter tower near the store. There are more of them on the other side, as those guy wires show. The Yagi directional outdoor antenna I have on the porch is pointed precisely at those towers, some 15 miles away.

I’m sure the engineers working at those nearby TV stations helped to keep You-do-it in business all of these years, but now the store is scheduled for closure. Boston and America’s Technology Highway aren’t what they used to be.

https://www.boston.com/news/business/2024/05/24/you-do-it-electronics-center-announces-store-closure/

Why Spend More?

Unbelievable prices at the moment on Amazon for two excellent items that I own:

Sony MDR-ZX110 Headphones w/mic and pause button: $15 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OUX6U6G/

Subynanal USB-C Dongle DAC/headphone amp: $3 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08817XKSW

A dongle DAC is pretty much a requirement for those who prefer wired headphones for their phones. At only three measly bucks, the DAC’s specs aren’t state-of-the-art, but the sound is excellent, the noise floor is silent (no added hiss), and there’s plenty of volume with all of my headphones and IEMs I’ve tried.

According to Amir at Audio Science Review, equalizing the Sony headphones (for the Harman target frequency response curve) “produces reference quality sound!” You can do that automatically on an Android phone, using the free Wavelet app. (I sometimes prefer the un-equalized sound.)

The sky’s the limit on expensive audio equipment, but for most everybody there’s no need to spend more than $18. Don’t need the mic and pause button? Then the headphones are only ten bucks. I’m not limited to these two products, but if I were I’d be perfectly okay with that.

Hooked on Needles

Something I realized rather quickly with CD (and also DVD), is the players are commodities. I have never felt the same personal connection for a disc player the way I always have for my speakers, headphones, receivers, turntables, and phono cartridges. Yes, even phono cartridges.

These are a few of the pickups, as cartridges used to be known, that I remember fondly.

The Pickering V15 came installed on my Garrard 40B turntable, way back in early 1972. Five years later, the Stanton 500 was on the Micro-Trak tonearms of the Russco Cue-Master turntables at the radio station.

The Shure M91ED was purchased to replace the Pickering.

The Audio-Technica AT-13Ea lived on my JVC VL-5 turntable.

Speedy! Clean!

Yesterday, looking at the Verizon FiOS bill, it had gone up $18 for no apparent reason. After two very long bot chats, and a very lengthy phone call with someone in India, not only was the $18 charge gone, my service had been upgraded from 100 meg to a gig.

Also yesterday, I was preparing for today’s colonoscopy, my third since first Prattling here. For the third time I was prescribed a different prep. How many different formulations are there to do the same thing? All of them are varying degrees of awful.

Let’s travel back in time to that first exam. There are comments from Monte, whose father, Charles M. Schulz, died of colon cancer.

And, In The End…

Sixteen years ago, I was reminding myself to tell of my experience with Transcendental Meditation. Having not done that yet, I’ll have to remind myself again.

Subsidies With a Side of Chips

A preview of last night’s 60 Minutes profile of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

The complete segment can be seen here:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/commerce-secretary-gina-raimondo-on-us-microchip-production-blocking-of-sales-to-china-russia-60-minutes-transcript/

Will Intel use its $8.5 billion from the Chips and Science Act to do anything more than cover the company’s $7 billion loss in chip fabrication?

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/03/intel-drops-almost-8percent-after-chipmaker-reports-hefty-loss-in-foundry-business.html

I’ve become cynical about government industrial policy. The reason why is the risk of picking winners — and losers — in a targeted market. Which happened with the HITECH Act of 2009 and hospital information system software. Epic Systems was the big winner, with its database vendor, Intersystems, also benefiting.