Category: Tech

Touch and Gone

“Everything I touch gets ruined!” – Charlie Brown

All of the gadgets below have been de-registered and retired. Not shown are my first three Rokus, or the first two Amazon Fire TV streamers that came after them. And people laughed at my reluctance to get a smartphone, which I finally did a year ago.

Discarded electronics
Lenovo Yoga Tab 3, Amazon Fire HDX 8.9″, Kindle Keyboard, Fire TV stick (2), Fire HDX 7″

For one reason or another, these devices are no longer useable. The Kindle Keyboard’s battery died, and I bravely replaced it, only to learn the battery wasn’t the problem. A Fire TV update came with an audio sync problem. For video streaming I am now back with Roku.

The Lenovo Yoga Tab 3, that I really enjoyed using, got me through my many trips to Arizona, starting five years ago. It was perfect for watching video on the plane, and on land with a Bluetooth keyboard it was my laptop substitute.

So much electronic waste! I wonder if Best Buy still offers recycling? On the positive side, the Oontz Angle Bluetooth speaker I bought in 2014, that I also took to Arizona, is still going strong.

DogRat Hums in Danish

Denmark’s Ortofon has a real winner if you’re willing to spend $200 for a phono cartridge stylus to replace the one that’s almost as good on a $79 cartridge. $50 test record not included!

“Set to the maximum tracking force of 1.75 grams, the Ortofon OM Super 20 plays band #8 cleanly on both sides of the Hi-Fi News Test Record. These are the two tests that matter for tracking ability.

“The OM Super 10 stylus at 1.75 grams buzzes slightly on side 1, band 8, but otherwise performs as well as the Super 20. Set at only 1.5 grams, the Super 20 buzzes a little on side 1, band 8. Both styluses do their best at 1.75 grams. The wow that is heard on side 1 is due to the disc being slightly off-center.

“Note the heavy anti-skating weight that was added on top of the smaller weight. A lot of anti-skating force was needed to get perfectly clean playback, but the results speak for themselves.“

Beyond the Worldwide Webb

Happy New Year, and wowee! Looking good, so far, getting the JWST deployed.

“Repent, Google!” Said the TikTok Man

Oh, the effort and difficulty it took getting Google to even list this site again, let alone accept a sitemap to index its contents:

Once again I lay blame on Bluehost for changes it made, causing all of the problems I have struggled to resolve. There are numerous quirks — especially with pre-fix posts — but most of the serious issues seem to have been cracked, and only because I switched from feeling annoyed to remembering why I started Prattling Before the Pratfall. It was originally intended purely as a learning curve challenge, with no expectation of continuing for more than 15 years. But now that I’m retired from a high tech career, a technical challenge is perhaps a good thing.

I’d better acknowledge the late Harlan Ellison for this post’s title, with the names of the world’s two busiest web sites. Harlan always — and I mean always — wanted to receive his due credit: