I’m glad that Dave didn’t post this video until after I’d completed 28 years of radiation therapy on a Varian system. Did I say years? I meant days, that felt like years.
Category: Tech
West Wrong
Here’s a return to blogging form. For suggested viewing during my treatments and convalescence, my buddy Bismo recommended The West Wing, a show that — gasp! — I’d never watched.
I’ve seen the first episode, and I thought it was a classic example of “trying too hard.” As a political soap opera, the writing is gimmicky, with some silly, overwrought “film school” dialog. The first three scenes in this video are examples from S1 E1, ending with Tim “Jonny Quest” Matheson getting chewed out. The chief of staff can get away with treating the VP this way? Well, probably during Trump’s administration.
Introducing so many characters must have been a challenge, but it’s nonetheless paced much too quickly. The overuse of “walking with the camera” direction is very annoying. Maybe they thought that tours of their impressive sets would help to sell the series. It’s made worse by having way too many extras rushing back and forth in obviously choreographed timing. Seriously, there are that many people packed into the White House, running around every second of the day? The private lives and work lives of West Wing’s characters are, of course, mashed together. But every TV series does that, so I’ll give it a pass on that count. What’s up with the incongruous “you’re in a magical place” music? It reminds me of the superb series Brideshead Revisited, where the music is perfectly complementary.
West Wing’s pilot episode improves during the moments when it slows down, like in the scenes above, and when Martin Sheen’s character is introduced. Suddenly it’s less hectic and becomes more watchable. Which I suppose was the idea, highlighting how everything stops and everybody shuts up when the president walks in the room. All of the praise for the series must be deserved, so it must have found its footing, and I’ll keep watching. It’s now on the MAX streaming service.
In another TV matter, Verizon says they’re sending me a new DVR and, maybe, a router too, that I don’t want or need. Everything is exactly as I want it already, but I must install the new gear within 20 days to avoid losing television service. Which means losing all of the TCM recordings in HD I have on the old DVR. This could be when I finally drop cable TV and lose access to Watch TCM. I’m not feeling well enough to deal with it on such short notice.
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Dave explains what CrowdStrike did wrong that made it possible for a single .sys file in Windows to stop the world.
Cheap Track
I’ve posted this video before, but I’ll do it again as a follow-up to today’s post about Ortofon. Audio-Technica doesn’t publish the tracking specs for its cartridges, but a $39 model, the AT85EP, tracks at the rated performance of the Ortofon 2M Blue at $189. In fact, it does it at a lower tracking force. If you listen with headphones, you can hear slight buzzing from the discontinued Shure M92E, indicating mis-tracking.
Ortofon the Obscure
This self-contradictory headline is obviously intended to attract attention. It caught mine. Saying that a particular brand dominates a market implies it isn’t obscure.
Why Does This Obscure Brand Dominate the Turntable Market?
https://www.gearpatrol.com/tech/ortofon-phono-cartridges-popular/
The article misses one reason why I favor Ortofon. They do something all cartridge manufacturers should do, by publishing the tracking ability of their products.
The 2M Red has a diamond-tipped stylus, and the 2M Blue has a solid, or “nude,” diamond stylus.
2M Red $99 Tracking ability at 315Hz at recommended tracking force 70 µm 2M Blue $189 Tracking ability at 315Hz at recommended tracking force 80 µm
Cleanly tracking a 70 µm (15 dB) cut in a record is very good, and tracking 80 µm (16 dB) is outstanding performance. Ortofon’s 2M Blue predecessor is the Super OM 20. It is also rated for 80 µm, which I confirmed in this test. Side 1 of the test record was pressed slightly off-center, resulting in “wow” being heard.
Something I first noticed fifty years ago, when replacing my American made Shure M91ED with the Danish Ortofon FF15E shown above, was the superior quality of plastic from the land of Lego.
“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.