Category: All Posts

HTML5 Agony

For Christmas I gave the missus a Kindle Fire HDX 7″. Couldn’t resist the $179 special price. The picture and sound are amazing but, like all Android-based products, Adobe Flash isn’t supported, and this site relies on Flash plugins for audio and video. So here I’m testing an HTML5 plugin for MP3 and MP4.

I’m very fond of the Flash audio player plugin, but the old, old WordPress theme that I’ve used lo these seven years causes it to conflict with the HTML5 plugin. I tried a workaround that doesn’t work, and now I’ve switched themes to accommodate this, and I’m still hitting a problem — two in fact — so now I’m disabling the plugin and going with the HTML5 media support that’s built into WordPress, which has fixed one issue but introduced another. Aaugh! Everything was running so nicely for such a long time, that this sort of frustration was inevitable.

Video support is also rather limited compared to the Flash plugin I’ve used, which can be adjusted to fix an incorrect aspect ratio, and smooth out a picture when it isn’t run in its original resolution. Both problems are apparent here.

For a long time I have been intending to restore a lot of video clips that were taken offline when I changed web hosting services, but now I also have to contemplate converting them from FLV to MP4. What a painful undertaking!

The Music Superman

Here’s some more Adventures of Superman music. The previous example is from season 2, and this is from the first season. The music wasn’t actually written for the series, it was composed for low-budget “Poverty Row” studios in the late 40’s, re-recorded overseas to avoid the musician’s union, and later made available on transcription disks for use in TV shows. Some of it is believed to have been the work of famed film composer Miklos Rozsa. There’s a strong “Rite of Spring” component to this piece.

The first season of TAOS is a lot grittier than subsequent seasons. One of the best early episodes is “Crime Wave.” Watch Superman punch through a concrete wall, then turn around and punch bad guys in the jaw, and remember that this was a kid’s TV show.

The little TEAC that could

I’ve been struggling with a project at home for some time, ripping a bunch of CD-R’s to MP3. Some of the discs simply could not be read by any of the combi-DVD/CD drives I have. The only player that worked at all is a dedicated CD reader that came with the Compaq computer I bought on October 25, 2001 — the day that Windows XP was released. But some songs wouldn’t finish ripping, and even if they did finish it could take hours, and even with error correction enabled on the drive the results were awful, as heard on the audio player’s first track. The song, by Bonnie Guitar, was #27 on the Billboard music charts the week of June 24, 1957. The second track on the player has a clean rip of the song from the CD-R.

[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2013/12/1st+rip.mp3,https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2013/12/2nd+rip.mp3|titles=Bonnie Guitar: Dark Moon – bad rip,Bonnie Guitar: Dark Moon – good rip]

You would think the first recording was taken from a badly scratched record, and the second from a CD, but they both came from the same CD-R. What made the difference? An amazingly nimble 10-year-old TEAC CD210-PU USB CD-ROM reader I got hold of that sails through the same discs that gave five other units a fit.

That same week in 1957, another recording of the song, done by Gale Storm, was #7 on the Billboard chart, and it makes for an interesting comparison to Bonnie’s version. I hear a definite Elvis influence here.

[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2013/12/GStorm.mp3|titles=Gale Storm: Dark Moon]

Diane Disney, 1933-2013

Sharon, Walt, Diane and Lillian Disney
Sharon, Walt, Diane and Lillian Disney

Diane Disney has passed away, a month shy of her 80th birthday. Diane was Walt’s first daughter, and his only biological child. Sharon, who died in 1993, was adopted. Brian Sibley knew Diane, and today he talked about her on BBC Radio 4.

[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2013/11/Brian+and+Diane.mp3|titles=Brian Sibley on Diane Disney]

This is the Disney Studio’s press release with Diane’s birth announcement.

12/18/33 - IT'S A GIRL! At the Walt Disneys. The infant was born almost at the moment that Disney, creator of Mickey Mouse, was receiving a medal from a Parents' Magazine for distinguished service to children. Hastily thanking 75 distinguished guests for the medal, Disney deserted the luncheon and rushed to the Good Samaritan Hospital (Los Angeles) to see his wife and baby girl. The baby, born through a Caesarian operation, and mother were reported doing well by the attending physician. Photo shows Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse making the important announcement.
12/18/33 – IT’S A GIRL! At the Walt Disneys. The infant was born almost at the moment that Disney, creator of Mickey Mouse, was receiving a medal from a Parents’ Magazine for distinguished service to children. Hastily thanking 75 distinguished guests for the medal, Disney deserted the luncheon and rushed to the Good Samaritan Hospital (Los Angeles) to see his wife and baby girl. The baby, born through a Caesarian operation, and mother were reported doing well by the attending physician. Photo shows Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse making the important announcement.