Category: All Posts

Imperfect Sound Forever

My best buddy Dennis likes to point out that for the first time people listening to recorded music are experiencing poorer sound quality than the previous generation of audio reproduction offered. He’s got a point, and the Boston Globe covered this topic in Wednesday’s edition.

Ever lower fidelity
Many listeners are trading quality for convenience

By Joan Anderman, Globe Staff | March 14, 2007

Gabe Stillman loves his iLamp . He puts it on his desk while he’s doing homework and moves it to his bedside table for the late-night hours. Not only does it throw good light, it plays Stillman’s music collection. The iLamp is outfitted with built-in speakers and a docking port for iPods, making every one of Stillman’s 850 downloaded songs a finger tap away.

It couldn’t be more convenient. It could, however, sound better.
Continue reading Imperfect Sound Forever

Oui Tintin!

[flv:http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Video/2011/Oct/Tintin.flv 400 250]

It’s been announced that Steven Spielberg will produce a series of Tintin movies. Tintin, if you don’t know, is a hugely popular and influential cartoon character from Belgium, created by the late Georges Remi, who worked under the pen name of Hergé.

An excellent documentary about Hergé, Tintin and I, was on PBS last year. The video player above has the first few minutes.

Colbert is Colbert

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/MAR07/ColbertAynRand.flv 400 300]

Some of the pass-offs from Jon Stewart to Stephen Colbert are real gems, even when they manage to flub it. This one from a couple of weeks ago I couldn’t find on Comedy Central, so I’ll resort to posting it myself. Colbert provides some bedtime reading from Ayn (A is A) Rand.

I went through an Ayn Rand period in college, when I read both “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged”. Like the science-fiction writings of L. Ron Hubbard, I genuinely enjoyed Ayn Rand’s novels. If nothing else, they’re solid romantic soap operas. But as I did with Hubbard’s Dianetics, I decided Rand’s Objectivism wasn’t for me.

More Henry Mancini Music

It’s generally believed that the Hitchcock movie North By Northwest with Cary Grant influenced the development of the James Bond movies. After the first Bond movie Dr. No proved to be such a hugely successful hit, in 1963 Cary Grant, almost 60, was featured in a less physical spy movie called Charade.

Henry Mancini wrote the Charade score and Andy Williams sang the theme song. Compare this to Matt Monro singing the theme to From Russia With Love, also from 1963.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/MAR07/Charade.mp3]

Nice, huh? Well, here’s a Russian duo performing a decidedly different version of “Charade” at a rowdy German club last year. That’s Zombie Girl playing bass.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/MAR07/MesserChups.flv 400 300]