In an elementary school class we discussed this song.
The teacher encouraged questions about its possible meaning. Was it about growing up and leaving childhood behind? Much later, kids speculated that Puff was a reference to being high on marijuana.
The question I didn’t ask, for fear of sounding stupid was, what is ceiling wax? The question soon came to mind again, with this record.
This confused me for a long time, until eventually I saw something on TV that made me realize it was sealing, not ceiling, wax.
My Economics advisor at the small college I attended liked teaching there because he could express his views on Political Economy without getting in trouble. Avoiding trouble is also the reason I prefer having my old weblog to posting on fan forums.
Some of the controversies regarding classic comic books concern the various combinations of pencil artists and inkers. Here is an excellent comparison of original pencil art to finished inks.
Unused art for Daredevil #24, Pencils by Gene Colan, Inks by Frank Giacoia
Frank Giacoia was a top-notch professional. His direct and distinctive inking style was unmistakable, while adhering to the original pencils. Stan Lee often credited Joe Sinnott as “Embellisher,” rather than as an inker. On the left is a face drawn by Jack Kirby that Frank inked, and on the right is the same character as inked by Joe.
(L) From FF #97, pg. 10, panel 1 / (R) From FF #46, pg. 18, panel 4
A few years separate these two examples. In that time Jack had adjusted his drawing to accommodate the switch to smaller original art — from 12″x16″ to 10″x15″ — but I think it’s still a valid comparison.
Joe said he sometimes felt he put too much of his own style on Jack’s faces. But Stan brought Joe back to Marvel to ink “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” for a reason. As I liked to tell Joe, his “friendly faces” were the very thing that got me started reading the Fantastic Four. Here’s a picture I took looking over Joe’s shoulder as he drew Superman for a fan five years ago. As you can see, Joe inked exactly the same way that he drew.
Stan said he liked to see how artists handled mundane, everyday scenes. Here’s a panel from a Captain America story, half of it taken up with Stan’s dialogue, that shows how perfectly Joe enhanced Jack’s art, adding expressive subtlety to the faces.
TOS #95, “A Time to Die — A Time to Live!” pg. 4, panel 2
The Beatles famously spent time with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Pete Townshend was influenced by Meher Baba. Chick Corea gave credit to L. Ron Hubbard. John McLaughlin’s guiding light for a time was Sri Chinmoy. I’ve been listening to my old Mahavishnu Orchestra albums. Jazz Fusion meets Progressive Rock.
Everyone talks about Beethoven composing music after going deaf, but so did Smetana. Here’s an example, played without benefit of sheet music by the Smetana Quartet, no longer in existence.
Did PHP 8 make this site faster and more responsive than it was? In the past, Google’s speed tests have rated it from poor (42) to no better than average (67). The results are still variable, but they now include hits in the excellent range.
Google Speed Test – MobileGoogle Speed Test – Desktop
Computer Tech – 2
Nine years ago (NINE YEARS??) I posted this item about what was then my new netbook.
Now retired from general use, the netbook (now running Windows 10) is my Logitech Media Server. Checking on it last summer, I could hear the fan was running at double speed, so I wasn’t surprised by the heat coming out of the side vent.
The workaround was as low tech as it gets. I flipped the netbook over for passive cooling from the bottom vents. This time of year, at times the fan doesn’t even need to run, but I do need to check occasionally for dust in the vents.
TV Tech – 1
Six years ago (SIX YEARS??) I wrote about getting a cheap Personal Video Recorder.
I later replaced the Mediasonic Homeworx with a vastly superior TiVo DVR that continues to work well. The PVR sat in its box for years, until I recently pulled it out for use with my bedroom TV, so I can pause live television. The TV is a 12-year-old 32-inch Samsung I bought for my offspring, who no longer needs it.
Being pleased with the Roku streaming stick on the porch TV, I bought one for the bedroom. So the TV went from having no HDMI devices to having two of them. Then the Roku’s sound went out. Not muted, but silent.
Hmm. I swapped its HDMI port with the PVR. The PVR had no sound. Then the Roku had no sound. I moved the Roku to the third HDMI port, and it likewise went quiet. The sound was fine when using the TV tuner.
Hmm. I went online and found how to enter service mode on the TV. I did a factory reset, and the sound returned on the HDMI ports. But then the Roku flashed a message saying its HDMI port had a problem. It suggested trying another port, which I knew was pointless.
Hmm. Would a firmware update fix the problem? Given the set’s age, I doubted Samsung would have one available but, yeah, they do! I put the file on a flash drive, ran the update, and that was the end of the problem. Kudos to Samsung! For the heck of it I checked the porch TV I bought ten years ago (TEN YEARs??), and it came with Samsung’s final firmware release for the model.
TV Tech – 2
Regarding Roku, it has a problem that Amazon’s Fire TV doesn’t. The current models of both products support 5 GHz WiFi, but neither device supports Dynamic Frequency Selection for 5 GHz WiFi. Fire TV is okay when the router tries to negotiate DFS, but Roku chokes on it sometimes. The result is the SSID’s for 5 GHz networks disappear.
The solution is to disable DFS on the router, which should also be checked to see if the Roku has been blocked, after repeated failed attempts to connect. This may or may not be something an average Roku user is willing or able to do on their own. It would be much better if Roku had a firmware update to properly handle DFS negotiation.
The bacteria did not come from the food, according to medical experts. The Boston Globe article at that link is behind a paywall, so I’ll use a couple of quotes.
“There’s absolutely no history in the medical literature of this kind of bacteria being transmitted by food,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. “It’s baloney.”
“It was completely irrelevant to this patient’s presentation,” said Dr. Eric Rosenberg, director of the clinical microbiology laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital.
