February 6, 2010
February 6, 2010
This is 20:00 EST. The real snow will arrive in the wee hours of the morning. It will be a busy day tomorrow. Snow removal is exercise, or more back trouble.
February 5, 2010
I have received a few inquiries about the laptop. Netbook, notebook? I don’t know what to call it. We call it the laptop. It’s also become a designated cat station. Toshiba calls it the s1307.
Cat owners know what I mean here. There are just certain places in a house where cats are found, and some of them change with the seasons, but the stations usually are places one can identify by the mounds of shed fur laying about.
The real reason for the posting was to do a quick product review on the small speakers I’ve added. These are Altec Lansing BXR1220 2.0 speakers.
A blogger introduced me to a great classical music station in Canada that is so good that I just had to play the music around my house. I have speakers for the desktop upstairs in the office, but I wanted to listen downstairs at my writing desk and at the dinning room table. These speakers, attached to the laptop work marvelously.
Pro’s of these speakers.
1) The sound from these two small speakers is very nice.
2) They are dirt cheap. At about $20 bucks U.S. the price is right.
3) They are easy to install. They get their power from an available USB port.
Con’s of these speakers.
1) They get their power from an available USB port. On a laptop, the number of powered USB ports is limited and that means a shuffling of add-on devices to get the combination desired.
2) They are small, but not small enough to put in a laptop bag. I also wonder what they look like to an x-ray guy at the airport? Two cylinders with wires? That seems likely to raise eyebrows.
3) No jack on the speakers for headphones. Choose either the headphones or the speakers.
For what we need around here, these speakers work nicely and the limitations are ones we can live with easily. I’m sure that other bloggers can recommend and share information about other sound systems for laptops too.
January 31, 2010
Here are links for two classical music stations I listen to online. I have a small collection of radio online broadcasts I tune in and listen to regularly, but these are my stations of choice for classical music. WETA’s Mozart selections this afternoon have been heavenly.
Do you listen to much radio online? What are your usual stations? Am I getting anyone interested in listening to more radio online?
January 27, 2010
With the passing of Éric Rohmer earlier this month, I decided to watch his “Six Moral Tales” in chronological order. I own them now on the Criterion Collection DVD label, a set that is extraordinarily well done. The collection also includes a number of Rohmer’s shorter films, including “The Curve,” “Nadja in Paris,” and a fascinating, thought-provoking, and touching television interview produced by Rohmer featuring a conversation between two philosophers, one a secularist, the other a cleric, discussing the works of Blaise Pascal. The shorter works provide atmosphere, background and context to his more famous six films.
Here are a couple of clips on YouTube of “My Night at Maud’s,” generally regarded as the best of his Six Moral Tales, and certainly my favorite of the six.
Another film, not of the “Six Moral Tales” but a later work, “Perceval le Gallois” was also interesting. I haven’t seen it in a few years, but I’ll likely watch it again in a couple of weeks.
Since viewers either love or detest Rohmer’s films, my near veneration of this giant of French cinema is best balanced with a few more clips of his works so I don’t risk steering non-fans into hours of “paint drying” boredom. Besides, I just like introducing film lovers to Rohmer if I think they will enjoy his works.
January 26, 2010
A laptop is an almost new thing in our home. My wife had a Dell laptop ten years ago and it was a good enough machine, but it was never used any differently than we would have used a desktop. It just took up less space and it was kind of hard to type on because of the small keyboard.
Recently, we took the plunge and purchased a Toshiba 1307 notebook. We hooked up the external DVD drive we also ordered, and within a couple of hours I was off to Staples to pick up a wireless mouse. I love the PC, but I will never adapt to a touch pad. I just can’t do it, and the touch pad on this model is rough.
Some things haven’t changed in ten years. This keyboard is nearly impossible for my large hands. The number of hideous spelling errors (I’m a weak speller anyway) is attributable to a frustrating squeezing feeling. Somehow, I also managed to make the cursor jump around in the text box of blogs and replies. I’m not sure how this is happening, but it mangles my postings. The answer lies, I think, in a larger keyboard.
So how do I rate the new PC? Very highly actually.
I need a portable, reliable machine that is easy to hook up to a small home network and this computer is all that. I’m not a gamer, but a business man so my RAM, video and hard drive requirements are modest. Neither was I looking for powerful speakers. A pair of head phones works fine, add-on speakers will come later.
Now that much of World Band radio has migrated to the Internet, I want to listen to my news on the Internet and this computer satisfies that need. I still have a nice short wave radio and a useful random wire for use when the Internet broadcasts (like Sunday night’s Voice of Russia programming) are not working for some reason. Wireless speakers are on our list of must have devices whenever we get back to listening to radio broadcasts together. For the near future, the headphones will suffice.
As for the keyboard? Well, I can use it (if just barely), and I will probably adjust to some extent, but the full-sized wireless keyboard is so common now that I’ve already a simple solution available so my criticism of the keyboard is not that important. On the road, I will make do.
I especially like the monitor. While only 13.3 inches, it is a good monitor. No, I can’t stand to read books online on this screen any more than on a larger one, but the resolution is better than I thought it would be, and adjustments are easy. I’ve watched both YouTube videos and full length films (Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales are what I’m currently watching ) and I’m very pleased with what I see.
The built-in camera is probably very interesting, but I don’t use it at all. I would be surprised if I ever use the device.
Battery life is something I’ve only lightly tested. A couple of quick trips to the café, or to a friend’s house doesn’t do much to establish the real limits of the battery. More travel is in the future and then we will field test the battery.
January 25, 2010
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Michael Alpert trans. Two Picaresque Novels Two thumbs up
de Beauvoir, Simone. The Ethics of Ambiguity. One thumb up
de Beauvoir, Simone. The Mandarins. One thumb up
Paine, Thomas. Common Sense. Two thumbs up
Xenophon (Robin Waterford trans.) Hiero the Tyrant and Other Treatises. Two thumbs up
January 20, 2010
January 20, 2010
In what may be the second herald of things to come in November, Republican Scott Brown has been elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts to fill the term of the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy. To say that Sen. Elect Brown has some big shoes to fill would be an understatement.
Things went rather badly for Democrats in November of 2009 in both New Jersey and Virginia. This election, a turnaround from what was once believed to be an easy win for MA-Attorney General Martha Coakley, is absolutely a vote of dissatisfaction with the economy and a growing and deep distrust of the Obama Administration’s domestic policies, especially on the bitterly partisan issue of health care reform.
What happens next inside the Beltway is likely to be infuriating to some, depressing to others, but there is almost certainly going to be a one party push to enact some type of health care reform before the new U.S. Senator (from the other party) is sworn into office. How far this last effort to pass and enact the current legislative initiative is going to get is anyone’s guess. I wouldn’t bet that the option of sitting back down at the table and getting some bi-partisan legislation underway will be on anyone’s agenda very soon.
January 19, 2010
I’m the webmaster for a library — the library of a church diocese actually. I not only do the web work, I also jump into editing, research work (on and off line), I help with some of the quick design work around the place (but much less so today), and I also administer a related, newly established web forum for church librarians.
So far, my forum is very basic and Spartan. Until the folks at Church HQ (the true Byzantine hierarchy) get around to sending me style sheets and art work for website revisions, (or giving me the axe) I’m sticking with the simple. Besides, I’m new to forum administration anyway and I’ve already found that I have an important task as a forum administrator. Each day, many times a day, I log on and delete false registrants who leave url’s for such interesting not exactly church related sites as “bigtitdolls” on an ISP in Russia or “buttf*ckdolls” located somewhere in Germany.
The porn sites are not the only ones competing for the eyes of church librarians. The Internet Viagra, and other online med’s sites seem intent on participating in detailed and exciting discussions about bi-lingual subject headings, book reviews in journals, and how to classify books using the Dewey Decimal System.
I delete the would be forum registrants, ban the IP addresses, report the url’s as possible phishing sites. Without fail, I’ll have more deletions waiting for me when I get back from the cafe, or the apothecary. Thanks to spammers and perverts on the Web, I know this little gig will last and last. I should start billing by the deletion.
January 19, 2010
Coverage and information about the efforts to overturn stupid, revolting, deeply offensive, disgusting, vile, stomach turning Proposition 8 in California.
A CNN iReport from the Courthouse in SF
The opening statement of Ted Olson
More information about marriage equality nationwide at
Get involved and help strike down anti-Civil Rights legislation like Prop.8 and the accursed DOMA.
