Still alive?

 I must confess, I had totally forgotten about this account until I started seeing mentions on social media about the impending culling.

It reminded me of how pleased I was to learn that this tool existed, until my attention was hijacked by other shiny objects.

Well, the luster of those objects have certainly tarnished over time, yet the appeal of this site remains as full of promise as ever.

Thanks Google, for the 'shot across the bow'. It has refocused my attention. Now that I'm reminded that this wonderful tool exists, I'm re-inspired to return to basics.

This medium isn't nearly as fractious as many of the other options. I have a newfound appreciation for the pleasures of a simple blog.

Maybe I'm just being nostalgic. Perhaps I'm becoming a Thoreau-like luddite, enamored by ascetic simplicity. Time will tell.

But for now, I'm back. For as long as Google will have me. 😏

Cutting the cord

I'm no Luddite, but I'm also not so fickle as to dump a proven technology just because it's no longer new & cool. Inertia is a powerful thing. But I may be getting ready to cut my ties to my Telco.

I'm old enough to remember growing up not even having a phone. Where we lived, my family was finally to get 'party line' service in the early 1960s. My grandmother, who lived in the Canadian Maritimes had a crank-phone and switchboard service until the early 1970s.

I live in an old mill town with a surprising amount of 19th century infrastructure remaining. I guess if it simply works, it remains invisible. No one wants to spend money to upgrade what doesn't draw attention to itself by failure or inadequacy.

DSL came to my area around 2000, and I signed up as soon as I could. Even over the cloth-shielded, solid copper cable that came into my basement junction box, it worked surprisingly well. I could finally shelve (alleged) 56K dialup for >700KBPS service, for only $50 more a month.

Since that time, technology has only advanced, while my existing service has remained stagnant, and my telco bill has inched up with fees and services I don't use.

My principal phone number is my Google Voice number. It offers me a bounty of features and options I would have gladly paid Verizon for. I rarely use my landline. It's merely an anchor for my DSL service. An anchor that costs me around $40 monthly. My mobile phone offers me far more calling options - and single-rate calling whether it's the next block or the opposite coast.

I've tried to whittle down the chargeable feature set on my landline voice/DSL service, but still it costs me upwards of $80 a month. ....More if I ever actually USE the damned phone.

I think it's time to cut the cord. Not because the 19th century technology can't keep up. It's surprisingly adequate. No, it's the mid-20th century billing model that's causing my defection. The infrastructure's long bought and paid for. Maintenance is paltry compared to the billions being poured into the communities that are being wired for FIOS and the buildout of 4G wireless infrastructure.

So why am I paying more for my legacy tech than I would to ditch it all & use WiMax/LTE and my mobile phone ?

As I said, inertia is a powerful thing, or as one sage put it "it's a fine line between a groove and a rut". Looking at what I pay and what I get is causing me to reevaluate everything. It may be time to break with the past and embrace the future.

In the end, it's not the tech. It's the money.

It's like 1974 all over again! I was working in a stereo store & got caught up in "Quad fever"... stereo was good, but this was utterly immersive - not to mention a handy way to nearly double hardware sales. All the big record labels got behind Quad - each in their own way of course. There were 3 major vinyl formats, plus a number of small fringe techniques to cram a quart of content into a pint container. There were incompatible 8-Tracks & Reels, and talk of a technical group to draft standards for Quad-FM.

Unfortunately, it was chaos. There were too many parts that wouldn't play nice with others and content was often terrible. Maybe swirling horns or guitars darting from corner to corner would impress a newbie like a game of "got yer nose" captivates an infant. But you can't build an industry on a facile gimmick. Well recorded surround sound was indeed immersive and could enhance the listening experience, yet it's extra clarity made every link in the recording/production/distribution chain that much more critical. When done properly, it was an evolutionary technology. But that kind of subtlety didn't move product.

The 3D TV fad seems startingly similar. Many different means to the same dubios end, a paucity of content, and much of what is out there immature and gimmicky.

I'm not knocking the underlying idea of making the presentation more realistic by adding another real-world perception - depth - to the process. I just get the feeling this is strictly about selling gear through gimmickry, the folly of which, sadly, seems to be a lesson the consumer electronics & content publishing industries have still not learned.

All that said, I'd love to see a medium for distributing stereoscopic content, from campy old chestnuts like "House of Wax" to NASA's stereoscopic survey data. But none of that will fuel a major trend in consumer electronics. Like colorwheel TV in the early 50s, I get the feeling this is just a future footnote in the history of home entertainment.

A good idea doesn't equal a good business

Sezmi has me excited & nostalgic. I was captivated by the idea when it was USDTV. That company's long gone, but the idea of using wasted bandwidth of broadcast stations still intrigues me.
I have so many ...I don't want to call them bad... let's say "underutilized" ATSC TV stations around me, I'd love to see someone buy up all those excess bits & do something useful with them. I count 5 stations doing SD with no subchannels. I would imagine that could carry a lot of additional content if someone would just lease the bandwidth. It would be additional income for marginal broadcasters, and more programming choice for viewers.
Let's hope someone finds a successful business model, so this can actually get done.

Groking Ephemera

They say memories fade. I'm realizing this in new ways as I unearth shoeboxes filled with shards of history preserved on dead formats... reels of mysterious 8mm film, brittle paper envelopes stuffed with curling orange negatives that I take to be from 110 & 120 cartridge film. They seem to be 16 & 35mm stock respectively but the perfs & framesizes are odd. I think they're all that's left of countless 'Kodak moments' snapped on long lost instamatics. Eyeballing the negatives is intriguing. There seem to be photos from the 1964 NY World's Fair, countless family moments I can't make out, and heaven knows what else.
I want to reclaim these fading ...and curling... memories, but I don't yet have a clue how. I've only begun my search for saving old formats, but the results aren't promising so far. Oh well, these things sat & mouldered in shoeboxes for decades, I guess they can wait a little longer until I can figure how to best restore them.
Too bad the Library of Congress (or any other country's archivists) don't have an online how-to for home restoration/preservation of personal history. If they do, I have yet to find it.

the mind's attic

I had the radio on as a background, when one of the non-news features mentioned an exhibit at a local museum that percolated some long forgotten memories ...like methane from the landfill of my mind. :) I don't know how long this link will remain active, but it's a retrospective of a "trolley park" ... a throwback to the days before suburbia, when city dwellers would take public transportation to the end of the line - and a bucolic recreation area in "the country" ...remember, this was pre-suburbs. Norumbega Park was a recreation area west of Boston along the Charles River. I remember as a child that it seemed like taking a trip to Maine. Of course, when you're in the early single digits, time & distance are quite different things. I now realize that this place is inside Rt 128 - which rings Boston at a roughly 10 mile radius.
I think the area had been bulldozed by the time I was 6. It's now industrial land near where I-90 meets Rt 128. But it had existed from the late 1800s. I'm a bit surprised to find the name brought back hazy memories long & deeply buried. While I was born far too late to recognize or appreciate the history around me, it brings home the lesson on how change relentlessly continues. Not inherently for better or worse... just for different.
...enough navel gazing Head - UP. Eyes - AHEAD. ;)

More foam on the sea of information

The Red Sox move on to game 7 of the ALCS. I wanted to watch game 6, but was too superstitious. Every game I watch goes badly. No - every game I follow... whether on TV, radio, or even SMS updates! So I go into info exile until fate has been set. I know it's foolish superstition, but it seems to be working, so I'm in no hurry to let reason prevail.