January 2016
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What she does
Over the holidays I asked my nineteen-year-old son, a music maven, to name a tune he liked that I probably hadn’t heard. He quickly brought up “What You Don’t Do,” by Lianne La Havas: Blew me away. Still does. Can’t get enough of it. It’s not just her soulful voice and delivery, but the arrangement. Continue reading
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Speeding on the Subway
At the uptown end of the 59th Street/Columbus Circle subway platform there hangs from the ceiling a box with three disks on fat stalks, connected by thick black cables that run to something unseen in the downtown direction. Knowing a few things about radio and how it works, I saw that and thought, Hmm… That Continue reading
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Rethinking John Wanamaker
This is an improved edit of a post I made to a list I’m on. Rather than let it scroll off to oblivion, I decided to put it here as well. The other parties are in italics. I’m in plain text. If you work in advertising or marketing, kill yourself – Bill Hicks Brilliant bit. Continue reading
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Can somebody fix this subwoofer?
So I’ve got this Onix x-sub subwoofer that doesn’t work. It’s the bass side of a Sonos ZP-100 system driving a pair of Cambridge Soundworks Newton MC300 speakers in our living room. Together the system sounds great. (Consistent with Tom Andry‘s review, which influenced my purchase back in ’06.) The little green light in the back went Continue reading
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The slow sidelining of over-the-air radio
I’ve always loved AM radio. But it’s not a requited love. AM radios these days are harder to get, and tend to suck. The band is thick with electronic noise from things that compute (a sum of devices that rounds to everything). AM stations are falling like old trees all over the band, and all Continue reading