My Word with Douglas E. Welch

Through the Great 78 Project, the Internet Archive has been digitizing the audio from 78rpm records produced from 1898 to the 1950s. Over 25,000 high-quality recordings are currently available from artists like Edith Piaf, Irving Berlin, Lena Horne, and Duke Ellington. This preservation is important because the discs are fragile:

Improve your skills on your own, effectively and enjoyably, by watching films and series in the language you study.

In the early 20th-century English fireworks company C.R. Brock and Company (now known as Brocks Fireworks) published colorful catalogs displaying designs from Japanese companies such as Hirayama Fireworks and Yokoi Fireworks. Six catalogs of diverse pyrotechnic diagrams have been digitized and made available for download thanks to the city of Yokohama’s public library. If you don’t read Japanese, you can download each publication’s PDF by visiting their website, clicking one of the book’s English titles near the bottom of the page, and then clicking “本体PDF画像” link below the image. Each catalog is a tremendous and varied selection of the firework shapes and colors of the time, with several designs you might recognize no matter where you view contemporary fireworks displays. (via Open Culture)

My Los Angeles 43 – Bradbury Building, Downtown Los Angeles

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Learn more about Los Angeles with these books

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* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Books available at the LA Public Library

See all the 2017 Gift Guide Entries

18 BOOM 2 Wireless Bluetooth Speaker and other

I have a smaller bluetooth speaker that I specifically was gifted for kitchen use. I love listening to podcasts and music while I cook and the little speaker did a perfectly good job. That said, due to the noise of running water, food processors and others, it would be nice to have a speaker with a bit more oomph. The BOOM 2 series of speakers is just one such speaker, but it was included in many other gift guides on the internet and will likely be my, more powerful, replacement for the kitchen and garden.

• Insanely good, loud 360degree sound with deep bass
• Portable design so you can bring the music anywhere
• Waterproof*, shockproof, designed for adventure (* IPX7 rated waterproof up to 30 minutes and a depth of one meter)
• 15hour battery life and 100 ft. Bluetooth wireless range (Actual battery life will vary with use, settings and environmental conditions. Rechargeable batteries have a limited number of charge cycles)
• Maximum Sound Level: 90dBA. Frequency Range: 90Hz – 20kHz. Drivers: two 45mm (1 3/4″) active drivers and two 45mm X 80mm (1 3/4″ x 3″) passive radiators.

While I was intrigued by the Amazon Echo, I couldn’t really make a case for buying one. That said, when a friend offered me their Echo Dot, which they didn’t want, I quickly jumped for it. I had been wanting to play around with the technology and see what it could do.

So far, for me, the Echo Dot has been used for listening to music from Pandora.com, providing weather and commute traffic info for my wife and sun each morning, game playing with Jeopardy, Lie Swatter, Sing Quiz and Screen Test Movie Quote Quiz and it also interferes with the Etekcity switches and Hook I mentioned earlier in the Gift Guide. I have been very happy with my Dot and, knowing what I know now, I probably would spend my own money to get one — perhaps to expand Alexa into other parts of the home.

The new Echo Plus looks neat due to its added capabilities as a smart home hub for many available systems.

09 Amazon Echo, Echo Plus, Echo Dot

You can save a few dollars if you want to buy a couple of Echo units or by buying factory refurbished units.

* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs

Our friends, Keri Dearborn and Michael Lawshe just released their annual Halloween show, Ghosts of the Internet.

This year it is a live recording of Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, adapted by Keri Dearborn.

If you listen, you might hear 2 familiar voices among the cast (wink, wink)

Listen to Ghosts of the Internet 11: Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!

Also available in many versions from the LA Public LIbrary 

TV Worth Watching: The Doctor Blake Mysteries

Another in a long line of mystery shows I love, The Doctor Blake Mysteries comes from Australia. The show follows the life of Dr. Lucian Blake, recently returned to Australia after living — and working in intelligence in Shanghai during World War II. His life there was thrown into turmoil when he was captured by the Japanese and imprisoned, losing touch with this his Chinese wife and young daughter.

Dr. Blake is a bit unconventional for the small, Gold Rush town of Ballarat in the 1950s. He works as a police surgeon for the local force, but find himself often in conflict with his coworkers and townspeople. The stories, acting,  writing, and production are top-notch.

Season 5 of the series (its last)  is currently airing in Australia, but Seasons 1-3 are available via Netflix and 1-4  available for sale on Amazon. The Dr. Blake Mysteries also airs on many public television stations in the US.