N.Y. Times discovers Sony has dropped the ball.

I think the N.Y Times reads my blog. See January's "What's the Matter With Sony?"

Now look at this:How the Tech Parade Passed Sony By

By HIROKO TABUCHI

Sony once wowed the world with the Walkman and the Trinitron TV. But its fortunes have taken a sharp turn amid disruptive new technologies and unforeseen rivals.

What's the matter with Sony?

In 1979 Sony gave us the Walkman and in 1992 the Minidisk recorder/playback system which I love. Then I suppose they had a big downsizing and fired all their development staff because since that date they have sat on their rears and watched Apple do all the innovating.

Sony make beautiful hardware but their software is pathetic. Their big flatscreen TVs look handsome but have a tiny and backward brain. They flaunt net access in their promotion but the TV comes without WIFI or Bluetooth built in, WIFI is an expensive extra, Bluetooth is not available at all so a keyboard is not attachable. Trying to input URLs or searching on Youtube is a hunt and peck affair reminiscent of the computers of 1980.

It's inexcusable. How could they make such beautiful hardware with such crappy software to run it? Wake up, Sony!

Band-in-a-Box, but which box? Not a Mac.

BIAB for MAC

I have been buying Band-in-a-Box since the Atari version, back in the last century. The last version I bought for Windows was around 2004, it did everything I wanted. Then I switched to Mac and I found I had to keep my old PC laptop going to use the program.

I worked the piano bar on cruise ships and I had my laptop on the piano, BIAB running, earphone port plugged into an amp, and the display where the music stand would be. As it played the backing instruments the notation was presented to me with lyric and chord symbols close by the melody line. It was so easy to read and play that I could play anything! All the standards, Sinatra, Elton, Croce, Billy Joel, bossanovas, anything. (I turned so many passengers on to BIAB that I seriously considered becoming a rep and signed with PGmusic to do that. However, the ship frowned on it so that didn't go anywhere.)

The fly in the ointment was that I was using a PC, subject to annoying interruptions in service. So I switched to Mac and bought BIAB for Mac. The computer was steady as a rock but the program was rubbish compared to the PC version so I struggled on with the PC until I retired.

Yesterday I blew $89.27 usd and upgraded to the latest Mac version, highly touted on PGmusic's website. I thought surely in the last few years they must have fixed some of the most glaring deficiencies, and the price is the same as the full-featured Windows version. What a disappointment. The interface is still clunky, the lyrics still come up in a little box in the control area, hard to read and nowhere near the melody line, impossible to sight-read during a live performance. Basic conveniences that every other program now has, like "Open Recent" in the drop-down file menu, are missing. Yes, the RealTracks sound great but the old midi sounds were quite adequate for the piano-bar environment.

Apple is a major player in the sphere of music and so is BIAB. I am surprised and disappointed to find Mac marginalization at PGmusic.

London Bobby

Time traveller from the last century

No tracks please, we're musicians!

Tracks are boring. Tracks leave no leeway for expression or interpretation by the performer. Singing to tracks is karaoke, even if accompanied by the odd note on a guitar or a keyboard. Boring! Boring!

Use a band, or an accompanist or, if the worst comes to the worst, play the damn thing yourself. If you can't do that, learn! Don't go trolling round the internet for somebody else's work.

So, if you are performing somewhere and most of what we are hearing is from tracks, I won't be there.

Bob Smith, time traveler from the last century.

Canada is sending my grandson to fight in Afghanistan.

I don't know why.

Time Travellers from the last century

I'm glad I am not the only dinosaur on the block. The man with the best possible career as a pianist excluding Iturbi and Liberace is Sid Wright, still active and starring in "The Three Pianists" concert. He is 89 and not a household name but worked in London solidly and simultaneously on radio, TV and in clubs for half a century.

I have just reconnected with my favourite entertainer of the 70s, Adam Timoon. Here he is playing Malagueña just a few weeks ago. He use to pack Adam's Inn at the Seaway Hotel when I was working at the Barmaid's Arms, both Toronto hotspots. Click here: Adam - Malaguena

London Bobby

Time traveller from the last century

Politics

Moderating the conversation around a piano-bar was an important part of entertaining on a cruise-ship and when politics reared its ugly head I always interjected, "Oh, we don't allow politics or religion to be discussed here, just sex!" Of course we didn't permit ungentlemanly sexual comments either but it got a laugh and diffused the situation.

However, I am not working for the cruise companies here, so…

I am a swing voter. I voted for Trudeau once (and lived to regret it), I voted against Chretien but cheered his stand against American bullying to join in the invasion of Iraq, and I voted for Harper. I had the impression that his personal beliefs were more extreme than I like but he would subdue them in the national interest.

Now I'm not so sure. His high-handed conduct of parliament is an affront, after all we elected the members to represent us, not to be marginalized and now his former spokesman, Kory Teneycke, is heading up a bid to bring "Fox News North" to Canada. There are suspicions of attempts to bully the CRTC and it appears likely that Teneycke was aware of or even instigated an illegal attempt to discredit a petition organized by Avaaz.

And speaking of being high-handed, the disgraceful abandonment of civil rights during the G20 could only have occurred with the highest levels of government turning a blind eye, to say the least. Is this the only way that life and property could have been protected from marauding goons? If so then the only locations for future G20 meetings are China or Russia or Iran where they are not under the illusion that they have a democracy, as we are.

London Bobby, time traveller from the last century

My geekability is slipping

Before I chucked it all to become a pub pianner-basher, I was an engineer. I designed things, control systems, complicated stuff. So when personal computers came along I was in there, bought a TRS-80, went to TMUG meetings, learned to program in BASIC . But now I don't want to be a geek, I wanna be a user and record music, edit videos without having to delve in to the operating system. I don't want to know what an iDisk sparsebundle is or why I should have to worry about it.

I have an old car and I like to keep an eye on other owner's problems but I think I am going to give up. I thought it it was just computer geeks who confuse me but here is advice from an owner:

Re: Reatta quits running when it reached operating temperature

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Yes the crank sensor can be replaced,with out pulling the balancer, I have done it on the 1989 and the 1990 years. It may be different on the 1991 . Use brass feeler gage to set the clearence to the inner fins.You have to turn the crank to get the balancer set so you can slip the crank sensor threw the fins, there are gaps in the fins or rings what ever they are called. Some use a match book as a feeler gage. The unit must be set to clear all the fins or it will rub and damage the sensor. nemo

__________________

About the only term I understood was match book.

London Bobby

Time traveller from the last century.

About not feeling old

I don't think old, I still appreciate a well-turned ankle, to use an old phrase. ('Cute bum', to use my terminology, 'cool frame' for today?) But every now and then I get hornswoggled. When I think I am playing more modern music I find there are people in the audience who think Elton John and Billy Joel are from the last century, which they are, like me.

Here is what clobbered me today. In an effort to keep up with eReaders I am installing 'calibre', a program to create or convert eBooks. I am happily reading along until I come to this:

A great example of this is the old books people read back in the 90's on their PDAs.

Whoa! What do you mean, back in the 90's? That is just yesterday, earlier today, to me. I only found out what PDA meant about a year ago so steady on, there. Anyway, I am convinced I will soon have converted all the text files on my "English Lit." CD to ebook form and then I can enjoy reading them on my iPad. So there.

Bob, time traveller from the last century.