We have AT&T DSL in our new house, as we did in our old one. We use a 2Wire modem/router combo, the one AT&T recommends. My computer’s connected to the router by Ethernet. My wife’s notebook uses wifi.
And ever since we moved in here, her download speeds have been poor–significant delays in page opens, long delays in downloading photos. We ran speed tests yesterday, and download speed was around 200Kbps, sometimes lower. (When I removed my ethernet connection, I was getting 160K–as compared to the 1.5-1.7Mbps I normally get. And that was a foot away from the router.)
So: Any ideas?
Other factors:
1. The house has a security system with some wireless transmitters…
2. There are other nearby wifi networks…
3. When I was running my treadmill–which has now gone back to Sears–it would knock out DSL after about a minute, due to interference. But the treadmill’s gone and DSL itself is just fine.
I’m wondering whether it would make sense to use the DSL/router combo as just a modem and plug in a separate router (with external antennas–2Wire hidss its antenna or antenna inside the case)…
Ideas?
]]>This one’s 32 pages, PDF as usual, but those who detest PDF or otherwise really need HTML can download the three articles separately.
The issue includes:
The theme for this installment: Rethinking books and rethinking reading. Which means most of the long essay is about ebooks and ebook devices. (How long? A little more than half the issue, that’s how long.)
What’s funny is generally in the eye of the beholder, although I suppose there may be objective criteria for labeling a flick a comedy. Watching the many early shorts and early movies in this first half of a 12-DVD collection was sometimes hilarious, frequently a little painful. (If I never see another East Side Kids “comedy” that will be just fine with me.) There’s some gold here–and some dross as well.
]]>A large handful of items spread out over almost two years–very much a once over lightly. (Yes, Library 2.0 and “Library 2.0″ continues to be downloaded almost as often as any current issue. $0.25 for each copy downloaded would nicely cover sponsorship for the next 18 months…)
Juno and the Paycock, 1930, b&w. Barry Fitzgerald, Maire O’Neill, Edward Chapman, Sidney Morgan, Sara Allgood. 1:25.
I honestly don’t know what to make of this one—a family drama set in Ireland during The Troubles, occasionally punctuated by gunfire, but with seemingly little going on except steady drinking and broad Irish accents. The print’s decent, the soundtrack’s very noisy, and the picture—well, I found it hard to watch all the way through without nodding off and, indeed, may have missed part of the second quarter. (It doesn’t help that people’s heads were frequently cut off—which could be a remastering problem, but otherwise reflects really poor cinematography.) I clearly wasn’t the target audience—I read “taut” in an IMDB review and, well, just didn’t see it. Of course, I haven’t read the drama it’s based on. Charitably, $0.75.
Sabotage, 1936, b&w. Oskar Homolka, Sylvia Sidney, Desmond Tester, John Loder. 1:16.
I’d already seen this—but that was on a movie set that came with a failed DVD magazine, not one of the 50-classics sets. So I watched it again. Probably just as well: This print was better quality, although the sound’s damaged. A movie theater owner—”Verloc,” played by Homolka—is also a saboteur in London; his American wife doesn’t suspect anything, but the greengrocer’s assistant next door to the theater is actually a Scotland Yard agent. At the climax, he manages to get her much younger brother blown up in act of supposedly delivering a film canister and package (on a slow-moving London bus)—and shows the banality of evil in his attempts to justify or ignore his actions to her. (One IMDB review sees
Not great Hitchcock, but it is a thriller. I was not at all enthralled last time around (particularly because the movie was supposed to be DOA, which sounded like a much better movie). This time? It’s taut and well-directed; I’ll give it $1.50.
The Skin Game, 1931, b&w. C.V. France, Helen Haye, Jill Esmond, Edmund Gwenn, John Longdon, Phyllis Konstam, Edward Chapman. 1:17.
An odd one, dealing with property conflicts and morality. One family’s been established in a rural area for generations and has tenant farmers as well. A brash upstart businessman buys out a neighbor and moves to oust their tenants—and then moves to buy another property that would effectively surround the family, vowing to build factories to make their lives miserable. In the process of an auction that the upstart wins (paying too much for the property), the businessman’s daughter-in-law faints after one of those special effects that Hitchcock liked so much he’d repeat it until you were sick of it (the face of someone else at the auction keeps swooping towards her as though it was a ghost). Turns out the daughter-in-law Has A Past.
All turns out badly for almost everybody involved. The noble family head has abandoned his principles to save his view (and, although he’d forgotten entirely about them, his tenants); one life’s been lost; a whole family’s been driven out of the area.
This one moves right along, with a fair amount of suspense. It has some of the awful cinematography of some other early Hitchcock sound pictures, with heads cut off and the like, and there are problems with the soundtrack—at times making dialogue nearly unintelligible. Still, I’ll give it $1.25.
Number Seventeen, 1932, b&w. Leon M. Lion, Anne Grey, John Stuart, Donald Calthrop, Barry Jones, Ann Casson, Henry Caine, Garry Marsh. 1:03.
This is a strange one, slow in parts, heavy on comic turns and problematic identities, with some thrilling aspects—and in the end seeming, well, odd. There’s a vacant house that may be a safe house, a corpse who isn’t a corpse, a squatter who’s a pickpocket but also honest as the day is long, a bystander who’s not all that innocent, a neighbor girl who—well, I never did figure that one out. A remarkable, if long, climax set on both a speeding train and a speeding bus, hammering home the lesson that it may be a bad idea to kill the entire crew of a locomotive if you don’t know how they work.
In the end, this seemed more heavy-handed comedy than deft thriller—and there are a few more of the “heads? Who needs to see heads?” shots. The sound’s not great. Odd though it is, it’s always interesting, so I’ll give it $1.25.
The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1934, b&w. Leslie Banks, Edna Best, Peter Lorre, Frank Vosper, Hugh Wakefield, Nova Pilbeam. 1:15.
The last movie in the set is also one of the best, ending on a high note. A thoroughly satisfying thriller with a consistent plot, reasonable complexity, a seemingly-incidental bit near the beginning that turns out to be crucial to the finale, and Peter Lorre as a villain. (What? You expected maybe a romantic lead?)
The plot involves a possible political assassination and a child held for a form of ransom. Other than that, there’s little reason to discuss the plot—and good reason not to, if you haven’t seen this one. Occasional problems with sound in a generally-solid print are all that reduce this to $1.75.
Bonus: Hitchcock Trailers,
But the last movie wasn’t the last thing on the set. Instead, although not listed on the disc label, there’s this remarkable bonus—19 trailers for Hitchcock movies, nearly an hour in all, with 19 chapter marks in case you want to find a specific one. (Given Mill Creek’s usual practice of having four chapters per film, this is special treatment.)
Quite a range of trailers (including one for the remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much), including a few narrated or introduced by Hitchcock—including a six minute item for Psycho that includes maybe three seconds of footage at the end. None of the trailers are for the films on this set. Excluding uncredited war movies and Hitchcock’s TV stuff, IMDB shows 32 Hitchcock movies later than the ones in this set, so it’s a broadly representative collection, including most of his most famous movies. Good sound, good picture, good fun. Even though it’s not a movie at all, it’s easily worth $1.00.
Meanwhile, I realize that I’ve never seen all that many Hitchcock movies. We’ll add a couple of more recent ones to our Netflix queue. I’m guessing I’ll never be a Hitchcock fanboy–he was clearly a superior director some of the time, but there’s flaws a-plenty in much of his earlier work. No big surprise: Few directors have anything close to a spotless record.
]]>This fortnight’s Quick take is a short followup to last week’s: Recruiting new library leaders, Part 2: ML[I]S required?
They’re back.
It has to do with the servers LISHost actually uses, a problem in March, and a little DNS mixup yesterday. These things happen.
And, to be sure, most “substantive” new posts now appear here. Movie reviews, ALA schedules and a few other things continue to appear in this space, as do unedited copies of LLN Highlights posts.
]]>If you want to get together, suggest a meal, invite me to a reception, whatever, it’s possible: Send me email (waltcrawford at gmail dot com).
Boldface items are mandatory or highly probable, underlined probable (for work reasons), any others entirely optional.
American 828, SJC 7:25 a.m.-O’Hare 1:35 p.m.
Hotel: Chicago Hilton, 312-922-4400
No specific plans at this point.
American 309, O’Hare 10:05 a.m.-San Jose 12:35 p.m.
]]>This week’s Quick take is Part 1 of a 2006 LLN Peer Panel, “Recruiting new leaders”–advice that’s still relevant.
]]>At times, this movie seems like a comedy in the classical sense—a play in which some people survive until the end. There’s more drama than light-hearted humor, although there are a few funny scenes. James Stewart’s a young New York lawyer (who apparently makes almost no money) who goes to Boston to take a deposition and, while he’s there, meets and weds a beautiful young woman (Carole Lombard). His mother lives with them and treats her badly; his boss (and a nefarious associate) prevents him from going on a honeymoon cruise; he has no money but almost always has at least one servant (and there’s that cruise thing). Then there’s a baby; they desperately need more money and he should be named a partner, but instead he meekly accepts a 15% pay cut…and soon, it’s New Year’s Eve and the baby contracts a rare pneumonia. Along the way, one standing joke is that the head of the lawfirm (Charles Coburn, who does a fine job) can only hear you if he opens his jacket and you yell into his pie-plate-size hearing aid microphone.
Laughing yet? It gets funnier. The only way to save the baby is with a new serum—but there’s none in New York, Johns Hopkins sent all of theirs (apparently the only supply anywhere) to Salt Lake City; the latter can spare a little, but there’s a terrible storm—and a pilot wants $5,000 to fly it back. We get several minutes of a (different) pilot in an open-air plane flying through storms and even bouncing off a mountainside at one point, then the plane catching fire and the pilot parachuting with serum package in hand. Of course, everything works out—the baby’s saved, the father gets his partnership, the mother comes around, and all of the happy ending is in the last two minutes.
The print’s pretty good, the sound’s fine, the acting is also fine. Not exactly a laughathon, but well made and enjoyable. $1.25.
That Uncertain Feeling, 1941, b&w. Ernst Lubitsch (dir.), Merle Oberon, Melvyn Douglas, Burgess Meredith, Alan Mowbray, Eve Arden. 1:24
Jill Baker (Merle Oberon) keeps getting the hiccups and is persuaded to see a psychoanalyst (Alan Mobray). She becomes disillusioned about her husband (Melvyn Douglas) and meets a strange but interesting pianist (Burgess Meredith), who she becomes involved with.
The husband plans to use psychology to get her back. After all sorts of incidents, it works—but it’s a very lightweight movie. Still, Burgess Meredith does a fine job, as do Oberon and Douglas—and the young Eve Arden (with her instantly-recognizable voice) has a small but significant role. Here’s the problem: For one reason or another, I didn’t review this right after seeing it—and after four days, I’d almost completely forgotten the plot and the performances. “Lightweight” may overstate it. Still, and despite some soundtrack damage, I’ll give it $1.25.
The Great Rupert (aka A Christmas Wish), 1950, b&w. Irving Pichel (dir.), Jimmy Durante, Terry Moore, Tom Drake, Frank Orth, Sara Haden, Queenie Smith, Chick Chandler. 1:28 [1:25].
A movie about vaudeville, the virtues of local investing, passing along good fortune—and a dancing squirrel. The squirrel’s trainer has to depart a basement apartment for lack of funds, sets the squirrel (The Great Rupert) free to roam, and runs into another vaudevillian family, the Amendolas, father played by Jimmy Durante, who’s fled their last residence for similar reasons and wangles their way into the apartment without paying in advance. Meanwhile, the landlord finds out that a worthless gold mine he’d been conned into investing in is paying off, to the tune of $1,500 a week for his share. He won’t deal with banks and doesn’t trust his wife or musician son, so he stuffs the bills into a hole in the wall near the floor.
But the space behind the hole is now occupied by The Great Rupert, who finds these bills distracting, so he sweeps them away—right into the hole in the roof of the basement apartment, where they come fluttering down just after Mrs. Amendola prays for a little money. And the next week—after they’ve spent the money, between paying off debts, buying shoes for their beautiful daughter, and lending the rest to people in similar circumstances—she prays again, and another $1,500 comes fluttering down.
So there’s one plot. Others involve Amendola’s daughter (who’s a harpist), the son upstairs (who likes her—and it’s mutual—and plays tuba: he composes a piece for “two forgotten instruments” to play with her), a show-biz type who also likes her (and keeps taking her out for meals, but gets nowhere), the son getting conned into a worthless oil investment, and eventually simultaneous visits from the local police, IRS and FBI, all wanting to know where the family’s getting all the money. Meanwhile, as the landlord notices, “and Amendola” keeps showing up on various small businesses (because Mr. Amendola keeps lending or investing in them), all of which seem to be doing very well.
There’s more—but I shouldn’t give it all away. The ending is, well, as it should be but also more than a little peculiar. All in all, a fun movie, but the print’s severely damaged, with missing chunks of dialogue and visual damage. Given the damage, I can’t give this one more than $1.00.
Something to Sing About, 1937, b&w. Victor Schertzinger (dir.), James Cagney, Evelyn Daw, William Frawley, Mona Barrie, Gene Lockhart, Philip Ahn, Kathleen Lockhart. 1:33 [1:27].
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. It’s easy to think of James Cagney as a tough guy, but he was also a first-rate hoofer and pretty good singer, and those talents shine in this romantic comedy. He’s Terry Rooney (or, rather, that’s the character’s bandleader name—his real name’s Thaddeus McGillicuddy), and bandleader/singer who’s been invited to Hollywood for a movie. He leaves, getting engaged to his singer/girlfriend just before getting on the train.
In Hollywood, the studio head makes sure that Rooney never realizes the extent of his screen chemistry and talent, trying to keep him from wanting a good contract. Rooney assumes he’s a disaster (and gets in a fistfight on set, which turns out to be staged to get a better film sequence) and has his fiancé fly out to Hollywood, where they get married and, with the picture wrapped, take off on a tramp steamer to the South Pacific. (This seems to be an era in which the train is the preferred way to go coast-to-coast, but you can fly if you’re in a hurry.)
Well, sir. The movie’s a big hit, Rooney’s a Big Star. When he returns, the studio exec wants to sign him up for seven movies (years?), but the contract says he has to be single. They come up with a gimmick: His wife will use her real married name (Mrs. McGillicuddy), live next door, and act as his personal assistant. Which is fine, but a female star makes a play for him, which an agent pushes on the press as a hot new romance—and his wife gets tired of it all.
]]>That’s more of the plot than you really need. Let’s just say it all ends up as a romantic comedy should, with a few great song-and-dance numbers along the way (including on the tramp steamer, where they’re the only passengers and most of the show is crew entertaining one another, flawed a bit by the clearly visible accordion, guitar and harmonica sounding a lot like a string-and-brass ensemble). The print’s pretty good with a little damage. (One oddity is revealed in the IMDB trivia area. I noted that the studio was Grand National, which I knew only for B westerns—and it turns out this movie broke the studio financially.) I’ll give it $1.50—not great, but a winner.
The updated What’s hot at LLN? page shows the 25 articles most frequently read between May 9 and June 8, and the 25 articles (not including that 25) most frequently read since LLN began. It’s a changing picture; five of this month’s 25 hot articles weren’t on last month’s list.
This week’s Quick take is shorter than usual: “Know-how: The 8 skills that separate people who perform from those who don’t.”
]]>Please update your feeds, blogrolls, whatever.
I wonder whether some master spam agency checks for site moves: I’m suddenly getting a LOT more spam. But, of course, this site still remains as Walt, Even Randomer, and the spam isn’t getting thorugh…
]]>The 30-page issue, PDF as usual but with HTML versions of most essays, includes:
Notes on sponsorship for C&I, the status of four possible future projects–and the move of Walt at Random to ScienceBlogs.
Continuing the discussion of blogging philosophy and practice that began in Cites & Insights 9:5 with a focus on reasons for blogging.
Seven individual items and technologies, plus eight editors’ choices and group reviews. From high-def Bluetooth to whether you can call a $1,500 computer a netbook…
Musings on whether Charles Dodgson had the proper theory of language (as stated by his character, noted wordsmith H. Dumpty), plus unaltered copies of the two blog posts (and most of the comments) at issue.
Three trendy items: Myths and limits, “They are not your friends” and the world of plentiful bandwidth.
]]>Nine little items on nine less serious topics; as usual, this one’s a bonus for those who download the issue.