One day last week I saw an ad in an electronics store sales flyer for a USB TV Tuner made by H-P.  Since I generally don’t pay much attention to television accessories, I hadn’t noticed anything like this on the market before.  So my curiosity demanded that I look at it and see just what in the world this “indispensible” gadget does.  The brief plug had an image of the tuner that looks like a flash drive with a coaxial cable connector in the other end.

The sales bullets said that you can “Watch, pause and rewind live TV or listen to live FM radio on your laptop PC.”  This was followed by the advice that the regular selling price of $100 has been reduced to $90.  Well, I stopped right there.  I just can’t imagine why somebody would go to all that expense just to watch some over-the-air television programs.  And a little $5 portable radio from Walmart will get you both AM and FM signals without having to fire up your computer.

It wasn’t two days later when an advertising email dropped into the box for a similar gadget, this one an off-brand item selling for $50, half the price of the H-P device.  Now I’m wondering, if there are more of these on the market, what is driving the demand for making them?  Clicking on this latest ad’s link brought me HERE where I find that the tuner comes with an antenna, connecting cables and a remote control box that is used to change the channels, pause, fast forward, etc.  It also gives you the option to record directly to you computer’s hard drive.

Aha, now we’re getting to the reason for having this thing.  There are all sorts of things you can do with recorded tv shows, especially the ones that are running movies.  But why the wide price discrepancy between the two brands?  I looked up H-P’s catalogue number and then went to their webpage HERE.  A comparison between the two seems to indicate that the H-P is the only one that permits you to plug in your home cable tv input and select from the 250 stations that you’re paying to recieve, including your movie channels.  The off-brand will only grab from terrestrial stations.  I shouldn’t need to say that in both cases we’re talking digital signals only.

I’m not going to bore you with any more about this stuff.  If you’re interested in learning more, then just click on the links that I gave you and check them out.  The H-P gadget can be bought online at several places for as little as $80.  But we’ve got to get this equipment checked out now.  And I need to get some more coffee going.  See you back in the day room later.

Note:  If you didn’t catch FossilMedic’s posting yesterday morning about the British PSA on texting-while-driving, make sure that you CLICK HERE to watch it.  It’s a guaranteed discussion-starter.

It looks like FossilMedic beat me to the keyboard this morning.  Make sure that you scroll down and watch the British PSA video about texting-while-driving.  It’s very well done and effective.  Now let’s hope that it gets the viewing distribution that it needs.

You’d think the people should know better and not need to be told basic things like this, but apparently there will always be a few who never think at all.  And so we will always have fire and ambulance squads cleaning up their messes.

Today marks a summer’s milepost – midway through August.  This is when we start yearning for those days when we can put on a sweater and go outside without choking on the heat.  And when you get in the car, it’s not like an oven in there.  Of course, after a month of that stuff we’re usually wishing for short-sleeve weather again.  There’s just no satisfying most people.  Anyway, there should be some good bargains out there in the clothing stores for summer duds clearances.  If they have any of your size left, that is.

I see that I’ve got some things to post about already, so we’d better get this equipment checked out.  I’m going to start the coffee.  We’ll meet back in the day room in a little while and watch for the Sunday breakfast spread.

Thursday – Aug. 13 – was celebrated by the automobile community as the 50th anniversary of the 3-point automobile seat belt, according to whoever it is that decides these things.

A Volvo automotive engineer had designed and patented the device first in 1958 and then it was introduced by Volvo on one line of their cars the following year.  According to the publicity release, it was on August 13 that the inventor, Nils Bohlin gave a public demonstration of the safety device.

In his obituary seven years ago, the New York Times wrote:

Mr. Bohlin began his career as an engineer designing ejector seats for the Swedish aviation industry in the mid-1950′s. At that time, safety belts in cars were strapped across the body, with the buckle placed over the abdomen. The position of the buckle often caused severe internal injuries in high-speed crashes.

In 1958, Mr. Bohlin joined the Volvo Car Corporation as its first chief safety engineer. Using his knowledge of ejector seats, in just under a year he designed a device that would restrain the human body as safely as possible under extreme conditions.

”I realized both the upper and lower body must be held securely in place with one strap across the chest and one across the hips,” Mr. Bohlin once said. ”The belt also needed an immovable anchorage point for the buckle as far down beside the occupant’s hip, so it could hold the body properly during a collision. It was just a matter of finding a solution that was simple, effective and could be put on conveniently with one hand.”

When Volvo publicy introduced the new device, they also announced that they were opening the patent and allowing any and all automobile manufacturers to use it free of charge.  This free sharing of the design is the basis for Volvo’s claim that “there’s a little bit of Volvo in every car.”

This video clip briefly illustrates the development of the 3-point belt with a couple of views of Bohlin:

(How did you like those old rollover testing films?)

Volvo estimates that more than one million lives have been saved by the 3-point safety belt.

Now before we go out and try to save some more lives, let’s get this equipment checked out.  I’ll go make sure there’s plenty of coffee ready.

There area a couple of mortality notices to dispense this morning, one death and the other is a “very sick” prognosis.

First, the music world as a whole and the Geezer generation as well were saddened yesterday to hear of the passing of innovative guitarist Les Paul at age 94.  During his prime in the 1950′s, Les Paul was a musical giant as he and his wife Mary Ford turned out recording hit after hit for several years.  In 1951 they first came to widespread prominence with a Pee Wee King-written song Tennessee Waltz which eventually became the official state song.  Within weeks they followed up with another monster-hit Mockingbird Hill and then right behind that, How High the Moon.

The latter song was a recording breakthrough that showcased a technique of multi-track recording that Ford had invented and is the basis of pop music still today.  He had been experimenting with taking the recording tracks of both his playing and his wife’s vocal tracks and layering them repeatedly until he achieved a unique blend that reverberated within the recording.  Listen to this live performance of their landmark hit:

It would take pages to tell the whole story of Les Paul’s achievements including his invention of the solid-body electric guitar  and his many musical innovations.  I suggest that for starters you read  a couple of well-presented obituaries HERE and HERE.

*  *  *

From the sick-bay comes the report that Cygnus Business Media filed for Chap. 11 bankruptcy protection last week.  Cygnus, you might already know, is the owner of Firehouse magazine, Firehouse.com and the exposition company that puts on the Firehouse Expo programs.  They also publish a wide range of other magazines and specialty publications.

They were undergoing a major restructuring which included two rounds of sizable layoffs and the suspension of several of their magazines due to a large drop in advertising revenue for their print publications.  It was their intention to have a pre-arranged financial restructuring to get back on a good financial footing and they had come to a satisfactory agreement with 23 of their 24 major creditors.  But the one holdout queered the whole deal and they were forced to take their plan to the bankruptcy court.

Cygnus has announced that they fully expect to emerge from the bankruptcy in 45 days and that all creditors will recieve 100% of their debt in the payoff and the senior lender, GE Commercial will become the majority owner of the restructured company.  Cygnus currently publishes 44 trade magazines, 35 websites and 34 trade shows (expositions).

Now let’s make sure that we’re still functioning well and get this equipment checked out.  I need to get some more coffee started.