Monthly Archives: December 2019

Reginald Marsh

Paintings

A ‘slice of life’ street painter.

The American painter Reginald Marsh (1898-1954) was born in Paris but grew up in New Jersey. Back when Americans could still afford the best American education he graduated from Lawrenceville prep school, and went on to Yale where he drew cartoons for the school’s student paper.

His genre of choice was that of street scenes, more often than not portraying the lower classes in locations like Coney Island. New York was very much his canvas.


Battery Park, 1926.


H. Dummeyer Bar and Grill, probably 1940s.


Coney_Island, 1930


Pavonia, Jersey City, 1928.


Coney Island. Pursuit, 1936.


The Normandie, 1953.

The cartoon ethic is always there to be seen. It’s no surprise that Marsh was a major inspiration for the best gangster movie made, Sergio Leone’s ‘Once Upon a Time in America’ set, naturally, in New York City.

Here’s what I’m talking about:


An electric crowd scene in the Jewish quarter, Prohibition-era NYC, from Sergio Leone’s movie.

A dirt cheap eReader

Photography

Kindle Fire 7.


The magnetic charger adapter – circled – protrudes very little.

I had yet another Kindle reader fail the other day. The previous two (Paperwhites) were rendered useless by trashed MicroUSB sockets, the latest, a costly Voyage (still sporting that awful MicroUSB connector), decided to go nuts and the screen started delivering crazed images.

So I thought I might try an iPad Mini until, that is, I saw the price. $400. Are you crazy, Apple? Never discounted, it’s over $100 more than a base full size iPad. No thanks.

I was reluctant to go with another Paperwhite owing to the fragile USB socket when I chanced upon a clever solution in the guise of a magnetic MicroUSB adapter. Costing all of $7, the small, chrome end piece goes in the Kindle’s socket and thereafter the cable is attached magnetically for charging. Elegant and inexpensive, you will never need to trouble that fragile connector again.

Then, by chance, I spotted that the base LED Kindle, the Fire 7, was selling for $30. Thirty dollars! At that rate I can replace it annually for a decade and I’m still way ahead of the cost of an iPad. And as my sole use for the device is as an eReader, paying up for lots of added functionality is money wasted. Sure the Fire 7 is replete with Amazonia, ads for this and that, direct links to the shopping site, and on and on. But, hey, one swipe and you are in the Kindle reader app. I downloaded free Wikipedia and Dictionary apps and that’s it. You really do not want to trust your contacts, calendars and so on to a device which runs a (modified) version of the Android OS, a system designed with thieves and hackers in mind, and not in a good way.

The LCD screen, which is perfectly adequate for reading all day long, means that you cannot read in direct, bright sun, but I can confirm that with the brightness cranked up to 80% I get a solid 7 hours of reading time. That’s barely adequate for a cross country flight, but the iPhone can always fill in for the last hour while the bus driver at the controls tries to find the landing strip and the cabin waitresses regale you with offers of free miles. What sort of masochist would want more time on an American flying cattle car?

Weight? 10 ounces, same as the iPad Mini, compared with 7 ounces for the Kindle Paperwhite.

And yes, you can comfortably hold the Fire 7 in one hand above your head lying on the sofa, a key requirement for this reader.

The Fire 7 comes with modest storage, netting to 10GB once the OS and apps are installed. This is more than adequate for ereading with each loaded book consuming 1-3 MB. That’s thousands of books and there’s no need to have them all loaded at one time. If more storage is needed, simply install an inexpensive MicroSD card in the provided slot. Up to 512 GB can be installed, with a quality 32GB card running Under $10.

Fixing MicroUSB

Photography

Maybe the worst connector out there.

You can find MicroUSB connectors in many devices, including digital cameras and Kindles.

My last three Kindles all failed after about a year of use. One developed a crazed screen and the other two ceased to be chargeable when their MicroUSB sockets failed. The part is not replaceable so the whole Kindle migrates from Paperwhite to paper weight.

The Micro USB connector is flimsy, very small and directional. Try and insert it the wrong way and damage results for the ham handed. Plugs rarely show any distinguishing marks and I have taken to painting a white dot on the top to avoid the daily struggle.

Now along comes a gadget which replaces the female (device end) MicroUSB socket with a magnetized adapter which remains in place, protruding a few millimeters. It even has an orientation LED.


Beating the awful MicroUSB socket.

Mine came from Amazon for under $10.

While there’s a green LED to indicate power is being supplied, it’s on one side of the connector only. You can connect the cable either way around and it will charge the Kindle properly. Nice.

How to make $100 million

Movies

There’s one born every minute.


For that sort of money, you would think they would
at least get the order of the names correct.

The press would have us believe that Martin Scorsese’s latest (let’s hope it’s his last) gangster flick cost $160mm to make.

Uh huh.

Let’s see now, $10mm apiece to the three stars and the director, $20mm for everyone else and there’s $100mm missing. Doubtless The Mob got it for providing all the ‘de-ageing’ technology the movie is being sold on.

I have no issue with long movies if the content and delivery are good. The Godfather series, anything by Sergio Leone, they are all long and very good indeed. But this car wreck of a self-indulgent three-and-one-half hour snoozefest is an abomination, pure and simple. Plotless and directionless, it does at least have one purpose – to serve as background noise when you make the Thanksgiving turkey feast.

Mercifully, mine was free on Netflix as part of a new subscription, now cancelled. You would do well to contemplate like action for a public company so naïve as to waste its shareholders’ money thus.