Thursday, March 4, 2004

Veteran radio host Cooke retires. Veteran broadcaster Alistair Cooke retires from his show Letter From America after 58 years at the helm. [BBC News | Entertainment | TV and Radio | UK Edition] I've always thought of Alistair Cooke as the affable host of Masterpiece Theater. That's where I first new him growing up in South Dakota, at 9pm on a Sunday evening and there he was introducing this week's episode. I remember watching Danger UXB in the early '80's with Nigel Havers (he would later star in Brideshead Revisited which at the time was a scandalous smash success). I had heard of Letters from America. I didn't know it had run continuously since 1946. That has to be a world record, Cheers Alistair Cooke! 9:07:27 PM    comment []

Notes and Tips: AMT Replacements. Here are some suggestions for replacing Apple Media Toolkit. [MacInTouch] Back in the day before the Internet gained all the mind share, I collected info about ALL the available CD-ROM, interactive authoring environments. AMT was the cadillac of all authoring tools on the Mac, next to Authorware. Supposedly it could do stuff you couldn't do in Authorware on the Mac. And Apple continued to develop it even while HyperCard was falling by the wayside. The last big step was the QuickTime 4 compliance. That was going to be the beginning of a new era where QuickTime had interactivity built in just like the SWF, Flash file format. 8:56:50 PM    comment []

To Avert Blackouts a Sag-Free Cable. Several companies are working to develop power lines that can handle more current without overheating and sagging. By Matthew L. Wald. [New York Times: Technology] This kind of article is great because I like hearing about current practices in the energy industry. Super-conducting wire is also another option for some people who want high-capacity transmission lines. I think superconductors are smart for longer runs where more loss occurs over the miles of transmission line. But, the cost is far more per foot than aluminum with a steel core. 8:49:00 PM    comment []