Yesterday morning, I was experimenting much more with our newly installed Echo Dot smart speaker, purchased the other day. I have found that if I give Alexa a command such as 'Alexa, play a selection of the work of Mozart' then a random selection will be made of the most popular tracks of Mozart, most of which admittedly I have come to know and love over the years. This is excellent for Meg and I in many ways, not least because when Meg is put to bed she can have a selection of Mozart playing indefinitely. I have also discovered that I can send a 'pause' and a 'resume' instruction to Alexa by a voice command, as well as a volume instruction to get just the volume level we desire. When I read one or two reviews of the Echo Dot smart speaker, most of the reviewers had the more expensive model where the time (and presumably other information) in flashed onto I what suspect is an LED screen hidden behind the mesh but as this nearly doubles the cost I am not unhappy with the cheaper version I have actually purchased. The sound quality of this little speaker is superb for the price but the speaker size has got to be an improvement upon the speakers built into the typical laptop which has been squeezed to make it thinner and thinner and is now an average of about 1 inch over the years with consequences for the size of speaker that can actually be fitted. The latest generation of Echo Dot has pushed up the speaker size from 1.6" to 1.73" which according to the reviews I have read makes quite a dramatic difference. And according to some of the blurb I have read, there's an upward-firing midrange speaker in addition to two side-facing ones, which makes the Echo Studio capable of playing 3D audio codecs like Dolby Atmos. In fact, the speaker automatically 'upmixes' your music from standard stereo to better fill your space. I have also discovered that if you particularly want to see which track is being played (as in my selection of Mozart pieces, detailed above) than the app on your mobile phone will give up to date and current information about the track that is actually being played and much more than you get on the rolling display of the typical DAB radio as well. Now that I am so much more familiar with Alexa, I am starting to use it so much more on the Toshiba smart TV which I have in our Music Lounge. Although we have always had access to Alexa in this way, I have typically used YouTube to which I had taken out a subscription which gives the video as well as the audio for any music of our choice. So now I finding that if there is no bit of TV that I particularly want to view at any one time, I have the option to deploy Alexa to play choice selections from Mozart.
After we had breakfasted this morning, we watched the political programs after which we contemplated a walk down the hill. We phoned up our University of Birmingham friend who readily agreed that we meet for our normal Sunday morning coffee. We arranged a time but it took me quite a long time to get Meg ready for the journey if only putting gloves on a demented patient is so difficult. I seem to remember a trick tried with very young children where you put the glove half on yourself and then pull half of it off so to expose the finger holes. I will try this in the morning as an experiment and might have to go onto the internet to buy some mittens to mitigate this situation. We had a very pleasant three quarters of an hour with our friend to whom I quickly explained the nature of Martin's illness. As is quite usual we had an interesting discussion about some of the moral imperatives surroundings things like inheritance tax. My friend and I quite like these discussions if only because having to think about, articulate and then defend a particular point of view leads one to clarify the exact nature of your own stance on the issue. For example today, we were trying to mediate between the extreme libertarian position (the state has no right to take any of your inheritance) to the more common position (that tax is the price that we pay for living in a civilised society). If the very rich who we try to tax do not like it, then they always go off to another society with ultra low taxes, no social services or health service provision and rampant crime on the streets as the underpaid police are riddled with corruption. We were fortunate that the weather had moderated on the way home so we walked home in quite mild conditions.
Once lunch was over, we watched the second half of 'The Way' in which the group of pilgrims approach Santiago de Compostela with various incidents en route. The shots that were played of Santiago were emotional in the extreme for me as it showed the pilgrims ascending the steps to the cathedral (which is something that Meg and I have done many times but on the very last occasion had to help her up the steps) Then, of course, there were exceptionally emotional shots of the inside of the cathedral including the pilgrims putting their hands in the finger holds in the marble below the statue of St James (which is something that Meg and I have done many times before) And, of course, there were shots of the Botafumeiro which is a huge incense burner of immense proportions swung high over the crowds of the congregation along a transept of the cathedral by two teams of about a dozen strong men, the original purpose of which was to fumigate the church from the stench arising from thousands of unwashed pilgrims in mediaeval times. In this day and age, it is a sort of symbolic tourist attraction and takes place at the conclusion of the Pilgrims Mass held each day at about 12.00pm.
© Mike Hart [2024]