bookofjoe

Bobby Hebb, Singer of 1966 Hit "Sunny," is dead at 72

Yesterday's New York Times obituary follows.

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Bobby Hebb, Singer of 1966 Hit 'Sunny,' Dies at 72

Bobby Hebb, whose 1966 hit "Sunny" became a pop classic, died here [Nashville] on Tuesday. He was 72.

His death, at Centennial Medical Center, was announced by his family. No cause was given.

“Sunny” reached No. 2 on the Billboard pop chart. At the height of the song’s popularity, Mr. Hebb opened for the Beatles on their last United States tour.

“Sunny” was recorded by many other singers, including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Dusty Springfield, Wilson Pickett, José Feliciano and Cher.

The song is an upbeat ode to a woman whose smile “really eased the pain” when the singer’s “life was filled with rain.” It features the catchy refrain “Sunny one so true, I love you.”

Mr. Hebb said in several interviews that he wrote it to lift his spirits when his brother was killed outside a Nashville nightclub in 1963, shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Mr. Hebb never had another hit as big as “Sunny,” but remained active as both a singer and a songwriter. In 1971, Lou Rawls won a Grammy award for “A Natural Man,” which Mr. Hebb wrote with Sandy Baron. As recently as 2007, Mr. Hebb was still writing songs and had his own publishing company and record label, Hebb Cats.

Born to blind parents and raised in Nashville, Mr. Hebb played trumpet in a Navy jazz band and later worked with the country singer Roy Acuff, becoming one of the first black musicians to perform at the Grand Ole Opry.

Survivors include a daughter and four sisters.

Pencil Case

So very Japanese.

Opens into a 9" x 5" tray

that holds about 20 pencils/pens.

Pink/Light Gray,

Khaki/Yellow or

Navy/Light Blue:

$12.75.

What your favorite movies were almost called

[via Mental Floss]

PowerLinks Rapid Bike Chain Fix

Scott Flowers reviewed this item as follows in the latest edition of Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools, edited by Oliver Hulland:

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I ride recumbent bikes with very long chains. My experience with them has been that in the reclined seating position, I can put a huge amount of force on the pedals. Sometimes this can be more than the chain can handle, and a link will break.

A lot of bikes use SRAM chains, and SRAM makes quick-closing replacement links called PowerLinks for repairing and allowing quick-disconnect of your chain for cleaning. There are different sizes of PowerLinks depending on if your chain is an eight, nine, or ten speed chain. The PowerLinks are cheap ($5 for a pack of two pairs), so I keep a few pairs in my bike tool bag. It takes around five minutes to repair a broken chain on the road.

To repair a SRAM chain with a PowerLink, you still need a cheap chain rivet remover tool. You remove the broken link with the tool, put one half of the PowerLink on each end of the broken chain, and snap them together. It's much quicker and more reliable than trying to re-rivet your chain with a chain rivet tool.

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$5.

Chariot of the God

It arrived in Times Square last Friday night, all the way from Egypt.

It is one of six chariots discovered in 1922 in the tomb of King Tutankhamen.

Wrote Randy Kennedy in an August 2, 2010 New York Times story, "It is considered uniquely amazing by scholars because it is the only one that shows signs of wear and tear. So it has long been thought that it was the chariot actually used by the boy king for battle or, more likely, for hunting."

Pier Wedge

By Cynthia Rowley for Roxy.

$79.

TechnoDolt™ finally twigs re: Magic Trackpad

File under "If at first you don't succeed, give up" (for a while).

After my super-stylish Magic Trackpad arrived last week, I was all excited as is my wont whenever a new piece of Apple kit enters my physical world.

There are worlds, and then there are other worlds... but I digress.

Anyhoo, I read the instruction booklet and couldn't make heads or tails of it so I just went ahead and paired the device via Bluetooth with my iMac and figured I was good to go.

Wrongo.

What I had just spent $69 on was simply a glorified cursor mover that let me click on whatever the cursor pointed to.

But where were all the promised multi-touch gestures that I'd read about and seen in videos and was looking at on the back of the Magic Trackpad box?

Stuff like putting two fingers on the device and rotating, shrinking and zooming photos, sideways scrolling in Safari, etc.

None of that was happening.

So I put the device aside to wait for something to come along and show me what I needed to do in language I could understand, mos def NOT the case with Apple's little instruction manual.

The message came in yesterday, in the form of Katherine Boehret's Wall Street Journal "Mossberg Solution" tutorial about the Magic Trackpad.

Buried deeply within the piece was this: "Installing the Magic Trackpad is a pain, as far as Apple standards go. First, users must be sure they've upgraded to the latest version of the Snow Leopard operating system — the most recent version is 10.6.4. Second, people must also go to support.apple/downloads to download a driver update for the Trackpad, a step that can be easily overlooked by users who are anxious to get going with their new gadget."

That's me, looking in the mirror.

I just went back and reread the instruction manual and nowhere in it does it say to do what Boehret wrote above.

No wonder it didn't work right.

Anyway, I downloaded the Driver update from the download site no problema, and now am happily using the Magic Trackpad in lieu of my Magic Mouse to compose this and all future posts.

Already I see one additional advantage for users who have limited space: once the trackpad's where you want it, you don't need any more room than its dimensions to do whatever it is you used to do with your mouse.

So those foot-long drag and drops that terminated in hitting the wall — literally — before reaching the trash are history.

Coleman Lantern Hanger

This item is featured in this week's edition of Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools, edited by Oliver Hulland.

Steve Yaeger reviewed it there as follows: "The single best piece of gear in my camp pack is the Coleman Lantern Hanger. It's nothing more than a length of chain you wrap around a tree and a clever, stable hook from which you hang your lantern. It ain't high-tech, but at eight bucks it provides unbelievable utility. Getting your light source up off the ground not only provides better light at your campsite, it's also safer."

Among the five reviews (all 5-star) on Amazon is this one: "The Coleman Lantern Hanger is a great way to have light at night without all the bugs bothering you! You have light and the bugs won't bother you since the lantern is hanging away from where you are. Easy to carry."

$8.32 (lantern not included).

I must say I'm so impressed by these reviews I may get one of these hangers myself — even though I don't have a Coleman lantern nor do I intend to get one.