@? Martin: This makes the routine of watching Despicable Me with the boy seem pretty perfect.
6.
JPL
@? Martin: That would be great news. The radio feed that I’m listening to just said several people have been seen leaving the plane. Hopefully, they all escaped without engine.
Poor Anna. Went from chasing after Prince Harry (srsly, she was keen on meeting the Royals during her covert stuff), to chasing after a computer geek on the lam.
In other news, the current reports on the plane crash in San Francisco is that most everybody is accounted for and alive. No news on serious injuries though.
9.
RobertDSC-PowerMac G5 Dual
4 of the 6 500GB IDE drives were installed yesterday. It took a while and I had to take a crash course in jumper setting, but everything works now.
Now I have to clean and prepare for laundry tomorrow. Fun fun fun.
10.
Origuy
A South Korean rhythmic gymnast throw out the first pitch at a baseball game yesterday in a unique and amazing way.
11.
JPL
@JPL: haha.. Hopefully they escaped without injury. I’m listening to a radio feed out of SF. A passenger emailed her husband a video of the triage area. She thinks that most passengers were able to get out with only minor injuries.
12.
burnspbesq
A big day for transportation disasters. Overnight, a freight train carrying “petroleum products” derailed in a small town in Quebec, and the resulting explosion apparently leveled most of the business district.
13.
Mike E
Gotta be out of the apt by the 26th…its tiny size precluded hoarding on my part, but, still. Moving Sux.
Anybody know how to hook a Technics turntable into a Compaq laptop? I wanna digitize my vinyl collection.
Probably better than 3/4 of the crap that makes it into theatres.
16.
Mnemosyne
I’m not quite sure how this is going to come across, but I’m sure someone will tell me if it’s racist:
Those cute Asiana flight attendants who giggle behind their hands are in fact highly trained professionals who WILL toss you head first down the emergency slide if you don’t cooperate during an evacuation. Most Asian women are tough as nails under the culturally-approved exterior.
17.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mike E: You need an amplifier, plug the turntable into the amp, plug audio out into the computer audio in.
18.
red dog
This “Ellison America’s Cup” thingy is turning out to be an expensive disaster for San Francisco. Absolutely nobody is happy and Ellison could care less. What douche.
19.
The Pale Scot
A retired naval Chief carefully dissects and fisks his old buddies nutty emails; it’s a good read.
“You were both trained by the military, I know you both, I’ve shot alongside you, you’ve shot on my range under my command, and neither one of you would have allowed an unqualified or unstable individual anywhere near a gun. But now? Now you send me an endless stream of hysterical NRA bullshit squawking about how anybody should be allowed to own whatever gun he wants without so much as a background check? ”
@BillinGlendaleCA: And get a mac and spin doctor. Then, in 10 years, you can give up and dump all your (gasp) vinyl!
21.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Being that he’s already communicating via computer, buying a mac probably isn’t necessary. I did my vinyl conversion on a PC with XP. It’s pretty painless either way.
“Silk Hiding Steel” tends to be the phrase I hear to describe that kind of ideal, though usually to describe the Japanese “Yamato Nadeshiko” ideal of a woman.
27.
MattF
@? Martin: Seems to have been a routine flight until the, um, landing:
@Bob In Portland: Bob, they’re saying the airport is closed for the rest of the day. Your daughter’s flight will have be rerouted. Hopefully, you can call the airline and find out where they’re being diverted to.
@Mike E:
As others have said you need an amp and there are cables to take output from the amp to a USB which you plug into your computer. You then need a way to capture and store the input in music format. I used to use a piece called streamripper. As you played music it would record. Anything going over the speaker, no matter the source. Now there are much better pieces of software, many are shareware at low or no cost.
32.
burnspbesq
This may be the strangest story I’ve ever read on espn.com.
Last month, one of the boats capsized, killing the British Olympic gold medalist Andrew “Bart” Simpson. (Like “sail,” the term “sailor” may need updating: These aren’t guys in polo shirts and Sperry Top-Siders. America’s Cup racers now wear padded body armor and crash helmets and carry oxygen tanks.)
Having witnessed the incident, an outraged group of spectators turned on the referee. He was tied up, beaten, stoned and quartered. They then put his head on a stake and planted it in the middle of the pitch.
Was the referee a vampire or something?
35.
MattF
@dmsilev: Does make you think that there’s some aspect of the situation that’s not being reported.
36.
Mike E
@dmsilev: Wow, so much for staying out of the players’ way.
The 2016 Olympics are going to be even more exciting than usual.
44.
Robert Sneddon
@Paddy: British news is commemorating the Piper Alpha disaster which happened 25 years ago today, another fossil fuel catastrophe which resulted in 167 dead.
45.
ricky
@JPL: Better yet, how will a blooger connect those David Brooks thoughts to the ceasless culture damning sins of Paula Deen?
46.
dmsilev
@MattF: You do have to admit that it’s suspicious that someone conveniently brought a stake with them, presumably just in case they needed to impale someone else.
Thereby violating Jonah Goldberg’s Second Amendment rights.
55.
liberal
I just got a job in Lowell ma, wife transferred to office in gov center. 2 2 small kids. Any recs on towns to live in?
56.
JPL
@different-church-lady: It’s amazing that there were only two fatalities and 61 injuries.
It shows the weakness of the presidency.. okay..that was too soon
@liberal: It has been decades since I lived in MA but Bedford always seemed like a nice town, to me. There are several folks on the site that live in the area and if they don’t respond, post again.
59.
Yatsuno
@CaseyL: The most likely destination is San Jose or possibly Oakland. I think San Jose has more capacity except for the really big planes.
Anybody know how to hook a Technics turntable into a Compaq laptop? I wanna digitize my vinyl collection.
You need anything with a phono preamp in it, such as a receiver, a preamp or an integrated amp. Or a dedicated phono preamp such as a cheap one from Recoton. This must have a line output. Line output goes to line input of computer. Then you need some software (free), and a great deal of time. Or take them with you. I’m for that option. I’ve been hauling records around since the ’70s and I still play them.
61.
PsiFighter37
@efgoldman: I hear SF is pretty darn expensive as well.
As a Manhattanite, I get severe butthurt every time my renewal notice comes.
@Ultraviolet Thunder: For quite awhile now I’ve been thinking that this is Ross in Detroit with a new moniker. Don’t respond if you’ve changed it for a reason that’s none of my business. I just always liked your posts and it was nice to see another juicer that I had some things in common with. Sorry if I’m out of line.
You do have to admit that it’s suspicious that someone conveniently brought a stake with them, presumably just in case they needed to impale someone else.
Fans think ahead in Central and South America. It would never occur to me to stop at the store on the way to a game and get Ziploc bags to pee in and throw at the opposing team, but apparently that’s de rigeur in San Jose when Tio Sam comes to town to play Costa Rica.
64.
raven
How can a fucking newscaster be looking right at pictures of the wing of the goddamn plane and say “you can see that the wing is gone”?
Took much longer than I’d have thought for you to chime in.
I was down in the shop hacking on a new project. The most powerful DIY headphone amp you can fit in a pocket. I’ve been using the prototype to drive the KEF speakers on my desk.
How can a fucking newscaster be looking right at pictures of the wing of the goddamn plane and say “you can see that the wing is gone”?
Instinct. Someone else wrote the copy and he’s going to read it verbatim no matter the violence to sense, logic or reality. That’s what they hire them for.
71.
Mike E
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I still have my mom’s Louis Armstrong Hot 5 & 7 records, those are definitely keepers. I can’t expect to haul the entire stack around anymore, sadly.
Gladly. Internal 9V rechargeable battery. External plug and socket to disconnect the battery. Battery is charged through a charging cable to its plug. Charging cable plugs into a standard 9V charger on the other end. Power socket on the amp can be connected to any supply external from 5V to 15V to run the amp without battery. I built up a cable to run it from a USB socket and that works great.
Two channels of LM386 power amp for current drive. Integrated bass/tone control via a passive filter circuit with potentiometer controls. So the kids can crank up the bass, because they like that.
All parts from Radio Shack because that’s a requirement. You been in a Radio Shack lately? Really tough to find the bits and pieces to make anything in there.
ETA: I put a fancy Lexan top on the prototype so you can see the innards.
77.
raven
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I had a guy who know evaluate mine. After years of abuse many of them were beyond help and I donated them to the Women’s Shelter thrift store. I would run into the manger and she would tell me how people LOVED going through them. The biggest fear was that the wrong person would find one of the doubles with seeds and stems in them!
@? Martin:
Which sounds better from an eyeballs on the screen point,
“Plane crashes at SFO with nearly 300 on board, so far only 12 injuries and 2 deaths”
or
“Plane crashes at SFO, loses tail and wing and flips as it attempts to land”
79.
Robert Sneddon
@liberal: My brother was working at UMass Lowell a while back, he and his family lived in Nashua in New Hampshire and commuted interstate. Low taxes and cheap rent, not much in the way of amenities but Baaastun was only a couple of hours away if they felt a sudden desire for civilisation.
80.
PsiFighter37
I’m in an airport bookstore that has just made me aware that Glenn Beck now writes fiction books that, from the inside fold, reads just like a right-wing conspiracy fantasy.
Who the hell would actually buy that?!
81.
different-church-lady
@Robert Sneddon: But catastrophic public schools. My cousin taught there after forever in Westford. He only lasted six months.
Oddly, Lowell itself is really rather nice now, although I have no idea about the schools. I grew up one town over, and back then Lowell was one major fire short of a ruin. But today it’s pretty vibrant.
@PsiFighter37:
Some people will buy anything. Anything.
PT Barnum made a bit of money with that idea.
83.
PsiFighter37
Also, too, Amity Shlaes has written a biography of Coolidge about how the Roaring 20s were actually totally awesome, and the whole laissez-faire thing actually was the shit.
I feel like I’ve stepped into an alternate universe here. No wonder physical bookstores are doing so poorly, if they are selling this revisionist dreck
84.
BillinGlendaleCA
@PsiFighter37: How could one tell the difference between a Glenn Beck novel and Glenn Beck “non-fiction”?
85.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@raven:
I use a wetvac record cleaning machine and find that many noisy records are salvageable. From thrift stores I’ll buy oddball stuff like klezmer, Balinese gamelan, African thumb piano music, operetta, etc. out of curiosity. I have a cheaper turntable with a disposable cartridge to evaluate them on in case they’ve been used as a Frisbee at the beach.
@BillinGlendaleCA:
The only difference is that with the non-fiction he tells you he isn’t lying. He’s lying of course but at least he tells you he’s not.
I think the exact words are “This is no shit!”
87.
PsiFighter37
@BillinGlendaleCA: In these novels, an industrialist named Aaron Doyle is the bad guy. I’m a bit saddened he wasn’t clever enough to come up with an ethnic-sounding name that rhymed with Barack Obama that also happened to be a community organizer in a Midwestern city.
88.
different-church-lady
Perhaps you had to be there for this to make any sense, but…
In 1971 Lowell won an “All-America City” award. All the local dairies (remember local dairies?) had “LOWELL: AN ALL AMERICA CITY” graphics on the sides of their milk cartons.
Towards the end of the 70s one of the local hippy papers (maybe it was something from a ULowell student publication) had a satire of one of those hand-drawn local chamber of commerce maps that lists all the local attractions and businesses. The title was “LOWELL: AN ALL AMERICAN CITY!” In the lower right corner there was an arrow pointing south, labeled: “BOSTON (near Lowell)”
That was Lowell in the 70s — perverse pride in denial of civic decline. It could have wound up as another Detroit, but then the Feds declared pretty much the entire downtown as a National Park, due to the mill heritage, and some money started coming in.
When I was growing up, Lowell was a place where they rolled up the sidewalks at 5PM. Today it’s a vibrant small city.
OK, what do you mean by “use”? You mean you actually own one of those things? Didn’t they used to cost thousands of dollars? Jesus, I’d be jellie.
I’ve had my VPI record cleaning machine for 20+ years. It’s paid for itself by cleaning up $1 garage sale records to playable condition. There are now cheaper options that do the same thing: vacuum cleaning solution off of the record surface. basically you do this once to any used record and after that dust it off before every play. Wet cleaning really works. I’m listening to a thrift store Brubeck record now and it sounds fine.
91.
different-church-lady
@efgoldman: OMG, that rings such a distant bell — across the street from a pool hall or something.
There was a head shop on Central Street I used to go record shopping in, even though I was too young to know what a head shop was. Just down the street from WCAP. When I was even younger there was a duck-pin bowling alley on Market Street built into an old theater. I remember vividly we were driving home from the the traditional Friday evening bowling and it was the first time I heard “Killer Queen” on the radio. Even a 10 year old could figure out something unique was going on with that.
I just listened to the interview with the FAA team that are heading from DC to SF to study the crash. The woman speaking was talking about all the players that needed to be in place when they get to the accident site so the investigation could ‘hit the ground running’. I bet she wishes she could take that one back…
SFO has announced they’re reopening two (of four) runways today.
I’m amazed the Asiana plane is as intact as it is. It dragged the tail section into the riprap bank from the water–they were feet away from a much worse outcome.
A friend flies the 777 so I hope to quiz her on what might have occurred.
It’s a self-supporting hobby. I buy ’50s-’60s American audio gear locally, rehab it and sell it to collectors in Southeast Asia. I’m a net exporter of audio electronics to Japan, Korea and China if you can believe that.
Used to do a lot of that but I’ve been traveling constantly for work for the last year so selling/buying less.
96.
different-church-lady
@efgoldman: Hipsters: Goorin Brothers are popping up like weeds everywhere now.
I grew up with an AR XA ttbl. Those are in demand in any condition, so don’t toss it before you offer it to a local phono geek.
The most recent new receiver I bought, for my mom this year, has a phono input! They disappeared and they’re back. I see decent turntables and new records for sale at Urban Outfitters, of all places.
98.
JGabriel
I just discovered a new insult on a forum, from a user who apparently doesn’t know English very well*:
you should become a full shitstorm ever !! shame on you !
This is my new favorite insult of all time.
(*No link, cuz I don’t wanna make it personal or embarrass the commenter.)
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
What’s a decent turntable going for these days? I have a BIC 960 that needs to be rebuilt so I can record my records and then don’t have to lug them around anymore.
We are having vegetarian burritos for dinner tonight. I snuck in soy protein chilli for the filling a while back and not only did DH like it but he prefers it to ground beef now. I also did the same for lasagna which had the same result. The only thing that I use ground beef for now is cottage pie and that is because I haven’t figured out how to use the soy alternative effectively but give me time. I will turn this meat loving American vegetarian if it is the last thing I do.
Music Hall & Audio Technica make nice ones for $250 or less with cartridge. Nowadays all consumer ‘tables have built in preamps (line output) and many have USB output. Avoid Stanton, Crosley, Jensen and Numark. The basic audio brands’ tables are all pretty good.
103.
gbear
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I’ve got a collection of about 2,500 LPs and I may be approaching that with my CD collection now too. I’m not even remotely into digital music – I don’t even have a way to play it other than my desktop computer (and I’m not going to feel embarrassed about being behind the curve. The only thing I’d like that I don’t have yet is GPS in my car).
It’s still a hobby of mine to go to record shopping but I realized yesterday there are records I would buy if I was 10 years younger, but I’m getting too old to add records to the collection unless I REALLY want them. My sisters and nephews aren’t going to know or give a shit about 9/10 of the stuff I own, so it’s becoming time to see it as retirement income. If I every have to move again, I may rent a storage room and move the collection there beforehand and then gradually move it into a new place. I would do this to save my friends and family the hassle of having to help me move it again. It became quite a point of discussion when I moved into my present house…
I would do this to save my friends and family the hassle of having to help me move it again. It became quite a point of discussion when I moved into my present house…
I’ll bet that’s an understatement. On a par with a diplomatic “full and frank exchange of views”. Nobody wants to help you move 2,500 records. That’s like, half a ton.
105.
gbear
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Do you have a nice Harmon-Kardon 930 receiver that you could sell me? I bought one in the early 70’s and I haven’t had a receiver I liked better since then.
I don’t know if Steeplejack is around, but one of the highlights of Antoine and Colette, a Truffaut short that was on TCM last night, was watching the hero with his little turntable. Damn, it is so much more fun to play an LP than a CD (and don’t get me started on MP3s or whatever they are). You could see the toner arm moving toward the middle of the record and know just how much was left, etc. It was so much more satisfying.
108.
Angela
I’m looking at buying Mr. Angela a Big Green Egg. There are the two of us at home and three college age sons who often stop by for a meal. Any ideas on size and necessary accessories to start?
Waidaminute–if you have CDs you’re into digital music already.
Just sayin’.
I didn’t ditch my el pees but I definitely slowed down my acquisition. The fam doesn’t let me play them when they’re present, either. [grumble]
110.
gbear
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I had enough people helping me move that nobody really got mad about it. When I moved in, the collection filled 27 boxes that weighed about 55 pounds each. The 1930’s solid wood bedroom set was more of a hassle than the records.
trollhattan: I guess I should have said downloaded music instead of digital. I still like having the object.
111.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@gbear:
I have two but they’re both parts units. Those were very nice but unreliable. I’m decades out of the loop with new audio bear, but audiophiles I know are buying Denon receivers for bedrooms, cottages, kids’ systems, etc. I use Denon cartridges and trust the company.
112.
Violet
@Litlebritdifrnt: Does he know you’re adding the soy? Or are you being sneaky?
Did you watch the Lions tour? Just finished watching the last match.
It became quite a point of discussion when I moved into my present house…
Spousal Unit & I have somewhere between 7k-10k books, plus 40-year runs of sf pulps, approaching 1500 manga, and a couple dozen cartons of craft magazines. We’ve been in this house for twenty years, and hope to leave it feet-first…
114.
different-church-lady
@Ultraviolet Thunder: OK, you really seem to know your stuff. So, what are the odds I can fix my Vector Research direct drive linear tracker from the early 80s? I think the microswitch that moves the tone arm across is wonky — instead of sliding over it just pivots until it can’t go no more and then starts to skip.
I really want to keep this thing, because everyone who hears it thinks it sounds sweet, and I tend to agree.
Have the medium, which maxes out at half a turkey–if you want more capacity then go for the large. I find this size fine for our family of three, and it takes less fuel and heats faster than the large.
Must have either the nest stand or a stand-table combo, because bending over to cook sucks. I light mine with an electric starter. Grill brush, pizza stone…maybe rib racks, I’d get accessories as you find the need rather than all at once. Definitely a remote thermometer, because the less you open the lid the better. It’s the grill for people who DON’T futz and putter while grilling.
My sisters and nephews aren’t going to know or give a shit about 9/10 of the stuff I own…
Don’t be automatically cynical — the exotic mysteries of the record collections of those older than myself were a big part of the joy of my childhood. Out of all of them there’s bound to be one who would be fascinated by all those big pictures and gatefold sleeves and time-warpy stuff.
OK, you really seem to know your stuff. So, what are the odds I can fix my Vector Research direct drive linear tracker from the early 80s? I think the microswitch that moves the tone arm across is wonky — instead of sliding over it just pivots until it can’t go no more and then starts to skip.
Might just need lubrication. In any case it’s a job for a specialist and I’m not that guy. Sorry! It was probably made under contract by Pioneer or Technics so if you can find a visual match to a different brand of the same ‘table The Google should tell you who’s working on them.
I have only one linear tracker left, a B&O that I modded with a wireless remote control. Even I’m intimidated by those things.
120.
RSA
Brad De Long links to the email exchanges that got Jerry Pournelle, science fiction writer and Byte columnist, kicked off ARPANet. I thought it was funny, though it’s probably of interest mainly to people who were online back in the 1980s. (I was, and I’m friends with one of the people quoted in the email messages.)
121.
different-church-lady
@gogol’s wife: What’s really missing today is the art of the side break — the satisfying mini-intermission. You had to sequence things so that there was a ramp up to the end of side one that would last through the 30 seconds of silence, and then a new arc would begin on side two.
George Martin’s theory was to put the four best songs at the beginning and end of each side — “nail down the four corners” is I think how he put it.
That’s a collecting horror story all right. I like records, and especially DG classical, but I can’t blame younger people for keeping their lofi recordings all in their pocket and on their laptop. What they lose in quality they’ll gain in musculoskeletal health.
I was just chain-pullin’. I rip my ceedees but indeed buy ceedees, in part to have “the thing” and in part because itunes inevitably corrupts a few dozen song files/year that I have to re-rip. Only apple thing I own is a sack of ipods and it’s only because they won.
Speaking of companies I don’t respect, Sony codeveloped the rather brilliant SACD and the format is basically pining for the fjords. My contention is either develop hardware or content, but not both because one will always hamstring the other.
I was sneaky to begin with and snuck in the soy when we were having burritos. After the meal and I asked him how it was and he said “great” I told him about the soy, he actually said “could you do that with lasagna too” and I said yes (I used the spaghetti soy for that one as opposed to the chilli). He is still on his health kick after the heart attack so any time I can replace red meat with soy he is happy. I do not think I will ever stop him eating his filet steaks every couple of weeks though.
What’s really missing today is the art of the side break — the satisfying mini-intermission. You had to sequence things so that there was a ramp up to the end of side one that would last through the 30 seconds of silence, and then a new arc would begin on side two.
Albums are really a thing of the past. In a decade we’ll be effectively back to the 45 single era where songs were sold individually. The album as a collection no longer has relevance for most popular music.
129.
Violet
@Litlebritdifrnt: I can’t eat soy protein–I’ve got a thyroid condition. I eat edamame and fermented soy stuff (tempeh, miso, etc.) but none of the more modern varieties of soy like soy milk or soy protein. Glad it’s working for you guys.
Speaking of companies I don’t respect, Sony codeveloped the rather brilliant SACD and the format is basically pining for the fjords. My contention is either develop hardware or content, but not both because one will always hamstring the other.
Sony will never forget Betamax. Inferior content built up a lead and their superior hardware died. That’s why they worked so hard to promote Blu Ray and bury Toshiba’s HDDVD.
Am hearing two fatalities and SF general is planning on a second wave of patients–they have ten (or twelve?) critical patients at present. They’re the regional trauma center.
Dear Twelve Rabid Weasels of SFWA, please shut the fuck up.
Posted by Mary Robinette Kowal
I know you value your freedom of speech. Good on you. However there are 1788 other members of SFWA who also value their freedom of speech and manage to exercise it without being raging assholes.
You are professional writers, so should know the power of words. I therefore must assume that you are deliberately being provocative and trying to set things on fire because you enjoy watching a flamewar.
There are 1788 other members who don’t. Scratch that… there are 1752 because some people just quit because of you.
I know, I know. Asking you not to be racist/sexist/elitist, or just for impulse control is tantamount to fascism and catering to the liberal mob. All the other members manage to do it. Why can’t you?
133.
Angela
@trollhattan: Thanks! I was trying to decide between a large and a medium. And the accessories are a bit overwhelming, so buying as you need makes sense.
134.
gbear
A turntable question for Ultraviolet Thunder: I’ve gor a B&O RX-2 turntable with a Soundsmith MMC-3 cartridge that’s about 10 years old. Very few plays on this cartridge. I want to sell it but I’m having trouble finding a buyer. Is it worth anything? Any recommendations for selling it beyond Craigslist (I really don’t want to have to ship it, although I still have the original packaging).
135.
Aaron Evan Baker
My sympathies to everybody in that San Francisco crash. Sadly, two deaths reported.
I wanted to take the opportunity afforded by this thread to thank Sarah Proud & Tall for her kinds words about my poem, “Drunkenness.”
Here is another, much more formal, effort, “Sunt Aliquid Manes”:
You had to sequence things so that there was a ramp up to the end of side one that would last through the 30 seconds of silence, and then a new arc would begin on side two.
Which is why it always took me five hours to make a 90 minute mixed tape for anybody.
Yes. I’ve has 2 RX-2s. They typically sell for around 2 bills with a working cart. Add $100+ for a good Soundsmith cart maybe?
EBay is the place to sell, but you’d have to ship. B&O tables aren’t too bad to pack because they’re light. Have to fasten the suspension locking screws, remove the platter and pad the arm with foam so it doesn’t flail around. Then it’s just plastic wrap, bubble wrap, box, peanuts and an outer box. maybe an hour’s work.
ETA: depending on where you live, you could just put up a CL ad with a throwaway email address and hang for your price. Would take a while but someone will find you.
I just pound them through with a tack hammer and bite them off on the inside.
142.
PurpleGirl
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I’ve been a Radio Shack recently. I also remember when you could get components of all sorts and kits to build things like TV sets and radios, etc. How it’s changed…
People stopped making and repairing things and Radio Shack sold remote controlled cars, cell phones and digital cameras instead. It’s a wonder than even one of the several strong national electronics chains still exists. We’re bringing back hobby electronics a little bit. I’m helping by creating projects from Radio Shack parts for publication. I think this kind of thing is very important, and it would be a real loss if DIY went away in favor of consumer purchase/disposal.
I said Pournelle “was” insufferable. I looked him up on Wikipedia and see that he is still alive, apparently semi-retired at age 79. He severed his ties with Byte in 2006—way after anyone I know stopped reading him—and apparently continues his column on his Web site.
Next thing you know someone will bring up Robert X. Cringely!
146.
Roxy
FYI, the referee was beheaded by family and friends of a player the referee had stabbed to death.
Noted. I haven’t watched any of them yet, but they’re safely tucked away on the DVR.
148.
different-church-lady
@Ultraviolet Thunder: What’s really amazing is that you can walk into a Radio Shack today and still get a hefty selection of things like zener diodes, rectifiers, and fuses. Yeah, they don’t take up as much floor space as they used to, but that’s because they got much much better at packing all that stuff into more efficient displays behind the smart phones and GPS units.
Radio Shack has far more component stuff available online only these days. It can be tough to make your way through the search functions but they will ship fast and cheap. I like RS because you’re never farther than a few miles from one when you need an adapter, a charger, a battery, etc. They’re everywhere.
151.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@burnspbesq:
Those H-K Twin Power receivers were packed a little too tight for thermal management and long term reliability.
The only working H-K I have here now is a TA-260 tube receiver. No idea what I’m going to do with that. Time was I’d have eBayed it immediately but I’m never home to ship stuff these days.
152.
red dog
@liberal: Consider moving to New Hampshire just a short 15 minute drive north. Much cheaper.
Speaking of companies I don’t respect, Sony codeveloped the rather brilliant SACD and the format is basically pining for the fjords.
Amen. Some years ago I bought the Animals’ Retrospective in SACD, and it was awesome. I was all set to go on an SACD rampage, but they were scarce and hard to find, and eventually I gave up.
By the way, for anyone who likes the Animals—and remembers that they did anything other than “House of the Rising Sun”—Retrospective is an incredibly good one-stop collection. Fairly complete and very well mastered. Eric Burdon had one of the three great white bluesy/shouty voices of the ’60s, along with Mitch Ryder and a player to be named later.
Eric Burdon had one of the three great white bluesy/shouty voices of the ’60s, along with Mitch Ryder and a player to be named later.
Rick Perry’s three favorite singers ;-)
157.
burnspbesq
SACD is pretty much limited to independent, specialist classical labels like Channel Classics, Pentatone, and BIS. DSD is the flavor of the month in the high-end digital-to-analog converter world, but there are very few DSD downloads available to buy.
Early Playstations that could play SACDs can also be used to rip them, and they sell for a hefty premium on eBay and specialist audio forums.
It’s easier to just get a high-res PCM download from someplace like HDTracks or Qobuz.
If you’re really serious about pro-quality cleanup, IZotope Rx2 is the way to go, but it’s $349.
I’m helping to keep HDTracks afloat. Have been for at least two years.
160.
Howard Beale IV
@Steeplejack: I remember the uproar after SACD was released and the giant pissing matches at AES conventions between the pro and anti-SACD club. To me it seems like from a physical media and reccording technology standpoint SACD/DSD has survived (And you can even play SACD’s on first and second generation PS3’s if you can find ’em) , but places like HDtracks are now offering an alternative for those of who who are audio snobs who don’t think the Stereophile gang is a few fries short of a Happy Meal and has more money than brains.
161.
Aaron Evan Baker
Wondered why Jerry Pournelle was as hated as he is; have a better inkling now.
162.
Howard Beale IV
@burnspbesq: I use Audition and it’s fscking impressive, going back to its origins as CoolEdit 2000-at the time it’s clean-up plugins were outstanding-and with Audition supporting FLAC and 12/192 to me it’s a no-brainer.
163.
Howard Beale IV
@Ultraviolet Thunder: If I need something that RS has in stock I go there, otherwise it’s DigiKey all the way..
Sony and a few other companies made ElCasette decks. It was supposed to ease RTR users into a more manageable format. Technically it was excellent, but metal tape and Dolby C brought Cassette up to a respectable fidelity and ElCasette died.
There was also a cassette based digital recording medium I forget the name of. And I have a single MiniDisk here on my desk. History is littered with failed formats.
166.
Howard Beale IV
@efgoldman: Ah, yes Lafayette Radio. There was also Olson Electronics in my neck of the woods.
167.
Yatsuno
@red dog: Stretch it out a bit further and you’re in single-payer Vermont. When I was looking at a job in Andover I examined that as a commute possibility. It would be exciting to be at the place where it all starts.
168.
Howard Beale IV
@Ultraviolet Thunder: DCC: Digital Compact Cassette from Philips, which Radio Shack bought into and actually built a plant to build the decks in Texas. DCC used Philips’s own PASC lossy compression codec-RS tried to pimp it but when the RIAA sued Sony over DAT and Sony’s introduction of the MiniDisc that put the knife into DCC once and for all, as both Sony/Philips worked on SCMS in order to placate the RIAA and still that corporate welfare Home Recordings Right Act got passed (a tax on blank media).
And the last MiniDisc hardware rolled off the assembly line a few years ago.
I have Lafayette and Radio Shack catalogs from the ’60s and ’70s that I use for reference. They’re an inch thick. They had an incredible assortment of stuff available.
DAT was always a pro format. I was thinking of DCC which was a consumer format based on the audio Compact Cassette tech. H. Beale #4 explained it succinctly in post 182.
172.
Howard Beale IV
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I had the first Sony DAT deck DTC-700 back in 1991, and I bought the “portable” (more like a brick) TCD-D# that I used when I traveled. I still have TCD-D3, but now my entire FLAC-ripped CD collection fits on a single 128 GB SDXC card.
Back in the early days of third generation compiuters, there was an old saying: ‘Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon loaded with magnetic tapes.’ Today’s version is: ‘Never underestimate the bandwidth of an Antonov An-225 filled with 64 GB MicroSDXC cards.”
I used to pore through those things–aspirations a kid who has the money for model airplanes can only dream of.
The dad built Heathkit stuff–mostly audio gear. They even had color gawddamn television kits, which cost many hundreds of dollars and contained a ginormous array of parts. Don’t you dare make even one bad solder joint.
174.
gbear
@Steeplejack: That is a really good Animals collection. The thing I like best about it is that some Animals anthologies used an alternate version of We Gotta Get Out Of This Place that had a different vocal take than the one from the original hit single. This Anthology has all of the songs just as I remembered them. Some of the psychedelic stuff at the end is horribly dated, but it really is a great collection of the hits.
175.
Ultraviolet Thunder
It’s been a pleasure chatting with you all again. Work travel keeps me merely lurking most of the time these days. Good to be ‘back’ here!
Happy weekend, all. My wife will be home in a minute and I need to make a mess somewhere so she won’t think I’ve spent the day in front of the keyboard.
Cheers!
176.
Howard Beale IV
@trollhattan: Boy does that bring back memories when Color TV grabbed a toehold-the damm chassis were a spaghetti-nesting of wires connecting vacuum tubes, resistors, capacitors, transformers, et al.
Just today when I strolling the isles of Best Buy a employee was pushing the carcasses of electronics being recycled: Old TV’s and CRT monitors.
Hazy memories but there were a boatload of legal hassles regarding the different labels the Animals recorded for early and later (e.g., “House of the Rising Sun” vs “Sky Pilot” eras). IIRC Eric Burdon can’t even tour with a band called The Animals in the UK. Stupid, stupid chit.
BTW, it was decades between my hearing Burdon and discovering Nina Simone. We’d never have the former w/o the latter.
180.
Howard Beale IV
@efgoldman: The first generation DVR’s were usually tricked out with 20-80 GB drives that spun at 5400 RPM and had less-than-rigorous error-checking (See; Hitachi CinemaStar, et al.)
With 320 kbps MP3, a 20 GB drive could hold about 2,000+ songs.
Now that 4TB drives are starting to get mass-produced, the idea that any lossy compresssion is necessary should be met with a giant DIAF (and don’t get me started on the Loudness War.)
181.
Howard Beale IV
@trollhattan: SACD seems to have survived pretty well, but then again, that’s probably ‘cuz Sony sucked up BMG and was able to distribute RCA’s back catalog-especially the RCA Red Seal recordings made in the mid-late 1950’s-excellent performances, coupled with excellent recording and engineering-what’s not to like?
182.
Howard Beale IV
@trollhattan: I guess I got corrupted at a very early age-To me, ‘House of The Rising Sun’ equates to the one-hit-wonder Frijid Pink, wich was played in heavy rotation by the influential Detroit/Windsor radio axis in 1969.
I’m happy if it remains viable, given I have the player, but I no longer see “high definition audio” sections in music stores…oh, who am I kidding, what music stores?
Is DVD-A still alive?
184.
Howard Beale IV
@trollhattan: DVD-A is on life-support-there’s rumors afoot about a BluRay-HiDef audio format, but nothing concrete at this time-and to me’it’s overkill. HDtracks.com has many hi-res tracks in 24/44.1, 24/96 and 12/192 formats.
Very Tasty, but that comes at a price.
My main component audio player is an old Oppo DVD player that does SACD/DVD-A connected with HDMI into a Yamaha RX-A1000, which supports DLNA and FLAC, and can be controlled via a web browser-and it’s got a mighty fine phono section (MM only-if I need MC, I got a Denon step-up transformer if need be.)
Was going to go into a semi-inside-baseball rant, but trollhattan has the gist of it: label/rights problems, mostly having to do with producer/empresario Mickie Most, who seems to have been a bit of a dick, but not at the Allen Klein/ABKCO level. [Shudder]
Sixties music is where I got my start, and I don’t claim that all of it is the greatest music ever, but I do like to have good, faithful recordings of the old stuff, just as I like to have good, faithful recordings of Charlie Parker’s jazz stuff from the ’40s, etc. Retrospective is a great collection by that standard. Yes, the psychedelic stuff at the end is a little weird, but at least it’s on there for historical reference. And the CD does include “Spill the Wine,” which wasn’t even really an Animals song.
For a lot of second-tier ’60s groups, a well mastered, fairly complete anthology is about the best you can hope for—short of dropping big coin for one of those eight-CD “everything but the kitchen sink” comprehensive sets. For almost all groups I do not need or want that.
(Okay, so I did go into a semi-inside-baseball rant.)
Ooh, ooh, the Oppos look like a LOT of player for the money. The real deal, then?
Have a good Sony SACD player (early model, Japan-made) but would like a newer more capable one at some point. I realize I want something that works magic into Redbook, given that’s the vast bulk of my music collection.
187.
Howard Beale IV
@Steeplejack: Makes me wonder whether my Mobile Fidelity half-speed master of King Crimsons’s ‘In The Court of the Crimson King’ is the real deal….
(and yes, I still have my copy of MSFL’s Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side Of the Moon’…..)
Spill the Wine is nothing but fun–great entre into the brief War period.
I sadly missed it, but Eric Burdon did a solo gig at a small club here fairly recently. Evidently he mixed music and stories and a good time was had by all.
189.
Howard Beale IV
@trollhattan: If you can lay your hands on a DVD-980 and run it HDMI, you’re all set. I overpaid for mine, but I already have a PS3 serving as my BluRay player-if you can get that or a used Oppo BDP-93 or the last generation BDP-95 (my brother had an Oppo modded with tube premaps!) yer in the game as it supports DLNA too.
Some of the newer Oppo’s reclock internally like the Benchmark DAC-1 does, which helps immensely.
Last October I gritted my teeth and splurged on an Oppo BDP-103. I don’t think I have played a Blu-ray on it yet, but it is a fantastic CD player! Do not regret the money spent.
@NickT: I read that post but didn’t make the connection to Pournelle, but it wouldn’t be surprising. I thought it was about this thing, as described on Scalzi’s blog. (I don’t follow SF that much these days, though.)
I had forgotten what an insufferable dick Jerry Pournelle was, but I did read his column in Byte every month back in the ’80s.
Me, too. That parody was spot on. And with respect to SF, I fell off the Niven and Pournelle bandwagon when I came across… well, pretty much anything either one wrote after 1975 or so.
Analog, and minimal analog at that: I’ve got a Sherwood RX-4503 receiver right now. Will upgrade at some point, but I got the Oppo for the long haul. And I have been able to tell a big difference even with my current setup.
198.
gbear
@Howard Beale IV: I have that album. :) It didn’t displace the original for me though.
All the posts about The Animals has gotten me interested in what other original albums or compilations exist. I’m going to spend a little time over at Amazon this evening…
[. . .] what other original albums or compilations exist.
I have found anthologies that compare to the Animals one in quality (not SACD, though) by the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Zombies and the (Young) Rascals. Still looking for a better anthology by Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, although the one I have—with mono mixes of the hits—is kick-ass.
The four-CD Nuggets set is an excellent compilation of one-hit wonders. That’s a good gateway drug to a bunch of other good anthologies (linked on Amazon).
. . . WTF?! Amazon is showing it as out of print? That’s an outrage. Although it looks like you can buy the CDs individually.
200.
Howard Beale IV
@Steeplejack: If you still have any vinyl look at the Yamaha Aventage Receivers. I had a Sony 9000ES pre-amp/amp pair back in the early 2000’s but both failed in the 5 year warranty period-I picked up a Yamaha RX-V1 and it was bulletproof and built like a tank. I replaced that with an Yamaha RX-A1000 when a regional AV store went out of business (Ultimate Electronics) – paid $800 for it and haven’t regretted it at all. I poked a hole in my living room so I could run the second zone into my office and I can control it via a web browser.
I run Klipsch KLF-30s for my main channels, a KSC-6 for my center channel, and my rears are homemade boxes I built 30 years ago using Electro-Voice/Bag End speakers in a 3rd order Butterworth alignment, 3 db down at the crossover.
If you’re not into AV, if you see a Sony VFET, NAD 7600 or a Nakamichi TA-series with Statis-snap ’em up before they get to Audiogon and get bid to insane pricing.
I am completely out of my depth wrt the technical and other aspects of this discussion, but wanted to chime in about how effing awesome The Animals, and Eric Burdon in particular, are — just from the simple perspective of listening to the music.
IOW, I appreciate.
202.
gbear
@Steeplejack: I’ve got a few of those Rhino Nuggets box sets* and they’re all a lot of fun. I’m kind of embarrassed that I never owned the Lenny Kaye assembled original album, but it was recently re-issued with the original artwork so now I finally have a two-record vinyl version in my collection.
*edit: The original one, the British bands one and the San Francisco and L.A. band ones.
203.
Howard Beale IV
@eemom: The definitive Eric Burdon songs to me was Monterrey, followed by Sly Pilot and Spill the Wine (and later, House of The Rising Sun)
204.
Howard Beale IV
@gbear: At one point in my life I had fire-singed 10″ version of ‘Songs By Tom Lehrer’. Now if THAT isn’t a treasure, I don’t know what is.
205.
nineone
@Origuy: Holy Hand Grenade, I need a smoke after that! Yowza!
@Steeplejack: Don’t Bring Me Down is my favorite Animals track too. Absolutely everything about that record just ignites. We Gotta Get Out Of This Place ties with House Of The Rising Sun for second.
Thanks for the “hi-fi” tips. I enjoy reading the comments from all the power users here.
I used to have close to a thousand LPs and a high-end audio setup, including a DAT deck, but I lost everything about 10 years ago in a personal catastrophe. Listened to music just on the computer for a long time, then I put together a low-end but pretty good setup a few years ago. The Oppo player was the first big splurge since then, and at some point I would perhaps like to upgrade the other components. But my needs are modest: my listening space is small, and I listen a lot on headphones anyway. The Sherwood with bookshelf speakers and Polk subwoofer is fine for now. But I tagged your notes for future reference.
Damn, had to really hunt for this one (why don’t I bookmark them when I find them first time?): TV performance of “Shake,”not lip-sync’ed. Killer organ from Alan Price.
All of it comes down to Burdon’s voice, how uniquely and intensely expressive it was. For some examples, I can just hear:
“I met my first love at thirteen, she was brown, and I was pretty green”
“Watch my daddy in bed a-dyin…..watched his hair been turnin’ grey, yeah…He’s been workin’ and slavin’ his life away”
And on another note entirely, of course,
“I dreamed I was in a Hollywood movie…”
212.
Howard Beale IV
@Steeplejack: I can appreciate that. LIke you most of my listening has been through headphones as of late but I still have my gear and right now it’s good enough. My goto cans for serious listening are Shure SE-425’s or my trusty 25 year-old MDR-V6’s (at one point I had Stax Electrostatics, but they were rather unwieldy.)
Right mow most of my listening is via my phone using AAC 192k encoding when I’m mobile; at home I use my WiFi with my FLAC library and get uncompressed sound to my cellphone. If you have a Samsung Galaxy 3, Galaxy Note or Galaxy 4 they support the CSR Apt-X codec, which makes Bluetooth streaming almost 100% transparent with an Apt-X-compatible receiver (the Samsung HS3000 is the best bang-for-the-buck because you can use your own cans, followed by the Creative Labs WP-530.)
He had an incredibly expressive voice. It wasn’t just the bluesy/shouty thing, although he had that in abundance.
Been playing that “Shake” video in the background, and it cracks me up how the camera is infallibly not looking at what is important at any given moment. Half surprised they managed to focus on Burdon for the singing.
I might be calling on your expertise (and others’). I was having a problem with my cell phone (Droid Incredible), which turned out to be a faulty microSD card. I upgraded to a 32GB card, and I have been feeling the urge to clean up my library of MP3 and other audio files and get everything that I want onto the phone, which is my audio device for when I’m out and about. Would like to rip CDs down to some format better than MP3, but I don’t know whether it should be FLAC or something else. And I need to get into Audacity or some other program to clean up the noise and sound levels on the MP3s I have collected or bought from various sources.
@liberal: Unless you are looking for the big city experience, look to the West and/or North of Lowell. Anything East and/or South will get progressively more expensive.
I think they were all working-class dudes from Newcastle.
Trivia: the bass player, Chas Chandler, went on to manage and produce Jimi Hendrix!
220.
Howard Beale IV
@Steeplejack: FLAC encoding will reduce the size of a typical PCM/WAV file by about 50%; with Windows Media 10 Losless and Apple’s ALAC (losless codec) pretty similar. On a Droid, FLAC support is near ubiqutous in the Andriod Market (I use UPNP play as it supports both local media and DLNA sources.)
Start by ripping your CD’s to FLAC. If you want an MP3, transcode the FLAC to 320 kbps CBR to keep losses at a minumum-better still, use AAC as its much more modern and sounds better than MP3’s at the same bitrate.
Transcoding existing MP3’s is a dicey proposition-what I usually do is transcode those to WAV and then to FLAC, with the understandign that my original source isn’t necessarily what it could be (esp. Amazon’s MP3 at 256 kbps CBR-grrr….)
If you absolutely need the maximum number of songs with an ‘acceptable’ lossiness, use AAC 96 kbps HE.
schrodinger's cat
I has a shiny new post about the perfect summer menu
Violet
A 777 operated by Asiana Airlines has crashed at the San Francisco airport.
burnspbesq
Details sketchy so far, but apparently an Asiana 777 crashed on landing at SFO within the last hour.
? Martin
From the twitters:
Photo
BGinCHI
@? Martin: This makes the routine of watching Despicable Me with the boy seem pretty perfect.
JPL
@? Martin: That would be great news. The radio feed that I’m listening to just said several people have been seen leaving the plane. Hopefully, they all escaped without engine.
Anoniminous
Russian spy proposes to Edward Snowden on Twitter
Personally I think he save himself for Björk.
PaulW
Poor Anna. Went from chasing after Prince Harry (srsly, she was keen on meeting the Royals during her covert stuff), to chasing after a computer geek on the lam.
In other news, the current reports on the plane crash in San Francisco is that most everybody is accounted for and alive. No news on serious injuries though.
RobertDSC-PowerMac G5 Dual
4 of the 6 500GB IDE drives were installed yesterday. It took a while and I had to take a crash course in jumper setting, but everything works now.
Now I have to clean and prepare for laundry tomorrow. Fun fun fun.
Origuy
A South Korean rhythmic gymnast throw out the first pitch at a baseball game yesterday in a unique and amazing way.
JPL
@JPL: haha.. Hopefully they escaped without injury. I’m listening to a radio feed out of SF. A passenger emailed her husband a video of the triage area. She thinks that most passengers were able to get out with only minor injuries.
burnspbesq
A big day for transportation disasters. Overnight, a freight train carrying “petroleum products” derailed in a small town in Quebec, and the resulting explosion apparently leveled most of the business district.
Mike E
Gotta be out of the apt by the 26th…its tiny size precluded hoarding on my part, but, still. Moving Sux.
Anybody know how to hook a Technics turntable into a Compaq laptop? I wanna digitize my vinyl collection.
Roger Moore
@Origuy:
That’s quite a windup.
kdaug
Really cool sci-fi short:
Plurality
Probably better than 3/4 of the crap that makes it into theatres.
Mnemosyne
I’m not quite sure how this is going to come across, but I’m sure someone will tell me if it’s racist:
Those cute Asiana flight attendants who giggle behind their hands are in fact highly trained professionals who WILL toss you head first down the emergency slide if you don’t cooperate during an evacuation. Most Asian women are tough as nails under the culturally-approved exterior.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mike E: You need an amplifier, plug the turntable into the amp, plug audio out into the computer audio in.
red dog
This “Ellison America’s Cup” thingy is turning out to be an expensive disaster for San Francisco. Absolutely nobody is happy and Ellison could care less. What douche.
The Pale Scot
A retired naval Chief carefully dissects and fisks his old buddies nutty emails; it’s a good read.
“You were both trained by the military, I know you both, I’ve shot alongside you, you’ve shot on my range under my command, and neither one of you would have allowed an unqualified or unstable individual anywhere near a gun. But now? Now you send me an endless stream of hysterical NRA bullshit squawking about how anybody should be allowed to own whatever gun he wants without so much as a background check? ”
An Open Letter To The Idiot Nation
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: And get a mac and spin doctor. Then, in 10 years, you can give up and dump all your (gasp) vinyl!
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Being that he’s already communicating via computer, buying a mac probably isn’t necessary. I did my vinyl conversion on a PC with XP. It’s pretty painless either way.
burnspbesq
@Mike E:
Easiest way is to get a phono preamp with a USB output. Something like this.
http://www.project-audio.com/main.php?prod=phonoboxusb
ETA: you also need a copy of Audacity, a great piece of open-source software.
Bob In Portland
My daughter and her beau will be flying into SFO this evening. That is, if the airport is open.
Roger Moore
@red dog:
Larry Ellison acting like a total asshole and fucking up a good thing? There’s a shocker.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Roger Moore: Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Mnemosyne:
“Silk Hiding Steel” tends to be the phrase I hear to describe that kind of ideal, though usually to describe the Japanese “Yamato Nadeshiko” ideal of a woman.
MattF
@? Martin: Seems to have been a routine flight until the, um, landing:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/us/san-francisco-plane-crash.html?hp
Paddy
@burnspbesq: I posted video of the explosion earlier here. As I said, living myself 2 blocks from a well used RR track, this creeps me the f*** out. They lost blocks of their downtown in one fell swoop.
Mike E
@BillinGlendaleCA: @burnspbesq: Thanks.
CaseyL
@Bob In Portland: Bob, they’re saying the airport is closed for the rest of the day. Your daughter’s flight will have be rerouted. Hopefully, you can call the airline and find out where they’re being diverted to.
Ruckus
@Mike E:
As others have said you need an amp and there are cables to take output from the amp to a USB which you plug into your computer. You then need a way to capture and store the input in music format. I used to use a piece called streamripper. As you played music it would record. Anything going over the speaker, no matter the source. Now there are much better pieces of software, many are shareware at low or no cost.
burnspbesq
This may be the strangest story I’ve ever read on espn.com.
Referee Beheaded
Higgs Boson's Mate
@red dog:
From a Bloomberg article about Ellison’s innovations:
dmsilev
@burnspbesq: Oh my.
Was the referee a vampire or something?
MattF
@dmsilev: Does make you think that there’s some aspect of the situation that’s not being reported.
Mike E
@dmsilev: Wow, so much for staying out of the players’ way.
The Pale Scot
@efgoldman: OH MY.. I guess I’m a bit behind.
JPL
@burnspbesq: Oh, my! What will David Brooks think?
Haydnseek
@Anoniminous: I heard that during the worst of Iceland’s economic crisis, the central bank actually considered selling Bjork to a Bulgarian circus.
MattF
@JPL: Category error.
Haydnseek
@red dog: Oh, Man…..You missed the perfect chance to use “douchecanoe.”
NickT
@burnspbesq:
Clearly we need more armed spectators to ensure the safety of… oh.. um.. well then….
SiubhanDuinne
@burnspbesq:
The 2016 Olympics are going to be even more exciting than usual.
Robert Sneddon
@Paddy: British news is commemorating the Piper Alpha disaster which happened 25 years ago today, another fossil fuel catastrophe which resulted in 167 dead.
ricky
@JPL: Better yet, how will a blooger connect those David Brooks thoughts to the ceasless culture damning sins of Paula Deen?
dmsilev
@MattF: You do have to admit that it’s suspicious that someone conveniently brought a stake with them, presumably just in case they needed to impale someone else.
different-church-lady
@Origuy: Pretty sure that was a balk.
Haydnseek
@dmsilev: Nah, nobody can afford guns. This is their version of open-carry.
NickT
@dmsilev:
It must have been a high-stakes game.
JPL
@ricky: Hmmm.. Maybe they both eat grits at Applebee’s .
different-church-lady
I thought Obama was out of control, but shooting civilian airplanes out of the sky just to get Snowden is taking it too far.
What, too soon?
NickT
@different-church-lady:
At least you know you’re joking. I’ve been waiting for a Mandalay Rant on exactly this topic with the usual mixture of fascination and revulsion.
ricky
@JPL:
Applebee’s eliminated grits from its Salad Bar during White Hominy Month.
NickT
@ricky:
Thereby violating Jonah Goldberg’s Second Amendment rights.
liberal
I just got a job in Lowell ma, wife transferred to office in gov center. 2 2 small kids. Any recs on towns to live in?
JPL
@different-church-lady: It’s amazing that there were only two fatalities and 61 injuries.
It shows the weakness of the presidency.. okay..that was too soon
? Martin
@burnspbesq: That’s pretty hardcore for Brazil.
JPL
@liberal: It has been decades since I lived in MA but Bedford always seemed like a nice town, to me. There are several folks on the site that live in the area and if they don’t respond, post again.
Yatsuno
@CaseyL: The most likely destination is San Jose or possibly Oakland. I think San Jose has more capacity except for the really big planes.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Mike E:
Anybody know how to hook a Technics turntable into a Compaq laptop? I wanna digitize my vinyl collection.
You need anything with a phono preamp in it, such as a receiver, a preamp or an integrated amp. Or a dedicated phono preamp such as a cheap one from Recoton. This must have a line output. Line output goes to line input of computer. Then you need some software (free), and a great deal of time. Or take them with you. I’m for that option. I’ve been hauling records around since the ’70s and I still play them.
PsiFighter37
@efgoldman: I hear SF is pretty darn expensive as well.
As a Manhattanite, I get severe butthurt every time my renewal notice comes.
Haydnseek
@Ultraviolet Thunder: For quite awhile now I’ve been thinking that this is Ross in Detroit with a new moniker. Don’t respond if you’ve changed it for a reason that’s none of my business. I just always liked your posts and it was nice to see another juicer that I had some things in common with. Sorry if I’m out of line.
burnspbesq
@dmsilev:
Fans think ahead in Central and South America. It would never occur to me to stop at the store on the way to a game and get Ziploc bags to pee in and throw at the opposing team, but apparently that’s de rigeur in San Jose when Tio Sam comes to town to play Costa Rica.
raven
How can a fucking newscaster be looking right at pictures of the wing of the goddamn plane and say “you can see that the wing is gone”?
Ultraviolet Thunder
@efgoldman:
Took much longer than I’d have thought for you to chime in.
I was down in the shop hacking on a new project. The most powerful DIY headphone amp you can fit in a pocket. I’ve been using the prototype to drive the KEF speakers on my desk.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Haydnseek:
Yeah, I heard that guy got accidentally outed by bOINGbOING and went underground.
*wink*
? Martin
@burnspbesq: Obviously you’ve never been to a game in Philadelphia.
burnspbesq
Listening to “The Bespoke Man’s Narrative” by Aaron Diehl. If straight-ahead piano-and vibes jazz is your bag, you definitely want to check this out.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Considering the state of our media, I think this question answers itself.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@raven:
How can a fucking newscaster be looking right at pictures of the wing of the goddamn plane and say “you can see that the wing is gone”?
Instinct. Someone else wrote the copy and he’s going to read it verbatim no matter the violence to sense, logic or reality. That’s what they hire them for.
Mike E
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I still have my mom’s Louis Armstrong Hot 5 & 7 records, those are definitely keepers. I can’t expect to haul the entire stack around anymore, sadly.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Mike E:
Well, leave them to a good home. Not that there aren’t billions of records still in circulation but a collection is worth keeping together.
burnspbesq
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
Battery or AC? Tell us a little about the circuit topology and key components?
? Martin
@raven:
There’s your answer.
raven
We drove 70 miles to get a bushel of butter beans. The princess is happy!
Ultraviolet Thunder
@burnspbesq:
Gladly. Internal 9V rechargeable battery. External plug and socket to disconnect the battery. Battery is charged through a charging cable to its plug. Charging cable plugs into a standard 9V charger on the other end. Power socket on the amp can be connected to any supply external from 5V to 15V to run the amp without battery. I built up a cable to run it from a USB socket and that works great.
Two channels of LM386 power amp for current drive. Integrated bass/tone control via a passive filter circuit with potentiometer controls. So the kids can crank up the bass, because they like that.
All parts from Radio Shack because that’s a requirement. You been in a Radio Shack lately? Really tough to find the bits and pieces to make anything in there.
ETA: I put a fancy Lexan top on the prototype so you can see the innards.
raven
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I had a guy who know evaluate mine. After years of abuse many of them were beyond help and I donated them to the Women’s Shelter thrift store. I would run into the manger and she would tell me how people LOVED going through them. The biggest fear was that the wrong person would find one of the doubles with seeds and stems in them!
Ruckus
@? Martin:
Which sounds better from an eyeballs on the screen point,
“Plane crashes at SFO with nearly 300 on board, so far only 12 injuries and 2 deaths”
or
“Plane crashes at SFO, loses tail and wing and flips as it attempts to land”
Robert Sneddon
@liberal: My brother was working at UMass Lowell a while back, he and his family lived in Nashua in New Hampshire and commuted interstate. Low taxes and cheap rent, not much in the way of amenities but Baaastun was only a couple of hours away if they felt a sudden desire for civilisation.
PsiFighter37
I’m in an airport bookstore that has just made me aware that Glenn Beck now writes fiction books that, from the inside fold, reads just like a right-wing conspiracy fantasy.
Who the hell would actually buy that?!
different-church-lady
@Robert Sneddon: But catastrophic public schools. My cousin taught there after forever in Westford. He only lasted six months.
Oddly, Lowell itself is really rather nice now, although I have no idea about the schools. I grew up one town over, and back then Lowell was one major fire short of a ruin. But today it’s pretty vibrant.
Ruckus
@PsiFighter37:
Some people will buy anything.
Anything.
PT Barnum made a bit of money with that idea.
PsiFighter37
Also, too, Amity Shlaes has written a biography of Coolidge about how the Roaring 20s were actually totally awesome, and the whole laissez-faire thing actually was the shit.
I feel like I’ve stepped into an alternate universe here. No wonder physical bookstores are doing so poorly, if they are selling this revisionist dreck
BillinGlendaleCA
@PsiFighter37: How could one tell the difference between a Glenn Beck novel and Glenn Beck “non-fiction”?
Ultraviolet Thunder
@raven:
I use a wetvac record cleaning machine and find that many noisy records are salvageable. From thrift stores I’ll buy oddball stuff like klezmer, Balinese gamelan, African thumb piano music, operetta, etc. out of curiosity. I have a cheaper turntable with a disposable cartridge to evaluate them on in case they’ve been used as a Frisbee at the beach.
Ruckus
@BillinGlendaleCA:
The only difference is that with the non-fiction he tells you he isn’t lying. He’s lying of course but at least he tells you he’s not.
I think the exact words are “This is no shit!”
PsiFighter37
@BillinGlendaleCA: In these novels, an industrialist named Aaron Doyle is the bad guy. I’m a bit saddened he wasn’t clever enough to come up with an ethnic-sounding name that rhymed with Barack Obama that also happened to be a community organizer in a Midwestern city.
different-church-lady
Perhaps you had to be there for this to make any sense, but…
In 1971 Lowell won an “All-America City” award. All the local dairies (remember local dairies?) had “LOWELL: AN ALL AMERICA CITY” graphics on the sides of their milk cartons.
Towards the end of the 70s one of the local hippy papers (maybe it was something from a ULowell student publication) had a satire of one of those hand-drawn local chamber of commerce maps that lists all the local attractions and businesses. The title was “LOWELL: AN ALL AMERICAN CITY!” In the lower right corner there was an arrow pointing south, labeled: “BOSTON (near Lowell)”
That was Lowell in the 70s — perverse pride in denial of civic decline. It could have wound up as another Detroit, but then the Feds declared pretty much the entire downtown as a National Park, due to the mill heritage, and some money started coming in.
When I was growing up, Lowell was a place where they rolled up the sidewalks at 5PM. Today it’s a vibrant small city.
different-church-lady
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
OK, what do you mean by “use”? You mean you actually own one of those things? Didn’t they used to cost thousands of dollars? Jesus, I’d be jellie.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@different-church-lady:
OK, what do you mean by “use”? You mean you actually own one of those things? Didn’t they used to cost thousands of dollars? Jesus, I’d be jellie.
I’ve had my VPI record cleaning machine for 20+ years. It’s paid for itself by cleaning up $1 garage sale records to playable condition. There are now cheaper options that do the same thing: vacuum cleaning solution off of the record surface. basically you do this once to any used record and after that dust it off before every play. Wet cleaning really works. I’m listening to a thrift store Brubeck record now and it sounds fine.
different-church-lady
@efgoldman: OMG, that rings such a distant bell — across the street from a pool hall or something.
There was a head shop on Central Street I used to go record shopping in, even though I was too young to know what a head shop was. Just down the street from WCAP. When I was even younger there was a duck-pin bowling alley on Market Street built into an old theater. I remember vividly we were driving home from the the traditional Friday evening bowling and it was the first time I heard “Killer Queen” on the radio. Even a 10 year old could figure out something unique was going on with that.
Origuy
SFO’s Twitterer is saying that two runways will be open soon. https://twitter.com/flySFO
gbear
I just listened to the interview with the FAA team that are heading from DC to SF to study the crash. The woman speaking was talking about all the players that needed to be in place when they get to the accident site so the investigation could ‘hit the ground running’. I bet she wishes she could take that one back…
trollhattan
@Bob In Portland:
SFO has announced they’re reopening two (of four) runways today.
I’m amazed the Asiana plane is as intact as it is. It dragged the tail section into the riprap bank from the water–they were feet away from a much worse outcome.
A friend flies the 777 so I hope to quiz her on what might have occurred.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@efgoldman:
It’s a self-supporting hobby. I buy ’50s-’60s American audio gear locally, rehab it and sell it to collectors in Southeast Asia. I’m a net exporter of audio electronics to Japan, Korea and China if you can believe that.
Used to do a lot of that but I’ve been traveling constantly for work for the last year so selling/buying less.
different-church-lady
@efgoldman: Hipsters: Goorin Brothers are popping up like weeds everywhere now.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@efgoldman:
I grew up with an AR XA ttbl. Those are in demand in any condition, so don’t toss it before you offer it to a local phono geek.
The most recent new receiver I bought, for my mom this year, has a phono input! They disappeared and they’re back. I see decent turntables and new records for sale at Urban Outfitters, of all places.
JGabriel
I just discovered a new insult on a forum, from a user who apparently doesn’t know English very well*:
This is my new favorite insult of all time.
(*No link, cuz I don’t wanna make it personal or embarrass the commenter.)
Ruckus
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
What’s a decent turntable going for these days? I have a BIC 960 that needs to be rebuilt so I can record my records and then don’t have to lug them around anymore.
Digitize. Not record. Idiot.
trollhattan
@JGabriel:
Proposed retort: you, sir, are no better than half-a-shitstorm. Good day!
Litlebritdifrnt
We are having vegetarian burritos for dinner tonight. I snuck in soy protein chilli for the filling a while back and not only did DH like it but he prefers it to ground beef now. I also did the same for lasagna which had the same result. The only thing that I use ground beef for now is cottage pie and that is because I haven’t figured out how to use the soy alternative effectively but give me time. I will turn this meat loving American vegetarian if it is the last thing I do.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Ruckus:
Music Hall & Audio Technica make nice ones for $250 or less with cartridge. Nowadays all consumer ‘tables have built in preamps (line output) and many have USB output. Avoid Stanton, Crosley, Jensen and Numark. The basic audio brands’ tables are all pretty good.
gbear
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I’ve got a collection of about 2,500 LPs and I may be approaching that with my CD collection now too. I’m not even remotely into digital music – I don’t even have a way to play it other than my desktop computer (and I’m not going to feel embarrassed about being behind the curve. The only thing I’d like that I don’t have yet is GPS in my car).
It’s still a hobby of mine to go to record shopping but I realized yesterday there are records I would buy if I was 10 years younger, but I’m getting too old to add records to the collection unless I REALLY want them. My sisters and nephews aren’t going to know or give a shit about 9/10 of the stuff I own, so it’s becoming time to see it as retirement income. If I every have to move again, I may rent a storage room and move the collection there beforehand and then gradually move it into a new place. I would do this to save my friends and family the hassle of having to help me move it again. It became quite a point of discussion when I moved into my present house…
Ultraviolet Thunder
@gbear:
I would do this to save my friends and family the hassle of having to help me move it again. It became quite a point of discussion when I moved into my present house…
I’ll bet that’s an understatement. On a par with a diplomatic “full and frank exchange of views”. Nobody wants to help you move 2,500 records. That’s like, half a ton.
gbear
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Do you have a nice Harmon-Kardon 930 receiver that you could sell me? I bought one in the early 70’s and I haven’t had a receiver I liked better since then.
? Martin
Sounds like 10 people critically injured in the crash. No reports of fatalities.
gogol's wife
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
I don’t know if Steeplejack is around, but one of the highlights of Antoine and Colette, a Truffaut short that was on TCM last night, was watching the hero with his little turntable. Damn, it is so much more fun to play an LP than a CD (and don’t get me started on MP3s or whatever they are). You could see the toner arm moving toward the middle of the record and know just how much was left, etc. It was so much more satisfying.
Angela
I’m looking at buying Mr. Angela a Big Green Egg. There are the two of us at home and three college age sons who often stop by for a meal. Any ideas on size and necessary accessories to start?
trollhattan
@gbear:
Waidaminute–if you have CDs you’re into digital music already.
Just sayin’.
I didn’t ditch my el pees but I definitely slowed down my acquisition. The fam doesn’t let me play them when they’re present, either. [grumble]
gbear
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I had enough people helping me move that nobody really got mad about it. When I moved in, the collection filled 27 boxes that weighed about 55 pounds each. The 1930’s solid wood bedroom set was more of a hassle than the records.
trollhattan: I guess I should have said downloaded music instead of digital. I still like having the object.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@gbear:
I have two but they’re both parts units. Those were very nice but unreliable. I’m decades out of the loop with new audio bear, but audiophiles I know are buying Denon receivers for bedrooms, cottages, kids’ systems, etc. I use Denon cartridges and trust the company.
Violet
@Litlebritdifrnt: Does he know you’re adding the soy? Or are you being sneaky?
Did you watch the Lions tour? Just finished watching the last match.
Anne Laurie
@gbear:
Spousal Unit & I have somewhere between 7k-10k books, plus 40-year runs of sf pulps, approaching 1500 manga, and a couple dozen cartons of craft magazines. We’ve been in this house for twenty years, and hope to leave it feet-first…
different-church-lady
@Ultraviolet Thunder: OK, you really seem to know your stuff. So, what are the odds I can fix my Vector Research direct drive linear tracker from the early 80s? I think the microswitch that moves the tone arm across is wonky — instead of sliding over it just pivots until it can’t go no more and then starts to skip.
I really want to keep this thing, because everyone who hears it thinks it sounds sweet, and I tend to agree.
trollhattan
@Angela:
Have the medium, which maxes out at half a turkey–if you want more capacity then go for the large. I find this size fine for our family of three, and it takes less fuel and heats faster than the large.
Must have either the nest stand or a stand-table combo, because bending over to cook sucks. I light mine with an electric starter. Grill brush, pizza stone…maybe rib racks, I’d get accessories as you find the need rather than all at once. Definitely a remote thermometer, because the less you open the lid the better. It’s the grill for people who DON’T futz and putter while grilling.
PeakVT
Derp as economic metaphor. No, really.
gogol's wife
@efgoldman:
I bet my ex-husband bought a lot of it.
different-church-lady
@gbear:
Don’t be automatically cynical — the exotic mysteries of the record collections of those older than myself were a big part of the joy of my childhood. Out of all of them there’s bound to be one who would be fascinated by all those big pictures and gatefold sleeves and time-warpy stuff.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@different-church-lady:
OK, you really seem to know your stuff. So, what are the odds I can fix my Vector Research direct drive linear tracker from the early 80s? I think the microswitch that moves the tone arm across is wonky — instead of sliding over it just pivots until it can’t go no more and then starts to skip.
Might just need lubrication. In any case it’s a job for a specialist and I’m not that guy. Sorry! It was probably made under contract by Pioneer or Technics so if you can find a visual match to a different brand of the same ‘table The Google should tell you who’s working on them.
I have only one linear tracker left, a B&O that I modded with a wireless remote control. Even I’m intimidated by those things.
RSA
Brad De Long links to the email exchanges that got Jerry Pournelle, science fiction writer and Byte columnist, kicked off ARPANet. I thought it was funny, though it’s probably of interest mainly to people who were online back in the 1980s. (I was, and I’m friends with one of the people quoted in the email messages.)
different-church-lady
@gogol’s wife: What’s really missing today is the art of the side break — the satisfying mini-intermission. You had to sequence things so that there was a ramp up to the end of side one that would last through the 30 seconds of silence, and then a new arc would begin on side two.
George Martin’s theory was to put the four best songs at the beginning and end of each side — “nail down the four corners” is I think how he put it.
Comrade Mary
@Litlebritdifrnt: I’m dying to try tempeh in a bunch of dishes. Ever cooked with that?
Ultraviolet Thunder
@efgoldman:
That’s a collecting horror story all right. I like records, and especially DG classical, but I can’t blame younger people for keeping their lofi recordings all in their pocket and on their laptop. What they lose in quality they’ll gain in musculoskeletal health.
trollhattan
@gbear:
I was just chain-pullin’. I rip my ceedees but indeed buy ceedees, in part to have “the thing” and in part because itunes inevitably corrupts a few dozen song files/year that I have to re-rip. Only apple thing I own is a sack of ipods and it’s only because they won.
Speaking of companies I don’t respect, Sony codeveloped the rather brilliant SACD and the format is basically pining for the fjords. My contention is either develop hardware or content, but not both because one will always hamstring the other.
eemom
In case anyone was wondering what became of the July 4 million gun nut march.
Hilarious, except for the fact that these sick fucks are still winning.
Violet
@Comrade Mary: I grew up eating tempeh. You can treat it as a meat–like slice it, put it in pasta, sandwich, whatever. It’s yummy.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Violet:
I was sneaky to begin with and snuck in the soy when we were having burritos. After the meal and I asked him how it was and he said “great” I told him about the soy, he actually said “could you do that with lasagna too” and I said yes (I used the spaghetti soy for that one as opposed to the chilli). He is still on his health kick after the heart attack so any time I can replace red meat with soy he is happy. I do not think I will ever stop him eating his filet steaks every couple of weeks though.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@different-church-lady:
What’s really missing today is the art of the side break — the satisfying mini-intermission. You had to sequence things so that there was a ramp up to the end of side one that would last through the 30 seconds of silence, and then a new arc would begin on side two.
Albums are really a thing of the past. In a decade we’ll be effectively back to the 45 single era where songs were sold individually. The album as a collection no longer has relevance for most popular music.
Violet
@Litlebritdifrnt: I can’t eat soy protein–I’ve got a thyroid condition. I eat edamame and fermented soy stuff (tempeh, miso, etc.) but none of the more modern varieties of soy like soy milk or soy protein. Glad it’s working for you guys.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@trollhattan:
Speaking of companies I don’t respect, Sony codeveloped the rather brilliant SACD and the format is basically pining for the fjords. My contention is either develop hardware or content, but not both because one will always hamstring the other.
Sony will never forget Betamax. Inferior content built up a lead and their superior hardware died. That’s why they worked so hard to promote Blu Ray and bury Toshiba’s HDDVD.
trollhattan
@? Martin:
Am hearing two fatalities and SF general is planning on a second wave of patients–they have ten (or twelve?) critical patients at present. They’re the regional trauma center.
NickT
@RSA:
There’s been some speculation that Pournelle is one of the twelve rabid weasels referred to in this post:
http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/dear-twelve-rabid-weasels-of-sfwa-please-shut-the-fuck-up/
Angela
@trollhattan: Thanks! I was trying to decide between a large and a medium. And the accessories are a bit overwhelming, so buying as you need makes sense.
gbear
A turntable question for Ultraviolet Thunder: I’ve gor a B&O RX-2 turntable with a Soundsmith MMC-3 cartridge that’s about 10 years old. Very few plays on this cartridge. I want to sell it but I’m having trouble finding a buyer. Is it worth anything? Any recommendations for selling it beyond Craigslist (I really don’t want to have to ship it, although I still have the original packaging).
Aaron Evan Baker
My sympathies to everybody in that San Francisco crash. Sadly, two deaths reported.
I wanted to take the opportunity afforded by this thread to thank Sarah Proud & Tall for her kinds words about my poem, “Drunkenness.”
Here is another, much more formal, effort, “Sunt Aliquid Manes”:
http://journalformalpoetry.com/_archive/_pdfFiles/Spring%2013.pdf
As is ever the case, I appreciate all comment–even hostile comment.
gbear
@different-church-lady:
Which is why it always took me five hours to make a 90 minute mixed tape for anybody.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@gbear:
Yes. I’ve has 2 RX-2s. They typically sell for around 2 bills with a working cart. Add $100+ for a good Soundsmith cart maybe?
EBay is the place to sell, but you’d have to ship. B&O tables aren’t too bad to pack because they’re light. Have to fasten the suspension locking screws, remove the platter and pad the arm with foam so it doesn’t flail around. Then it’s just plastic wrap, bubble wrap, box, peanuts and an outer box. maybe an hour’s work.
ETA: depending on where you live, you could just put up a CL ad with a throwaway email address and hang for your price. Would take a while but someone will find you.
gbear
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
Which is why us oldsters listen to old records. :)
different-church-lady
@gbear: five hours? A good mix tape should take days, if not weeks.
Corner Stone
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I’m having trouble getting a really close shave. Any suggestions?
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Corner Stone:
I just pound them through with a tack hammer and bite them off on the inside.
PurpleGirl
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I’ve been a Radio Shack recently. I also remember when you could get components of all sorts and kits to build things like TV sets and radios, etc. How it’s changed…
Ultraviolet Thunder
@PurpleGirl:
People stopped making and repairing things and Radio Shack sold remote controlled cars, cell phones and digital cameras instead. It’s a wonder than even one of the several strong national electronics chains still exists. We’re bringing back hobby electronics a little bit. I’m helping by creating projects from Radio Shack parts for publication. I think this kind of thing is very important, and it would be a real loss if DIY went away in favor of consumer purchase/disposal.
burnspbesq
@Corner Stone:
The Art of Shaving
Steeplejack
@RSA:
I had forgotten what an insufferable dick Jerry Pournelle was, but I did read his column in Byte every month back in the ’80s.
That piece you linked to had a link to a pretty good parody of a typical Pournelle column.
I said Pournelle “was” insufferable. I looked him up on Wikipedia and see that he is still alive, apparently semi-retired at age 79. He severed his ties with Byte in 2006—way after anyone I know stopped reading him—and apparently continues his column on his Web site.
Next thing you know someone will bring up Robert X. Cringely!
Roxy
FYI, the referee was beheaded by family and friends of a player the referee had stabbed to death.
Steeplejack
@gogol’s wife:
Noted. I haven’t watched any of them yet, but they’re safely tucked away on the DVR.
different-church-lady
@Ultraviolet Thunder: What’s really amazing is that you can walk into a Radio Shack today and still get a hefty selection of things like zener diodes, rectifiers, and fuses. Yeah, they don’t take up as much floor space as they used to, but that’s because they got much much better at packing all that stuff into more efficient displays behind the smart phones and GPS units.
burnspbesq
@gbear:
930s are hard to find. There are usually a couple of 730s on eBay at any given time. I had a 730 in law school and it wuz awesome.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@different-church-lady:
Radio Shack has far more component stuff available online only these days. It can be tough to make your way through the search functions but they will ship fast and cheap. I like RS because you’re never farther than a few miles from one when you need an adapter, a charger, a battery, etc. They’re everywhere.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@burnspbesq:
Those H-K Twin Power receivers were packed a little too tight for thermal management and long term reliability.
The only working H-K I have here now is a TA-260 tube receiver. No idea what I’m going to do with that. Time was I’d have eBayed it immediately but I’m never home to ship stuff these days.
red dog
@liberal: Consider moving to New Hampshire just a short 15 minute drive north. Much cheaper.
Steeplejack
@trollhattan:
Amen. Some years ago I bought the Animals’ Retrospective in SACD, and it was awesome. I was all set to go on an SACD rampage, but they were scarce and hard to find, and eventually I gave up.
By the way, for anyone who likes the Animals—and remembers that they did anything other than “House of the Rising Sun”—Retrospective is an incredibly good one-stop collection. Fairly complete and very well mastered. Eric Burdon had one of the three great white bluesy/shouty voices of the ’60s, along with Mitch Ryder and a player to be named later.
lojasmo
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Yuck. Ptooie. Hog food, at best (and no hog I would eat)
Howard Beale IV
@burnspbesq: Now what if wants to clean up the sound? Audacity’s plugins for vinyl restoration isn’t all that great.
Been on HDtracks.com yet?
trollhattan
@Steeplejack:
Rick Perry’s three favorite singers ;-)
burnspbesq
SACD is pretty much limited to independent, specialist classical labels like Channel Classics, Pentatone, and BIS. DSD is the flavor of the month in the high-end digital-to-analog converter world, but there are very few DSD downloads available to buy.
Early Playstations that could play SACDs can also be used to rip them, and they sell for a hefty premium on eBay and specialist audio forums.
It’s easier to just get a high-res PCM download from someplace like HDTracks or Qobuz.
Steeplejack
@trollhattan:
God, he didn’t even play it off that well.
Now you’ve got me questioning my mental capacities.
burnspbesq
@Howard Beale IV:
If you’re really serious about pro-quality cleanup, IZotope Rx2 is the way to go, but it’s $349.
I’m helping to keep HDTracks afloat. Have been for at least two years.
Howard Beale IV
@Steeplejack: I remember the uproar after SACD was released and the giant pissing matches at AES conventions between the pro and anti-SACD club. To me it seems like from a physical media and reccording technology standpoint SACD/DSD has survived (And you can even play SACD’s on first and second generation PS3’s if you can find ’em) , but places like HDtracks are now offering an alternative for those of who who are audio snobs who don’t think the Stereophile gang is a few fries short of a Happy Meal and has more money than brains.
Aaron Evan Baker
Wondered why Jerry Pournelle was as hated as he is; have a better inkling now.
Howard Beale IV
@burnspbesq: I use Audition and it’s fscking impressive, going back to its origins as CoolEdit 2000-at the time it’s clean-up plugins were outstanding-and with Audition supporting FLAC and 12/192 to me it’s a no-brainer.
Howard Beale IV
@Ultraviolet Thunder: If I need something that RS has in stock I go there, otherwise it’s DigiKey all the way..
tybee
@Steeplejack:
cringely! the good old days.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@efgoldman:
Sony and a few other companies made ElCasette decks. It was supposed to ease RTR users into a more manageable format. Technically it was excellent, but metal tape and Dolby C brought Cassette up to a respectable fidelity and ElCasette died.
There was also a cassette based digital recording medium I forget the name of. And I have a single MiniDisk here on my desk. History is littered with failed formats.
Howard Beale IV
@efgoldman: Ah, yes Lafayette Radio. There was also Olson Electronics in my neck of the woods.
Yatsuno
@red dog: Stretch it out a bit further and you’re in single-payer Vermont. When I was looking at a job in Andover I examined that as a commute possibility. It would be exciting to be at the place where it all starts.
Howard Beale IV
@Ultraviolet Thunder: DCC: Digital Compact Cassette from Philips, which Radio Shack bought into and actually built a plant to build the decks in Texas. DCC used Philips’s own PASC lossy compression codec-RS tried to pimp it but when the RIAA sued Sony over DAT and Sony’s introduction of the MiniDisc that put the knife into DCC once and for all, as both Sony/Philips worked on SCMS in order to placate the RIAA and still that corporate welfare Home Recordings Right Act got passed (a tax on blank media).
And the last MiniDisc hardware rolled off the assembly line a few years ago.
And vinyl still lives.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@efgoldman:
I have Lafayette and Radio Shack catalogs from the ’60s and ’70s that I use for reference. They’re an inch thick. They had an incredible assortment of stuff available.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Howard Beale IV:
You know more about that era than I do. I wondered where DCC went. Radio Shack was the only place I ever saw it.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@efgoldman:
DAT was always a pro format. I was thinking of DCC which was a consumer format based on the audio Compact Cassette tech. H. Beale #4 explained it succinctly in post 182.
Howard Beale IV
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I had the first Sony DAT deck DTC-700 back in 1991, and I bought the “portable” (more like a brick) TCD-D# that I used when I traveled. I still have TCD-D3, but now my entire FLAC-ripped CD collection fits on a single 128 GB SDXC card.
Back in the early days of third generation compiuters, there was an old saying: ‘Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon loaded with magnetic tapes.’ Today’s version is: ‘Never underestimate the bandwidth of an Antonov An-225 filled with 64 GB MicroSDXC cards.”
trollhattan
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
I used to pore through those things–aspirations a kid who has the money for model airplanes can only dream of.
The dad built Heathkit stuff–mostly audio gear. They even had color gawddamn television kits, which cost many hundreds of dollars and contained a ginormous array of parts. Don’t you dare make even one bad solder joint.
gbear
@Steeplejack: That is a really good Animals collection. The thing I like best about it is that some Animals anthologies used an alternate version of We Gotta Get Out Of This Place that had a different vocal take than the one from the original hit single. This Anthology has all of the songs just as I remembered them. Some of the psychedelic stuff at the end is horribly dated, but it really is a great collection of the hits.
Ultraviolet Thunder
It’s been a pleasure chatting with you all again. Work travel keeps me merely lurking most of the time these days. Good to be ‘back’ here!
Happy weekend, all. My wife will be home in a minute and I need to make a mess somewhere so she won’t think I’ve spent the day in front of the keyboard.
Cheers!
Howard Beale IV
@trollhattan: Boy does that bring back memories when Color TV grabbed a toehold-the damm chassis were a spaghetti-nesting of wires connecting vacuum tubes, resistors, capacitors, transformers, et al.
Just today when I strolling the isles of Best Buy a employee was pushing the carcasses of electronics being recycled: Old TV’s and CRT monitors.
My oh my have we come a long way.
Howard Beale IV
@trollhattan:
Back in the day they were also referred to derisively as ‘Grief-Kit’ for that very reason.
Cacti
I love grocery shopping for meat after the 4th of July. Buy 1 rack of baby back ribs, get 2 free + $3.00 manager’s special on 5 lbs whole chickens.
trollhattan
@gbear:
Hazy memories but there were a boatload of legal hassles regarding the different labels the Animals recorded for early and later (e.g., “House of the Rising Sun” vs “Sky Pilot” eras). IIRC Eric Burdon can’t even tour with a band called The Animals in the UK. Stupid, stupid chit.
BTW, it was decades between my hearing Burdon and discovering Nina Simone. We’d never have the former w/o the latter.
Howard Beale IV
@efgoldman: The first generation DVR’s were usually tricked out with 20-80 GB drives that spun at 5400 RPM and had less-than-rigorous error-checking (See; Hitachi CinemaStar, et al.)
With 320 kbps MP3, a 20 GB drive could hold about 2,000+ songs.
Now that 4TB drives are starting to get mass-produced, the idea that any lossy compresssion is necessary should be met with a giant DIAF (and don’t get me started on the Loudness War.)
Howard Beale IV
@trollhattan: SACD seems to have survived pretty well, but then again, that’s probably ‘cuz Sony sucked up BMG and was able to distribute RCA’s back catalog-especially the RCA Red Seal recordings made in the mid-late 1950’s-excellent performances, coupled with excellent recording and engineering-what’s not to like?
Howard Beale IV
@trollhattan: I guess I got corrupted at a very early age-To me, ‘House of The Rising Sun’ equates to the one-hit-wonder Frijid Pink, wich was played in heavy rotation by the influential Detroit/Windsor radio axis in 1969.
trollhattan
@Howard Beale IV:
I’m happy if it remains viable, given I have the player, but I no longer see “high definition audio” sections in music stores…oh, who am I kidding, what music stores?
Is DVD-A still alive?
Howard Beale IV
@trollhattan: DVD-A is on life-support-there’s rumors afoot about a BluRay-HiDef audio format, but nothing concrete at this time-and to me’it’s overkill. HDtracks.com has many hi-res tracks in 24/44.1, 24/96 and 12/192 formats.
Very Tasty, but that comes at a price.
My main component audio player is an old Oppo DVD player that does SACD/DVD-A connected with HDMI into a Yamaha RX-A1000, which supports DLNA and FLAC, and can be controlled via a web browser-and it’s got a mighty fine phono section (MM only-if I need MC, I got a Denon step-up transformer if need be.)
Steeplejack
@gbear:
Was going to go into a semi-inside-baseball rant, but trollhattan has the gist of it: label/rights problems, mostly having to do with producer/empresario Mickie Most, who seems to have been a bit of a dick, but not at the Allen Klein/ABKCO level. [Shudder]
Sixties music is where I got my start, and I don’t claim that all of it is the greatest music ever, but I do like to have good, faithful recordings of the old stuff, just as I like to have good, faithful recordings of Charlie Parker’s jazz stuff from the ’40s, etc. Retrospective is a great collection by that standard. Yes, the psychedelic stuff at the end is a little weird, but at least it’s on there for historical reference. And the CD does include “Spill the Wine,” which wasn’t even really an Animals song.
For a lot of second-tier ’60s groups, a well mastered, fairly complete anthology is about the best you can hope for—short of dropping big coin for one of those eight-CD “everything but the kitchen sink” comprehensive sets. For almost all groups I do not need or want that.
(Okay, so I did go into a semi-inside-baseball rant.)
trollhattan
@Howard Beale IV:
Ooh, ooh, the Oppos look like a LOT of player for the money. The real deal, then?
Have a good Sony SACD player (early model, Japan-made) but would like a newer more capable one at some point. I realize I want something that works magic into Redbook, given that’s the vast bulk of my music collection.
Howard Beale IV
@Steeplejack: Makes me wonder whether my Mobile Fidelity half-speed master of King Crimsons’s ‘In The Court of the Crimson King’ is the real deal….
(and yes, I still have my copy of MSFL’s Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side Of the Moon’…..)
trollhattan
@Steeplejack:
Spill the Wine is nothing but fun–great entre into the brief War period.
I sadly missed it, but Eric Burdon did a solo gig at a small club here fairly recently. Evidently he mixed music and stories and a good time was had by all.
Howard Beale IV
@trollhattan: If you can lay your hands on a DVD-980 and run it HDMI, you’re all set. I overpaid for mine, but I already have a PS3 serving as my BluRay player-if you can get that or a used Oppo BDP-93 or the last generation BDP-95 (my brother had an Oppo modded with tube premaps!) yer in the game as it supports DLNA too.
Some of the newer Oppo’s reclock internally like the Benchmark DAC-1 does, which helps immensely.
trollhattan
@Howard Beale IV:
Eeeeexxxcellent! [touches fingertips together] Thanks for the input.
trollhattan
Dinner time. A parting treat for the music fans.
http://www.kylerockinrowland.com/
Just listen to this kid and try not to smile. He’s got it.
Howard Beale IV
@trollhattan: Yer welcome. And if you haven’t visited HDtracks.com, get the Audiogon Sampler, and be prepared to have your ears opened.
Steeplejack
@Howard Beale IV:
Last October I gritted my teeth and splurged on an Oppo BDP-103. I don’t think I have played a Blu-ray on it yet, but it is a fantastic CD player! Do not regret the money spent.
Howard Beale IV
@Steeplejack: You running analog or digital?
Howard Beale IV
Flight Path of Asiana Airlines Flight 214
RSA
@NickT: I read that post but didn’t make the connection to Pournelle, but it wouldn’t be surprising. I thought it was about this thing, as described on Scalzi’s blog. (I don’t follow SF that much these days, though.)
@Steeplejack:
Me, too. That parody was spot on. And with respect to SF, I fell off the Niven and Pournelle bandwagon when I came across… well, pretty much anything either one wrote after 1975 or so.
Steeplejack
@Howard Beale IV:
Analog, and minimal analog at that: I’ve got a Sherwood RX-4503 receiver right now. Will upgrade at some point, but I got the Oppo for the long haul. And I have been able to tell a big difference even with my current setup.
gbear
@Howard Beale IV: I have that album. :) It didn’t displace the original for me though.
All the posts about The Animals has gotten me interested in what other original albums or compilations exist. I’m going to spend a little time over at Amazon this evening…
Steeplejack
@gbear:
I have found anthologies that compare to the Animals one in quality (not SACD, though) by the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Zombies and the (Young) Rascals. Still looking for a better anthology by Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, although the one I have—with mono mixes of the hits—is kick-ass.
The four-CD Nuggets set is an excellent compilation of one-hit wonders. That’s a good gateway drug to a bunch of other good anthologies (linked on Amazon).
. . . WTF?! Amazon is showing it as out of print? That’s an outrage. Although it looks like you can buy the CDs individually.
Howard Beale IV
@Steeplejack: If you still have any vinyl look at the Yamaha Aventage Receivers. I had a Sony 9000ES pre-amp/amp pair back in the early 2000’s but both failed in the 5 year warranty period-I picked up a Yamaha RX-V1 and it was bulletproof and built like a tank. I replaced that with an Yamaha RX-A1000 when a regional AV store went out of business (Ultimate Electronics) – paid $800 for it and haven’t regretted it at all. I poked a hole in my living room so I could run the second zone into my office and I can control it via a web browser.
I run Klipsch KLF-30s for my main channels, a KSC-6 for my center channel, and my rears are homemade boxes I built 30 years ago using Electro-Voice/Bag End speakers in a 3rd order Butterworth alignment, 3 db down at the crossover.
If you’re not into AV, if you see a Sony VFET, NAD 7600 or a Nakamichi TA-series with Statis-snap ’em up before they get to Audiogon and get bid to insane pricing.
eemom
@Steeplejack:
I am completely out of my depth wrt the technical and other aspects of this discussion, but wanted to chime in about how effing awesome The Animals, and Eric Burdon in particular, are — just from the simple perspective of listening to the music.
IOW, I appreciate.
gbear
@Steeplejack: I’ve got a few of those Rhino Nuggets box sets* and they’re all a lot of fun. I’m kind of embarrassed that I never owned the Lenny Kaye assembled original album, but it was recently re-issued with the original artwork so now I finally have a two-record vinyl version in my collection.
*edit: The original one, the British bands one and the San Francisco and L.A. band ones.
Howard Beale IV
@eemom: The definitive Eric Burdon songs to me was Monterrey, followed by Sly Pilot and Spill the Wine (and later, House of The Rising Sun)
Howard Beale IV
@gbear: At one point in my life I had fire-singed 10″ version of ‘Songs By Tom Lehrer’. Now if THAT isn’t a treasure, I don’t know what is.
nineone
@Origuy: Holy Hand Grenade, I need a smoke after that! Yowza!
NickT
@nineone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpjPxpGL7Sk
Just in case you felt like a second cigarette.
Steeplejack
@eemom:
Two of my favorites: “Don’t Bring Me Down” and “Bring It on Home to Me.”
gbear
@Steeplejack: Don’t Bring Me Down is my favorite Animals track too. Absolutely everything about that record just ignites. We Gotta Get Out Of This Place ties with House Of The Rising Sun for second.
Steeplejack
@Howard Beale IV:
Thanks for the “hi-fi” tips. I enjoy reading the comments from all the power users here.
I used to have close to a thousand LPs and a high-end audio setup, including a DAT deck, but I lost everything about 10 years ago in a personal catastrophe. Listened to music just on the computer for a long time, then I put together a low-end but pretty good setup a few years ago. The Oppo player was the first big splurge since then, and at some point I would perhaps like to upgrade the other components. But my needs are modest: my listening space is small, and I listen a lot on headphones anyway. The Sherwood with bookshelf speakers and Polk subwoofer is fine for now. But I tagged your notes for future reference.
Steeplejack
@eemom, @gbear:
Damn, had to really hunt for this one (why don’t I bookmark them when I find them first time?): TV performance of “Shake,” not lip-sync’ed. Killer organ from Alan Price.
eemom
@Howard Beale IV: @Steeplejack: @gbear:
All of it comes down to Burdon’s voice, how uniquely and intensely expressive it was. For some examples, I can just hear:
“I met my first love at thirteen, she was brown, and I was pretty green”
“Watch my daddy in bed a-dyin…..watched his hair been turnin’ grey, yeah…He’s been workin’ and slavin’ his life away”
And on another note entirely, of course,
“I dreamed I was in a Hollywood movie…”
Howard Beale IV
@Steeplejack: I can appreciate that. LIke you most of my listening has been through headphones as of late but I still have my gear and right now it’s good enough. My goto cans for serious listening are Shure SE-425’s or my trusty 25 year-old MDR-V6’s (at one point I had Stax Electrostatics, but they were rather unwieldy.)
Right mow most of my listening is via my phone using AAC 192k encoding when I’m mobile; at home I use my WiFi with my FLAC library and get uncompressed sound to my cellphone. If you have a Samsung Galaxy 3, Galaxy Note or Galaxy 4 they support the CSR Apt-X codec, which makes Bluetooth streaming almost 100% transparent with an Apt-X-compatible receiver (the Samsung HS3000 is the best bang-for-the-buck because you can use your own cans, followed by the Creative Labs WP-530.)
Steeplejack
@eemom:
He had an incredibly expressive voice. It wasn’t just the bluesy/shouty thing, although he had that in abundance.
Been playing that “Shake” video in the background, and it cracks me up how the camera is infallibly not looking at what is important at any given moment. Half surprised they managed to focus on Burdon for the singing.
Steeplejack
@eemom:
“Watch my daddy in bed a-dyin’ . . .”
Steeplejack
@Howard Beale IV:
I might be calling on your expertise (and others’). I was having a problem with my cell phone (Droid Incredible), which turned out to be a faulty microSD card. I upgraded to a 32GB card, and I have been feeling the urge to clean up my library of MP3 and other audio files and get everything that I want onto the phone, which is my audio device for when I’m out and about. Would like to rip CDs down to some format better than MP3, but I don’t know whether it should be FLAC or something else. And I need to get into Audacity or some other program to clean up the noise and sound levels on the MP3s I have collected or bought from various sources.
eemom
@Steeplejack:
wow. And so young and clean-shaven and suited as they were at that early time.
The wiki piece doesn’t say anything about his actual bio. I assume he wasn’t heir to a knighthood, though who knows….
Redshirt
@liberal: Unless you are looking for the big city experience, look to the West and/or North of Lowell. Anything East and/or South will get progressively more expensive.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
Meant AAC rather than FLAC for the phone.
Steeplejack
@eemom:
I think they were all working-class dudes from Newcastle.
Trivia: the bass player, Chas Chandler, went on to manage and produce Jimi Hendrix!
Howard Beale IV
@Steeplejack: FLAC encoding will reduce the size of a typical PCM/WAV file by about 50%; with Windows Media 10 Losless and Apple’s ALAC (losless codec) pretty similar. On a Droid, FLAC support is near ubiqutous in the Andriod Market (I use UPNP play as it supports both local media and DLNA sources.)
Start by ripping your CD’s to FLAC. If you want an MP3, transcode the FLAC to 320 kbps CBR to keep losses at a minumum-better still, use AAC as its much more modern and sounds better than MP3’s at the same bitrate.
Transcoding existing MP3’s is a dicey proposition-what I usually do is transcode those to WAV and then to FLAC, with the understandign that my original source isn’t necessarily what it could be (esp. Amazon’s MP3 at 256 kbps CBR-grrr….)
If you absolutely need the maximum number of songs with an ‘acceptable’ lossiness, use AAC 96 kbps HE.
This is what I use for mass ripping/transcoding. When I deal with vinyl, i use Audacity at 24 bit / 192 kHz sampling to record, then I use Audition to clean it up.
Steeplejack
@Howard Beale IV:
Thanks! This answers a lot of questions and gives me a great start.