From: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org (alloy-digest) To: alloy-digest@smoe.org Subject: alloy-digest V3 #271 Reply-To: alloy@smoe.org Sender: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "alloy-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. alloy-digest Monday, October 12 1998 Volume 03 : Number 271 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Alloy: 80s bands & music camp [RThurF@aol.com] Alloy: What a buzz! [Paul Baily ] Re: Alloy: 80s bands & music camp [IT Admin - Govt Office North West ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1998 02:28:43 EDT From: RThurF@aol.com Subject: Re: Alloy: 80s bands & music camp In a message dated 10/10/98 6:36:52 PM Eastern Daylight Time, elaine@qnet.com writes: << do you watch ER on Thursdays? >> No, I've never seen it! I think I'm the only one on the face of the earth who hasn't. Robin T ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1998 21:46:09 +1000 From: Paul Baily Subject: Alloy: What a buzz! Hi y'all, A couple of you made the mistake of asking how my talk went today, thankfully it went well. In fact it was a real buzz! As you guessed I demoed Beatnik in all it's glory using the headspace site. It was well received: no-one had seen or heard of it before, but it was so encouraging to see that when I asked how many had heard of Thomas Dolby a significant number raised their hands, and knowingly nodded when I ran through a quick list of our intrepid hero's musical achievements. The Hyperactive! page of the walkthrough set a few feet tapping, and the Groovetub brought some appreciative oohs and ahhs, especially when I had a good four or five instrument layers grooving along, then moused on over to the guitar and started strumming. Geez it's nice to be able to demo a good product! I used the Lucasfilm example to good effect too - have a read in the overview section if you've not yet done so, it makes very good sense. I think it clicked to people then that sound - especially professional quality sound such as that provided by Beatnik - can make a real difference to websites. That, and when I showed the Headspace page first muted, then sonified, listening to the orchestra tune up and mousing over various buttons. I even had an amp and some good speakers waiting in the boot of the car just in case the demo equipment wasn't up to the challenge. If you're going to demo something you need to do it justice! What I found a real spinout though was that all these people acted like they knew me and yet I'd never met them before (gosh - I've never been a celeb before! ;-) - so friendly and... respectful, yes that's it, respectful. The talk lasted about an hour and a quarter, with a good 20 mins or so after that filled with Q&A on Beatnik, as well as Macworld. Thankfully, I was somehow able to give convincing answers to them so the cover story that I might know what I'm talking about still holds! A couple of comments stand out in my mind, "it's good to see that you obviously write the articles since you sound just like you do in the column - it's good to hear it's not faked" (believe it or not I took this as flattering that someone would read Help Folder enough to know my style of talking), and get this, one person seriously asked "since it sounds like you've been pretty much everywhere in the industry, why don't you write a book?" Um, how do I say this, no. :-) Sorry, just had to tell someone! Anyway, my thanks to Thomas and Headspace for letting me use Beatnik as material, and for keeping it and the headspace site performing absolutely perfectly during the demo. Tonight there are a few more people in Australia that know of your achievements, and are hopefully wandering over to www.headspace.com right now to take a closer look. My thanks also to you guys for the moral support, believe me, it did make a difference! cheeyahs, Paul. [Who's now a tad drained from the excitement (terror?), and still amazed/chuffed that some people out there actually read what I write in the mag!] This message powered by "Airwaves" off The Golden Age of Wireless/Thomas Dolby. ________________________________________________________________________ Paul Baily paulb@thehub.com.au JustSomeGuy Brisbane, Australia I itch all over, let me sleep ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1998 14:17:38 +0100 (BST) From: IT Admin - Govt Office North West Subject: Re: Alloy: 80s bands & music camp At 02:28 11/10/98 EDT, you wrote: > >In a message dated 10/10/98 6:36:52 PM Eastern Daylight Time, elaine@qnet.com >writes: > ><< do you watch ER on Thursdays? >> > To which Robin replied >No, I've never seen it! I think I'm the only one on the face of the earth who >hasn't. > >Robin T > > No you're not, I've never seen it either, on any day of the week. As a general rule I dislike all hospital dramas, unless their comedy dramas, e.g. MASH. Slarv ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1998 14:17:40 +0100 (BST) From: IT Admin - Govt Office North West Subject: Re: Alloy: What a buzz! At 21:46 11/10/98 +1000, Paul B wrote about his presentation experience: > >Hi y'all, > >A couple of you made the mistake of asking how my talk went today, >thankfully it went well. In fact it was a real buzz! > Yes, it IS a buzz when it all goes well. In a former life I was a training officer and an open learning liaison officer, both of which required me to give presentations on a regular basis. The training presentations were usually to around a dozen people, but the OL stuff could be to individuals or halls full of people. It certainly DOES make a difference when the equipment works (it makes MORE of a difference when it doesn't, believe me, and this has been the case on more than one occasion when I've been trying to demo use of the internet). 99% of good presentation is down to preparation. If you've tried out the whole thing with all the kit in advance, and it all works as expected, there are usually no nasty surprises when you come to do the real thing. Of course it also helps if you know your subject, but for presentational purposes this is less important than sticking to what you've prepared. Sometimes I had to make presentations using other peoples' materials, where I DIDN'T know the subject very well, and it only got tricky if I got asked detailed questions about the subject. Having said that, it IS quite draining, which is one of the reasons I changed jobs. People thought that it got easier over time, and although I became more self confident in my ability to present, it became harder to maintain my enthusiasm on subjects I'd presented tens, if not hundreds of times. There's only so much you can say about Open Learning; the basic principles remain the same no matter how you dress it up. Even so, I was usually quite nervous right up until I started the presentation. Anyroadup, enough of my waffle. I'm glad it went well for you, it's a real confidence booster when that happens. Maybe you should video the next one (assuming there'll be one), or record it one audio and have it sonified on your web pages. TTFN Slarv ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1998 10:03:32 -0400 From: MacSuirtain Subject: Alloy: TV Dramas (was 80s bands & music camp) IT Admin - Govt Office North West wrote: > ><< do you watch ER on Thursdays? >> > > > To which Robin replied > > >No, I've never seen it! I think I'm the only one on the face of the earth who > >hasn't. > > > >Robin T > No you're not, I've never seen it either, on any day of the week. As a > general rule I dislike all hospital dramas, unless their comedy dramas, e.g. > MASH. I love hospital dramas and GOOD cop shows. I'm rather annoyed that Chicago Hope and Law & Order are on at the same time. (I prefer L&O, but I went to college with/did college theater with one of the guys (Peter Berg) on Chicago Hope, and it's cool to see him up there. It was really strange when he was (briefly) tied to Madonna recently.) I love gritty UK cop shows -- Prime Suspect, Cracker - and now, Touching Evil. Damn good stuff. My favorite show, though, is Homicide: Life on the Street. I've been in Fells Point, the Baltimore neighborhood where H:LOTS is filmed, this weekend (and I'm headed back in about ten minutes), hanging out with about 10 other fans of the show, some of them homicide cops from various cities around the country, some of them police psychologists, some of them Average Joes, just visiting various places where pivotal scenes took place, etc., and just chatting. Yesterday, by chance, we ran into Reed Diamond (who plays disgraced detective Mike Kellerman) and his girlfriend Michele Forbes (formerly Chief Medical Examiner Cox and, for those Trekkies in the group, Ensign Ro, the first Bajoran you ever met on ST:TNG.) They were delightful and friendly and hung out with us for ages and gave us big hugs and let us take pictures with them. Very, very much what you don't expect from Hollywood People. Reed is giving me a tour of the set on Tuesday, when they start filming again after the long weekend. Totally cool. I have to pick up a friend at the airport on Tuesday night - he's a HUGE Homicide fan, too - and I intend to blow up the picture of me and Michele Forbes and hold it up as he gets off the plane. :-) Best weekend in ages. Cheers, Melissa ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1998 10:25:10 EDT From: RThurF@aol.com Subject: Re: Alloy: What a buzz! In a message dated 10/11/98 7:48:02 AM Eastern Daylight Time, paulb@thehub.com.au writes: << What I found a real spinout though was that all these people acted like they knew me and yet I'd never met them before (gosh - I've never been a celeb before! ;-) - so friendly and... respectful, yes that's it, respectful. The talk lasted about an hour and a quarter, with a good 20 mins or so after that filled with Q&A on Beatnik, as well as Macworld. Thankfully, I was somehow able to give convincing answers to them so the cover story that I might know what I'm talking about still holds! A couple of comments stand out in my mind, "it's good to see that you obviously write the articles since you sound just like you do in the column - it's good to hear it's not faked" (believe it or not I took this as flattering that someone would read Help Folder enough to know my style of talking), and get this, one person seriously asked "since it sounds like you've been pretty much everywhere in the industry, why don't you write a book?" Um, how do I say this, no. :-) Sorry, just had to tell someone! Anyway, my thanks to Thomas and Headspace for letting me use Beatnik as material, and for keeping it and the headspace site performing absolutely perfectly during the demo. Tonight there are a few more people in Australia that know of your achievements, and are hopefully wandering over to www.headspace.com right now to take a closer look. >> Paul, you ROCK! I'm so proud of you! I really wish I could have seen your presentation... oh well. When you start doing demos in the states, nothing will keep me from attending :) Rounds of applause for Paul, for Thomas & for Headspace!! Robin T ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1998 11:31:20 EDT From: TBlagg@aol.com Subject: Re: Alloy: What a buzz! Paul, I've been reading the Headspace Webb SIte recently and have noticed that you can actually download a version of Beatnik. In Lamens terms, is this system like an advanced version of real audio player? And would it be useful for the average home user such as myself and many of the other guys on the list? Also it mentions that to download this you need to be running Netscape Navigator which in itself takes 5 hours to download. If this would improve the way I listen to "webb sounds" is it not possible to download Beatnik using IE4? Best Wishes,Trev.... P.S it must have been a real thrill to do research and perform such an exciting presentation! Congratulations!!! ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1998 09:33:59 -0400 From: "Beth Meyer" Subject: RE: Alloy: Re: alloy-digest V3 #268 Hi, Stacey! Sorry to be a little late in welcoming you to Alloy (the conference travel kind of interfered), but welcome! I just had to mention that you and I seem to be on much the same musical wavelength, as well as having started college in the same year. In particular, I am a big B-52's fan, and took advantage of my many years in Atlanta to see them in concert several times -- that is some party they put on! But then, as many in the list know, my tastes often run to the wacky... Also, let me assure you that you will probably LOVE the "Gate to the Mind's Eye" video. The animation is just spectacular. While Thomas did not direct the video nor create the animation, I think you'll really appreciate how the music helps hold everything together! Cheers, Beth Beth Meyer bethmeyer@mindspring.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1998 12:26:24 EDT From: CJMark@aol.com Subject: Re: Alloy: What a buzz! Hey Paul.. It sounds as if we missed a great presentation.. glad it all went well. !! Congrats once again.. !! Ciao for now.. Mark ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1998 22:10:32 -0700 From: Robyn Moore Subject: Re: Alloy: Curiosity/Mail lists At 04:27 PM 9/17/98 , you wrote: > >I've been mulling over life, the universe and everything, as I am wont to do >from time to time, and particularly this week as it's the second week of the >third of my two week breaks in rapid succession so I have a little time on >my hands. [In case this is confusing you, what I mean is I was owed six >weeks' leave, and I've taken it in three blocks of two weeks each, between >June and Spetember. OK? ] Painting the living room THREE TIMES in as many >days in order to get the right colour gave me time to reflect on things, >and I wondered what other mailing lists my fellow Alloy subscribers >subscribe to, or have subscribed to, and how they compare to Alloy. Hiho...late as usual, but I felt like answering it anyway. :) Let's see....Currently, I belong to: 7 different lists involving the MUD I'm an imm on. Alloy, of course. The Jeff McBride news list. An informal humour list. The list for the local anime club. This Is True (a weird-news kind of list). The Dominion info list (SciFi Channel) I also casually read a few online message boards - the MAME list on Dave's Videogame classics the discussion list at Animation Nerd's Paradise the discussion list at Animation Blast MagicTalk (a forum for stage magicians) I've belonged to a couple different pagan lists, but wound up leaving them due to either in-fighting or lack of time. I also belonged to Tamson-House (A Charles DeLint fan list) for a while, but had to give it up because it was generating 10 meg of content a month. Not only could I not keep up, it was swamping my hard drive. (I don't throw out 99% of mail) I'd have to say Alloy is my favourite list, if for no other reason than not having to worry about it having burst into flames overnight. :) Well, that's all I can think of for now. Hopefully, I'll be able to catch up on the rest of the list soonish, so I can talk more. :) Robyn M This message powered by the John Denver edition of "Behind the Music" on VH1. @ Robyn Moore @ http://www.alveus.com/kbrm/robyn.html @ You knew the job was dangerous when you took it. - S.C. ------------------------------ End of alloy-digest V3 #271 ***************************