Errors-To: ecto-owner@ns1.rutgers.edu Reply-To: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu Sender: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu From: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu To: ecto-request@ns1.rutgers.edu Bcc: ecto-digest-outbound@ns1.rutgers.edu Subject: ecto #754 ecto, Number 754 Tuesday, 14 September 1993 Today's Topics: *-----------------* roman numerals CITW, ETM and Abestos. YaY Re: MiniDisc, TSW Re: Champagne Jam Lives! Re: Back from vac with Hiatt lyrics Keeping up?! quote of the week How to Keep up With it All Calling New England Ectophiles for -mjm Re: Me & IRC ======================================================================== Date: 14 Sep 93 12:28:18 EDT From: Mike Mendelson Subject: roman numerals |Soooooooooooooo, the sound that could kill someone from a |distance really exists!!!!! | | Bob Morrow You know, this is *really* interesting, Bob. I can't believe I *never* thought of that! How completely interesting. Thanks to you I'm probably going to start liking this song now. I guess I *never* *really* understood it and its intended effect. You know, She Really Is. -mjm ======================================================================== From: "Michael Blackmore" Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1993 10:30:07 EST Subject: CITW, ETM and Abestos. At least from my end I'm ending this whole discussion. Judging by some of the replies that I've seen there is vast confusion on both sides as to what is being discussed. Thus there's really no point continuing this. Sorry if I offended anyone. Especially Meredith. Just a hint for people who read my posts as being sarcastic, etc. My posts are meant to be read without such inflections. They follow the pattern of speech not formal written english. If I mean something to be sarcastic, angry, etc. I will say so very specifically around the passage that it is intended to apply to. Got it? - Michael B. ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 14 Sep 93 10:15:53 PDT From: Neal R. Copperman Subject: YaY Meredith says: >> Yay. and a resounding yay is heard echoing around the country. Glad you held onto your show. I like reading the playlists probably almost as much as I'd like to hear it someday. Maybe in celebration of your new time I'll recreate as much of the show as I can at home. Kiri, hadn't you heard Kate make the surprise announcement that her album was going to be released from Memphis, which will be the sole distribution point until next year, when it is released in Australia, followed shortly by Finland and the rest of the world. (Reggae Politics, that sounds like a pretty cool class. It was a real pity that Los Lobos, B.B. King and Jimmy Cliff were all playing at the same time for one and a half hours, so none of them got the attention they deserved, and Jimmy got the least.) Thanks for the WOMAD info Vickie. Any other hot tips before the weekend? Neal ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 14 Sep 93 11:45:42 PDT From: erik@falcon.kla.com (Erik Johnson) Subject: Re: MiniDisc, TSW |> From arg@kilimanjaro.opt-sci.arizona.edu Mon Sep 13 22:59:12 1993 |> -==- |> > From: Philip Sainty |> > > Fine by me. Thanks for the answer. So it's a commercial, |> > > magneto-optic, audio disk? Based on your summary I'd probably choose |> > |> > I can't imagine it's magneto-optical based... not unless they've |> > improved the technology a lot since last I heard - it simply wouldn't |> > be fast enough! (even with the compression) |> > |> > Then again, I can't think of another way to do it, so perhaps my |> |> Perhaps it's WORM (Write Once, Read Many) and not eraseable? That |> uses laser heating only and doesn't require the magnetic field to |> hold the polarity of the crystals until they re-solidify I think. |> If so that's a definite disadvantage over DAT and DCC. |> Wow - reading the list for only a day, and here's a question I can actually, authoritatively answer! :-) The MiniDisc is not a WORM. It is definitely erasable/rewriteable. It gets read by the laser like a regular CD, but uses a magnetic field to write. << Technical stuff alert - skip if you're not interested >> The recording process works by using the laser at a higher energy to heat the material of the disk in a small area (the size of the laser spot), which produces a change the magnetic coercivity(*). The field will polarize the disk material within the spot, making it either reflective or non-reflective when read. This looks close enough to the pits of the pre-recorded disks that the read-back laser can get the data off the disk and convert it to music for us optically-deprived humans. :-) (*) coercivity ~= the amount of energy necessary to change the orientation of the magnetic field in the material. << Technical stuff over - you can look again >> |> > -==- |> > What have people got against "The Sensual World" ? |> >.... |> > Ah, yes, TSW. I really like most of this album - I love the soft, |> > almost husky sound of Her voice... Somebody please explain the |> > dreadful error I'm making in liking this album! :) |> |> I don't know since I like it too... I actually think it may be the |> best album to use to introduce Kate to new people, but it really |> depends on the person. And if I had to chose my favourite Kate album |> it would be between TSW, Dreaming, and Hounds (not in an order). I'm |> not sure I'd want to say that on Gaffa though! /get fire hose TSW was actually the first Kate that came to my attention, so I'll always have a soft spot for it. I'd have to name those same three as my favorites - the order depends on my mood at the moment. :-) Still waiting for The Red Shoes... Erik ObEcto: I'm sure someone must have asked this before, but I wasn't here to see the answer so it doesn't matter. :-) Is Happy have any plans to tour out here on the west coast? I'd love to see her live, but there's no real way I'll be able to get east anytime soon. _______________________________________________________________________________ Erik N. Johnson Don't believe any return address rumors. The KLA Instruments Corp. one and only True Address is e_johnso@kla.com. San Jose, CA GECS d-- -p+ c+ l u+ e- m+(--)* s++/+ !n h+ f+ !g(+) w+ t@ r+@ y+(*) Out of woman comes the man, spend the rest of his life getting back when he can. - P. Gabriel ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1993 14:23:39 CDT From: Subject: Re: Champagne Jam Lives! > ([...] Tell all your friends. Even if you're not in the area, > tune in. [...] I can try it, but 88.1 where I live is a low-power community station whose programs, insofar as I have stumbled onto them, aren't of interest. Maybe if ESU strikes it rich they can invest in a shortwave station to simulcast to the likes of I :-). BTW WRT how many ectophiles can fit in a Chevy Cavalier: 30 some years ago, it used to be trendy to see how many college students could fit in a VW Beetle. Unless people have generally gotten bigger since then, surely one could fit at least that many into the Cavalier (more if it's a wagon). Anyone recall any stats from the good old days? Mitch ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1993 14:30:28 CDT From: Subject: Re: Back from vac with Hiatt lyrics > Query to all: I've been a prolific record buyer for too long, and > this list has just made things worse. I sit in my office all day > listening to tapes and discs, and go home and listen some more (though > my 6-yr-old rarely countenances anything but Mary Black and Angelique > Kidjo). And still I get the feeling that my collection has already > gotten out of hand; like, how many things have I only listened to > twice? How do y'all keep up? Long commutes? Speaker-under-the-pillow? > How many hours a day are you plugged into music? > > --Pshanks, Perplexed In practice, I usually don't keep up. There was a time when I seemed to be plugged into my cassette collection all day, every day, but then I discover- ed National Public Radio and have substituted it ever since, for the same amoun t of time per diem. The downside is that I have this humongous backlog of factory-fresh tapes and cd's that I hope to get to one of these fine days, but have no idea when. Every once in a great while I get lucky, but that's very sporadic and ad hoc. Hope springs eternal... :-). Mitch ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 14 Sep 93 16:48:53 -0400 From: Mike Matthews Subject: Keeping up?! What does this mean, "keeping up"? I thought the whole point of this was just to buy. An occasional listening is just icing on the cake.... Mike ======================================================================== From: Philip Sainty Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1993 09:00:29 +1200 Subject: Re: Back from vac with Hiatt lyrics > Query to all: I've been a prolific record buyer for too long, and > this list has just made things worse. I sit in my office all day > listening to tapes and discs, and go home and listen some more (though > my 6-yr-old rarely countenances anything but Mary Black and Angelique > Kidjo). And still I get the feeling that my collection has already > gotten out of hand; like, how many things have I only listened to > twice? How do y'all keep up? Long commutes? Speaker-under-the-pillow? > How many hours a day are you plugged into music? <...quietly sobbing at the thought of having so much music...> I wouldn't spend any more than 90 minutes a day I think; although this is mainly because I leave for Varsity at about 7.15am and frequently don't get home until about 9.30pm (I have no way of listening to music while at Varsity apart from radio, and there are few stations which even occasionally play music that I like to listen to...) , and by the time I've eaten dinner, and watched the odd TV programme I may have taped, I'm usually too tired to do much more than play a few tracks from what treasured CDs and tapes I do own before I attempt to get to sleep... In fact, my not having a large collection is not too much of a problem for this very reason, although I dearly wish I had the money to go out and get several of the albums mentioned here on ecto... I suppose I do have a number of tapes that I haven't listened to in a long time, but that's because I wouldn't want to listen to them ;) (it's truely embarrassing to see some of the things I have on my shelf from years past... :) .________________________________________. ._______. | __ _ ___ _ __ __ |\________/| | | / / | / \ | \ | | | | / | __ | _O_ | | \_ | | | | |__/ |__| | | \_ | / \ | |/ | | / | | | | | | | | | / | |/\_/ | |\ | | \__ \_ | \_/ | | | | |__ \__ | | /\ | T W W | |________________________________________| N.Z. |_______| \ Philip Sainty: psainty@comp.vuw.ac.nz \________/ / `-------------------------------------------------------' "This is where I want to be This is what I need" --KT ======================================================================== Subject: Re: Keeping up?! Date: Tue, 14 Sep 93 17:21:54 -0400 From: jeffy@syrinx.umd.edu Mike sez: >What does this mean, "keeping up"? I thought the whole point of this was >just to buy. An occasional listening is just icing on the cake.... Mike's not being honest with himself here. He doesn't go insane in CD stores because he wants to keep up. And he doesn't do it just to spend money. Naw, the *real* motivation here is that I still have at least 100 CDs more than he does and he just can't live with that fact. Me, well, there are a few things I completely ignore in my collection. And certain albums that find their way on to tapes (whether or not I own the CD) tend to get more play simply because it's a lot more easier to run to class or fly a kite whilst a walkman is strapped to your waist than a discman. But I listen to a *lot* of music and it's very rare for me to get something and not actually pay much attention to it. Though I will admit that there *was* a recent case. Mike Mendelsohn will surely recall the rather fun day when he visited and we hit Tower. We found copies of a Fairground Attraction CD and both (as I recall) bought 'em. I also bought Sarah Brightman's _Dive_ the same day. That night, I gave each album 1 listen. Said listen was vaguely favorable, but not what I was expecting. The next day when I packed for a weekend trip to Cape May, NJ, I grabbed _Dive_ but not the FG album, for whatever reason (I know I grabbed _Dive_ so I could make fun of her lyrics, particularly "Johnny Wanna Live," perhaps the worst peta-esque song ever written--makes me wanna go kill a cute furry animal and wear it on a hot day just to spite the lyricist...). My one listen was on July 2nd. Last week when I moved into my new digs, I was trying to pick some tunes to listen to and happened across the FG album. With nothing else in mind (ETM hadn't been released yet), I popped it in and was pleaseantly surprised. I've heard it another time or two since then and continue to enjoy it. Wow! Almost like getting a new CD! ;-) Jeff ======================================================================== Date: 14 Sep 93 17:41:42 EDT From: Mike Mendelson Subject: quote of the week Conan O'Brian (taking Letterman's place with new Late Night Talk Show on NBC): "In high school I used to say that one day I would have my very own talk show. And all my classmates said, "yeah that's the day there'll be peace in the middle east."" -mjm ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 14 Sep 93 17:24:16 -0500 From: hhtra@chevron.com (T.M.Haddock) Subject: Re: Keeping Up Paula perplexes: > Query to all: I've been a prolific record buyer for too long, and > this list has just made things worse. I sit in my office all day > listening to tapes and discs, and go home and listen some more (though > my 6-yr-old rarely countenances anything but Mary Black and Angelique > Kidjo). And still I get the feeling that my collection has already > gotten out of hand; like, how many things have I only listened to > twice? How do y'all keep up? Long commutes? Speaker-under-the-pillow? > How many hours a day are you plugged into music? Oh, Sherry and I are late starters in CD and only have about 200 or so. Even with that small amount, I sometimes find some I haven't listened to in a long long time. I try to make it a point to listen to everything at least once a year but it's getting tougher as the collection grows. I keep up by having a 30+ min commute each way (but a $2500 car audio system makes it enjoyable) and a "boom box" sitting on my desk while I sit in front of this damn tube all day long. Sherry has the CD player at home going non-stop - that is until the kids come home and its time for cartoons or their own CDs. TRAVIS hhtra@chevron.com ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 14 Sep 93 18:42:41 EDT From: ken@engr.startek.com (Ken Descoteaux) Subject: How to Keep up With it All The only way I manage is by boycotting most TV. On good days I can listen to 3 or 4 CD's (one before work, the rest after). That still doesn't mean that I listen to my entire collection on a regular basis.. Some things require the right mood... -ken d ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1993 22:29:56 -0400 (EDT) From: Suspended In Duct Tape Subject: Calling New England Ectophiles Hi! Anybody out there going to see Heidi Berry at the Iron Horse in Northampton, MA this Thursday evening? If so, please e-mail me ASAP. I'm going up for the show from New Haven, and would love to meet anyone up there, if you're going to also be in attendance. Thanks... Meredith meth@delphi.com ======================================================================== From: shark@cs.ucla.edu (Jeanne B. Schreiter) Subject: for -mjm Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1993 19:41:14 -0700 (PDT) -Michael... rmemeber that poem you wrote a music for...how hard would it be for you to find the words for me? I've misplaced them. Jeanne shark@cs.ucla.edu ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 09:28:50 -0500 From: Dennis G Parslow Subject: Re: Me & IRC >DATE: Tue, 14 Sep 1993 00:30:40 +1000 (AEST) >FROM: Anthony Horan > >In apana.lists.rec.happy-rhodes, article <9309130811.AA02312@kilimanjaro.opt-sci.Arizona.EDU>, you wrote: > >Part of the policy of the APANA network that my machine is a part of is that >mailing lists that are likely to be of interest to more than one person are >gated at the hub site into a newsgroup. I then take a feed of that newsgroup >here. I prefer reading mailing lists this way, anyway - it keeps my mailbox >clearly defined as "personal mail". :-) > Yes, but what mail is more personal than ecto-mail? ;-) >> > > BTW, what are "mini-discs"? Are those the 3" CDs or are they not >> > >> > Time for me to slip into technophile mode... :) >> >> Fine by me. Thanks for the answer. So it's a commercial, >> magneto-optic, audio disk? Based on your summary I'd probably choose >> MiniDisc, when it became cheaper, but only if they are able to keep it >> from skipping fairly well. Random access is a very nice thing. Does > >Yep, commercial optical, but I'm not sure about the magneto part; I believe >the technology used is newer than that. Disc skipping is reportedly >eliminated by the use of a 3-5 second flow-through buffer that is accessed if >the laser loses tracking. The same buffer technology is used for error >concealment with Sony's prototype SDDS 8-channel cinema digital sound system, >and Dolby Digital uses a similar technique of their own development. > >> the compression actually lose data or is it a different sampling to >> begin with? Are the digital outputs/inputs of these decks compatible? > >It's what the techs call "lossy" compression; at a ratio of about 10:1. While >the sampling rate is standard 44.1KHz, elements of the digital bitstream that >the processor determines won't be audible to the human ear are dropped. The >digital inputs and outputs are fully compatible with CD player and DAT deck >digital ports. > My understanding is that they yield ~680mb with compression, and would yield ~128mb without that voodoo magic "You really don't notice this bit anyway" stuff, so closer to 5:1 compression. It is not magneto-anything. The biggest problem with magneto-stuff is it is not safe in the long term. It would be too easy to have an entire shipment of mini-discs wiped completely clean during shipment (very difficult for cd's ;-) Dennis Parslow "I don't write songs about girls anymore Troy, NY 12180 I have to write songs about women p00421@psilink.com No more "Boy meets girl, boy loses girl", More like "Man tries to understand what the hell went wrong!" "I'm an Adult Now" The Pursuit of Happiness _Love Junk_ ======================================================================== The ecto archives are on hardees.rutgers.edu in ~ftp/pub/hr. There is an INDEX file explaining what is where. Feel free to send me things you'd like to have added. -- jessica (jessica@ns1.rutgers.edu)