Chapter and verse, again

Meme stolen from Dawn's place:

1. Grab the nearest book.

2. Open the book to page 123.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the next four sentences on your blog, along with these instructions.

5. No cheating by going for a "cool" book...it has to be the nearest one.


Ok, since an aging Roget's Thesaurus is the only thing to hand, I walked through to the other room and grabbed something off the shelf without turning the light on. Unfortunately, page 123 of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness doesn't have enough sentences on it. So... back to the darkened room again, returning with the following:

"Hereupon those two heralds blew their trumpets once more, and Duke Mordaunt of North Umber turned his horse about and went away from that place. Then King Leodegrance also went his way, very sorrowful and downcast in his spirits. For he said to himself: 'Is it at all likely that another champion shall come unto me like that wonderful White champion who came two days since, I know not whence, for to defend me against mine enemies? And, touching that same White Champion; if I know not whence he came, so also I know not whither he hath departed; how then shall I know where to seek him to beseech his further aid in this time of mine extremity?'"

Gosh, those are some really long sentences. Any guesses?

Weekend update

...and the hawk is back. Definitely confirmed as a female Northern Harrier. I even managed to grab the camera and shoot some pictures this time. And, along with the last batch of hawk photos that were shot on the film camera (which I haven't bothered to post - see below), I've managed to learn some things about nature photography. Namely:

1. A 120 mm zoom lens is not long enough, even for large-ish birds in very small back yards.

2. Do not leave the camera on 'portrait' setting while shooting small objects far away. It will auto-focus on something you don't want it to (see the crab-apple tree in the photo below? Nicely in-focus.)

3. Shooting in overcast, outdoor lighting with white balance set to 'indoor/fluorescent' results in stupidly blue-coloured photos. Colour balancing never fixes this adequately.

4. You can't focus on anything while shooting through Venetian blinds (remember what I said above about not showing you the film pics?).

5. It's hard to get things in focus while shooting rapidly with a 300 mm lens (film camera again I'm afraid).

So now you know. Apologies for the horrific quality of these. I suggest looking at the original shot, which is much, much better.

A couple of very suspicious-looking piles of feathers in the back yard make me suspect that the score is now, conservatively, hawks 2, doves 0.

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In other news, apparently sports car season is not quite over yet. Either that, or nobody told the person who drove by me in a bright red Ferrari 512 Testarossa on Saturday. And my fingers hurt from putting up the Christmas lights. Just thought you'd like to know.

Obscure Song Quiz #2

For anyone who's not over at Scaryduck's place reading his regular Friday story, do join in the fun and try out this quiz. It's the same drill as before. Here are two sets of lyrics. What do these songs have in common?

[Editorial note. I will stop all these music-related posts soon, and get back to something more interesting next week. Possibly.]

I couldn't stop movin' when it first took hold
It was a warm spring night at the old town hall
There was a band called The Jokers, they were layin' it down
Doncha know I'm never gonna lose that funky sound

Don't want to argue, I don't want to debate
Don't want to hear about what kind of food you hate
You won't get no dessert 'till you clean off your plate

Rule
Google is cheating. So is Yahoo (I'm looking at you, Black Knight). Wikipedia is in a grey area.

Hint
The answer is not 'they're both by American artists', although that is in fact true.

Disclaimers (again)
The above lyrics are copyrighted, and not by me. I may not get around to acknowledging the winner right away. There is no prize. E&OE. There may be multiple possible answers (see 'Hint', above) but I'm only looking for one specific one. All other disclaimers are incorporated by implication. Anything nasty you pick up from the web by breaking the Rule is entirely your own fault. Etc.

Gimme some Payola($)...

On the topic of music...

Once upon a time, and a long time ago it was (as all good stories begin):

I discovered Rock And Roll.

I was a (just-about) teenager in a relatively small 'city' in what used to be called Upper Canada. Like many, I had some records. Yes, 'records'. For those of us of A Certain Age™, this means The Nirvana Of Music™. Twelve inches across, black vinyl, put it on the turntable, and you're there.

Like many, I have to admit to owning a number of ABBA records. But the first real album I owned was 'Physical', by Olivia Newton-John, which I didn't buy for the double entendre, no, not at all. And the second: 'Dare', by the Human League. Because it was, and still is, the best Euro-Synth-Pop record ever made.

However...

Having grown up on a diet of local AM radio, it was a revelation to me when I discovered AM Top 40. In the name of CKLC 1380, a station that is, sadly, no longer in any way related to pop music. But it was excellent, for a 14-year old.

I was a late starter, ok? But I wanted more.

And more showed up. FM Radio, from the U.S. of A. Across Lake Ontario, hauled in on an ancient radio, from 'Y94, the ROCK OF ROCHESTER!!!'. Too bad they sold out and went Adult Contemporary a few years later. But then, it was a Revelation. Album-oriented-rock. Wow.

I think the first song I heard was something by Black Sabbath, but it could have been Judas Priest. Doesn't matter. It was in stereo, with guitars and drums and bass and vocals splashed all over the left-to-right stereo spectrum. And I was hooked. Years and years of listening later, I have suffered through addictions to Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton, Jethro Tull, the Blue Öyster Cult, and other guitar-heavy bands. But there is one that comparatively few others have heard of, and I need to rectify this.

The Payola$.

A Canadian band from the 80's, they released what is in my opinion one of the Best Rock Albums Ever™. It was called 'No Stranger To Danger'. I first heard it on the audio system of an airplane, en route from Canada to England, in the summer of 1982. A summer in which I watched Dino Zoff and the Italian team win the World Cup. A summer in which I watched Captain Sensible hit the #1 position on Top Of The Pops with his cover of 'Happy Talk', from South Pacific (b/w 'It/I Can't Stand It', and yes, I bought the single as a souvenir). I hunted that few weeks in England in record stores, and nobody new what I was talking about. Turns out, it was also the summer that the airline mis-spelled the band's name, so I kept looking for 'Payload' instead. And it didn't matter anyway, because nobody in England knew about this band, even in the slightest.

It was the summer I fell in love with that Payola$ album, its beats, its jangly guitars, its English-accented-somewhat punk, its kinda New Romantic lyrics, its fabulously mystic tunes, its garage-band rocking noise. I had no experience yet with Ska, Reggae or Rockabilly, but they were all represented. I didn't know about Bob Marley, The Specials, The Police, The Stray Cats. Not yet. But the Rock 'n Roll, I totally got.

And this brings us to today's point - the damn thing isn't available on CD. Select cuts ('Rose', 'Romance', the incomparable 'Eyes of a Stranger' with its ringing guitars and driving beat, 'Hastings Street', which should make even the most hardened rock'n roll cynic cry) are out on compilations. But the whole album, no. Not the post-punk driving shouty noise of 'Youth', not the uptempo ska-influenced 'Lights To Change', not the achingly beautiful 'Pennies Into Gold'.

It seems the term 'Payola', meaning a pay-off from a record company to a radio station ('pay for play') probably sunk the band in the US market, which even then was overly commercialized. Which is a shame.

So, I'm stuck with the vinyl LP and a broken record player, or the cassette copy from years ago (the tape has been played enough that 'noise reduction' is now a joke).

I guess I'm getting old. My favourite bands are becoming relics of disused audio formats.

But now you know. The Payola$. 'No Stranger To Danger'. One of the best. Ever.

Ahhhh, muuuuuuuuusic...

Rik has come to the rescue! The files are up and happy. Click away, folks. I've updated the links at the original post too.

Rik is a lovely fellow, so do yourself a favour and go and read his blog.

Here are the links again, for convenience. Please try not to gag when listening. If you're especially nice to me, I might post some more later on.

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(all glorious 44.1 kHz, 16-bit stereo, squashed down to 128 kbps mp3 for your listening pleasure)

Curiosity (1:23, 1.3 Mb). A piece for solo clarinet, with 2nd clarinet accompaniment.
Scudding Sky (3:57, 3.6 Mb). Downtempo ambient techno.
Spinning Circles Of... (2:08 , 2 Mb). Fairly lightweight electronic 'soundtrack music'.
Lonely House (4:04, 3.7 Mb). Ambient techno, a bit more 'beat-y' than the rest.

All files © Ricardipus. Painfully detailed technical information available on request.

Technical difficulties... please stand by...

Pah, Geocities and its wretched download limits.

For those hundreds and hundreds* of you that might have wanted to download the music files from the previous post, and couldn't, help is on the way. Rik has graciously offered to host the files. What a nice chap.

Stay tuned... might take me a few days to get myself organized. I'll post an update when it's ready.

EDIT: oh yeah, speaking of technical difficulties... sorry about that overly-wide photo in the last post, which made the whole sidebar disappear. 'Tis fixed now.



*this number has been slightly exaggerated.

A new definition of pain, as promised.

Recently I alluded to yet another of my fights with 21st century technology:

"Next week - how to encode mp3 files from four-track cassette tapes and upload them to the web, using an aging Pentium II with no CD burner, no internet connection, and a parallel port Zip drive. It's a new definition of pain, believe me."

And here it is, as promised. Late, but you should be used to that by now.

Warning: long-winded, somewhat technical and rant-ish post follows.

Back in the dim and distant past, I recorded a lot of electronic music of admittedly rather dubious quality, initially to a slightly broken two-track open-reel tape deck, then to cassette, and subsequently graduating to a Fostex 160 four-track cassette, which was a quantum leap forward in that it allowed me to overdub and bounce tracks (technical terms - basically 'record myself playing along with myself' - minds out of the gutter, people). Don't get this confused with the VF-160, which is currently available and an all-digital beast. We're talking honest-to-goodness analogue cassette tape here, similar to the (amazingly, still available) X-12. The 160 had more features, but we're still talking early-80's technology.

So... how do you get that old music onto this here new internet thing? The following is not the most reasonable method. But it's what I did. You may notice that much of the pain that ensues was caused by one over-riding issue, which I've emphasized for you so that you won't have to look too hard for it.

1. Music is on 4-track cassette. Sometime in the past I mixed it down on to the stereo audio tracks of VHS videotape. Why? VHS is cheap and at its highest speed, has far superior sound quality than cassette.

2. At some point, I dubbed the VHS masters onto Minidisc. Why? Minidisc was cheap, easy to use, digital, and portable. And I didn't have a computer with a CD burner.

3. Take portable minidisc player. Plug into sound card on ancient Pentium II computer. Why not hook it up through a digital connection? Um, no computer in my possession has a digital audio in, just analogue. I could, of course, buy a USB digital in box, but that would cost money. Crappy old SoundBlaster cards are cheap, and I already had one. Two, actually - anybody want to buy the extra?

4. Now... record and edit the audio using a venerable edition of Cool Edit 96:

Which works fabulously well, so much so that Adobe bought the multitrack version and turned it into Audition. My old version, was, um, er, free. But it works, even though running it on the old computer meant that noise-reducing even a couple of minutes of audio took about 40 minutes. Argh.

5. Move files over to new Sleek and Intelligent Computer. On the aforementioned 100 Mb Zip disks. Which also entails moving the Zip drive, because the S&I machine doesn't have one. And, of course, downloading and installing the obligatory driver. Naturally, spending some money on any of the following would have made life easier: second zip drive for new computer, CD burner for old computer, USB interface for old computer, network card and router so I could move the files directly, or audio interface so I could use the new computer for all the editing chores instead of the old one.

6. Now... they have these mp3 thingamajigs now, don't they? Aha! The LAME mp3 encoder (free) and its even more excellent RazorLame front end (also free) come to the rescue. Work exactly as advertised.

7. Finally... we have mp3s. I'll spare you the long and tedious and extremely painful story of finding a free place to put them on the web (short version: Yahoo Briefcase, Ourmedia, mp3.com and Yahoo Time Capsule all suck. Geocities is marginally better, despite its horrendous interface, but it appears to work. EDIT: it's down. The links below might or might not work. Anyone have any suggestions? Another EDIT: Rik has come to the rescue! The files are up and happy. Click away, folks.)

Results:

(all glorious 44.1 kHz, 16-bit stereo, squashed down to 128 kbps mp3 for your listening pleasure)

Curiosity (1:23, 1.3 Mb). A piece for solo clarinet, with 2nd clarinet accompaniment.
Scudding Sky (3:57, 3.6 Mb). Downtempo ambient techno.
Spinning Circles Of... (2:08 , 2 Mb). Fairly lightweight electronic 'soundtrack music'.
Lonely House (4:04, 3.7 Mb). Ambient techno, a bit more 'beat-y' than the rest.

All files © Ricardipus. Painfully detailed technical information available on request.


Criticism on a postcard, to the usual place, please, where it will be given due consideration, immediately prior to shredding.

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Moral of the story: sometimes spending a little money on new technology might save a whole lot of pain later on.

Second moral of the story: Ricardipus is a cheap git.

Domestic fauna

This fellow showed up in the basement recently. It's about 5 cm long.



I believe, based on some photos at this rather good spider website, that it is a Grass Spider (Funnel Weaver) of the genus Agelenopsis. Harmless, but frightening when it surprises you. We find these in the house all the time.

Apologies for crapness of the photo - the camera was being a bit stroppy. No user error at all. Really.

Scottsdale, next 15 exits…

…which is what the road sign said. Partway through the $60 cab ride from the airport. I have never paid that much for a taxi ride, ever. Have the good hoteliers of Arizona never heard of an airport shuttle bus?

Anyway, it’s not so bad – 80 degrees outside (sorry folks, I’m in the U.S. of A. now, so everything must be in Fahrenheit), sunny, a light breeze ruffling the palm fronds just outside my window. If any of the pictures I took with the disposable camera from the gift store turn out, I’ll put some up on Flickr. Or maybe here. Or both.

I really must get myself a camera phone for trips like this... the lovely Sony DSC is just a bit heavy and expensive to haul around.

One unfortunate downside of this little break from routine is that there is no free internet in the hotel room. What is that all about? $14.95 to connect? Philistines. Don’t they understand that blogging must be done? Oh yes, and work as well. Of course.

[Editorial note - which is why you're getting this post two days after I returned. So I'm not really in the U.S. of A. right now after all. Artistic license, ok?]

It is rapidly becoming apparent that I have very little to say, so let me leave you with this little observation about U.S. sports television:

On ESPN2, 2:30 PM, Monday… Dominoes. Competitive dominoes.

The rest of the time: football. Occasionally interrupted by basketball. And dominoes, apparently.

This is sports television?

No sign of any hockey though, even though we are in the New Land of Gretzky™.

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In other news, we may have a new candidate for Most Useless Blog Post Related To Travel™. This one, obviously.

You know you're a parent if:

Following on from #6:

7. (from Zoe) ...and by the time you've found that pink bit of plastic, the smaller person has completely forgotten about it.

And here's #8:

You can have an entire, perfectly rational discussion with another adult on the topic of human poo - its texture, size, colour, smell, and frequency.

Without even being Scaryduck.