08:12 – Barbara is going out to dinner with friends this evening, so Colin and I will have peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and watch Heartland reruns. We’re about a third of the way through series five at this point. That leaves only series six to watch before we go back and start again at series one episode one. We’ll probably make it through all six seasons at least twice more before series seven finishes broadcasting next spring.
Speaking of series seven, CBC broadcast the first episode last night. I watched just enough of it to confirm that Amber Marshall Turner is still credited as “Amber Marshall” rather than under her married name and that Shaun Johnston (Grandpa Jack) is no longer listed in the opening credits, although the opening still includes a shot of him riding a horse. The cliffhanger in the series six finale was of Jack lying in the snow with his horse standing next to him, so Heartland fans have been speculating all summer about whether they killed him off.
Amber Marshall is the only lead in Heartland. The rest are supporting only. Without Amber, they have no show. But of the supporting actors, Shaun Johnston comes closest to being essential, so I’ll be very surprised if they kill off his character.
I’ve been watching the first season of “Homeland” off and on when Mrs. OFD is not here; she’s gonna be gone again eight out of the next ten weeks, returning for Thanksgiving week and then gone again for two more weeks. So I should make it through all the extant seasons; though I find it increasingly difficult to like the main character, played by Claire Danes, or the others. I have found myself sorta cheering for whichever hadji takes out the Danes character, man is she annoying! Supposed to be bipolar or something so I guess that says something for her acting ability. I have the “Boardwalk Empire” seasons on-deck.
70 today and very windy overnight and so fah; fire trucks, ambulances and the FD boat all rolled by here an hour ago with sirens and lights; appears that either a boat capsized or someone fell overboard or whatever; I have the scanner on but not much of a clue yet.
Mrs. OFD with her 85-year-old mom today, due to running a temp and MD appointment this afternoon anyway. I am holding the fort. Per usual.
Unless you happen to be associated with a radio station, it is probably not obvious how much work goes into what most assume are simple things—like ripping a CD.
Just spent the weekend—about 15 hours—ripping a CD of all the Ikettes recordings for the Modern record label. I know the estrangement of Ike and Tina overtook their public persona, but Ike was one helluva musician and arranger. The Ikettes were superb vocalists—all 46 of them over the couple of decades they backed Ike and Tina. Ike wrote quite a number of songs that he had the girls record as The Ikettes, and 4 of them charted—the most famous being “I’m Blue (The Gong-Gong Song)”.
The CD I ripped had lots of studio chatter in between songs or at the beginning or end. Fortunately, most of that was placed on the “gap” tracks between song cuts. There is a way in EAC to rip only the 01 tracks, which are the song tracks; the 00 tracks are almost always silence (2 seconds is the Red Book standard for CD’s).
But the work is not done there. Cutting off the gap track removes that standard 2 seconds of silence after a song is over. So I have to add 2 seconds to the end of all those tracks. Moreover, many songs do not end cleanly. Some may start to fade out, but end abruptly before the fade is complete. In radio, there are volume levelers and compressors, which raise the level of the fadeouts, so the point of cutoff is clearly sudden and obvious. EAC has a basic WAV editor, so I can alter the fadeout so it ends before the cutoff. The beginning of songs often do not fade in, but pop on, with studio noise before the music begins becoming very obvious on older records. So I have to add a quick fade-up to those. Although we play the WAV files whenever possible, I still make MP3’s. So after all the tinkering to make each cut clean at beginning and end, I have to re-encode the MP3’s, then use MP3Tag to copy the ID tags from the original MP3’s to the newly encoded ones. Then the WAV files have to be imported into the playout machine. Like I said, 27 tracks took about 15 hours.
The Ikettes never got the promotion Motown gave to The Supremes, but the Ikettes were every bit as good and talented as Diana, Mary, and Flo. Their version of “Sally Go Round the Roses” is a really fantastic upbeat alternative to the Jaynettes’ slow and plodding hit version. And I have noticed that Ike seldom used an organ in his arrangements, but piano instead.
Gas man just left from switching off the gas at the house kitty corner across the street. They are on vacation, so it is going to be quite a surprise when they return from happy days to no heat or hot water. Two sisters live there and both work, so it is puzzling what could have gone wrong.
I set up auto withdrawals from my mom’s checking account, so non-payment would not be an issue. I still have that account, now in my name. Heat, hot water, fridge, microwave, and toilet I need all the time. I gave up camping after Boy Scouts. Probably need to add Internet to that list these days.
Watched the “My Babysitter is a Vampire” and “Wolfblood” pilots over the weekend. Both were set in junior high XXXXX middle school with young teenagers and on the Disney channel. Enjoyed both somewhat but not a lot. Nothing like Buffy at all. Or Sabrina the teenage witch. The Wolfblood show was surprisingly dark for a young teenager series, almost as dark as Buffy. I will continue with the Wolfblood to see if it gets better or augers in. I do see that the Wolfblood series is from the UK, unusual.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1727434/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2321596/
Four more troops lost. Obama, anybody care:
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/10/06/4-us-soldiers-killed-by-afghanistan-bomb/?intcmp=latestnews
Hey Lynn,
Did you catch Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Not sure if I like it or not. I think I need to see a few more episodes.
I liked the S.H.I.E.L.D. pilot but I think that I detected an augering potential there. Seemed like a weak story line with excellent characters.
toilet I need all the time
To a guy, the whole world is a toilet. Of course, the wife has mentioned that if I say this one more time to her that she is …
They say dark shows and movies are more prevalent in bad economic times than in good. I guess that means dark shows like Wolfblood and Breaking Bad should be no surprise in these times. But teens already have too much brooding time, and ones with troubled lives do not need trouble-themed shows to feed their confusion.
One of the great rhetorical questions in radio and TV classes back in my day was ‘does TV lead or reflect society?’ It was distressing to hear prof’s who believed the answer was one or the other, because the answer is clearly obvious: it does both—leads some people, and reflects others. There is no question TV and movies have led people to do things they suggested. Clearly, some of those motivated are not fully balanced mentally, but that is what we have to deal with in society in general.
It was nice knowing that Lynn guy down in Texas. He should have known better than to rub it in with women that we can go anywhere at anytime.
Something from a couple years ago that this reminded me of: crime spray.
The other comment mentioned in that comment thread: tweeting.
Spray and spree. Yeah. Sounds like a plan, my man!
Then we have this:
“Have I mentioned the awesomeness that is SteveF?”
Jeezum. But for sure, if we’re still alive when Barry Soetero checks out, and if by some odd chance they bury his narrow ass next to Pharaoh Roosevelt II, I will certainly look you up so we can do that spray thang. The Prophet Barack Hussein, many blessings be upon his name, will more likely be buried at Mecca. Well, either that, or next to Lenin in Moscow. Tough choice. Maybe the Mooch will just have him cremated and his ashes scattered into the cabbage or carrot plot she’s got underway down there.
I just wish they’d hurry up and bury him. Where doesn’t matter.
Lynn wrote:
“To a guy, the whole world is a toilet. Of course, the wife has mentioned that if I say this one more time to her that she is …”
The whole world is our urinal. Women are just, ah, PEEved that they have to sit down to have a slash. Well, most of them do. 🙂