Saturday, 16 March 2013

By on March 16th, 2013 in Barbara, science kits

09:37 – Barbara’s out working in the yard, I’m doing laundry, and Colin is whining to go out and play. A typical Saturday. We haven’t had many of those recently. But now things seem to have settled down with Barbara’s parents, which is exactly what she needed.

My vendor acknowledged the PO I sent yesterday. Unfortunately, two of the items were backordered. One of them, the 96-well plate, is out of stock permanently. They’re out and don’t intend to get more. That’s not a big problem. I can order those elsewhere. The worrisome one is the deep cavity slides. I ordered $600+ worth of those, and they’re backordered until May 15th. No one else carries those, unless I want to order directly from the factory in China. That’s a can of worms I’d rather not open.


17 Comments and discussion on "Saturday, 16 March 2013"

  1. CowboySlim says:

    LA Times article regarding Archdiocese of LA petioning for change of venue of civil trials against the church for its role in harboring pedarasts. They are not looking toward the PA locale where Sandusky was convicted, but SLO cty which is 200 miles to the NW.

    Side note: Previous settlements have wiped out insurance company shares of liability. The next multi-millions will come from parishoner contributions.

  2. Matt Harting says:

    My wife sent me this link of a video where an engineer created a device where a dog could play fetch by himself. I thought this might inspire you to make something similar for Colin. It is a Facebook link but you can see it without being logged in to Facebook or having a Facebook account.

    What happens when an engineer owns a dog

  3. dkreck says:

    Well they start with the cemetery care fund.

    According to the 2012 report, the archdiocese in October 2007 appropriated $144,986,000 from the perpetual care fund “for purposes of funding the global settlement reached in July 2007 related to the lawsuits for claims of sexual misconduct by certain individuals.” The report stated the archdiocese intended to replenish those funds through future cemetery sales of graves, crypts and niches, though not until “all liabilities associated with the [2007 global settlement] lawsuits … are paid off.”

    http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/sex-abuse-settlements-spur-scrutiny-los-angeles-funds

  4. CowboySlim says:

    That is just kicking the can around. Many big city morgues are overfilled now with stiffs out in the corridors. Check the gun control domain of Rahm Emmanual. LA morgue also suffering backlog.

    Personal note: We are prepaid with Neptune Society and are OK as long as Air Quality Control Board doesn’t keep me from getting fired up! Also told my daughter not to let the mortician keep my gold crowns.

  5. Chuck W says:

    After some upgrade disappointments back in early 2009, I finally upgraded Rockbox—the open-source player software—on my iPod. The Rockbox crew has moved everything to an automatic installer, so there is no more heart-stopping manual flashing the drive to get it to boot to Rockbox, and all installations and upgrades are now handled completely by the installer—no more downloading to the computer, unzipping, then copying over to the iPod, making sure to get all the folders correctly placed. There is nothing manual to do anymore—it even identifies what player you have, and retrieves the proper files automatically. Nice work.

    They successfully reverse engineered the USB connection on my iPod 5th generation, so the transfers are now darned near instantaneous. The only two drawbacks are: that they now use their own interface for USB instead of the Apple one, which means that I no longer see when the battery is fully charged nor do I see the check-mark telling me the device has been successfully ejected; and the customized screen I created for playback will no longer work, because they changed some of the protocols.

    The whole reason I upgraded was because the iPod locked up solid when I tried to play some FLAC files on it last week. Upgrading seemed like the simplest fix if it would work—and it did. The transfers are now at least 3 times faster, if not more—the difference between USB 1 and USB 2.

    There have been a lot of improvements since my last upgrade. The sound is just super coming out of that thing—and it really was not all that bad before. The equalizer has more settings on it, and works like a champ. What is really mind-blowing to me, is that consumer-grade equipment now sounds considerably better than pro radio/TV station equipment used when I first started in the industry.

    Radio stations around my area have been upgrading equipment to digital processing since I returned a few years ago, and the sound quality of music from them is just vibrant these days; this Rockbox upgrade likewise is a noticeable improvement in sound quality. Amazing how it is software programming that improves things these days—no real need to buy new hardware; things are bettered strictly through software changes.

    So the upgraded Rockbox is working fine. I won’t be going back to a previous version, although I do hope they figure out how to tell me when the battery is fully charged. Meanwhile, I have to look over the personalization file for the display to determine what needs to be changed.

    If you are wondering whether Rockbox would be useful to you (works on a limited number of players), it really depends on how much you use a portable player. Rockbox allows any unit to be seen by a computer as an external drive. You see everything, including the root drive. You can use the computer to arrange your file structure and do transfers; there is no secret switching of file names to database-driven naming like Apple and some others require; Rockbox supports lots of file formats, not just MP3 or WAV (and that has become more and more important, as we are investigating switching to lossless FLAC at the radio project and the FLAC support helps my evaluation); and finally, ID tags for all supported formats just work. I use audio more intensely than most people, and Rockbox makes transfers a breeze with no conversions or renaming necessary. And no iTunes necessary, either. My iPod is also part of the backup of my personal music library. Rockbox makes my life a lot easier.

  6. brad says:

    Here’s a question for Chuck. This is something I’ve noticed before, but have no definite explanation for. We were watching the final in a casting show last night. When the singers were performing, I had the feeling that my ears were stuffed with cotton, i.e., that I wasn’t hearing the singers very well. It wasn’t a volume problem – the sound was loud enough.

    It seems likely to be some sort of mixing problem. The singers’ voices too soft compared to the music? Too little dynamic range? It’s something that I almost always notice, when listening to performances on Swiss TV, but not otherwise when listening to music.

    Any ideas what they’re doing weirdly?

  7. Miles_Teg says:

    Did anyone else notice this?

  8. brad says:

    Within the family, I seem to be the only one that it bothers. I can’t really say if anyone else notices it, because I find it really hard to describe. Just an urge to crank up the volume, even though it really is already loud enough.

  9. Chuck W says:

    Well, that link does not work for me—not sure why not. There are a ton of links on You Tube for that show, but none for the full-length complete show. I have listened to what I think is all of the individual performances on the You Tube site. Actually, I do not detect much of significance in the mix problem you are having. I am assuming it was a solo act. The only two I have a problem with were Iris Moné’s “The Lie” and Nicole Bernegger’s “No Matter”. When Iris sang in a lower register, she was a bit low in the mix; so was Nicole during the entire song—but not terribly so. Probably forgivable in a live show, as it is really easy to screw up a mix by varying levels during the live show, which ordinarily WOULD be done in a post-production mix. These days, you fine-tune a mix in rehearsal, then save that preset for the live show, hit that preset before they sing during live, and just sit back and don’t screw up.

    Three things come to mind. One, you may not have the right EQ on the television to hear sibilance sounds, which are absolutely crucial to understanding Western languages; you may have more sensitive than normal hearing and little things bother you; or you may have a hearing deficiency in the range of the human voice—which is not all that uncommon. Human speech is between about 400 and 1200hz and singing can go up to about 4000hz. I have a dip in hearing from around 800 to 1000hz in my left ear, which was caused by having an intercom headset against it during probably 50,000 hours of directing TV shows. That has caused some hearing loss in my left ear at the tinny, limited frequencies those intercoms reproduce. Both of my ears have a dip at 15,000hz, which is the horizontal frequency rate of TV monitors. Decades of sitting in a control room filled with more than a dozen 15khz screamers has made my ears numb to that frequency. My hearing then responds again up to about 22khz, although that is lowering with age. I could once detect the presence of sounds up to about 35khz, but never could actually ‘hear’ them. But that ability too is now gone.

    Now you may have more sensitive than normal ears, and little things bother you that others do not even hear. In spite of the fact that my hearing is not as good as average, I do seem to have hearing that can discern more than the average person hears. But that is likely due to years of exposure and training to hear nuances that others miss.

    That live Swiss television performance likely has harmonic overtones that are missing at higher frequencies, as they used radio mics, which are notorious for being bad for singing; they used nothing BUT radio mics on that show. Linda Ronstadt has refused to use radio mics for her entire singing career, because she realizes they destroy the subtleties of her voice.

    I will admit that it sounds as if the vocal mix relative to the orchestra, was dictated by the loudest the singers reached, and when they sang lower in volume, there was no manual process to raise their level to keep the relative difference the same. In those portions, they probably relied on mic ‘channel strips’ to do the adjusting through active compression and limiting. Almost all voices you hear these days are processed before they reach you—whether singing or speaking. Humans do not really have voices that are as full as you hear. Some music recording studios put in ‘modulator/exciters’ which generate harmonics synthetically, to make certain voices stand out. Mariah Carey has a reputation of not sounding as good in live performance as in studio albums, and that is likely due to the beefing up of her voice in the studio. Carey has been caught lip-syncing to recordings in live performances. On the other end of the spectrum, Janis Joplin had a voice that has been measured as harmonic laden, with no need of synthesized enhancement.

    Americans are the best at sound mixing. Not sure why, really. But I have worked on projects in Europe, and we brought our own sound people across the pond, because the foreigners were just not up to our standards. Even mixing on the BBC World Service shows absolutely and positively stinks. Compare podcasts of their stuff with NPR- and APR-originated material, and the difference is truly noticeable and dramatic. I have been scared out of my wits by a music piece suddenly blasting into my earbuds after a long stretch of talk on BBC Business Daily. People sitting next to me on the Berlin transit probably thought I was nuts, practically jumping out of my seat. But music should generally be at least 2db lower than compressed speech (more if there is no compression on the voice channel)—NEVER louder as the World Service frequently does.

    If no one else has the same problem you do, I’m afraid the answer points to hearing—either more or less sensitive than theirs. Almost everyone in my field suffers from hearing loss. It is quite usual for people working in sound studios every day, to have quite a bit of hearing loss, because sound folks listen at what most of us consider extraordinarily loud levels, so they can ‘hear’ everything in the sound track, including room ambiance, which is not even noticeable until you get to excessively loud sound levels.

    But at the least, start by adjusting the tone controls on your TV to hear more of the upper frequency ranges, so you can clearly hear sibilance sounds.

    I would never have picked Nicole as the winner for that contest. Afraid my vote would go to Iris. Nicole did only covers of others’ songs, and she did not do as good a job as the originals. She never came close to Etta James’ on “At Last”. We play lots of covers on the radio project, but they have to have something that distinguishes them from attempting to be an exact copy of the original. For a while, an Israeli/California girl Sara Lov was doing really creative and distinctive covers of a broad range of music. But not Nicole.

    Now that girl Iris had a distinctive voice, expressive delivery, energy, and good songs to sing. Maybe she sounded too Italian to be ‘the voice of Switzerland’, but winner Nicole would have been at the bottom of my list. My number two would have been Angie Ott, and number three Sarah Quartetto—even though she pronounces “I” and “Ah” while the rest of her English is a flawless American accent.

  10. SteveF says:

    you may have a hearing deficiency in the range of the human voice—which is not all that uncommon

    Especially among married men for the upper range of human voices.

  11. OFD says:

    Another person who lives in this house seems to think I am hahd of hearing.

    If true, this would be no surprise, after decades of live rock concerts, small arms fire, explosions and street cop stuff, followed by more decades inside data centers, yea unto the present day.

    Amazing, really, that I hear anything at all from that other person who lives here.

  12. SteveF says:

    I, too, have some hearing loss from gunfire, being caught in artillery, music that was probably louder than it needed to be, and aging. And, of course, over-exposure to female voices which never fuckin’ stop talking.

    Ahem.

    Actually, my hearing is still on the upper end for human beings regardless of age — it was phenomenal when I was younger. There are a couple of gaps or notches or whatever you call them. Alas, none match my wife’s voice.

  13. Chuck W says:

    Hmm. In addition to this site being really slow for the last week, now I cannot even edit my own comment. Very weird.

    Speaking of music and mixes, here’s the most creative song I have heard in a long time.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zaiFMzy4o0

    From a London group headed by lead singer Jody Gadsden, who has a very unusual voice and style on all of his songs. Came out 7 months ago in Europe and played heavily by BBC2; just released a few weeks ago in the US. As far as I know, no one in the US is playing it, except us at the radio project. This is the kind of creativity that came out a couple times every week back in the ’60’s. Nowadays, everything sounds the same.

  14. OFD says:

    “…over-exposure to female voices which never fuckin’ stop talking.”

    Some years ago we (family plus MIL) were enroute to someplace on the Maine coast and at a motel or something; I was inside reading the paper while son was watching the tee-vee and the hens were all out front yakking with some other hens they’d just met. This went on for quite a while, and eventually sonny, about twelve then, got bored and leaned out the door and said “Is that all you guys do is just talk all day?” I about fell over on the floor laughing.

    He’d also heard me more than once replying to wife’s “I’ll be right back” as she was leaving for some minor errand with “Yeah, see ya in a few hours.” Yesterday we were down at his place in lovely South Royalton, VT, home of Vermont Law School. He’s twenty-seven now with two kids of his own, and his wife was leaving to get a few things at the store and told him she’d be right back. You can guess his response.

  15. Miles_Teg says:

    Mum often complained that she’d say stuff and it didn’t register on me. And it didn’t. I had no memory of her saying stuff to me and she’d have to start from scratch.

  16. brad says:

    Chuck, thanks for your thoughts.

    The problem is not specifically the TV, because I notice the same effect on my computer with headphones. I suppose both could be off in the upper frequencies, but our TV in particular is set up through good quality equipment.

    Your idea with the radio mikes makes a lot of sense though! This is something I always notice with music performances on Swiss TV, and Swiss TV always uses radio mikes. I’ll watch for this in the future, in particular outside of Swiss TV, and see if I can confirm the pattern.

    Hearing is definitely the other alternative. I certainly don’t hear higher frequencies any more, which could affect the sibilance, but I hadn’t thought about hearing loss at lower, specific frequencies. Could be. Probably I should go in for a hearing test.

    It’s really interesting to hear your views as a professional in the area. Nicole has a distinctive voice, and won a lot of sympathy points for going through the competition 7 or 8 months pregnant (the final winner was chosen by public vote, at $0.80 per SMS). Iris has a really good stage presence – she is already a semi-professional musician who performs regularly. The two blond girls, Sarah and Angie, both do really excellent piano/singing performances (seen in the earlier rounds). Add to that being very pretty, and they could do well as solo entertainers at events and high-class restaurants. I don’t think either is going to make it on a big stage, as they seem to lack the necessary energy level. But success often involves luck as much as talent, so one never knows…

    Regarding the voice processing, yes, it’s really clear that the voices are processed. On this particular show, they showed clips of the performers rehearsing, and their voices sounded quite “ordinary” in comparison to the final performance. The difference is really quite remarkable!

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