Like everything on the internet, YouTube has some crap, and some great, funny and well done stuff. One recently viewed example is that all of the Super Bowl commercials are on YouTube, as well as lots of other clips of this and that, and even some other stuff. Whatever you want, even soft porn, and dumbass guys doing stupid things.
For a place to start, click on the tab at the top marked "Videos", then on the menu selection for "Most Popular".
I just watched one for "Japanese Train Loaders". Guys who shove people into the trains before they close the doors.
Here is another example of why I like YouTube:
Reporters Blow Whistle on FOX News
The truth is out there. We just have to find it. And the internet makes that a bit easier. Stuff like this is why "they" are always warning us about the dangers of the internet. "Dangers" indeed -- the truth always hurts. The people with an agenda hate that so many people have video cameras and cell phone cameras, and an internet connection.
As a historian, all I ever want to find is what really happened. Every time I get going on research on just about any subject, I soon learn that it is usually one person's personal agenda that drives any particular event, throughout history. And everyone around them either agrees with that agenda, or goes along in the interest of avoiding confrontation, or keeping their job. Peel away the layers of history, and it's always about money and power. "You will do what I want you to do, because I think it's a good idea."
Conservatives want to limit your choices to what they think is good and right. Liberals want to offer you so many choices that nothing gets done, because in life's choices, nothing is easy.
The best we can ever hope to do is EDUCATE OURSELVES, make the decision and hope for the best. My favorite defense comes from Steve McQueen when he said in The Magnificent Seven, "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Friday, October 09, 2009
Back To Railroad
Now that my tunes are all in good shape, it's time to get back to working on the railroad (history).
While working on a locomotive roster of Oregon Short Line & Utah Northern Railway, which operated throughout Utah from 1889-1897, I realized that OSL&UN's predecessor roads were a bit scattered all across my web site. So I created a separate web page for each. An index is on the main Utah Railroads index page, under the heading "Union Pacific Controlled Railroads" since by 1881, almost all had come under the control of Union Pacific.
The timeline for each of these railroads was included as part of the chronology of UP in Utah, and I decided to present each road as its own page, rather than maintining duplicate entries. Using hyperlinks between pages is one of the major benefits of web pages over publishing to paper, allowing the reader to move back and forth by clicking on a link.
While working on a locomotive roster of Oregon Short Line & Utah Northern Railway, which operated throughout Utah from 1889-1897, I realized that OSL&UN's predecessor roads were a bit scattered all across my web site. So I created a separate web page for each. An index is on the main Utah Railroads index page, under the heading "Union Pacific Controlled Railroads" since by 1881, almost all had come under the control of Union Pacific.
The timeline for each of these railroads was included as part of the chronology of UP in Utah, and I decided to present each road as its own page, rather than maintining duplicate entries. Using hyperlinks between pages is one of the major benefits of web pages over publishing to paper, allowing the reader to move back and forth by clicking on a link.
Saturday, August 08, 2009
Getting Good At Album Art
I recently realized that my digital music collection was in a sorry state. Scattered here, there, and wherever. Album art was scattered even worse. Some research helped me better understand MP3 tags, and what goes in and what stays out. Apple's crosstalk (or lack thereof) between Mac and PC computers that caused the scrambling of the iTunes catalog data still hurts, so I'll be keeping their "helpful" management at arm's length.
I have resolved to make my music as future proof as possible. It's all in a single Library folder with hundreds of subfolders, named for the artists or the movie title for the soundtracks. The Library folder is completely away from iTunes, and I don't use that silly, silly "Compilations" folder. The music is all in MP3 format.
I've read lots of remarks about the reduced quality of MP3 versus the many, many other uncompressed formats ("My format's better than your format."), but I have yet to detect any difference between an MP3 and an uncompressed version. I guess I remember too well the sound quality of cassettes. MP3 songs are great! On the plus side, using MP3s allows me to embed the album art. I like the album art because I don't like the generic music note that Apple uses.
Don't let iTunes "Find Album Art." I gave it a one-time try, but its choices were remarkably silly for about a third of the songs. I guess I'm not mainstream enough in my music choices.
I have owned hundreds of vinyl albums since the early 1970s. I kept a few after the big sell off about eight years ago, and I have now digitized them, along with several audio books on cassettes. All of the digitized albums and cassettes are kept as uncompressed WAV files, along with matching album art that I have photographed with a digital camera and a copy stand, with full bright sunlight as the light source. Others I scanned using Photoshop. These albums have never been offered on CD, and include the one-man Broadway shows of Hal Holbrook's "Mark Twain Tonight", and James Whitmore's "Give 'em Hell Harry", along with Mancini's soundtrack for "The Hawaiians", Roger Miller's "Waterhole No. 3" ballad and soundtrack, and the soundtrack from "Vanishing Point". The rare stuff also includes the 1972 Warner Brothers 50th Anniversary, three-disk set of movie dialogue, along with several old radio programs on cassette. [Vanishing Point October 2009 update: less than a year ago, both a CD of the soundtrack and a DVD of the movie became available on Amazon.]
I still use iTunes because the user interface is the best I've tried (and I've tried several since the Crash of Late May). With everything as an MP3 file, iTunes' sticky fingers are kept at bay. It does a real nice job at embedding the song information, and the player is very easy to use. Just don't let iTunes manage your music collection.
iTunes completely lost all of my trust when I connected my Mac-formatted iPod to the new Dell PC for the first time. Instead of asking to reformat the iPod, which is what I expected, some kind of glitch made iTunes scramble of the iTunes music catalog data. I ended up with over 3900 songs with truncated titles and no other information. Since I had already moved all the music to the new Library folder, and arranged the subfolder names by artist and album (or by movie name for the soundtracks), the only saving grace was that the location was still in iTunes' Summary tab. So if anyone wonders what I've been doing throughout June and July, there you go. Three words: music collection recovery.
The basics: as of today there are over 600 albums and over 7500 songs, and it takes 38GB of hard drive space. The music is all MP3s, including the 44 DRM-protected songs purchased from the iTunes store that I have since converted to MP3s. Some are in Apple's AAC format, but they are slowly being converted to MP3s.
I use a combination of dbPoweramp and MediaMonkey and TagTuner to edit the MP3 tags. dbPoweramp is great at viewing all the tags, allowing me to simply delete the iTunes proprietary tags. MediaMonkey is great at showing me what album art is already embedded, including those crappy little 75x75 and 200x200 thingys that Windows Media Player stuffs in the MP3s. I have removed all links to Windows Media Player, and to keep the hidden versions of WMP out of my stuff, and those crappy images out of my MP3s, I use Quicktime as my single-song player.
The album art is being kept in a separate "Album Covers" folder in the Pictures system folder. The original images are archived as TIF files in a separate subfolder. The album art is in the form of 500x500 JPGs embedded in the MP3s. For songs with embedded images smaller than 500x500, I use MediaMonkey to grab the image and save it to the separate album art folder. I then open it in Photoshop, save it as an uncompressed TIF and adjust the canvas size to be square. I'm getting good at using Photoshop to fill in the backgrounds of the now-square image, and using layers, background colors, the clone brush, and the healing brush.
After making the image square, I adjust the resolution to be at least 96 pixels/inch (I scan my own at 300 pixels/inch), then let PS up-sample it to 500x500, then do a single unsharp mask filter, and resave it as a JPG. That's what then gets embedded. For missing album art, I'm having pretty good luck at finding album art on the web, and adjusting the image to match my criteria.
Because so many have shared their own album art images on the world wide web, allowing me to use them for my collection, I want to give back, and share my album art via Picasa (the collection is split due to Picasa's 500 image limit).
Album Art A-L
Album Art M-Z
To give back to one of my sources, I have already shared several on Amazon.
I have resolved to make my music as future proof as possible. It's all in a single Library folder with hundreds of subfolders, named for the artists or the movie title for the soundtracks. The Library folder is completely away from iTunes, and I don't use that silly, silly "Compilations" folder. The music is all in MP3 format.
I've read lots of remarks about the reduced quality of MP3 versus the many, many other uncompressed formats ("My format's better than your format."), but I have yet to detect any difference between an MP3 and an uncompressed version. I guess I remember too well the sound quality of cassettes. MP3 songs are great! On the plus side, using MP3s allows me to embed the album art. I like the album art because I don't like the generic music note that Apple uses.
Don't let iTunes "Find Album Art." I gave it a one-time try, but its choices were remarkably silly for about a third of the songs. I guess I'm not mainstream enough in my music choices.
I have owned hundreds of vinyl albums since the early 1970s. I kept a few after the big sell off about eight years ago, and I have now digitized them, along with several audio books on cassettes. All of the digitized albums and cassettes are kept as uncompressed WAV files, along with matching album art that I have photographed with a digital camera and a copy stand, with full bright sunlight as the light source. Others I scanned using Photoshop. These albums have never been offered on CD, and include the one-man Broadway shows of Hal Holbrook's "Mark Twain Tonight", and James Whitmore's "Give 'em Hell Harry", along with Mancini's soundtrack for "The Hawaiians", Roger Miller's "Waterhole No. 3" ballad and soundtrack, and the soundtrack from "Vanishing Point". The rare stuff also includes the 1972 Warner Brothers 50th Anniversary, three-disk set of movie dialogue, along with several old radio programs on cassette. [Vanishing Point October 2009 update: less than a year ago, both a CD of the soundtrack and a DVD of the movie became available on Amazon.]
I still use iTunes because the user interface is the best I've tried (and I've tried several since the Crash of Late May). With everything as an MP3 file, iTunes' sticky fingers are kept at bay. It does a real nice job at embedding the song information, and the player is very easy to use. Just don't let iTunes manage your music collection.
iTunes completely lost all of my trust when I connected my Mac-formatted iPod to the new Dell PC for the first time. Instead of asking to reformat the iPod, which is what I expected, some kind of glitch made iTunes scramble of the iTunes music catalog data. I ended up with over 3900 songs with truncated titles and no other information. Since I had already moved all the music to the new Library folder, and arranged the subfolder names by artist and album (or by movie name for the soundtracks), the only saving grace was that the location was still in iTunes' Summary tab. So if anyone wonders what I've been doing throughout June and July, there you go. Three words: music collection recovery.
The basics: as of today there are over 600 albums and over 7500 songs, and it takes 38GB of hard drive space. The music is all MP3s, including the 44 DRM-protected songs purchased from the iTunes store that I have since converted to MP3s. Some are in Apple's AAC format, but they are slowly being converted to MP3s.
I use a combination of dbPoweramp and MediaMonkey and TagTuner to edit the MP3 tags. dbPoweramp is great at viewing all the tags, allowing me to simply delete the iTunes proprietary tags. MediaMonkey is great at showing me what album art is already embedded, including those crappy little 75x75 and 200x200 thingys that Windows Media Player stuffs in the MP3s. I have removed all links to Windows Media Player, and to keep the hidden versions of WMP out of my stuff, and those crappy images out of my MP3s, I use Quicktime as my single-song player.
The album art is being kept in a separate "Album Covers" folder in the Pictures system folder. The original images are archived as TIF files in a separate subfolder. The album art is in the form of 500x500 JPGs embedded in the MP3s. For songs with embedded images smaller than 500x500, I use MediaMonkey to grab the image and save it to the separate album art folder. I then open it in Photoshop, save it as an uncompressed TIF and adjust the canvas size to be square. I'm getting good at using Photoshop to fill in the backgrounds of the now-square image, and using layers, background colors, the clone brush, and the healing brush.
After making the image square, I adjust the resolution to be at least 96 pixels/inch (I scan my own at 300 pixels/inch), then let PS up-sample it to 500x500, then do a single unsharp mask filter, and resave it as a JPG. That's what then gets embedded. For missing album art, I'm having pretty good luck at finding album art on the web, and adjusting the image to match my criteria.
Because so many have shared their own album art images on the world wide web, allowing me to use them for my collection, I want to give back, and share my album art via Picasa (the collection is split due to Picasa's 500 image limit).
Album Art A-L
Album Art M-Z
To give back to one of my sources, I have already shared several on Amazon.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
My Lost CD Drive
The newest development in my trip along this road to digital nirvana is that Apple has screwed it all up with iTunes 8 for Windows.
There is a bug that kills your computer's CD drive when iTunes 8 is loaded. I get a kick out of those funny-ha-ha Apple ads criticizing PCs for regular crashes, when in this case it is Apple and their inability to write and test PC software that are at fault.
This is all really silly since there are a lot more PCs running iTunes than there will ever be Macs running iTunes.
There are lots and lots of exchanges on various tech support message boards about whose fault it is: Apple's, Gear Software's, or Microsoft's, and this has been going for almost a year. While these three companies, their fans, and tech support teams are busy pointing their fingers at each other, their customers are left without either a usable CD drive, or at minimum, not being able to burn a CD from iTunes.
My version of the problem came when I upgraded from an OEM version of Vista x64 Home Premium to a full retail version of Vista x64 Ultimate.
After the upgrade I reinstalled iTunes, at which time the DVD/CD drive disappeared. Like several others in many other threads on many tech sites, I thought it was a DVD/CD drive problem. More research narrowed it down to an iTunes 8 problem, and the way that Apple chooses to implement the GEARAspiWDM driver furnished by Gear Software.
After spending several hours tweaking, deleting, and reinstalling, I decided to live without burning CDs in iTunes. I had reinstalled iTunes too many times to count, but as a last-ditch effort, decided to try their "Run diagnostics" routine. I found that iTunes thinks I am not an administrator, which is wrong. So for convenience, I created a new desktop/start menu shortcut to "Run as administrator" and which points directly to the itunes.exe file, which neither the Desktop or Start Menu icons created by Apple are able to do.
Running iTunes as an administrator seems to have fixed the problem. Several reboots and checks for a disappearing CD drive confirms this, as long as I use the new "Run as administrator" shortcut. I have to "allow" in UAC, and iTunes says I am running it in compatibility mode for an older version of Windows, which I am not. But iTunes is working, the CD drive is showing, and I am able to burn CDs in iTunes and in all the other programs. This crappy software "update" from Apple is making MediaMonkey look better every day.
ZDNet's Ed Bott's article
ZDNet's Adrian Kingsley-Hughes' article
Apple's article
Gear Software's article
Microsoft's article
There is a bug that kills your computer's CD drive when iTunes 8 is loaded. I get a kick out of those funny-ha-ha Apple ads criticizing PCs for regular crashes, when in this case it is Apple and their inability to write and test PC software that are at fault.
This is all really silly since there are a lot more PCs running iTunes than there will ever be Macs running iTunes.
There are lots and lots of exchanges on various tech support message boards about whose fault it is: Apple's, Gear Software's, or Microsoft's, and this has been going for almost a year. While these three companies, their fans, and tech support teams are busy pointing their fingers at each other, their customers are left without either a usable CD drive, or at minimum, not being able to burn a CD from iTunes.
My version of the problem came when I upgraded from an OEM version of Vista x64 Home Premium to a full retail version of Vista x64 Ultimate.
After the upgrade I reinstalled iTunes, at which time the DVD/CD drive disappeared. Like several others in many other threads on many tech sites, I thought it was a DVD/CD drive problem. More research narrowed it down to an iTunes 8 problem, and the way that Apple chooses to implement the GEARAspiWDM driver furnished by Gear Software.
After spending several hours tweaking, deleting, and reinstalling, I decided to live without burning CDs in iTunes. I had reinstalled iTunes too many times to count, but as a last-ditch effort, decided to try their "Run diagnostics" routine. I found that iTunes thinks I am not an administrator, which is wrong. So for convenience, I created a new desktop/start menu shortcut to "Run as administrator" and which points directly to the itunes.exe file, which neither the Desktop or Start Menu icons created by Apple are able to do.
Running iTunes as an administrator seems to have fixed the problem. Several reboots and checks for a disappearing CD drive confirms this, as long as I use the new "Run as administrator" shortcut. I have to "allow" in UAC, and iTunes says I am running it in compatibility mode for an older version of Windows, which I am not. But iTunes is working, the CD drive is showing, and I am able to burn CDs in iTunes and in all the other programs. This crappy software "update" from Apple is making MediaMonkey look better every day.
ZDNet's Ed Bott's article
ZDNet's Adrian Kingsley-Hughes' article
Apple's article
Gear Software's article
Microsoft's article
My Audio Life
It all started with my brother's return from his Viet Nam experience in 1969 with a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Along with the reel-to-reel recorder, the setup included an amp and a couple big-bass floor-speakers. We spent time recording our (mostly his) vinyl collection, recording songs from the radio, and listening to music. Loud music, mostly surf music, such as The Ventures and other guitars-and-drums groups of the 1960s.
I bought my own setup within the year which included a Pioneer amp, a Garrard turntable, a Sony cassette player that auto-reversed (cool stuff in those days), and two big Pioneer speakers that are, almost 40 years later, still mounted up high on my walls.
Music has remained a part of my life ever since, through all the various moves and upgrades. Components have come and gone, and the current component setup uses those same big Pioneer speakers, plus a couple great sounding book shelf speakers at the other end of the room, and a AIWA combination CD/cassette player, together with what was literally hundreds of CDs and vinyl albums. That was until I purchased my first iPod in late 2005, which forced me to rethink of my audio life, with my computer becoming the focal point.
I soon began loading the vinyl albums and CDs into iTunes, and scanning my own album art. Within a short period I filled the 30GB iPod. A concurrent review of the vinyl and CD collection revealed several that were not really keepers, and several that were one-trick ponies with a single song being the reason for the original purchase. While keeping a realistic collection of vinyl and CDs, a local used-CD store bought the rest at a fair price, and I walked out with enough cash to buy a new 80GB iPod, which as I write this, is still only half filled with over 6000 songs.
Until it died, the iMac had been kept just for the tunes, connected to a set of Bose Companion 5 speakers. The combination of iTunes and the Bose speakers, along with the iMac (now replaced by the Dell PC) is essentially a great stereo, with edit capability, with more music readily available from several on-line sources including iTunes, Amazon, Jamendo, Last.fm, or whatever else strikes my fancy.
I can still crank up the volume and feel the music. The sound is so great that I haven't had my four-speaker component stereo even powered-on for over a year. And I can pick and choose the songs I want on iTunes, by artist, by album, by date added, by least played, by title, or completely random.
I use iTunes, but to be fair, a couple days ago I tried Zune, having noticed the recommendation given it by the newest Maximum PC magazine. It took Zune well over two hours to import the 6500 songs in the music collection, and after trying to use it to play particular songs, I think I'll stay with iTunes. I don't much care for Zune's look and feel. I have also tried using Windows Media Player, and MediaMonkey (which I like a lot).
The recent iTunes 8 for Windows update is giving me pause about continued use of Apple's product, and replacing it with MediaMonkey. I only need to figure out how to keep using my iPod as the portable player. With the silliness of Windows Media Player's whole "folder.jpg" and "AlbumSmallArt.jpg" thing, versus embedding the album art as part of the MP3 files, I know that I'm staying as far away from Windows Media Player as possible.
I bought my own setup within the year which included a Pioneer amp, a Garrard turntable, a Sony cassette player that auto-reversed (cool stuff in those days), and two big Pioneer speakers that are, almost 40 years later, still mounted up high on my walls.
Music has remained a part of my life ever since, through all the various moves and upgrades. Components have come and gone, and the current component setup uses those same big Pioneer speakers, plus a couple great sounding book shelf speakers at the other end of the room, and a AIWA combination CD/cassette player, together with what was literally hundreds of CDs and vinyl albums. That was until I purchased my first iPod in late 2005, which forced me to rethink of my audio life, with my computer becoming the focal point.
I soon began loading the vinyl albums and CDs into iTunes, and scanning my own album art. Within a short period I filled the 30GB iPod. A concurrent review of the vinyl and CD collection revealed several that were not really keepers, and several that were one-trick ponies with a single song being the reason for the original purchase. While keeping a realistic collection of vinyl and CDs, a local used-CD store bought the rest at a fair price, and I walked out with enough cash to buy a new 80GB iPod, which as I write this, is still only half filled with over 6000 songs.
Until it died, the iMac had been kept just for the tunes, connected to a set of Bose Companion 5 speakers. The combination of iTunes and the Bose speakers, along with the iMac (now replaced by the Dell PC) is essentially a great stereo, with edit capability, with more music readily available from several on-line sources including iTunes, Amazon, Jamendo, Last.fm, or whatever else strikes my fancy.
I can still crank up the volume and feel the music. The sound is so great that I haven't had my four-speaker component stereo even powered-on for over a year. And I can pick and choose the songs I want on iTunes, by artist, by album, by date added, by least played, by title, or completely random.
I use iTunes, but to be fair, a couple days ago I tried Zune, having noticed the recommendation given it by the newest Maximum PC magazine. It took Zune well over two hours to import the 6500 songs in the music collection, and after trying to use it to play particular songs, I think I'll stay with iTunes. I don't much care for Zune's look and feel. I have also tried using Windows Media Player, and MediaMonkey (which I like a lot).
The recent iTunes 8 for Windows update is giving me pause about continued use of Apple's product, and replacing it with MediaMonkey. I only need to figure out how to keep using my iPod as the portable player. With the silliness of Windows Media Player's whole "folder.jpg" and "AlbumSmallArt.jpg" thing, versus embedding the album art as part of the MP3 files, I know that I'm staying as far away from Windows Media Player as possible.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Mac and Me, It's Over
The iMac has died.
I was out of town for a couple days in late May, for which I turned off power to the computers while I was away. Upon my return, and when I turned power back on to the iMac, all I got was a folder icon, with a question mark. A quick call to Applecare followed, and with their help we determined that the internal hard drive had died. As I have previously written about, all that was on the iMac was my music and sound collection, and I was doing a daily backup to two external hard drives, so I haven't lost anything.
Any sane person simply cannot be without music in their lives, so I purchased a Dell PC at my local Costco. I have previously owned a Dell, and this one is a nice rig. But there is still that nagging hesitation concerning the crappy, heavy accented tech support, and all the bloat that they add to their machines. This Dell rig has Windows Vista 64 bit Home Premium, with a 24-inch monitor.
Right off the top, within a couple hours of new, one of the cooling fans on the Dell kicked into high gear and tried to imitate a helicopter. Dell tech support was pretty unresponsive, as expected. A couple days later, FedEx delivered a box with two new fans and a new power supply. No note in the box, and still no email. There have been a couple phone messages, in which some guy mumbles something about Dell and what I think is his cell phone number, so I think the two might be related. Still no email, or easily understood phone call, so the new stuff sits on the floor, awaiting an uncertain fate. By the way, a review of the forums suggests that the random high speed cooling fan problem is common to several different Dell motherboards and firmware versions, and is easily fixed by a power off, power on cycle; so far, only twice in the one month of ownership, and only after the occasional warm boot. [Update after 90 days: the high speed fan problem has been in remission for the past couple months, so now the question is what to do the the new stuff in the box that Dell sent.]
Why another PC instead of simply fixing the iMac?
Simple answer: I like to tweak, and I have a pretty good idea of what I'm doing when I do it. I really, really don't like it that with the iMac I cannot simply open the case, unplug the hard drive and plug in a new one. Ten minutes to a fix, tops. I have always felt that the iMac ran a bit hot, with nothing more that vents on the bottom, and a long slot across the top, and no cooling fan. My own gut feeling is that since I never turned it off, and seldom rebooted, the poor hard drive simply cooked itself, and it died when it cooled down from the power being off.
Next task was how to get the music files from one of the Mac-formatted backups to the new Dell PC. The externals were hooked to the iMac by way of a couple Firewire 400 connections, which the Dell also has. A quick on-line search found MacDrive, a PC program that allows a PC to read a Mac-formatted drive. And it works great. I copied all the music files to the PC without a hitch.
Before loading iTunes, I took the opportunity to reorganize the Music folder to get them off and away from the iTunes folder. The sheme I now use is C:/Users/[me]/Music/Library. I lost about 30 bits of album art that I had previously let iTunes get for me, but I either found them elsewhere on the 'net, or rescanned them myself with Photoshop. To keep Apple's "helpful" fingers out of my stuff, especially that silly "Compilations" folder, when I loaded iTunes I unchecked the "Keep iTunes music folder organized". I have also decided that I'll keep the WAV and other source files separate and away from the iTunes library, using only MP3s for that purpose, which allows adding album art to the file itself.
For an editor, I reloaded CoolEdit, but Vista is a bit too fast for that nine-year-old program. So I tried the open source Audacity, the NCH suite (way too intrusive), and the nice Free Audio Editor, which looks a lot like Office 2007. FAE needs some more development work, but it is pretty good as it stands. After some consideration, and a trial period, I purchased Adobe Audition 3, which retains all the features of the old CoolEdit, plus some other bits. I especially like the ability to record a vinyl album as a single file, then use Audition's marker labels to split and save the different tracks into separate files.
As expected, due to the changes in Vista versus XP and the way each handles sound, Total Recorder doesn't play nice with the integrated sound on the Dell, so I installed a Soundblaster X-Fi Extreme Audio sound card.
[Update after 90 days] After numerous tries, Total Recorder still does not work as easily as I would prefer (too many senior moments in which I forget how I got it to work in the first place). Finally after reading numerous postings to various tech support groups, I decided to use the no-cost method of a miniplug patch cord between the speaker output on the Sound Blaster card, looping back to the card's microphone input plug. The fix works great, especially with the open source Audicity sound editing software. To use either Audition or Audicity, I have to disable the Bose Companion speakers since their USB connection seems to confuse all other sound programs. I then enable a set of speakers connected to the Soundblaster sound card, and it all works as needed. I use a Y-adapter cord that allows use of the single speaker output to both the speakers and the patch cord for the input plug.
When I'm done being creative, I disable the standard speakers, and enable the Bose speakers. (One small quirk: whatever sound application is running remembers which speakers are being used, no matter if they are disabled or enabled. So to change speakers, I need to shut the application down and restart it.)
For backups there are two external hard drives: a set of two Other World Computing (OWC MacSales, Inc.) 500GB Mercury Elite-AL Pro "Quad Interface" drives that allow any of the current connections (USB, FW400, FW800, eSATA) between the externals and the Dell PC. Although preformatted as Mac, they work just fine on a PC after being reformatted.
I tried a separate add-on expansion card with two eSATA connections, but there is a problem with the two drives powered on during a reboot. When I reboot with the drives powered on, the rig hangs at the RAID BIOS screen. Although I don't use RAID, the expansion card thinks I do. When I power the drives up after rebooting, they both show up in Explorer just fine. But I can't figure out how to update the expansion card's Tools/Driver/BIOS the way Silicon Image says I need to. So the connection will remain as USB until I can figure out the eSATA thing. [Update: The solution was to buy an SATA extension add-on that has two external eSATA ports connected direct to two empty SATA ports on the motherboard.]
As for fixing the iMac, since it was still on the original 3-year Applecare warranty, I let them replace the hard drive free of charge. I have since passed it on to a family member who really, really needs the tunes to help him get through his day.
I was out of town for a couple days in late May, for which I turned off power to the computers while I was away. Upon my return, and when I turned power back on to the iMac, all I got was a folder icon, with a question mark. A quick call to Applecare followed, and with their help we determined that the internal hard drive had died. As I have previously written about, all that was on the iMac was my music and sound collection, and I was doing a daily backup to two external hard drives, so I haven't lost anything.
Any sane person simply cannot be without music in their lives, so I purchased a Dell PC at my local Costco. I have previously owned a Dell, and this one is a nice rig. But there is still that nagging hesitation concerning the crappy, heavy accented tech support, and all the bloat that they add to their machines. This Dell rig has Windows Vista 64 bit Home Premium, with a 24-inch monitor.
Right off the top, within a couple hours of new, one of the cooling fans on the Dell kicked into high gear and tried to imitate a helicopter. Dell tech support was pretty unresponsive, as expected. A couple days later, FedEx delivered a box with two new fans and a new power supply. No note in the box, and still no email. There have been a couple phone messages, in which some guy mumbles something about Dell and what I think is his cell phone number, so I think the two might be related. Still no email, or easily understood phone call, so the new stuff sits on the floor, awaiting an uncertain fate. By the way, a review of the forums suggests that the random high speed cooling fan problem is common to several different Dell motherboards and firmware versions, and is easily fixed by a power off, power on cycle; so far, only twice in the one month of ownership, and only after the occasional warm boot. [Update after 90 days: the high speed fan problem has been in remission for the past couple months, so now the question is what to do the the new stuff in the box that Dell sent.]
Why another PC instead of simply fixing the iMac?
Simple answer: I like to tweak, and I have a pretty good idea of what I'm doing when I do it. I really, really don't like it that with the iMac I cannot simply open the case, unplug the hard drive and plug in a new one. Ten minutes to a fix, tops. I have always felt that the iMac ran a bit hot, with nothing more that vents on the bottom, and a long slot across the top, and no cooling fan. My own gut feeling is that since I never turned it off, and seldom rebooted, the poor hard drive simply cooked itself, and it died when it cooled down from the power being off.
Next task was how to get the music files from one of the Mac-formatted backups to the new Dell PC. The externals were hooked to the iMac by way of a couple Firewire 400 connections, which the Dell also has. A quick on-line search found MacDrive, a PC program that allows a PC to read a Mac-formatted drive. And it works great. I copied all the music files to the PC without a hitch.
Before loading iTunes, I took the opportunity to reorganize the Music folder to get them off and away from the iTunes folder. The sheme I now use is C:/Users/[me]/Music/Library. I lost about 30 bits of album art that I had previously let iTunes get for me, but I either found them elsewhere on the 'net, or rescanned them myself with Photoshop. To keep Apple's "helpful" fingers out of my stuff, especially that silly "Compilations" folder, when I loaded iTunes I unchecked the "Keep iTunes music folder organized". I have also decided that I'll keep the WAV and other source files separate and away from the iTunes library, using only MP3s for that purpose, which allows adding album art to the file itself.
For an editor, I reloaded CoolEdit, but Vista is a bit too fast for that nine-year-old program. So I tried the open source Audacity, the NCH suite (way too intrusive), and the nice Free Audio Editor, which looks a lot like Office 2007. FAE needs some more development work, but it is pretty good as it stands. After some consideration, and a trial period, I purchased Adobe Audition 3, which retains all the features of the old CoolEdit, plus some other bits. I especially like the ability to record a vinyl album as a single file, then use Audition's marker labels to split and save the different tracks into separate files.
As expected, due to the changes in Vista versus XP and the way each handles sound, Total Recorder doesn't play nice with the integrated sound on the Dell, so I installed a Soundblaster X-Fi Extreme Audio sound card.
[Update after 90 days] After numerous tries, Total Recorder still does not work as easily as I would prefer (too many senior moments in which I forget how I got it to work in the first place). Finally after reading numerous postings to various tech support groups, I decided to use the no-cost method of a miniplug patch cord between the speaker output on the Sound Blaster card, looping back to the card's microphone input plug. The fix works great, especially with the open source Audicity sound editing software. To use either Audition or Audicity, I have to disable the Bose Companion speakers since their USB connection seems to confuse all other sound programs. I then enable a set of speakers connected to the Soundblaster sound card, and it all works as needed. I use a Y-adapter cord that allows use of the single speaker output to both the speakers and the patch cord for the input plug.
When I'm done being creative, I disable the standard speakers, and enable the Bose speakers. (One small quirk: whatever sound application is running remembers which speakers are being used, no matter if they are disabled or enabled. So to change speakers, I need to shut the application down and restart it.)
For backups there are two external hard drives: a set of two Other World Computing (OWC MacSales, Inc.) 500GB Mercury Elite-AL Pro "Quad Interface" drives that allow any of the current connections (USB, FW400, FW800, eSATA) between the externals and the Dell PC. Although preformatted as Mac, they work just fine on a PC after being reformatted.
I tried a separate add-on expansion card with two eSATA connections, but there is a problem with the two drives powered on during a reboot. When I reboot with the drives powered on, the rig hangs at the RAID BIOS screen. Although I don't use RAID, the expansion card thinks I do. When I power the drives up after rebooting, they both show up in Explorer just fine. But I can't figure out how to update the expansion card's Tools/Driver/BIOS the way Silicon Image says I need to. So the connection will remain as USB until I can figure out the eSATA thing. [Update: The solution was to buy an SATA extension add-on that has two external eSATA ports connected direct to two empty SATA ports on the motherboard.]
As for fixing the iMac, since it was still on the original 3-year Applecare warranty, I let them replace the hard drive free of charge. I have since passed it on to a family member who really, really needs the tunes to help him get through his day.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Asking Questions
An anonymus stranger wrote in June 2006:
Jeff Cauthen wrote in June 2006:
I have been able to get an amazing variety of books through my local county library. It may take a while, but you, too, might be surprised as to what's available through interlibrary loan. At no charge, so the "limited income" argument has nothing to stand on.
But I can understand Jeff's frustration. I suspect the question asking for a detailed list of Cab Forwards that operated in northern California and southern Oregon was simply ill-considered about the depth and range of possible answers, but Jeff's words could have come from any of the 30+ authors that I know.
There are times that we authors get real tired of answering basic questions that we have all written about many times (kind of like a doctor being asked medical questions at a party). Why oh why don't people read the books and magazines they buy. By far, most railroad books are sold for the photographs, with most buyers simply flipping through a new book and putting it proudly on the shelf.
As for asking simple questions, it's a whole lot easier to simply tap a question on the computer keyboard, than it is to spend a couple hours reading various printed sources. A good comparison would be a conversation on a street corner, which is what I consider all of these discussion groups to be. Two people are talking, and one of them will ask the other a question.
I run a very large web site, with over 1500 pages. It has a "Contact Me" feature. Anyone would be amazed at the variety and range of questions that get thrown my way. Most are pretty senseless, like a recent one, "Can you tell me about my Grandfather Hector Holmes, who I think worked for a railroad in Colorado?" This to a web site that is clearly marked UtahRails.
But every now and again, a question comes in that makes it all worth while. Or, even better, an offer to send along some item of interest, such as an extended correspondence with the son of Martin Blomberg, a design engineer at Pullman-Standard, and later at EMC/EMD almost from Day One.
The good questions force me to think about what I may, or may not know. The good questions make it all worth while. I love doing research, and I enjoy sharing the results of my research, but please, do a little basic research before asking your question.
I cannot believe how mean spirited the responses to a simple question have been. Many of us (myself included) live on a limited income and cannot afford the spend $50.00 or more on books.
Jeff Cauthen wrote in June 2006:
I'm sick of this "limited income" crap. WE"RE all on limited incomes. Buy a book, it won't kill you!!
I have been able to get an amazing variety of books through my local county library. It may take a while, but you, too, might be surprised as to what's available through interlibrary loan. At no charge, so the "limited income" argument has nothing to stand on.
But I can understand Jeff's frustration. I suspect the question asking for a detailed list of Cab Forwards that operated in northern California and southern Oregon was simply ill-considered about the depth and range of possible answers, but Jeff's words could have come from any of the 30+ authors that I know.
There are times that we authors get real tired of answering basic questions that we have all written about many times (kind of like a doctor being asked medical questions at a party). Why oh why don't people read the books and magazines they buy. By far, most railroad books are sold for the photographs, with most buyers simply flipping through a new book and putting it proudly on the shelf.
As for asking simple questions, it's a whole lot easier to simply tap a question on the computer keyboard, than it is to spend a couple hours reading various printed sources. A good comparison would be a conversation on a street corner, which is what I consider all of these discussion groups to be. Two people are talking, and one of them will ask the other a question.
I run a very large web site, with over 1500 pages. It has a "Contact Me" feature. Anyone would be amazed at the variety and range of questions that get thrown my way. Most are pretty senseless, like a recent one, "Can you tell me about my Grandfather Hector Holmes, who I think worked for a railroad in Colorado?" This to a web site that is clearly marked UtahRails.
But every now and again, a question comes in that makes it all worth while. Or, even better, an offer to send along some item of interest, such as an extended correspondence with the son of Martin Blomberg, a design engineer at Pullman-Standard, and later at EMC/EMD almost from Day One.
The good questions force me to think about what I may, or may not know. The good questions make it all worth while. I love doing research, and I enjoy sharing the results of my research, but please, do a little basic research before asking your question.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
History and Web Sites Are Fragile
In June 2006, Ken Clark wrote:
In my recent visit to UP at Omaha, I was more than surprised to learn that UP themselves cannot access equipment records from the mid 1980s, and through to the time of my visit in 1995. It was during the mid 1980s that UP computerized their record keeping. I discussed this with several contacts within the company, and learned that they accept the new reality, along with the fact that if an employee did not print the report out, and keep it in his personal stash, the record is likely not available. Also, now that the ICC no longer exists, with its requirements for volumes and volumes of retained records, the railroads simply don't retain the depth and range of records that they did previously. Also, one of the "buried-in-the-minutiae" parts of the 1980 Staggers act was the reduction in reporting required by the railroads, and less reporting meant less records retention.
Ken continued:
When I realized just how fragile web sites are, I determined to generate web pages that conform to current standards of future compatibility. All my web pages are fully compliant with XHTML standards, meaning mostly that they are simple text with formatting being handled by separate style sheets. I use PHP server-side includes so that I don't need to worry about keeping the formatting of every page perfectly up to date. No glitz. Each and every page is all about just the content.
I'm a great believer in open source, public web sites, such as Wikipedia, the free on-line encyclopedia. They have over 200,000 articles, supposedly more than Encyclopedia Britannica and Encarta combined. For us railroaders, there is a remarkable range of railroad-related subjects. The editors take their (volunteer) jobs very seriously and strive to the most accurate information available. But their weakness is similar to any author's weakness; you can't use a source if you don't know of its existence.
The information at Wikipedia is always suspect, as is information in any printed source. But Wikipedia is fully editable by any registered user, with a full history shown of all changes. Wikipedia makes good use of peer review, much like academic research. Peer review is something our railroad writing could certainly use more of, but I have learned that there is a definite shortage of peers in the subjects I write about.
I determined years ago that railroad publishing to paper has a severe limitation. The potential market is astronomically small (1000 to 1500 books), therefore the economics of such a small market severely limit both the size and content of the published work, and the promotion and advertising of newly released, or still available, books. I figured this out at about the same time that Google became available as the web's premier search engine. From then on, I decided to make my research readily available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. The hard part, a difficulty also shared by commercial interests on the web, is to get the search engines to find your web site through a simple key word search.
My first Wiki edit was for Cooper bridge loadings. Some recent research about the weight limitations of the Salt Lake trestle brought a private email that mentioned the bridge loading standards known as Cooper loadings, with its axle loading standards, of which E-70 is an example. I did a search on Cooper loadings, along with the engineer who developed them, Theodore Cooper, and was a bit surprised that neither Google nor Wikipedia had any reference to this basic facet of railroad engineering. There is an article about Cooper, the man, but it makes no mention of the bridge loading standards named for him. Oh well, yet another subject to be researched and developed. Life goes on, and every work is a work in progress...
The problem is that the records are fast disappearing. Twenty five years ago we had a lot of records that were 25 years old, now we can't find or read files that are three years old.
In my recent visit to UP at Omaha, I was more than surprised to learn that UP themselves cannot access equipment records from the mid 1980s, and through to the time of my visit in 1995. It was during the mid 1980s that UP computerized their record keeping. I discussed this with several contacts within the company, and learned that they accept the new reality, along with the fact that if an employee did not print the report out, and keep it in his personal stash, the record is likely not available. Also, now that the ICC no longer exists, with its requirements for volumes and volumes of retained records, the railroads simply don't retain the depth and range of records that they did previously. Also, one of the "buried-in-the-minutiae" parts of the 1980 Staggers act was the reduction in reporting required by the railroads, and less reporting meant less records retention.
Ken continued:
One author who contacted me brought up a more troubling issue, that of the relative fragility of the web site. Many have not had the staying power of the hard bound volume. What happens upon the maintainer's death? or the internet host quits? Dead links abound. Will historical societies provide secure host space and maybe digital backups to ensure that the information is not lost? At this time I think the digital media has proven more fragile than the printed medium. It requires continual renewal onto current technology to avoid rapid obsolescence.
When I realized just how fragile web sites are, I determined to generate web pages that conform to current standards of future compatibility. All my web pages are fully compliant with XHTML standards, meaning mostly that they are simple text with formatting being handled by separate style sheets. I use PHP server-side includes so that I don't need to worry about keeping the formatting of every page perfectly up to date. No glitz. Each and every page is all about just the content.
I'm a great believer in open source, public web sites, such as Wikipedia, the free on-line encyclopedia. They have over 200,000 articles, supposedly more than Encyclopedia Britannica and Encarta combined. For us railroaders, there is a remarkable range of railroad-related subjects. The editors take their (volunteer) jobs very seriously and strive to the most accurate information available. But their weakness is similar to any author's weakness; you can't use a source if you don't know of its existence.
The information at Wikipedia is always suspect, as is information in any printed source. But Wikipedia is fully editable by any registered user, with a full history shown of all changes. Wikipedia makes good use of peer review, much like academic research. Peer review is something our railroad writing could certainly use more of, but I have learned that there is a definite shortage of peers in the subjects I write about.
I determined years ago that railroad publishing to paper has a severe limitation. The potential market is astronomically small (1000 to 1500 books), therefore the economics of such a small market severely limit both the size and content of the published work, and the promotion and advertising of newly released, or still available, books. I figured this out at about the same time that Google became available as the web's premier search engine. From then on, I decided to make my research readily available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. The hard part, a difficulty also shared by commercial interests on the web, is to get the search engines to find your web site through a simple key word search.
My first Wiki edit was for Cooper bridge loadings. Some recent research about the weight limitations of the Salt Lake trestle brought a private email that mentioned the bridge loading standards known as Cooper loadings, with its axle loading standards, of which E-70 is an example. I did a search on Cooper loadings, along with the engineer who developed them, Theodore Cooper, and was a bit surprised that neither Google nor Wikipedia had any reference to this basic facet of railroad engineering. There is an article about Cooper, the man, but it makes no mention of the bridge loading standards named for him. Oh well, yet another subject to be researched and developed. Life goes on, and every work is a work in progress...
Metallic Smokebox Color
In October 2006, Harry Wong wrote:
This brings to mind my experience as a boilermaker apprentice back in 1971. I was an active modeler at the time (Denver & Salt Lake), and we were retubing the boilers in UP's huge power plant in Salt Lake City. These were massive water tube boilers, three in a row and three stories tall.
My journeyman was Glen Rice. One day he had me mix up what he called graphite paint. It was about a half gallon of some thick valve oil (a bit darker than your typical motor oil for automobiles), into which I mixed an equal measure of powered graphite. I then brushed it on an exposed part of the upper tube sheet. The heat took care of the oil in a couple hours, leaving behind a durable graphite coating as form of corrosion control. The next day, it was exactly the same color as Floquil's then-Graphite color that I took with me to work to compare.
I have since learned that what we modelers know as silver paint is actually aluminum paint, or aluminum powder in a carrier solvent. I have also learned that aluminum paint came about as a replacement for aluminum leaf, which itself was a cheaper version of silver leaf in lettering. Aluminum paint was so cheap and so durable in high heat situations, that many railroads began using it in lots of applications. It wears very well, but also oxidizes pretty fast.
...had a darker shade of metallic on the smokebox.
This brings to mind my experience as a boilermaker apprentice back in 1971. I was an active modeler at the time (Denver & Salt Lake), and we were retubing the boilers in UP's huge power plant in Salt Lake City. These were massive water tube boilers, three in a row and three stories tall.
My journeyman was Glen Rice. One day he had me mix up what he called graphite paint. It was about a half gallon of some thick valve oil (a bit darker than your typical motor oil for automobiles), into which I mixed an equal measure of powered graphite. I then brushed it on an exposed part of the upper tube sheet. The heat took care of the oil in a couple hours, leaving behind a durable graphite coating as form of corrosion control. The next day, it was exactly the same color as Floquil's then-Graphite color that I took with me to work to compare.
I have since learned that what we modelers know as silver paint is actually aluminum paint, or aluminum powder in a carrier solvent. I have also learned that aluminum paint came about as a replacement for aluminum leaf, which itself was a cheaper version of silver leaf in lettering. Aluminum paint was so cheap and so durable in high heat situations, that many railroads began using it in lots of applications. It wears very well, but also oxidizes pretty fast.
History
History as pure dates is boring to many. But dates are the skeleton of history.
If you have your dates wrong, then any history based on those dates will be seen as lopsided and unsupported. This includes any history of equipment, of operations, or even social and cultural histories that seem to be in vogue today.
History in context brings the past alive.
If you have your dates wrong, then any history based on those dates will be seen as lopsided and unsupported. This includes any history of equipment, of operations, or even social and cultural histories that seem to be in vogue today.
History in context brings the past alive.
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