J Larsen

Thanks. I'm joining.

I'm considering joining emusic.com. Has anyone used this service? Can you recommend it? Are there similar services out there worth investigating? Thanks.

My Toshiba cable modem went down in the line of duty last night. It was pulling cd information from cddb last night when it gave out. It's going to take me a week or so to get it replaced. I'll be able to post a bit from my office, but I'm really busy this week going through some new data, so I won't be around too much. So have a good July 4 weekend, thanks to whoever alerted me to the show at the Iridium next week, and I'll see you guys later.

I'm torn between Jefferson and Franklin. They were both people I think I could have related to on a certain level, in that they were inquisitive, interested in many things, and opinionated. They both had their problems, but I've never met anyone who didn't.

I like to thank all the little posters who helped me along the way in winning this prize. jacman, do you have any pictures of your pinhole camera that you can post? I had my students make their own in a class I taught a couple years ago. They seemed to get a kick out of it.

Excellent! I have most of that week off! I'm there. $12.50 with my student ID is a decent deal. Thanks a lot for posting this.

I wrote a couple days ago that my upstairs neighbor woke me up with a top 40-style ballad that went "I don't wanna die like that, I don't wanna die making love to you" which I thought was more than a bit perverse. Later in the day I was informed that the actual lyrics were "How you gonna act like that, act like that when I'm making love to you." (I think the problem there was that it was 7:30 AM and the only htought going through my head was "DIE! DIE!".) This isn't the first time I've misunderstood popular song lyrics. When Tina Turner sang "What's love but a second-hand emotion?", I heard "What's love but a second-hand abortion?" Needless to say, I spent quite a bit of time as a child figuring out what a second-hand abortion would be. Later, when George Michael (YUCK!) sang "I want your sex, ohh I want your love", I heard "I want your sex, ohh I want your womb", which seemed like a pretty wacked-out line even to me. It actually was fairly recently that I realized he was saying love and not womb. Got any good ones?

Well, they do use the Newton's rings phenomenon at Kodak to ensure the quality of photographic film, and at all lens factories to ensure lens precision, but I guess you have something else in mind. Do you use that thing for light metering or contrast adjustment?

Here's a picture of the diffraction of a laser around a metal sphere. The effect is MUCH more impressive when you see it in person, as it then appears that the light goes right through the sphere. This is actually a pretty lousy photo. I'll replace it with a better one if I can find one.

An example of Newton's rings: I believe these rings were actually produced by placing two glass films on top of each other.

Greg, iTunes is the Mac program that, among other things, allows your computer to talk to your iPod. It can also be used for importing music to your harddrive in the form of AAC, MP3, or Wav files (actually I think it supports one or two other formats as well). However, you can choose any other program to import music files to your hard drive, you just need iTunes to get the files from your harddrive to your iPod. Personally, I don't mind the somewhat reduced sound quality for a portable device. You're subject to so much external noise when you're on the go that I don't really see the point in using a huge amount of memory to get hi-fi quality sound.

Okay, I figured out a solution to my problem. You have to plug the iPod into your Mac, double click on the iPod icon in iTunes, click on the iPod icon in the lower right hand corner of the screen that pops up after that double click, and then select "manually manage songs". It sucks that I accidently erased anout 10 cds before figuring this out, but that's life I guess. I'm not too impressed with the clarity of the instruction manual on this issue, but on the other hand I've always had short patience for user manuals. Greg, I'll try to post a better review of iTunes in a few days after I've worked with it a bit more. I very rarely listen to music on my computer.

Well, seeing as it's been deleting songs from my iPod all night, I'm not too happy with it at the moment. Except for this very annoying feature, the iPod itself is fine. Not the best sound quality in the world, but perfectly fine for a portable device.

How does one update the playlists on an iPod without deleting songs that you've removed from your computer? My instruction book says that you do it by choosing "update selected playlists only" in the iPod preferences menu, but to get that menu I have to plug in the iPod to my computer which automatically starts the auto update which erases all songs no longer on my harddrive. I don't have 30 GB of harddrive space to devote to AAC files on my computer. Anyone know what to do?

Catesta....hmmmm, how do I put this politely....my upstairs neighbor is exceptionally "bouyant", if you catch my drift. If that's your thing, she's all yours. BTW, I had the lyrics to that song wrong. The actual lyrics are "How you gonna act like that, how you gonna act like when I'm making love to you". Definately a lot less strange than what I thought I was hearing this morning. I guess the whole bit about concerning death came from me being really tired and pissed off at 7:30AM.

Not to derail the thread, but another complaint I've heard about this release is that the cd layer sounds awful, much worse than the previous cd release. Would you agree with this?

You haven't heard the bass on any of my neighbors' systems. We're not talking about audiophiles here. To them, the ideal system is the one that booms the most. The courtesy call isn't too effective, as few of my neighbors speak English very well. Also, the neighborhood is a shade seedy (which is the only reason my girlfriend and I can afford it on our grad student budgets). I don't really want to rock the boat too much. Right now my neighbors have our backs, but I'm sure that could change.

Well, the ideal scenario is that my thesis results in a profitable patent, in which case I move back to California and buy a house in two years or so. However, I'm not exactly the first or only person with that aspiration . That actually is the main reason I don't plan on staying in New York. The average cost of a townhouse here is more than what the average person makes in their entire life, and this apartment shit is getting really old. (I've lived in apartments virtually my entire life, so it's not like I'm spoiled in that regard.)

Since this is a problem everywhere I move, perhaps I should call for pre-emptive strikes before taking up residence anywhere new.

St. Vitus, I loathe disco in general, but my feelings about "To Be Real" may have been shaped by having grown up too close to a seedy gay disco joint on Polk St. in SF. You have no idea how many times I've heard that song at high volume. For that matter, neither do I.

I learned that the hard way in 1994 when living directly above an early-rising polka fan.

I am cursed. No matter where I move, I wind up with an upstairs or downstairs neighbor who feels like imposing their awful music on me ridiculously early in the morning. I thought I had finally broken the curse with my new apartment, but I just got a new upstairs neighbor. Not only does she sound like an elephant walking around (she litterally shakes my ceiling lights when she walks over them), but she starts playing bad music at about 8am every morning including weekends. On Sunday I was woken up by a string of disco (there's NOTHING I hate more than disco). She played that "To Be Real" song about four times in a row, and then plowed right through the 70s for the rest of the morning. I finally left my apartment at about 10am to get away from it. This morning she woke me up at 7:30 AM by playing the WORST top 40-style song I've heard in years no less than seven times in a row (yes, I counted). It might be the most ridiculous song I've ever heard. There's a whiny male with a high voice singing "I don't want to die like that/I don't want to die making love to you" (I'm not kidding) in the so-called "contemporary R&B" style. In the background there's another guy with a slightly deeper voice going "Woah-oh-oh making love, making love to youuuuuuuuuu-oh-oh, I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die oh-oh, etc. etc.". If anyone else cares to share similar horror stories, I have an unlimited supply of them.

It looks just like Newton's rings from a lens in contact with a plane glass surface. The distance between fringes gives a measure of the precsion of the lens being tested. I'd go in to a little more detail, but I'm really busy right now! (In fact, I'm so busy I half-botched this the first time I posted, hence the edit!) Edit 2: Okay, as I have a second here and there I may add a bit to this post I said above that Newton's rings are often used for examining the quality of a lens. Another application is examining the quality of a thin film. If you have a lens of known precision (say, one wavelength of red light, which is very realistic for a quality lens), then the rings can reveal imperfections in the smoothness of the thin film. Another edit: It also looks like the diffraction pattern you get if you carefully aim a high-quality laser at a metal sphere, so that the laser beam is perfectly perpendicular to the surface of the sphere. It is very tricky to get this exactly right! I did this demonstration for a class I taught a year ago. In the morning section it worked perfectly. I spent less than 15 seconds adjusting the laser to get the diffraction pattern. In the mid-day section I struggled with it for over five minutes before giving up. I don't think the mid-day students ever believed that it should really work! It is really strange the first time you see it, as normally you only get the center fringe and then it appears that the laser light is going directly through the metal sphere.

How much does that snake weigh now? How long before it ate again?

Noj, this site may explain why they didn't believe you. http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/agarman/bco/fact2.htm I'm sure you saw a large black cat, but you surely didn't see a black panther.