Monday in Santa Fe

02010-01-25 | Photos | 7 comments

Saw the hand in a store in Manhattan last December and could not resist.

The key on top is a 8GB flash drive. I am thinking of releasing this year’s trio album in 24/88.2 HD-quality on a flashdrive in FLAC-format, because an HD album doesn’t fit on a CD, even in FLAC form…

HD FLAC will also be available to download from HDTracks.com. And of course the music will be available in mp3 form from the usual outlets as well, and we will have CDs.

Are you going to Singapore this year? You might check out this coffee house:

Papa Palheta coffee, Singapore
Singapore might be better known for its insatiable foodies and gastronomic offerings than its cups of joe, but local coffee roaster Papa Palheta is attempting to change all that. Located in the Newton area, away from the island’s café hubs, this speciality coffee boutique has gotten coffee-crazy Singaporeans talking with its selection of coffee beans all roasted and sold on-site.

Here is Papa Palheta’s website.

I ask you, is the Fahrenheit scale of temperature cute, or antiquated? Well, it’s possibly both. The real question is why people in the USA and Belize are still using Fahrenheit?

Check this out: the reference points that defined the scale were brine (((ice, water, and salt))), and the inventor’s wife’s armpit!! Celsius on the other hand simply uses the freezing point and boiling point of water, at sea level. No armpits necessary!

Fahrenheit – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
According to a journal article Fahrenheit wrote in 1724, he based his scale on three reference points of temperature. The zero point is determined by placing the thermometer in brine: he used a mixture of ice, water, and ammonium chloride, a salt. This is a frigorific mixture which automatically stabilizes its temperature at 0 °F. A mixture of water and ice stabilizes at 32 F. But Fahrenheit did not use this point in defining his temperature scale. The third point, 96 degrees, was the level of the liquid in the thermometer when held in the mouth or under the armpit of his wife. Fahrenheit noted that, using this scale, mercury boils at around 600 degrees.

Later, work by other scientists observed that water boils about 180 degrees higher than the freezing point and decided to redefine the degree slightly to make it exactly 180 degrees higher. It is for this reason that normal body temperature is 98.6 on the revised scale (whereas it was 96 on Fahrenheit’s original scale).

What I am wondering is this: obviously the entire scientific community as well as most of the industry in the USA use metric measurements… is the reason that Americans have never switched to a metric system and the Celsius scale, that the old measurements are somehow comforting in an age where everything seems to turn upside down? When everything is changing people hold on to the little things that remain the same?

Fahrenheit, so ähnlich wie Fahrvergnügen…

7 Comments

  1. Carol

    I like the idea of using flash drives. Maybe you could add a photo or so and the information on the music and group. We could just hang our music up or keep it on a key chain. Nice!

    Reply
  2. marijose

    Although I’ve lived in the US most of my life now, I still have to look up how many ounces are in a pound and in a gallon. The non-metric system (or whatever it’s called) is so counterintuitive.

    Reply
  3. Ottmar

    Carol: I am turning to flash drives for HD material only, and simply because that will not fit on a CD. So, unless a person would want the flash drive to complete their collection, the content won’t be really useful unless they can listen to audio files with a resolution of 24/88.2KHz. On the other hand, hopefully we’ll find flash drives we can have customized with a SSRI logo, so that would be cool to have.

    Oh, and I was planning on adding some video and other stuff as a bonus on the flash drive as well.

    Reply
  4. Brenda

    Public School, USA, at least 40 years ago,a teacher in desperation would cover the math chapter on metric’s and probably, in hopes, that we would learn the metric system of measurement and would say to us, almost yearly, “You better learn this” “everything will be metric by next year”. “Yykes” USA government change is slow. Possibly the dairy industry,
    Gallon of Milk and a pound of cheese, please. :)

    Reply
  5. Carol

    Oh, that would be cool, Ottmar. I want one I can hang around my neck with your logo. I still wear your minidisc now and then, and get nice comments on it!

    I remember teaching metrics only for a year or so. I taught it but I could never picture it. Too much of the standard is stuck in my brain. It was very difficult. Old dog you know…

    Reply
  6. Panj

    LOL…armpits???…who would have thought it…:-)
    I have no idea of what a Flash thingy is, but as it seems it can have visual aspects…is it possible for an artist to have one of those ‘strobe’ visuals that would actually go with his or her Music in perfect harmony? It would be so nice to see exact precision and depth and crispness!

    Reply
  7. Carolynn

    I wish the US would have gone metric. I, too, learned it in school under the threat that America would be all metric one day. Metric is so much more intuitive (borrowing the word from Marijose) as is Celsius vs. Fahrenheit (I never knew about the arm-pit temp as a standard. LOL). But with that said, I don’t have the metric system or Celsius measures in my brain at this point, and even though I can’t tell you off the top of my head how many ounces are in a pint, etc., I’m still a prisoner of the standard weights and measures that I grew up with. (sigh)

    Reply

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