Sunday, April 6, 2003

Laptop formerly known as ultimate.... Spend too many hours today trying to figure out what's going on with my new PowerBook. The built-in audio was gone...silent was the laptop. Reinstalled the OS...reinstalled software...still no sound...finally I ran Hardware Test and the Logic Board didn't pass the test. A couple of days ago I started noticing the cursor getting sticky, then sound was gone...now I can look forward to spending an hour with customer service tomorrow...and a few days without a laptop... 10:37:09 PM    comment [] Ultrasonic In 1949, Dr. Josef and Herbert Krautkrämer developed the first German ultrasonic flaw detector. Their instrument operated according to the pulse-echo method, which not only detected flaws existing inside the material being tested, but also determined their position. This first Krautkrämer flaw detector was suitable for testing forgings, axles and plates. My dad worked for this company for a couple of decades as industrial designer. It was fascinating to listen to him talk about their inventions as they were happening....from detecting flaws in steel to detecting the amount of fat on a pig to developing ultrasound for pregnancies... 9:26:06 AM    comment [] How does HSS work? The basic operating principle of HSS uses a property of air known as "non-linearity". A normal sound wave (like someone talking) is a small pressure wave that travels through the air. As the pressure goes up and down, the "non-linear" nature of the air itself causes the sound wave to be changed slightly. If you change a sound wave, new sounds (frequencies) are formed within the wave. Therefore, if we know how the air affects the sound waves, we can predict exactly what new frequencies (sounds) will be added into the sound wave by the air itself. An ultrasonic (beyond the range of human hearing) sound wave can be sent into the air with sufficient volume to cause the air to create these new frequencies. Since we cannot hear the ultrasonic sound, we only hear the new sounds that are formed by the non-linear action of the air. Wow! This will change everything. It could even make the world quieter if it is done right. Take the drive-through window at a fast food joint for example...with HSS only the driver would hear the voice instead of half of the neighborhood...this invention will be as huge as the invention of dynamite, believe me! 9:19:57 AM    comment [] Copy-protected CDs and Radio This radio station, which recently received its regular bag of freebies from EMI, finds that it is unable to play any of the CDs it received - the copy protection on the discs gets in the way. Serves em right! This is thigh slapping hilarity!!! How do artists get roped into having their CDs copy-protected? Are they dumb? Do their managers talk 'em into it? 8:51:41 AM    comment [] Critics corner Turned on the telly this morning and there was Lisa-Marie Presley dressed in Elvis-black singing and dancing. The song was incredibly flat, mega compressed and mixed terribly...nothing was sticking out, not even her voice. Her singing wasn't bad I thought and should have been featured a little more. When you have a song that doesn't have a strong, memorable melody you have to still pretend like you do. Something has to lead the listener's ear, the vocal melody or a instrumental riff of some sort. This song sounded like it was mixed by committee and they couldn't agree on what the song was about and just pushed all the faders up...Anyway, if somebody asked my opinion...I would push the fact that she resembles her dad so much by cutting her hair short. And get somebody to mix the song better...then I snapped out of it, realized I had just wasted three minutes of my life watching VH1 and turned off the TV. 8:51:29 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Ottmar Liebert. Last update: 5/13/03; 11:30:26 PM.