Daily Archives: May 18, 2006

Linkie o’ the Day: Ask Chaucer 2.0

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From Geoffrey Chaucer's blog, right over there on the blogroll.

Dear Mr. Chaucer,

Okay, so there's, like, this guy at school and he is TOTALLY hot and I think he likes me – like, he hasn't SAID anything? But Jamie heard from Marissa that Brooke had overhead him saying that he was completely into me!! And I like totally trust them? Except that this guy used to date M'lyssa and exes are like SO out of bounds, it's so not cool! But then she was all "oh, we're thinking about getting back together too" and the rest of us were just like, "umm, get over yourself?" and she was like "no", and we were like "yeah" and now she's not talking to any of us which is SOOO unreasonable, she is such a drama queen oh my god and she has the fugliest hair, she had it like slicked back yesterday and I was just like "what the hell?"
So anyways, do you think I should go for him???

Love,
Hopeless Romantic

Ma chere Romantique sans Espoir,

Thou knowst wel the oolde clerkes sawe, ‘who shal yeve a loevere any lawe’? And also that fayre couplete of Boethius his Consolation of Philosophie that saith ‘quis legem det amantibus, maior enim lex est amor sibi,’ the whiche on englysshe tonge meneth ‘Who shal yiven loveres a lawe? ffor love ys for ytselfe a gretere lawe.’

Thus, thyn affecioun for thys manne of hotnesse doth surpasse eny bonde or promise thou hast ymade with Marisse. But onlye, I counsel thee, yf yt doth drawe yts source from cupides owen trewe arwe, and yf yt ys sovereine and powirful love (and nat simplye a passynge fancie). So yf yt be trewe and honest love, proceede, wyth litle thoghte for litel boondes yn fikel frendshep yforged. And yet, be nat cruelle aboute Marisses hairestyle, for as Cicero saith: odium ludo non ludatori, the whiche meneth hate nat the playere but the game.

Le Vostre
GC

Email o’ the Day: Romenesko

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Poynteronline

Romenesko

THURSDAY, MAY 18, 2006
Friedman’s do-or-die dates never seem to get any closer
Fair.org

* New York Times columnist Tom Friedman in 2003: “The next six months in
Iraq — which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there —
are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long
time.”

* Friedman in 2004: “Iraq will be won or lost in the next few months.”

* Friedman in 2005: “I think the next six months really are going to
determine whether this country is going to collapse into three parts or
more or whether it’s going to come together.”

* Friedman in 2006: “I think that we’re going to know after six to nine
months whether this project has any chance of succeeding.”
Posted at 10:41:59 AM

PSA: How to record off a warped record

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Vinyl Album 

Via a completely nerdily pointless article on BoingBoing about cha-cha and mambo songs that there are a surplus of anyway. This is the addendum, when it should have been the WHOLE POINT.

A reader comments:

Here are a couple of techniques I've used when dealing with warped vinyl. In all cases I've done it so I could get one good copy, which I would use in the future (ie. I didn't use these techniques to play the vinyl every time). Also note, I probably wouldn't recommend these techniques with a really expensive turntable and stylus, though they never messed up mine.

1. Try weighting down the stylus with one or two pennies. Or perhaps a nickel (which weighs about 5 grams).

2. Place the vinyl onto a hard surface (eg. table top), between two sheets of clean paper (not the sleeve, since it sometimes has stickyness), and then place a heavy, flat weight on top for 15 minutes or so (I'd use an unabridged dictionary). While the vinyl usually has enough physical memory that it'll ultimately re-warp, it's possible to flatten things out long enough to record one copy.

3. Drizzle a bunch of distilled water all over the surface of the vinyl (avoiding the label). While I usually used this to reduce pops and clicks from scratches, the added dampening from the water would sometimes be enough to hold the needle in the groove on warped records.

4. Lastly, play it at a lower speed, so the needle doesn't jump, then process the recording to shorten the time and raise the pitch. While I did this a couple of times, it was back in the early 80's before I had a digital processor, so restoring the sound in the end wasn't so easy, though I could get close.Let It Be

He doesn't mention one that worked on my original copy of Let It Be: Leave the damn thing on a flat surface under a piece of glass in front of a window for one day. Simple.

Narnia Rap: Wicked Wednesday, CS in Chi-Town

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When desperate for blog content, hit YouTube and enter any single thing off the top of your head. Never Fucking Fails. See "Maritess vs the Superfriends" for the greatest example of this serendipity.