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Chaos Corner v03 n09
Chaos Corner V03 N09 21 December 1993
Copyright 1993 by Robert D. Cowles; Ithaca, NY 14850. Permission is
hereby granted to republish complete issues in unaltered form.
Republication of partial issues must reference the source and state that
subscriptions to Chaos Corner are available (free) by sending electronic
mail to chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu.
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Welcome to Winter and Winter Weather!
The Winter season is officially here, along with the first major
snowfall of the year. Dr. Chaos finds the way to track the coming
storms this season is to get the current (usually) US weather map in GIF
format from wuarchive.wustl.edu. Use anonymous ftp in binary mode to
get the file saMMDDHH.gif (where MM = month, DD = day-of-month, and HH
is hour in GMT) from the /multimedia/images/wx directory. If you would
like to view a nice animation of a Christmas Tree, ftp to ftp.netcom.com
and get (in binary mode) the file winter11.zip from the /pub/nickc
directory. It ran nicely in a full-screen DOS session under OS/2 (we
didn't test it under Windows).
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Mailbag - Yet Another Response on Musical Scales
Jerry Dunham writes: I want to thank you for the information on musical
scales. Yes, I did look it up in my CRC as you suggested. Quite
fascinating. And as best I can tell Celtic bagpipes (I can't speak for
the other varieties) aren't tuned to any of these three. That might
explain why the London Philharmonic does not have a bagpipe section. If
there's interest I can find out what A4 is to a Highland piper; I know
it's around here in this chaos somewhere....
Edward Stuebing writes:
Thanks to David Karr and Dr. Chaos' extracting service for a nice
review of the problem (read: opportunity). Many musical instruments
are not limited to the compromises of an "equal temperament" - for
example: the voice, stringed instruments, the slide trombone. These
instruments have the flexibility to play a given note (say, middle C)
at any frequency in the vicinity of its "proper, i.e., equal
temperament" value. Consequently, they can adjust the notes according
to the key the music is being played in. This is seldom useful in
ensemble playing because of the need to play in tune with other
instruments to produce a musical effect, consequently these musicians
in ensembles are carefully listening to the collective sound and
adjusting each note to blend (other instrumentalists do the same thing
by "lipping" the intonation - extra tightening or relaxing of the lip
about a normal amount of squeezing tension called "embouchure").
However, when the voice, stringed instrument, or slide trombone is
playing solo there is great freedom to use the flexibility to musical
advantage. One such adjustment would be to play in "just intonation"
- a very advanced technique that would require knowing adjusted
intonation for each note in each key signature. That is the hallmark
of a virtuoso. This was the motivation for my original question - as
a trombonist, I wonder just how different the notes would be in
various key signatures played in just intonation. With such a table
and my tuning meter, I could find out. A less difficult effect is
noting that the seventh step of any scale (referred to as the "leading
tone") is somewhat higher in pitch than its equal temperament (or
standard) fingering and a tune sounds more musical if the leading tone
is played a little higher in pitch. This technique is often taught to
student musicians at the intermediate level (pianos, of course, can't
do this).
Now, about computer music. If accomplished musicians can improve the
musicality of their performance (as appreciated by the human ear of
the listener) by such adjustments, imagine what could be done with
computer generated music where every note in every voice could be
adjusted as the composition modulates through various keys. The
computer need not be limited to the compromises of equal temperament
when not playing in ensemble with noncomputer instruments. Electronic
music can realize what was impossible for Bach - a keyboardist
surrounded by a separate instrument for each key. Only an ensemble of
virtuoso voices or strings had even the possibility of such a sound
(subject to human imperfections). The computer could do it perfectly.
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Guide to the Internet Now Available in German
Ken Stuart at Cornell provided Dr. Chaos with the following information
on a new guide to the Internet. Have any Chaos Corner readers seen a
copy?
Peter Klau, Das Internet, -Weltweit vernetzt-, p. 320, IWT-Verlag GmbH,
Vaterstetten, Germany, Jan. 1994
DM 59.00, ISBN 3-88322-467-7.
This is an introductory guide (and catalog) for new users of the
Internet. The book contain useful information for people new to the
Internet. It is aimed at students, researchers, administrators,
information professionals, librarians and others.
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Chaos Corner in the News
Dr. Chaos was mentioned in the December issue of CompuServe Magazine in
an article about Internet resources. Although Chaos Corner can be found
in the Internetworking section of the Telecommunications Forum and in
the Ask the Sysop section of the IBM Communications Forum, the number of
CompuServe subscribers has increased dramatically over the past several
weeks. Dr. Chaos also received a copy of Internet World's "on INTERNET
'94"; a publication of Mecklermedia (Westport, CT, USA and London, UK);
ISBN 0-88736-929-4. It contains over 200 pages of information on
mailing lists, 60 pages on electronic texts, archives, selected FTP
sites and Resource Guides; and other sections on Freenets, Campus-Wide
Information Services, Commercial Services, Usenet Newsgroups, WAIS-
accessible databases, and last but not least, a Subject Index. As an
indication on how quickly the network changes, the Cornell CUINFO that
is described is the old 3270 based interface rather than the shiny new
Gopher-based interface (the change occurred in November, 1993.
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Upgrade to Version 6.2 of MS-DOS?
If you are currently running MS-DOS release 6.0 and would like to
upgrade to release 6.2; the MS-DOS 6.0-to-6.2 update, stepup.exe, is
available on ftp.microsoft.com in the /peropsys/msdos/msdos6.2
directories (select based on language).
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Almost a Good Mailing
Well, after the disastrous mailing of V03 N07, Dr. Chaos got me to do
everything "by the book" last time for V03 N08 ... and it appeared to go
out without problem. Then, almost two weeks later, I re-booted pelican
and suddenly a bunch of people received an additional copy of V03 N08!
Apologies to all (once again).
--------------------------------------------------
Error in the Previous Issue
While we're admitting mistakes ... the most embarrassing one in the last
issue appeared when we said "it is not possible" rather than "it is now
possible" with regard to subscribing to Bits and Bytes without human
interaction. Thanks also to the thousands of eagle-eyed readers who
caught the mistake and wrote to point out the error. (Well, it seemed
like thousands.)
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Images of the Hubble Space Telescope Repair
Images from the Hubble repair mission (STS-61) are available via FTP and
Gopher from seds.lpl.arizona.edu in the /pub/images/shuttle/sts-61
directory. (Dr. Chaos points out that there are some gif images from
the November lunar eclipse in the directory /pub/images/eclipse.lunar.)
For those not satisfied with still images, there are 8 video clips of
the repair procedure that can be found at seds.lpl.arizona.edu in the
/pub/anim/space directory and ftp.univ-rennes1.fr in the directory
/pub/Images/ASTRO/anim/space. Look for files hub1.mpg through hub8.mpg.
(If you can't find a player for MPG files, ask Dr. Chaos for more
information .. please specify the kind of computer/OS you are using.
Speaking of images from space, Kevin Marsh (kmarsh@deneb.jsc.nasa.gov)
has asked for some feedback:
I have loaded the press release photos from STS-58, STS-51L, and STS-1
on an anonymous ftp and Gopher server (krakatoa.jsc.nasa.gov) at the
Johnson Space Center. I have also included the Hubble telescope
deployment photos. Look under /graphics/PressReleases.
Future missions will be posted as soon as the press release sets have
been selected, usually about a week after landing. If there is
sufficient interest I will also load images from each mission from
Mercury to the present. We are discussing the possibility of making
all NASA manned mission photos available online. Please let me know
if you would use this service and what you would do with the images if
you had them. I would also like feedback about the quality of our
JPEG compressed files.
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Mailbag - Indelible Blue Service in Finland
Mike Walsh in Finland sent along the following experience when he
subscribed to Chaos Corner:
I'd be grateful to be added to your subscription list. So I expect
special mention of Finland in a future issue !! (Here it is!)
...
As for Indelible Blue; you had a favorable report on them a while ago.
I too have had very very good service from them. Somebody called Jamie
(female/male ? don't dare to ask) did the very unusual act of actually
sending me a fax back telling me what was going on with my order -
amazing as I'm otherwise completely in the dark - and since then with
future orders things have gone just the same. I only hope they stay as
nice when they become big.
By the way, they've just moved (result of being bigger no doubt) and
have new tel and fax numbers. Murphy's law has it that I'm at home and
the tel/fax numbers are at work. But if you'd like them for a mention
in a future column , ask and I'll email them to you. (The telephone
numbers we have are (800) 776-8284 - Orders; (919) 878-9700 -
Inquiries; (919) 878-7479 - FAX. OS/2 products only!)
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Interested in Rock Climbing? - Get on the Web!
The climbing server is run by Magnus Homann and Keith Amidon. They are
two climbers who have never met and are separated by half the world.
They came up with the idea of taking information on rock climbing that
they had collected from the Internet and making it easily available to
other climbers.
1- Fire up your WWW client, preferably Xmosaic for maximum effect.
2- Load: http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/Climbing/index.html
3- Explore!
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Files available from Dr. Chaos
Interested in Cross Stitch software (takes digitized images -- usually
gif files -- and produces a pattern in a reduced number of colors that
can be used for cross stitch or needlework)? Just send a request to Dr.
Chaos at chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu. Other files available
are:
Guide to Telecom Resources on the Net (includes directions on how to
get access to the ITU documents)
Directions on how to access the archive server for the Usenet group
misc.consumers.house
Instructions for getting access to the last 10 days of the Commerce
Business Daily (the official newspaper that publishes contracts that
are being put out to bid).
Introduction to the Frequently Asked Questions on Copyright Law.
Gopher Jewels - the net's best Gopher servers.
Directions for accessing the Joke archive via ftp.
Results of the 1993 Unix file size survey.
Instructions for obtaining a copy of the Winsock specification.
Audio File Formats
--------------------------------------------------
Get your Free Subscription Here!
Just send a message to Dr. Chaos - chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu
and ask to be put on the subscription list. From CompuServe, use the
address INTERNET:chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu. It's that easy.
Don't delay ---- act now!
Dr. Chaos
.
