No one expects the Standpipe Bridgeplate.
Just make it look like a car accident. Problem solved.
In Super Mario half-Brothers, the divorcing couple fights for possession of the turtle and then the winner jumps on it and uses it to knock the other down.
... Is a (possible future) decision to put down the cat a mutual decision for the exes? Asker thinks it should be.
I think it's up to the person with custody. And no I don't think you should have a joint custody agreement for a cat. Is someone just making an issue out of this as a bargaining chip?
A trainer I know says no. I imagine it would be polite to ask, but the ex should have no veto unless there's a joint-custody situation.
Ah, coincidences! As we speak the aforementioned trainer is playing Mario.
I'd be happy to let them try it out on our cat and see how they feel.
8: Just send your cat to yoyo. He could use one.
The best way to handle it is to allow either party to put down the cat at any time point. If custodial cat-owner forgets to lock the door, non-custodial partner can sneak-in and poison the cat.
I'd go the other way (requiring both parties to consent to put-down) for dogs.
This is why we need government death panels.
What's so hard? It's wrong to kill people, dogs, horses and anything we're about to run out of. As long as you minimize cruelty, it's O.K. to kill other things if you're hungry or they are in the way.
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At some point during a dinner party tonight, I realized everything I was saying was recycled from Unfogged threads.
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Unfogged threads are a useful source of dinner-party conversation.
14: Did you do the, "Uh, this friend of mine told me about [thing X]" thing?
That's my conversational gambit in situations where I'm digging for conversation and slogging out Unfogged-based fodder.
16: My strategy as well. There have been a couple of odd times where people have been discussing unfogged, though, and I've kept pretty much quiet. (Like when that flophouse article came out.)
14: At some point during a recent birthday party for a friend, I realized everything ever said on an Unfogged thread had been stolen from me. Unfogged is the Elvis Presley to my black music. I am currently mulling avenues for seeking monetary compensation and/or compensation in the form of extended mixtape-and-recipe threads.
I would take issue with that CT comment about that thread being like an unfogged thread. It's too on topic.
16: I was going with "I heard somewhere that..." or "someone told me about..."
In other dinner-party news, the frequency with which a Chinese professor I work with has said to me "you should get a Chinese girlfriend!" is starting to weird me out.
I dunno, pretty much all the threads about sex or Jessica Biel's glutes were pretty cohesive.
20.2: I have a Facebook friend who works at a nearby indie theatre who has apparently become my unofficial sponsor for seeing the movie "Good Hair." To a degree that's making me uncomfortable. Luckily an ice storm and a blizzard, respectively, have intervened in my favor thus far.
21: Maybe when they got to be about those things, but I remember those conversations breaking out on unrelated threads, or after unrelated interludes in threads. But it doesn't really matter. I just want to object to CT comments, just because.
I thought the lesson of that CT thread was that accusing others of racism is a good way to provoke a long, vituperative conversation.
essear seems to go to a lot of dinner parties (and other social functions), doesn't he?
Probably eats a lot of fried chicken at those dinner parties, too.
Oh sure, go and stereotype people who grew up in Kentucky.
Well I was at a dinner party where I related a story about a "friend" who was too drunk to go home so he stayed in his office all evening.
essear seems to go to a lot of dinner parties (and other social functions), doesn't he?
Dinner parties, very rarely. Taking visitors to restaurants, somewhat more often, but this month is weirdly full of such things.
Oh, this thread had a topic? I agree, it should be a mutual decision.
That was easy enough.
I can't help but feel we have been non-creative about the feline question.
Here's an idea: take a page from Titus Andronicus and (whoever gets to this idea first) serve the cat up to the unknowing spouse as part of a delicious feast. When they ask what happened to the cat, say, "Oh, he/she wandered off. Sorry."
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I shouldn't be sharing this with you people, but I will.
A gentleman of my online acquantaince, who was always very much on the "white hat" side of things, and with whom I had a number of quite vituperative discussions on the proper limits of state authority when it comes to regulating the internet -- a gentleman who, it could be fairly said, would readily leap to taking the quote-unquote "fed" side of any argument about civil liberties and law enforcement in the age of the internet -- has recently been arrested for possessing a vast quantity of quasi- or less-than-quasi- illegal weaponry, in addition to various other crimes along the nature of pretending to be a spook that he aint'. Oh, it is delicious!
Actually, I feel pretty bad for him. He's an okay guy, for a textbook authoritarian follower. But it's deeply ironic.
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33 re-paused: I should say that these discussions were not mere internet blowharding; they happened in a forum wherein people would be expected to know -- or at least fake extremely credibly -- their business.
33 re-unpaused.
I can't help but feel we have been non-creative about the feline question.
Another option is to passive-aggressively try to out-spend each other in last-ditch invasive medical procedures to save the cat.
33 is shocking in the most un-shocking way conceivable.
I'm sorry I misspelled "acquaintance".
Also, I had some problems with "ain't". Oh well.
35: Or send the cat off to distant relatives, pretend it's dead, then bring it back a year later and pretend the ex-spouse is talking crazy when they talk about how it had vanished for an extended period. Suggest they see a therapist.
Next dinner party: skip similes or worse and pass the mouseover text.
Question for the asker: do you love kitty enough to want to have to remain in regular communication with the ex about her? Joint custody with someone you hate sucks. Sometimes necessary, but if Rory were a cat, and not a charming child who can shovel and make me breakfast, I'd just let UNG have her.
45: I'm mostly with Di on this, but regular & frequent communication needs to be with the cat too. Otherwise, it's just a cat you bought food for, it's not YOUR cat. If that's the case, let it go.
(The joint custody & alternate week living arrangement thing did not do DE's kid any good. He just didn't know who he "belonged" to and that made him very anxious.)
46.last: I'm not sure what alternative there is. I know joint custody is awfully hard on kids, especially when house rules and values diverge after the split, but joint seems inevitable. The kids are already losing half the time they'd spend with each parent; it seems cruel to take even more away.
I like cats a lot, but I can't imagine liking a cat enough to get into a joint custody thing with an ex over it (and deadlocking a decision to put a cat down seems as if it has real potential to be cruel to the cat). I think the only reasonable thing to do is one person gets the cat, (possibly with a reversion to the other person if the first can't take care of it ever) and the person with the cat makes all the decisions.
IOW, I'm with Di and most other people on the thread.
Simply chalk a circle on the ground, put the cat in it, and inform the separated couple that whoever manages to drag the cat out gets to keep it.
47: I think custody is one thing, living arrangements are another. We didn't change anything except that he lived with us most of the time and his father had at least one day of the week visitation, which he mostly used, and could have more if they wanted more. It was the dual "homes" and alternating weeks that were the problem.
(That part of the deal wasn't acrimonious though I can easily visualize (read about on the net) divorces where anything and everything becomes a battle. I once saw some preliminary demands my X sent to her lawyer. I think she copied Stalin's orders about his WW2 "scorched earth" policy.)
LB nails it at 48. Kids are people, cats aren't. Cats are specifically more attached to their territory than to a person (don't kid yourselves). So in a breakup situation, whoever is going to hold onto the animal's familiar ground should hold onto the animal. If both humans are moving out, then the one moving to the more cat friendly place should take it. If both humans are moving into one room apartments or to share a house with a pit bull owner, the cat should be wished on a mutual friend or enemy.
And whoever winds up with the cats gets to decide about its health care and euthanasia.
Put the cat in a sealed box with some poison which will be released upon atomic decay of a radioactive substance. That way the cat will be both put down, according to the wishes of one party, and not put down, according to the wishes of the other.
There should be a Twilight Zone episode in which it's discovered that Schrodinger actually performed the experiment, but was persuaded by Einstein never to open the box, for fear of the damage that the waveform's collapse could do; the box was walled up and forgotten about. Sixty years on, builders at Princeton (or wherever) uncover the box, and the unwitting men release the cat, which is, horrifyingly, neither alive nor dead and also rather ill-tempered at being walled up in a box for six decades with nothing to play with but a lump of radium and a small bottle of poison gas.
Dang, If only I had been here a couple comments earlier I could have said the same thing OFE said. So yeah, that.
46, 47: This will also depend a great deal on the particular kid and particular homes. I sort of can't imagine having what UNG has -- two nights a week, every other weekend. I definitely am thankful for the chance to connect every night before bed and every morning before school. But then, he didn't fight this arrangement at all, so. I couldn't imagine being Rory and managing the every other week arrangement biohazard describes. But I can sort of imagine that, as a teenager someday she may be served well by such an arrangement.
I do know that in the immediate post-divorce stage a lot of "issues"were fought to the death where I suspect the real battle was just a battle to keep the battle going. Walking away completely is really, really hard.
57 sounds a lot like heebie's willpower link from way back when.
Wallerstein goes into a lot of detail on the effects of divorce on kids of varying ages. She seems to focus on acrimonious divorces, and never to consider the possibility of (kid stays with former dwelling, parents shuttle), which is hard on parents, but creates continuity of environment for the kids. In other words, she describes worst cases.
Whoever has the cat decides what to do.
(kid stays with former dwelling, parents shuttle), which is hard on parents,
Does anyone actually do this long term? I can imagine it being easier on the kid, but I can't imagine any substantial proportion of adults being able to cope with it beyond a fairly short transition period. Having your ex touching your stuff (to put it in the most immature fashion possible) forever seems like the kind of thing very few people could handle.
LB, didn't your parents basically do this? Stay together until you guys left the house, but not really be together?
Penelope fucking Trunk, along with many central europeans. In central europe, divorced couples continuing to cohabit was routine, since there was not enough housing in cities. People still do that, as the housing market is expensive, but it's fading. I expect that it happens with some frequency in Manhattan, Seattle, or SF. Maybe not Manhattan, because Woody Allen is an oddball.
But yes, obviously transitional, won't work in acrimonious breakups; I think, thouigh, that transition space matters for kids, as people can adapt much better to gradual than to sudden change.
Sorry, misread 60 and 61. Although, in one sense, it seems like you'd still have an "ex" touching your stuff all the time.
61: I have a hard time imagine many adults being able to afford it for that matter.
61: I know someone who is doing this at the moment; I also am skeptical that they'll be able to continue that way for very long.
@54: the canons of all TV science fiction surely demand that the cat's DNA has mutated while shut up, with eldritch consequences.*
*As opposed to: it won't have viable kittens.
Well, renting in Prague is much much cheaper than buying, so people hold on to rentals forever, and maintaining a rental that the couple lived in is not too bad financially. Also, people had lower expectations for personal space wrt the US-- a room in what was basically someone else's place was pretty common, not a degrading testimony to personal failure.
The people I know of that do this in SF actually share the other place as well, so obviously a divorce where they can cooperate given mutual interest.
BOGF and I had joint custody of our dog for awhile - the dog was part of what had delayed the breakup, frankly (and, the night I moved out, I truly was more upset by closing the door on the dog). That worked for a few months, but BOGF was pretty Bad once AB came on the scene, and it just became too much stress.
But anyway, during the joint custody, we certainly would have made joint decisions about anything important wrt the dog. But I can't imagine joint custody working long term for a dog, or at all for a cat, and once regular visitation ceases, I don't think anything more than a polite note is called for.
67: this is obviously why vampires and other undead are creatures of the night. As long as they stay in the dark, they can't be properly observed and can remain undead (neither alive nor dead) - as soon as they get illuminated, they can be observed, and collapse. (Into dust.)
The obvious weapon to use against Schrodinger's Cat would be a Heisenberg Gun: this works on the Uncertainty Principle by making you unable to be sure of your own position and velocity simultaneously. So you tend to crash into stuff or fall over.
The effects of a Heisenburg Gun sounds a lot like being drunk. "But officer, I haven't touched a drop.."
The link in 57 is great, confirms my prejudices.
@70: this proves -- as per one of the actually useful and interesting arguments on CT -- that zombies are not the Undead.
Things that confirm my prejudices are always great.
Things that confirm Megan's prejudices.
Confirmation of Megan's prejudices, continued.
Lame. Don't they know to light it first?
On the cat thing, doesn't it depend on how acrimonious the divorce is?
The last time I split with someone with whom I shared cats, we did it this way:
48: I think the only reasonable thing to do is one person gets the cat, (possibly with a reversion to the other person if the first can't take care of it ever)
But we split amicably. He took the cats, and some 3 years later I got a call saying that he had to move to a new place in which he could no longer keep them, so (surprise!) it was my turn now. Which did throw a wrench into things, but hey, they were the cats. I think I'd have expected we'd phone each other if either of the cats had to be put down.
If you can't stand the sight of each other, it would be a different story.
As long as they stay in the dark, they can't be properly observed and can remain undead (neither alive nor dead) - as soon as they get illuminated, they can be observed, and collapse.
I'm pretty sure being bitten counts as observation.
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No more masturbating to Stephen Toulmin
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81: Aww! I teach from his argument model, which I have found tremendously helpful.
Cats, no. Dogs, yes. This dog? I'd sooner give the shirt off my back.
17: I am inside the Flophouse even as we speak.
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I should not gratuitously snipe at McArdle. But she's got a kitchen gift guide up, and she's recommending a thing to separate eggs with? If you cook things that need separated eggs, you know how. If you don't, what's the thing for?
Pointless sniping over.
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what's the thing for?
You tie it on a string around your wrist to remind you not to read McMegan.
Mary mother of God. A gadget for separating eggs?
Her Marketplace gig helped me to stop listening to that program. I didn't need much of a push, but still.
Look, Balloon Juice linked to it.
what's the thing for?
Stimulating the economy. If you have a gadget to do it, you have economic growth. Doing things yourself is for people who are anti-growth, and therefore anti-life.
The very existence of McMegan's kitchen gift guide -- let alone that people are linking to it -- makes me deeply embarrassed for the blogosphere.
I turned against Marketplace when I heard the report lauding the KGB's business spinoff ventures, maps I think, in 2002.
No mention of good maps being illegal in the USSR, so no meaningful competition, or the background of the people involved in the venture-- a completely idiotic "look, business in the east!" report.
Having your ex touching your stuff (to put it in the most immature fashion possible) forever seems like the kind of thing very few people could handle.
To Ted Nugent's credit, he identified this as a case where adults have to prove themselves worthy of the name.
it's discovered that Schrodinger actually performed the experiment, but was persuaded by Einstein never to open the box, for fear of the damage that the waveform's collapse could do; the box was walled up and forgotten about.
I assumed that egg separators were for people too uptight to use their hands.
neB, there's no eggs in those cookies.
Every time McArdle's name comes up, I wonder why people hate her so much, but every time I visit her page, I am reminded. Full of words, void of interest.
I assumed that egg separators were for people too uptight to use their hands.
The eggshell itself works just fine.
My hand is much less sharp and/or pointy than eggshells. And then you can pinch off that nasty white thready bit as well.
I separate eggs by subjecting them to a series of fiendishly difficult trials, which require feats of strength, daring, and intelligence.
Huh. I do the eggshell thing. I may have been overtaught that if you want whites to get fluffy there must never be the merest speck of anything oily near them -- I always thought that even freshly washed hands wouldn't be oil-free enough not to taint the whites. But if it works, then it does look like it might be quicker. Maybe I'll try it -- I'm heading into gingerbread house land this weekend, and that means royal icing.
98: YOU PEOPLE ARE SO INSENSITIVE.
MY TOPIARY BLOWS
50: no -- whoever lets go of the cat first to avoid tearing it in half gets to keep it. That is the Solomonic technique.
98: Huh. I use the sharp edge to scrape of that thready thing. I would be afraid of squiching the yol if I tried it with my fingers.
Oh, you and your hang-ups about squiching the yol.
108: As you can see from my typing, my fingers are not exactly skillful. Fellaz...
neB, there's no eggs in those cookies.
Do you say this to reassure me nothing in your hands has touched them? But that lowers, not raises, them in my consideration.
I usually use the shell to separate eggs—it seems more elegant to me, and you don't get egg stuff on your hands—but am not above cupping the golden yolk in my eager palm, when, for instance, I crack the shell in a too-asymmetrical manner.
99: I just explain to the whites that even a hint of yoke will render them "colored". Then, coupled with the draconian segregation laws our 2.5-year-old has passed for all food served in our house, voila: separation. Come to think of it, I'm surprised Megan didn't suggest something similar.
86.2 gets it exactly right. I'd been avoiding noticing how bereft of content that program was, until ....
But that lowers, not raises, them in my consideration.
Maybe that's exactly her intent? I.e., "Don't get all excited, neB: I didn't touch those cookies."
I wonder why I wrote "nothing in your hands".
I've always considered Marketplace the infomercial for capitalism that came on after All Things Considered.
You're awfully particular about food, so I was concerned. But I can't imagine making cookies without touching the ingredients, dough, or finished product.
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I rode a bike today for the first time in years. I had forgotten how much fun it was. And I could still ride (for a very short distance) with no hands, which impressed my children no end. Or not. I used to be able to ride all the way home up the Cowley Road with no hands, which is probably one of my proudest achievements.
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I just explain to the whites that even a hint of yoke will render them "colored"
No, a hint of yoke will render them servile.
118: you could wear latex gloves, I guess. Practice safe food prep!
Dude. I'm still disproportionately proud of myself for turning corners on my bike with no hands.
I believe in using my kitchen to hone the immune systems of friends.
Congratulations, Megan! If something unexpected were to happen as you turned, you'd probably get in an easily avoided accident!
Servile eggs make poor soufflés.
125: neb, the whole point of bicycling is to eliminate all unnecessary portions of the experience. First you eliminate gears, then brakes, then handlebars, until eventually you reach the purest form of bicycling: walking.
Every night I lie and bed and bicycle all night long.
I separate eggs by putting perfectly adequate ones into couples' therapy.
123, 125 - I did fall off my bike once because I swished round my corner no hands and there was a car in the middle of the road! Had a massive scab on my knee for weeks.
Speaking of food: a while back someone (AWB? RFTS?) linked to a site that sold nice dried beans, anyone remember what it was?
129: Emerson's weakness as a short-order cook is that he won't serve whole eggs.
We will probably be having Rancho Gordo beans as part of our dinner this very night!
Those are very good beans, even if my (no longer vegetarian) children scorn them.
127: Yesterday I saw a unicyclist pedaling along with his arms folded inside his jacket. At first I thought he was an armless unicyclist. He deserves to fall just for freaking me out.
137 - no longer vegetarian?! That made me laugh.
That other thread is dead, but my 7 year old got mistaken for a boy today, which surprised me. She's got short bobbed hair, and she was wearing actual boy clothes - an orange ski jacket and black combat pants.
Yeah, she lasted a couple of weeks, but the combination of not actually liking much in the way of vegetables or beans and that she's growing about an inch a month meant that hunger drove her back into the arms of bacon. We told her that lots of people go back and forth between being vegetarian and not being, and she can try it again later if she likes.
Hard to be vegetarian when you don't like vegetables.
If she doesn't like enough beans and veggies to fill her up, you can focus on eggs, grains, and cheese. That can definitely satisfy a need for calories and things that make you feel full, and it is about as healthy as a meat and potatoes (and no other veggies) diet.
In general, you can't make it as a vegetarian if you simply take vegetables out of your existing diet. You will need to find new things.
Has Sally been introduced to the wonders of tofu and seaweed?
140 - as with many things in life, knowing there are options and talking about them is a very good start.
Gah - I come here to get away from earnest parentness.
Keep feeding her the vegetables she hates, LB. You'll break her spirit any day now. Hunger is on your side.
I eat and love a huge variety of greens from mild to turbo-bitter, but I've always found seaweed a really unpleasant flavor.
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Voilà! The first comment from my brandest new laptop -- brandest new because my not-even-two-years-old laptop had gone in for service so many times that Apple finally replaced it with a much nicer one.
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And then my TimeCapsule failed (seriously, the next day) taking my entire iTunes library with it and so Apple has put everything I have ever bought from iTunes into back into my download queue. It's kind of intimidating -- mostly from gift cards, thank fsm, and since like 2004, but damn.
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146: Some Korean friends of us got us eating this crispy broiled seaweed. It is so greasy and salty and crispy, I find it hard to believe that it retains the nutritional benefits of seaweed. Still, it's great. I just look for Korean script shopping for seaweed in Asian grocery stores. Our kids eat it up.
Oh man. Korean seaweed is sooo good, with visible salt crystals. Very yummy.
Is that the crunchy stuff that "health food stores" sell in little plastic tub things, often with both salt and sesame seeds? That stuff rules.
everything I have ever bought from iTunes
In my library, that would amount to maybe 60 or 70 songs out of 40,000.
I used to be able to ride all the way home up the Cowley Road with no hands, which is probably one of my proudest achievements.
That's nothing. I used to walk back home from the Cowley Road legless.
153: Oh, it is way fewer songs than that. It is all tv shows and movies!!! Insane, I know. But every relative I have has been giving me an iTunes gift card for every occasion since the early aughts.
146: Some Korean friends of us got us eating this crispy broiled seaweed. It is so greasy and salty and crispy, I find it hard to believe that it retains the nutritional benefits of seaweed. Still, it's great. I just look for Korean script shopping for seaweed in Asian grocery stores. Our kids eat it up.
Yessss, I love the fried seaweed. The stuff oudemia is thinking of may be roasted instead, which is also good (but not as good! shocking).
I've only ever had it in seaweed salad, so maybe different preparation would help.
The fried crispy seaweed you get in most Chinese restaurants in the UK is in fact fried shredded green cabbage.
Fried seaweed is the perfect snack for people trying to avoid eating too many carbohydrates but not particularly concerned about calories. If I had tested positive for gestational diabetes, I would have immediately gone to the pan-Asian supermarket and bought a zillion packs.
I've only ever had it in seaweed salad, so maybe different preparation would help.
Yeah, seaweed salad is certainly its own thing. The different varieties of seaweed can be pretty different from one another, too. Do you hate nori in your sushi?
No, there isn't enough of it in sushi to even really register.
I fear that 98% of my comments are about food, pregnancy, or obscenely venting my spleen about Congresspeople. What a narrow purview.
Do you hate nori in your sushi?
As the bishop said to the actress.
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One more for the Natilo Hates Cops files: I was at a benefit dinner recently, and a local anti-police brutality activist was telling a story about someone who had called the police brutality hotline. Seems this guy (white) had been at home alone, sleeping in his bed. The cops had broken in, without a warrant or any kind of probable cause, and, unable to wake him verbally, had Tasered him to wake him up. So he wakes up, and is all "WTF?" and the cops give him some bullshit story, and he asks if they have a warrant, and they admit that they don't, and so he shoos them out of his house. So he files a formal complaint, and because he's white, gets a meeting with the police chief. The chief looks at his files and says "Well, by what I see here, we really should have arrested you."
Of course, if this fellow had not been white, he would simply be dead, so, could always be worse.
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153: How do you tolerate having so much music on your computer? I'm hovering under 8000 songs and have been deleting stuff, but it's like the thing with the broom and the ocean.
I suppose there's a way to do it, but I haven't quite embraced digital living as much as I thought.
153: How do you tolerate having so much music on your computer? I'm hovering under 8000 songs and have been deleting stuff, but it's like the thing with the broom and the ocean.
Why deleting stuff? I have fewer songs than that at the moment, but it's because I've been lazy about putting stuff on there (there's a bunch more on other computers on our network) not because it would trouble me to have more there. I can see running out of room on the hard drive, but otherwise don't get what the problem would be.
I have nearly 42000. I tolerate it by having rolled my own database.
165: What's not to tolerate? I have an external hard drive that's just for music.
165: Yeah, my library sits on its own external HD. This is part of the reason that iTunes restored everything to my download queue, but I have now given it a better place to sit.
I was going to talk learnedly about how I manage my encyclopedic music collection but I have less than 10,000 tracks, so I'm a piker, pretty much. Still, my answer is Smart Playlists.
166-168:28k
I add and delete a few hundred every day.
but otherwise don't get what the problem would be.
I can't stand having Abbey Road in rotation
I really miss not having Abbey Road in rotation.
OMG, not Abbey Road again
How can I not have Abbey Road?
How do I find room for Priest = Aura?
But really, isn't Abbey Road a little better than Priest = Aura?
I haven't listened to Priest = Aura enough to tell if Abbey Road is better, because London Calling is still taking space.
CA keeps his insane music library (all ripped to FLAC) on its own computer -- it's a little mini-server that works with his fetish object, the SlimServer.
My baroque division of the music library between the main hard drive, which currently has 128 MB of free space (out of 40 GB), and my G drive, which currently has 360 MB of free space (out of 80 GB), has become so unwieldy that I probably should devote an entire hard drive to the music library, even though it would sadly wipe out my pride-inducing "most played" statistics.
(note: not all of that space on the hard drives is audio and video files)
Every so often I wonder if I'm overstating my claim to be basically indifferent to music. After all, there are some songs I like a lot. Then I read conversations like this and realize that you people are all insane.
I agree. 42000? That's just... too damn much.
I love music, but I can't listen to it while I do anything that requires any thinking. So I pretty much only listen while driving. Which doesn't inspire me to compile a big awesome library of music.
So I pretty much only listen while driving.
Just remember to stay in the car.
My music collection (plus smart playlists) basically acts as a personal radio station; I don't seek out particular albums unless a song really calls to me. I will rate tracks that I particularly like, and then have smart playlists made up of tracks I haven't heard in some kind of ratio with songs I've specified enjoying but haven't heard in a while, then I put that on my phone. Much more fun than listening to the radio.
Damn. I only have, like, 8000 files in my iTunes library.
ITunes dj works pretty good. It can find some good songs in a big collection.
I was going to talk learnedly about how I manage my encyclopedic music collection but I have less than 10,000 tracks, so I'm a piker, pretty much. Still, my answer is Smart Playlists.
That's probably still better than what I use (and I think there's an audacious plugin carried over from way back when it was still xmms that does something similar). Really just about the most sophisticated thing I can do is search for songs using regular expressions based on title/album/artist, play it in audacious or on the commandline, see what I've recently played/played most, what I've recently added to the collection, and … not much else, actually.
But I could add more functionality if I wanted.
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I think at this point I might just drive right through the Bay Area and not stop. It'll be the third 400+ mile day in a row.
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i've never really 'organised' my music b/c all the things seems too dumb/uncustomisable. tags seems better than just folders, since most things could be catagorised in multiple ways. i might not even be happy with an allmusic db scanning thing. i really don't want to catalogue hundreds of thousands of albums just to get locked into someone's annoying software. so the most i really do is use last.fm to have 'top 40' type charts. i also use pandora sometimes. i may read through this thread if anyone has any good software.
also, if anyone has any um, 'ambient jungle' type music, i'd like ot hear about it. i was playing spore, and the soundtrack i started to enjoy, especially the thing you get over new colony cities. and i felt a bit embarrased, but then i read that brian eno did it, so i felt comfortably smug again. but i'd like some stuff like that: has some faster drum machine rhythm stuff, with slower melodic/pink noise layers.
or that sounds like seefeel.
oh, i meant thousands of albums, or another order of magnitdue songs. 100k albums would be too much, gah.
(note: not all of that space on the hard drives is audio and video files)
He's also got several gigs of memory dedicated to .TIFFs of his etchings...laydeez.
also, if anyone has any um, 'ambient jungle' type music
Racist.
Is 187 made in full knowledge of the hilarious brouhaha over "jungle" vs. "drum and bass" dating back to the mid-90s? I should probably check Standpipe's blog on this one, shouldn't I?
drum 'n bass, excuse me. I shop at "Toys Are Us".
also, if anyone has any um, 'ambient jungle' type music
The jungle? It's about a weem away.
175
Every so often I wonder if I'm overstating my claim to be basically indifferent to music. After all, there are some songs I like a lot. Then I read conversations like this and realize that you people are all insane.
I agree with this.
also, if anyone has any um, 'ambient jungle' type music,
I think Third Eye Foundation, Little Lost Soul, approximates what you describe: examples 1 and 2.
Every so often I wonder if I'm overstating my claim to be basically indifferent to music. After all, there are some songs I like a lot. Then I read conversations like this and realize that you people are all insane.
I love music, and have fewer than 150 music files on my computer.
This isn't a music discussion so much as a tech/gearhead discussion.
Don't get me wrong, I keep being tempted to (one of these days) post pretty pictures of my pre-amp. I don't pretend to above tech discussions, but it is something different than actually talking about music.
It's neither a tech nor a gearhead discussion, anymore than your saying how many records or CDs you own would be.
I have about 1500 musicish on my computer, maybe 1000 of which are from my brother-in-law. A substantial portion of the remainder consists of podcasts and other spoken wordy musicish files.
Hey NickS, you don't know anything about building (hi-fi) tube preamps, do you? I'd really like to make one, but many of the kits strike me as wildly overpriced, and anyhow I'd love to have some control over the feature set, maybe by combining boards (I'd love it to have a s/pdif input) but all the resources on designing your own I can find are gnomic and rely heavily on 15 year old gif diagrams.
191: I agree with your agreement with 175.
Speaking of music, there was a song out about 25 years ago and I don't know enough to search for it. Whenever I do search, I get Pat Benatar's "Shadows of the Night", which is great but not what I want to get. The chorus was like "Woo-o-o. (Drum hit). Woo-o-o. (Drum hit)." Help? Or is that just too unclear?
A Gearhead Discussion
Alice: I've got gears in my head.
Bob: My head is actually a gear.
Carol: Just a gear?
Bob: Well, a pair of gears. They mesh.
Carol: Huh. I used to have to wear headgear.
Alice: Attractive!
Carol: Well, la-di-dah, clockwork skull.
Bob: Girls, girls, you're both pretty.
Carol: How are you talking, anyway?
Bob: The gears drive a player piano kind of thing.
hm, not exactly, though thats pretty close and i really like third eye foundation, and hadn't listened to them in a while. something less intense/ bass drop-y. i hadn't remembered them, so thats not so bad. maybe more like gas or oval, except with the rhythmic sense of jungle.
Bob: The gears drive a player piano kind of thing.
WE DECLARE THAT WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE
The chorus was like "Woo-o-o. (Drum hit). Woo-o-o. (Drum hit)." Help? Or is that just too unclear?
Too unclear for me, at least.
201: I couldn't tell if he was joking or not. Still can't.
Getting Pat Benatar is no joke.
i guess i just need some sort of beat-maching software so i can play a jungle track with all the low and mid range cut out over top an ambient track.
202: I do kind of invite that, but I'm not joking, just lacking the words to express music.
Anyway, I managed to find it because I remembered "creatures of the night" not "children of the night", which is what kept bring me to Pat Benatar. It was Laura Branigan's "Self-Control".
Why I couldn't have remembered the part where she goes "You take my self, you take my self control," I don't know?
196: You could get a few 12AX7s and start from first principles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12AX7
IMX, the nicest thing about tube electronics was that they were electrically rugged. You could make many mistakes, the first one didn't fry all the components instantly.
Huh, turns out I do know that song.
207: Close.
208: That's because it is the best song of its generation.
Hey NickS, you don't know anything about building (hi-fi) tube preamps, do you?
I don't. I'm not particularly tech savvy; all my hardware is built by a guy in town.
For what it's worth (not much) my sense is that the main problems in designing a pre-amp are (1) channel separation (2) channel matching and (3) not introducing too much noise with the volume control circuit. But I don't know how you actually build a pre-amp that solves those problems.
*shrug*
Addendum to 209: Except for "I Touched the Rain in Africa."
Sifu: I may know a guy who may be able to offer some advice. Send me an e-mail to remind me to ask him tomorrow.
Am I the only one who feels compelled to listen to 207 after clicking on it? I do like that song.
208: That's because it is the best song of its generation.
Oh. Is it an only child?
214: Music started to go downhill with Nirvana.
Am I the only one who feels compelled to listen to 207 after clicking on it? I do like that song.
Sort of; I did youtube Toto's "Africa" after 211, which is a similar earworm.
215: Well, that's just silly. There's been tons of great music since Kurt died.
And I used to think that if I were deeper, I wouldn't turn the station whenever Pearl Jam came on the radio and no one else was in the car.
Although the manatee song isn't evidence of 217. But boy does it get stuck in my head. Shawty's like a manatee in my head!
Anyway, I managed to find it because I remembered "creatures of the night" not "children of the night", which is what kept bring me to Pat Benatar.
Either you're thinking of "shadows of the night", or you have Pat Benatar confused with Bela Lugosi.
The chorus was like "Woo-o-o. (Drum hit). Woo-o-o. (Drum hit)."
Billy Squier's "The Stroke"?
107: no -- whoever lets go of the cat first to avoid tearing it in half gets to keep it.
Pre-pwned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_Chalk_Circle
Music started to go downhill with Nirvana.polyphony
very disappointingly, i read this whole thread, and it was only like the last 5 posts htat had anything about music collection organization techniques.
