WHAT'S GOIN' ON HERE?

Sunday, September 28, 2008

The N2FNH Sound Effects Library 3B: Simple Sound Design!


I've gotten a lot of mileage from the basic everyday Microsoft Windows 98 ding wav. I currently use CoolEdit Pro Version 2.1 so when I produced a Random Access Thought on the JingTong general purpose handhelds, I needed a show and tell slideshow bell, like what you might have heard if you've been around long enough to recall those clunky junky 35mm slide film and vinyl audio record machines. The bell was the audio cue to jump to the next visual slide.

I would have used the Microsoft ding wav but as simple as it was, it was all too closely associated with PCs, so I downshifted the frequency of the bell by ten per cent. The original duration was maintained and the resulting effect was a dull and uninspiring sad little bell. But this was exactly what I wanted.

At another earlier time, I took the ding wav and time-stretched out to about four seconds. The DING became a DIIIIIIIIG. Then I passed it though a so-called CoolEdit Pro"Martian Echo" and the resultant effect was more of a DEE DOO DEE DOO DEE DOO. I then looped a lot of these DEE DOOS in sequence and they made for an appealing high tech background sound, especially when tossed in with other custom produced ambiances.

Bored one day, I took the DEE DOO loop file and adjusted the sample rate from 22.050KHz to 19,2000 KHz. Flanged it. Then, reversed the file. Flanged it again. Adjusted the sample rate back to 22.050KHz. The result was startling! A nifty very 1950's vintage vibrato-like outer space music effect. I use parts of this track now quite often.

I've produced a number of Random Access programs and promos which revolve around the theory of the Internet Tubes. I was able to assemble a unique mini-library of Internet Tube effects, going back to the DEE DOO noise as a source effect. But remember! The Microsoft ding wav was the source of all of these!

Two things I did to the files: First, I Dopplered them all, including the ambiances - I wanted an aural feeling that things on the super information highway burbling by at high speed, like cars and trucks zooming by with that distinctive sweeping high to low WHOOOOM. Second, the DEE DOO noise was subjected to extensive modification to shift the DEE DOO into a more brassy tinkling sound, as if the e-mail and file transfers flitting by were feverishly flapping their tiny metallic wings. Finally, these same sounds were passed through a so-called CoolEdit Pro"Tunnel Echo" which really made the flying wavs sound even more tinkly and brassy.

You've seen photographs of a house-sized ball of string with a man standing next to it. The Nutty guy started with a strand maybe an inch or two long when he was seven. Fifty five years later, there's a fifteen foot diameter cloth sphere in his front yard that the neighbors wish he would just roll away. But the theory is the same. Start out with something small and simple and you can build, assemble and construct things that look or sound nothing like the original, but of course, much better and far more exciting!

That's what creativity is all about!

Friday, September 26, 2008

Into the Internet Tubes! In search of Black Holes!



We delve deep below the streets of midtown Big City in this week's edition of the Random Access File. Our host Howard Stern, NO NO NO! NOT THAT GUY! NOT THAT GUY!, is just your average everyday working stiff, who carefully escorts you, our valued podcast listener, through the ins and outs of one of the largest Internet tubes in Big City in search of an truly ominous denizen, the Internet Black Hole! The fact is, the Internet is not such a friendly global environment. The digital high seas are fraught with all sorts of nasty sub oceanic entities, including the Internet Black Holes.

Mister Stern has been a senior member of the IITCMWU, the International Internet Tube Construction and Maintenance Workers Union AFL-CIO Local 237A, since December 14th 1939, so he carries with him almost seven decades of accumulated experience on Mechanical Internet Infrastructure. By the way, this feature was recorded in Big City Cable's primary outgoing e-mail tube so if you listen carefully, you can actually hear personal e-mails and spam being tossed from server to server.

In the associated promo that plays before the main Random Access File feature, we learn that Marilyn Krasnov is also employed by Big City Cable as an Internet Tube Maintenance Specialist.

So download this week's This Week in Amateur Radio Ham Service and the TWIARi Broadcast version, or even better connect to: http://www.twiar.org/n2fnh/RATParts Look for file number RAF080424_HOLE.cab, right click and "Save Target As" to your hardddrive. Use your WinZIP or IZArc to extract the select RAF audio WAV file inside!

From the RAT Files Circa 2003: Terrorism...and Amateur Radio!?!

The following was originally composed as radio copy for THIS WEEK IN AMATEUR RADIO which is due to air in August of 2003. Please click on this address: http://www.twiar.org/ for more information on this amateur radio news service. The call signs and names noted in this copy are fictitious and do not represent any specific amateur radio or citizen band station, but there is an Empire State Plaza. It's located a just few blocks away from this keyboard. Like several previously scripted Random Access Files, this feature was first aired as spoken word and then later was edited and scoped down to a ten minute produced version which has run from time to time overThis Week in Amateur Radio.

A man sits in a small room. A squalid little pay-by-the-hour 10-by-10. At the Blodgett Motel.A 24-unit dump just off Central Avenue on Arcadia Street in Colonie. A mellow-yellow, white-bread suburban community just a few minutes west of Albany. The capital city of New York, The Empire State. His dusty complexion and jet black hair suggest that he is Middle Eastern, Perhaps Eurasian. Maybe Mediterranean. But he could be South American. One can not tell for sure. He is perched on the edge of a severely "tested" and hopelessly worn-out mattress, marked with some incidental and somewhat ambiguous brownish-yellow stains. But he is not concerned with this.

He unpacks the sleek silver laptop. Disconnects the cheap close-out RadioShack beige-colored plastic room phone. Plugs in the Dell Inspirion 600m. For his own odd sense of security, he decides to do a dial-up. The connection to EarthLink is made. A click on the WinPack icon renders an instance of this popular packet program, up and good to go. It happens to be version 6.8. The man types in the telnet address for VE2UPZ. VE2UPZ is an amateur radio packet bulletin board system with Internet connections located near Montreal. The WinPack Selection List Editor has been set to reject all message inventory except those containing JPEG images issued from a certain GW3 ham station, encapsulated and transmitted within an eclectic data format known as 7PLUS.

During this session, three out of an expected five zipped JPEG files plus one tiny text message are downloaded. The images appear to be intended for any ham's view, sent "@WorldWide". But the tiny text was sent personally to the man's legally-obtained KC2 call sign. WinPack dutifully unzips and decodes the images. These are images of a World War II Boeing B-17 bomber. Shots taken at the big Oshkosh Airshow just a few months prior. The personal text is also unzipped and decoded. There is a single word: FRAGOR.

FRAGOR is Latin for BOOM.

A click on another icon brings up something just as interesting.. This is called: The Evidence Eliminator. It happens to be version 1.6. This is a so-called Steganography application which can encode and decode text messages embedded in JPEGs, GIFs, bitmaps and other image formats. The keyword FRAGOR is entered into the interface. The three B-17 pictures are called up. The Evidence Eliminator performs its assignment flawlessly. Some remarkably strategic documentation is extracted. Sensitive information detailing certain architectural flaws in a New York State government structure referred to as the Empire State Plaza is now before him.

The Empire State plaza is an huge, sprawling World's Fair-like office complex in Albany's downtown business district, complete with an over-sized museum, a forty-story skyscraper and a bulbously bloated toilet bowl-shaped theater which everyone in these parts euphemistically calls "The Egg".

But the man had anticipated two additional images.

Still online with EarthLink, another telnet session is made to the G8QAR amateur packet Internet gateway at Kidderminster in the United Kingdom. A check of stations heard list on the 2 meter - 144.85 radio port reveals a certain GW3 station has been beaconing on the frequency. The man jumps into the radio network and connects with the open terminal of the GW3 Terminal Node Controller.

The man types:
"Hello Ian. Here is Anthony. Are you there?"
Moments later:
"Yes, Anthony. Ian is here. How is the family?"
"The family is well. We received some snapshots but two were missing."
"Oh that is too bad. Did you check with Francois or Niles? I think they may have those..."
"Not yet, but yes, I will give them both a call now. Thank you Ian, please give your son a hug for me."
"I will. Hope to hear from you soon." *click*

The man who calls himself Anthony knows that Francois is the F6DEE Internet BBS near Toulouse and Niles is actually NL1DBU, a citizen band bulletin board system in Uitgeest, Holland. Winpack now up again and a link to F6DEE. All five images are there plus his personal message and just for curiosity, he logs in with NL1DBU but finds only one of the five images and no personal message. No matter though, he has what he needs. This mission will be accomplished soon. For a small moment, the man who calls himself Anthony reclines on the spotty old mattress and muses: How easy it was to pass through the lax security at the Albany International Airport. All he had to do was take off his shoes. The so-easy-to-use western technology Microsoft Windows XP laptop computer.

The Empire State Plaza structural weakness data first harvested perhaps five years ago, forwarded at that time by hand over land and sea with great risk and delivered to an electronic database located in a place where the need to know is held by the select few. This same data just now relayed back to provincial upstate New York, hidden in full view and embedded in simple JPEG photo images of American airplanes.

Easy access to commercial Internet telephone lines. Easy access to homebrew radio transmission networks constructed by unsuspecting and apparently quite naive amateur and citizen band radio "hobbyists". The two missing photos are now before him. More shots of the same B-17, providing the needed additional thought-to-be-secure data plus contact and so-called "equipment" information.

If all goes well.. By 3PM Tuesday...............FRAGOR!





Hi this is Bill Baran - N2FNH with the Random Access File. The tragic events of September 11th, 2001 in New York have given me pause for thought in a perhaps unusual sort of way. What if those in the world who would attempt to render us harm, possible terrorist operatives known in the popular media as "sleepers", actually employ our packet radio network systems for nefarious gain. A "triviality" perhaps. Why bother? Who would waste their time? 1200 baud? You must be joking! But please consider:Amateur packet radio, once a rag-tag, hodge-podge collection of disparate regional radio networks can now be easily daisy-chained together where ever there is a nearby radio-to-the-Internet gateway to fashion a highly usable communications network available to anyone who understands the strengths and weaknesses of these networks and also understands how to gain access. And access is easy. An operative need not make use use of any archaic and torturous 1200 baud radio links. He can bypass those by carefully intercepting one of approximately 500 strategically-located Internet gateways, nodes, online packet bulletin board system or even DXClusters.

The availability of low cost or free domain names for dynamically addressed Internet communications systems has made it possible for a small fleet of online BBSs and DXClusters to mushroom forth, with little or no need for radio circuits. Therefore, information transfer becomes instantaneous. Less stringent requirements for amateur radio licensing in the United States and many other countries makes it more easy for an operative to secure a license legitimately. But there is a wide range of other more sophisticated communications options available: Cellphones, Satellite telephones, 802.11 WiFi, even Nextel walkie talkies with coast-to-coast coverage. Why would a terrorist make use of amateur packet radio? Why?

Because access is easy. A legal call sign gets you in. To date, I have not come across one Sysop who would subject a prospective user to the kind of scrutiny a government or military agency might employ to verify an identity. Plus, both amateur radio and citizen band packet networks are: Effectively out of the way. If the Internet is akin to a galaxy, studded with stars, suns, planets, moons and comets, then ham and CB packet radios with their associated wireline systems are nothing more than an infinitesimal pinpoint of light, virtually invisible on the extreme fringe. Effectively, out of the way. Easily missed. Totally unnoticed. And often forgotten even by its own architects, maintainers and supporters.

Government regulatory agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission expressly forbid the use of codes or encryption. But who could guess that names like Francois or Niles might be keywords representing select mailboxes on the Internet? Average everyday although highly strategic message boards that more commonly carry the occasional FOR SALE item, the oddball trivia factoid or the meaningless rantings about Land Line Lids. How could a local ham watching his packet monitor in the British Isles know that common given names like Ian or Anthony might actually be aliases for Mustafah, Singh, Anatoli or Fidel?

And would an eyebrow be raised if these names were actually seen? Most likely not. In the global village, such names are common everywhere. But an operative working surreptitiously will take no chance. When in Rome, use a Roman name. There are however some disadvantages to using such networks. Such networks are homegrown affairs. They are not commercial services. They are the efforts of hobbyists, who offer up their discretionary time for the better cause.But if a critical node or gateway crashes and drops off the screen, it might be days, weeks, maybe even years before the time is taken to effect a repair. Thus, a clever operative however will maintain an up-to-the-minute awareness of the systems needed to get the job done. And who could guess that text messages could be embedded in simple computer generated images?

You can try this your self: Click on: http://www.evidence-eliminator.co.uk/ (tread light here, not sure if this is still safe) and download a program identified as Dound's Steganographer. It happens to be version 1.6. It's freeware and it allows the user to encrypt or digitally watermark any bitmap image, making use of any keyword you choose. Remarkably, it works! By the way, even as this Random Access File was being written, check out this real packet message I just intercepted from the VE2TOY BBS at Laval. It's from G6HXW and it was sent to CODE3(at)WW on the 25th of August, 2003:
............................................................................
From : G6HXW
To : CODE3(at)WW
Type/status : B$
Date/time : 25-Aug 20:47
BID (MID) : 670378G6HXW
Message # : 394681
Title : Night owl to Squirrel
(This message has been read 1 times so far in this BBS.)
Path: !VA2BBS!VE2WXK!VE2PKT!KB2TXP!VK3TE!VK3KAY!PP5AQ!HA3PG!IK1ZNW!LZ0FBB!
!GB7CRV!GB7CIP!GB7WSX!GB7IPW!
From: G6HXW@GB7IPW.#38.GBR.EU
To : CODE3(at)WW

The night owl has spotted the squirrel eating at the tree stump.
Put plan B into operation. Test over.
73 - Lionel, G6HXW @ GB7IPW-2
;-)

Message timed: 23:52 on 2003-Aug-25
Message sent using WinPack-AGW V6.80
--- End of messsage #394681 to CODE3 from G6HXW ---
............................................................................
Could this be some secret terrorist communique? Or is it just another typical test message from some funny guy ham operator? I would say the latter, wouldn't you? But then again...
- 30 -

WHAT ARE YA!

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Visual Sound Effects! More Optical Onomatopoeia!



Here are a few more images associated with visual sound effects or optical onomatopoeia. Most of these are from stateside comic publications. Remarkably, many of these seemingly silly words are very similar to names assigned to audio sound effects in commercially available libraries such as the Hanna Barbera Sound FX Library.They use such nonsense words to label sounds that can not otherwise be titled.

Words like FLBONK, BILP, PEEONG, GEDUNK and BRONK, can not do justice to what each effect actually sounds like but at least you know which is which. In my own effects library, I am forced to do the same so equally baffling phrases like JAWUBBA_WUBBA and ZACHBLIP_BLOOP show in my inventory lists.


Friday, September 19, 2008

The Dead Are Among Us! The Dead Are All Around Us!

The focus continues on the dead media thread in this week's episode of the Random Access Thought, an exclusive feature of This Week in Amateur Radio.Actually, it's not so much DEAD as OBSOLETE. Any high tech item you purchase today is doomed to obsolescence within a matter of months as the next "latest and greatest" hits the store shelves.

Hosted by The Dead Media Guy, this week's RAT also features the Krasnov family, including Marilyn, Beverly (Mother Radio) Boleslav and Cigman. The items discussed are computer serial ports, the venerable Western Union Telegram, the Zaurus pocket organizer, early versions of the Palm Pilot (I have an "old" Palm M500 and a Sony Clique here, both of which belong to MNOAOS Zach) and the original Nintendo Gameboy (mine!)!

There is a new TWIAR Blog Promo on board this week, featuring the enigmatic TANK and Zach and a new QSL card offer as well, starring Mother Radio and Zach's digital pal Bix Nix. Of course, a bevy of rare vintage 1950's era analog sound effects are littered throughout all the Random Access elements so make a point to secure a download of this week's This Week!


So go get This Week in Amateur Radio Ham Service and the TWIARi Broadcast version, or even better connect to http://twiar.org/n2fnh/RATParts

Look for file number RAT080409_DED3.WAV - DEAD MEDIA: SERIAL PORTS AND OTHER THINGS, right click and "Save Target As" to your hardddrive. Use your WinZIP or IZArc to extract the ripe RAT audio WAV file inside!

From the RAT Files circa 2003: The Future is Here! It's Just Very Hard to See...

The following was originally composed as radio copy for THIS WEEK IN AMATEUR RADIO which first aired in June of 2002. Please click on http://www.twiar.org/ for additional information on this amateur radio news service. This is one of my favorite Random Access Files. Aside from it being an adjective-heavy boatload of copy, it was one of my more passionate efforts. Also, this installment has been reincarnated several times. I believe the original voice only version played in two ten minute segments. It reappeared as a twenty minute two part version with added sound effects. I finally reshaped it down to a single ten minute version, which still airs from time to time.


It has been at least forty years.
...............maybe fifty years.
.......possibly even sixty years.
Since they promised us:
FLYING CARS!
So far, I see no flying cars.

It has been at least forty years.
...............maybe fifty years.
.......possibly even sixty years.
Since they promised us:
HOUSEHOLD ROBOT FRENCH MAIDS!
So far, I see no household robot French maids.

It has been at least forty years.
...............maybe fifty years.
.......possibly even sixty years.
Since they promised us:
ANTI_GRAVITY TUBES!
(Something like an elevator without the elevator).
But so far, I see no anti-gravity tubes.

Buck Rogers
Flash Gordon (the Mac Raboy version)
Life Magazine
Popular Electronics
Popular Science,
Popular Mechanics
Science and Mechanics
Rocky Jones - Space Ranger
Captain Video
Captain Midnight
Gort
DC Comics
Marvel Comics (Stan Lee, always cool)
The Jetsons
The Flintstones
Walt Disney
Bill Hanna
Joe Barbera
The collective Captains - Kirk, Picard and Janeway
Mister Spock (live long)
Scotty (She's gonna blow)
Bones (He's dead, Jim. I'm a doctor)
Stanley Kubrick (despite his amusing toilet scenes)
Doctor Strangelove (not really, but I liked the film)
The Big Black Monolith (scary)
George Lucas
Luke Skywalker
His father Darth
His sister Princess
The tin can R2
The other can C3
Steven Spielberg
Steve's CE3K thing from the mother ship
Rita Liebowitz
The Great Gazoo
MAD Magazine (rarely)
Playboy Magazine (barely)
Robby the Robot (Oh, my Krell)
SuperCar
StingRay
FireBall XL-5
Thunderbirds (are GO F-A-B)
Scott McCloud (Space Angel)
Space Ghost (Gary Owens)
The Herculoids
Tom Swift (not Tom Slick)
Analog Science Fiction
Fantasy and Science Fiction
Issac Azimov
The National Geographic
Potzrebe
Roger Ramjet (Gary Owens)
Noodles Romanoff
Max Headroom
Max Korn
Anna Nova
Adam Strange
Wonder Woman
And anyone else
You can think of.

They all promised us...
Cities sculpted into impossibly tall, shimmering see-through time-share
high rises (which we shall call):
The Glass Spires.
Your own personal flying car for zooming around:
The Glass Spires.
Your own personal helicopter for zooming around:
The Glass Spires.
Your own personal jet pack for zooming around:
The Glass Spires.
Antigravity tubes for zooming up and down inside, outside and around:
The Glass Spires.
Your own personal robot French robot maid for cleaning:
The Glass Spires.
They promised us this fabulous, spectacular-looking future!

Things around here look pretty much the same today as they did in 1953. There are a few obvious changes, like buildings, automobiles and airplanes. Here in little old Albany New York, we've got an Empire State Plaza and the State University of New York at Albany and the New York State Office Campus, all apparently designed by frustrated former New York City World's Fair architects. Very, very ultra modern but surrounded by sagging turn-of-the-century vintage tenement buildings, dusty depression era houses, post World War Two cookie-cutter split level semi-detached ranches and even a few Lustron stainless steel houses in the Beaver Cleaver suburbs. But overall, most of the buildings that were here in 1953 are still here in 2003, in some cases, filthier, in some cases cleaner and in some cases rehabbed and stocked with a load of well-meaning, over-educated, under-paid and terminally misdirected social workers.

Cars have changed. But too not much as you might expect.
The testosterone-pumped 57 Chevy..
The estrogen-flooded Thunderbirds.
Then.
Sexless little boxy Acuras........
Sexless little boxy Toyotas.......
Sexless little boxy Subarus.......
Sexless little boxy SUVs..........
Now.

Trucks never really got into future gear. The ultimate boy toys got bigger and more ominous in size. But look pretty much the same as they did one and two score ago. City, suburban and intercity buses sad to say have changed for the worse, going from the warm and friendly well-rounded rolley polley Art Deco appointments of the General Motors coach of the 1950's and the fiercely loud, rattle trap diesel engine of the Mack bus of the same era, somehow morphing into giant moving tin can bread boxes spot-welded together by manufacturers that no one has ever heard of.

Airplanes.
The rugged workhorse and pack mule of the Second World War......
The Douglas DC-3, it's brothers....the manly DC-4,6 and 7......
And the ultra sexy three-finned Lockheed Constellation.........
Then.
Big blobby terrorist blowtorch Boeing 727s, 737s, 747s, 757s...
and all the other 7s and of course the big blobby Euro AirBuses
Now.

THE FUTURE IS HERE! But a lot of it is just very hard to see. Hi, this is Bill Baran - N2FNH - with some thoughts from the Random Access File. The future is very hard to see because the future is mostly hiding inside things, like old falling-back-to-nature farm houses, crappy old city apartments, even crappier old office buildings and cars, some crappy and some not so crappy and commercial airliners and boats and things like that. The Internet, arguably our most universally futuristic application to date can't be seen at all, except as images skittering across dumpy beige-colored TV monitor screens, downloading their way out of boxy beige boxes sitting on dumpy dingy desks or dumpy beige towers sitting on the floors beside those dumpy dingy desks inside those same old falling-back-to-nature farm houses, those same crappy old city apartments and same even crappier old office buildings. Outside, the Internet is incognito. Looking just like old, tired, weather - ravaged, very badly listing telephone poles strung with droopy, sagging wires, clad with Flying Walanda squirrels, cranky crows and timeless pairs of kids' KEDS (or maybe it's NIKE) sneakers tangled, strangled and dangling for dear life, the wires secretly and quietly transmitting the megabauds to the unseen distant servers sequestered in big city basements. In some cases, you may see fatter, pudgier, bird poop-stained cables groaning from the same poles and this would be your Verizon, Bellsouth, Pacific Bell, SNET et al broadband DSL or Time Warner Road Runner transmission line.

The big boxy beige boxes themselves ARE getting smaller, changing color and becoming more more invisible too, turning into PDAs that are so small they can fit in your pocket. The Internet is more invisible to the outside world then television has been in its various forms. The 1950s saw single-channel 20-element Yagis and multi-channel 40-element log periodic antennas mushroom over rooftops everywhere. You knew where the future was because the antenna was the visible link to the Ether. Nowadays, computers are linked with their hard-to-see Ethernet cards but they are connected with equally hard-to-see cables and twisted pairs of wires that slide around and then disappear into a tiny socket in a wall inside an office or residence.

By the late 1970s, the first of the giant metal ears, satellite dishes - small-scale Arecibos, blossomed in back yards at first across the rural fruited plain. But then many sprung up in suburban backyards too and sometimes even New York City high rises. Neighbors were pissed. They complained it was an eyesore but really they were jealous because they did not have the future in a boxy beige box delivering 500 channels of "Gee Honey, there's nothing good on the tube tonight".

As we made our way to the mid-90s and then into the present century, the TV dishes got smaller and became almost completely invisible, every house on the block with an 18-inch Japanese stir fry wok jammed on a stick sideways over the porch or on a window sill in the suburbs and the urbs, the trailer courts and the downtown ghettos. The TVs got bigger and bigger and still promise to get even bigger but they are hiding inside houses, hiding inside apartments and hiding inside condos that somehow themselves seem to be getting smaller and smaller.

Cable TV, even worse, with its black, shaky, snaky, kinky coax wires strung helter-skelter under the ground, through the basements, behind the walls and other filthy cobweb-laced, insect-infested places just out of view. The future..terminating in a little boxy beige box with glittering red LEDs sitting by the TV set. The future continues to become even more invisible.

As the TV dishes got smaller and the decades-old rooftop TV antennas now almost completely rusted away, some things - were - getting bigger. You could actually see them. King Kong vs. Godzilla-sized cellphone towers rising up like gargantuan steel weeds, spreading their giant Rodan antenna wings everywhere, on every open lot, every roadside, every hillside, every apartment rooftop, the towers are appearing to be getting bigger and wider and heavier and are studded with truly ominous and very formidable emitters. But the telephones they serve, Are getting smaller. They are so small. They are almost invisible. They are smaller than your hand. You could easily drop it in a toilet.

But you can telephone someone with no wires needed. Or make like a two-way radio (Ala' Nextel). Or send instant text messages or even get HTML or XML or any ML on some. But they are so small, You could easily drop it in a toilet. The future continues to become even more invisible.

And what happened to those thousands of CB and amateur radio antennas that were homegrown on housetops and towers everywhere. Most did indeed rust away. Many were taken down as new property covenants condemned the gawky, gangly sky hooks a socially unacceptable structural offense. Clever entrepeneurs moved right in and invented invisible antennas or at least every small but supposedly very active antennas. And the radios themselves, Like the cellphones and PDAs, Smaller and smaller again. The smallest ones, You could easily drop in a toilet.

Other radios will soon be hiding, masquerading as brother and sister boards, stuffed in PCI slots inside the boxy beige boxes but will be called Software Defined Radios, virtual transceivers where the radio is just a picture on the boxy beige box screen. In professional circles, the radio station, the television station, the audio and video post-production house, once repositories of big red glowing glass tubes, big iron rack mounts, big patch bays snarled with big finger- sized wires, big 14inch metal reel-to-reel tape machines, and the big Gates control consoles with the big fist -sized pots - all have given way to tiny little virtual studios that can easily be concealed in a little boxy beige box and further concealed in a closet painted in the color of your choice. The future continues to become even more invisible.

Our neighborhood shops and superettes, one on every corner when we were kids, all have politically defected from the neighborhood and have slipped inside big giant boxy, in some cases beige, boxes. Monstrous, sprawling, faceless landscape eaters that we all call the Mall. But it is here in the Mall where the glass-spired future comes closest to the desired realization. But this future too is concealed within the great sometimes boxy beige-colored boxes. The interior decoration often appointed with spectacular see-thru glass elevators, brilliant sparkling glass chandeliers and of course the ubiquitous go-up and down escalators. But escalators will always be the always-cool but truly retro future machine. All of this invisible to the world...

Unless you go inside.

The future continues to become even more invisible.

Each day, take look around you and see the future. Each day, there will be something new to see. Something truly futuristic. Something truly fantastic. Something wonderful - (ala' 2010). But this, and the rest of the future, will continue to become even smaller and more and more invisible. So small in fact, You could easily drop it in a toilet. -30-

No Shame!


Friday, September 12, 2008

Mmmm, Yep! Yeah! Just...


TIME! That's the Subject...and so forth!


Time is the subject of this week's installment of the Random Access Thought. MNOAOS Zach's pal Bix Nix visits with Marilyn Krasnov. Bix wants to know what what it means to be obsessive. Ms. Krasnov responds by playing a tape I recorded several years back at a late summertime Troy Amateur Radio Association picnic at the nearby Riverspark Pavillion. During that event, I whipped out my C49DRSACTR and interviewed Jeff WA2AIB who launched into an intense diatribe on his his self-admitted compulsive issues concerning time.

Bix gets a lot of airtime this week, appearing in both our TWIAR/TWIARi blog promos and also our latest QSL Card Offer promo. Here is Bix's script where he stops by Canarsie Wireless to show Mother Radio his shiny QSL card collection.

(FX1 - canarsie wireless background, rainy afternoon.)
(FX2 - big warehouse doorbell.)


MR: WHO IS IT?

BX: IT'S ME, BIX.
(muffled.)

MR: COME ON IN.
(FX4 - big warehouse door open and close.)

MR: SO, WHAT BRINGS YOU TO CANARSIE WIRELESS ON THIS DOOM AND GLOOM SUNDAY AFTERNOON?

BX: HI MOTHER RADIO, I THOUGHT I'D STOP BY AND SHOW YOU MY AMAZING COLLECTION OF QSL CARDS.

MR: SAY, DO YOU HAVE ONE OF THOSE OFFICIAL THIS WEEK IN AMATEUR RADIO QSL CARDS WITH THE ASTEROIDS?

BX: WHY YES, I DO. HERE, NOTICE THE HIGH GLOSS FINISH TO THE CARD. SEE HOW
CLEAR THE RENDERING OF THE ASTEROIDS HAS BEEN DESIGNED AND DEPICTED.
(FX5 - qsl card flexing.)

MR: THAT'S AMAZING.

BX: AND ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS E-MAIL BILL. N2FNH AT CAPITAL.NET TO RECEIVE ONE OF THESE QUALITY QSL CARDS.

MX: WHAT WAS THAT ADDRESS AGAIN?

BX: THAT'S N2FNH AT CAPITAL DOT NET, N2FNH AT CAPITAL DOT NET.

MR: THAT'S GREAT! NOW, THAT YOU'RE HERE...
(FX6 - rumble.)

I'VE GOT THE LATEST MONITORING TIMES...
(FX7 - madcap1.)

OK HANG ON! GO OUTSIDE IF YOU'RE GOING TO FREAK OUT.
(FX8 - madcap2.)

MR: WHAT IS IT WITH YOU GUYS. I MENTION RADIO MAGAZINES AND BAGELS AND YOU ALL FLIP OUT. YOU'D THINK IT WAS PLAYBOY.

BX: WHAT'S PLAYBOY?
(FX9 - bounce out.)
(FX0 - babba booey.)

From the RAT Files circa 2003: I Remember Mama!

The following was originally composed as radio copy for THIS WEEK IN AMATEUR RADIO which first aired in July of 2003. Please click on http://www.twiar.org/ for additional information on this amateur radio news service.
I remember Mama. But we didn't really call her Mama. And we didn't necessarily hold her in the highest regard. And we didn't really call her Mama. We called her Ma Bell. We also called her "monopoly". Because that's what she was. Just like the Parker Brothers board game. People called her Ma Bell. A seemingly simple and kindly nickname affixed to a corporate fortress for most of the 20th century, most notably in the 1950's and 60's by television comedians and clever boy magazine editors as an alias for this same corporate fortress better known as the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, the Bell System or simply, AT&T. Ma Bell always knew what was best for us and our telephones. We all had the same basic Western Electric telephone instrument, a miniature corporate fortress encased in black Bakelite, sheathed in a steel foundation with bomb-proof transducers for the hearing and the speaking, the two big steel half-moon bells for the banging and the clanging. Plus the implant: the 425B (actually A through at least K) network box, a small metal containment of electrical resistors, varistors, capacitors, a clod of wires and other junk terminally sealed in some kind of really gooey and greasy cancer-causing lubricant, obviously not meant to be tampered with. Unknown to the common telephone citizen, such network boxes handled the ugly chores of impedance matching, controlling audio side tone, voltage spike suppression and DC current blocking for the bell ringer coil. And : You leased the Western Electric telephone instrument. You did not own it.

Western Electric was the hardware subsidiary of the monopoly but Ma bell did respond occasionally to customer demand. The appearance of the pastel- colored, sensually shaped, ovalesque Princess Phone for the young teenage gal, the functional, relatively unobtrusive and somehow always yellow, pink or beige kitchen wall phone for the stay-at-home housewife and the equally functional but very 60's suburban-class TrimLine. I do recall the promise of the future and the demonstration of the Bell System PicturePhone at the 1964 New York World's Fair but this promise was never kept during her regime. The promise was not kept but the Princess Phone's little rotary dial would always light up brightly whenever the handset was lifted.

The media, through these same television comedians and clever boy magazine editors, was never really comfortable with the monopoly. Ma Bell was the Microsoft of the early to mid-20th century. Your daily experience with your Western Electric telephone instrument was a dependable albeit banal affair beyond these few trivial offerings. You knew you could lift the hand set and dial the zero but not the "OH"..and actually DIAL the zero but not the "OH" using the rotary contraption on your Western Electric telephone instrument and receive the pleasant and not always nasal voice of your hometown operator.

You never heard a man's voice! It just wasn't done! And the things that she could do! Set up a station-to-station call. And arrange a collect call. And we knew that she knew when the collect call was completed and we asked the party at the other end if "Frank" was there and they said: "No, not here!" that this was a secret code telling everyone at home that you were AOK. She knew. But she didn't mind at all. That same disembodied voice could patch you into other nifty operators. The salty marine operator. The foreign-accented overseas operator. The very high flying aviation operator.The very high frequency mobile telephone operator.

Even the hometown directory assistance ladies, armed with their big rubber thumbs, thumbing and fingering for the numbers in the big DA phone books. And chances were, if you lived in a small enough locality, you may have even been on a first name basis with your hometown operator. And your phone book was your Bible. Every business listed in two colors, The white pages. And the yellow. Your family. And friends. Dutifully listed as well. Except for the elitists who by their own request were non-published and maybe even unlisted. All was well in the world of telephones.

Some have speculated that perhaps the very first hairline fracture in the Bell System fortress may have been the arrival of the Western Electric touch tone telephone instrument. The future was here! And those who were status minded and trendy if not necessarily forward-thinking would actually *pay* for that privilege. But this got people thinking.

Then there was the big crack: The 1968 Carterphone Decision, which cut cloth on a whole new industry of interconnect devices,allowing manufacturers other than Western Electric to sell telephone devices such as private mobile radio interfacing systems to businesses nationwide. For us commoners, this meant that we could attach things to our telephones, like our *own* non-Western electric telephone instrument!

And then, AT&T divestiture in 1984! Oh my! Who knew? Who knew that Ma Bell, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, the Western Electric and the Bell System would actually be forced by the United States Department of Justice to subject herself to corporate binary fission and subdivide into seven RBOCs or Regional Bell Operating Companies, further splitting off into 164 Local Access And Transport Areas or LATAs (I live in in LATA 132), a messy mob of Competitive Local Exchange Carriers or CLECs and also InterExchange Carriers or IECs to handle the local telephone traffic? Ma Bell, her heirs and future competitors would always be big on abbreviations. A Baby Bell for every region. An RBOC for every town. The big monopoly was dead. But many small monopolies were born. And for a while... All was well in the world of telephones.

AT&T long Lines would still be there for the long distance and the RBOCs would still be there for the local distance. Customers would eventually come to enjoy a veritable explosion of all kinds of telephone services and communications possibilities hereto for undreamed of. Mickey Mouse telephones! And telephones that looked like a shoe! Answering machines! 49 Megahertz cordless phones! Fax machines! And then, President Bill Clinton's unleashing of the Super Information Highway, along with the Telecommunications Act of 1996 helped bring those big ugly beige boxes and their big ugly beige screens, with their stringy mouses and and their wiry and clunky crap-out keyboards into our homes...And while no one was looking, another guy named Bill was busy building another telecommunications monopoly.

Elsewhere...Competition was rife! Fabulous deals for the new-fangled cellular phone!...though some people called them Cell-O-Phones. Big contract deals! Big no-contract deals! Prepaid Phones! Prepaid calling cards! 900 MegaHertz cordless phones! Call Waiting! Call forwarding! Three-way calling! Caller ID! Call Blocking! All this crap! Customers were becoming phone crazy!

Even standard residential and business services burgeoning with new, seemingly impossible money-saving plans. Text messages and Webpages over wireless PDAs! 802-11b War Driving WIFI weirdoes with beardoes, trenching the streets looking for the free zone Internet-access hot spots! 2.4 GigaHertz spread spectrum cordless phones! All this crap! All this cheap, third-world, disposable crap! But soon... As there is always a yang to a yin... As there is always dark cloud to a silver lining... As there is always an Omega to an Alpha... Little anguishes began to seep in as the diversity of divestiture began to unfurl in ways perhaps not foreseen by its champions.

Consider the following: Here in upstate New York while there are many competing telephone concerns, the primary carrier is Verizon. Verizon used to be Bell Atlantic which used to be NYNEX and prior to that, New York Telephone. The names have changed so fast and so furiously, that many Verizon customers still regard it as New York Telephone, perhaps a subconscious subliminal yearning for the Parker Brothers system of years gone by. If you are a Verizon customer, you can dial 411 for your friendly directory assistance operator and request a telephone listing in your home town but Verizon's service is called National 411 so you can request a number in Ronkonkoma, New York, Kokomo, Indiana or Kook-a-munga, California, all for an additional nominal fee. But, if you are not a Verizon customer and you call Verizon's directory assistance, you may only receive listings within your own area code. Any requests beyond your area code may be blocked. Why? Because National 411 is a special service provided only to Verizon customers. You may have your own national directory available to you, but unless you read the fine print in your telephone service plan, you may never know. You begin to empathize with the confusion, the twinge of abdominal muscles and the dull gray throb to the skull.

But it gets better or worse. Verizon changed things so that when you dial zero for the operator, you get something called "EASY-OH". Zero delivers to your ear an automated menu. The choices: emergency police or fire services, business or residential service, business or residential repair and directory assistance. No mention of an option to press a digit for the zero operator. This is intentional because Verizon analyzed call volumes and determined that these choices are what people most often want when they dial zero. You, the caller can get the zero operator, but you may have to wait on the line or you must use a secret code. Very few callers know that as the menu is playing, doing the zero key again will dump the menu and immediately connect you to a zero operator. Meanwhile, some folks are pressing the "OH" over and over again. But this is the number 6 on the keypad and produces no result.

Confusion, mayhem and pain also comes during your daily business activities. Many banks, such as Fleet Bank, HSBC and Citibank provide a unified local telephone number for all their branches. So the number for Chasebank on Route 112 in Patchogue is the same as the one on Bailey Avenue in Buffalo, New York some 500 miles distant. The US Postal Service is quietly in the process of replacing all local telephone numbers in every city, town and village in the United States with a single toll-free number. An interesting thing about this toll-free number is that there is no option to connect to your local Post Office. It would appear that the Post Office would prefer not to talk to you. Patrons have freaked out and are furious.

Back in the Big Apple, the Federal Communications Commission has mandated that all numbers dialed in the five boroughs must be eleven digits instead of seven. So, if you work on the 79th floor of the Empire State Building and you want to call someone on the 28th floor, you must dial 1 plus the three- digit area code plus the seven-digit number. That's: 1+NPA+NUMBER. NPA=AREACODE. But secretly, NPA=Number Plan Area. It's the same thing. But it's just too easy to officially refer to the area code as the "area code". Are you following all this so far?

You don't have to live in NYC to suffer eleven digit dialing. Many cities, towns and villages across the fruited plain are experiencing area code splits and something called area code overlay. If you grew up in Sullivan County in the Jewish Alps (the Catskill Mountains) of upstate New York, you knew your NPA was 914. Not any more. Under FCC mandate, you lost your coveted 914 and became an 845. Only Westchester County got to keep the esteemed 914. All the other counties in 914 were banished to the common man's 845. Back in town, more chaos. A generation ago, all of New York City was under one area code - 212.

Then, the split decision: Manhattan - 212. The rest of New York - 718. But things change. Living in Manhattan, you may now get a 646 or a 917 number and being in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island may fetch you a 347. These additional numbers are termed area code overlays because they share the same geographic region as the original Number Plan Area. And while teeth-gritting urbanites were still coming to grips with dialing eleven digits, Gotham City government agencies decided to amalgamate all city services under a new simple three-digit telephone number. Simply dial: 311. But New Yorkers still don't quite know how to respond to this. Do you dial 1-212-311 or do you put the 212 after the 311. At 311, you can hopefully find the Mayor's Office, the Finance Department, the Health Department, the Sanitation Department, the Department of Homeless Services, Mental Health, Consumer Affairs and many other expensive government agencies. Not having heard this yet, I must assume the menu plays on with more numbers to press than there are numbers to press.

Now, consider this: Your local telephone company most likely publishes telephone directories butthere may be more than one phone book from more than one publisher tossed on your doorstep. I heard a phone book story from our esteemed technical director George Bowen - W2XBS: Here in Albany, Verizon distributes their phone book in the Spring. Customers dutifully dump their out-of-date books and place the new book within arm's reach of their most-likely non-Western Electric telephone instrument. Three weeks later, another publisher,TransWestern, moves their book through the same community, Customers assume this is yet another update and dutifully dump the new Verizon book, not realizing that they swapped one Bible for another that may not carry the same listings or may actually contain listings that Verizon does not have. And the confusion. And the chaos. And the mayhem. Continues. And this is where the chapter ends because I have a headache.

But maybe more on this topic in some future rant. This is Bill Baran - N2FNH - for the Random Access File. A thing heard exclusively over This Week In Amateur Radio. For reasons not entirely clear. -30-

P.S.: Shortwave radio listeners worldwide will recall the voice of Jane Barbe who passed away on 18 July, 2003. Ms. Barbe has been the voice of WWVH, the time and frequency radio station of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) based in Hawaii since the early 1970's. WWVH can be heard on 2.5, 5, 10, 15 and 20MHz. Anyone who has used a telephone anywhere in the United States over the last four or five decades is also intimately familiar with her voice She is known for such classic telephone network messages as: "I'm sorry. The number you have dialed is not in service or is temporarily disconnected. Please check the number and dial again or ask your operator for assistance. This is a recording". A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Ms. Barbe passed away after a battle with cancer. She was 74.

More "Got One for Me?" QSL Card Requests!

Here, in no particular order, are a few recent e-mail requests for an Official This Week in Amateur Radio QSL Card. The more traditional pathway of writing a reception report and mailing it to: This Week in Amateur Radio Post Office Box 30, Sand Lake, New York 12153 has given way in recent years to an e-mail request sent to n2fnh@capital.net. So, whether you receive the program over your local VHF or UHF repeater, copy the show over WBCQ or download the latest weekly Internet Podcast, you can get your own TWIAR QSL Card by taking pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. either way works!


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Just wanted to drop a line and say that I enjoy the podcast greatly. I dl it from iTunes weekly.
Andrew Holmes
KE5SMH
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I listen to This Week In Amateur Radio on my MP3 player. Love the show. Thanks Dennis KR8U

Friday, September 5, 2008

HEY EVERYBODY! I'M ON TWITTER!?! So, is this something or is this nothing?

The other day I stopped by George W2XBS's ever-changing blog to see what was new in the template department. I noticed toward the bottom of his page a link to a new Twitter account. Then, earlier this afternoon, I made the observation that Greg K4HSM had also installed a Twitter account for This Week in Amateur Radio. If you don't know what Twitter is, then here is a funny story, good for one smile...or smirk (depending on your personality), because I didn't know what this cockamamie thing was either.

A month back, I had connected to the NF2G Scannist Pages and saw that Dave Stark had applied a link to his new Twitter site and so of course I clicked on it. What showed appeared to be a title or headline in a little white box proclaiming that new frequency updates for specific counties in New York State were now available. So, I clicked on the box and a new page appeared, with the same exact detail.

Hmmm, curious. Clicked again, an encore performance. I leaned back in my vintage 1950's executive's office chair, which creaks very loudly, and stroked my latter day grey and white stubble and began to emit question marks encased in soft pearly white thought balloons.

BING! After momentary analysis I grasped the secret! These "tweets" are post-it notes, electronic post-it notes, where you can plug one or two hopefully significant thoughts for others within your circle of friends to read.

Greg's approach is such that he is posting news headlines relating to the amateur radio community with associated linkage to websites for additional and more detailed information. And so I have one of these little Twitter accounts too. Stop by. I am sure can inflate a few thought balloons to squeeze inside the tight little white box.

From the RAT Files circa 2003: News Tickers and More!

The following was originally composed as radio copy for THIS WEEK IN AMATEUR RADIOwhich first aired in June of 2003. Please click on http://www.twiar.org/ for addiitonal information on this amateur radio news service.

Hey, listen!
The news is:

The news is BIG news.
Have you heard the news about this?
Everybody wants the news.
Everybody needs the news.
We just can't seem to get enough of the news.
The Cable News Network.......
The Fox News Network.........
The Bloomberg Business News..
The CBS Sixty Minutes News...
The NBC Dateline News........
The ABC 20/20 News...........
The Ted Koppel News..........
The local TV news stations...
The all news radio stations..
Rush Limbaugh................
Mike Savage..................
Oliver North.................
G. Gordon....................
Matt Drudge..................

Every body's got to get their news fix in somehow.
And there are so many choices:
Even on the Internet.........
So many news Web pages.......
Real News....................
Quasi-News...................
Questionable news............
Bogus News...................
False News...................
Pure Fantasy News............
Amateur Radio News...........
Like this program here.
On...........................
And on.......................
And on.......................

And even with all this news, you can still put the BIG news on your very own PC desktop. Yes, News Junkies Jockeys Fans and Aficionados, you can now even get the news on a virtual thing called a NEWSTICKER! That's right! This is Bill Baran - N2FNH - with more rant from the R-A-F. No, not the Royal Air Force but the Random Access File, your usual monthly plunge into the bilge with a deluge of dynamic variation on no particular theme, so let us give some lip service to these ticky-tocky streaming words. So far, I have discerned at least two species of the Internet news ticker:

The first such manifests itself as a chunk of HTML source code which is appended to an existing Web page document. An excellent example can be viewed at http://www.twiar.org/, the home planet for that which you are paying attention to right here. Go to this page and you will observe a narrow, almost three-dimensional slit with words tracking to the left along the length of it. In this example, up to the minute amateur radio news information putters, flutters and sometimes sputters across the screen. Many Web pages will provide this ticker format as a unique adjunct to it's own format and design.

I am not sure if the above feature is still available, contact Greg K4HSM at TWIAR.

The other sort of news ticker is a downloadable job which you can dump to your harddrive and then on to your desktop and there are several brand names of these available. For the benefit of this report, I FTP'ed a few flavours.

In no specific order, they were:
The BBC NEWS TICKER............................
The RADIO NETHERLANDS NEWS CLOCK..............
A ticker from the REUTERS NEWS SERVICE........
Plus two topic-specific versions, including:
HALIFAX TODAY.................................
And BUNKERWORLD INTERNATIONAL.................

Of these news tickers, the BBC is perhaps the oldest software. The BBC Web page provides ticker versions for Windows 3.1, which functions very nicely on the N2FNH Retro Machines and a more recent version prepared for Windows 95 with loud disclaimers that it may not work well on Windows 98. But it does so AOK anyway. As such, it appears that the BBC news ticker is a largely forgotten project on the part of its creators but it's a fairly simple affair with short headlines that can be clicked on for more detail. All these tickers work in this same way. Key on a headline and your default web browser pops up and then leaps to the position on the Web page where the story is located.

http://www.brothersoft.com/bbc-newsline-123375.html
(Windows 95/NT)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/3223354.stm
(Windows 2000 and up)

The RADIO NETHERLANDS NEWS CLOCK is a more graphical interface with the set-up executable weighing in about two Megs prior to installation. There is a Mercator Projection of the Earth displaying where the sun is supposed to be shining and where it is not. A pretty package, however like the BBC job, most of the news headlines are specific to their respective countries first and foremost.

http://www.brothersoft.com/wereldomroep-news-clock-131367.html
(Windows XP, 2000, 98, ME, NT)
http://www.rnw.nl/xml_newsfeeds/newsclock_download_en.html
(Same as above)

The ticker from REUTERS is less showy but is a slicker, more professional design. Here, the headlines fade in and out in a colorful blue, black and white motif rather than track across the interface. But the big problem with REUTERS is that it's extremely difficult to establish a connection. It may take three, four or more attempts to link with the home base before the words begin to propagate.

http://www.microsite.reuters.co.uk/ticker/uk/download.htm

The HALIFAX TODAY and BUNKERWORLD INTERNATIONAL tickers are very tightly focused on their respective namesakes. HALIFAX TODAY has all the news that you will need for the lovely city of Halifax in Canada's Atlantic Maritime province of Nova Scotia while BUNKERWORLD INTERNATIONAL deals specifically with news and views of the oil industry and all that goes with it, business-wise.

For Halifax Today: could not locate.

Hey listen Ham Radio Dads! Did you know that you can entertain your kids using both the ECHOLINK and EQSO amateur radio Voice-over-IP networks? Turns out both these systems offer a TEST SERVER channel or room where you can adjust and set your transmit and receive audio levels before entering any of the fully operational environments. This past Sunday afternoon, I was noodling around with the ECHOLINK TEST SERVER. My son Zachary, who had been completely engrossed and totally one with his big Nintendo ZELDA THE WINDWAKER video game, dropped everything when he heard Dad's voice echoing back like a big old tape recorder and by the way, does anybody remember what a tape machine is anymore? Big Box with big reels and a mile-long strip of plastic tape with brown rust stuck to it which makes noise?

Anyway, for the next forty-five minutes, My Number One And Only Son quoted personally favorite lines from personally favourite books, personally favourite commands, announcements, music and sound effects from personally favourite video games and then as anticipated degenerated into some twenty minutes worth of personally favourite mouth farts, personally favourite burps and personally favourite grunts.

It's a fair bet that the ECHOLINK and EQSO TEST SERVERS were not intended to be used in this way. But since no one can hear but you, what's the big deal. So your kids should enjoy themselves, digging the computer, the radios and their Dad!

If you plugged in last month to this indescribably verbose audio extravaganzo, I clued you in to a hereto for unexplored socially interactive philosophical approach to personal electronic recreation and enjoyment. I officially billed it as "Entertainment By Proxy". If you missed this, the plan is simple: You suggest to your friends, your family, your fellow hams, those who currently possess DVD players or computers with DVD playback devices built-in, you..convince these folks to lay out the dough, the scratch, the scheckels, the mulla-schmulla for the plastic software with program titles that you personally will find enjoyable...highly pleasurable listening to... or watching on their requisite hardware.

In short, your friends and family please you with movies and feed you with the snacks, the chips, the ice cream sandwiches and the Coke and the Pepsi. Then you go home and enjoy the vast wide open spaces in your house that would otherwise be avast and awash in a tangly, snarly Sargasso Sea of machines, wiring and piles and piles of discs.

Since that analysis delivered to you last month, I am happy to report significant progress to all fledgling and aspiring electronic party moochers that I have secured four, count them four, very willing hosts on tap to support my shameless parasitic pastime. To date and I will mention names, Jeff Bennett - WA2AIB - here in Albany has invested in several hundred dollars worth of DVDs for me to watch at his place any time I want. Really cool retro science fiction film fare such as THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, THE CRAWLING EYE and Japanese classics such as GODZILLA and RODAN, all at my beck and call. Then there is Tim Maxwell - KA2PKH - who was the inspiration for this plan in the first place. Tim already has many selections that just happen to coincide with my personal tastes. How about EARTH VERSUS THE FLYING SAUCERS and KRONOS? Fabulous 50's sci-fi films.

And then there is our technical director here at THIS WEEK, George Bowen - W2XBS - who has displayed excellent judgement in pursuing DVD titles that he knows will provide me with a wealth of great pleasure. An astute choice he recently provided me with was the famous MTV series, THE OSBOURNES. And yet another entry, our own Bill Continelli - W2XOY - who recently advised me that he that he has, not one but *two* DVD players. This demonstrates advanced thinking since Bill recognizes that by having two machines on hand, equipment failure need not hamper my personal enjoyment of his DVD purchases.

Someday I may purchase a DVD player myself.(I did eventually) I may have to especially if these guys get wind of my diabolical master plan. - 30 -

The Addiction Continues...

I am wondering if this is synonymous with collecting things like vintage Ajax the Foaming Cleanser or Brillo Pads from the 1950's. There's no way logos like these can be moved on eBAY...
or...is there?

Some End Slices!


Here are some quick lower case randomly accessed thoughts:

In a previous post, I made mention of Hanna-Barbera Drop-Ins Volume 1. For what it's worth, I come across an image of the vinyl album cover in case you should ever come across such a copy at a record convention, assuming that such get togethers are still held. As a reminder, some of the recordings on Drop-Ins appear on the O'connor Crazies compact disc which is still available. Jersey City FM radio station WFMU offers an excellent commentary on Hanna Barbera Records, the company's division that produced long play albums and 45RPM singles for public consumption, some of them downright odd! http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/08/the-vinyl-side-.html

The Japanese don't have exclusive franchise to print based onomatopoeia. From 1956 and 1987, MAD Magazine's Don Martin had some remarkably creative verbal effects bursting forth from his full page Don Martin Department feature liberally littered with print sound effects. My personal favorite effects was "ZWIT FAT!!!!", which he would pencil in as a whip crack effect or what a lizard tongue might sound like zwitting out of some weirdo's face in order to catch a fly!
http://www.collectmad.com/madcoversite/index-dmd.html
http://www.geist.com/curiosa/don-martin-department

Even television cashed in on the visual onomatopoeia thing. The original BATMAN TV series served big balloon word fonts when Batman and Robin engaged in fisticuffs with the bad dudes. Click on this address for an online repository of BATMAN thought balloon effects!

Amateur Radio Repeater IDs! Part 3: The 2nd Sequel

This week's edition of the Random Access Thought was composed and produced this week here at the N2FNH Bunker and features Mother Radio and Packetman for yet another kitchenside coffee clatch where the subject of note is amateur radio repeater IDs. A recent scan of the Googleverse revealed some new and quite creative entries. In addition, our technical director, George W2XBS offered a CD with additional ID material from the Broadcast Employees Amateur Radio Repeater - The Bear!...some really great stuff!

The effects used this week's feature are truly vintage, going back to the late 1950's and early 1960's. Packetman's freakout sequence was assembled from select effects from the Hanna Barbera, Jay Ward and UPA sound effects libraries. There is also a new RAT Intro and Outro, which features Cigman and Marilyn Krasnov playing around with MY audio equipment. On a personal note, I was a little distressed to discover that Cigman was smoking his cheesy unfiltered Viceroys around MY sensitive audio mastering equipment.

I cheated on the RAT promotional message, recalling the original repeater ID recording where MNOAOS Zach, then at the age of nine, was hanging with the enigmatic Tick Tock discussing the curious things people collect. I edited in an updated slug line ("...coming up in just a few minutes...) with fresh audio! Remember! This be a labor of love here.

What follows is the script that Beverly Krasnov (Mother Radio) and Packetman (real name held due to AFTRA contract restrictions) read before the Microphonium!
---
INTRO
(FX: doorbell)

MR: Who is it?

PM: It's me, Packetman! (voice muffled)

MR: Come on in! So, what brings you to the Krasnov homestead this bright and sunny Saturday afternoon?

PM: I have more exciting amateur radio repeater IDs to play for you on my trusty mp3 audio player.

MR: Ok Puppy Boy! What have you got?

PM: The first two clips are standard fare, one a computer voice from WA1ZYX and the other, a noisy analog recording from W1BIM. Both of these repeaters are located in New Hampshire.
(VX: repeater clips: set 1)

MR: I hear that type all the time.

PM: Sometimes, you may hear a professional announcer, like this one from W1DC at Uncanoonuc, New Hampshire.
(VX: repeater clips: set 2)

MR: Very professional!

PM: Here a few more of Bill Hamilton's World Famous Repeaterisms.
(VX: repeater clips: set 3)

MR: I like those the best!

PM: The guys out west at the N6ICW repeater in Sacramento, California have taken this ID thing to higher levels. check out these famous celebrity impersonations.
(VX: repeater clips: set 4)

MR: They sound like Saturday morning cartoons.

PM: Yeah, but N6ICW also got a real broadcaster to do the voice over work too!
(VX: repeater clips: set 5)

MR: That man drives me crazy every weekday afternoon on the local radio station.

PM: And just like N2FNH, the N6ICW hams are big into sound effects too.
(VX: repeater clips: set 6)
MR: Far out!

PM: Finally, speaking of celebrities, the Broadcast Employees Amateur Repeater W9LOV at Schaumberg, Illinois, offers up it's own fleet of famous folk. I got these recordings from George W2XBS.
(VX: repeater clips: set 7)

PM: And that's it!
MR: You know, I was just thinking. There was a local repeater here that used to have very creative IDs and messages, but they took them off the air. Too bad. Now, they sound so stale. Well, anyway, now that you're here, I've got the latest Monitoring Times, Popular Communications and some garlic bagels right over there on the kitchen table.
(FX: twang, key at "monitoring times")
(FX: rumble, key at "popular communications")

PM: oh oh oh
(FX: madcap 1, key at third "oh")
(FX: oyoyoyoy, key at madcap tail)

MR: Cool your jets there puppy boy, we've got all afternoon!
(FX: madcap2, key at "afternoon")

MR: This boy really needs to get himself a girlfriend! (whispered)
OUTRO
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So download this week's This Week in Amateur Radio Ham Service and the TWIARi Broadcast version, or even better connect to: http://www.twiar.org/n2fnh/RATParts/
Look for file number RAT080902_RID3_BCQ.cab and RAT080902_RID3_HAM.cab, right click and "Save Target As" to your hardddrive. Use your WinZIP or IZArc to extract the RAT audio WAV file inside!