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01:31 / 27.03.03

Hi all, I just couldn't figure out how to use the features that Ace of Wav gotta offer. The software writers have put in much thoughts to come up with the software and I have to disappoint them by only using 10% of the software. Anyone got any idea how I can create some sound effects or synthesis with Ace of Wav? Any examples? Any help website?

14:07 / 27.03.03

Trijhaos: contact the post office. Number's in the phone book with all the gummint offices.

14:10 / 27.03.03

Thanks for the "Obelus," Deva. Methinks that might be good info to illustrate some circuitous philosophical argument, someday.

18:25 / 27.03.03

I have a question: How do Chinese keyboards work? Apparently to be able to read a Chinese newspaper you need to be able to understand 3000 characters, and 6000 characters are essential for everyday use.

So where do they all go on a keyboard?

This has been perplexing me for a while now, I think I need to get out more...

18:38 / 27.03.03

Simple. Although there are zillions of characters in traditional calligraphy, each is made up of a number of brushstrokes. Asian-language keyboarding uses keys to represent particular types of brushstrokes, and each character is made up of several keystrokes.

Extend the analogy to the Roman alphabet, and C would be one keystroke, while G would be two. I is one, P is two, R is three--the two for P, plus an extra key for the downstroke.

It's surprisingly manageable--at least compared to the old days, when a Mandarin typewriter was constructed that was the size of a ping-pong table.

More interesting, though, is that there's no concept of alphabetical; order in a pictogram-based system like kana--so (at least until recently) filing systems would exist only in one person's head, and if that person died or quit the office would be thrown into chaos. I gather there's been some sort of general system adopted, albeit fairly recently.

This always bent my head--the notion that imperial powers, with huge bureacracies, could somehow get by without a universally-recognized file system--or, in the case of imperial Rome, simple columnar addition or multiplication: try doing MCM times XXXIV on paper, let alone in your head! How did they manage?

12:46 / 28.03.03

what is the significance of the last verse of 'the farmer wants a wife"?

I understand the farmer wants a wife, the wife wants a child, the child wants a dog, the dog wants a bone but why does the bone get left alone? and why do we all 'ha ha look at the bone' in the final verse?
Is it a commentary on the fact that ultimately we all die alone, and are sure to end up looking foolish?
Hey ho me dearie oh...

12:55 / 28.03.03

I thought the child wanted a nurse and the nurse wanted a dog, and then we all got to pat her dog?

13:15 / 28.03.03

Oh yeah i forgot all about the nurse,
but what about the bone? it was definitely left alone and laughed at in the final verse we used to sing, I always thought it seemed a bit cruel.

14:12 / 28.03.03

I think you're referring to what I grew up knowing as "The Farmer in the Dell," which started out:
The farmer in the dell, the farmer in the dell
Hi-ho the dairy-o, the farmer in the dell.

and ended:
The cheese stands alone, the cheese stands alone,
Hi-ho the dairy-o, the cheese stands alone.

It was one of those long chains of predator-prey relationships... I remember the mouse wanted the cheese, and the cat wanted the mouse, and there was probably a dog chasing the cat.

Here's one version.

I like to think that it's a ecological parable about sustaining limited resources... that the buck has to stop somewhere.

But apparently, it's structured like that because the song goes along with a game, with a "farmer" standing in the "dell," a circle of dancing/running kids. The farmer picks a "wife," who then picks the next in line, and so on. The last kid chosen gets to be the cheese, with everyone circling round hir... and then gets to be the farmer for the next round.

14:23 / 28.03.03

Hm - bell, I think we plaid it differently to you. In my version, everyone got in a circle, and someone became the farmer, and to the sound of the rhyme, he chooses a wife, she chooses a child, the child chooses a nurse, the nurse chooses a dog and then everyone left in the circle around this family group pats the dog (quite visciously) on the head. Then the dog "becomes" the farmer in the middle of the circle and it starts again.

I can't remember the bone - all alone. How very strange.

16:34 / 28.03.03

My memory is pitiful, I had forgotten this was even a game! thanks for reminding me.

We played in much the same way as you both (grant & jub) describe, with the farmer picking his wife etc. The chosen wife/child/nurse/dog stands in the middle of the circle until it gets to the point where the dog chooses a bone. As far as I can remember, which on recent evidence is not very far at all, when the bone is chosen all the other people in the middle return to the circle singing "and the bone is left alone, the bone is left alone, hey ho me dearie oh, the bone is left alone", then the game can start all over again.

I was sure there was a bit in the game when we all sang "ha ha look at the bone" but perhaps I'm just remembering a painful bullying episode...

The local Goth prototype has become a run-of-the-mill example of the apocalypse.

00:24 / 04.04.03

Hi all, I've been of the opinion that someone has been sending me ideas telepathtically. You see, some of my thoughts can be explained if I traced my trains of thoughts. But some ideas can't be traced back, they just pop into my head.

Say if I make a boobee trap in someone's else mind; that is if he thinks of that thing, the trap would sprung and that thing would drop on the floor. I dunno if I explained this clearly. But rougly it's like that.

And, when's the last time you drink your own piss? I've just drink mine yesterday. It tasted like bamboo rice with ammonia, and not as salty as I imagined. 20 mins later, I felt dizzy. How's the idea of after drinking his own urine, he died. I felt like the ancestor of the character played by Kevin Costner in Waterworld. Oh let me indulge in myself, cos I'll never live to have children.

By the way, my piss is not as salty as I imagined; is it because there's sugar inside? My piss is white when I tasted it. I tasted it just when I was about to have my shower before dinner time.

And the mind booby trap, how elaborate can this kind of mind triggering mechanism be? Please help.

20:21 / 04.04.03

are you serious? cos i sort of feel sick after reading that.
i think yr not s'posed to drink yr piss more than 2 or 3 times in a row, i think you can die that way.

20:43 / 04.04.03

I think there is a widely believed Urban Myth that Maggie Thatcher drank her own piss everyday which I find strangely unsurprising. Obviously she's still alive so I guess if you believe she did then the idea that only 2 or 3 delightful drafts of it can kill you can't be true.

But I digress...

I should like to enquire: why do men have nipples? (And no perverse comments please, despite the fact that I can clearly see the temptation...)

04:15 / 05.04.03

what does VBR stand for next to songs on soulseek?

The Return Of Rothkoid

04:40 / 05.04.03

I'm assuming it means Variable Bit Rate. Possibly to indicate a range of results (ie: not all are 192 or 320 or whatever?).

11:35 / 06.04.03

olulabelle - I'm no biologist, but I'm pretty sure that the simple answer to your questions is that men have nipples because women have nipples. Most if not all the structures in a female body have a counterpart in the male, only fashioned by hormones into more amusing shapes as the foetus stews in the womb (and later).
Someone is sure to correct me if I'm wrong but I believe there is meaningful sense in which my penis is actually a large and deformed clitoris. That's how I like to think of it anyway.

11:46 / 06.04.03

Speaking of which - a question occurs to me.
I understand that testicles hang outside the body because sperm require a lower operating temperature than the rest of the body. Any biologists here know why evolution chose the Let's make 'em dangle route rather and adapting sperm to work warmer? Ova seem to cope, and since both attractiveness and the gamete security are so important in evolution game, downwards strikes me as an odd direction to take them.

17:38 / 06.04.03

I think a more accurate (though over-simplified) answer would be that it's not a mirroring thing -- rather our default settings are female. Males keep their nipples because there's no compelling reason to lose them.

As for testicles -- well, they work well enough where they are for mammals to reproduce, so that's where they stay. Darwinian evolution can only perfect things by accident so if a not-quite-so-perfect solution works well, it probably won't get developed further.

15:47 / 07.04.03

are you serious? cos i sort of feel sick after reading that.
i think yr not s'posed to drink yr piss more than 2 or 3 times in a row, i think you can die that way.

Actually, there's a rather healthy (uuuuhhhhhhh) community of urotherapy advocates who extol the positive virtues of a daily glass of urine. (Oddly, the practice has inspired some cancer research.)

And then, there are the modern shamans....

11:56 / 09.04.03

Hi All, recently I heard a song over the radio 95 FM and there's this guy, saying "You are my Aaaaaannnnnnnnnggggggeeeeellllll" He expounded on the last few words of every stanza by singing them out over a longer duration than was necessary. It's as if he's singing from his soul. Later I learn from the DJ that it's by John Sircarda called "Angel". I would pretty much like to read the lyrics of the song. Especially the stanza "Give me the bbbbbbooooodddddddyyyyyyyy" Could anyone kindly point me to the right direction?

12:52 / 09.04.03

Maygen - This the one?

And Ignatious, thanks, although I still don't really understand. I was assuming that at some stage in our evolution, testicles - or their equivalent - were housed in a safer location. As far as I know for instance, reptiles have never had swinging nut-sacks. So I imagined that it was something that actively came about rather than something that not been rectified.
My guess was that at some stage - maybe when mammals evolved - bollocks emerged, and that this was because, for reasons that I'd like to understand, warm testes became less effective. Given that one's plums are far more likely to be damaged dangling outside the body rather tahn safely garrisoned inside, and that securing these facilities is a crucial objective for the genetic forces, I would have thought it an extremely disadvantageous development. Certainly more so than having a tail, a clumsy gait or hairy hands. And yet of all these things, it's the pendulous pods that prevail!

I accept that it must be an evolutionary advantage to have them here. But it just seems so counter-intuitive that I assumed I'm missing the up-side that mitigates their tearoffability.

13:06 / 09.04.03

with quadrapeds, the testes are as far as possible from the biting equipment of an adversary. Since one would be disinclined to turn one's back on an angry sabretooth, it makes sense to stick the nadgers back here for protection.

If ya gotta have em dangling, might as well keep em safe!

13:12 / 09.04.03

Perhaps the reptile to mammal transition holds the key. Once biology switched to central heating over solar power, those gonads just stopped working as well. solution?

Aircooled.

13:23 / 09.04.03

Seems to makes sense, Mixmage. I don't know a great deal about these things, but am I right in saying that traits that develop to the advantage to a creature can subsequently work to its disadvantage? Could it be that going down the hanging-them-out-in-the-breeze route could seal our doom at a later stage?

13:26 / 09.04.03

I think the transition to warm blood might have been the catalyst for the change mixmage, but compared with developing, say, warmer spunk, ours seems to be a pretty high risk strategy!

14:13 / 09.04.03

But compare the simplicity of lowering your nuts to developing heat-resistant tadpoles. Then consider that these physical changes aren't deliberately developed but have to happen by mutation. The simpler solution is always, I reckon, going to - ahem - come first. It might simply not be possible to produce hot mess.

14:46 / 09.04.03

Full marks and a side order of Bravo! for "hot mess".

Yeah, I am just assuming that that'd be easier. Largely based on the fact that the female gametes (if that's what ova are) don't have the same problem. I know, that's not a very strong argument.

16:02 / 09.04.03

Hmmm, I think I up-cocked there. I was trying to say that a reduction in testicle altitude would be easier to achieve than the development of all-weather sperms, not the other way around. Having your bits sag must only require the lengthening of a few pipes, a slightly different skin texture and a bit of hair; whereas making your sperms heat resistant must involve either a complete re-plumbing job, the installation of air-conditioning or a change in the sperms themselves. That all sounds a lot more complicated to me.

Is everyone else typing these out cross legged?

16:12 / 09.04.03

Nope. I daren't. This is the problem.

I understood you right Saveloy. And I take your point about the lengthening, sagging and retexturing. But, I'd contend that that is quite complicated - and I'd imagine much less likely to happen accidentally, by dint of a genetic mutation, in the first instance than the emergence of man-fat that can operate at what...a couple of degrees warmer?

Whisky Priestess

16:31 / 09.04.03

I actually don't think it would be possible to develop heatproof sperm in a few generations - and as the sperm themselves are the transmitters of the genetic mutation that would make them heatproof, if they weren't 100% they might not make it to the egg and therefore the mutation would not be passed on.

My guess is that sperm that liked it hot would be disadvantaged in some other way (weaker, slower, heavier) which cancelled out the usefulness of the mutation.

Hence dangly nuts.

19:33 / 09.04.03

regarding the pee drinking: everyone, i said *in a row*. as in: pee, drink, pee, drink. not: get up, pee, drink, go about yr business all day, go to bed, get up, pee, drink, and so on. i imagine that'd be fine.
i have also heard that putting yr morning piss on yr face is an incredible cure for acne. incredible as in, really works, not incredibly gross. altho' it's that too, in my book.

20:14 / 09.04.03

Well, urine's pretty similar to ammonia... nitrogenous waste and all... and I know it's been boiled and used as an antiseptic before.

22:56 / 11.04.03

Is the Wizard of Oz public domain?

23:16 / 11.04.03

Kegboy -- you can get The Wizard of Oz here, so I guess so.

Check the small print though. Always check the small print.

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