Human Voice Recorded in Dirt — 1860

The earliest known recording of the human voice is from 1860, and it was recorded in dirt! Scratches made along paper with a layer of soot, to be precise. The phonautograph was invented by Frenchman Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville, and it was the inspiration for Edison’s phonograph. Recently, engineers recovered this amazing recording of a singing woman.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/MAR/phonautogram.mp3]

Rough, but recognizable and thoroughly amazing! Compare this to the nanotube FM radio I featured at this link. Neither recording is high fidelity, but both represent the absolute state-of-the-art in technology for their time.

21

No, not 21 the movie. I mean 21 miles. Today I covered the distance from the starting line of the Boston Marathon to the top of the infamous Heartbreak Hill. It took longer than the last time I did it, two years ago, before my ankle injury, but I set a goal and met it exactly, so I’m pleased.

When I got back home I was expecting to see the new control panel for my Web server account, but instead there’s this message.

Your account has not yet passed our comprehensive QA process. We are still working on moving your account and hope to have it on the new platform in the near future.

Don’t know if this means there’s a problem or not, but for now I’m still on the old platform.

This afternoon D.F. Rogers came over to the house for a visit. As always, lots of fun doing the fanboy bit, and as always there wasn’t nearly enough time. My friend Morris asked me a while ago if I knew what he was going to do when he retires in a couple of years. “Read old comic books, listen to music, and watch movies?” I asked. “YES! How did you guess?”

Biographies or Hatchet Jobs?

Ya know, sometimes you can take great pains to be thoughtful and fair, only to say something that backfires in an unexpected way.

Charles Schulz Cartoon

Animator Gerard de Souza has read Schulz and Peanuts and he considers it be a good and balanced biography. He suggests another book as an example of character assasination — Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince, by Marc Eliot.

Believe me, I’ve read “sensational”, I own a paperback copy of Marc Eliot’s Walt Disney, Hollywood’s Dark Prince. Unlike Eliot’s total raping of Uncle Walt’s image, Michaelis doesn’t have an agenda but more of thesis; Charles Schulz was a red blooded human being with ups and downs and frailties as the rest of us mere mortals; multi-faceted more than the warm puppy we believe we knew.

This was spotted by Mr. Eliot, who fired back with…

I know you’re trying to be a writer, or a critic even, but try not to kill the messenger in your comments. I hardly raped Walt Disney’s “image,” whatever that might possibly mean.

Thanks.

Marc Eliot

I hope De Souza isn’t about to get embroiled in a controversy other than the one he intended to be a part of. De Souza says of the Michaelis book and the comments on Cartoon Brew:

What I found ironic this past October reading the Cartoon Brew posts is that while many disqualified the author for not knowing Schulz, many posters hadn’t even read the book choosing to sycophant with the Schulz friends and family posters, proverbially wanting to storm Michaelis’ residence with pitchforks and torches, verbally skewering any positive reviewer including the genius of Bill Watterson for a balanced objective academically critical review of the book. I choose not to judge films based on trailers as is common in cyber- nerddom; I chose not to discuss a book which I haven’t yet read.

At this link you can hear me tell Monte Schulz that when I first read about the complaints that members of the family had with Schulz and Peanuts, my sentiment was, “Well, yeah, of course they’re not going to like it!” But as I got into the book I could see that Michaelis was indeed determined to drive home a certain characterization of Sparky. Call me a flip-flopper if you must, but I changed my mind and decided that Monte and Amy and Jeannie have reasons to be upset.

One of the things I can’t stand is when somebody reveals something about themselves, and they do it with honesty and in sincerity, then later somebody uses it against that person. It’s analogous to somebody saying, “Give me a stick so I can beat you with it.” Charles M. Schulz openly broached the subject of his moods and anxiety in Good Grief! by Rheta Grimsley Johnson. That admission seemed to be the stick that Schulz handed to Michaelis.

The divorce and affair were off-limits to Johnson when she wrote her authorized biography. Fair enough. That was personal business, and it would keep until Schulz was no longer with us. But that’s not what bugs me about how Michaelis has presented Schulz. He has taken the 80/20 rule and reversed it, so that 20% of the man became his single most defining characteristic.

Something that I must acknowledge about Schulz and Peanuts that impressed me is that it’s obvious Michaelis did nothing else but work on this book for more than five years. I can also tell from the last half — especially the last third — being so rushed, that the original manuscript must have been much longer. Monte Schulz says it was 1800 pages! I’m looking forward to reading Monte’s essay in The Comics Journal #290, which should be out in a few weeks.

Groovin’ On Beatles Oddities

Beatles Alternate Butcher Cover

This is a picture of The Beatles that I bet you haven’t seen. It’s the original concept for what became the infamous butcher cover for the initial pressings of the US LP “Yesterday and Today.” The idea was to give the impression that the woman was being disemboweled. Pleasant, eh?

The Beatles hated the way Capitol in America put out their records, and they felt their material was being butchered. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band was the first LP that was released exactly as it was in the UK. Well, almost. It was missing the inner groove at the end of side 2. This is how it sounded.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/MAR/BeatlesChordUS.mp3]

This is how it sounded in the UK, assuming you had a manual record player that left the tone arm down.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/MAR/BeatlesChordUK.mp3]

Note the superior sound quality of the British pressing. Listen carefully at 28 seconds and you’ll hear Ringo’s shoe squeak; however, at the end, the full three seconds of the inner groove don’t play. The CD release of Pepper has it played in a loop, but this single-play recording is from an LP.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/MAR/BeatlesInnerGroove.mp3]

EMI Assembly Line 1965
Rubber Soul records being inserted into sleeves, England 1965

One of the best known Beatles song anomalies is the false start to “I’m Looking Through You” on Rubber Soul that is missing on the UK version. But instead of that, I’ll offer the rarely heard hi-hat intro to “All My Loving.”

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/MAR/AllMyLovingHiHatIntro.mp3]

And finally, here’s the end of “Penny Lane” as it was originally heard on the radio in America and Canada. The horn will either sound strange to you or, if you’re old enough, it will be something very distant, yet familiar.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/MAR/PennyLaneHornOutro.mp3]

Superman Family Doings

Bear with me for a bit of silliness. Here is a message thread that started with my father pointing out the news about the gigantic Antarctic ice shelf collapsing.

—–Original Message—–
From: George

You might want to think twice about purchasing any waterfront property right now.

Shortcut to: http://www.news.com/2300-11395_3-6235636-1.html

My father’s cousin commented on it.

—– Original Message —–
From: Lawrie

Well, we smart owners of real estate in Arizona are hoping for beachfront property when the “big one” finally cracks down the San Andreas fault and dumps California into the Pacific Ocean.

Here I am, changing the direction of the exchange…

—– Original Message —–
From: Doug

Hey, I saw that movie! It was Superman I. Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor, putting a nuke in the fault. “Bye, bye, California. Hello, new west coast. MY west coast. Marina del Lex.” OK, so I’m a fanboy.

… and this is my younger sister elaborating on what I said…

—– Original Message —–
From: Marianne

Remember “Otisville” on the map? Lex didn’t even allow his loyal follower one measly town!

(Fangirl, sister of fanboy)

…to which I say…

—–Original Message—–
From: Doug

OtisBURG, with the “R” backwards. I’ll check to be sure.

… and Lawrie finishes it off.

—–Original Message—–
From: Lawrie

You guys are just too funny!

Well, we fanboys take this sort of stuff seriously, so I did indeed check, and here’s how that scene in the movie really goes. (Isn’t Gene Hackman impressive? Some actors would have considered this role to be a throwaway job, but Hackman is completely compelling. No wonder Kevin Spacey, who played Lex Luthor in last year’s Superman Returns, borrows from Hackman.)

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2008/MAR/Otisburg.flv 448 252]

I was wrong! It’s not the “R”, but the “S” that’s reversed; which, now that I think about it, makes sense because it’s a sly reference to Superman’s “S” emblem.

This week the family of Jerry Siegel, Superman’s co-creator and original writer, won a victory in court. A lot of people have linked to the New York Times article about it, and I will too.

Superman was a sensation from the get-go, as was Batman. Bob Kane took sole credit for creating Batman, but a writer named Bill Finger actually had a lot to do with it. The characters were teamed up early in their existence, as heard in this brief clip from an old radio show.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/MAR/SupermanBatmanRadio.mp3]

Failover and Over

Wish I could blog more, but I’m afraid that unless you know everything about Microsoft Cluster Service for failover, on Windows 2008 Server, under VMware ESX 3.5, on EMC shared storage, over iSCSI, I can’t talk to you right now. And Sunday is the big 21-mile training run from the starting line of the Boston Marathon. While I’m doing that, the Web host service will be switching my account over to a new management platform. Will anything work Sunday night?