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samedi 10 mai 2003
 

There's a trial at MacDailyNews on 'AAC vs. MP3 at 96-192 kbps using AIFF as the reference point':

"Van Vliet's observations echo what most people have said about AAC vs. MP3. AAC is higher quality at the same bit rate, so you can use a smaller file to achieve the same quality as MP3 which is a good thing for portable and computer users. Ultimately, both formats still sound pretty bad in their practical ranges compared to CD."
Plus comments (via the MDC).
The development centre also draws our attention to a Safari security risk, and back with the music, to a most interesting TuneFinder from those Watson people, Karelia.
Watson is giving Sherlock an increasingly hard time!


10:30:56 PM  link   your views? []

sausa-toniWell since you asked, thank you, I'll just have to break yet another promise. I guess that something like this is what blog-hero Yang heard when he jerked his stethoscope back with a loud exclamation about remarkable and excessive "activity".
The man fortunately couldn't see it churning away, since it was scarcely music to his ears, but why spare the reader? And the diet was what he'd said to do, after all.
This evening, after eating nothing at all yet, it feels rather bloated, but it's beginning to settle down nicely.

odd man outOf course I don't take the whole lot at once. I'm not a hypochondriac, but have to think of my posture. This is but a selection from the "tummy shelf". Anyway, the Smecta's for kids, mainly. The Ercefuryl was for travelling.
Now it's the Actapulgite, delicious stirred in with Coke, and that Panfurex® stuff. The Immosel briefly worked, but every night I must take a Zoltum. Did they not mean ZapTum?
I forgot to say "благодарю" to Yana for whatever it was that dealt with yesterday's blinding headache. Should that be wrong or rude, please blame it on this, but online dictionaries seem to get better by the year. No, I've not been to the 'Russkiy mat' or foul language explanatory place ... yet.

Now Dmitri is back from gallivanting around the Urals as president of the Association France-Oural (fine French site), it might be wiser to try rendering my rich resources of rudeness into Russian on him first.
How do you say "flatulence"? On second thoughts, this would scarcely be fair on Dmitri. In Moscow, he said, it wasn't actually snowing, but it did where he was earlier in a place I can't pronounce, and that's bad enough.
He wasn't gallivanting either. He was doing fine work.

But we all make mistakes. The French word "couffin" can mean "cradle" as in '3 Men and a Baby' "filmed as it should have been!" (before Leonard Nimoy tried again).
It was consequently regrettable when Catherine, back I believe in her studious Manchester days, was given the tidings of great joy by some proud new parents.
"Wonderful!" she said. "Have you got the coffin yet?"
Many faux amis knife you straight to the guts, blood on the walls.
Just as guts can sometimes be false friends, though it's generally preferable to keep them just as long as you can.
"Salut, Francis, et bienvenu à bord!"
I've not pillaged his shop for the medical journals; the computer shelves keep me happy. All those magazines about la santé are enough to turn the stomach with fear about everything you haven't got, let alone what you have.
How those cigarettes got into the cupboard I can't imagine. I don't even smoke Lucky Strike except when it's very late, I've run out and the tabac is shut.
It doesn't do to tell foreign smokers new to France that they really don't have to search high and low for a tobacconist's on such occasions, since most corner cafés keep a stock in a drawer for their patrons and people who ask nicely. They charge more for them, naturally; it's part of the service. But this knowledge is not only bad for your health; it goes easy on shoe-leather, keeps cobblers out of business and stops you bumping into the unexpected.

sausa-toniWell, soon enough I'm sure my express ways will have become simple freeways again. No more sudden surges in traffic, no more congestion. They will be far more beautiful to behold than the miracle of Brum and its alike round the world, and will induce less swearing too.
It was Karin again who very nearly came up with the answer to all this. Yesterday, she fished out a present just for me, very sweet of her.
I did exactly what was written on the packet. Pity the outcome nearly sent me to an early cerceuil.

fine stuff!This stuff did not go down too well on top of all the rest. Even before I'd swallowed a whole pill, I was foaming at the mouth.
Perhaps it was the mixture that was wrong, because once it was down I used plenty of water and went into the speediest spin I could manage. Maybe that just wasn't fast enough. Another reason to give up smoking.
Any thoughts, girls and boys?
Some complain that at the rare times you venture to make comments on these experiments of mine, they simply don't show up. They do, really! It's just in the nature of blogland that they take a little while to go where they should and come back.

Like spam. I don't even want to think about that. But this month's Univers Macworld returns to that perennial nuisance with an interesting article where I read of Bayesian filtering for the first time.
I learned that this is the kind used by Apple's Mail.app, and could be one of the best ways of getting all the junk out of the system. Further exploration revealed that for heavy-duty users, a number of Bayesian software options can cut down in-box constipation by around 80 percent, tried and tested by UM.
If Eudora spam becomes unmanageable for Mac people, for instance, they recommend attacking it with a sieve. I've not reached that point yet.
But I'm working on a mantra: "I'm really not scared of having all that tubing poked inside me, I'm really not scared..., I'm really not scared."

Perhaps in Tibetan, it would sound harmonious, trip off the tongue and do a perfect job (site links to CDs and sound files).
At Amazon, Samuel E. Katzen reviews one of these records in glowing terms:

"I listen to this music every day. Why? Because it touches something in me that I don't understand completely on an intellectual level, but that on an emotional level, is one of those powerful experiences that you know is good and good for you. As soon as it starts I feel a relaxation response. There are moments in this music that can make you cry with joy.
Sound has long since found its way into medicine. I'm all for the holistic approach.
And though I'm bad at projecting my voice, I do like it when things are pronounced right. Especially my name. True, I don't make it easy, but it's "tally-essin", not "taleesin" or other variations on the theme.
Point is (the last question), Taliesin really is my name, the second one. How that came about is another saga, told before ... and not for tonight.


8:49:33 PM  link   your views? []

hippiqueAt one age, full of admiration for Olya and her shop downstairs, Marianne wanted to become a florist. There was the lawyer phase too. The poet and writer. Now I'm not sure. It's fashion time.
Whether in York to see Gran and Grandpa or in the shopper's madness of les Halles, Claire's (uses Flash) is an almost obligatory stopping place! Not to all tastes, that's for sure, and I prefer myself to wait outside because of that music! In the heart of Jorvik, there's a very convenient bench where you can usually squeeze in between those gossiping Viking women and watch a colourful world go by.
The youngster's pictures have changed a great deal down the years, as of course they do. I'm very fond of the "miniatures 'Orientales', and have framed a superb big white splotches on black piece which dates back to days when she could scarcely talk. Sometimes I think of it as 'The Spaceman', sometimes of 'Paleolithic Manu' (slow-loading but sumptuous page [URL fixed, 17/3/03]).

flairAll along, year after year, there have been "les dames, a constant theme. There must be dozens on dozens of them, to such an extent that some people ask "Aren't you going to do anything else?" But I don't have any problem with this obsession, if such it even is.
Time has brought many changes of style, from the initial blob heads, small bodies and splayed fingers to a period of hyper-sophistication, occasionally to the point of a cluttered look. All it takes is a little patience and an attentive eye, like the one her grandfather gives such "work", because the devil is in the fine detail, not just the wide variety of hairstyles, clothes and accessories.
If you get told off for not spotting the new belt buckle or bracelet, Miss Marianne does have a point. Until recently, almost all were in colour, with careful attention all the way down from the facial expressions to the toes. And most of the models had names and more than touch of character, spelt out or not. There's something going on here, well worth putting on show not just because I'm her proud dad. I don't like them all anyway and neither does she.

flairThe latest development is intriguing. The personalities and the physical features are beginning to disappear, the colour has gone, and the body has become little more than an accessory itself, like a mannequin. "Who do you want to be today, young lady?"
It's quiet when you're not around, which has both its advantages and its drawbacks. See you next weekend, here's a kiss for today!
And it's your uncle Keith's birthday. For once I remembered. I forgot your uncle Jon's on April 30. Craftsmen both, I don't doubt they'll be interested to see what's running in the blood.
"I miss you, miss!" Ah, and how much I miss the wildcat in my heart! The 'phone's OK, in its way and each day, and the sooner her trip's over and we see her back (and front) in Paris again, the better.
I don't ask her to love me, that's not the way with cats! But just one little word she used the other evening gave me such palpitations and the best night's dreaming of the year.
I rejoice that you have taken to each other so well, but know this too, sweetheart: her choices are her own, they're very far from easy right now and her latest journey took her more than halfway to Hades (to each their own hell. This fresh one is full of felines. Hello!) That's most of what you know and all you have to know, so forgive me if my mind sometimes strays when you're here.

All she has asked of me is understanding; at least somebody has to and I want to, while each decision, each step now calls for an intuition like yours and a rather better grasp of the nature of cats and other beings with a highly agile intelligence and sharp claws. You certainly don't pick them up and treat them like dolls. I'm not surprised you got scratched before you learned that...

flameThe one thing I think she mustn't do is to stop writing, the way she works now is just fine, the hardest thing to change is the course of the voyage. There's no changing the strong winds of the emotions, hers are stormy and quickened by lightning (in the 'Dragon Cave'). When there's anger, it's not for you, darling, and when it's for me, it's usually no more than I merit. And that, as well you know, can sometimes be a rare thing...
As to the rest, no "shoulds" nor "oughts". She fuels herself as she will and all we have to do, you and I, is keep an eye on the fire and take care the flame doesn't go out. Now there's a danger I've known people even killed by. Times were it so nearly happened to me.
Hence, today it's a red camellia, plucked from a New Zealand essence garden.


4:21:48 PM  link   your views? []


nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit
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