Ew, mega-active weekend for the ultimate in sads But good luthiery is always exciting - I love Warwick basses!

Thanks for your critique, glad you like the mad one - that slower song of ours is quite the stylistic anomaly actually! The rest of our tracks are probably closer in style to the insanely fast one, but we wanted to preview a couple of tracks that provided some contrast - also we wanted to keep our big guns up our sleeve until the album's out On that note, I'd like to hear any recordings you've got - ya never know when our bass player's going to get blotto on a world tour, requiring us to find a stand in. Actually, he always gets blotto, it's just a question of how severely...

Now get some sleep Kevinator.

I simply refuse to be one even though I'm a Red Cross employee, so tonight I'm gonna play Bruce Lee and then play a gig with me band[/plug]. Long weekend too, no work tomorrow. And Mrs H is out of town til Monday! Rock out with various appendages out

Bah! Puny ninja is laughed at by Mighty Yamo! Anyone troubled by annoying ninja is no match for even a tiny bug!

Here, Kevbo, effect a clicking action on these words to secure a PC-happy version of Bruce Lee, the greatest platform game in history.

Cool, Stang.

The fire's still a problem for me though. Faulty fireproofing aside, we're talking about metres-thick solid steel being sufficiently weakened by a mere methanol fire. Steel's melting point under ideal conditions (say, in a foundry) is +1500 Celsisus. You'd have to get close to that to cause the steel to soften even a little. Methanol, a highly volatile hydrocarbon, boils at 60 C and burns very quickly at only a few hundred degrees. I find it highly implausible that kind of volatile, rapidly-burning fire caused so much catastrophic damage to so many thousands of tons of steel and hastened a simultaneous failure of an entire building. Yes there would have been hundreds of litres of methanol, but it would still have produced nowhere near enough energy to compromise the steel. Throwing burning liquid on metal, even in a confined space like a building core, would be as unlikely a way to melt or soften it as I can imagine.

Grand Champion Green Yamo takes offense! Do not blame Ultimate Yokozuna Green Yamo for your foolish gaijin ways!

Mighty Champion Ultimate Fighter Green Yamo is always animated!
Tiny English man has brokened the interblang!
YAMO SMASH!

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

I agree with you. In fact, I find that, generally, the amount of swear words and personal attacks in a post is directly proportional to the stupidity of the person posting. However, I simply cannot believe that you are that narrow minded that you don't have the ability to understand simple, and extremely relevant analogies, so I couldn't resist a little. I promise there are no other derogatory remarks in the rest of the post

I actually think I'm not narrow-minded enough - then I'd be comfortable with whatever people told me, and I'd be able to get some sodding sleep at night FTR I read the whole thing, very interesting. Also FTR, I'm still not satisfied that two jetliner impacts and fast-burning methanol fires managed to turn a billion tons of concrete and steel - engineering to withstand exactly such things - to dust in mere seconds. I'm no structural engineer or even the son of a structural engineer, but I am the son of a scientist and I know enough about physics to be skeptical of this virtually no-resistance free-fall theory. That doesn't mean I have an alternate theory though - sometimes you have to have the balls to say "I just don't know, so I refuse go out on a limb and speculate". And I still remain suspicious of the decision to remove and destroy all the evidence from the crime scene. CSI's Grissom would be appalled.

Also, FTR, it wasn't me who professed problems with the analogies on offer.

Last edited by Hankstar, Thu 24 Apr 2008, 01:38.

Funnily enough Stang, I stopped reading at "you are an idiot".
Strange how personal attacks completely devalue an argument, however compelling that argument might be

It's all completely academic though, what with a billion tons of evidence sent to the freaking recycle bin.

Like I said in my first post, I don't really have a "take" as such. Just a bunch of questions which I don't expect to be answered, skepticism regarding the official story/stories and some deep suspicion of Bush & Co's actions, immediately following the attacks & leading up to right now. Naturally, when there's a vaccuum, people speculate and gravitate towards things to make sense to them. Some people think the official story is true, some think the opposite is true - I just see a big gaping hole waiting for an answer to fill it.

I don't believe satisfactory answers will come any time soon - it took 40 years for people to learn the truth of the Gulf of Tonkin fabrication, which the US used to commence hostilities in Vietnam.

To me, the biggest conspiracy theory surrounding 9/11 is the one that blamed it on Iraq & Afghanistan, has cost countless lives and made people like Dick Vader Cheney & various US mercenary contractors (there are as many mercenaries in Iraq as there are regular troops) incredibly wealthy.

Interestingly enough, the very first WTC attack (a massive truck bomb in the underground carpark in 1998) was intended to do exactly what you said: weaken the foundations of one building, toppling it sideways onto its neighbour.

Last edited by Hankstar, Thu 24 Apr 2008, 01:10.

Quote from jayhawk :

Although it doesn't sound like it to me, I am told by many people my voice sounds like Brian The Dog from Family Guy.

I can't tell from here, but you sure don't type like him.

Quote from me :

/me sits back and lights up, this is gonna be a long & interesting one.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

I bet you a dollar it will actually be a long and ignorant one.

I bet you one pound sterling you're 50% right already.

Controversial topics for the ultimate in winning technology.

/me sits back and lights up, this is gonna be a long & interesting one.

ZZ Top - Legs
Danged work radio

I just bought a preamp for my record player - I tell you, there's a rennaissance in my house After so many years of iTunes and my PC speakers, it's a revelation! Pink Floyd, Radiohead & The Mars Volta never sounded so good. Time I bought Soundgarden's Superunknown on LP...

Speaking of disrespect, I think it's the very height of disrespect to send 4000 more Americans to their deaths in two deserts for absolutely no good reason - all the while lying to their faces and telling them it's payback for 9/11.

I really don't think you can do worse than to ask a man to lay down his life for his country under false pretenses. I always think of that on ANZAC Day (tomorrow), when we in Australia & New Zealand pay our respects to all our countrymen who put their lives on the line for us. To think that the guys who never came back, or came back broken, from places like Vietnam were lied to (by our government and America's) to get them there really, really gets my back up.

MP3 examples of what can be achieved with a PC recording setup: ProTools (expensive version), various pre-amps & related hard/software, Rode NT2 and Rode Classic microphones. Recorded, engineered, produced by our guitarist Doug in 2001. Mastered digitally off-site.

Band: Mothdust
From Afar
Eat Me
Funky Lepinja

So, yes, a purpose-built PC with the right software, soundcard(s), studio mics (Rode or Neumann are industry standard) can be as good as any indie studio. Your average home PC probably could cut it processor-wise, but you can't expect a decent, pro sound without splashing on some dedicated hardware & software, and especially a good mic for vocals. Rodes are expensive but a decent live mic can do a pretty good job. Shure SM58s are fine sturdy things. I use a Sennheiser on stage though - better dynamic range and compression.

Since this recording, Doug's replaced his enormous fluid-cooled PC with a souped-up Dell laptop, one line-mixer/preamp and a Rode Classic (with condenser unit). Fits all into a backpack and achieves results far superior to the above recordings - all we need do is make a mattress & quilt soundbooth, sit him in the hallway of my house and we can do noiseless, crispy vocal takes all day. This Guerilla Studio(tm) setup can be ready to go in 20 minutes. Great for coming to visit me from London and getting hassled by the men at customs, who have numerous questions about his little electronic boxes and miles of cables. I'll post examples of our results when they're ready

Contrast: latest from my current band From The Ashes. Debut album in progress. Pro studio, up & coming producer, pro everything (professional pricing too, oh boy - hope we sell some bloody records :zombie.

Quote from RocksGt :

I like it! Specially x-lo-fi, nice work!

Thanks mate, many wasted hours

Last edited by Hankstar, Wed 23 Apr 2008, 23:13.

I don't have any theories as to what actually happened so I won't buy into this argument.

What I do have is dissatisfaction at the official theory. Considering skyscrapers of the time were over-engineered to withstand exactly such impacts, both WTC 1&2 came down almost at freefall speed and fell very, very neatly into their own footprints. People have theorised bombs (numerous reports from firefighters who said they heard series of explosions), thermite, missiles - all which point to an insanely complex inside job or an even more complex outside job. I'm also deeply concerned that all the debris and rubble (i.e., the evidence from a major crime scene) was trucked away and destroyed, as a detailed examination of every piece of that evidence would have shed invaluable light on the investigation.

There are still, for me, unanswered questions as to why Bush & the Whitehouse stalled a 9/11 investigation for so long, and why Bush did not testify either under oath or by himself (Cheney was sitting next to him & coaching him the entire time). Considering this administration's blatant, consistent dishonesty & deep secrecy concerning just about everything since the attack - especially the wars, justified by 9/11 and other things which have all proven to be false, which continue to rage & worsen and have claimed over 1000 more American lives than 9/11, not to mention between half a million and one million Iraqi/Afghan lives - I don't think I'm too far out on a limb to have my doubts.

There's also Bush's baffling behaviour at the school right after he was told: why continue to read stories to children after being informed the nation's under attack? Do you think FDR sat down and smoked a bowl after being informed of Pearl Harbour? Did the Revolutionaries finish their poetry reading after Paul Revere told them "the Redcoats are coming"? You'd think, even with a disconnected daddy's-boy dropout like Bush, that a report of a civilian airliner striking a major landmark would have him jumping out of his seat like his pants were in flames and actually doing his job - or at least have the Secret Service drag him into an armoured limo and rushed to a bunker somewhere. For some reason, the exact opposite.

WTC 7 is a major source of suspicion for me too: why was it levelled so soon? It had only minor damage - certainly not enough to bring it down on its own. If it was pulled, who ordered its demolition? How did a demo crew get in, place their charges and get out so quickly at such short notice?

Like Polyracer said, three into two don't go.

So, no theories here, just a stack of questions. I ask these questions in a rhetorical sense as I don't expect they can ever be answered to my satisfaction, least of all here.

I love Fruity Loops (www.ekranoplan.org - click "tunes", fear the robots)

Check this screen shot. Click in the little panel with the dashes (circled) and drag until the number increases. That'll increase the bar length of the loop.

Now, to get it to repeat as a song, put a series of loops in the Playlist screen (it's right underneath the loop screen). Then you need to select the "song" box (next to the "pause" key up top), hit play and it'll play as many loops as you've got in the Playlist screen, then repeat. When you get the hang of it you'll be able to make a bunch of loops and mix and match them and mess about for hours, getting no sleep and hearing repeated demands to come to bed

Hope that makes sense If you're after anything more complicated, check the help menu or online help because I'm at work where they don't let me play with Fruity Loops. Bastards.

Last edited by Hankstar, Wed 23 Apr 2008, 05:35.

Quote from dev :

Don't forget about the giant squid

I certainly haven't.

This list could change at any time - it probably will once I acquire a PS3. Right now it's:
God Of War, GTA, Silent Hill, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, Burnout, Mafia, Ratchet & Clank, The Godfather (most things I've hired for the PS2 in the last six months) and any of their sequels (if applicable).

My favourite non-binary games include:

Trivial Pursuit (I've never beaten my dad, confound him, but I'm still undefeated by my dad in-law)
Axis & Allies
Diplomacy
Poker with mates - $20 buy-in, play with five and ten-cent coins until dawn or until everyone's broke, listen to Allman Brothers & Miles Davis LPs, drink and smoke far too much, last man standing buys breakfast for the defeated
Beach cricket

Quote from flymike91 :

Of course I'm anti-Palestinian

Quoted for posterity, hysterical ravings omitted.

You, in a display of baffling ignorance, prejudice and bigotry, have chosen to be opposed to an entire nation of people, without even considering the possibility that some of them won't agree with Hamas or their policies, that some of them may actually have a point about Israel's reprehensible behaviour or even that Palestinians have a right to exist in their own country in the first place. How does this bigotry make you better than these vicious anti-Semites you rail against? You can dress up your "anti-Palestinianism" and rationalise it with statements about Hamas' supposed Jew-exterminating mission statement and professed fear for the Jews' survival, but strip it back and you're no better than any common-as-dirt racist.

Or perhaps you await The Rapture, which can only come when Israel reclaims Zion and rebuilds Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, bringing on Armageddon, Final Judgement and the ascension of all you good Xtian folk, with all us godless heathens Left Behind. Wouldn't surprise me.

Well, I hope your god looks well upon you for your racism and bigotry. My conversation with you and my participation in this thread ends here.

Wow Mike, that's a hysterical point of view even for you.

Israel isn't going to just dissolve its borders and choose not to exist anymore (it's completely unrealistic to think that could ever happen) but even if it did, I doubt very much that what you suggest would happen would be even remotely close to reality. And this...

Quote from flymike :

the Allies gave them that land because it was practically uninhabited except by nomdic people

... is possibly the most ignorant thing ever said on this topic. On this planet. You anti-Palestinian, you.

Quote from David33 :

Do you mean that he did not tolerate extremist behavior, within Iraq? Or do you mean that he did not tolerate extremist behavior, outside Iraq? Or do you mean that he simply did not tolerate any extremist behavior, at all?

Quite an obtuse answer there. Nice start.

Quote :

The US is very far from "blindly supporting Israel." Instead, it has organized several peace conferences, and it has continued to pressure Israel to refrain from violence (including retaliation for the extensive Hamas rocket attacks from Lebanon, a while back), and to make concessions (including, returning virtually all captured territories [Oslo accords, if I recall correctly], in exchange for peace; unfortunately, what Arafat required as the essential concession, was extinction of Israel, and this turned out to be a deal-breaker).

"Pressuring Israel to refrain" is a polite, diplomatic term which is next to meaningless. It isn't the same as actually doing something. All this alleged "pressure" has done absolutely nothing to curb the building of settlements on Palestinian land; the building of the separation wall (deemed illegal by the UN); the airstrikes and every other military response that's completely disproportionate to what the IDF is apparently responding to. Telling Israel to back off, coupled with a threat to start attaching very short strings to the billions of dollars America hands Israel every year to prop up its economy and buy arms would be a start.

Quote :

Anyway, the USA is an ally of Israel (democracy, and all), and that means that it is willing to support Israel's defense of its existence. Some persons have said that the USA is too willing to pressure Israel to make concessions for peace, arguing that such concessions would be suicidal for Israel.

The US's "pressure" amounts to a pat on the back.

Quote :

As for "civilian neighborhoods," Palestinian civilians are its soldiers (as confusing as that may be, for everybody concerned), and while it would be nice if the Palestinians would be kind enough to identify who is the one that is making bombs and deploying them, and who is shooting rockets, and who is the peaceful civilian, and if these groups would separate themselves, and maybe wear uniforms, for the sake of conducting an orderly Geneva-Convention-style war, then things would perhaps work out more to your satisfaction. As it is, many Palestinians seem to prefer the confusion, since it gives them the opportunity to try to convince everybody that evil Israelis are attacking peaceful Palestinian civilians, and even to convince some foreigners to visit Palestine and to become human shields, themselves (presumably, so that the Palestinians can achieve their desire to have peace while living next door to Israel).

So, because Palestinian militias are made of civilians, it's ok to bomb houses indiscriminately because an attack may have been launched from the surrounding area? Worked great in Vietnam! Or, maybe it didn't. Perhaps these Palestinian militia wouldn't be so enraged if Israel were willing to retreat to its 1967 borders (as defined in UN Resolutions) and cease the expansion of Jewish settlements entirely. Perhaps they might moderate somewhat if they didn't feel like the world was completely ignoring them. Carving one nation out of another through a combination of sympathy & prophecy is one thing (which is in the past, a fait d'accompli, can't really reverse it now) but continuing to allow that nation to carve up & colonise its neighbour - its host - without any checks on its behaviour is intolerable.

Quote :

Perhaps you're right. Anyway, the pertinent problem is that Israelis want Israel to exist, and several of Israel's neighbors want Israel not to exist. Please, let me know when you think of a peaceful solution to that disagreement.

You'll be the first to know, after I cure cancer and invent a holodeck.

Palestine and the world at large have thought of a very simple solution: return conquered Palestinian land to Palestine. Stop treating an entire nation - which was carved up for Israel's benefit - as criminals and second-class humans. Israel seems to have no end of problems with that. Constantly responding to violence with even more violence hasn't actually accomplished anything in forty years - except continuing expansion and continuing reprisals from either side. Maybe the Israeli government thinks its worth it. Most counts put the Palestinian:Israeli death ratio at 4:1 after all. Hey, it's a win for Israel.

I really don't understand some people. Everyone knows it's wrong, that it's murder, for militants/terrorists/extremists to launch rockets at civilians from Palestine and detonate themselves on buses in Tel Aviv; but flip it around and mention Israel sending attack choppers and tanks into Palestinian streets and destroying houses, apartment blocks, businesses, killing in the same indiscriminate fashion as a Katyusha rocket or suicide bomb, expanding their territory through force long after the war supposedly ended, annexing all the arable land and water sources, cutting people off from their neighbours and families and suddenly rationalisations and justifications come gushing out of people like a burst oil well.

Quote :

And btw, if you want to be really funny, you should perhaps henceforth spell "FOX" as "faux;" many persons do that, so I guess that it would be a great party trick.

Really, stop it. You're killing me with laughter here.

Quote :

OK; no Frontpagemag, no WND and no Fox News, as sources of information (also, no op-ed pieces from Bill O'Reilly). Anybody else?

Three particularly red-necked, one-sided media outlets of the hundreds of millions of print, tv and web news sources in the world. Yeah, I guess there's nowhere left to get my fix of neo-con apologetics & flag-waving. Oh wait, the OT forum. Of course!

Oddly enough Haaretz, the main Israeli media outlet, is a lot more critical of Israeli policy than anything you'll find in the states and very eye-opening. Some Haaretz editorials & articles make the Huffington Post (not one fo my favourites, ftr) look positively Zionist. Going by Haaretz and a few other Israeli outlets, it would appear that most Israelis are pretty moderate in their views on Palestine - a lot more so than the people who are supposedly protecting their interests.

Quote :

The reason was that the purpose of the war, was to kick Saddam out of Kuwait, and doing more than this (removing him from power in Iraq), would be difficult and, in any case, not seemingly supported by the UN and by the coalition of allies that had been formed with the intent to respond to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. The result was a continuation of problems with Saddam, that became urgent (specifically, wrt his continuing enmity and pursuit of weapons, and the incipient failure of the "containment" of him [unpopular "sanctions," and the greatly corrupted "oil for food" program]), following the 9/11 event.

Funny how invading another country without a legitimate reason (grr, bad pet dictator) earned Saddam a quick, brutal invasion & ten years of sanctions (which claimed at least half a million lives through disease and starvation - Madeleine Albright said it was "worth it") and "containment" missile attacks while doing absolutely nothing (nothing that he was accused of, anyway) earned him a full-scale long occupation, show trial (funnily enough one of his major crimes, his criminal use of WMD, purchased from Guess Who, against Iran wasn't even on the charge sheet) and rapid execution.

Quote from flymike91 :

I think Israel has more than enough to be paranoid about with every surrounding country circling for the kill. I mispoke before. Saddam had ties to the Taliban and Al-qaeda in Afghanistan and was a supporter of state sponsored terrorism. So while Iraq was not under Taliban rule, Saddam Hussein was equivalent or perhaps even worse. I read that from here

Great, now you're quoting from WND.com - which in turn cites FOX News as a source! You sure know how to pick 'em. Those two necon propaganda factories are about as "fair and balanced" as a seesaw with two fat kids at one end. What next - an op-ed piece from Bill O'Reilly?

Saddam did not have ties to the Taliban or al-Qaeda - as a paranoid dictator he saw extremism of any form as a potential threat to his reign and simply did not tolerate extremist behaviour.

As for Israel, it's own behaviour simply needs to improve. It can't keep simultaneously playing both the victim card and the aggressor card. The US can't keep blindly supporting Israel as it launches airstrikes on civilian neighbourhoods - effectingly lowering themselves to the level of indiscriminate Palestinian rocket attacks & suicide bombs - and still claim the moral high ground. Simply going by all the UN Resolutions regarding the treatment of Palestine that Israel has ignored and the US has vetoed, the single biggest obstacle to peace since 1948 has been Israel and America. The US was all for waving UN Resolutions around in the run-up to the Iraq invasion - where are they when Israel ignores resolution after resolution? Sending them money and weapons in full knowledge of how they will be used.

Quote :

It is true the war has been handled badly, the biggest problem was lack of communication of the goals we set in the middle east. Now is not the time to pull out, though. Iraq's democracy to far too shaky to simply leave. What we need to do is support it from the background and put constant pressure on muslim states to reform to provide a system that provides the same rights we enjoy in the western world including education and civil rights. These things may not come without a fight because there are Jihadist groups from western europe to Indonesia who would fight to the death to prevent that, but the question is: is it worth fighting for?

Real democracy & freedom is always worth fighting for - but it's not always right to start a fight just because you can, or think you should. That's the problem people have with the US's handling of Iraq: it was not a necessary step to take. It was not justifiable by any of the supposed reasons given by the Whitehouse (which seemed to change with the wind). It has not been handled honestly or competently by anyone since the beginning.

Quote :

One of the best things we can do is amplify the voices of the moderate muslims and silence the voices of the extremists. Silencing them will be difficult because of their enormous influence in uneducated communities.

Ironic & tragic, considering the Islamic Middle East was once the most educated & tolerant region on the planet, especially during Europe's Dark Ages. One vitally important thing the West in general, and the US in particular, can do to help matters is let individual nations sort out their own internal affairs and not preach to other nations about peace & democracy while holding a gun to their neighbours' heads! Oh, and perhaps large powerful countries should stop installing and supporting people like Saddam in the first place. I don't suppose WND.com or FOX Noise have any articles detailing the long, close & lethal (for the Iranians) relationship between President Reagan, Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein do they?

Quote :

Option 2 is just to drop it and leave. From what I hear from you guys, the middle east was utopia of peace and understanding before the US invasion.

Ridiculous. I've read nothing of the sort in this thread. Just because people have a problem with how things are now, it doesn't logically follow that we think things were awesome before.

Noone would have been foolish enough to think the Mid East was a utopia pre-US occupation, especially Afghanistan & Iraq. People were wary of the Taliban long before 9/11 and I don't think anyone my age could forget the 1991 Gulf War, after which - for some still unknown reason - Bush the 1st vacated Iraq, leaving Saddam to continue his oppression and even to ramp it up considerably, especially against rebels to whom Bush I had pledged support - support which he withdrew at the last moment, leaving them to the mercy of Saddam's security forces and the hell of Abu Ghraib.

Congrats on not dying for another 12 months, great job Bob