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Chaos Corner V03 N09 21 December 1993 Copyright 1993 by Robert D. Cowles; Ithaca, NY 14850. Permission is hereby granted to republish complete issues in unaltered form. Republication of partial issues must reference the source and state that subscriptions to Chaos Corner are available (free) by sending electronic mail to chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu. -------------------------------------------------- Welcome to Winter and Winter Weather! The Winter season is officially here, along with the first major snowfall of the year. Dr. Chaos finds the way to track the coming storms this season is to get the current (usually) US weather map in GIF format from wuarchive.wustl.edu. Use anonymous ftp in binary mode to get the file saMMDDHH.gif (where MM = month, DD = day-of-month, and HH is hour in GMT) from the /multimedia/images/wx directory. If you would like to view a nice animation of a Christmas Tree, ftp to ftp.netcom.com and get (in binary mode) the file winter11.zip from the /pub/nickc directory. It ran nicely in a full-screen DOS session under OS/2 (we didn't test it under Windows). -------------------------------------------------- Mailbag - Yet Another Response on Musical Scales Jerry Dunham writes: I want to thank you for the information on musical scales. Yes, I did look it up in my CRC as you suggested. Quite fascinating. And as best I can tell Celtic bagpipes (I can't speak for the other varieties) aren't tuned to any of these three. That might explain why the London Philharmonic does not have a bagpipe section. If there's interest I can find out what A4 is to a Highland piper; I know it's around here in this chaos somewhere.... Edward Stuebing writes: Thanks to David Karr and Dr. Chaos' extracting service for a nice review of the problem (read: opportunity). Many musical instruments are not limited to the compromises of an "equal temperament" - for example: the voice, stringed instruments, the slide trombone. These instruments have the flexibility to play a given note (say, middle C) at any frequency in the vicinity of its "proper, i.e., equal temperament" value. Consequently, they can adjust the notes according to the key the music is being played in. This is seldom useful in ensemble playing because of the need to play in tune with other instruments to produce a musical effect, consequently these musicians in ensembles are carefully listening to the collective sound and adjusting each note to blend (other instrumentalists do the same thing by "lipping" the intonation - extra tightening or relaxing of the lip about a normal amount of squeezing tension called "embouchure"). However, when the voice, stringed instrument, or slide trombone is playing solo there is great freedom to use the flexibility to musical advantage. One such adjustment would be to play in "just intonation" - a very advanced technique that would require knowing adjusted intonation for each note in each key signature. That is the hallmark of a virtuoso. This was the motivation for my original question - as a trombonist, I wonder just how different the notes would be in various key signatures played in just intonation. With such a table and my tuning meter, I could find out. A less difficult effect is noting that the seventh step of any scale (referred to as the "leading tone") is somewhat higher in pitch than its equal temperament (or standard) fingering and a tune sounds more musical if the leading tone is played a little higher in pitch. This technique is often taught to student musicians at the intermediate level (pianos, of course, can't do this). Now, about computer music. If accomplished musicians can improve the musicality of their performance (as appreciated by the human ear of the listener) by such adjustments, imagine what could be done with computer generated music where every note in every voice could be adjusted as the composition modulates through various keys. The computer need not be limited to the compromises of equal temperament when not playing in ensemble with noncomputer instruments. Electronic music can realize what was impossible for Bach - a keyboardist surrounded by a separate instrument for each key. Only an ensemble of virtuoso voices or strings had even the possibility of such a sound (subject to human imperfections). The computer could do it perfectly. -------------------------------------------------- Guide to the Internet Now Available in German Ken Stuart at Cornell provided Dr. Chaos with the following information on a new guide to the Internet. Have any Chaos Corner readers seen a copy? Peter Klau, Das Internet, -Weltweit vernetzt-, p. 320, IWT-Verlag GmbH, Vaterstetten, Germany, Jan. 1994 DM 59.00, ISBN 3-88322-467-7. This is an introductory guide (and catalog) for new users of the Internet. The book contain useful information for people new to the Internet. It is aimed at students, researchers, administrators, information professionals, librarians and others. -------------------------------------------------- Chaos Corner in the News Dr. Chaos was mentioned in the December issue of CompuServe Magazine in an article about Internet resources. Although Chaos Corner can be found in the Internetworking section of the Telecommunications Forum and in the Ask the Sysop section of the IBM Communications Forum, the number of CompuServe subscribers has increased dramatically over the past several weeks. Dr. Chaos also received a copy of Internet World's "on INTERNET '94"; a publication of Mecklermedia (Westport, CT, USA and London, UK); ISBN 0-88736-929-4. It contains over 200 pages of information on mailing lists, 60 pages on electronic texts, archives, selected FTP sites and Resource Guides; and other sections on Freenets, Campus-Wide Information Services, Commercial Services, Usenet Newsgroups, WAIS- accessible databases, and last but not least, a Subject Index. As an indication on how quickly the network changes, the Cornell CUINFO that is described is the old 3270 based interface rather than the shiny new Gopher-based interface (the change occurred in November, 1993. -------------------------------------------------- Upgrade to Version 6.2 of MS-DOS? If you are currently running MS-DOS release 6.0 and would like to upgrade to release 6.2; the MS-DOS 6.0-to-6.2 update, stepup.exe, is available on ftp.microsoft.com in the /peropsys/msdos/msdos6.2 directories (select based on language). -------------------------------------------------- Almost a Good Mailing Well, after the disastrous mailing of V03 N07, Dr. Chaos got me to do everything "by the book" last time for V03 N08 ... and it appeared to go out without problem. Then, almost two weeks later, I re-booted pelican and suddenly a bunch of people received an additional copy of V03 N08! Apologies to all (once again). -------------------------------------------------- Error in the Previous Issue While we're admitting mistakes ... the most embarrassing one in the last issue appeared when we said "it is not possible" rather than "it is now possible" with regard to subscribing to Bits and Bytes without human interaction. Thanks also to the thousands of eagle-eyed readers who caught the mistake and wrote to point out the error. (Well, it seemed like thousands.) -------------------------------------------------- Images of the Hubble Space Telescope Repair Images from the Hubble repair mission (STS-61) are available via FTP and Gopher from seds.lpl.arizona.edu in the /pub/images/shuttle/sts-61 directory. (Dr. Chaos points out that there are some gif images from the November lunar eclipse in the directory /pub/images/eclipse.lunar.) For those not satisfied with still images, there are 8 video clips of the repair procedure that can be found at seds.lpl.arizona.edu in the /pub/anim/space directory and ftp.univ-rennes1.fr in the directory /pub/Images/ASTRO/anim/space. Look for files hub1.mpg through hub8.mpg. (If you can't find a player for MPG files, ask Dr. Chaos for more information .. please specify the kind of computer/OS you are using. Speaking of images from space, Kevin Marsh (kmarsh@deneb.jsc.nasa.gov) has asked for some feedback: I have loaded the press release photos from STS-58, STS-51L, and STS-1 on an anonymous ftp and Gopher server (krakatoa.jsc.nasa.gov) at the Johnson Space Center. I have also included the Hubble telescope deployment photos. Look under /graphics/PressReleases. Future missions will be posted as soon as the press release sets have been selected, usually about a week after landing. If there is sufficient interest I will also load images from each mission from Mercury to the present. We are discussing the possibility of making all NASA manned mission photos available online. Please let me know if you would use this service and what you would do with the images if you had them. I would also like feedback about the quality of our JPEG compressed files. -------------------------------------------------- Mailbag - Indelible Blue Service in Finland Mike Walsh in Finland sent along the following experience when he subscribed to Chaos Corner: I'd be grateful to be added to your subscription list. So I expect special mention of Finland in a future issue !! (Here it is!) ... As for Indelible Blue; you had a favorable report on them a while ago. I too have had very very good service from them. Somebody called Jamie (female/male ? don't dare to ask) did the very unusual act of actually sending me a fax back telling me what was going on with my order - amazing as I'm otherwise completely in the dark - and since then with future orders things have gone just the same. I only hope they stay as nice when they become big. By the way, they've just moved (result of being bigger no doubt) and have new tel and fax numbers. Murphy's law has it that I'm at home and the tel/fax numbers are at work. But if you'd like them for a mention in a future column , ask and I'll email them to you. (The telephone numbers we have are (800) 776-8284 - Orders; (919) 878-9700 - Inquiries; (919) 878-7479 - FAX. OS/2 products only!) -------------------------------------------------- Interested in Rock Climbing? - Get on the Web! The climbing server is run by Magnus Homann and Keith Amidon. They are two climbers who have never met and are separated by half the world. They came up with the idea of taking information on rock climbing that they had collected from the Internet and making it easily available to other climbers. 1- Fire up your WWW client, preferably Xmosaic for maximum effect. 2- Load: http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/Climbing/index.html 3- Explore! -------------------------------------------------- Files available from Dr. Chaos Interested in Cross Stitch software (takes digitized images -- usually gif files -- and produces a pattern in a reduced number of colors that can be used for cross stitch or needlework)? Just send a request to Dr. Chaos at chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu. Other files available are: Guide to Telecom Resources on the Net (includes directions on how to get access to the ITU documents) Directions on how to access the archive server for the Usenet group misc.consumers.house Instructions for getting access to the last 10 days of the Commerce Business Daily (the official newspaper that publishes contracts that are being put out to bid). Introduction to the Frequently Asked Questions on Copyright Law. Gopher Jewels - the net's best Gopher servers. Directions for accessing the Joke archive via ftp. Results of the 1993 Unix file size survey. Instructions for obtaining a copy of the Winsock specification. Audio File Formats -------------------------------------------------- Get your Free Subscription Here! Just send a message to Dr. Chaos - chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu and ask to be put on the subscription list. From CompuServe, use the address INTERNET:chaos-request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu. It's that easy. Don't delay ---- act now! Dr. Chaos .