h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

mostly chess with an ocasional monopoly. how bout cards?

I play freecell a lot, when my browser is stuck...

Are you good at chess? (I could never get the hang of it.)

decent...not enough practice yet. I seem to have some talent though

I knew somebody in another town who started a chess club for kids. I don't know where they met. I think some people play in city parks in the summer.

there are no city parks where I live... there's a church park but lots of traffic

Wow. No city partks? I used to live in Philly, where city parks are a big thing. And I was born in Memphis - big park city.

Do you have state parks around?

yah...also only bout 3 hours from yellow stone. but I'm stuck in a small city (pop. 10k) with the closest normal sized city being 20mins away on the freeway and my only vehical I can drive being a gas guzler

Ouch. I hope at least it isn't a Toyota.

What's Yellowstone like?

it's a chevy...and yellowstone is just like a normal forest/plain area cept it has a super volcano under it that makes gysers(the super volcano could easily corev almost the entire U.S.A in volcanic gas and ashes btw

Aha...you guys have a superweapon over there.

by the way the volcanic ashes would cause me to drown in my own blood since it would cut up my lungs(it's more like mini glass shards then wood ashes) and may cause a mini ice age. on top of that it would kill lots of plants/crops anyways by blocking sunlight via clouds (filled with acid rain) and burying them...

Is there any sign Old Faithful is gonna blow?

old faitful blowing doesn't do any damage it's all da magma under it we have tp worry bout

I can understand that. It's the pyroclastic flow you need to dodge.

although for you the magma won't do much ... lava might get to me but you gata worry bout those sharp edged ashes ...on a side note they made an anime that's premiering in spring based off of a song mage by a voice synthesizer called vocaloid ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocaloid#Vocaloid ) which I found rater interesting. partly because I'm in to vocaloid at the moment but also because they are basing it off of a song ... let alone one sand by a voice synthesizer. I think it'll only be a 5 ep. ova(short or extra) series but I still want to know where all that story came from.

( http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-08-22/hatsune-miku-anime-with-yutaka-yamamoto-confirmed-for-spring ) the news about the anime
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEPhzcXYn2E ) the song with the original video
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWSeSlH-Gdw&feature=related ) anime trailer

What is vocaloid, exactly? (It sounds a little the Chipmunks to me.)

... can't really tell you better the wiki. but I can show some less chipmunk vids

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec0QuViLVbY&feature=related "bad apple: vocaloid gumi megpoid, 3m 37s"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7QV-lJuKOE&feature=channel "kaito's song of goodnight: vocaloid kaito, 4min 5s"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO4tbqYkgD0 "nebula: vocaloid miku hatsune, 4min 50s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ri4SkfWsFU "crazy clown: vocaloids kaito and hatsune miku, 2min 23s"

that last one is less child apropriate so if you have some little kiddos round then don't watch it. the other three are fine.

if you ask me something more specific then I might be able to awnser it but I mostly just know vocaloid is a program that synthesizes singing ... and it's kind of expensive at over 130 USDs for just Miku

Considering what it's doing, I'd think that wasn't too expensive.

It's sort of like a Moog for voice, I guess.

I remember ages ago being in a European museum and seeing the first voice synthesizer. It was a machine that was set to say one word, 'Coffee'. (Only in Dutch.)

I've never been too big a fan of synthesized music - though I have an electronic keyboard I keep fighting with. (All I really want it to do is to be a piano, and the poor thing is trying...)

It's funny that 'future' music almost always sounds artificial. Starting with theremins in the 50s. Or else like some recreation of the past, with pentatonic harps. (I've got a pentatonic lyre.)

My favourite 'future' music, though, was in 'The Fifth Element':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQEDhQnxZxI&feature=related

youir right about the price being appropriate. but that dpesn't mean it isn't expensive still more then I can afford.

I was raised in this age with synth music so I guess it just makes sense to me. although classical is one typoe of music I just can't let go of

either or I'll probably be bored of it in the next couple of months

Or it will get better. Or worse.

Classical's good. And since it's really all about technique, the synthetic version just loses the nuances.

But the synthetic stuff has lots of interesting effects, too.