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

What amazes me about listening to or watching things played backwards is the total lack of purpose or sense of progress. I remember watching the whole of the French Lieutenant's Woman backwards at about 3 times normal speed. It was completely impossible to figure out what was going on, as nothing related to the events preceding it.

Music played backwards tends to start complex and loud and fade away into simple quiet stuff.

Have you tried playing speech backwards. Most consonants are unrecognisable.

Burnatonce -- http://www.burnatonce.com/

Good, free cd mastering program

burns CDs like a


English speech played backwards sounds almost like Russian

???

I downloaded the one you posted the link for yesterday. It isn't faster but I think that may be because I was ripping them as mp3 rather that .wav. I have yet to try the burning program I downloaded at the same time. Currently, I use Nero or Windows Media Player, (I think) bith have annoying quirks like telling me that I have a successful burn and then finding that the CD is blank, or giving me a faulty error message (this is the Nero one) and then seemingly freezing up, when, in fact, the burn is going along quite well. Or, most annoyingly, saving all the titles for the CD I am about to burn and finding that they didn't save, if and when I finally get the burn to successfully burn.

I have been able to edit with Nero, though, and quite successfully... cutting out applause or loud voices at the beginning of a piece.

Getting back to the backward thing, as a teenager the little group I hung out with got into the habit of figuring out what our names were backward and then pronouncing them that way regularly. (Don't ask why, I can't even remember!) I say pronouncing them that way since later after uni when I was in a video production program we heard English backwards and it doesn't sound the least like the way it is spelled. I remember specifically *Semserchk Yearem* specifically (Merry Christmas).

"(Don't ask why, I can't even remember!)"

Because you were a teenager, silly....

Child Born Out Of Wedlock In Tokyo...

Did I foget to mention EAC?

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

Also, check out the audio mastering tips here: http://www.pcmus.com/

The section on XP tweaks, particularly

CBOOWIT could be abreviated BIT.

"BIT"?

child born out of wedlock/fatherless child

in Tokyo.


This has got to be the most painful communication ever.

oic

I got the "B"

It was the "IT"...

I couldn't understand the connection with Information Technology

jay-sus! praise the lard and pass the newfie bullets! This shows the cost of poor writing! Let this be a lesson to me to read first and post later.

Yesterday, I wrote that it was "snowing like a child born out of wedlock in Tokyo" when what I really should have written was: In Tokyo, it is snowing like a child born out of wedlock (in other words "snowing like a bastard")

Since then it has picked up a certain amount of backward momentum.

Ectually, Rev. I believe that what you actually said was "It's snowing like child born out of wedlock in Tokyo." (Which is why I, quite reasonably thought you meant that children in Tokyo, born out of wedlock are dropped out of windows or something.... thus the resemblance to heavy snow.....).

Had you said "It is snowing in Tokyo like a child born out of wedlock", we might have clued in a little quicker. However, we would all have missed out on the birth (pardon the pun) of a splendid new phrase.

a nifty new turn of phrase, but how does it sound backwards?

Taliesin,

I want to thank you for turning me on to both the Burnatonce and the Expressrip.

I just used the Burnatonce and within 5 minutes I had my CD burned... and without having the thing freeze up or go thru 3 CDs because of faulty burns.

Speaking of thing we've waiting twenty years for - I bought a great new professional tool (toy) yesterday: A digital voice recorder that came with software that converts digital recordings INTO TEXT FILES!!! If you have ever had to transcribe tapes from an hour long interview or speeches from a conference, then you know what a gigantic pain in the ass it is. This thing is a Hienlienian voice-writer. Spoken words go into the magic box, written words come out. Yippee!

I bet it translates from French too. Try saying 'Pas de leur Rhone que nous' and see what it types out.

well it does do both Japanese and roman characters....

Those USB flash sticks impress the h-e-double-hockey-sticks out of me!

1GB in a solid-state device smaller than a disposable lighter

I wonder how long before there are 100GB memory sticks?

Someone recently was looking for an everyday application of the old British 'billion' meaning what it now called a trillion, that is 1,000,000,000,000. I realised that the number of bits of information on the hard drive in my PC is now more than this number. And it only cost €99.