December 9, 2007....
In order to give you some idea of what it is like outside now, I have put
together this page. I scanned in some snow. There wasn't much snow out. This is
mostly ice crystals. Douglas thought it would melt all over the scanner. It
didn't melt too much. I was working in a hurry though. (I laid a piece of
plastic down on the scanner. Douglas had it at work. I wanted it to
hold books open---- a splatter shield for cookbooks and to hold books open so
they can be typed from easier. I have a music stand next to the computer
for such applications.)
There's a water drop above the "E" in December. It isn't a punctuation or other mark above it (umlaut). Let me know if this works ok. Can you read it ok? I don't normally like doing a dark background with white text. But it is the only way this works.
The reason I put together this page... I was writing my key pal in China. (key pal = pen pal via computer) I have always joked with him about sending him snow via E-mail. I figured out how to get snow in a format so that it can be E-mailed. Rather than E-mailing it, I stuck it on here as background to this page.
There was once this advertisement here for a shipping company. (UPS) It showed people ordering items online and then receiving them via their computer printer. Some day there will be a box and service you can buy/rent for the computer. It will be a little teleportation device. When you order something online, it will appear in a few hours into the box on your desk. You will pay rent on the box depending on what size you get. I don't know if they will have elephant sized boxes. What happens if they accidentally send two items at once and the molecules of the teapot coming from eBay get scrambled with those of the alarm clock you ordered? I wouldn't order a cat and a dog at the same time. You might get an animal that would fight with itself. (That is, if the animal survived.) I wonder if engineers at FedEx are developing such a system with a time travel component? They could advertise it with a play on words of their old slogan, "When it positively has to be there yesterday".
Ok, I have some E-mails to reply to. I really
want to work on my "Bookcase
Conundrum" story..... I have a list of stuff to do before I
work on that...
December 21, 2007...
I never did get any more pictures of snow for this page. I was going to do a photo gallery thing on here. It really did snow on December 16. It snowed between 8 and 9 inches. Douglas thinks our snowfall was closer to the 8 inch mark. I am going to put some sound files on here. I recorded some nice sound during the big snow of 2007. Some of the louder sounds are a bit distorted. When recording some of the files, I had the recording level at maximum so I could be sure to get the quiet sounds better. For some reason, the quieter winter sounds, sounded louder through headphones as I recorded them. These were recorded via a Sony Professional Walkman via audio cassette tape. Then I recorded that onto the hard drive via Audacity. They are MP3 files.
First off here is a sound file of the door bell. We had the door bell fixed around October 2007. It was great to have it fixed. Well, it didn't stay fixed. (had to sign for postcard from Estonia I bought on eBay; didn't hear the letter carrier ring the bell or knock; had to get a ride and pick up envelope at post office) It doesn't work now. This is sound of both the back and front door bells. This file is 0:00:47 min. long. It is 740 KB. (739 KB) 128kbps
This next file is the sound of the "snow
emergency" siren. I recorded this on December 16, 2007. I missed
the first few seconds of it. It is 0:03:09 min. long. It is 2,967 KB.
(2.89 MB) 128kbps
At some point you hear this loud thump against the house. It is the
newspaper person delivering the Sunday paper. I couldn't believe he was
out delivering papers. If they declare a "snow emergency" we will hear
these sirens in winter. It means that we are not allowed to park on the streets.
If we do, we face heavy fines and or towing. It is to make it easier on
the snow plows. I am thankful we don't live "up north" in Michigan.
They measure the annual snowfall in feet rather than inches. I was listing
to a friend of ours tell about how it was done in one place up north. He
said the snow fall was so great drivers had to put high flags onto the cars.
I forget what all he said about intersections. There were special
instructions. But the flags were there so you could see a car coming
around corners or at intersections. He said the paths on the sidewalk
(U.K. pavement) would be up higher in the winter months.
I have a file now, "snowing
out". Various sounds outside as it snowed.
I had a little over half an hour of sound.
I edited it down somewhat. It is 0:16:11 min. long. It is 15,175 KB. (14.8
MB) 128kbps
Some of the sounds you hear in this file are, early on Douglas puts food in the
bird feeder--you hear him banging his shoes against the house to clear off snow;
truck horns, which come from the snow plows (You hear the snow
plows more than once, we live near a "T" intersection. They come down the
street near us at least once , and down our street twice.); you can hear
a guy on the street near us with his snow blower; there's airplanes overhead;
there's the kettle for the hot water bottle; you hear Douglas and I talking a
time or two. I tried to edit out Douglas as much as I could.
The last file is "birds".
(birds) I recorded this December 19, 2007. I edited this one down as well.
I didn't do the best job as I kept loosing my place. This file is 0:16:30 min.
long. It is 15,475 KB. (15.1 MB) 128kbps
I tried to get a nice recording of the birds feeding at the bird feeder. I do
have better recordings somewhere. We had more birds come a few years ago.
You hear doves. I think there's finches maybe and sparrows. There's
two brown birds that look similar. I know one is a sparrow. The
other one is a finch I think. Not totally sure. They look extremely
similar. It is difficult to tell one from the other, except one is
smaller. I got the cat chirping as she looks out the window. I wrap
on the window a time or two. It has a loud echo. At the end of
this file, is a short bit of Radio Australia. I do get it in better on a
different frequency, but that one closed around the time I made this recording.
There's probably blue jays on here too. The hot water bottle kettle really
sounds nice and loud in this one. I don't turn it off early like Douglas
did in the other file.
That should do it for now. Maybe I will get more
snow pictures on here, before the snow melts... I am horribly busy lately.
I don't know if or when that will happen.