unitascular: something that requires individual focus or that does not require multiple steps

(it’s a made-up word)

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The Telharmonium and the Hammond Organ

The first electronic organ was called the Telharmonium. It was invented in 1897 by Thaddeus Cahill. This organ was a monster to operate. Tones were generated by massive tonewheels. The sound of the Telharmonium was transmitted over wire and the sound was put through speaker horns (this was prior to real amplification, at that time there wasn’t a very functional way to make signals stronger). The organ would transmit the sound not only where it was played, but anywhere in the city that a line was brought to, just like the telephone. In fact, the speaker horns were usually just telephones with extended cardboard horns attached to make the sound louder.
A total of three Telharmoniums were built. The first Telharmonium (“Mark I”) was retained by the brother of Thaddeus Cahill for quite a time after his death. Unable to find anyone interested in rebuilding the instrument, the last remaining Telharmonium was scrapped in 1962.
Despite having operated a time when audio recording did exist, there are no recordings of the Telharmonium. Our only guesses to its sound come from detailed descriptions in writing. The sounds were described as clear, people truly enjoyed listening to the instrument. Technical problems frequently occurred, random clicking in the lines, and sometimes it would completely go out. The pitch would sometimes shift and a drive shaft adjustment might need to be changed while the organ was being played.

You can watch a documentary about the Telharmonium here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPlbXl81Rs0
The music is what we think the Telharmonium might have sounded like. Ignore the weird echo-ey voice in the background.

Building up to the 30’s, a few things happened: tube amplifiers were introduced bringing new and amazing feats of wonder to audio reproduction, telephone, radio communications, and many more applications. In 1935, Laurens Hammond unveiled the Hammond Organ which used the exact same technology as the Telharmonium — tonewheels — except his design was on a much much smaller scale. His tone wheel unit fit in a small unit that could actually go inside the organ console. The tones of his organ were picked up by small microphone pickups and amplified by the tube amp. Just like the Telharmonium, the sound is altered by additive synthesis — adding sine waves at different pitches together to create harmonic waveforms.

Read more about the Telharmonium: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telharmonium
Read more about the Hammond organ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammond_organ
Read more about Additive Synthesis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additive_synthesis

 

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Program to record webcam (Windows 7/Vista/Linux)

What programs are there to record webcams for Windows 7/Vista?

Likely, you already have one on your computer — and it’s free! Its called Windows Movie Maker. (Linux users, read on)

Yes, that’s right. The up-to-date movie maker actually has a feature to record webcam, and it works just fine. Most people ignore Movie Maker for even basic editing now since it seems weak compared to other free movie editors.

If you would like to download Windows Movie Maker, just visit the website: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-live/movie-maker-get-started

Just start Movie Maker, and on the “Home” tab press “Webcam Video”. Just hit the record button to get started, and save when you are done. It is that simple!

If you have Linux, you should check out Cheese.
Read about Cheese on Gnome.org:
http://projects.gnome.org/cheese/download
Cheese is a basic video recording and picture taking program for Linux. Your disto probably has its own package for Cheese as it is a fairly common program.

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What is the difference between a theater organ and a classical organ?

In the organ world, we have many ways of classifying organs by some type. We might say electric or mechanical action, modern or historical (for age), church or classic — but what about theater organ versus a classical organ? Is a theater organ not a regular organ? Yes and no.

Theater organs use mainly pipes to produce their sound, but the functionality of the theater organ is different than that of a classical organ. If a classical organist walked up to a

English: Avalon Casino's Page Organ console wi...

English: Avalon Casino’s Page Organ console with portraits of and . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

theater organ for the first time, there are a few things they might notice as odd:
1. The console shape. Theater organs almost always have the classic “horse-shoe” console with tabs that seem to move around the console, rather than being at the sides or only above the keyboards in a straight line. The tabs on a theater organ are bit thinner and colored (color coded, actually), with tabs on the backboard under the stop rails that do more than just couple. Also, a classical organist might notice that toe pistons on an organ aren’t presets for generals or pedals — most of the toe pistons on a theater organ have sound effects.
2. The names of the stops are modern instruments, rather than historical instruments. A pipe organ has stranger names like Gamba, Subbass, Trompoette, Mixture, flote, and more, whereas a theater organ has modern instruments like trumpet, clarinet, or flute.
3. “Second Touch” stops. Pressing the keys like normal triggers whatever stops you have selected for the manual, second touch brings in another set of ranks when you press harder.
4. Percussion like drums and triangle, and tuned percussion like xylophone, marimba, “harp”, glockenspiel, tuned sleighbells, and even piano are present on theater organ, these are extremely rare on a classical organ.
5. Multiple tremulants for sets of ranks, rather than one main tremulant or a single tremulant for each division.

These are the biggest differences. So what are they all about?

Keep in mind as I break these down that theater organs are designed for efficiency in playing, but most important that they are designed to accompany silent films.

The horse-shoe console wraps the stops around the organist in a way that they are much more accessible. You do not have to move your hands as far away from the keys to add or subtract a sound. This is incredibly convenient for changing registrations on the fly without stopping, which is necessary for silent film accompaniment. For a silent film, you would have provided non-stop music for the entire show.
The stop tabs are colored. Generally white for fairly standard flute and diapason stops, but red for reed stops (the loudest, e.g. trumpet or kinura) yellow for strings (violins), and black for couplers. The stop tabs are slightly thinner than tabs on classical organs, this allows for more space but doesn’t have much advantage after that.
Toe pistons are usually sound effects on the theater organ. These usually include things like police sirens, bird train and boat whistles, fire gong, kettle drum and other drums, horse hooves, and much more. These are directly for the purpose of accompanying silent films. On a classical organ, toe pistons are usually presets that either affect the pedal registrations or that affect the entire organ (called generals).

The theater organ was often called a “Unit Orchestra”. The sounds it produced were made with a higher wind pressure and were made to represent the sounds of orchestral instruments. That is why the theater organ has many modern instrument names, like trumpet or clarinet. They sound much more like the instruments they are supposed to represent as well. Robert Hope Jones discovered that one of the keys to better instrument representation was to provide a higher wind pressure than what was currently being used in organs,

Marimba in the Solo Chamber at Ann Arbor's Mic...

Marimba in the Solo Chamber at Ann Arbor’s Michigan Theatre (3/13 Barton) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Percussion stops are one of my personal favorite parts of the theater organ. Drums, tambourine, and castenets are a lot of fun to include in music, but I especially enjoy the tuned percussians. With the flip of a tab, the keyboard suddenly becomes a Xylophone, cathedral chimes, glockenspiel, harp, or my personal favorite: chrysoglott (celesta). These really add an extra dimension to the organ.

Organs also have what is often called a “toy counter” or the “trap effects”. These are sounds, usually triggered by toe pistons, like bird and train whistles, police and boat sirens, and other inventive sounds. These are all created by clever mechanical means and are important in providing special sounds in silent films.

The last notable feature of the theater organ are the tremulants. Theater organs usually divide up tremulants by ranks, rather than divisions. The theater organ I play frequently for example has separate tremulants for the main, tuba, trumpet and kinura, tibia, vox, and flute. The vox humana is usually always on, the tremulant usually can’t be turned off from the console. The tremulants of a theater organ are usually deep and fast, rather than the shallow and slow tremulant we find on classical instruments. This is the pinnacle of the theater organ and is also why it has that (in the best respects) “cheesy” sound we all love.

During silent film accompaniment, many organist would improvise what they were playing to fit with what was on the screen. If a man shot a gun, the organist might trigger a crash-cymbal to make the effect. If he escapes on a horse, he might along with his music hold down the “horse hooves” piston to mimic that sound. As a copper follows him, he might press the police siren piston after, and upon crashing into a wall, it might just be a conglomeration of sounds that are all made by mechanical means. You can see how then that the silent film was seldom silent. Even theaters without organs would usually have a piano. Some larger theaters often even had orchestras, but this only proved to be expensive.

The theater organ, unfortunately, is often now forgotten. Many classical and theater organs are thrown away or melted down. If you want to learn more, find out if you have a local Theater Organ Society chapter by visiting this page: http://www.atos.org/chapters

 

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Software worth noting: Tomboy Notes (Windows, Linux, Free)

When I was a younger computer user, I obsessed with the idea of placing virtual sticky notes on the computer desktop. I have no explanation for why. Now, I don’t like them nearly as much. I liked how human it was and how it made my desktop screen look like the top of my actual desk! Disorganized and cluttered. I am sure that if I could place virtual excess writing utensils, unused CD-ROMs, pens, shoe laces, extra change, and random chords and USB cables on my computer desktop I probably would.

I found a better solution:
Tomboy notes. Tomboy notes are very easy to use. They organize well and each note is kept in an index. I use Tomboy notes for keeping track of daily things, but I also have other note pads for specialized things. I use Tomboy when I have something I need to be able to remember for the short-term time, but I don’t feel that it is worth creating a

Example note in Tomboy 0.10.2, a notetaking ap...

Example note in Tomboy 0.10.2, a notetaking application. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) (OS is Linux)

document on my computer for. Right now, I have a snippet of HTML code for HTTP redirects down, a notepad called “main notes” where I write daily tasks and things I need to remember, and a notepad with things related to a study group that I am in.

Tomboy notes is part of the Gnome project and is open source and completely free. Its short description is “Tomboy: Simple Note Taking. Powerful ideas.”

Notes can be organized into notebooks if you are using many at once. A notebook allows you to categorize easily. One of my favorite features in Tomboy is “WikiWords”. When enabled, typing words InSeriesLikeThis will automatically highlight that text and when you click, will link to another note with that name. This lets notes tie together easily and is quite handy. (Enable in Edit> Preferences, WikiWords)

You can read more about Tomboy and download it from their website: http://projects.gnome.org/tomboy/

Pros:
Very easy to use. Simple.
Fast.
Stable.
2.6MB download.
Supports synchronization.

Cons:
Uses about 29MB of RAM, which seems a bit much for this kind of program.

Neutral: A single-use program, does not do anything but take care of notes. (This being good and bad).
Tomboy Notes is truly software worth noting.

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August Site Updates

This month yielded an uptime of 93.76%. An issue with a series of Ubuntu updates caused by delaying to upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04 caused some serious issues. The site was hosted temporarily on another server and was being served statically. The days that had the most downtime were July 10, 12, 16, bust mostly the 19th.

To rectify the issue as well as many other problems, the server was completely reformatted. This solved other issues it was having with non-web services as well.

Our percentage of returning visitors is increasing. Returning visitors is now 20.01%, leaving 79.99% new visitors.

Stats:
The Connect Economics site is doing quite well.

Top Pages

  1. Connect Economics Answers
  2. Accordion Fingering Chart (bass) | ZylBlog
  3. The Sims 3 Online Play | ZylBlog
  4. Run The Sims 3 under Linux | ZylBlog
  5. Website is currently unreachable
Top Referrers

  1. winfix.zylblog.com
  2. 36ohk6dgmcd1n-c.c.yom.mail.yahoo.net
  3. zylblog.com
  4. computerhope.com
  5. facebook.com
Top Searches

  1. (unknown)
  2. accordion bass chart
  3. play sims 3 online free trial
  4. how much more output will the average american have next year if the $15 trillion u.s. economy grows by: assume a population of 300 million.
  5. accordion finger chart

Our other stats engine reports:

P.S., check out www.88d.info

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Ways to improve your computer: Defragment Daily

For those of us using Windows, we are haunted by the inner-workings of the NTFS file system. All through the life of Microsoft file systems, fragmentation has been a major performance issue. Now that drives are getting larger and larger, and files vary from a few bytes to a few gigabytes, defragmentation is becoming more important.

Windows Vista introduced the feature of scheduled defragmentations. When enabled by

English: Screenshot of Auslogics Disk Defrag w...

English: Screenshot of Auslogics Disk Defrag which is a freeware disk defragmenting utility for Microsoft Windows which aims at speeding up the user’s computer and optimizing the file system by means of defragmentation. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

default, it would defragment once a week. Fragmentation is a major issue I notice with users who have operating systems older than Vista who are just unfamiliar with running defragmenter.

Most people leave their computers on all the time. Why not defragment daily?
It makes a lot of sense. It does not ware your drive down to defragment daily, it doesn’t waste power if you are planning to leave your computer on anyways — if you are going to leave your computer on at night every day it might as well do something.

I’ve begun to recommend that people set up their defragmenter to defragment every day at a time when they almost never use their computer. The Windows filesystem develops fragmentation quickly and is a huge cause in slowing down a computer. Running daily makes sense in keeping on top of it.

I recommend using Defraggler. Defraggler has the ability to do a boot-time defragment and can take care of defragmenting files that are normally locked, it also allows you to create a schedule. This is an especially good solution for those running Windows XP or lower, as pre-Vista defragmenter does not allow scheduling. You can read my article about Defraggler here (Zylblog).

Resources:

Visit Defraggler’s website: http://www.piriform.com/defraggler

Download from Filehippo: http://filehippo.com/download_defraggler/

Read on Wikipedia in the most complicated terminology possible the causes of fragmentation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defragmentation

An article about speeding up your computer: https://zylblog.com/2011/06/speeding-up-your-computer/ (Zylblog)

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FCC Report on Bandwidth Speeds from StopTheCap.com

StopTheCap.com has recently released a very good writeup of the FCC report regarding bandwidth throughput as tested by the FCC. This is especially interesting if you are the subscriber of a major provider.

The major providers included in the report are AT&T, Cabelvision, CentryLink, Charter, Comcast, Cox, Frontier, Insight, Mediacom, Qwest, TimeWarner, Verizon Fiber, Verizon DSL, Windstream. The report also breaks down by ISP the advertised speed versus the actual speed that was available.

Read more here: http://stopthecap.com/2012/07/19/latest-fcc-report-on-broadband-speeds-good-for-verizon-cablevision-bad-for-frontier/

StopTheCap.com provides information about major ISP’s and their bandwidth restrictions, but most importantly StopTheCap researches and warns users about billing schemes that many ISP’s use to try and overcharge for the use of bandwidth. StopTheCap’s slogan is: “Promoting Better Broadband, Fighting Data Caps, Usage-Based Billing, & Other Internet Overcharging Schemes”

What kind of Internet speed are you getting? What type of Internet are you using? Fill our our poll, and comment on the article below! You can test your speed safely at www.speedtest.net

[poll id=”2″]

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Download Free Games — Safely!

Free games are difficult to find. Especially if you are looking for the legal, virus free kind.
I am not a gamer, but I think these resources are great to have.
Do you have a game to share? Comment below, we’ll check it out and add it.

Here are some locations which I have screened and determined safe:

Wikipedia hosts a large list of freeware games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freeware_games

The DMOZ Open Directory has a list of freeware games, organized by category http://www.dmoz.org/Games/Video_Games/Downloads/Free/

A list of free, high quality graphics, games. Free games are clearly marked “(freeware)”.
http://www.network-games-collection.com/

Want old DOS Games? DOSGames.com is for you. Games are clearly marked as to whether they are shareware or freeware. Many are legal and in the public domain, others are considered abandonware.
http://www.dosgames.com/

A large directory of multiplayer games. Each game is clearly marked
http://www.mpogd.com/games/price.asp?id=free (links to the free games page)

Games by Steam, available to play for free.
http://store.steampowered.com/genre/Free%20to%20Play/

 

Individual free games:

Classic

NetHack. A single-player rogue-like video game from the late 1980’s. Free.
http://www.nethack.org/

FPS – First Person Shooters

Assault Cubers. “AssaultCube is a FREE, multiplayer, first-person shooter game, based on the CUBE engine.” Good graphics. Lightweight. Free.
http://assault.cubers.net/

Savage2. “Savage combines real-time strategy and first person action in one fluid game. Instead of sending mindless computer drones into battle, imagine organizing real human players on a crusade to conquer your adversary.” Free.
http://www.savage2.com/en/main.php

Nexuiz Classic. Nexuiz is a free, open source, first person shooter that offers fast paced action and intense battles. Great graphics. Free.
http://www.alientrap.org/games/nexuiz?

Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG)

Runescape, well known and [overly] used. “RuneScape is a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game” Free.
http://runescape.com/

Other

GridWars 2. The object of [Grid Wars 2] is to survive as long as possible and score as many points as possible by destroying an ever-increasing swarm of enemies. Free.
http://www.caiman.us/scripts/fw/f2317.html

Puzzles/Matching

Frozen Bubble. A Bust-a-Move clone. 1 or two player, network ready as well. Free.
http://www.frozen-bubble.org/

RPG

Dink Smallwood HD “The newly remixed version of the classic RPG brought to you by the original creators.” Free.
http://www.rtsoft.com/pages/dink.php

Dope Wars. “Join over 7,500 active players and try your hand at creating an online drug empire! Buy your favorite narcotic at one subway station and sell it else where for profits! But that’s not all, the more you make, the more you can pimp-it-up with bigger, badder jackets, weapons and armor.” Multiplayer. Free.
http://www.treadon.us/

Simulation

BMW M3 Challenge. A free racing game.
The website is in German. Click “Zum Download”
http://www.chip.de/downloads/BMW-M3-Challenge_28749288.html
Read about it in English here: http://www.network-games-collection.com/racing/119-m3-challenge-freeware

C-evo is a freeware empire building game for Windows. Free.
http://c-evo.org/

LinCity-NG, a Sim City clone. “Build your own city.” Free.
Sourceforge Site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/lincity-ng.berlios/
https://fedorahosted.org/LinCity-NG/
 (07/21/2012: Under Construction)

Strategy

Command & Conquer, an action-packed hybridization of cerebral strategy and pulse pounding real time gameplay. Free.
http://www.commandandconquer.com/classic

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Yahoo’s Contributors Network Passwords Leaked

Recently, 430,000 email addresses and passwords were stolen, taken from the Yahoo Contributors Network. These email addresses were the addresses associated with a users Contributors Network account. The password as well. They are publicly viewable.

If you had an account on Yahoo Contributors Network, you should change your password for it and other services that you were using the same password for.

You can view the entire list here:
http://d33ds.co.nyud.net/archive/yahoo-disclosure.txt
(at the time of writing, they were using a mirror to hold the text file). Use the “Find” feature in your word processor to discover if your email address is contained with the 430,000 addresses. Mine was. Luckily, it was an older password that I no longer use.

Yahoo, interestingly, did not react to this leak quickly. I had emails from Hulu and Twitter before I had a single mention from Yahoo. Also, Yahoo did not require the compromised users to reset their passwords or even point them to a password changing link. I was surprised.

Of course, all of these email addresses had to pass through anti-spam mechanisms, meaning that most of these addresses and passwords were actually in use to some extent.

 

Outside resources:
Description of the issue from cnet: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57471178-83/yahoos-password-leak-what-you-need-to-know-faq/ & http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57470786-83/hackers-post-450k-credentials-pilfered-from-yahoo/

 

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