[Coco] Sigh of relief, refresh your floppies!

[wdg3rd at comcast.net]

----- "Steven Hirsch" <snhirsch at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 27 Mar 2010, Gene Heskett wrote:
> 
> >> Avoid rotary head data drives (DAT and 8mm) like the plague.  I've
> had
> >> enormous problems with these over the years and I don't think I'm
> alone.
> 
> > Nope, you have lots of company in that little red wagon bound for
> he!!.
> 
> s/hell/bitbucket/    ?
> 
> It's reassuring to know I'm not the only one :-)  Interesting how a 
> technology that worked so well for video acquired such a black-eye in
> the 
> computer domain.  I'll guess that things were scaled down, dumbed down
> and 
> cheapened to the point of unreliability, then "Muntzed" back until
> they 
> just barely worked (a time-tested engineering process).

Analog video is quite forgiving, a lost frame is a small fraction of a second, barely long enough to insert a subliminal advertisement (well, that was the demon claimed to be in some movies back when I was in diapers [research shows that (1) it was only tried a few times and (2) it didn't work]).  Quality loss for less time than you can see, but generally not total garbage.  (A head alignment problem is a whole 'nother thing, and losing a head from a four-head machine produces garbage from one end to the other if you didn't know it had happened before the record process).  Compressed digital video (say an mpeg), a frame lost can mean up to several seconds of {garbage --> pixelation --> viewable again}.  I'm not a video professional like Gene, but I have watched some clips when the verification of the disk I'd burned showed one block bad, and that's how it went.  I've got some twenty-year old VHS tapes that haven't necessarily been stored perfectly, and they are quite watchable even if not as crisp as when I first made them, on amateur equipment with whatever tapes were on discount at the time.  Those "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and "Simpsons" tapes are watchable, if not up to the standard of the DVD releases I can never quite ration the funds for these days; the last pre-recorded DVD I bought was"Mamma Mia", because one of my guilty pleasures is ABBA, and for the most part it was spectacular -- though whichever casting director got the idea that Pierce Brosnan could sing should be hanged, drawn and quartered, but he was great, except when he tried to carry a tune, he'd have done it better if he'd been given a bucket (and the movie didn't have my favorite ABBA song, "Fernando", but I can't think of a good place to insert that one into the plot as done anyway, though the islands around Greece have some history where it could have fit).

I'm babbling.  Tired.  Over to a gathering of science fiction fans in upper Manhattan last night, La Esposa and I drove my recently widowed first wife home to Brooklyn well after midnight, talked the rest of the night, didn't head back to Jersey until after 7am.  Then I read a book for a while and decided to come up to the attic to check email.  At this point, I'd best stay up the rest of the day, else my metabolism and sleep schedule will be skewed for the next week at least.  But I think I'll spend it passive (reading, watching the odd Youtube or Hulu video, maybe that "Mamma Mia" DVD again) rather than active (posting), especially since I'm also having a couple of beers in the extremely-high-gravity lager category (Earthquake boasts 12% Alc by Vol at a buck and a quarter [plus tax, of course] per 24oz can -- not a great or even good beer, but I can't afford to drink Sierra Nevada's better efforts these days and I can't stand Bud, Miller or Coors) and I know too well that drinking and posting can be a bad combo (though it might be a great name for a retro-swing band or a stand-up comedy act).
-- 
Ward Griffiths        wdg3rd at comcast.net

<home.comcast.net/~wdg3rd>