spokenward

Worth noting that CES is pointedly international. https://www.ces.tech/international.aspx "CES 2020 is expecting more than 60,000 international attendees. Make the most of your CES experience by learning more about the services provided." The worst part of a trade show is the off-floor exposure in booths and suites.

We are finally getting more useful descriptions of what we have. This is about Covid-19 variants. Local Chicago news picked up a story from Northwestern University because it noted a variant that appeared to be centered in Chicago. Cautions: this is a small study with analysis based on the analysis of 88 subjects. the source is a research preprint (before a peer review) https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.19.20107144v1 I think the most significant feature of the research is the higher "Average viral loads in the airways" associated with Clade 1. April 9 we had this story that pointed to the variant from Italy as the source of infections in New York. At the time Dr. Fauci acknowledged that this was "probably correct." https://abcnews.go.com/Health/york-coronavirus-outbreak-originated-europe-study-finds/story?id=70062642 The Beeb has a story on waste water samples that present a timeline: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53106444

"Get an encoder. That"s the one thing you probably don"t have. This is basically a box that sends your video signal out to the world." I think that this is correct and a non-obvious part of a working system. The next question - what about integration with things like OBS for stream encoding and capture? https://obsproject.com/ Most of the previous hardware solutions were aimed at the worship and corporate video markets. It feels like things are changing very rapidly.

There are videos and use cases for the recently updated Cubasis over here: https://new.steinberg.net/cubasis/new-features/ There is also a class of app that stands on its own in IOS. http://kymatica.com/apps/aum#overview

Another find in the dead magazine dept. with a life beyond dead trees. They have lovingly preserved some issues of the UK magazine Recording Musician here: http://www.muzines.co.uk/mags/rm I was not aware of the magazine when they were publishing. I found it this week after a chance hearing of Sting's "If I Ever Lose my Faith in You." Of course the lyrics are a pretty good choice for this week, but I went looking because I was very curious about the drums. http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/sting-and-hugh-padgham/3116

Looks like she's on the panel that we all missed. Tough turn of events for travel.

This is the opening weekend with performance events. https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/moog/events.php They plan on building out their online presence in March. The exhibit runs into October. https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/moog/index.php

8 Tracks are like a B school lesson in finding the "almost good enough" solution to a problem. A combination of ingenuity, hustle, self-deception and fatal compromise. Funny and failed like a leisure suit. As an art project, though, funny and obsessive. Designers love this stuff. And those green 8 track shells mentioned in the Verge article were because the label was "Chrysalis". Dig it. ArsTechnica did a capsule review of the hardware history of the 8 track. Carts - in the sense of the NAB cartridge, both preceded and survived the 8 track. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/01/forgotten-audio-formats-stereo-8/ But the 8 track was the 8 track because of the people who cobbled it together and could look you in the eye and tell you that the 4 track tape is dead and the Philips cassette is a toy and if people are driving with the windows down they might not even notice that the song faded out weird. Everything 8 track over here - http://www.8trackheaven.com In the suburbs just west of O'Hare in one of the first industrial parks was the home of Ampex. There is a first person account from a guy who worked there in 1971. http://www.8trackheaven.com/archive/ampex.html The brief success of 8 tracks also played a role on reshaping the record business. Ampex had successfully negotiated distribution deals with many labels at a time when distribution was still mostly small labels with independent distributors servicing territories. The Ampex model of a national organization was influential when labels started consolidating and moving to branch distribution (CBS, WEA, MCA, etc.) in the 1970s.