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Basement Archaeology Part man, part caffeine Skip to content HomeAboutContactDisclaimerhmvh.net Older posts More media madness, obviously! Posted on Saturday, 19. June 2021 by hmvh

Earlier this month I finished my wifes artist portfolio website. Check it out here.

Obviously it includes a store.

Obviously you check out the competition while setting up shop, and obviously it doesnt take long to discover the stranger side of Etsy. Even books have been written about certain regrettable products.

One of the more interesting items I stumbled across was this Hi-Fi rack.

Just look at it. Its gorgeous!

I have no idea whats supposed to be audiophile about a few threaded steel rods and stained wooden boards you could buy at the nearest hardware store and put together in a weekend for a fraction of the asking price but hey, at least its functional and flexible.

Its a popular design I had come across some years ago while looking for inspiration for the rack I built recently. While it certainly looks good (wait until you start running cables) and has its practical aspects, the designs major drawback, though, is that the equipment is exposed to dust. I wanted an enclosed shelf over and above some place for records.

This brings me to the next point: Vinyl records.

The most recent archaeological dig in the basement archives revealed two boxes packed full of records. Theyre all thats left from previous sorting rounds and should now be regarded as the interesting ones. A few of those have actually made it into the secondary collection (the stack on the right side in the photo above, a work in progress).

The boxes also include an unusual number of records released by financial and religious institutions, and Im currently stumped by a certain record with Christmas carols sung by lepers and orphaned/abused children put out by a Ponzi pyramid scheme organisation. Now theres a cliché if ever there was one!

Im undecided about whether that qualifies it for a spot in my collection.

Like many others, itll probably just get consigned to the rubbish heap (or recycled as raw material for arts and crafts) once theyve been digitised/scanned and fed to the Discogs database monster. Some may even fetch something on the marketplace. And theres at least one more box of CDs and tapes waiting for another day.

Why the sudden desire to clear out the space?

Too much stuff, obviously! And I need it for more media.

This most recent harvest has given me new ideas for another exciting project.

Its obvious that I have a troubled relationship with physical media.

Or theres something else wrong.

All photos by hmvhDOTnet unless specified otherwise.

Posted in Media | Tagged art, CD, DVD, madness, movies, records, tapes, vinyl, web design, woodwork | Leave a comment Canis fidelis verum vox Posted on Sunday, 18. April 2021 by hmvh

So there’s this puppy, and it likes to chase cars.

Not just any car, mind you, this puppy goes after certain black cars and occasionally silver cars too. It has no interest in other colours because pink or green cars cannot be taken seriously — but also because dogs are colour blind. The puppy is informed; it learns what is desirable from the adverts and reviews it sees in the newspapers laying on the floor while it is being house trained, and because it observes the adult dogs in the neighbourhood chasing after similar cars.

However, our puppy never quite manages to catch up because cars are fast.

As the puppy grows up it gradually gets side tracked by other interests and new chew toys. Pussies, too, become an instinctive pursuit. Still, our dog looks up and occasionally gives chase when it sees a flashy black car go by — but loses interest after a few metres.

“Nah, another time,” it thinks to itself, “every dog has its day.”

One sunny day our dog was basking in the front yard as a particularly flashy black car cruises by. The dog gives chase. The car slows down. The dog catches up. The car comes to a stop. The driver leaves the engine running and jumps out to quickly drop off something at a neighbour’s house.

Yes, the dog has finally caught a car!

So now what? Seriously… what’s a dog to do with a car?

Oh, this dog knows. It jumps in the seat, closes the door, and drives off. The dog is happy.

Or is it? After a few spins around the block the dog returns the car and scurries off home. It is not fulfilled. It wants more. A flea bug has bitten. The dog wants a better car.

That dog is me. I finally “caught my car”.

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Posted in Technology | Tagged audio, dream, gadgetry, hardware, music, obsessions, sound | Leave a comment The legacy of Lou Ottens Posted on Thursday, 15. April 2021 by hmvh

As has been widely reported in the media, Lodewijk (Lou) Frederik Ottens, the Dutch inventor of the Compact Cassette as well as the Compact Disc died last month.

He passed away on the 6th of March 2021 at the age of 94. At least he got to C90!

Truth be told, Mr. Ottens didnt really single-handedly invent the compact cassette; he was in charge of a team of Philips engineers in Hasselt, Belgium who wanted to develop a portable tape recorder / dictation device and the associated tape cartridges for the home consumer. This was achieved by simplifying, miniaturising and re-imagining several existing concepts and products. It was in mono.

Little could he know what legacy his personal frustration with open-reel tapes would leave.

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Posted in Cassette | Tagged C90, CD, media, obituary, tapes | Leave a comment Revision: 2020 Posted on Saturday, 2. January 2021 by hmvh

2020 was a year of infamy.

Corona, corona, corona and more corona peppered with travel bans, lockdowns, quarantine, curfew, face masks and social distancing… urgh, 2020 was a reviled year! Arent we all excited and happy now that its over?

Bullshit! The fat lady has yet to sing.

2020 will probably go down as the year of SARS-CoV-2 but sorry, were still in the middle of the very same pandemic. We still have a stretch to go as the lack of regular New Years celebrations have shown.

Dont hold your breath. The year you think youre remembering aint quite done yet.

Still, 2020 started like any other year. We optimistically rung it in with celebrations, fireworks and a few Chinese lanterns that descended upon the monkey house at the Krefeld Zoo in Germany. Around 30 primates died in the resulting inferno. Many Australians, in turn, spent New Years on the beach in order to escape raging bush fires.

Oz was ablaze again. Happy New Year!

A few days later, the USA assassinates Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and nine other people with a drone air strike. Iranians are peeved. Thousands attend his funeral where 56 mourners die during a stampede. Iran responds by firing ballistic missiles at international military bases in Iraq, killing exactly nobody. A few hours later, Iran accidentally shoots down a civilian Ukrainian airliner shortly after take-off in Tehran, leaving 176 people dead. More people demonstrate following the governments initial denial of the error.

Prince Harry and wife Meghan decided to megxit the British royal family, and as of the 31st of January the UK is officially no longer part of the European Union.

And that was just January. Thats how it started.

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Posted in History | Tagged 2020, brexit, corona, current affairs, fire, humanity, in the news, murder-death-kill, Thanos | Leave a comment The rise and fall of Bookogs, Comicogs, Filmogs, Gearogs and Posterogs Posted on Friday, 11. December 2020 by hmvh

About four months ago the sites Bookogs, Comicogs, Filmogs, Gearogs and Posterogs closed down.

What, you may ask, were Bookogs, Comicogs, Filmogs, Gearogs and Posterogs?

Bookogs, Comicogs, Filmogs, Gearogs and Posterogs were offshoot database projects by (and for the users of) Discogs (hence the names) launched successively starting in 2014. They provided some of the same features as Discogs (the audio recordings database) but (as their names suggest) catered specifically for the cataloguing of books, comics, films, audio gear, and posters, respectively.

In fact, requests and ideas for facilities of the kind had been voiced at Discogs over the course of many years, and when they finally did launch, its users (collectors and trainspotters that we are) were utterly delighted.

Posterogs is a user-built database of posters from the team behind Discogs. We are on a mission to create the most comprehensive database of posters in the world. The Posterogs database is currently focused on music posters, such as gig and concert posters, album release promo posters, music festival posters, as well as film posters.

Sounds promising, doesnt it?

Indeed, the ventures were quite ambitious.

With your help we’ll list every turntable, audio recorder, amplifier, effects pedal, microphone, and every other piece of audio gear conceived. Any equipment that records, amplifies, mixes, or reproduces audio, belongs here.

Discogs members piled into the systems with sheer gusto in order to populate them with data or to simply goof around and test their limits. Features and supporting guidelines gradually got refined to their specific requirements. It didnt much time before they had created and uploaded thousands of entries (read: metadata points) and images.

Crowdsourcing works; people want to contribute and share. Its in their nature.

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Posted in Media | Tagged archival, collecting, data loss, database, discogs, geekdom, metadata, obituary | Leave a comment Webris, netsam and the demise of Flash Posted on Friday, 4. December 2020 by hmvh

Webris and Netsam are the names of two internet companies. This is not about them.

Instead, webris and netsam is a term I use to describe material and debris left over by internet-related tasks you know, the kind of stuff you download during a specific project and hold on to in case you might need it later or because its too good to delete.

Then you either forget about it, never use it, or standards have changed.

Here, for instance, is a bunch of clip art and icon packs that I rediscovered in my web design folder. The oldest file is dated 1998, and the smallest of these 32px .GIF files is 453 bytes in size. These sizes were appropriate for current displays twenty years ago!

Back then designers cared about loading times or file sizes because nobody in their right mind would force a sites visitor to download a huge photo only to display it as a small thumbnail due to the hosting and bandwidth constraints of the time. Conversely, excessive HTTP file requests on account of each of the multiple little icon files was to be avoided hence image maps, and now CSS and Font Awesome. Things have progressed.

Then there are icon sets designed for providing attractive links to social media sites.

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Posted in Internet | Tagged flash, fun, images, junk, obsolete, software, web design | Leave a comment Offline, online, offline, online Posted on Wednesday, 11. November 2020 by hmvh

Hi! Howre you doing?

Im fine. Thanks for asking. Im better now.

No sooner had the ink of the previous post dried did the blog go offline for a day at least thats what the alert message said. A day later it came back, and then it went down again for three days.

All I know is that my hosting company were working on something on the back end because I had two hosting products at the time one of which was a promotional goodie that went bad and took on a life of its own. I didnt want it, I cancelled the trial.

That was in August. And that was just the beginning my troubles.

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Posted in Internet | Tagged anger, blogging, downtime, GoDaddy, hacked, hosting | Leave a comment Meta blogging Posted on Thursday, 6. August 2020 by hmvh

This blog, in its present form managed via WordPress, is ten years old this year.

According to popular blogger Anil Dash, one of 15 Lessons from 15 Years of Blogging is that Meta-writing about a blog is generally super boring.

And he might be right.

Any housekeeping writing about how it’s been a while since you’ve written, or how you changed some obscure part of your blog, doesn’t tend to age very well and is seldom particularly compelling in retrospect. The exception are genres like technical or design blogs, where the meta is part of the message. But certainly the world doesn’t need any more “sorry I haven’t written in a while” posts.

Yet this is exactly what Im going to ramble on about now.

When this blog (in its current incarnation) was launched, the web was quite different.

It was all about written content, with a few pictures added for fun and demonstration. Bloggers wrote about this, that, their hobbies and life in general, with no real regard about whether their words were read and with even less interest in becoming self-important influencers with huge hero images. Web pages were static, had a fixed width (or none at all), and text had a set size (or relied on browser defaults). Images were kept small because of bandwidth and loading time considerations.

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Posted in Internet | Tagged blogging, mobile, progression, SEO, statistics, web design, words, WWW | Leave a comment Older posts Subscribe via email Archives Archives Select Month June 2021 April 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 August 2020 June 2020 April 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 September 2019 August 2019 June 2019 April 2019 January 2019 December 2018 September 2018 May 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 September 2016 June 2016 March 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 August 2013 April 2013 February 2013 December 2012 October 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 October 2010 May 2010 April 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 December 2006 October 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 March 2006 February 2006 December 2005 October 2005 September 2005 July 2005 May 2005 December 2004 November 2004 May 2004 April 2004 February 2004 December 2003 September 2003 February 2003 September 2002 July 2002 May 2002 April 2002 November 2001 December 2000 November 2000 June 2000 May 2000 April 2000 March 2000 January 2000 December 1999 November 1999 September 1999 June 1999 April 1999 March 1999 February 1999 December 1998 November 1998 August 1998 July 1998 May 1998 April 1998 March 1998 February 1998 January 1998 December 1997 November 1997 October 1997 September 1997 August 1997 July 1997 June 1997 January 1997 December 1996 November 1996 October 1996 September 1996 July 1996 June 1996 May 1996 April 1996 March 1996 February 1996 January 1996 December 1995 November 1995 October 1995 September 1995 August 1995 July 1995 June 1995 May 1995 Categories Archive (9) BBS (86) Cassette (15) History (30) Humour (31) Internet (25) Language (8) Media (18) Movies (8) Music (42) Technology (25) Uncategorized (51) Tag Cloud anger anniversary art babes car car audio CD CDR compulsion digitization discogs ego FAIL fun funny gadgetry hardware humanity images internet culture in the news jokes junk madness magazine mixtapes movies murder-death-kill music music mixes noise OCD people personal pr0n progression retro shakespeare South Africa stupidity tapes Telkom travel VHS wasted youth Privacy Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
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