xxmikexx

Doc DeHaven -- I've heard of him so I guess that's why I didn't list him.

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Booker T. and the MG's ...

I don't own a lot of music but in what I do own is the 8-CD Stax/Volt set -- the complete catalog as of when they shut down and sold themselves to Atlantic. Of course "Low Rider" isn't in there because it hadn't been written yet when Stax closed. Do you have a URL for the Booker T version?

As for Mulligan, I find berry sax just as boring as bass solos, and that comes from a bass player. The only baritone sax playing that I've ever liked is the back-up playing by Saint Claire Pinckney, Jame's Brown's musical director. Spartan and tasteful -- just like bass should be.

I'm familiar with many but not all of the names on your list, but I did notice the Dukes of Dixieland ...

My sister was seven years older than me and my parents favorite. So she got neat stuff, like a nice early model stereo record player, and the first 33 that she bought was the original Dukes of Dixieland album. (This was in 56, I think. I don't know what happened with the group after that, you will have to tell me.)

I remember the jacket saying that those guys never improvised -- that all the arrangements had been worked out down to the last note and were played the same way every time.

That was my introduction to Dixieland jazz. It's not the kind of music that I would ever buy, but I can listen to it from a producer's viewpoint and admire it even if it's not my cup of tea.

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In terms of likes (as opposed to simply familiar with), we are on the same page re

Dave Brubeck

Bill Doggett

Aretha Franklin

Jimmy Smith

Pinetop Perkins

Santana

Dukes of Dixieland

Louis Prima

Now … You can’t stand polka, I can’t stand Gerry Mulligan.

I’ve never heard of the following people, I sure hope you’re not going to tell me that Google is my friend …

Richard Holmes

Hank Crawford

Ray Prysock

Prayful

Bryan Shanley

Lighthouse Allstars

Gene Ammons

Cal Tjader

Keiko Matsui

Everybody else on your list I know, and I'm familiar with their music, but if I didn't list it under our common likes then it means I don't care for their stuff. (Though again, I can listen to anything from the viewpoint of a producer.)

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Now ... If you like Santana then you might like Latino jazz funk as exemplified by the group War. Check out "Low Rider" ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6c3emqC6aw

You likee yes or you likee no?

<Did we have this conversation a few months back? I have a strong sense of deja vu here.>

The dearly departed member is Paxx. He said that he was going to Avsim, which is fine, he'll be happy there because nobody at Avsim will be capable of calling him out when he's wrong, and I don't go there very often, certainly not to pursue anybody.

Apart from the Microsoft people there is one other person in the FS community who knows more than Paxx, and that person is (drum roll) ... ...

... ... Pete Dowson of FSUIPC fame. I don't think there's anybody else. Pete truly is a remarkably strong technical programmer. I admire him in the same way that Keith Richards admires Chuck Berry.

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Okay ... Re the oil stuff, you've reacted to what I wrote, now I'm not going to write anything more about it on this site.

Re the pay of airline pilots, I would like to see us re-regulate certain aspects of airline operations, including raising the pay scales for flight deck crews so as to reduce the airlines' incentives to promote people to the left seat simply because they're young and cheap. I want to know that the guy in the left seat has years of experience and thousands of hours, and I'm willing to pay for that assurance.

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Re music lessons, like you I took piano lessons at an early age, in my case five, and at my mother's insistence. The lessons didn't go on for very long. As I was being taught to read, the confines of the written music (Bach preludes) were getting to me and I wanted to swing out and play the pieces my way. :)

The teacher was having none of it, and so the irresistible force met the immovable object -- and I refused to go any more. I didn't touch another instrument till I was ten, which was blues harmonica, self taught. Then I taught myself to play guitar (and mandolin and ukelele, which are really all the same thing).

I'll write more about this tonight but I played semi-pro late in high school and throughout college. I was the best rhythm guitarist I knew (can't play lead at all) but I wasn't the best that I was hearing on the radio. So I gave up all thoughts of becoming a studio guy ...

... And I never did learn to read. Got a mental block for some strange reason. :) And anyway, 80% of session guys can't read ...

... And I absolutely LOVE polka music. Who can't love "In Heaven There Is No Beer?" ...

In heaven, there is no beer.

That's why we drink it here.

And someday, when you're no longer here,

Your friends will be drinking all the beer.

Courtesy of Frankie Yankovic. By the way, it turns out that even though they have the same last name, and even though they both play the accordion (well, Frankie's dead), Frankie Yankovic and Weird Al Yankovic were not related. They did a couple of gigs together just for fun but they had no relatives in common that they knew about.

Inquiring minds want to know about stuff like this. :)

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Anyway, for the sequenced cover music business I had to learn to fake it on keyboards. I'm really not very good at all, but thanks to punching in I can sound like Jimmy Smith if I need to.

And I had to do that once -- the Jimmy Smith B-3 organ solo for an obscure piece called "Walk The Dinosaur". I played it into a sequencer 1-2 bars at a time, one hand at a time, with the other tracks running in parallel, and the result sounded fine. But I can only finger in the key of C so I had to get a MIDI keyboard that would do transpostion. (We needed a good one anyway, I just didn't want to pay $2,000 for a touch sensitive 88-key Yamaha or whatever it would have been.)

Anyway, I can make a MIDI track do whatever I want it to do, I just can't play the instruments in real life. :D

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Now ... Tell me about Ragtime. Who did/do you like?

Well, some people are basically analytical of the natural world, like me, and other people are basically accepting of the natural world, like you I suppose. I'm happy doing engineering type stuff, you were happy to simply fly the aircraft that engineers had designed. It's essential to the human race that we have both kinds of people.

So maybe this article will appeal only to the analytical crowd -- to the people who would like to tweak their aircraft but don't know how to go about it. That's fine. You read it and that's sufficient for me as an author.

But you know, because of my musician background, and because of my short career as a producer of MIDI sequenced music for computer bands, I'm both left brained and right brained in my approach to music. I guess I'll make that the subject of tonight's blog. (As I said two weeks ago, for me a blog a day keeps the doctor at bay.) In the meantime ...

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People are posting to the Energy Independence thread in The Yard after all so perhaps the problem is simply the mods plus rgarber, all of whom are leaving me alone today. Why don't you read it and see whether you want to chime in.

As for Ready For Pushback, I'd just as soon do the politics, religion and discrimination stuff at The Yard rather than at my PC Game Controls site, though I'll certainly do it if it's the only way to get a free speech platform for me and for people of all viewpoints who are willing to be civil, and tolerant of even the most extreme viewpoints, even when the discussions get vigorous. (My feeling is that most people are smart, not dumb, and that really stupid ideas and positions will be seen as such by most people, hence there's no threat and no need to try to censor ideas and attitudes, only a need to intervene on civility matters now and then.)

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I don't know about you but I find that I learn the most from people I disagree with because their attempts to bring me around to their viewpoint invariably result in information that's new to me. (And sometimes people will actually cause me to change a position, see below for an example.)

I find this to be just as true in technical matters as it is in politics etc. So for example I often try to get debates going in the PC Software Tech forum because I figure that if I'm learning stuff from people who won't get with my programs, then the readership will too.

But there's a fundamental difference between somebody disagreeing with me for sound technical reasons, versus somebody disagreeing with me because they're speaking out of ignorance and/or providing misinformation. In the latter cases I correct them, coming down hard if they won't accept correction. (Like a certain arrogant member who departed this site the other day because, I do believe, he suddenly realized that when it comes to operating system principles of operation there's a new sheriff in town -- and always has been.)

Yet member loki caused me to do a complete 720 degree change of direction regarding my approach to system backups. The debate got vigorous, I explained the crux of my position, he showed me that I was wrong on that particular point, and as a result my whole view of the issue changed on the spot. That's why I love forums.

Never a horse that couldn't be rode,

Never a rider that couldn't be throwed.

P.S. It's goodbye Yard for me too. I received a PM from a different moderator making it clear that I am most unwelcome there ...

Which is fine. I'm a tremendous site traffic builder with a large readership that likes to follow me around. If the mods are unable to see the business value of that, or if they don't care about the business value, it's their loss, not mine.

Of course if somebody actually does post to that thread I left then it might be a different story. But they have a double standard now. One set of rules for the people the moderators like (like posting political, religious and race topics is okay), and another set for me (like This Is A Train Simulator Site And Don't You Dare Come In Here Again Making Trouble With Your Posts About Political, Religious and Race Topics). :D

An aside: Folks, when I posted about race over there it was from the perspective of someone who grew up with parents who were active in the civil rights movement of the late 1940s, when it was REALLY dangerous to be involved with that stuff. I'm not a racist, I was simply talking to people who ARE racists.

But that's all I'm going to say here about anything like that. I will make no further posts here at FlightSim that really belong in the old Yard or the pending Ready For Pushback.

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This is why I need "Ready To Push". Without stepping on anybody else's toes it will be my playground and my rules, which will be very few rules other than politeness required.

You might also check out http://www.airnav.com They have a lot of stuff beyond the simple portal into the NACO/FAA charts database.

But no, I didn't see your question. I wonder how I missed it.

How can I identify the thread you started? (It might have been deleted?)

Apparently the policy at The Yard has changed. (As I said, I hadn't been there since March.) I've never seen a moderator at work in that forum before, and now there is a detailed set of rules posted, which is also new. (Unless I misread a timestamp, the rules may have been posted subsequent to my defending myself against rgarber's attack.)

As you saw, rgarber attacked me the moment I arrived. He was not chastised, but I was, for making a comparatively mild reply, after which this guy was allowed to attack me again. So I opened up another thread explaining that the things he was saying about me were simply wrong. Result? Another nastygram post from the moderator, whose position is that I should "be the bigger man" and sit there and take my lumps.

Well, we'll give it a try, but "Irish Terence" McCarthy's son Mikey has a rule in life which is, Be nice, but when pushed by a bully, push back.

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The Yard used to be an interesting place to hang out. Now it may be just another pablum forum, we shall see. I opened a thread about energy independence. I won't post there again unless and until somebody replies in that thread.

Of course we could always go over to Ann Coulter's website. :D I've only made a post or two there, and that was last winter, but it seemed at the time like a pretty liberal place provided decorum is maintained, which is not a problem for me unless pushed the way rgarber pushed me.

That site also hosts a broad spectrum of political positions, or so it did when I signed up last winter. Also, I was given an especially warm welcome for being a newcomer. As the Joe Dolce song of twenty years ago went, "It-za ni-za place."

Interested?

Most people who are experts became experts independent of the formal educational processes.

Here are the backgrounds of some of the pioneer computer programmers I knew way back when, many of whom never finished high school, but all of whom showed the world how creative and competent people are when you give them the opportunity to be all that they can be ...

gold prospector

infantry sergeant

astrophysicist

fighter pilot

railroad office clerk

tail gunner

chemist

.

.

.

I could go on but you get the idea. The pioneers of any new field come from all walks of life, and from all educational levels. In a "missionary" situation, people care only about what you can do, not how you came to be able to do it, and not whether you have a "license" to do it, so to speak.

The pioneers figure stuff out on the job. Then the educators come in and codify everything, and make the rest of the world believe that the resulting degrees are somehow important.

I'm the chemist, by the way, and my master's degree in that field meant zero. Because of my own experiences, and because I saw who the pioneers were and what they accomplished, I don't give a rodent's rear how somebody became an expert.

I care a lot about what people know and therefore what they can teach me. I care zero about how they came by their knowledge, other than for my own curiosity.

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Like job descriptions, degrees are pretty much about what you're not allowed to do. Once you realize that these chains are an illusion, they can never make you a prisoner again ...

... And the feeling of true freedom -- intellectual freedom as well as economic and political freedom -- has no substitute. No wonder companies are reluctant to hire entrepreneurs. In the immortal words of Peter Townshend of The Who, "We can't be fooled again."

Okay. I couldn't figure out what your username is, and "skylab" doesn't show up in the member list. (Separate registration for the forums there too.)

Anyway, see the "I'm Ba-a-a-a-ck" thread and we'll go from there.

By the way, my Train-Sim identity is zzmikezz.

Now ... I really don't want to get into politics here -- The Yard would be a much better place ...

But as I like to say, Here in Colorado we have everything except an ocean, and if Al Gore is right, in 50 years we'll have one here too. (In the Mile High City. :D)

If you want to talk politics and/or religion and/or any other taboo subject, the place to do it is in the little-known forum at TrainSim.com named "The Yard", at the very bottom of the forum list. I'd be happy to meet you there to discuss anything you'd like that would not be appropriate fare for FlightSim.com.

It's a very interesting bunch of people there ranging from loony left to loony right and all stops in between, including a military items collector who calls his home "Firebase Andy", and a hilarious Canadian who continually takes well-aimed potshots at we USA people. :)

You and I could safely start some trouble over there :D -- I guarantee you that the usual suspects would chime in but that no harm would be done and, in the end, no grudges held.

Ordinarily I would not publcize The Yard but there's nobody here in my blog but us chickens -- and the few who are reading us might also want to join in.

Wanna go for it? (You would need a thick skin because essentially anything goes over there.)

How about the rest of you? Trust me, the Conversation Police have no jurisdiction there, and the Great Site Owner In The Sky, webmaster Nels Anderson, turns a blind eye to the happenings in The Yard.

loki,

No, I haven't gotten mine yet. I think I'll ask my wife to order the one on the right. (Now I know where Big Daddy Roth got his inspiration.)

Anyway, the one I want says on the back "My mommy and my mommy and my mommy and my daddy and my daddy went to earth and all I got was this lousy T-shirt." :D

(Gee ... You probably don't know who Ed Roth was, do you?)

The straight man sets up loki with a lobbed pitch so he can hit it out of the park ...

loki,

I don't think so. Consider ...

Everybody in Primitive Amazonia has T-shirts now, obtained from the civilized world. So where are our alien T-shirts?

skylab,

It seems to me ...

Violence is in our genetic makeup and has probably been there for tens of thousands of years. You're worried about mankind self-destructing yet in terms of head count we have survived and prospered in spite of wars and crime.

So violence has some kind of survival value or we wouldn't have 6.5 billion people on the planet. Perhaps it goes back to a species war with the Neanderthals. Perhaps it is simply survival of the strongest in terms of competition for land and hunting resources. Perhaps it's something else.

I'm not condoning violence -- it's probably genetically obsolete now, like body hair. But it must have played some part in our development as a species or it wouldn't be so deeply rooted in our genetic makeup.

... Or so it seems to me.

C'mon, skylab, I'm trying to have a serious conversation with myself :D. As always you're welcome to join in, as is anybody else, but let's try to be dignified :) when we post. Now ...

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I read a book last summer that plausibly estimated the number of advanced civizations in the universe to be about one per galaxy. (I agree with the author's analytical approach though of course the numerical result could be off by a factor of a million or more either way.)

Since there are estimated to be 100 billion galaxies in the known universe, one per galaxy would be a huge number of civilizations, most of which must be more advanced than our own given that our own is so recent.

What would we talk with such a civilization about? I think we could relate only in the areas of mathematics and science. We could learn about their ways but we would never understand them, in my opinion.

Speaking of bass, here's Larry Grant of Sly And The Family Stone ...

Someone in this video said that Larry Grant is the inventor of slap bass. Not true. Slap bass goes all the way back to upright string bass and big bands. However, Grant is the inventor of electric slap bass, which is a whole different thing.

I'm a huge James Brown fan, have been so since the early 60s when he was recording as "Nat Kendrick and the Swans". I own most of his stuff. However, while listening to the regional jazz station today, KUVO out of Laramie, I heard a JB number that I'd never heard before.

He sang "Every Day I Have The Blues" with an honest to goodness full big band behind him. The band arrangement sounded to me as if it must have been written by the guy who wrote all the Frank Sinatra band arrangements. (I'll have to look into that.)

Now if I can just remember, I also learned today that there's a KUVO funk show tonight from 11 PM to 1 AM. The time is not a problem -- I'm a night owl. So I think what I'll do is set my desk alarm. Almost certainly I'll be working at that hour, now I won't forget about the show.

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You see, I'm also a huge funk fan. Here's the kind of thing I'm into, this one an obscure piece by the Ohio Players, "Funky Worm", this particular rendition done live at a small dancehall somewhere ...

And here's the original recording

Each rendition has its own merits. I have no preference because I love funky keyboard work and this guy is a master.

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Since I can't seem to come up with any other renditions of Funky Worm you will have to settle for this interesting live jazz/funk arrangement of "Skin Tight" ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfjtoNzh7p8&feature=related

In this video we come in with the long intro already well underway. Now listen to the bass. Except for the short choruses he plays the same line all the way through, for more than six minutes. This is a complex bass run and I will tell you as a bass player myself that it's really hard to keep from getting hypnotized and messing up the intricate line in a long piece like this.

No, I've not heard of Silver Lake. As for Yosemite, we were there in 1976 and it was clean and stunningly beautiful, with unobtrusive and immacualte campgrounds maintained by the National Park Service. I'm sorry to hear that it has been degraded by the modern world. Except for Old Faithful it actually exceeded all of our expectations.

I've heard of Hetch Hetchy but know nothing about it other than what you just told me.

On my one three-day outing I caught, cooked and ate a bunch of trout fingerlings. They were delicious -- and I don't even like fish. :D (No, I shouldn't have done it but yes, I was that kind of kid.)

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Camping is great. As a kid I did plenty of wilderness camping but in three years of driving vacations I decided that we would use KOAs.

By a week into our first vacation we were able to set up camp in 15 minutes, and we could break camp the next morning in half an hour. So we got the best of both worlds -- sleeping on the floors of fragrant pine forests, for example, while still being able to take showers, which was important to the women folk.

I'm a night owl and spent many wonderful early mornings just feeding brush into a low fire, watching the embers and marveling that we exist.

tigisfat,

I think that those of us who grew up in tough areas of cities appreciate rural America more than most. A line from Stevie Wonder’s “Livin’ For The City” comes to mind ...

A child is born, in Hard Times, Mississippi.

Your escape from the grimness of Castro Valley was your aunt’s ranch. Mine was to my grandparents' bungalo in the new Sherman Oaks development in the San Fernando Valley, the Valley at that time being almost completely empty, in huge contrast to the densely crowded Sicilian neighborhood at the north end of NYC’s Little Italy that I grew up in, and in equal contrast to the Valley of today.

I was exposed to horses later during 3.5 years at a boarding school consisting mostly of kids from dysfunctional families like mine. To my surprise I found horses to be intelligent, friendly, and excellent pets even though they were comparatively large. My only problem with horses was the amount of time and effort required to keep them healthy. (And the expense of course though somebody else was paying.)

So where did you go camping by horseback in the Sierras? My one such experience was a three day summertime trail ride in Vermont. I loved it.

Folks,

The contents of this thread have been posted to the PC Software Tech forum. Please view the thread here in my blog as closed, and make any further posts over in the forum.

Folks,

The contents of this thread have been posted to the PC Software Tech forum. Please view the thread here in my blog as closed, and make any further posts over in the forum.