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notvplez

55 karma · joined March 9, 2014

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notvplez··on The curious case of whistled languages and their lack of left-brain dominance
I understood the first, third, and fifth sentence on the first listen, except that just like jcranmer I misheard "sunny." Listened to the two remaining sentences several times, and finally decided that the second one had to be "the animal jumped in the cage of the zoo", which wasn't too far off and funnily enough persisted even after I had heard the real sample. I misunderstood the fourth completely: "<unintelligible> stayed until lunch time", but heard it clearly after listening to the correct version.

English is my second language though, I wonder if that makes any difference? For example I'd guess that compared to a native speaker, I'd have to pay more attention to the stream of sounds to determine where each word ends and the next begins. Perhaps just by expecting to hear an English sentence I automatically increased my level of attention?

I'm going to ask someone to create a few sentences in my native language to see if there's any difference, although the fact that I've now been exposed to the concept of sine-wave speech has probably in itself altered my perception of future examples.

notvplez··on 1980s computer controls Grand Rapids Public School heat and AC
The first version of Scala was released in 1990 if I'm not mistaken, he probably used a later version as he was using a A1200 which had the AGA-chipset that improved graphics considerably. He'd been using it "for about twenty years", and as this was two or three years ago and the A1200 was released in 1992 he probably had a 22 year run on the same hardware and software. He didn't specify the card he used, but I think it's safe to say it was the Video Toaster given its popularity at the time.
notvplez··on 1980s computer controls Grand Rapids Public School heat and AC
Was hoping it would be an Amiga, and wasn't disappointed. Though it seems like this particular system is ripe for replacement because of the issues mentioned, I have a lot of respect for staying with old soft- and hardware instead of chasing something new and shiny when the old system still gets the job done.

A few years back a seller came to my workplace to ask if we wanted to advertise at our local cinema. We didn't, but I had a chat with the guy and was pleasantly surprised to discover that he was still creating and showing the ads using an A1200 with a genlock card running Scala (25 years old this year, real popular in the nineties with cable companies and broadcasters as big as CNN and BBC). Reason for not upgrading? "It still works great." Put a big smile on my face for the rest of the day.

notvplez··on 8088 PC Speaker MOD player: How it’s done
Yes, that would be great! I remember running it over and over listening to the miracle of speech through a ibm pc speaker, wondering how they did it. I also faintly remember some kind of fantasy sports game, with quirky characters kicking a ball or something (it's very vague at this point), which had the most amazing (to me at the time) polyphonic music coming out of this simple speaker on its title screen. I've been looking for that HELPME-file and the title of this game for years.
notvplez··on Google Maps Pacman
Works fine in Safari 7.1.3 for me.
notvplez··on How English beat German as the language of science
No, he just used the two recent Norwegian Nobel-winners as an example of scientist publishing in English instead of their native language (or any other).
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