Mysterious disappearing elastometers - wierd

Slacker said:

Quoted message said:

I pieced together something usable with some fork elastometers and other
various paraphenalia, but I still for the life of me can't figure out
where those damn things went!

Perhaps a trip to the proctologist might be more revealing ;-)

LOL!

--
-BB-
To reply to me, drop the attitude (from my e-mail address, at least)

Slacker said:

Quoted message said:

I pieced together something usable with some fork elastometers and other
various paraphenalia, but I still for the life of me can't figure out
where those damn things went!

Perhaps a trip to the proctologist might be more revealing ;-)

LOL!

--
-BB-
To reply to me, drop the attitude (from my e-mail address, at least)

BB said:

I got a rebuild kit for my USE SX seatpost, but never got around to it
because there's still no play.

On the ride today, I hear the dreaded "pffffffft" sound...oh great, I get
to change tubes on muddy tires. But NO...both tires were fine. Turns out
it was my seatpost! Fortunately it still worked, it was just kinda flat!

I get home, pull it out and open up the rebuild kit. It wasn't really
much
help, except that it had a picture of the seatpost innards. From the
bottom - a screw-in cap, a stiff spring, a big pile of elastometers, and
the slider with the seat clamp. My seatpost was empty except for the
slider - obviously the screw-in cap came out.

So I turned the bike over and started shaking. Out came the spring and
cap...but no elastometers. I peered down the seattube with a light, and
probed down it with a broomstick. It was empty all the way to the bottom
bracket.

I pieced together something usable with some fork elastometers and other
various paraphenalia, but I still for the life of me can't figure out
where those damn things went!

Perhaps a trip to the proctologist might be more revealing ;-)

--
Slacker

BB said:

I got a rebuild kit for my USE SX seatpost, but never got around to it
because there's still no play.

On the ride today, I hear the dreaded "pffffffft" sound...oh great, I
get to change tubes on muddy tires. But NO...both tires were fine.
Turns out it was my seatpost! Fortunately it still worked, it was
just kinda flat!

I get home, pull it out and open up the rebuild kit. It wasn't really
much help, except that it had a picture of the seatpost innards. From
the bottom - a screw-in cap, a stiff spring, a big pile of
elastometers, and the slider with the seat clamp. My seatpost was
empty except for the slider - obviously the screw-in cap came out.

So I turned the bike over and started shaking. Out came the spring and
cap...but no elastometers. I peered down the seattube with a light,
and probed down it with a broomstick. It was empty all the way to the
bottom bracket.

I pieced together something usable with some fork elastometers and
other various paraphenalia, but I still for the life of me can't
figure out where those damn things went!

Sorta like when I go to the garage for an 8-track tape: the carts are still
there, but the tape has long ago disintegrated...

Bill "Best of Yes no more" S.

"S o r n i" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:nmL0d.815

Quoted message said:

Sorta like when I go to the garage for an 8-track tape: the carts are
still
there, but the tape has long ago disintegrated...

Bill "Best of Yes no more" S.

Remember that Beavis and Butthead episode where they watched the hippie
teacher's house and destroyed hi garage full of 8-tracks!

Scott said:

"S o r n i" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:nmL0d.815

Quoted message said:

Sorta like when I go to the garage for an 8-track tape: the carts
are still
there, but the tape has long ago disintegrated...

Bill "Best of Yes no more" S.

Remember that Beavis and Butthead episode where they watched the
hippie teacher's house and destroyed hi garage full of 8-tracks!

Would someone into 8 track tapes watch Beavis and Butthead?!?

Bill "now, the Flintstones..." S.

S o r n i said...

Quoted message said:

Sorta like when I go to the garage for an 8-track tape: the carts are still
there, but the tape has long ago disintegrated...

Bill "Best of Yes no more" S.

I remember one time back about in about '79, an English guy was in a
local drug store looking at 8-tracks and asked me and my brother what
the heck they were. We couldn't believe there was someone who didn't
know what an 8-track was. Can't understand why it died out. They had so
many advantages. They were so big you couldn't lose them. Similarly,
since you could only carry so many of them in your car, when they got
ripped off, you wouldn't lose as many at one time compared to cassettes.
I also miss the way the songs would get cut off in the middle when it
changed tracks. Fade out...click-clunk...fade back in. Ah the memories.

SuperSlinky said:

We couldn't believe there was someone who didn't
know what an 8-track was. Can't understand why it died out. They had so
many advantages.

That was some seriously jury-rigged technology!

--
-BB-
To reply to me, drop the attitude (from my e-mail address, at least)

BB said...

Quoted message said:

That was some seriously jury-rigged technology!

There should be a technology hall of shame somewhere. On the same wall
with the inventor of the 8-track should be the guy who dreamed up the
'OK' box for Windows that tells you useless information that you can't
do anything about anyway, and the guy who invented the red panic button
on my car's key fob.

SuperSlinky says:

Quoted message said:

Can't understand why it died out. They had so
many advantages. They were so big you couldn't lose them. Similarly,
since you could only carry so many of them in your car, when they got
ripped off, you wouldn't lose as many at one time compared to cassettes.

Or, if you drove a Fiat 500, you had to choose the 2 you wanted for the trip,
since there was no room to store any more. Fine for commuting, but longer
trips got really boring....

Steve

"SuperSlinky" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

S o r n i said...

Quoted message said:

Sorta like when I go to the garage for an 8-track tape: the carts are
still
there, but the tape has long ago disintegrated...

Bill "Best of Yes no more" S.

I remember one time back about in about '79, an English guy was in a
local drug store looking at 8-tracks and asked me and my brother what
the heck they were.

<snip>

Oh yes, we had 'em in the UK, at least my dad did. He was given a player and
one tape - The Carpenters Greatest Hits or something like that. He was too
hard-up to buy any more tapes so we listened to it over and over and over
and over again - *every* time we went out in the car when I was a kid. I
used to get car sick - now I relive the nausea every time I hear The
Carpenters which, thankfully, is not too often :-)

I had to explain to my teenage daughter, only last year, what the vinyl LPs
were that I had got down from the loft. I'd just bought a new stereo system
that had a record deck. I swear she had never seen a vinyl record before and
watched with mouth hanging open as I lifted the stylus over and started
playing an old Robin Trower LP (Victims of the Fury IIRC). Lots of ghosts
that evening, playing stuff I hadn't heard for over 20 years or more.

Later,

Fred

Doctor Doctor give him a clue. He has a bad
case of losing you. Elastometers that big just don't disappear.

I MTB 2004

Fred Fragger said...

Quoted message said:

Oh yes, we had 'em in the UK, at least my dad did. He was given a player and
one tape - The Carpenters Greatest Hits or something like that. He was too
hard-up to buy any more tapes so we listened to it over and over and over
and over again - *every* time we went out in the car when I was a kid. I
used to get car sick - now I relive the nausea every time I hear The
Carpenters which, thankfully, is not too often :-)

Nah, I think most people get nauseous listening to the Carpenters.

Quoted message said:

I had to explain to my teenage daughter, only last year, what the vinyl LPs
were that I had got down from the loft. I'd just bought a new stereo system
that had a record deck. I swear she had never seen a vinyl record before and
watched with mouth hanging open as I lifted the stylus over and started
playing an old Robin Trower LP (Victims of the Fury IIRC). Lots of ghosts
that evening, playing stuff I hadn't heard for over 20 years or more.

A little known fact is that digital recordings do not always sound as
good as analog recordings. Analog recordings force a certain amount of
compression into the recording that is easier on the human ear. Harsh
sounds are smoothed out. Digital recordings can't do that, although
there is recording software now that tries to simulate it. Digital
recording also introduces its own distortion, because no matter how good
the digital recording, it is always a finite number of flat topped
approximations of a smooth sound wave that is later forced into an
analog wave form. The more complex the sound, the greater the difficulty
in getting a good translation to digital. Actual musical instruments =
difficult to record in digital. Synth sounds that are digital to begin
with = easy to record in digital. Now that all recordings are digital,
synth music totally dominates. Some people think that is not entirely
due to changing fashions.

Slacker <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<opsd6pqw0rm83lxu@slacker>...

Quoted message said:

BB said:

I got a rebuild kit for my USE SX seatpost, but never got around to it

Quoted message said:

because there's still no play.

On the ride today, I hear the dreaded "pffffffft" sound...oh great, I

get

Quoted message said:

to change tubes on muddy tires. But NO...both tires were fine. Turns o

ut

Quoted message said:

it was my seatpost! Fortunately it still worked, it was just kinda fla

t!

Quoted message said:

I get home, pull it out and open up the rebuild kit. It wasn't really

Quoted message said:

much
help, except that it had a picture of the seatpost innards. From the
bottom - a screw-in cap, a stiff spring, a big pile of elastometers, a

nd

Quoted message said:

the slider with the seat clamp. My seatpost was empty except for the
slider - obviously the screw-in cap came out.

So I turned the bike over and started shaking. Out came the spring and

Quoted message said:

cap...but no elastometers. I peered down the seattube with a light, an

d

Quoted message said:

probed down it with a broomstick. It was empty all the way to the bott

om

Quoted message said:

bracket.

I pieced together something usable with some fork elastometers and oth

er

Quoted message said:

various paraphenalia, but I still for the life of me can't figure out
where those damn things went!

Perhaps a trip to the proctologist might be more revealing ;-)

KA-POW!

/s

SuperSlinky said:

Fred Fragger said...

<snip>

Quoted message said:

A little known fact is that digital recordings do not always sound as
good as analog recordings. Analog recordings force a certain amount of
compression into the recording that is easier on the human ear. Harsh
sounds are smoothed out. Digital recordings can't do that, although
there is recording software now that tries to simulate it. Digital
recording also introduces its own distortion, because no matter how
good the digital recording, it is always a finite number of flat
topped approximations of a smooth sound wave that is later forced
into an analog wave form. The more complex the sound, the greater the
difficulty in getting a good translation to digital. Actual musical
instruments = difficult to record in digital. Synth sounds that are
digital to begin with = easy to record in digital. Now that all
recordings are digital, synth music totally dominates. Some people
think that is not entirely due to changing fashions.

There's some truth to that, but it call all be overcome as far as the human
ear is concerned.
The same can be said for digital photography, but increased resolution and
other factors have severely narrowed the gap. A lot of photographers who
scoffed at digital a few years ago have now embraced it at a viable and
significantly more convenient way to capture images.

I find 16 bit audio (44.1 or 48 k) to generally sound fine, but like you
said it's a jagged digitized representation of what would be a smooth curve
in the analog (real - reel?) world. Now that 24, 48, and even 96 bit
recording (at 48, 96, and even 192k) is becoming more affordable and there
are consumer devices to play back higher resolution (DVD Audio and SACD are
two) the gap will continue to narrow.

Also, a lot of old analog recordings that were re-released on CD were not
remastered to take advantage, or compensate for the digital medium. This
combined with early implementations of A/D converters resulted in some
downright bad digital reproductions of good analog recordings. That wasn't
necessarily because digital recordings are inferior, but because the
technology was poorly implemented.

When done right, I think a digital recording surpasses an analog recording
done on comparable gear (consumer compared to consumer, or high dollar pro
compared to similar). No tape hiss, no clicks or pops from the physical
interface of stylus on vinyl. If you think about it, analog recording got a
lot of time invested in it, and then digital came out and it only had a few
years. As the technology matures it will only continue to get better as
analog did starting from that first wax cylinder. It's come a pretty good
distance since then!

Matt (but what do I know...)

MattB said...

Quoted message said:

There's some truth to that, but it call all be overcome as far as the human
ear is concerned.
The same can be said for digital photography, but increased resolution and
other factors have severely narrowed the gap. A lot of photographers who
scoffed at digital a few years ago have now embraced it at a viable and
significantly more convenient way to capture images.

I find 16 bit audio (44.1 or 48 k) to generally sound fine, but like you
said it's a jagged digitized representation of what would be a smooth curve
in the analog (real - reel?) world. Now that 24, 48, and even 96 bit
recording (at 48, 96, and even 192k) is becoming more affordable and there
are consumer devices to play back higher resolution (DVD Audio and SACD are
two) the gap will continue to narrow.

Also, a lot of old analog recordings that were re-released on CD were not
remastered to take advantage, or compensate for the digital medium. This
combined with early implementations of A/D converters resulted in some
downright bad digital reproductions of good analog recordings. That wasn't
necessarily because digital recordings are inferior, but because the
technology was poorly implemented.

When done right, I think a digital recording surpasses an analog recording
done on comparable gear (consumer compared to consumer, or high dollar pro
compared to similar). No tape hiss, no clicks or pops from the physical
interface of stylus on vinyl. If you think about it, analog recording got a
lot of time invested in it, and then digital came out and it only had a few
years. As the technology matures it will only continue to get better as
analog did starting from that first wax cylinder. It's come a pretty good
distance since then!

Matt (but what do I know...)

Well, tape compression is a happy accident of the physics of analog
recording, and this is absent from digital recording. So if it is
desired, and the effect is a good one for the most part, it must be
emulated. In theory, digital recordings can be good enough to surpass
the human ear's ability to detect any of its inherent shortcomings, but
AFAIK, this has not been entirely proven. But the same could be said of
analog recordings. They can can be as good as the money you have to
invest in them.

But all that has to do with the original recordings. I'll be the first
to admit that CDs and even good MP3s are too good a technology to pass
up due to retro-grouch hi-fi concerns. We put up with FM radio don't we?
God knows that isn't the best sound you can get. Vinyl was a major PITA
and I don't miss it, except for some of those rare audiophile
recordings. They really did sound great. Agree some of the earlier
translations to CD were nothing but a rip-off. Some of them were
actually made from vinyl records and on some the balance was so out of
whack that some of the sounds would disappear into the background. Agree
too that digital is here to stay. It is more portable and can be copied
an infinite number of times. That is also what makes pirating so easy.