Cassette Culture Untangled

Posted on Friday, 25. July 2008 by hmvh

TDK, BASF, Maxell, Denon, and Sony: Once, these were among the most important words in the teenage lexicon.

For those who couldn’t strum a guitar, a mix tape was the ultimate expression of youthful (self-)obsession.

That era of post-punk, during which cassette culture flourished, presaged today’s music scene. It was an age of garage bands and DIY recordings, and as young fans started to copy and share each other’s music collections, it didn’t take long before somebody claimed that –Home TakingThe advent of the iPod, downloads and peer-to-peer networks seemed certain to consign the old analogue cassette tape to cultural oblivion, but in music, it seems, that what goes around doesn’t just come around again; it’s simply rewound!

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Virals and their hosts

Posted on Friday, 4. July 2008 by hmvh

While we’re on the topic of cartoons, here’s a batch of favourites from the most creative period: the late 80’s — an era spent mostly behind a desk, pretending to study and absorb information and knowledge passed on largely by people who hadn’t quite mastered the intricacies of the English language.

Scribbling helped pass the time.

The first thing that strikes me about the selection is that I’ve got some quality time with my old cartoons and a more modern scanner coming up in the indeterminate future. These scans are paltry!

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Of cassettes and cartoons

Posted on Wednesday, 25. June 2008 by hmvh

In 1990, I found myself working in Marshalltown.

A horrible place, in hindsight. At the time I didn’t have an own car and had to rely on public transport. That meant waiting for the bus. Lots of waiting because there were all of five buses on weekdays between home and anywhere else. “Elsewhere”, at least, included the bus terminus near Marshalltown plus a 10-minute walk to work.

And waiting for the bus meant killing time. Lots of it. So much so that every shop and store in the vicinity became boring after a while… bar one: the CNA down the road. Or, more specifically, the book section of the CNA down the road. It was a particularly quiet CNA, one that I had never visited before or since my Marshalltown tour of duty during which months I must’ve gone through just about every book on every conceivable subject that one could consume in the hours of waiting for the bus. Although I’m quite confident I left no bookmarks or dog-ears, some literature was interesting enough that that I regularly just continued reading where I had left off the day before.

And then I discovered the mother lode: Gary Larson.

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Ghosts in the cassette shell

Posted on Monday, 16. June 2008 by hmvh

The Tape2MP3 project is making slow but certain progress.

We’ve got it down to a finely-tuned and timed routine, where a C90 takes an average of about two hours of actual work to convert: a minute or so to adjust levels prior to the unavoidable 90 minutes of listening while recording/importing; then another five minutes of cleaning up, testing/setting noise reduction filters and a bit of fine-tuning, and perhaps even some minor editing thrown in for good measure — although I do aim to keep the final MP3 as near as possible to the original tape (warts and clicks between original copying/taping sessions and tracks included).

Once that’s done, the old 933MHz Pentium workstation takes another 15 or so minutes to write the resulting .wav file before the whole process is repeated for the next tape. The final conversion to .mp3 is done in bulk, which I usually just leave the machine running overnight for.

Of course, it can’t all be fun and games: we’ve had about three tapes so far that got munched by the tape deck, and another snapped… but nothing that a screwdriver, a pen and some sticky-tape can’t fix!

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Audio tapes are dead!

Posted on Friday, 13. June 2008 by hmvh

On Monday I picked up another 300+ audio tapes for my upcoming project/s.

Some people apparently cannot get rid of their own old and dated media soon enough and most are very generous when doing so — as is evident by the usually careful and sometimes even “loving” packing they use to send me along with when I come around to collect their old tapes.

Needless to say, and without exception, all people are curious and interested as to what exactly one would be doing with the thousands of old tapes (I’ve honestly lost count) that I’ve accumulated so far. Many have even asked if they’ll eventually get used as material for some work of art, like Brian Dettmer has become famous for. Continue reading →

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Xenophobia, part 2

Posted on Wednesday, 11. June 2008 by hmvh

The bloodbath is over, apparently all quiet on the southern front.

The death toll has reached 62 (some people just take longer to die).

The “Burning Man” has been identified (35-year old Ernesto Nhamuave of Mozambique) and buried.

Meanwhile, Zimbabwean billionaires who remain less than optimistic about their own free country’s blossoming future and negligible inflation rate continue to find holes in the border fence and flock to South Africa in droves.

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Flames of hatred and xenophobia

Posted on Friday, 30. May 2008 by hmvh

Three days ago, I received an email from a Ugandan ex-colleague.

It contained snippets of news articles as well as several rather disturbing and terribly saddening images of the madness and mayhem that ensued after a series of violent attacks on foreigners (mostly African nationals) across South Africa.

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First Anniversary

Posted on Wednesday, 21. May 2008 by hmvh

The HMVHumourList is definitely no more.

Today, the first anniversary of this blog also marks the last batch of jokes and similar funnies that were collected during the last few years, sorted, edited, re-assembled, and often re-packaged before being re-posted. 600 seemed like a good number at which to call it quits. Any other crap that’s still lying around, accumulates or gets sent my way will get dumped here here.

I just don’t have the time to waste on this shit any more.

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