Category Archives: Misc.

Crafts, Short Posts

telephone hold music: analog generator

Recently a friend recounted to me a visit to a cool museum which had, in one exhibit, a “hold music” generator (you know, elevator muzak… here have some Cisco sound samples).

That is, before there was digital recording and playback, telephone switchboard operators wanted to play soothing music to callers while connecting their calls. To do so, they used little analog electromechanical playback devices — what we now think of as those cute music box toys

440px-Music_box_elements

but which included very serious and complex devices once-upon-a-time.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_box#/media/File:Baud_museum_mg_8548.jpg
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_box#/media/File:Baud_museum_mg_8548.jpg

Anyway, so it turns out it was the Museum Speelklok (“Musical Museum”) in Utrecht, the Netherlands:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_Speelklok
https://www.museumspeelklok.nl/lang/en/

From Zoz comes this photo of the infamous Japanese telephone exchange hold music generator: (original content ahead! whoo)

Electromechanical telephone hold music generator. Photo credit: Zoz at MIT.
Electromechanical telephone hold music generator. Photo credit: Zoz at MIT.

[the end.]

Footnotes

Some wikipedia articles of interest:

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_on_hold
    Which contains this “lolwut” anecdote:

    > For those still uncertain of the difference between “song title” and “mechanical” copyrights, consider the Capitol Records lawsuit for copyright infringement against Nike some 20 years ago. Nike legally obtained permission to use the Beatles song title “Revolution” from the title’s owner, Michael Jackson. They used the Capitol Records owned recording of the Beatles’ performance, but failed to obtain and pay for permission and use. Capitol Records sued and prevailed because Nike ONLY had a license to use the title and did not have a license to use the mechanical recording

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_music
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_recording_and_reproduction
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sound_recording
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_box
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_Speelklok
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_exchange#Sounds

Other interesting links I dug up while hunting for this museum before giving up and emailing Zoz:

  • http://www.telephonetribute.com/pdf/telephone_history_series_rev1.pdf
  • http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2014/09/history_of_hold_music_how_did_we_end_up_with_handel_tinkling_through_the.html
EastWest, International [Development], Short Posts

short post about toilets

3 Comments

First let’s start with
1) i’m chinese-american
2) I’ve travelled around the world a lot. Europe, Asia, Africa, South America.

Anyway, just commenting on how being a little more open-minded and having a different cultural background / immigrant background than a lot of English-speaking people makes it easy to poke fun at English websites.

I mean, you’d think the writer on a website dedicated to toilets would be a little self-aware and think about how different people can be within a single “culture”. But take a gander at this quote:

toilets in guangzhou
toilets in guangzhou, source: http://toilet-guru.com/overview-intl.php

Chinese toilets, at least those in the People’s Republic of China, can be highly communal. There is no place for privacy in a totalitarian state striving for the completely collectivist society. These are in Guangzhou, the large city formerly known in the West as Canton.

–toilet-guru.com

That’s uh, good to know. I guess Amsterdam, the large city formerly known in the West as the “Venice of the North“, is just s*** out of luck (pardon the pun) :'(

Judging their entire culture and society by their toilets and how they void bodily fluids, the Netherlands must be a zero-privacy hellhole, ruled by a dictator, I guess….

Photo via: Jane Dutton Utrecht (http://janeduttonutrecht.wordpress.com/2012/01/14/a-dangerous-method/)
Photo via: Jane Dutton Utrecht (http://janeduttonutrecht.wordpress.com/2012/01/14/a-dangerous-method/). source: http://whenonearth.net/different-types-toilets-youll-see-around-world/

So, long story short, this is why I’m announcing my new startup idea, “It’s like Yelp but for Toilets.” Not only will we help millions of people with the toilet experience, but we will also promote open-minded and inter-cultural exchange. It is truly an idea for saving the world, being a social enterprise, and making bank.

Thank you. Please stop throwing money at me. I’m so goody-two-shoes, I can only tell you to throw money at watsan (water and sanitation) charities instead.

here just click here: https://www.wateraid.org/us/get-involved/donate

or if you want to just share links and do slacktivism / clicktivism instead go here: http://www.charitywater.org/

p.s. I bought this book and really enjoyed it; let me know if you want to borrow a copy: http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Necessity-Unmentionable-Matters/dp/0805090835. You can read a summary of some key points on core 77.

http://www.core77.com/posts/12286/book-review-the-big-necessity-adventures-in-the-world-of-human-waste-by-rose-george-12286
http://www.core77.com/posts/12286/book-review-the-big-necessity-adventures-in-the-world-of-human-waste-by-rose-george-12286

 

Bioinformatics, Short Posts

hg19 vs hg38 in two pictures

I took these two screenshots for work recently. Shows our evolving understanding of the complexity of the human genome at the population-scale, as reflected in the changes in the reference genome between hg19 and hg38.

hg19 / GRCh37: 2009
hg38 / GRCh38: 2013

hg19-ls

(ignore the temp folder, not part of hg19)

hg38-ls

Note: I make no claims as to actual accuracy or completeness of these two directory listings, I haven’t taken a close look at them in a while. But they’re interesting from a big-picture perspective.

Note to self: continue uploading interesting pictures to imgur album, http://imgur.com/a/PKYyX. (reduce bandwidth consumption on orangenarwhals)

cross-posted to https://www.biostars.org/p/136189/