JimLucas

A couple of times now I've logged into the new Forum and been presented with icons that indicate unread posts in a particular forum, only to find when I enter the forum that there are *no* topics with unread posts indicated (and in fact, no unread posts, as I verified by checking each topic). To me this seems like a bug. Am I missing something?

Ah, so the Morse Hayden is a reality! (Once again, the lack of the tree structure makes it harder to understand what this quip is in response to. Multiple posts intervened between Rich's post/picture and this one. And one of those was in response to my own post/picture, which was similarly separated.)

I wrote: I'll say that I'm "abnormal", and proud of it. :-) Chris T. responded: Can we have a picture to back up that statement? I say: OK!

1) I think having a common clock is a good idea. Using the poster's local time on each message will result in some messages appearing to be answered before they're posted. 2) Chris T. suggesting that GMT would be a good common time reminds me of the time the Wall Street company I worked for tried to set a common time for its offices world wide. Everyone liked the idea, but *which* time? Someone in New York suggested GMT, which raised a hue and cry not only from the Japanese, but also from the Brits, who said, "We have no idea what GMT is (especially during the summer), but we *all* know what time the stock market opens in New York." So US Eastern time, summer or winter, became the standard. 3) A common clock is good, but telling me it's *my* *local* time when it's not? That's just plain wrong. 4) I remember noticing earlieer that my "local" time was wrong, and I was frustrated that I could find a way to set it. Now I can't even find where it's displayed. (Oh, it's at the top of each of my messages, but I remember something that actually *said* it was my "local" time. Now I can't find it.) 5) I don't know how it works with Unix boxen or Macs, but on Microsoft systems the user's local time is a system setting, readily available to all programs, so it should only be wrong if the user has set it wrong on their computer.

Villa Lobos himself wrote arrangements where the 8 cellos were replaced by either piano or guitar (two separate arrangements). I used to do this with a friend who plays classical guitar. He, of course, did the guitar arrangement, and I played the soprano's part on my treble English. We thought it sounded great. More significantly, so did most of the other people who heard us. :-)

James, this has been discussed before, though not as frequently as some other topics. My own perspective is that such tactile discrimination is practically useless, and that's probably the main reason why it's not implemented. Consider the following brief scenario: "Oh, that's not the button I want. It has a diagonal cut across it, but the one I want has a cross. Ah, there's the right one! Too bad it's two measures too late." It makes much more sense for the player to learn to simply feel the spatial relationships. If you get lost, you'll *hear* the difference. And if you've learned the patterns of the keyboard, you'll know instinctively how far and in which direction is the button you need... the *next* button, that is, since it's already too late for the one you missed. You mention the tactile feedback being a help for beginners, but I doubt it would really help very many. In addition to all the other things they'd be learning, they would have to learn what patterns represented which notes. A more serious problem would likely be learning to distinguish such small tactile variations at anything approaching playing speed. Do you think it would be easy for you to learn to read braille with your fingers? The buttons on English concertinas are much smaller than braille patterns. Well, when this was discussed in the past, I wrote up some suggestions for how to learn the spatial orientation needed for playing. I don't have time to try reconstructing it now, but if somebody else kept a copy, they're welcome to re-post it.

Ah, here we go, again. Were Göran's statement true, I would say that I'm "abnormal", and proud of it. I don't believe his statement is true, unless the "specific" music he refers to includes "all the specific music I play" and "specific situations" most of the specific situations where I find myself playing. Well, even if his statement isn't true, I'll say that I'm "abnormal", and proud of it. :-)

But what if *I* want to see who responded to *your* post?

Well, I champion Paul's right to do it the way he wants. Still... This morning I logged in, and I saw several topics. I recognized a couple of new ones, so I glanced at them. But on the old ones, all I saw were numbers and the names of the "latest" posters. I couldn't remember the counts from last night, nor who was the last posterthen , so how was I to know whether there was anything new. Now that I'm writing this I realize that the "last post" must also have a time and date, so that would at least tell me if there was *something* new. But there's only that *last*, instead of seeing all of them, and the structure of who responded to whom. Aside from the tree structure, we're missing at least one summary level. In the new Forum we can see the list of Topics, and we can see all (or one page worth) of the posts in a given Topic, but we can't see a summary (poster's name and timestamp; we've lost the individual subject lines) of the individual posts in a Topic, with the *option* of expanding individual posts. I.e., "Scrolling, scrolling, over the flood of text; By the time I find the post I want, I really am quite vexed. ..."

Do you mean that Forum to be *for* us, or *about* us? Both of course! Samantha J&G on J&G. Hmm. Well, we have been known to do that occasionally, but appearances to the contrary, mainly off line.

This is beginning to sound like a light bulb joke....

And therein lies the heart of the matter. I much preferred the old format, even though it lacked a search facility, BUT... Paul is owner and captain of this ship (and most of the crew as well), and he has every right to sail it where and how he wants. We're just along for the ride, and we're not even paying passengers. We can make suggestions; we can complain; we can even bicker and scold. But if any of us wants to steer a ship, we're going to have to build or buy our own... AND be responsible for the maintenance. Paul, I may not agree with all of your choices, but I firmly believe that it is *your* right to make them. Three cheers! /Jim

But I think you can reply to posts directly? I have clicked the quote button to reply to your post, and I think (but confirm this please) that you will be alerted that I have replied specifically to you : perhaps via your assistant (see the link in the top right hand corner of the window). the fact that your post is quoted will give anyone else who reads this the sense of where I am coming from. Samantha But it won't tell me what post to go look at if I want to see the full context from which you clipped the quote. *That* is one thing the tree would do for me.

The really strange thing for me is/will be that there may be several individuals now using pseudonyms with whom I've conversed before, but I won't know who is who. And I must say I'll wonder why people I've known by name in the past find it necessary -- or even simply attractive -- to avoid using their real name. OK, maybe they just like the pseudonym, and nicknames they're already used to are another story. After all, my "real" name is James, not Jim. And I think it's cool that Wendy wants to be "bellowbelle", now that I know that this is the same person I knew as Wendy Stanford in the old Forum. But folks who have been here under another name and don't come forward to tell us who they "are"... I'll wonder what they're trying to hide and why. As for myself, I'm not particularly outgoing, but I've never wanted to pretend I was somebody else. Jim Lucas is proud of the good things he's done, and not afraid to take responsibility for his mistakes. But I do find it strange that this Forum's interface where you can put personal information about yourself has places for your birthday (which some people consider *very* personal), and for AOL id, MSN id, yahoo id, etc., but no place for your REAL name, even if you would want to put it there.

Do you mean that Forum to be *for* us, or *about* us?

I *am* testing, but there are far too many possibilities and so little guidance to tell me which ones actually do something, much less do something I want. If I were used to driving a buggy but had never seen a car before, I might guess that I should sit in the front seat and even that the steering wheel resembled a directional control. But if I didn't know about the key for starting the engine, I wouldn't get very far. I feel a bit that way with this new Forum. I note that many (though admittedly not all) of the people who say they like the new Forum give as a reason that they're already familiar with it from elsewhere. That doesn't help me.

What are "Guided Mode" and "Normal Mode" on the page where I'm writing this? The "Help" doesn't seem to be helpful on this point, and so far I haven't noticed any difference in behavior when I switch back and forth between the two.

Paul and Ken, please correct me if I'm wrong, but: If I understand what you (especially Paul) have said, the old Forum was Paul's creation. If a change was needed, then he could do it, at least in theory. Now, however, you guys are using somebody else's creation. You can enable and disable various features, or select various options, but you can't *add* things of your own, or make fundamental changes. Specifically, you are *not able* to introduce a tree-structured display like the old Forum had, nor separate subject lines for each post. I'm guessing that you're not even able to give us a linear display of the poster's name, date, and first line of each post where we could click to display the full text of the one(s) we're interested in, but wouldn't have to scroll past *all* the full text to get to the one(s) we wanted to look at. You see, I'd like to make several positive (IMO) suggestions rather than just criticizing. But I fear there's no point, because even if you like them, *you* can't provide them. Please tell me I'm wrong.

This is a branch from the "Do you like the new Forum?" topic. Couldn't you tell? Well, as far as I can tell, there's no way to change it to something more informative, as one could by changing the subject lines on individual messages in the old Forum. I just picked a thread/tree from the old Forum to analyze. I picked an extreme case, of course, since the extreme cases is where one encounters extreme problems. The original subject line was "Why are Englishes more popular than duets?" That tree reached a total of 64 messages. In all, it included 15 different subject lines (I didn't count the addition of "RE:" as a change). There were 16 different branch points -- individual posts which had more than one direct reply. 22 different individuals contributed to the tree. One could *see* this information in the tree structured display of subjects. No, not the numbers... that took a bit of work, and is something I don't particularly care about. I counted them only to illustrate my point. No, what can be seen is *who* contributed, *where and when* the threads branched (frayed?) and subjects changed (or at least someone acknowledged a change). *That* is what interests me, *not* the count. One could quickly see whether a "topic" with 64 "replies" had numerous participants like the above or was simply a 2-person exchange. Or to use myself as a personal (bad?) example: You might want to ignore a long back-and-forth between Göran and me, but you might become curious if you suddenly saw a third-party poster.

1) Everybody, I don't care much about "pretty"; I care about *communication*. 2) David, I had my own way of managing the home/office split. I would do a ctl-F search for the day's date. That would limit the number of "hits" I would have to check, and it was usually easy for me recognize the posts I'd already viewed from the other location. Not quite as useful in the new Forum. 3) I agree with Sandy and a few others that this linear "threading" sucks. Not being able to see the branching is almost enough to put me off participating in conversational exchanges. Some of you may be grateful for that, since the new format would make it difficult for you to identify and avoid specific exchanges (between myself and Göran, for example), and at the very least you would have to scroll past them. 4) I almost forgot this one, because it's a response to something that's now well off the page: Someone (I'm pretty sure it was Paul, but *where* did he say it?) praised the ease of following "topics". The trouble is that very few threads stick to a single topic, so here I have the option of hiding various unrelated things under the original topic or making several separate replies, each starting a new thread. The trouble with the former is that I can't indicate multiplicity or shifts of topics by changing the "subject" line, and as others have mentioned, it can become impossible to determine what is being responded to. One trouble with the latter is that there's even less possibility of identifying the message that prompted the split, since it will be buried without any pointer somewhere under a different topic. Another trouble is that suddenly we would have hundreds of different topics, and finding a particular one could become virtually impossible. 5) As haven't had time to explore all the possibilities here, but I wonder if there's a way for folks with slow connections to turn off the download of attachments on messages that include such.

What kind of concertina is it? Anglo, English, or duet system? Who's the maker? If it's an English-made concertina, don't let an *accordion* maker touch the reeds, unless you know for sure that (s)he has a deep understanding of the differences in construction and in methods of tuning. There *are* differences, and damage can be done. But you might try getting a copy of Dave Elliot's "Concertina Maintenance Manual", now in its improved second edition and highly recommended by many.

In other words, one doesn't download the image to Concertina.net, but only provide the link to an image already located elsewhere, yes?

1. I personally prefer holding the instrument free, and I often hold it suspended above my legs even when I'm seated. I do find that having the instrument free/suspended makes expressive control easier. It is possible, though, to develop excellent expressive control even with one end fixed (e.g., on a leg). It just takes a bit more practice 2. Muscle memory is a common experience. Actually, I would prefer to call it "context memory", since it can be connected to factors other than body position. E.g., some folks can't play tunes when they're sober that they learned when they were drunk.

Couldn't we just repeat the discussions periodically? We tend to do that, anyway. :-)

Almost certainly you have a standard 30-button Wheatstone "Linota" anglo. But a standard Linota is still an exceptional instrument. Made in London, England. There should be a serial number on the instrument, probably on a little metal plate on the one end, wtih a corresponding plate on the other end giving the Wheatstone name and address. If these labels aren't there, there's still a good chance that the serial number is stamped on certain parts inside the instrument. If you know how to be delicate with a screwdriver, we could advise you on opening it up to look for the serial number. The number might then be used to determine the date of manufacture from the recently published Wheatstone company ledgers. How big is the instrument -- from flat side to opposite flat side across one end? Each button will play different notes on push and pull of the bellows. Are you able to tell which notes are which? In particular, what is the lowest note on the instrument (the push note of the "leftmost" button in the middle row of the left-hand side)? If you want to sell it, you'll find many folks here who will offer to buy it. But most of us -- no matter how much we might personally want it -- will recommend that you learn to play it. We love to spread our addiction. Welcome to Concertina.net!