April 30, 2001– Newsletter #128

Greetings, Weekend Silicon Warriors,

A student gave me a Ziggy cartoon yesterday I know was
probably more true than the author wanted us to believe.
It showed Ziggy reading his mail from ziggyzone.com. It
was just one flame after another. The punch line was
Ziggy saying, My Website doesn’t get many hits, but it
does get bashed. I’ll bet the texts of the flame emails
were verbatim. If some of the email I get is any
indication, that text was real. I guess what bothers me
most is what kind of person do you have to be to flame
Ziggy?

Did you hear

Aim high! Hack the Air Force. A 15-year-old from
Connecticut is charged with breaking into the Air Force
system that tracks planes worldwide. If you think it’s
amazing that a 15-year-old could perform the hack, dig
this. The hack occurred on March 28, 2000 when the kid
was only 13. Gosh.

In the ever-increasing fight to be the best domain name
service on the Web, VeriSign has announced that it has
added support for an additional 180 languages bringing
the total number of languages it supports to 350. You can
get into it a bit more at the VeriSign site itself.
http://www.verisign-grs.com/multilingual/genfaq.html

Have you ever been watching CNN, seen a story, and
wondered how to get a copy of the videotape? If all goes
well, you’ll be able to get the video right off of your
computer. CNN has announced that it will undertake the
job of putting almost 120,000 hours of videotape online.
The project is estimated to cost 20 million U.S. dollars.
Turning the tape into digital will make categorizing easier
in addition to making CNN’s entire video library
available to just about anyone who wants it. How about
that?

Now onto today’s topic

The end of my school year is coming up and I just found
out that I received a grant worth tens of thousands of
dollars. I’m going to take the money and purchase four
digital audio suites with all the bells and whistles. The
four systems are built around four Yamaha 16-channel
boards. The system is digital and self-contained. There’s
even a CD burner built right into the Yamaha board.
Students can finish their project, burn it, and walk away.

Sigh.

There’s no tape. Making an edit is as easy as clicking a
button. In my day we would have to have to cut tape to
make an edit. I mean cut it, with a razor blade. If you
made a mistake there was no real way to undo it. Yes,
you could tape up the audiotape but it would never be the
same. In my day, we learned to hear drumbeats in slow
time as well as backwards while we rocked the tape back
and forth on the reel to reel machine so we would know
where to make the edit.

While getting the specs for the digital machine, I told a
student of my days in the radio studios when I use to
carry my own splicing block and razor blades in a little
leather case. She laughed as if I was talking about the
middle ages.

It was the mid 1980s!

Technology is moving so fast that people are becoming
over the hill in terms of experience very quickly. My
audio stories sound ancient when they’re only 15 years
old.

The other day I started corresponding with a gentleman
living in Japan. He asked me if I was ready for the next
wave of technology.

I didn’t have an answer. I know it’s coming. Wireless
will the way of the world soon. New languages will
come into the fold. In three years, the world of
technology will barely resemble today.

At 36 years old, I found myself longing for a simpler time
when people coded HTML using Notepad and the latest
trick was well within the grasp of the weekend silicon
warrior.

I spoke to a group of people about Web page creation the
other day. They were students and programmers. I told
them that I still enjoy coding in Notepad. They laughed.
They laughed much the same way the other student
laughed when I told her about using a razor blade to cut
audiotape.

This morning I put two and two together. I’m the old
guy.

I’m the old-guy audio teacher and I’m the old-guy Web
professor.

I’m the old guy.

When did I become the old guy? I don’t want to be the
old guy!

This is not to say that I cannot make the new digital audio
processors sign and dance. I can. I can edit digitally like
the wind. I just don’t like it as much. I remember when
my first radio station went from 45-RPM records to all
CD. I hated it. I could slow the 45s down or speed them
up to match beats. I could slip cue. I seemed more in
control. The CDs just didn’t seem right to me. The
process became sterile. I couldn’t touch the discs. The
technology had too much control.

It’s the same with the new Web media. I like coding in
Notepad because I am in control. I don’t have FrontPage
placing code and altering elements without the expressed
written consent of Major League Baseball and me.

No, I don’t dislike the new stuff that’s coming out. I dig
it. It fascinates me. It’s just that I seem to like the old
stuff better. I grew up with it. I learned on it. I
somehow feel that I am a better person because I had to
go through it.

They say the first step is admitting it. OKI am the old
guy. In only seven years, I became the old guy.

Now, if you too are the old guy (or old gal) what do we
do?

Do we abandon our old guy ways for the new? Could we
even do it if we tried or, as I think is more correct, do we
embrace our old guy ways and act as that lightening rod
that keeps the old ways around just to help others
understand how we got to here and how we did it in such
a short amount of time.

I’m afraid I’m going to embrace my old guy ways.

I’ll be teaching HTML and Web page design every
semester until I retire. I don’t see me changing my
methods of teaching any time soon. If you take Web
design with me, you’ll code in Notepad. Yes, I know
there are assistants out there that will allow you to make
Web pages so fast my head would swim. Do it in my
class and you’ll lose all the points for the assignment.
There will be no argument.

That’s the old guy in me and I think it’s the best way.
When my class is over, use any HTML assistant you
want, but until that time, Notepad is the way. Take your
time. Place every flag. Build the page from whole cloth
like it was a Lego set.

I’ve had students come to me with every form of
argument. They say, We could build pages faster if we
used [insert program name here]. I always ask, Will
the pages be better or just faster? The student usually
states they will be better. I then disagree and send him or
her back to their computer to open Notepad and get
started.

Do the students like it? Not always. Do they thank me
for it? Long after the class when they can fix the code the
HTML assistant messed up they do. Am I laughed at for
sticking to the older ways when there are always bigger,
more powerful ways?

Yep.

But you know what? Each and every student in my audio
class next semester will take a razor blade in hand and
correctly cut a piece of tape long before they get their
paws on that digital equipment. I simply think it’ll help
them to understand what in the heck that digital system is
copying.

It is far better to know exactly how the new stuff
worksnot just that it works. The only way you can
know how it works is to understand the machine’s history
and maybe even live a little of it. Now, everyone take up
your razor blade, sharp side down.

The old guy has spoken.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

That’s That. Thanks for reading.

Joe Burns, Ph.D.

And remember: A drawing room received its name not
because it was a place to sketch but rather because it was
a place to relax. The word drawing is actually a
shortened version of the word withdrawing. Thus, the
drawing room is a place where persons would withdraw.