Inhabited Chair: The Sound of Music
My name is Zachary Wolfson, I’m a student at Northeastern doing my internship at Shoebuy.com. I will be writing weekly blog entries, which I modeled after “Monday Morning Quarterback” by Peter King who is a great sports writer and always gives some love to my Philadelphia Eagles. Every week, there will be a main story where I discuss something that is happening in the world at that time, my shoe thoughts of the week, where I share my thoughts on a couple of styles and my non-shoe thoughts of the week where I just share random thoughts for your enjoyment.
No, this week’s story doesn’t have anything to do with the classic musical starring Julie Andrews, however you will be hearing about a few of my favorite things. It was this week in 1878 that Thomas Edison patented the phonograph (sometimes called a gramophone). Although it seems like we have left the phonograph in our dust, the same basic technology that allows you to listen to such classic songs as “Hotel California” by The Eagles or “Carry on My Wayward Son” by Kansas on your mp3 player, also allowed Edison to play back a recording of himself saying “Mary had a little lamb,” amongst other phrases. The basic technology revolves around the fact that sound is no more than a series of vibrations. These vibrations cause disturbances in the air and create sound waves. Edison was able to capture the sound wave on tinfoil through a needle that vibrated with the sound wave, which in turn left indentations, or valleys, on the tinfoil. These vibrations corresponded to the sound wave which caused them. Louder sounds and higher amplitudes would result in deeper valleys. The closer together the valleys are, the higher the frequency of the wave, which creates a higher pitch. By varying the amplitude and the frequency, thanks to Edison, you can make and also record any sound. Today’s electronic recordings work on the same principles, except that instead of the sound being physically recorded onto a piece of tinfoil, the vibrations are transposed into a digital signal, which is nothing more than a series of 0’s and 1’s that a computer can understand. Once the sound is stored as an mp3 or wave file, it can be downloaded or burned onto a CD. It is thanks to this that modern day musicians like Green Day and Nickelback don’t have to record their songs every time someone wants to buy a copy. The file can just be copied with no loss of sound quality!
And now, as promised, these are a few of my favorite things. These are all related to music and its recording. Although this is a list of my favorite things, they may not fit the tune of the song; but have fun doing your best Julie Andrews impression.
- Songs (other than those previously mentioned)
- “Citizens Soldier” by 3 Doors Down
- “Love Shack” by The B-52s
- “All the Small Things” by Blink – 182
- “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Öyster Cult
- “More Than a Feeling” by Boston
- “White Room” by Cream
- “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” by Green Day
- “New Shoes” by Paulo Nutini
- “Magic Carpet Ride” by Steppenwolf
- “Under the Sun” by Sugar Ray
- “Kiss from a Rose” by Seal
- Playback Device
- My LG Shine, it allows me to take my music anywhere
- Place to get music
- Rhapsody – get unlimited downloads from a huge library of songs for a small monthly fee
Shoe Thoughts of the Week:
Okay, it’s not a shoe, but it is on our website shoebuy.com so I figured it’s close enough. This is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while. It’s like having a boom box that can carry stuff. You simply connect your mp3 or CD player to the line-in connection in the bag, and you can be listening to music on the go.
While this doesn’t play music, it does feature a picture of a cassette tape, reminiscent of the good old days.
As a tribute to the all-American form of music I will feature this jazz shoe. It’s great for expressing yourself on the dance floor.
Non-Shoe Thoughts of the Week:
- LOST Thoughts:
- The end of the episode finds Jin in a Dharma suit, this means the last flash took the island to the 1970s and that those left behind on the island have been living there for three years and have since been integrated into the Dharma initiative. This explains why we saw Daniel Faraday working with Dharma but seemingly looked the same age, that’s because it was only three years after the flashes began.
- In the Bible Aaron is the great-great grandson of Jacob. It seems likely that Jacob is in Jack’s bloodline because we have only seen Christian and Claire (both related to Jack) in the cabin. If the creators of LOST follow the Bible literally then Jacob would be Jack’s Great-Grandfather.
- Next week we might finally find out why John Locke is so important, as the preview showed Ben kneeling in front of John just before he hanged himself.
- The plane crash take two was pretty neat. It is still unclear how all those people got onto the flight but I’m sure at least one of them is working for Widmore. I think the reason they never crashed and just experienced a flash was because they never experienced the original flash so they had to be moved to island time.
- How did Ben get his bruises? It is possible that in order to get Desmond back to the island and to seek his revenge on Widmore, he killed Penny and probably Charlie too.
- And now I have to give credit where credit is due because my friend Tim McDonough brought most of these theories to my attention, thanks.
- I have recently discovered the game of squash, it’s awesome. It is fast paced and very intense, but still easy to pick up quickly.
Thanks for reading. I always enjoy hearing from my readers so leave lots of comments on anything I’ve said. Please subscribe to the Shoebuyblog.com RSS feed and tell all your friends.
February 20th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
nice Lost thoughts Zach
-Rich
February 24th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
Zack:
I like the music connection…but if you are going to feature a jazzy shoe why not some jazz music? Maybe a little Herbie Hancock?
Glad to see that you like ‘Love Shack’ by the B-52′s? this is a classic track by a classic group…I’ve been noticing they’ve getting more and more air play recently.
– Dave
February 26th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Sorry, but jazz just doesn’t make my list of favorite things, the only “salt peanuts” I like have nothing to do with Dizzy Gilespie