[johnfowles]

Originally Posted by geodeticman.5

Oh - and a 3k-watt Honda generator as back up or source for power , if its the desert island scenario -
~geo steve

Cor Blimey young Steve you have managed in one fell swoop to get the scoop on a future thread I was planning
Some time ago I was musing aboot earlier threads that posed such perennial questions as "what are your (top 5/10/very favourite GL (love) songs" and came up with great idea for a thread.This began to form in my mind during the long (8.5 hour) drive from NJ to Toronto on Nov. 15th 2006. I remembered a very long running BBC radio programme first broadcast on 29 Jan. 1942 so it is the world's oldest radio programME. Each week a celebrity was asked to imagine being marooned on a Desert Island with only a gramophone and a power supply and limited to his/her choice of a limited number of Desert Island Discs see:-
the "wiki" at:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Island_Discs
In a flash I was mindful of

2. Mr Sober Rodents effort to compile a number of 90 minute cassettes
   
3. that to burn a compilation CD one must keep in mind at a blank CD will hold just a "nominal" 80 minutes of audio (a length agreed upon by Sony and Phillips in their joint specification for their proposed Compact Disc format)(both companies wished to avoid the format problem that led to the inferior JVC VHS videotape format winning the contest over their own superior Betamax and Video 2000 formats respectively) which has recently erupted again in the current Blue Ray/HD-DVD contest
   
4. Urban rumour has it that 74 minutes was chosen because that just so happens to be the average time it takes to perform the Beethoven Choral Symphony (number 9).
   
5. blank CD-s are marked with a suspiciously rounded capacity of 700MB or 80 minutes of audio
   (earlier these were 74 minutes and 650MB)
   
6. the 4 Songbook CDs are each at the maximum of about 76 minutes
   

I therefore wanted to propose a thread that would imagine that you were going to be marooned on a Desert Island with a CD Player and a generator but that you could only have just the one Lightfoot Compilation CD, and if so what would you want on that one CD-R.The problem as that any attempt to compile a "best" of GL collection is of course doomed to failure because as we all know it is exceedingly difficult to impose any limit due to the fantastic range our "jongleur' has presented us with.
I suddenly realised that what was needed was some form of discipline and this implied setting some basic rules.
Taking my cue from the fact that 80 minutes as evidenced by the 4 Songbook CDs which are about 76 minutes each and 21-24 tracks and that Gord has so far released the famous 20 "original" albums including Sunday Concert, plus what is in effect a 21st comprising the 16/18 "rarities" included in Songbook.
One complication is that both "Gord's Gold" albums contain rerecorded versions with different track times, plus GG1 has the extra track "If It Should please You" that is not included on any other album
I thought about these rules and eventually concluded that good starting rules would be
[list=1]
[*]There must be at least one track from each of those 21 albums
[*]to cover a few cases where in your case there are two tracks that you simply could not live without there must be a maximum of two tracks from any one album
[*]As there are a significant number of other GL recordings that never made it onto an actual "official" album that you might want to include (in my case the sadly neglected single hit "Spin Spin" and the magnificent, recorded for a television special, "Face Of A Thousand People") plus any of the songs on the early albums "Two Tones At The Village Corner", "Early Lightfoot",Canadian Talent Library, Warner Demos plus the rare tracks on the La Cave bootlegs "Yellow Bird" and "Get Together" and a few more bootlegs, there should be a further one or two from that category.
The next problem is devising a simple way to determine the Total Running Time of your selection, ideally with provision to add and remove tracks easily and recalculate that time,
WARNING for those liable to get bored or with a propensity of getting bad headaches
what follows will be "techie" talk and is incomplete so skip it rather than complain please:-
Bear in mind also that the maximum capacity of a blank CD-R is not actually 80 minutes but 700MB worth of audio files in CD format ("wav" files are what you basically get if you "rip" tracks from a CD.Plus the complication that you may be selecting from a set of mp3 files compressed from wavs.
I mention that point because I have in fact managed to burn one perfect audio CD that has a TRT of 80 minutes 52 seconds from a folder of mp3s that the simple DOS utilty mp3indx shows is indeed 81 minutes
yet ripping it to wavs produces the file total of way over 800MB for reasons I completely fail to understand.I am still however investigating this discrepancy and hope to report back in due course.
In order to get the TRT I can see the following methods:-

2. If you have a pen/pencil and paper and know the individual track times do a "simple" bit of arithmetic well not that simple because long ago the Phoenicians used base 60 for minutes and seconds but that is is another subject entirely
   (it would be far easier if there were 100 seconds in one minute and 100 minutes in one hour but that will never be!!!
   
3. Use a neat Java applet from a site that I will refind
   
4. Convert all tracks from wavs to mp3s and use mp3indx
   
5. Load up Nero** with the wavs it will tell you the TRT
   **in passing another nice urban legend is that the commonly used German program known as "Nero" that often comes bundled with CD/DVD burners has the full title "Nero Burning ROM" because Nero fiddled whilst Rome burned and Rome in Germany is spelt ROM, and nothing whatever therefore to do with Read Only Memory!
   
6. Create a spreadsheet using Microsoft Excel
   
7. Use Online Google docs. a.k.a. "cloud computing"
   
8. In my case use a superb old DOS only programME called Surefire written by a team at Piaf Inc in ColoUrful ColoUrado
   led by Peter Makula who when I contacted admitted that he had run out of funding to develop a Windows version more's the pity because it is far easier to learn than the bloatware known as Microsoft Office and far more useable. Because starting with any text file Surefire allowed you to insert fields (cells) anywhere you wished on the text document that mimicked Microsoft's Word the cells rapidly made a spreadsheet with all the formulas that Microsoft Excel includes,then you could from these cells create a database to rival Microsoft Access.
   OK there was one major problem the size of your total creation had to fit in the basic PC Random Access Memory of 640MB
   

Err Umm "Cloud Computing"??
what's that then??? I thought you'd never ask!!
To be honest I was not really sure but fortuneately recently I received a newsletter which had a link to a page at:-
http://www.wxpnews.com/RK5CBN/080812-Google-Docs
where I was pleased to read:-
"There has been a lot of talk lately in tech circles about "cloud computing," but what is it, really? The "cloud" refers to the Internet (based on the symbol used to represent the Internet in network diagrams) and computing "in the cloud" refers to using applications and services that are provided over the Internet, rather than being installed on your local computer. Perhaps the best- known aspect of cloud computing is "software as a service" (SaaS).
With SaaS, instead of buying application programs, you rent them.
Google goes further, with its online applications such as Google Docs, an "in the cloud" word processing, spreadsheet and presentation application that's intended to compete with Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint"
so what you say??.
well if I can recall my rusty spreadsheet skills I should be able to create an online
spreadsheet come database containing drop down lists for every album sand suitable check boxes and with the track time for every track that everybody could then access and pick their own selection from and see immediately without having to count on their fingers and toes the Total Running Time of their then current selection.
I have yet to decide for my own use if the rules could be relaxed to allow a double CD, noting that Gord's Gold 1 of course is esentially a double album
OK enough for now else this will never get posted . 'sides which I will be away all next week
but I'll continue ASAP with a suggestion for a customisable CD jewel case front insert and my own Desert Island GL Compact Disc details
Phew OK Ron and CHar the coast is now clear!!!!