Two days ago I had macaroni salad with my breakfast. It tasted kind of weird, like oil or wax or something. I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was, and even though it tasted strange, I ate some of it.

As you may recall, last summer I acquired some records (you know, those big black CDs). I had never really got around to playing them because I didn't know how to work the turntable. Well, recently my dad showed me how to do it, so yesterday I spun Beatles discs such as Hey Jude, the White Album, and Abbey Road. I also gave my recently bought copy of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band a first play. It sounded pretty nice, though I did notice one thing that I confirmed with later research. As you move from the outside towards the center of a record, the sound quality deteriorates. And this was quite noticeable (on Side 1, at least) with a brand-new record.

It's no wonder people switched to CDs. But I think I like records; they seem to be more -- well, personal, I guess -- than CDs. When you play a CD, you don't get to position the laser to indicate exactly where it will begin playing. (You can't even see which tracks are where anyway.) You can see the stylus traveling around the record (or, rather, the record traveling under the stylus, or leading the stylus around, or whatever). And there are lots of hazards associated with keeping records (dust and heat, to name a few). You really have to be involved.

And it was quite neat figuring out, while listening to Side 2 of Abbey Road (which has a sort of medley of songs), how they managed to place space ("banding") between the tracks and still have one song blend right into the next. The groove quickly takes the stylus across this large, otherwise blank space by leading sharply toward the next track rather than going around easily in a circle. In Abbey Road's case, that part of the groove just happens to have sounds on it rather than being quiet.

I'm looking forward to buying more records.

Oh, and after I played some of the records, I had the rest of the macaroni salad. And it was then that I realized what it tasted like: record cleaning fluid! I'm not talking slightly, either. It tasted as though someone had sprayed the stuff on. I ate the rest of it anyway. Mostly.

In a previous post I said that I would download a particular program to generate stereograms. Well, it turns out that that particular program bites. The only way you can view the "hidden" image in each "stereogram" is to look at it normally; that way you get a pretty good idea, because you can see the outlines of the shapes quite clearly. And you're liable to hurt yourself trying to relax/de-focus your eyes like you're supposed to; there's nothing to see! Needless to say, I'm not going to name this program or tell you where you can get it. It's a waste of time.

Give me an "A"! Give me an "S"! Give me a "K"! Give me a "Jordon"!

Get me a life! ... No? Darn. It was a good try.

Yellow Chicken: Why did you choose WordPress? How did you pick? Why not something like Movable Type?

The why: It seemed very customizable and easy enough to use (it is, in fact). It also appealed to me because it runs on PHP, which I like to dabble in.

The how: Someone on my web host's message board heard my plea for a good program and recommended WordPress.

I basically ruled out Movable Type after reading this Blog Software Breakdown. I didn't happen to see WordPress there (it's the very last column). MT runs on CGI/Perl, which I'm not too crazy about for some reason -- probably because of having to upload files as ASCII and chmod them and all that.

At The Chemistry of Vinyl, you can learn about the science behind vinyl records and... how to make your own? Um, check it out and don't blame me if you break your stylus trying to play your own "records."