[johnfowles]

Warning long post that I have tried to keep as short as possible but hopefully there will be some items of interest therein
I recently noticed that I was receiving an increasing number of Google Alerts for another of my obsessions the great UK/Australian novelist Nevil Shute and that several were mentions of his name on a (web)blog,.I found that when you open http://www.google.com and click the "more" link you will get a drop down extended offering list including blogs which will open a google blog search option
I was about to write that I have received precious few google alerts for GL mentions in blogs,when out of the blue cyberspace today came a Google Alert email with, in addition to three "regular" items, had a separate secton headed
Google Blogs Alert for: gordon lightfoot
I had never seen that heading before
it included 4 blog alerts including:-
http://9poundhammer.blogspot.com/200...lightfoot.html

which contained an embedded youtube video

YouTube - Midnight Special - Gordon Lightfoot -...

which is the Midnight Special live IYCRMM that I had not found or seen before
amongst the accompanying blurb on the youtube page is this:-
"Gordon should have been bigger, I think, but he wasn't far out or dangerous or devilishly handsome--he looked more like somebody's ex-husband--but he wrote some good songs"
As this thread subject indicates a blog search for GL produces a staggering number of results
I have only looked at the first 10 of that huge number no doubt others will peruse at length and report back on any interesting finds
For example I found a link to:-
http://www.guitars101.com/forums/f90...ast-92280.html

today that page provides links to megaupload.com and rapidshare.com to "freely and slowly" download the rar file as mentioned by TG in thread
http://www.corfid.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=19923

I said "freely and slowly" because both sites impose a throttle to try to get you to purchase a high speed subscrption
that rar is not huge at 63.6MN
I said "today that page provides links to megaupload.com and rapidshare.com" above because when I first found it few days ago the link was to a torrent listing site http://www.tapecity.org
and the details page for the 1975 Frankfurt 7 track torrent:-
http://tapecity.org/showthread.php?t=34255

that torrent like all serious torrents aimed at audiophiles comprises the 7 audio tracks mildly compressed by the Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) and you can download the torrent control file from that details page which will by using a torrent client (program) download the set of flac files
but you will have to register to do so
I have saved the page and uploaded it to a free website that you can get to using the following forwarding URL
http://www.frankfurt1975.notlong.com

There are countless internet pages describing torrents, what they are, how to find them, how to acquire them then what to do with them and I am gradually compiling a basic tutorial on those lines. Part of it will include the procedure for decoding and playing flacs and making an audio CD from a set of flac files.
Note that my tutorial will only cover users of Windows PCs



Here are my working notes on flacs

• the basic tool for decoding is the freeware program flac front end this will decode each flac to a CD standard wav format file
• that is not a player but instead of carrying out the decoding first you can get a "sneak preview" by installing an flac codec (COmpression/DECompression) for Windows Media Player from http://www.xiph.org/dshow/

• 
  
  you will download an installation file oggcodecs_0.81.15562-win32.exe 1.04MB
• In order to burn a CD I used to use flac front end to decode to wavs.Now I use a freeware CD burning program that can handle flacs and mp3s "as is"
• download and install the burrrn program (yes three "r's" just like in Reading 'Riting and 'Rithmatic) from:-
  http://www.burrrn.net/?page_id=4
  
  
• Add your flacs and burrn baby burrrn!!

On the tapecity GL listing page were a few other interesting items but in compensation the guitars101 GL page also offered some extras
one important item I found by scrolling down was that as well as downloads of the 2006 Ottawa ROIO (Recording Of Independant Origin) and the 1977 New York Cerebral Palsy benefift concert broadcast there is the superb 1969 Charlottetown Festival broadcast recording ( a 75.4MB zipfile). It unzips to 16 high quality (192KBPS) mp3s totalling 76.6MB
Finally bear in mind that flacs being"Lossless" when decoded produce an exact reconstruction of the original audio file, mp3s on the other hand deliberately discard some information (in particular some those higher frequncy portions because they are above the normal human hearing range) such a codec is therefore termed "lossy" and the decoded version cannot be said to be fully equal to the original because what was discarded can never be recovered.