Breaking Cat News by Georgia Dunn for December 15, 2021

I think that one of my vehicles might have a working cassette player. Obviously, I haven’t listened to any of my (many) cassettes in a while.

Thank you for that laugh. XD

And it’s OK, Baba Mouse – Burt’s an AV cat, and if anyone knows spit takes…

Burt’s so chill that not even getting sprayed with coffee bothers him!

Obviously a “cassette” is a small cass.

Young whippersnappers; don’t know the joy of low-fidelity music which you cannot instantly skip through and which is always a threads-width away from getting tangled in the machine.

Oh, the wonderful world of cassettes……. I miss the days when one could copy a cassette onto a CD and visa versa. Then play a custom made version on a device that played both.

I was on a discussion list about Neil Young back in the late 90s, and someone in all seriousness asked “What’s an LP?” Gee, Mr. Freekowtski, tell us about the OLDEN DAYS!

It was the replacement for the ‘Reel-to-Reel’ Beatrix.

I still have a boom box with dual cassettes and a CD player.

Don’t get it. Is Baba blowing tea a reaction to Beatrix’s reporting?

Heck, I remember those tiny 45rpm records and the special record player to play them on. And going to a record store and taking your choice into a booth to listen to it. Sometimes we even bought one.

What did the trees record on a cassette in a tape recorder?

I can’t tells you that. It’s a mys-tree.

I recently got a cassette to MP3 converter. Got it for free, but that’s another story. Anyway, I had some old tapes of my father’s music, not commercial recordings, and transferred them to digital format. Stored each tape as one file, so the individual pieces don’t have their own tracks, but I wrote a text file guide to what is on each one, and put it in the same folder as the MP3s.

Yesterday’s was lots of Christmas fun!!

Must be cassette tape day today, eh.

https://www.gocomics.com/pluggers/2021/12/15

The good old cassette!! I remember when I was a kid, my dad and uncle had filled up an entire shelf of a cupboard with cassettes of old bollywood hits. I later added a few cassettes, but they are all gone now, the good old 2-in-1 player (Cassette player and FM/SW/MW radio) is now sitting on top of a showcase as an antique item (It still works, BTW!!)

Oh Beatrix, shall I also explain to you what a rotary phone is and what a 4-party telephone line is?

I digitized all my remaining cassettes a few years ago so I can listen to them as (relatively static free) MP3s now. Took some work but it was worth it.

About eleven or twelve years ago I had to show a bunch of twenty-odd year old Chinese students how to use a VCR. Their grandfathers probably ran the company that made the VCR.

And I shall take this opportunity to apologise for the cheerful tone of recent comments. We are having technical difficulties, but normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

I’m with Baba Mouse. ;) Nearly chocked on my cup of cocoa. lol!! Oh these kids today . . . what they don’t know. (sigh) #AnalogueBrainInTheDigitalDomain

Now Burt knows what the Coffee tastes like…

Many years ago I got a cassette recorder for Christmas. It was a quite nice one. I used it for years. Then I got one that was like a a “Walkman” from Radio Shack. It was to use for taping lectures, but I mainly used it to listen to music. I was ahead of the curve.

Why do they call it a cassette? Well, when the tape got jammed in the recorder again you had something to cuss at

Poor Baba Mouse! The look on her face.

Oh how I want an 8×10 of panel 3, Baba Mouse spewing tea across the room!

Well youngin’, waaaaaaaay back, in the before time…hold on, I gotta put muh teeth in to chew my oatmeal!

Posted this last night and decided to repeat it this morning so more can see it.

My sister found this and sent it to me. A choir from an Irish school for autistic children. It is absolutely beautiful.

https://www.chonday.com/47060/autistic-kids-sing-hallelujah/

Fortunately Nana Dee Dee was not truly old school with the 8-Track. My pet peeve with those were when they switched tracks in the middle of a song. At least the cassettes were formatted like the old album, one side of the cassette = one side of the LP and ditto for the cassette single which was popular for a bit of time during the ’80s and ’90s as well. Vinyl has made a bit of a comeback, I actually heard someone on the local college or NPR radio station talking about some vinyl releases by Green Day, The Smiths and a couple of other bands from back in the day. Even if my turntable still worked, I am not sure where to buy a new stylus/needle for it since Radio Shack punched its ticket….

It’s properly called a Compact Cassette and was introduced by Philips in 1965.

OT: Thank you for all your prayers, purrs, and positive thoughts

I have a cassette copy of our wedding. I still play it occasionally. It’s a good thing I have it. My father had a stroke the day we got married and my mother walked me down the aisle. It was such a blur of a day, I don’t remember much. I should really get it transferred over though.

We just found a cat outside she was very sweet and she had no owners so we made a appointment to neuter her but after it was done the cage wasnt closed properly and she escaped she has been gone for too long and we are losing hope of finding her many of you may not live near me but look out for a grey and orange tabby cat with calico ears we miss her so much and want to know if she is ok

Great spit-take by BBM!

My Get Well Lupin print arrived yesterday. 11/67!

Someone hand that cat a towel!

Me to my parents.

Wait until they learn about 8 Track Tapes!

I have some cassettes that have stuff I must keep, but I’ve been too lazy to convert them.

I also have a 21-year-old car with a cassette player. I used to love the cassette bins in thrift shops where they were about 50 cents each. Cheap enough to grab something that looked interesting and see what it was.

I have a couple of car cases of cassettes, a few are 30+ years old but the last time I bought a new one was in 1999-2000 before I switched to multi-CD changers and MP3’s. They’ve travelled all over the country with me. I can’t play them and I won’t throw them away.

Okay, no one has mentioned it yet, and lots of folks are saying they still have cassettes. Anything precious on them, get those digitized now! Magnetic tape is NOT stable, and not meant for long term storage. The plastic breaks down and the coating will flake off. They may look fine, and play “this time.” But at some point you are going to put them in, and the coating will quietly flake away as it moves across the rollers, and the next time you put it in, there will just be some scratchy vague sounds interrupted with sad hissing. Same goes for all your VCR tapes.

I miss the really old days when we used to gather in caves, paint on the walls, and sing songs together while we waited for the meat to burn over the fire…

I have to fess up, when I was a teenager way back in the last century, I bought my first car from the sad rear of the used car lot, because when I sat down I saw it had not only an am/fm radio, but a cassette player!!! I hadn’t even driven it, but told my dad “I want this one!” We bought it, but yeah it had some issues I probably should have considered, but boy was I the rocking envy of all my joy-riding friends!

Bea, let me introduce you to the wonder and glories of the mix tape.

When I was in college, finishing my second Master’s and starting Medical School – if I did not have the where-with-all to record lectures I would have taken a lot longer to finish.

I still have every one of those lectures on cassette. I used to play some of them on a Sony Walkman

Actually, I’m hoping Burt will now take us into a long explanation of a cassette tape …

Audio or video?

Young people miss so much. I guess they were our version of smart phones

OT: Busy day!

Heading out shortly to take R to his morning appointments, then he & J (who’s riding along) will drop me off at the train station on their way home. Sis is meeting me at the station this evening, & tomorrow we go to mom’s & I spend a few days of quality time with sis’s boss Onyx while mom & sis are away visiting my niece & family. It’s gonna be a LO-O-O-O-O-OOOOONG & exciting day…

A method of magnetic data storage, sometimes storing audio and in larger modes, video.

You can also define a generation by the trash you see on the side of the road. In the 80s and 90s you would see miles of freed cassette tape lining the gutter.

A…a template for cutting lunch meat down to fit the bread?

I have a small brief case full of cassette tapes.

Nothing annoys Burt. He’s such a cool guy.

Baba Mouse, I thought you were already well aware that you are old.

I didn’t get the chance to chime in on favorite holiday songs yesterday but my favorite is “Rusty Chevrolet” by Da Yoopers:

https://youtu.be/aeZ0BUc3kMw

And the oldest boy said to mention “The Night Santa Claus Went Crazy” and “Christmas at Ground Zero” both by Weird AL Yankovic.

A cassette is just a container (derived from the same root as “case”) but came to mean a cartridge of ferrite-coated mylar tape which could be analog-encoded with varying magnetic field strengths corresponding to audio signals. It was a short term storage medium . I still have a couple of cassette tapes around for sentimental value and a USB cassette deck from which I transferred the contents to digital format many years ago. The ferrite-coating turns to powder over the years and flakes off the tape and coats the tape read head in the process. The high-frequencies are the first to go. You just might get one more play out of cassette tapes which have been very carefully stored. Enjoy it while you can. Merry Christmas

OT: Yeti

Last night I said Good-Bye to Yeti – He crossed over and was reunited with Zoomer at the Rainbow Bridge. My little buddy had lost 2 more pounds and the cancer was spreading. There was nothing more the Vet could do for him. I knew it was time, and that this was the right decision to end the suffering.

Fortunately I was with Yeti at the end, and I was able to hold and comfort him while he took his last breath. I love you Yeti, and will miss you. R.I.P.

Maybe that was a cassette player on the anchor desk next to Lupin in Sunday’s strip.

So very sorry for your loss. A Mother’s love knows no boundaries, it stretches across eternity. Prayers for you and your family. God Bless.

More than a decade ago, when I was in training for this job, during a break in one of the classes I made a joke about Boy George. One of my younger classmates responded with “Who?”.

.

Everything’s cyclical. I wonder if I’ll get to hear “what’s a smartphone?”.

Fortunately, I had finished my coffee before seeing this! Just love the slightly moistened Burt.

I used my computer to move my cassette contents to CDs, years ago, but my last two Macs didn’t have a CD burner so I’m glad those are done. My new car doesn’t appear to have a CD player so it’s smart phone plug in or nothing. And, surprise, I don’t have a smart phone. So, straight radio or nothing. A good thing I don’t spend much time in the car.

And of course I just took a big sip myself and didn’t let it fly….

Recently, I found myself tryin to explain to a group of college undergraduates what carbon paper is and how we used to use it to make copies. I don’t think they believed me.

I so identify with this strip… if I ever have grandkids I want them to call me Baba Mouse. ;-)

And of course.. who doesn’t love Bert?

Mmmyeah, I’m with Baba Mouse on this one.

Beatrix has gaps in her education. As a social media coordinator/bookstore cat she needs to be conversant with the history of technology.

Audiowise I have been able to experience Wax Cylinders (still have a player and some cylinders), Records, 8-tracks tapes, cassette tapes, CD and MP3s. Visual media has been CED, Laser Disc, VHS, DVD and now streaming (and still own all). And don’t even get me started on Video games. :p

Oh, Beatrix, you beautiful, innocent, little child, you.

Baba just did a spit take on poor Goldie!

Bea, you best hope Burt is a lot calmer in his explination.

Me, I really gotta get a good casette to MP3 converter so I don’t have to repurchase all my old casettes on either CD or MP3.

Way back in the 90s, I asked a librarian if they had LPs (places were getting rid of them at the time) A little boy overheard me and asked, “Are LPs something new?” And the Liberian and I both laughed, “No, they’re something old”

Que Gordon Lightfoot’s “Old Dan’s Records.”

So sorry for your loss.