Did you get any lovely glass in Venice?

One of my friends brought me back a beautiful Venetian glass wine-bottle stopper that I am too afraid to use for its intended purpose. I don't want it to break.

ION, I ordered and have received the Riona dress from Holy Clothing (in that color). I like it fairly well. The bodice is very fitted, because of the elastic in the back. It's not *tight*; just fitted, which I'm not used to, other than my occasional wearing of a corset. But I'm pretty pleased with it, so I'm keeping it. In fact, I may wear it today since we have a graduation party to go to and it's in the 90s. Sheesh.

Teppy, use it. It's part of my de-clutter and de-box plan to use all of the beautiful things that people have given me, or that I've brought back from trips. Use it, and enjoy it and savor it because you literally can't take it with you.

Sean, I am loving all of your posts and am so thrilled that you're on this adventure with your father. What a wonderful 40th birthday present he's given you.

New level of adorable. Father/Daughter dance. Nice to know I'm not the only one who can't dance.

omnis is killing me with cute and Sean is killing me with envy. You're all invited to my funeral.

Sean, your travelogue posts are WONDERFUL. I'm so glad you're on this trip.

Seriously, I'm squeeing along with each post. Now I'm afraid to go myself, because I won't have Sean along to make commentary in ASSCAPS and that really makes it teh awesome.

The f/d dance is half dozen fathers, the songs are psuedo tuff guy songs (poorly edited together). The girls are in the 8-10 range (I'm guessing). And it really is proof that it looks easier than it is. First hurdle, remember what to do. Next, where to do it. Now, 10x faster and to the beat. Yeah, close, let's have your daughters dance circles around you now. All very cute. The dads are almost on par with the 5-8 y.o.'s. Only bigger. And know when they mess up. Very cute.

This high quality, well tuned sound system really shows the flaws of MP3's and m4a files.

What file format is lossless? What do standard CDs and DVDs use?

Apple has some lossless format that compresses music to about half its uncompressed size. Standard CDs are not compressed, but the audio in DVDs is. DVDs use mp3s for audio, I think.

cda is the file format for cd's. Uncompressed, 16 bit 44.1 kHz sample rate. Computers are not supposed to be able to view the files, but can play them. Although Mac automatically converts them to aiff on the desktop.

mp3 is a propietory compression method with variable sample rates. It eliminates the portions of audio "you won't hear" to save space. Any device/software that can create/rip mp3's pay royalties to some German guy/company.

AAC uses m4a (open) or m4p (protected) formats. They do not store data in the zero areas, and can reduce file size by about half.

It would be interesting to do a listening party with the same track in the different file formats. Depending on the audio content of the song, the artifacts will have different results. This show is using all flavors. Full wav, aiff, m4a, mp3. Some tracks are quite brittle in the high frequencies. Some boomy in the mids. And some missing a lot of bass.

Ok, that was over simplified version. On iPhone and supposed to be working. Hence simple explanation.