In today's entry I'll say a few things about the 11th-grade English classes that I took at Vista High School in the 1978-1979 academic year, per the More English to come section at the beginning of my "Sods and Odds" post.
Fall
For the September-to-January semester I took an Advanced Composition 11A course that was initially run by Mr. James Hunter. At some point in the latter half of the semester (shortly after Thanksgiving, if memory serves) Mr. Hunter announced to the class that he would be leaving Vista High School for a position "in the computer field". He declined to specify exactly why he was leaving: "It's not you," he assured us. A Mr. Johnston* ran the remainder of the course.
*Per the Edward Johnston obituary at this page, I think Mr. Johnston's first name was Warren - he was the husband of my History 7 teacher at Lincoln Junior High School and took over for her shortly into the year as she was ill - but he wasn't in the La Revista 1979 yearbook and I don't know for certain.
I wrote my first five-paragraph essays and first term paper for Mr. Hunter's class.
• Regarding the former, Mr. Hunter handed out a photocopy of a five-paragraph essay that a previous-year student had written on Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land as a model for us to follow. I read it over and thought, "Man, this is really contrived, does anyone actually write like this in the real world?" With 20/20 hindsight and from my current vantage point as a technical writer, I now recognize that such essays, and term papers, are meant to serve as introductory prototypes for formal reports that one may create in, say, the business world or a STEM-related profession.
• My term paper was on electronic keyboard instruments.
Literature-wise my 11th-grade English classes kept to an American authors theme, and for Mr. Hunter's class I and my fellow classmates accordingly read the following class novels:
Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small-Town Life by Sherwood Anderson,
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, and
A Separate Peace by John Knowles.
I relatedly wrote separate book reports on
Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck and
R Is for Rocket by Ray Bradbury
but bucking the theme I also wrote reports on
Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne and
King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table by Antonia Fraser.
(Yes, I was listening to this guy at the time.)
One last point in the name of completeness before moving on:
For a while at the beginning of the semester Mr. Hunter had us play The Propaganda Game in class; perhaps this was meant to be a sort of critical thinking exercise but I thought it was a waste of time.
Spring
For the February-to-June semester I took an English Literature 11A course that from start to finish was run by Mrs. Laurene Tweed.
Mrs. Tweed's class was highlighted by a vocabulary-building unit that was designed to prepare us for the verbal section of the SAT, which we were to take the following year. (I confess I am 'not a fan' of standardized tests: they are useful to some extent but IMO they and their scores are taken much more seriously than should be the case.)
We read one class novel for Mrs. Tweed's class: The Scarlet Letter: A Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
I relatedly wrote separate book reports on
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway and
Dandelion Wine and
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury.
Toward the end of the semester each student also presented an oral book report in front of the class: my presentation was on The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand as I was going through a (thankfully brief, hey, it happens to the best of us) Objectivist phase at the time.
Our coursework culminated in a term paper on an American author. I appropriately wrote my paper on Ray Bradbury: it discussed Bradbury's literary influences, his approach to the craft of writing, his advice for would-be authors, and his view of the future.
I'll cover my 10th-grade English classes in the following entry.
Thursday, April 26, 2018
Saturday, April 14, 2018
Listening to Songs at Random, or Not
At the beginning of my "I'd Like to Make a Request" post I briefly discussed the MP3.com music site and lamented what MP3.com had become vis-à-vis its salad days in the early 2000s. I continue to check in with MP3.com from time to time, in part out of curiosity, in part out of nostalgia, in part out of a hope that the site has improved.
New stuff
MP3.com had been dormant since April 2015 but there's been a flurry of activity there in the last couple of months.
(1) A new /2018/ directory features 20+ new articles, including a "Welcome Back to MP3.com! This Is Going to Be Big" announcement and a "Can You Name Every One of These '80s Hair Bands?" article/quiz that at present also takes up most of the home page.
(2) A new navigation menu at the top of the site points to '80s, '90s, '00s, and DOWNLOADS sections that at the time of writing are highlighted by a common "12 Great Songs You Totally Forgot Were From 1993"* article.
*1993? That was 25 years ago. And excepting "Soul to Squeeze" and "I Got You Babe" (OK, maybe not the Cher with Beavis and Butt-Head version), you probably were never familiar with these songs in the first place if you don't listen to urban contemporary radio. Where's U2's "Lemon"? Where's the Smashing Pumpkins' "Today"? But I digress.
2011-2017
MP3.com last underwent a major overhaul in June 2011. The heart of the 2011-2017 MP3.com was its /top-downloads/ Free Music collection of songs to stream or download, which is now gone. The current MP3.com still has a /top-downloads/ directory but it now contains a "How Old Was This '90s Pop Star When They Made It Big?" article/quiz and some links to external MP3.com resources and some advertising content and that would be it. Some of the /2018/ articles do feature videos but you know what I think about music videos.
Actually, all of the other 2011-2017 MP3.com directories and all of the textual content of those directories are still present at the current site; for example, if you go to http://mp3.com/free-mp3/ and scroll past the "12 Great Songs ... From 1993" article (all the way to the bottom of the page) you'll find links to the 2011-2017 site's Free MP3 of the Day articles although the .mp3 file downloads originally offered by those articles are no longer available.
The 2011-2017 MP3.com was a venue for underground artists, whereas the new MP3.com material focuses on hitmakers. If you prefer the former to the latter, however, all is not lost...
Back to the bars
The External links section of Wikipedia's MP3.com entry helpfully includes a link to the Internet Archive's collection of past and present MP3.com pages. I go to the 12 May 2014 capture (the one closest to the "I'd Like to Make a Request" 14 May 2014 publish date) to check out its Free Music songs. To my amazement and delight, I discover that the Internet Archive has also saved a great many of the original .mp3 files for those songs - just click the buttons and you've got 'em. (Clicking the buttons doesn't do anything.)
I note in "I'd Like to Make a Request" that I prefer to stream songs rather than download them. I go over to YouTube and run searches on several of the 12 May 2014 MP3.com Free Music songs: every one of them shows up. And what you get at YouTube is in most cases better sounding than an .mp3 file anyway.
The Internet Archive's MP3.com captures stretch back to the site's late-1990s origin. It is unlikely that you will find anything to stream or download in the charts sections of captures that predate the 2011 overhaul, but at least you will have artist name and song title information to work with.
In sum, a respectable chunk of the MP3.com 'database' is still there and waiting for you to explore it - you don't have to settle for "Can You Name Every One of These ’90s Boy Bands?".
We'll go back to high school English class in the next entry.
New stuff
MP3.com had been dormant since April 2015 but there's been a flurry of activity there in the last couple of months.
(1) A new /2018/ directory features 20+ new articles, including a "Welcome Back to MP3.com! This Is Going to Be Big" announcement and a "Can You Name Every One of These '80s Hair Bands?" article/quiz that at present also takes up most of the home page.
(2) A new navigation menu at the top of the site points to '80s, '90s, '00s, and DOWNLOADS sections that at the time of writing are highlighted by a common "12 Great Songs You Totally Forgot Were From 1993"* article.
*1993? That was 25 years ago. And excepting "Soul to Squeeze" and "I Got You Babe" (OK, maybe not the Cher with Beavis and Butt-Head version), you probably were never familiar with these songs in the first place if you don't listen to urban contemporary radio. Where's U2's "Lemon"? Where's the Smashing Pumpkins' "Today"? But I digress.
2011-2017
MP3.com last underwent a major overhaul in June 2011. The heart of the 2011-2017 MP3.com was its /top-downloads/ Free Music collection of songs to stream or download, which is now gone. The current MP3.com still has a /top-downloads/ directory but it now contains a "How Old Was This '90s Pop Star When They Made It Big?" article/quiz and some links to external MP3.com resources and some advertising content and that would be it. Some of the /2018/ articles do feature videos but you know what I think about music videos.
Actually, all of the other 2011-2017 MP3.com directories and all of the textual content of those directories are still present at the current site; for example, if you go to http://mp3.com/free-mp3/ and scroll past the "12 Great Songs ... From 1993" article (all the way to the bottom of the page) you'll find links to the 2011-2017 site's Free MP3 of the Day articles although the .mp3 file downloads originally offered by those articles are no longer available.
The 2011-2017 MP3.com was a venue for underground artists, whereas the new MP3.com material focuses on hitmakers. If you prefer the former to the latter, however, all is not lost...
Back to the bars
The External links section of Wikipedia's MP3.com entry helpfully includes a link to the Internet Archive's collection of past and present MP3.com pages. I go to the 12 May 2014 capture (the one closest to the "I'd Like to Make a Request" 14 May 2014 publish date) to check out its Free Music songs. To my amazement and delight, I discover that the Internet Archive has also saved a great many of the original .mp3 files for those songs - just click the buttons and you've got 'em. (Clicking the buttons doesn't do anything.)
I note in "I'd Like to Make a Request" that I prefer to stream songs rather than download them. I go over to YouTube and run searches on several of the 12 May 2014 MP3.com Free Music songs: every one of them shows up. And what you get at YouTube is in most cases better sounding than an .mp3 file anyway.
The Internet Archive's MP3.com captures stretch back to the site's late-1990s origin. It is unlikely that you will find anything to stream or download in the charts sections of captures that predate the 2011 overhaul, but at least you will have artist name and song title information to work with.
In sum, a respectable chunk of the MP3.com 'database' is still there and waiting for you to explore it - you don't have to settle for "Can You Name Every One of These ’90s Boy Bands?".
We'll go back to high school English class in the next entry.
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