Aucbvax.1560
fa.info-cpm
utzoo!duke!mhtsa!ucbvax!BHUBER@USC-ECL
Mon Jun 8 12:19:28 1981
Re: Using DC Hayes modem at 450 baud
In response to the message sent 8 June 1981 02:31-EDT from W8SDZ@MIT-MC
"Anything is better than 300 [bps]." Oh? What about 75, 110, or 134.5 bps?
Bob Loesch must not have much (any?) experience with older equipments.
Bud
P.S., I suspect today is going to be a bad one if this is my reaction to
the referenced message.
-------
??
------------------------------
Date: 7 Jun 1981 0531-PDT (Sunday)
From: Lauren at UCLA-SECURITY (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: misc. comments and a query
Here we go...
The program where you would draw on your television screen to "aid"
characters was called "Winky Dink and You". Luckily, at the time the
show aired, few people had color televisions, so the radiation risk
was not as bad as it COULD have been. Still... not a great idea to
play around so close to the screen. Probably almost as bad as using a
modern "touch-with-your-finger" type CRT! Personally, I refuse to use
color CRT terminals close-up for long periods...
---
Remember Colonel Bleep? This was a "minimum animation" type cartoon,
largely consisting of still frames. The Colonel (who was some sort of
alien who always wore a fishbowl type space helmet) operated from
"ZERO ZERO ISLAND". He had two "pals", -- Squeak, who was a puppet
(and I believe often wore a cowboy hat), and Scratch, who was a
caveman. This program is so obscure I can hardly remember it -- the
only plot I can recall involved Squeak and Scratch having helmets
locked on their heads that turned them into zombies of a sort -- the
work of the Colonel's enemies.
---
In this same era we come to two programs which occasionally bordered
on SF. The first is "Spunky and Tadpole". This animation paired a
boy (Spunky) with a bear (Tadpole). Don't ask me to explain it. I
believe it was episodic. It also has faded deep into the mustier
regions of my brain, where few dare to tread.
The second show is "Herjay's Adventures of Tin Tin". Tin Tin was a
boy who had a number of non-SF type adventures in his various episodic
segments -- but one series of shows had him on a rocket to Mars.
These shows were later re-edited (much to my surprise) into a feature
length film, which actually runs on television occasionally.
---
One program that lies on the boundary between entertainment and
education involved a pair of (live action) boys who take a rowboat
ride down a river in some basically metropolitan area. They pass
through a tunnel, and when they come out the other side, discover they
are millions of years back in time, and moving rapidly farther back as
they move farther down the river. The show involved their seeing
various animals at different stages of evolution as they moved deeper
and deeper into the past with each episode. Eventually, in a somewhat
unclear segment, they reach the "creation" of the Earth as a molten
mass in the Big Bang. It is unclear what happens to them at this
point (at least to my memory) -- but I believe there was some
implication that they looped back around in cyclical time.
---
Gee, here's one that's pretty obscure! How about "The Big World of
Little Atom?" This animated program taught science facts in the guise
of entertainment. Anyone remember?
---
And now, a query. For years I have been trying to locate a print of a
film/TV show that nobody but me seems to remember -- a bad sign to say
the least!
The film version was called "The Adventures of Mr. Wonderbird", I
believe. It was later broken up into many episodes and aired on
television under the name "The Shepherdess and the Chimneysweep".
This was an animated feature, involving a shepherdess who was being
held prisoner by a king. A chimneysweep was trying to rescue her,
with the help of a strange bird -- Mr. Wonderbird. The element of
this film that made it so fantastic was the technology that this king
had at his disposal. He lived in a tremendous mechanized palace. He
was continually dropping enemies down trap doors that would appear
beneath them at the pull of a lever or the push of a button. He had a
fantastic transportation system for getting around the castle, and a
large robot which also was important to the plot. It has been years
since I have seen it, but I remember it very fondly. Any information
about where it might be hiding -- such as who produced it, would be
appreciated. Even someone else verifying that THEY remember it would
make me feel a bit better. Thanks much.
[ Please send any information about this film directly to Lauren,
not to SF-LOVERS. -- Jim ]
--Lauren--
------------------------------
Date: 7 Jun 1981 (Sunday) 0637-EDT
From: SHRAGE at WHARTON-10 (Jeffrey Shrager)
Subject: The mechanics of Winky Dink
Firstly, one was asked to purchase a special clear plastic mat that
was taped to your TV screen and included a set of water soluble
markers. W.D. was mainly a line drawn cartoon and on occasion the
main character would say...
"Ok, boys and girls, now, trace that door over there so that I can
escape."
Then they would pause for little jeffy to trace the door on his mat in
erasable marker (or on the TV screen in indelible black marker if
mommy hadn't bought a mat for him -- clearly the entire point of the
show was to get the parents to buy these things) and after a
reasonable interval the screen would shift and "lo and behold!" the
door appeared on the once bare wall by virtue of its having been
traced on the mat.
This was actually quite clever on several counts...(1) the obvious
cleverness of the design of the system, (2) the marketing strategy of
providing an extra income to the program (who was, I'm sure, getting
some percentage of the mat profits), (3) the writers didn't have to do
much work... most of the show was pauses to draw and erase the mat.
Another technique that I count as quite clever along the same lines as
the Winky Dink mat is the little teaching machine that looks like a
robot and houses an eight-track cassette. Now, I had always
considered 8-t a useless pursuit until I saw this thing.... On t-1
they ask a question that has several possible solutions and then ask
the listener to choose the correct solution from one of the "answer"
buttons labeled A,B,C,D. How clever-- of course, the "answer buttons"
were the track selectors and the track that had the right answer said
"very good" and then played some music while all the other tracks were
catching up with an error report and detail explanation of the correct
answer.
One of the neatest things about that is that, since 8-ts are
continuous loops, you can do all sorts of clever q-a mapping from one
tack to the next. Actually, I have to think about this some more to
see whether it is really capable of having simultaneous questions on
the different tracks.
------------------------------
Date: 7 Jun 1981 (Sunday) 1904-EDT
From: PLATTS at WHARTON-10 (Steve Platt)
Subject: Compu-fiction
In regards to the user-input fiction story... I seem to recall a
similar device at the '64 World's Fair (NYC) using segmented motion
pictures ("movies"). After every few minutes, (at a possible split in
the plot,) the audience was allowed to vote on which course of action
to take (binary choices).
The trick was, rather than having 2^n movie segments, was to have
the two courses after choice reconverge to a common next-decision.
Thus, only 2*n movie segments were needed.
-Steve
------------------------------
Date: 7 Jun 1981 0926-PDT (Sunday)
From: Mark at UCLA-SECURITY (Mark Kampe)
Subject: theme to Fireball XL-5
Mike Urban, knowing of my strange tastes and talents asked me to
submit this to you - saying that you had been searching for it. I may
have missed a final verse, but I am fairly certain that these are the
first two verses of the fireball XL5 theme song.
The person who relayed the question also gave me a bonus problem (far
more difficult) that being the theme tune to "clutch cargo". I offer
only an attempt at that.
Now, without further adieu....
I wish I was a spa-a-ace man,
I wish that you were too.
We'd cruise around the universe,
together, me and you.
Chorus: Through a wonder-world of stardust,
We'll zoom away to mah-ahrs....
My heart would be a fireball...
(doo-doo-oo-doo)
a fireball...
And you would be my venus of the stah-ah-ahrs
We'll take a trip to Jupiter,
and maybe very soon,
we'll cruise along the milkyway
and land upon the moon
Chorus
Clutch Cargo, however, was a far more difficult problem.
I remember the rhythm and harmony, but the melody was quite illusive
(and of course I know it was instrumental).
The rhythm was quite simple
4/4 - moderate
_ _
_ _ _ | |
| |_ |_ | |
| | | O O
O O O
played on bongo like drums with the last two notes struck
on a drum tuned about 1/4 higher than the first three
The harmony was more an (american) indian like tune played on a wood
flute. I have a pretty good memory of it, but I can't write music
without a keyboard in front of me - but it might have been
_
_ |_ _
_ _ _ _ |_ _ _ _ | |_ _ _ _
_ |_ |_ |_ | | |_ |_ | O | |_ _ |_ |_
| | | | | O | | | O |_ |_ |_ |
| O O O O O O O O |_ O O
O O
My memory on the melody is not good, but I seem to recall that it was
also played on a wood flute (about 1/2 octave lower) and that it
started with the harmony and then danced around scales while keeping
the same rhythm - but no bets on that.
---mark---
------------------------------
Date: 17 May 1981 15:17-EDT
From: "Kenneth W. Haase, Jr." <KWH AT MIT-AI>
Subject: The Three Investigators
Ah! Fond remembrances! The Three Investigators were three high school
kids (one an abnormally precocious one) who started their own
detective agency based in the precocious ones uncles junkyard. They
had Alfred Hitchcock as their more-or-less mentor, whom they hardly
ever saw. It was a neat series with all kinds of "kids show up
adults" scenes in it.
Louis Slobdkin's stories about the "spaceship under the apple tree"
also strike a familiar bell. It was about an alien boy who lands on a
farm and becomes friends with a terran boy, joins the boy scouts etc;
Fun reading.
Does anyone out there remember a series of short stories about a group
of boy scouts who find a time machine behind a rock fall and have a
lot of fun traipsing through the ages with it. There are some really
nice scenes in them, like life in an underwater farm, or an obnoxious
boy-king's visit to the twentieth century.. Anybody remember who
wrote them?
Ken Haase
------------------------------
End of SF-LOVERS Digest
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