chilli

Okay, the links are working for me now... but did you catch my post re: bitrate? They are all still 40kbps.

Better too high than too low IME... still waiting for that all important evidence though.

Smokers are jokers.

Hi vapour, My bullshit alarm is going off again... Okay, I'm sure you're sworn to secrecy and all that, and so you will under no circumstances divulge the identity of this mysterious plant, but could you at least please provide some evidence of its centrality to aboriginal creation stories? Or is that Top Secret as well?

Hi GreenDreams, You're right, I'm sorry for that moment of genuine niceness, it was very late and I was in an unusually good mood. I didn't stop to think about the way my rare compliment could be interpreted as some kind of twisted psychological ploy to subtly insult you. I'll try and stick to unwarranted cynicism about human goodness from now on. I take it all back, you are a stuck-up arsehole after all. Hopefully one with a good sense of humor... _______________________________________ Hi Anodyne, Why don't you and husk take it to PM instead of messing up GreenDreams' eloquent, interesting babblings with your own dull, predictable ones? But before you do, isn't "whiteys" more of an epithet than "white"? Oh well, at least you didn't say "white cunts"

Only the first link works for me too, and when I clicked on your profile at esnips, there is only one track showing up in your shared folder... maybe the reason you are seeing them is because its your account... if the files are there, perhaps they are "hidden" from everyone but the account holder... is there an option to make files public or something?

Hi paradox, Most audio hosting sites recompress the tracks you upload, so even if you upload a 128kbps mp3, they'll compress it again. Also, you should realize that no matter how good the compression you use on an mp3, you will lose quality, and the lower your bitrate the more noticeable this will be. I have noticed when I compress tracks that sometimes a better mix results in better results... work on balancing yor frequencies etc. Okay, I have just checked out the first track, SpaceShaman... were you aware it was sampled at 40kbps? If so, it is not surprising it sounds crap, this is an extremely poor sampling rate for mp3. A good starting point for mp3 would be 128kbps, but even at this rate there will be a noticeable loss of quality. For personal listening, I find 192 to be a good compromise between sound quality and size. Most free sites won't let you upload anything over 128kbps unless you pay though. If you do upload to a site, and you're wondering if they are recompressing your tracks, you can simply download the track from their site, then do an A/B comparison with your original mp3. Apparently, there are some sites that will allow you to upload your tracks as wav files, then they compress those... this is the ideal option for these kinds of places, as it means your music only suffers one set of data loss, instead of two. Will esnips only allow you to stream mp3 formatted music, or can you choose other formats? If you can, perhaps you would like to try experimenting with wma and m4a codecs. There are some good reasons for sticking with mp3, but if you do use it, make sure you use AT LEAST 128kbps, but preferably higher. Something else you might want to try is VBR (Variable Bit Rate) which allows you to set a minimum and maximum bitrate, and then adjusts according to the complexity of each individual track.

Sorry shroomytonos, its because I made a corny joke earlier in the thread and Torsten said he had expected someone to say it, probably you.

Hi komodo, I'll admit I'm slightly confused... I personally would not draw such a sharp distinction between values and morality... Moreover, I thought we differed not about whether values and morals existed, but whether we could consider them to have any meaning beyond a fleeting personal preference? Besides, if it is not a question of values, why did you finish by saying "values go beyond morality"? I think I understood your point well enough, I'm just saying it is useless to offer arguments that show people derive pleasure from certain actions as a debunking of nihilism, since a nihilistic view would be that there is no valid reason to prefer pleasure over pain. Nihilism goes far beyond both morality and personal values, it is not just about absence of morals, but absence of meaning altogether. My argument earlier was that the moral relativist generally lives a lifestyle inconsistent with the logical claims of their espoused wordlview, and I think this is a good illustration of that. Granted, the individual does not behave as a nihilst, but what I am arguing is that based on their belief system, they logically should. Sorry, I can't resist... all three of your statements there appeal to objective standards... as a moral relativist you must be careful about how you phrase these things. I am only half joking, this is in large part why I am skeptical with regards to this position. It is a difficult code to live by with consistency. Komodo, I hope you understand that none of this is levelled at you personally. I having been working these ideas out for myself in the back of my mind for a long time, and it is refreshing to bounce them off a real human instead of a dusty old book. Whenever you get sick of it, let me know and I'll go join a philosophy forum or something, where they can eat me for breakfast.

Hey GreenDreams, When I first started reading your posts I got the impression you were a bit full of yourself... Then I remembered that I tend to be a mistrustful, judgmental hypocrite who manages to find something wrong with just about everyone I meet for the first time, and I kept reading your posts... I would like to say I think you seem like a remarkable individual, and I am impressed by your energy, thoughtfulness and wit... your creativity and knowledge come out in every paragraph.

Some people do this, but I don't see the point as the casing essentially keeps the mycelium in the dark anyway... I just chucked mine in the fruiting chamber with my cakes.

Hehe, yeah its that one that I found particularly creepy... Have you seen the Robot Chicken segment "Disney Attacks"? Its on youtube: Pretty funny, that Seth Green is totally insane. *edit* changed the link to another version, that one was out of sync. Oh, and BTW I think those Disney cartoons are on youtube as well.

My sentence above was supposed to read "I too *have doubts* about adding..." Creach, why do you disagree with sterilizing the casing layer? It seems like bad advice for a first attempt, especially when it can be done so easily.

I got it really quickly, not sure why its taking so long for you... have you got it yet? I'm seeding this solely now for anyone who's interested, but my upload speed is only 128k... weird, when I dl it yesterday there was about 10seeds/3leechers, now theres like 4/140! OK, now its 80/120... plenty of available seeds. Benzito, do you have your ports set up properly?

Yeah Sphinx, I know what you mean, I do the same thing. RE: h202, I don't think much is needed, but the thing is I used quite a lot the first time, because I just wanted to make sure I got some shrooms. A few mL to every 500mL of 3% peroxide should be okay, but I didnt really measure, I just liberally splashed it in the water... Still got heaps of shrooms, and although I never ended up eating any of them, my bro says they were good. *edit* RE: Harry, I too about the need or wisdom of using h202 in the casing mix, I only used it in the water for the perlite in the fruiting chamber. I also had a slightly stronger mix on hand in a spraygun, but I think the only time I used it was on the exposed surface of a couple of partially uncolonized cakes I chopped.

Yawn, walk-ins and cosmic brotherhoods are so last millennium.... Oh and I agree, what a crock of narcissistic bullshit.

Like I said last time you asked this question: "Ideally, you should sterilize the casing mix in a pressure cooker, especially if peat is involved. I just used straight verm for my casing, and I zapped it in the microwave with no probs." Yeah 10min sounds fine, maybe too much depending on how much casing mix you have... and this would not really be pasteurization, no. BTW, with regards to h202, I probably went overboard with it with my first attempt, but I think it may have contributed to the fact that I had no contams at the birthing stage... well worth it IMO, just so you don't get discouraged on your first try.

Yeah that sounds pretty dumb.. I hadn't even read the whole article, so at first I thought I'd missed something. I just got this image of these aborigines in overalls and straw hats, carrying pitchforks and setting up scarewcrows... OMG, maybe I am shroomytonos. Anyway, what the hell are you doing up at this hour?

I'm glad the movie has a happy ending. Hey, BTW, I've been curious about this for a while... Can anyone with experience tell me if there is a significance difference between smoking opium and taking morpheine? For instance, does opium cause as much nausea? Is it gentler/less addictive? Is it more of an 'organic' experience, like taking Pedro syrup instead of extracted mesc?

21/12/2012. Apparently the last date on the Mayan Calander. Oh FARK!! What happens then? Maybe Jesus will come back.

Hey Torsten, Interesting theory, there definitely could be something to it... here's a comment I found whilst trawling the net with regards to this topic. "Pituri use these days is shrouded in mystery, and has become something of an outback Holy Grail for Ethnobotanists and New Age pilgrims alike." Source: http://aboriginalrights.suite101.com/artic...al_drug__pituri

Good points, but isn't South Australia actually a part of Oz? Sorry, that was pretty lame I guess. Hey anyway, didn't you make the comparison to South America originally? As for the rest of your post, again some very interesting points. I didn't know pituri use was so sparsely documented. I can certainly understand your ideas, and I think they are definitely feasible, but when we are reduced to speculation my natural tendency is to start hacking and slashing at anything in my path with my trusty Occam razor.

Hey Hebrew, I don't really understand where your question about greendreams ethnicity comes from, it seems like you're saying "what you reckon you're a blackfella, well you don't sound like one, you sound like an anthropologist" Can't an aboriginal be an anthropologist without rejecting his people and his heritage? Don't know if that's what you meant, but that's just how it came across to me. _______________________________________ Hey Torsten, I totally agree with all this, but it kind of feeds in to what I was asking, I just think maybe I didn't phrase it very clearly. What I was saying was that while I acknowledge the break in culture, I don't think it was actively aimed at eliminating hallucinogenic use, which I thought was what you were implying. What I was suggesting was that if there was knowledge about such things, there is a good chance it either would never have been discovered by white settlers due to the secrecy or rarity or both surrounding it, or that it would have persisted regardless of colonist interference as so much other aboriginal culture has. Part of the reason I think this is because if it had existed, and white settlers had known about it and tried to sanitize or eradicate it like the Spanish did in South America, then we would almost certainly have records of it. Furthermore, I don't think it would necessarily have been successfully eliminated, in the same way it was not successful there, and in the same way that attempts in Australia to eliminate knowledge of wider aboriginal culture was not (entirely) successful. This is what I meant when I said it seemed more likely that it either had never existed, or was lost long ago, or was lost during colonization due to the fact that so few had the knowledge, or perhaps was eliminated incidentally along with other aspects of aboriginal culture, although I think this last option is unlikely because I think there would be evidence for such a thing.

It sounds like you didn't read my question very carefully.

Hi Tonic, Well there's black people and dots, but beyond that, not really. Nice pics though. ___________________________ Hi shroomytoonos, Hehe, its peurile I know, but even after reading the rest of this gargantuan post, I'm still chuckling over this... ____________________________ Hi Torsten, Isn't it more likely that it hallucinogenic use either never existed, or died out long before colonization, or was restricted to only a few small tribes, and then a few individuals within those tribes, than that the knowledge was actively destroyed by white Christians? I think this seems like a long shot, especially when you consider that they were seeking to root out indigenous culture in general, and yet much knowledge has survived.