once more, into the breach

[Dave Hsu <hsu@eneevax.umd.edu>]

_Prologue_

Something was bothering me today.  Something big.  Something more
important than all those finals coming up.

I thought.  I wondered.  I couldn't figure out what it was.  I went
home.  And then it hit me.

I *had* to know which of you had the most plausible explanation for the
X4 `hidden' message.

It would take some tape.  It would require me to fix my walkman.  It
would take time.  So, after three hours, a little solder, a lot of
wire, two soldering irons, a box of cassettes, various screwdrivers,
several batteries of assorted types, one dead Aiwa, one borrowed and
horrible double-cassette boom box with a graphic equalizer, two sets of
headphones, one CD player, one recoton adapter, and numerous peculiar
cable connectors later, I had:
	(1) a working walkman (yay!)
	(2) two cassettes partially filled with bizarre sounds
	(3) a very woozy brain from listening to (2)
	(4) burn marks on two fingers from dragging the capstan flywheel
	(5) a better idea of what the message might be

_Our Story_

Funny thing about dubbing decks, even trashy ones; most of them have
this little button that severely bumps the speed up.  So I tried
recording the message at a ridiculous speed, and played it back at the
standard setting.  No dice.  Poor Kate sounded like HAL9000 just before
he passed out for good.  The equalizer helped a little, but I spent
most of my time trying to filter out a horrible hiss and line hum, both
of which appeared on the speaker and headphone outputs but not on the
copied tape.  Taped at normal speed and moved to walkman.

I tried dragging every moving part I could reach, and settled on the
capstan flywheel.  It was brass, a good size, and I could control it rather
smoothly.  Slowed it down just enough to prevent auto-reverse from
kicking in.  Listened for myself.  Listened with IED's message in mind.
Listened with Phil's message in mind.  Listened while playing devil's
advocate.  Listened with nothing in mind.

It definitely did not sound like Phil's message.  IED's sounded very
plausible, but I have a few reservations.  To my ears, the last words
are very clearly:

	... me a little toy instrument (echos of "instrument")

IED's "bring" might be possible, but I hear "make" more clearly.
I have almost no trouble agreeing with his "I" and "my" and "gonna" but
the "bet" and "mum's" aren't anywhere as clear.  "Bet", in particular,
sounds a lot like "doubt" to me, and then the line doesn't make much
sense.  So, I'm up to "I (doubt) (my) (?) gonna make me a little toy
instrument", where parenthesized words remain mostly muddled to me.
Another try this weekend, and we'll see if I make any progress.

-dave
-- 
David T. Hsu			Newsaholic Emeritus
ARPA:	hsu@eneevax.umd.edu	UUCP: [seismo,allegra]!mimsy!eneevax!hsu
USNAIL: soon leaving the EE Computer Facility, U of Md, College Park, MD 20742
"So when you're playing, you feel like a preserved moose, on stage?"  "Yeah."