. founded march 12, 1995 _| : _____ t r a x w e e k l y # 107 ______________ |___| _ _______/ /\___________________________ / ____________/ /\__\ _ _______/____/_____________________________ / / _________ \/__/ ______\ \_____________________________ / / / `_ . .~ \____\/ _ __ ___ / / / _____ . _ \ __ ___ _/__/\ / / / / /\ _ The Music Scene Newsletter __ __\__\/ _/__/ / ____/ /__\_________________________________ _____ ___ _ / /\/ /___ __________ _ ______ _ ___ \/ /\ / / /____/ \ \ / /\ / __/\ / /\ \ \ / \ /____/ / / \ / \/ /_ \___/___/ \ \_/___/ / \_/ / / \ ___\ / /_/ /______/\/ \ /______/\/ \ /_____/ // \ \ / / / \ / / \ \ \ \_\ \ \ \_\ \ //____/\____\/ / / / / / \______\/ \______\/ \_____\/ \ \ \ \ / / / / \____\/\____\ / / / / _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ / / / /__/ w /\___/ /\___/ e /\___/ /\__ / l /\___/ /\____/ / / __/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/____/________/ / __\ \____\ e \____\ \____\ k \ ___\ \____\ y \__________/ \____\/ \____\/ \____\/ \____\/ \____\/ \____\/WW ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | TraxWeekly Issue #107 | Release date: 01 Aug 1997 | Subscribers: 954 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ]--[Introduction]------------------------------------------------------------[ Welcome to TraxWeekly Issue #107. Last week I fouled up Airon's article on "a little panning," so here you will find it again with the correct diagram. Our vigilant staff writer Zinc brings us the Demotape Directory again, along with a piece on music theory for the layman. Vincent Voois goes in depth on sound cards from Creative Labs, Advanced Gravis, and Terratec. And of course, I myself am causing trouble by reading other people's emails and making irritating remakrs about them. =) Readers! What do you want to see in TraxWeekly? Interviews? TraxCulture? Private and potentially embarassing email conversations? ;) Please let us know! Send a message either to me or any of the active staff: Bibby, Behemoth, and of course, Zinc. Until next week! Gene Wie (Psibelius) TraxWeekly Publishing gwie@csusm.edu ]--[Contents]----------------------------------------------------------------[ ________ _________________________________________________________________ / ____/_/ __/ \ __/ / _____/ \ __/ __/ ___/_ < \____\ \ \\ \ \\____ __/ __/_\ \ \\____ \_____ \__ \ \ \ \\ \ \ww\ \\ \\ \ \ \ \ \_ _\________\________\\___\____\ \_____\\_______\\___\____\ \_____\_______\ General Articles 1. A Little Panning (reprint)....................Airon 2. Layman's Music Theory.........................Zinc 3. On Proper Requests............................Psibelius 4. Gravis vs Creative vs Terratec................Vincent Voois 5. DemoTape Directory............................Zinc Closing Distribution Subscription/Contribution Information TraxWeekly Staff Sheet ]--[General Articles]--------------------------------------------------------[ --[1. A Little Panning]----------------------------------------------[Airon]-- Ever sat there and smoked some brain cells over what panning data to put into the command ? I'm talking Impulsetracker here now. The panning command sits in the volume column ... so that means ... uhhm ... from 0 to 64 ... damn! I wanted to have X38 in the volume column to free space for a sample offset or delay command. Don't you hate having to translate between the two datas of the Xyy command and that green stuff in the volume column ? I do folks and here's your chart for easy reading : OUTER RING - VOLUME COLUMN PANNING ---------------------------------- 32 _ _ 32 80 30 - 78 88- 34 28 - 70 90 - 36 26 - 68 98 - 38 24 - 60 A0 - 40 22 - 58 A8 - 42 20 - 50 INNER RING - Xyy command PANNING B0 - 44 -------------------------------- 18 - 48 B8 - 46 16 - 40 C0 - 48 14 - 38 C8 - 50 12 - 30 D0 - 52 10 - 28 D8 - 54 08 - 20 E0 - 56 06 - 18 E8 - 58 04 - 10 F0 - 60 02 - 08 F8 - 62 00 - 00 FF - 64 This should ease the use of these two ways of panning with commands. Cheerio from an English guy Tony (Airon / Phase^D musician, Phase^D Webmaster) http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~airou/phd ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ --[2. Layman's Music Theory PART ONE]---------------------------------[Zinc]-- (but don't count on future parts unless i get lots of feedback!) by Zinc rays@direct.ca INTRODUCTION: "Basehead" is an anagram for "He's A Bead" Until not too long ago, I thought I didn't need music theory. Unless I plan on composing 'experimental' techno for the rest of my life, though, I finally realized that I'd have to finally learn how to make different sounds work together. My problem is that every single article I've ever read in TraxWeekly or Audiophile or elsewhere were written for the learned man (or woman, you sexism freaks!). Since I have absolutely no formal music training, I have no idea what people are talking about when they try to explain most theory to me. So, who better to write an article on music theory for the musically challenged than yours truly! If you have a decent comprehension of theory, you should probably stop reading right now. If you have no idea how to figure out the notes in an Augmented chord, THIS ARTICLE IS FOR YOU - READ ON! Now I know some of you know about theory but decided to read this anyway. If that's you, don't nitpick about technicalities in my article, but if you want, send me feedback on how I can correct them in the future. CHORDS "GOAway" First of all, let's start with the basics: chords. Two or more notes played together is a chord. Most commonly, a chord will consist of three or most notes. A three-note chord is called a TRIAD. The root of a chord is the note from which a chord is constructed. For example, C is the root note of Cmaj or Cmin etc.. The relationship of the intervals from the root to the other notes of a chord determines the CHORD TYPE. Triads are most frequently identified by four chord types: MAJOR, MINOR, DIMINISHED, and AUGMENTED. INTERVALS "Using shareware is the art of pretending not to pirate software." Hold on there! Intervals? I know a C major is C-E-G. Okay, so let's break this down into intervals, using the C major scale (shown below). (ill. 1) C D E F G A B C (D F A) Scale Degree: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 (9 11 13) Intervals from C: M2 M3 P4 P5 M6 M7 P8 Your C is a 1. Now, starting from the C, count three scale degrees: C-D-E. An interval of a 4th, starting on C, would take us to an F. A 5th, G. You can see now that a C major contains a 3rd and a 5th. The fun does not end there, however! Intervals themselves are measured by their qualities, namely these five: (ill. 2) M = Major m = Minor P = Perfect o = Diminished (dim) + = Augmented (aug) Look back at the C major scale (ill. 1) You can see that the example of C-E-G, that's right, a Cmaj, had the Intervals of M3 and P5. In fact, all major triads have a M3 and P5. How exactly does the M, m, P, etc. affect the actual chord? Here are how the qualities work: o When a MAJOR interval is flattened by half a note, it becomes a MINOR interval. ie. M3 -> m3 E -> Eb o When a MINOR interval is made larger by a half step, it becomes a MAJOR interval. ie. m6 -> M6 Ab -> A o When a MINOR or PERFECT interval is made smaller by a half step, it becomes a DIMINISHED interval. ie. P5 -> dim5 m7 -> dim7 G -> Gb Bb -> A o When a MAJOR or PERFECT interval is made larger by a half step, it becomes an AUGMENTED interval. ie. P4 -> aug4 M9 -> aug9 F -> F# Here's another wonderful chart! It's a Table Of Intervals. Note that a few intervals are actually the same as another interval. These are enharmonic equivalents (they sound the same) but are written differently. Remember, one step is one whole note which is two half notes! (ill. 3) m2 1/2 step M2 1 step aug2 1 1/2 steps m3 1 1/2 steps M3 2 steps P4 2 1/2 steps aug4 3 steps dim5 3 steps P5 3 1/2 steps aug5 4 steps m6 4 steps M6 4 1/2 steps dim7 4 1/2 steps m7 5 steps M7 5 1/2 steps P8 6 steps m9 6 1/2 steps M9 7 steps aug9 7 1/2 steps P11 8 1/2 steps aug11 9 steps m13 10 steps M13 10 1/2 steps You may want to print that out. Anyways, using your head you should be able to figure out any basic triad. Let's see if I can do it off the top of my head. Hmm how about F#m.. Okay F#-A-C#? Let's see. Diminish the 3rd to m3. Checking the chart above (ill. 3) that means we go 1 1/2 steps up... Yep, A... Then, P5 means three and a half steps which would take us to C#. It works! If you have a keyboard (actually if you don't know this stuff by now then probably you don't) you can play with all the basic triads, and pretty soon you've memorized them all. Then you can move on to 7ths and things. Basehead told me that there's really no way to tell what chords will sound good together unless you just play them, so get a guitar or keyboard and see what sounds good. Anyways, that was a pretty basic introduction to theory. Hopefully there will be more theory articles in the future for you to absorb. I won't guarantee a follow-up to this simplistic article, but, like I said, if I get enough people giving me feedback, I'll notice that it was worth writing and I'll definately continue the series. Until next time, keep tracking, and get those demotape directory updates in to me! (oh, and AVOID THE LEMONS!) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ --[3. On Proper Requests]----------------------------------------[Psibelius]-- Probably the most entertaining thing about being a newsletter editor is find juicy emails like this one in your mailbox. On occasion, they cover numerous subjects from sample and song ripping to temper tantrums being thrown by members of various groups on various subjects. Often, they are sent to me by various individuals within the scene who, for one reason or another, have earned the general animosity of another individual within the scene. Regardless, I did find this particular message fairly funny in a twisted sort of way, and I thought all of you might enjoy a break from all those music theory and tracking technique articles. =) ----- Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 11:46:35 -0700 To: RaD Man [ACiD Founder] Subject: aghgh Guess what, Radman; Nova, Beaner, Rimbo, and I AREN'T in ACiD/pHluid anymore, so why don't you get a clue and take us off the fucking web page? Didn't it say "Nova and Xenoc were kicked out in spring cleaning because nobody wanted to listen to our music, anyway" in a past newsletter? You're so full of shit; couldn't even admit that a couple of your best members chose to leave the group for another. What a bunch of morons. In the meantime, why don't you get ahold of our new groove disk #2, including songs from Basehead, Scirocco, Ozone, Hunz, Lord Pegasus (Zack), Stalker (Ari), Sirrus, Chris Jarvis, Me, and many more... Feel free to drool and kick yourself as much as you want for being such a dipshit. -Xenoc [aNaLOGUE '97] ----- Now frankly, this is none of my business at all, but assuming that Xenoc is speaking for Nova, Beaner, and Rimbo...this is no way to ask anyone to do anything. I think a simple email from a musician that states, "I am no longer part of such-and-such group. Please remove me from the memberlist in distribution and on the web" is much more efficient at getting results than "get a clue," "you are full of shit," and "you are a moron" stuff. A much better way to publicize your "Groove Disk #2" would be to send me an advertisement for the next issue of TraxWeekly, so that the nine hundred plus subscribers here will be alerted to the presence of a new music disk featuring the works of the wonderful Analogue musicians Basehead, Scirocco, Ozone, Hunz, Lord Pegasus (Zack), Stalker (Ari), Sirrus, and Chris Jarvis. Also if one of you would be so kind as to email me at gwie@csusm.edu with the web or ftp location of your "Groove Disk #2," I would be very happy to feature it in next week's issue. For those of you who are unaware, Ryan Hunt (aka pinion), who organizes the phluid music group, has had a major hardware problem. At this point in time he lacks a functioning modem in which to coordinate the activities of the phluid music group. Those of you who are in the group (or have left recently) have probably heard and seen nothing. As a result, Mr. Hunt has not been able to get online to update the phluid web page and memberlist. Being familiar with the world wide web will aid in understanding that web pages are sometimes not updated as frequently as one would like. As Mr. Hunt is a good friend of mine and lives relatively close to my university, I am temporarily handling the group's affairs. For those musicians who are in the group, or are even vaguely interested in releasing anything with it, please send me a message at so that I may have things straightened out. Thank you for your patience. Have a good day! -G. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ --[4. Gravis VS Creative VS Terratec]------------------------[Vincent Voois]-- I was reading an intresting looking article about the Gus Extreme (ViperMax as they called it as OEM) and their comparance to Creative Labs Soundblaster series (pro, 16, AWE 32/64) wich was presented on TraxWeekly 106. Since i had various soundcards in my "pc-life" i think it is a good thing to give some good facts about the different cards available.. Not only my experiences but also other people's experiences are involved here. Nopes, my first soundcard was not a GUS but a Soundblaster compatible clone Prosonic 16 from MediaVision. A good clone alas it did not last for five months when it broke down, so i returned it to my retailer for exchange for a good one. After haven't heard from it in about am onth i bought a Gravis Ultrasound Max. A real neat soundcard and hey:no stupid software mixing noise! cool! Two weeks later the retailer wich still had my defective Soundblaster, called up and offered me another Soundblaster compatible in exchange for the Prosonic since they had big problems with Mediavision (A complete line of prosonic's were very wrong assembled so many people returned their defective soundcard) Only because Gravis Max lacked of OPL support on the Max i decided to accept the sb-clone exchange for the Prosonic sb-clone. (Wich became Trust Expert, not THE best but it won't quit on you!). "What do you want with an OPL-chip then?" That's quiet easy if you got a C64 past and still want to do enough with generated waveforms:you choose a card wich has a simular intergrated circuit like the SID 6581 and that became the Yamaha OPL. Okay, the Noise wave sucks, but you can do very neat feedback tricks to create some nice hihats, and you need more tracks than one to have some nice drumsounds created but that's it. I have some s3m's written in adlibmode wich shows it. Okay, to prevent heading off topic i return to the soundcard facts. Gravis is capable of offering clear quality and sounding in wavetable what Soundblaster x.x/pro/16 does with softwaremixing, but then without NOISE (no offense against the music group:)). I have now an AWE 32 (they call it SB32 PNP wich does not have implemented Synths for mid or something in comparance to a complete SB AWE 32). Disadvantages of the AWE in comparance to GUS tested in Impulse Tracker wich is one of the less editors supporting AWE: -30 hardware tracks, Creative says 32 but they lie, it is 30, EMU8000 only supports 30 tracks. AWE 64 has 32 hardware and 32 software tracks (bwu, useless to my opinion wich kind of software supports that? my opinion:buy an AWE32 if you want EMU8000) AWE 32 has 32 Hardware/Software tracks (?complete nonsense from Creative as far as i can concern or might have misunderstood things from their documents online but it looks like 30/256 to me (if you have a fast system).) -Clicking:AWE is not really built for tracking:the more tricks you use and the smaller your samples become, the more awfull clicks you hear, you'ld rather enable Soundblaster 16 mode and listen mod's in it then hear it on the AWE. I have found trick against clicking, but you have to stay off the commandcolumn options, that sucks. -Plays 16 bit samples only:yeps in IT, 8 bit samples get converted to 16 bit in order that IT can play those samples that also creates more clicking specially when samples are very short and looped too. -44.1 Khz hardware frequency limit:most gus samples sampled above 44Khz or will be played with a Khz rate above 44.1 will not be sounded at all! -EMU updating sucks:When you want to finetune a sample, you have to constantly reinitialise the soundcard to hear the result. I finetune in SB-16 mode since you can hear the result when you change the frequencyvalue right away. -RAM-upload fucks up sometimes:you have to reinitialise your soundcard in IT because some samples are not placed correctly into the AWE RAM, probably because the ram isn't cleared correctly after playing the previous tune in IT. -Canned sound:The AWE may sound warmer than it's SB x.x/pro/16 variants, it is still sounding canned and it has deprecated it's warm base environment wich sounds colder than in SB x.x/pro/16 mode! Advantages of AWE in comparance to GUS: -AWE has digital processing circuit implemented, offers a neat effect on your playing environment in chorussing and reverbing, when you have good quality samples these things can make your song sound very professional. Sure, invest money in external devices wich do that for you, on an AWE these things are just toys when you have that kind of equipment. Besides:when you have badly centered samples, these effects fuck up your samplesounding badly! -Memory up to 28 MB (huh? why not 32?) yes you have to put two 16 MB simms on it and you loose 4 MB since the EMU8000 seem to reserve the first four MB for midi-instrument mode as i understand from the Creative's docs online, it's really lame but it isn't otherwise. -It has a REAL surround-mode circuit implemented, hell it has a better Midi environment in samples than gus that's for sure now! Only:a real midifreak uses it's own external divices:he does not buy an AWE for such purposes. -External Soundbank support, hehehe it may look like an advantage, yes if you are a Midifreak without external Midi-equipment, you certainly have the wrong soundcard if you have GUS. But when you track, you are no midifreak and trackers find external Soundfonts very lame since it is nothing more than a midifile with it's own samplepack SEPERATED from eachother. I rather have mod wich is COMPLETE! To "those" midifreaks i advise them to become a modfreak instead :) Okay, this is info based on AWE 32 against MAX!, i don't have a ViperMax or a GUS PNP, but as i have sensed from various PNP card users: PNP cards suck in overall not only because Window's lacks deinstalling of PNP-carddrivers when it does NOT find the PNP-card anymore, it still keeping detecting PNP cards when you kick them out of your window's user-environment because you want to have another soundcard running in it. It's a typical PNP problem wich also teased many Macintosh users but they had a little problem extra:the PNP-card drivers were implemented on the PNPcard itselves, wich does not seem wrong to me, but any updating was out of the question since they weren't set like you can software update your USR/Rockwell/Zyxell-NVRAM-chips. Now, the article's topic also mentions Terratec. For the ones who do not know what Terratec produces:EWS. EWS has 64 hardware channels (YES ultimate cool fact number one) and has supports digital I/O (yes Ultimate cool fact number two) and seem to work properly with extreme samplehandlings such as multilevel command processing (cool fact number three). It has only one bug on the moment in it's digital output:it fucks up the samples, they are fixing it at Terratec but it will be finished in about two months from now i guess. More specifications and experiences on these soundcards can be read on www.maz-sound.com. I think Jeffrey Limm can be more specific about what each soundcard does since he supports various in IT and can be more accurate than me i suppose. You have also Kurzweill from Turtlebeachexisting, but this is really more a midicard to my opinion, it has GOOD quality but lacks various form of good multileveled sampleprocessing adaption support without crackles and fuckups. Not mentioned is the SoundTrack'97 soundcard:i don't know ANYthing about this soundcard except it is from Hoontec. As far as i concern these soundcards, my advise is to save bucks for an EWS and some external digital/analogue processors if you want to have some neat effects to your songs for professional recordings. But above all:use your common sense and ask you retailer if you may test these soundcards locally with your own tools for a good opinion! What a descent soundcard should have to my opinion: -Good RAM support -Multilevel sampleprocessing support: not only in EMS also controllable on the card's RAM self please! -OPL and/or MOS 6581 implementation :) -Digital I/O, -68Khz hardwarefrequency range, -Ram expansion up to 64MB (how about recording audiotracks without wasting HD-space :)) -IF implementing PNP support, only deliver a small driver calling up cardspecs from a software updatable NVRAM installed on the SOUNDCARD! It does not only prevent problems arising with deinstalling a PNP soundcard. It can be installed AGAIN without the problems wich arise due to improper or no full deinstallation. -IF implementing effect-toys like Chorus, Reverb, Delay, Phasing etc. Send it to the Digital I/O and Recording DMA (the last one is tricky!) too. No surround offcourse, Surround is a playing tool only, people can have two tin cans and a string between them as playing device! :) -Last but most important:Give SDK support and specification support, lacking good support makes you a lame company, whatever you produce! For firm in averages, GUS wins in all, for professionality: EWS wins above AWE. Creative labs still does not seem to show respect for the average home-made musicians and trackers AND gamedevelopers and they don't deliver what they promise. They seem intrested in the money only. Let's not discuss the SB 64-bit soundcard since it requires a pentium 90 as a minimum systemrequirement because it has totally NO onboard RAM. Creative still has the "go to hell" status from me in spite of the professional level their AWE delivers; GUS deserves it's living; EWS keeps my attention. Sources: www.creafs.com www.maz-sound.com Maz' own experiences about EWS and Turtlebeach. www.gravis.com www.terratec.com My own experiences. Vv. vv@musician.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ --[5. Demotape Directory]---------------------------------------------[Zinc]-- Greetings! This column is back once again for another run. The last run was way back in February, and finally there is a new listing from Sublevel 3. I plan on reviewing this CD when I get it. Look for the review in this column. Several of these listings are probably outdated or obselete. If there are any errors TELL ME! Remember to mail me with any new listings at rays@direct.ca and give me all the information possible: release date, price, name of album, style(s) used, and so on. Your contact e-mail address is vital! NEW: I'll now be accepting listings for those of you who also happen to have bands and want to advertise your indie records. Also, I'll to an in depth review in this column for anyone who wants to send me a copy of their album. Contact me if interested and we can work something out. PSEUDO-DISCLAIMER: :) The following demo tape/cds are organized by artist, alphabetically. All dates are approximate. There may be surcharges for s&h fees, etc. I am not responsible for misinformation. Contact me to correct errors. DEMOTAPE DIRECTORY for SUMMER 1997 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- B00MER - Negative Youth CS - $5 US + SH ($1.25 extra for metal tape) Industrial/techno September 1996 boomer@a.crl.com OR www.atdt.com/bliss/form.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------- bibby - Subsequence - Seclusion Records CS - $5 includes SH Techno-Rock October 1996 bibby@juno.com Original .ITs unavailable on the internet. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Electric Keet - version one point zero beta CD - $15 or CS - $10 Everything. Classical to techno January 1997 tracerj@asis.com OR http://asis.com/~tracerj/ek.htm 18 tracks, five exclusive to CD. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- IQ and Maelcum - FTZ "Nothing Is True" CD - $8 US + S&H N/A 1995 maelcum@kosmic.org OR www.kosmic.org/areawww/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mental Floss - Grey Matter CS - $10 US mixed techno N/A andrewm@io.org OR www.io.org/~andrewm/greymatter -------------------------------------------------------------------------- PeriSoft & SupaMart - Live Inside Your Computer CS - $6 US Ambient/Trance/Techno July 1996 mwiernic@pinion.sl.pitt.edu OR supamart@servtechcom -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sublevel 3 - Submerged CD - $? Ambient, Techno, Trip-Hop ? (guys, please update me on this!) www.sublevel3.org -------------------------------------------------------------------------- All listings follow this format: Author/Title/[Label] Format/Price (CS = Cassette, CD = Compact Disc, S&H = Shipping Costs) Style(s) Used Release Date Contact (email/WWW) Other Think tracked music is commercially viable? Prove it! Support the scene! Suggestions and comments are welcome. - zinc / rays@direct.ca ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ]--[Closing]-----------------------------------------------------------------[ TraxWeekly is available via FTP from: ftp.hornet.org /pub/demos/incoming/info/ (new issues) ftp.hornet.org /pub/demos/info/traxweek/1995/ (back issues) /pub/demos/info/traxweek/1996/ /pub/demos/info/traxweek/1997/ TraxWeekly is available via WWW from: www.hornet.org, under section "Information" and subsection "TraxWeekly." To subscribe, send mail to: listserver@unseen.aztec.co.za and put in the message body: subscribe trax-weekly [your *name*, NOT email] To unsubscribe, mail same and: unsubscribe trax-weekly (in the message body) Contributions for TraxWeekly must be formatted for *78* columns, and must have a space preceding each line. Please try to avoid the use of high ascii characters, profanity, and above all, use your common sense. Contributions should be mailed as plain ascii text or filemailed to: gwie@csusm.edu before 11:00pm PST every Wednesday. TraxWeekly is usually released over the listserver and ftp.cdrom.com every Thursday or Friday. TraxWeekly does not discriminate based on age, gender, race, or political and religious views. The staff can be reached at the following: Editor: Psibelius (Gene Wie)..............gwie@csusm.edu Writers: Atlantic (Barry Freeman)..........as566@torfree.net Behemoth (David Menkes)...........behemoth@mscomm.com Bibby (Andrew Bibby)..............bibby@juno.com Mage (Glen Dwayne Warner).........gdwarner@ricochet.net Zinc (Justin Ray).................rays@direct.ca ascii graphic contributors: Cruel Creator, Stezotehic, Squidgalator2, Thomas Knuppe, White Wizard TraxWeekly is a HORNET affiliation. Copyright (c)1995,1996,1997 - TraxWeekly Publishing, All Rights Reserved. ]--[END]---------------------------------------------------------------------[ :: ::: : . ..... ..............................:::.................:.... ::: : :::: : .::::. .:::::.:::. ..:::: :::: : :: :: ::: .:: :: :: WW:::: : ::. :: ::: .:: :: .:: :::: : :::.::. ::: .:: .:: .:::::... :: :::.. ... ..: ... ..:::::::::::::::: .:: .::::::: :::::::: ::::::.. ::: ::: ::: : until next week! =) .. ... .. ....... ............... .................:..... .. . :