Many Uilleann pipers have lost their only contacts w/others

[Dale]

Why not get it over and done with, do a poll and then re-instate or scrap the lot depending on the outcome? (yes yes i tried but kept getting error messages when trying to add replies)

Why not just give me a few days to work the problem? Trust me, I'm getting plenty of email that lets me know the range of opinions.

[feadogin]

The problem is, in my view, the price of pipes. Not that I think they are more expensive than they should be, just that they are expensive. This causes any person who spends that kind of money and doesn't like the hardware to get pretty angry and emotional. It also moves people to DEFEND the hardware they paid so much for. I have to believe that's true, rather than the idea that pipers have a more surly temperament.

But if that was true, concertina players would get in flamewars too. They also spend huge money, and also endure long waiting times.

Yet, check out concertina.net. It is one of the nicest and most civil boards I ever did saw, and people only have positive things to say about everything and everyone. Even the one guy who just complains about everything is polite, and is treated graciously.

There must be some other factor. Maybe it's easier for concertina makers to appreciate the supreme difficulty of building a working instrument, and thus nobody would ever think to slag a maker just because he doesn't like the tone.

Caj

I agree...it's not the price. My theory? Too many boys.
Ever been in a frat house?

J.

[rebelpiper]

I agree...it's not the price. My theory? Too many boys.
Ever been in a frat house?

J.

can we all agree there needs to be more hot chicks in the piping community

[Martin Milner]

I agree...it's not the price. My theory? Too many boys.
Ever been in a frat house?

J.

can we all agree there needs to be more hot chicks in the piping community

There are plenty of hot fiddle-playing chicks, which must be why fiddlers are so smug

[Caj]

listserv is a much better "tool" than what chiffandfipple is currently running on which is PhpBB, a php implementation of mysql, it's basically a database, for goodness sake. it's a web app and fun, goofy more tailored to users with little experience outside the "web".

I think Usenet is much better than listservs.

Usenet is just a big fat pipe of articles, and all the organization is managed at the end, by a specialized program on your home computer. Hence you have complete control over what you see.

There are dozens to hundreds of these newsreader programs, many are free, and they come in all levels of usability, sophistication, etc. They are designed for handling huge volumes of blather. With a Usenet reader, I can go through hundreds of articles in half an hour and sift out just what I want.

The newsreader I use, called trn, displays an unobtrusive little graph of each thread in the corner, showing who replied to whom and the general shape of the conversation. It can also handle very complex filtering rules. I have it set up so that when this one crackpot posts to sci.crypt, his articles are filtered and so are any articles posted in reply to him, and any articles posted in reply to those, etc. This cleans out both the initial post and all of the corresponding flamefest.

Caj

[Caj]

can we all agree there needs to be more hot chicks in the piping community

It's so hard to recruit!! I keep going up to women and saying, "excuse me miss--do this with your elbows." *flap* *flap* *flap*

Oh, that reminds me, does anyone know a good defense attorney?

Caj

[Lorenzo]

Why not just give me a few days to work the problem?

A coupla years ago, we had a very nice advertising type of paper distributed to every home, and it was a free subscription. All the yardsale people use to use it because it included a big map of the area. The local official newpaper never had any sales in it because each daily paper cost money and there was no map.

Then a terrible thing happened. The free paper with the map made a change of policy. No more map. It took up too much space I guess. That very weekend, the local local official newspaper noticed and swiped the map idea. The huge crowd all shifted over and never returned to the free one again. About a month later, the free paper realised the mistake it had made and offered all kinds of incentives to get the yardsalers back. Normally there would have been around 70-100 yardsales per/weekend. After about 6 months of incentives, and no takers (I think the yardsalers were offended), the paper folded. That one section was critical to the other sections--same people using it probably.

Lesson: shut down too long and another one springs up.

[peteinmn]

can we all agree there needs to be more hot chicks in the piping community

It's so hard to recruit!! I keep going up to women and saying, "excuse me miss--do this with your elbows." *flap* *flap* *flap*

Oh, that reminds me, does anyone know a good defense attorney?

Caj

I suspect this is where the "gobsmacked" part also comes in.

[TomB]

Lesson: shut down too long and another one springs up.

Maybe, but in the instance, the competition's not all that fierce, and even if another does spring up, Dale won't be go broke and go out of business over it.

Lessons: Don't bite the hand that feeds you, or, don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Tom

[Nanohedron]

The problem is, in my view, the price of pipes. Not that I think they are more expensive than they should be, just that they are expensive. This causes any person who spends that kind of money and doesn't like the hardware to get pretty angry and emotional. It also moves people to DEFEND the hardware they paid so much for. I have to believe that's true, rather than the idea that pipers have a more surly temperament.

But if that was true, concertina players would get in flamewars too. They also spend huge money, and also endure long waiting times.

Yet, check out concertina.net. It is one of the nicest and most civil boards I ever did saw, and people only have positive things to say about everything and everyone. Even the one guy who just complains about everything is polite, and is treated graciously.

There must be some other factor. Maybe it's easier for concertina makers to appreciate the supreme difficulty of building a working instrument, and thus nobody would ever think to slag a maker just because he doesn't like the tone.

Caj

Good point. We'll go with surly temperaments.

I'll hazard a guess that once costs are defrayed, concertinas pretty much hang tough once you get them; maybe a retuning every year or so. The pipes, on the other hand, are not only a day-to-day thing for tweaks and changes, but you have the added challenge of playing them into proper tuning. It's also like patting your belly, rubbing your head, chewing gum, and walking all at the same time. Or maybe that's rubbing your belly and patting your head...is it any wonder we're stark raving mad?

[mukade]

Lessons: Don't bit the hand that feeds you, or, don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Tom

Or to put it another way, don't bite the gift horse in the hand that don't look in the mouth that feeds you.

So there.

Mukade

[Nanohedron]

See? I rest my case.

[Lorenzo]

It might affect the well-being of the pipe forum though when all that's left are a bunch of rowdy newbies while the veterans and well respected pipers and pipe makers made the shift. After all, pipers are just advanced whistle players, and whistle players are just more whistle blowers.

[Wombat]

I'll hazard a guess that once costs are defrayed, concertinas pretty much hang tough once you get them; maybe a retuning every year or so. The pipes, on the other hand, are not only a day-to-day thing for tweaks and changes, but you have the added challenge of playing them into proper tuning. It's also like patting your belly, rubbing your head, chewing gum, and walking all at the same time. Or maybe that's rubbing your belly and patting your head...is it any wonder we're stark raving mad?

Not really. Concertinas are nowhere near as difficult to maintain as pipes but it helps if you can do some basic maintenance yourself. Dust and fluff can get into the workings causing notes to go 'dead'. You should know how to fix that. There are lots of little things that can go wrong, lots of fiddly parts inside. You also have to be very careful how you open and close concertinas.

I've been assuming you have a top of the range concertina in what I've been saying. All sorts of things can go wrong with a cheapo, some of which require dramatic surgery to fix.

[Nanohedron]

I don't expect that the heavyweights will abscond. The UP forum is too interesting to abandon, don't you think? My assumption is that the experienced players and makers will be content to just watch the fray, and chime in when they have something to say. Much of what gets discussed IS newbie material, anyway. 'Twas always thus. Me, I just hang out and learn, other than the occasional smart remark.