What would you give a person who has nearly everything and a cellar
full of fine wines. There is one item they likely do not have - a wine
cork grinder. This grinds up wine corks so that dumpster divers can not
see what expensive wines you have opened by reading the text on the
cork. A wine cork grinder is shown at
http://www.cwdjr.info/wine/corkgrinder.php . The wine cork grinder
shown is not for sale, and you will have to find your own source for
one. :-)

Basset hounds work, too!
Mine is indiscriminate, but my friend Arv's Lena will chose the Harlan
out of a tray of corks to chew on.

cwdjrxyz wrote:
> What would you give a person who has nearly everything and a cellar
> full of fine wines. There is one item they likely do not have - a wine
> cork grinder. This grinds up wine corks so that dumpster divers can not
> see what expensive wines you have opened by reading the text on the
> cork. A wine cork grinder is shown at
> http://www.cwdjr.info/wine/corkgrinder.php . The wine cork grinder
> shown is not for sale, and you will have to find your own source for
> one. :-)
>

That is certainly a talented parrot that you recorded. I have heard
some amazing tales of the powers of mimicry possessed by parrots, but to
imitate a whole orchestra in tune, along with Mickey Mouse singing
"Largo al factotum..." is truly unbelievable. In all seriousness, that
sounds like a doctored recording in which you've sped up the vocal track
while leaving the instruments untouched -- or is it merely a novelty
recording in which a castrato sings the title role?

Mark Lipton

Mark Lipton wrote:
> cwdjrxyz wrote:
> > What would you give a person who has nearly everything and a cellar
> > full of fine wines. There is one item they likely do not have - a wine
> > cork grinder. This grinds up wine corks so that dumpster divers can not
> > see what expensive wines you have opened by reading the text on the
> > cork. A wine cork grinder is shown at
> > http://www.cwdjr.info/wine/corkgrinder.php . The wine cork grinder
> > shown is not for sale, and you will have to find your own source for
> > one. :-)
> >
>
> That is certainly a talented parrot that you recorded. I have heard
> some amazing tales of the powers of mimicry possessed by parrots, but to
> imitate a whole orchestra in tune, along with Mickey Mouse singing
> "Largo al factotum..." is truly unbelievable. In all seriousness, that
> sounds like a doctored recording in which you've sped up the vocal track
> while leaving the instruments untouched -- or is it merely a novelty
> recording in which a castrato sings the title role?

I used a wave editor called GoldWave to process the recording from an
old acoustic one. I first removed some noise with special filters. I
then used a progrom that allows you to increase or decreach the pitch
while keeping the tempo the same. I also used a special effects filter
or two in a few places to make some pars more squawk-like. The bird can
talk if he wants to.

You mentioned castrato. So far as I know, the only castrato recordings
were recorded in the Vatican in 1902 and 1904. You can hear a soprano
castrato at http://www.cwdjr.net/ram/mixtestRAM.ram . This is a Real
Player play list of several selections in several formats, all from
very old acoustic recordings. The castrato recording, from the Vatican
in 1902, is the second on the list. The 3'rd and 4'th selections by
Yaw(a lady) likely contain the highest notes ever recorded by a human
The Skylark written for Yaw likely is too difficult for anyone else to
sing. People were known to take tuning forks to her concerts to verify
the extremely high pitch she reached.