Topic: DK Wilgus UCLA Digital Library

[btasoundsradio]

I'm not sure if this was already posted about, but, here is a link to the UCLA Digital Archive, this is all a revelation to me. Full interview with Ishmon Bracey by John Fahey. Recordings of Fahey and songster Elmer Williams, Roosevelt Holts (new to me and stunning), Babe Stovall, and the full interviews with Ruben Lacey (also never heard these before). I'll be entertained for days.
http://digital2.library.ucla.edu/viewItem.do?ark=21198/zz00089bvf
or more specifically:
http://digital2.library.ucla.edu/Search.do?selectedFormats=all&selectedProjects=30&viewType=1&keyWord=fahey

[Lastfirstface]

Looks like a lot of good material to dig into. Thanks for sharing.

[Johnm]

Yes, thanks for posting the links, powerlinehorizon.  There is some great stuff there.

[David Kaatz]

Tracks from this site don't play for me - I have an error on the page that says Error loading player: No playable sources found.
There is text that says Play Content, but it is not clickable.

The rest of the page is visible, looks normal.

Dave

[Stuart]

Hi Dave:

In the Audio Content box, "Play Content" is just text with no function other than indicating what the "play" arrow does.

I haven't had any problems using my old XP box--Win 7 box is the same. It's probably set up for use with Win or Mac systems (and maybe others), so if that what you're using, there's probably some conflict with other software or maybe system settings.

Edited to add: I did a little checking and "Error loading player: No playable sources found" might indicate that you have to update Adobe Flash Player.

On my Win 7 box, Firefox and IE work with no problems, but I had to update Flash Player again in order to get it to play in Chrome, although it was up-to-date in the other two browsers. So give it a shot and see if it fixes the problem if you're using a PC with Windows and any of the above three browsers.

I used this file as a test:

http://digital2.library.ucla.edu/viewItem.do?ark=21198/zz00095vh4

[David Kaatz]

Thanks Stuart,
Sure enough it was my browser (Chrome) setting. Standard (recommended) was set to not run flash without asking first. I didn't see an ask, but I set the ucla site as an exception to the rule and it now looks right and works.

[Stuart]

With the constant updates to browsers, add-ons, extensions, to Flash Player, etc., it's a wonder that anything still works on a consistent basis. I've seen this before, though--Flash Player updating to one browser, but not to another. I have to then run the update from inside the browser in question and usually that solves the problem. Sometimes I also have to tweak the settings like you did. Occasionally they reset back to the defaults.

What's the old joke? The end user's headache is tech support's job security? --Or something like that. 

[Rivers]

Steve Jobs famously hated Flash for good reason and threatened to drop support for it entirely. Adobe eventually began to take its problems seriously and fixed some of it. But it remains a security risk. See this 2010 piece from Jobs: https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

Google "adobe flash problems" for a million reasons why Flash has a bad reputation. UCLA, among many others, would do well to convert their Flash files to some other video format and use the HTML5 <video> tag to embed them.

Also, if you do decide allow any Flash browser plugins to run, disable automatic updates. There's plenty of information available on the web as to why that's a good idea.

[Stuart]

Good advice, Rivers. The only automatic updates I allow are to my virus/malware definitions. Everything else is manual. There's just too much potential for conflicts and problems otherwise. Even though it takes longer, at least it's easier for me to isolate and identify the problems if something goes wrong.

Another old joke is that an update fixes one problem, only to have two or more come along to take its place. We're all beta testers even though we're not aware of it.

[Rivers]