Ideal Bite

I just wanted to follow up with this mornings tip by giving you this website. www.obviously.com/recycle/guides/hard.html This information has changed since the last time that I looked at it, but locally cities might have more locations to recycle these. While the idea is great to use ipods, folks should encourage the manufacturer to make it with batteries that can be replaced. I have avoided buying this expensive musical outlet since its life span is about 2 1/2 year. Info. from above site: Damaged CD's can be repaired, and repair or reuse is definitely a better environmental option than recycling. You have some chance of repairing small numbers of obvious scratches with a mild abrasive such as toothpaste. Work only on the non-label side, with strokes radially out from the center. Professional refinishers such as AuralTech CD Refinishing will repair disks for about $3 each and guarantee the results. If you just don't like the CD's, give or trade them at a music store or donate them to charity. Obsolete or unrepairable CD's and cases can be recycled. Recordable CD-R's have about 20mg of gold that can be recovered, and some processors can actually remove the data layer, and reuse the plastic disc. If you are worried about proprietary data, you can cut them with a pair of heavy duty tin shears, or place them in a microwave oven with a small glass of water (for one disc, 5 seconds on medium does a fantastic job, and creates a spectacular light show) Since CD's are not very valuable, nobody will pay you for recycling. Send pre-paid by UPS Ground, third-class mail, freight or other surface transportation to NESAR Systems, 420 Ashwood Road, Darlington, PA 16115 (724)827-8172 or Digital Audio Disk Corporation, Attention: Disc Recycling Program, 1800 Fruitridge Ave., Terre Haute, IN 47804-1788, (812) 462-8323a

Kathy has some nice points there. (In a sense it's handier to know how to recycle CDs than it is too hear how damaging they are when obsolete.) Mine are of a slightly more audiophile perspective: 1) Quality – I have yet too see these online music stores offer none lossy format, CD quality audio. (Mostly the quality ranges from 128kbs AAC/WMA to 192kbs MP3. Not as high as it could be.) 2) DRM Restrictions. There are no major online music stores that offer none DRMed music. DRM = A pain in the arse, pardon my french. only (smaller) indie record labels have offered none DRMed downloads ... The restrictions are usually tied to a certain brand of player, restricting the consumer further. So downloads have their pros and for many far to many cons. (Until one can download music in CD quality without restrictions, downloading is not an equal option.) And when it comes to packaging; It's part of the art, usually. Cheers! -Tim

Tim - my brother would SOOOO agree with you. I am pretty lax in my music expectations. (I always drove him crazy when I'd make mix tapes that cut off songs halfway through or didn't record at the highest possible sound setting (whatever all that meant)). I agree - music purists are a LONG way from being able to be happy with downloadable music quality - but as with everything, we're getting there. As for the art/packaging - a lot of downloaded albums are now starting to include special PDF downloads of the pictures, lyrics and covers for the albums -and many include special content and songs that you can't get anywhere else, so I feel like the art needle is moving toward the downloaded versions as well. Time will tell. Kathy - I'm terrified at the idea of microwaving CDs, but love the repairing/recycling information. Keep on commenting - we really loved both your insights here.

Have you tried listening to podcasts? I think you might find "More Hip than Hippie" a good one to start your podcast experience. www.morehipthanhippie.com is their website.

Heather; Now I doubt that I am by far a purist, I just like to hear the thing that the artist intended me to hear, not a version where half the highs and lows are cut off by an algorythm. ;) But I've been aware of the ITMS PDF feature, I in part use iTunes to catagorize, sort and store my PDFs. Hehe. :) But like digital books, they still can't beat the feel of the real thing in your hands. (Although I must admit I feel guilty about the amount of trees that are sacrificed ... Any thoughts on doing a bite on paper recyling?) Anyway, the commenting will continue when I have something too add. :) Cheers! PS: Here's a small page on microwaving CDs that I found ... : http://apache.airnet.com.au/~fastinfo/microwave/cd/ Seems like rather a bit of fun. Hehe. But I doubt it's very practical otherwise. :)

What can be done with old political buttons?

our band released our cd digital only to reduce the waste associated with replicating cd's on a mass scale.

the life of a celeb playlist is always going http://www.hotcelebrityimages.com/

Now that I've finally converted all my cds to digital and reduced space by putting them in a case logic binder....what do I do with the case? I don't see a number on the plastic, but have a feeling that curbside won't take them (only 1-5 and 7). Is there any other use for them? Anyplace that will take them?

great articel .thanx share.