New Aquarium Sounds

if i can feed the fish, that would be cool

[FishyBusiness]

Chrissy,

You will be able to feed the fish in a future version of the aquarium.

[FishyBusiness]

Tim4web,

The sound is a fresh water aquarium sound. Jim edited it a little bit.

I personally love the new sound. True, it is a bit unrealistic but some compromises had to be made in order to get a sound that the majority of people with different speakers and ears would like.

[feldon34]

Reduce the bubble sounds, increase a hissing sound, and add the soft drone of filters and motors and I'll be happy. if I had a Minidisc, I'd record the sound for Jim.

[Coelacanth]

I have never, ever seen a reef aquarium with a bubble wand or large airstone in the tank anyway. And I've seen a LOT of tanks, at fish stores, shows, and public aquariums. It's a nice graphical touch for the screensaver, sure, but in my experience most reefkeepers consider it to be unnecessary and actually a little detrimental to the tank because it can really contribute to salt creep -- which can in turn have an effect on the salinity. (The more salt that gets "skimmed" out of the water by the bubbles, pushed onto the hood, sides, or other areas, the lower the specific gravity.) Plus, salt creep is just ugly and a pain to clean.

Having said that, I think the bubbles are a nice option to have in the screensaver. I turn the sound off, though. The reason a lot of reefers put small slits in standpipes, for instance, is to *reduce* the amount of gurgling sounds. Motor hums are also something to minimize as much as possible, which explains the existence of pumps like The Quiet One by Lifegard. And chillers are notorious for making a lot of noise (think: car radiator in the aquarium cabinet), so manufacturers have concentrated on new ways to chill the tank without being noisy. So, as far as which bubble sound would be best, I say whichever sound is the quietest and least annoying. Me, I just turn the gurgling sound off. I get enough of that from my REAL aquarium.

In reference to Jim's last post in this thread:

1. I've got about 10 computers around here, and the only way they all have of sharing data is the floppy drive. Whenever I make the slightest change in the Aquarium, I have to test it on all those different machines.

I'm telling you, man, network up all of the machines, create a central share point, and post the updates to that! (10/100 network cards are about $15 a pop nowadays, and hubs are cheap too, as you probably know.)

2. I allow Key holders to use the Aquarium on all their machines. So they can download it at home, put it on a floppy and install it on their machine at work. I can't stand downloading something which won't quite fit on a floppy, then trying to figure out how to transfer it to another machine.

Everybody I know that owns a PC at home and uses a PC at work invariably has a much faster connection at work than at home (usually some sort of broadband, LAN, or in my case, a shared T3). I imagine certain other countries may be more limited, but is the plan to expand the features of the aquarium, or to always play to the lowest common denominator? I don't think you can do both. You are already up to around 680K; I would be surprised if you can get even a fifth of the way through adding the features from the long wishlist before you hit 1440K, no matter what sort of compression scheme you come up with. I am not dissing your considerable abilities, and I sure hope you prove me wrong -- but I think I'm looking at this realistically.

3. Coming from the Amiga community, I am amazed at the bloat that is so rampant in the PC world, so I just feel like leading a charge the other way, toward lean, mean programs. Why does it take 3 minutes instead of 3 seconds for my computer to boot up? The enormous amount of wasted bytes that it has to process can't be helping the situation.

Agreed. My first PC was an Apple II (back before IBM stole the "PC" acronym), back when people actually wrote entire programs in assembler (6502). I am always impressed by people that actually take the time to write tight code. Think how our computers would run if Microsloth decided to reduce the mega-bloat in Windows and Office. On the other hand, I'm not so sure that, at least after a few evolutions of this aquarium, the 1.44 MB floppy should dictate your creative ceiling. Even with tight code, it seems like a pretty tall order to cram all or even most of the proposed wishlist features into that amount of space. Again, I hope you prove me wrong on that one.

[Digital Lungfish]

"Even with tight code, it seems like a pretty tall order to cram all or even most of the proposed wishlist features into that amount of space. Again, I hope you prove me wrong on that one."

Coel, (might as well just call you Seal)

If anything, I'm sure Jim has already proved a great many people wrong with his efforts. I've seen a vast number of other screensavers and demos out there that use far more space and do WAY less than Jim's does in the little space that it occupies.

Yes it is possible that he could exceed the barriers of a 3.5 floppy, but I'm willing to bet that he gets in the majority of his feature set before that ends up happening.

- DL

[Coelacanth]

...it's just that that wishlist is pretty darn long, and even if only 70% of it, fitting all that onto a floppy seems like a Herculean feat. Not thinking negatively...just realistically given all the features we want added in there. Prove me wrong, Jim!

[Digital Lungfish]

Yeah, I can see where you're coming from, it's true there is no absolute guarantee as we all know, but hey, we can wish for it right?

Oh and by the way, thanks for taking the time to clarify that you're not being negative. I'm pretty sure we all knew that, but it's cool that you took the time to point it out.

Besides, if you had been, I probably would have noticed. My wife accuses me of it all too often. I just keep telling her the same thing "honey, I'm not being negative, I'm being realistic!"

- DL

[Coelacanth]

I admit there's a pretty fine line, though, between being "realistic" and being negative. I try not to step over the line.

I think a lot of so-called "recording artists" and movie directors hide behind that. They put out all this negative, profane, disturbing, violent, and/or immoral stuff, and then try to defend it by saying, hey, I'm just depicting the "real world." As if the "real world" is never anything but disturbing, profane, immoral and violent.

Whoa! I got way off the aquarium topic, didn't I?

Anyway, I guess you could best describe me as "appreciative of Jim's work, very hopeful, but with some healthy skepticism too."

[Jav400]

Coelacanth,

"Anyway, I guess you could best describe me as "appreciative of Jim's work, very hopeful, but with some healthy skepticism too."

Hehe, hang around awhile, I've been here for 6 months now, and Jim has managed everything he promised so far.

[Jim Sachs]

Well... maybe not quite EVERYTHING.

Coel,

Just wanted to say that was a cool post!

The bits about real tanks was very educational.

Any links you recommend to find out more ?

Thanks, Tim4web

[Coelacanth]

Thanks Tim.

Actually I must admit I don't own a marine tank anymore at the moment

Saving up for a new one, though. In the meantime, I have freshwater tanks with plants. And I try my best to keep my reef knowledge right up to date so when I do jump in again I'll know as much or more than the owner of the LFS (local fish store).

I'm really interested in this new system called Eco-Wheel that is driven by only a single large air pump, and uses an efficient and low-maintenance combination of "algae scrubbing" (using algae as filtration) and foam fractionation (protein skimming). It is very expensive at first look (too much for my wallet right now), but actually could save in the long run because it replaces wavemakers, skimmers, water pumps, complex plumbing, and other equipment you would normally have in a reef tank. It may also eliminate the need for a chiller because the air pump doesn't heat up the water due to friction like high-powered water pumps do. To me it seems like the ideal system, if it works as advertised.

Their web site is awful: www.aquaticengineers.com -- but the people explained the system in detail to me through e-mail and sent better pictures. (They plan to improve their web site soon).

Hanging out in rec.aquarium.marine.reefs on Usenet is one of the best ways to learn. A lot of the folks there are experienced reefkeepers and are always discussing new things.

For beginning websites, hmm....I like this guy's site:
community-2.webtv.net/deflizard/doc/

And..
www.thereefweb.com

This place has a bunch of links:
www.reefkeepers.org/links/index.html

And these places are online stores:
www.marinedepot.com
www.ffexpress.com
www.petwarehouse.com (carries live marine animals now)
www.oceanrider.com (tank-raised seahorses)
www.harboraquatics.com
www.aquabid.com (the E-bay of the aquarium trade)

And finally, some cool 3D photos of marine life:
www.imagequest3d.com/page...marine.htm

[Shinsa]

coelacanth, want to see some good 'ol programming? Check out what Steve Gibson has at his site. www.grc.com

This is the guy that wrote the program SpinRite. A utility to format your hard drive without losing the data that is on it. He programs everything in Assembler!

[feldon34]

Coelacanth,

You told them that I'm the one who should re-design their site right?

They did it cookie-cutter in FrontPage or something.

[Coelacanth]

Well, Morgan, they did tell me that they were in the process of contracting out someone to fix up their website. So go for it!

And yes, I use grc.com all the time. Also the tools on dslreports.com. And I'm familiar with SpinRite. Steve Gibson is a gifted programmer.

[FrogMastr]

Gibson's programs are to utilities what Jim's Fish is to screen savers!!!

They are the kind of programmers who are no-more!!!

The one who would enjoy a line lit

real programmers use: C>copy con PROG.COM

hehe! Drop the bloatware! Free our harddrives! Free the memory! Hail to Liberty ))))))))))