Saturday, November 09, 2013

that funny middle part of your CD / DVD and probably Blu Ray player / drive

hi there

as i was sorting through some stuff (nearly done) i found something that whilst i had not quite forgotten about was not something at the forefront of my mind on a day to day basis. it occured to me that there's probably a whole generation out there that do not know exactly what a feature on their equipment is meant for.

behold, a pretty conventional tray off a DVD drive on the PC.



if you are wondering exactly what the little indented bit in the middle of all trays, to this day, is for, wonder no more. what i found today is one of the things that fits in there. observe, if you will.



i think one or two people make this size CD still. i am pretty sure i have seen one or two "promo" discs from companies of this size, and a while ago you could buy blank discs too. size? if i recall, it's a 3" disc compared to the usual 5" size of a conventional CD.

what's that disc i have in there? this one.



Peter Gabriel's rather fine Sledgehammer single. sadly not related to the epic TV show of the same name, but all the same rather good.

from what i recall there was some fuss when Peter Gabriel, or "Gabes" if you are a mate of him i guess, re-released a box set of the album from which this song came, the rather brilliant So. one or possibly both of the b-sides to this CD single (although they are on the same side) were excluded. it is possibly for that reason this single seems to command a rather high price over on amazon.although some places have it cheaper if you want to try and get a copy.

what are these b-sides? well, i think it was Don't Break This Rhythm that people got upset about being missing from the So deluxe set, which is fair enough as it's a great tune.




before you ask, no, sorry, it's in a box and taped up.

as for the 3" CD single, it did not last long at all. i think beyond this i've got (Don't You) Forget About Me by Simple Minds and Batdance by Prince in this format. i did have a U2 one, but i gave it away to a dear friend at some point. actually i might have a Pet Shop Boys one too.

as you could only get 20 minutes of music on them they were pretty useless, truth be told. i have no idea how much data that is, but not a great deal.



the kids of today are probably quite bewildered by the idea of buying an actual CD, never mind a mini one i suppose. they are happy enough with their iTwat downloads i suppose.

anyhow, back to boxing and sorting!




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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