I just read this thread. I am so sorry to hear about your son. I am so happy to hear he is not seriously injured. I hope he will not have too many lasting thought over this. As well as everyone who has experienced this type of since less crime. The world is in such a sad state. Where have peoples values gone. Out with the garbage. I was robbed in my home 2 times in 2 months. It has been a year now. I still feel unsafe in my own home. It is crazy to think I have to keep my doors locked at all time. It helps to have neighbors who look out for you. You know the ones who some think are too nosy? Well that is the one who called the police because he thought something seemed wrong. I will never be able to repay him for his kindness. Bonnie

Datura is a short lived perennial down here, and lives three to four years, and does produce some brown woody trunks and stems. However, they will never get more than about 4 feet tall, no matter how much you feed them. There are some varieties of dats that actually sprawl. Some brugs tend to grow into shrublike shapes, and others more treelike. Datura like sun, most brugs prefer semi-shade. Datura don't like a lot of water, prefer to be rather dry, whereas Brugmansia love lots and lots of water. Datura don't actually need a lot of fertilizer, will do fine without it, and Brugs need a lot of fertilizer. Some datura do have a scent. Datura wrightii and Datura inoxia, night bloomers both, have a scent, though not as strong as the brugs. Datura are very hard to propagate from cuttings, brugs are not.

OK...little doubt that 1) you did NOT record as "data" but, rather, as "music" for playing as music CD and 2) inasmuch as the CD's play the tunes OK on CD-player you need have little doubt that your music files remain intact -- albeit in a format that is confusing to you computer-wise. You are missing something in the way your computer handles tunes. Too much to write here. Suggest preserve your recorded CD's where the important music resides in a safe place and then LEARN how your computer handles this information. You WILL be able to upload your preserved tunes into a computer and you WILL be able to do anything you want with them thereafter. Sorry, but there really is too much to write. This is simple widely-known stuff. I have no doubt you will be able to find locally.

I took a quick look at a review for the InstantMusic box and it is just the kind of thing I'm talking about. I actually have a stereo system (receiver, turntable, cassette deck, CD player) hooked up to an Onkyo audio hub (no longer made) which then feeds my Macintosh. Works great. Mine just converts to bits, and the software I use has to convert into the various music formats; this goes one step further. For $40 or so, it looks like just the ticket. The various music formats. There are a bunch of them. AAC, MP3, and WMA are the most popular. AAC is the format used on iPods and Apple's iTunes by default. Apple claims that AAC results in better-sounding files that are the same size as MP3 files. I don't know anyone who has a particular opinion on that, though I'm sure this is discussed to death elsewhere on the Internet. Music you buy from the Apple iTunes Music Store also is AAC-encoded. One disadvantage is that music from the iTunes Music Store has additional coding that makes it difficult to move those files to a non-Apple player (the main exception being iTunes for Windows). MP3 is the more generic format. iPods can play MP3s as can digital audio players from whoever is left in the business (Apple owns about 80% of the legal digital music business). WMA is a Windows Audio format. I don't know a lot about WMA other than Microsoft would prefer you use it. :-) I have not heard that it sounds significantly better or worse than any other format (including ones I haven't mentioned here); the big issue with WMA is that if you're not using a Windows-based system for playback, it will be harder for you to find a player for WMA-encoded files. Not impossible; just harder. It's not as popular a format as AAC or MP3. The general things to remember about digital audio formats are 1) that the smaller the file, the less good it sounds. That may not be a big deal if you're listening through iPod earbuds or a portable speaker or your cell phone -- it may sound just fine through those devices. It might be a bigger deal if you pipe your music to a quality home stereo. But it costs you pretty much nothing to try it for yourself; and 2) unless you have access to an "uncompressed" digital file of the music (or the original record/tape/CD), once you "rip" it into one of these formats, converting it to another format often causes some audible damage to the file. Then there's the labor that entails. So you might want to think just a bit about the format in which you want your music. It would be a pain to have to convert hundreds of files if you decide to move to another player that can't handle your chosen format.