Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2010 December 8

Welcome to the Wikipedia Entertainment Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

December 8

How much fan fiction exists?

Approximately how much fan fiction exists on the internet, in gigabytes, and how much space on servers does that take up in gigabytes (essentially, is it compressed on the servers)? 97.125.80.45 (talk) 01:46, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure that anyone has ever made an attempt to calculate such a thing. I am willing to be proven wrong, but this seems like the sort of statistic which has not been ever computed; and may not even be computable. --Jayron32 04:09, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

You could draw some conclusions by assessing the total number of stories on Fanfiction.net (the largest fanfiction community on the net), assigning some average length-per-story (maybe 25k?), assigning Fanfiction.net a percentage of the total fanfic on the net (say 50%?) and then using maths to arrive at a guesstimate. Horribly wobbly numbers but it might give you a starting point. Providing that all fanfiction is text, though, I think you might find that the entirety of all fanfiction on the net would probably fit on a commercially available hard drive, if sensibly compressed. To put it another way, if 10 million people in the world had each written an entire 300-page novel of fanfic, and that data wasn't compressed at all, it would still only be 10 terrabytes, and as you'd be aware the average fanfic is barely short-story length. - DustFormsWords (talk) 07:53, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

A difficult question to answer. vast swathes of fanfiction are hosted on Livejournal and other similar sites (InsaneJournal etc.). If you measured all of this, you would have to deduct the kilobytes of comments and the bloated html used to prettify users' journals. Then there is EFiction, a content management system tailored for fiction which can be set up on almost any web hosting; any major fandom will likely have an automated or manual archive using this or another similar system. Individuals' own websites hold their own collections, and sometimes those of friends or co-writers; mailing lists have been used historically and some are still active today. Geocities hosted a lost of personal and multi-author archives - a percentage may have been lost when it closed. Some is still available through the Wayback machine and other similar sites. Additionally, fanfiction seems to suffer from a pernicious case of linkrot - hosting and domain names are not renewed, archives move constantly, sometimes [it seems] on the whim of the administrator, internal links are inconsistent or not updated. There has been no significant pan-fandom effort to curate and archive fiction: Archive of Our Own is the most recent multi-fandom archive to gain traction, but it's still in beta, and I would guess that large sub-sections of fandom are not represented. --Kateshortforbob _talk 14:38, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Late 1990s mini music players for kids

Sometime around the turn of the century, there were these devices, less than 2 inches high, that would play a short clip of a popular song (Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, etc.) when you pressed a button. I know they were advertised to kids on American TV, and you could wear them on a necklace. I've tried to remember what they were called, with little success. Does anybody have any more information on these? 68.230.81.125 (talk) 05:41, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Try HitClips. --Jayron32 06:09, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

obscure music group

Sometime back in the 1980s, there was this pop music group called Jakata. I remember them doing their own Light at the End of the Tunnel. What's become of them nowadays? Anyone know?24.90.202.42 (talk) 06:49, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Could it be that you have been searching for a mis-spelling, and mean either this band - Jakarta - or another of the same name? 87.81.230.195 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:03, 8 December 2010 (UTC).

No, it's Jakata. They were an American band.24.90.204.234 (talk) 22:28, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Jakata were a band formed by Jimmy Felber (born James Paul Foelber), who recorded for Motown in the 1980s. Band members were Jimmy Felber (vocals, keyboards), Steve Kragan (lead vocals, horns), Chuck Coffey (vocals, bass), and Chris Myers (drums, percussion, acoustic guitar). "Light at the End of the Tunnel" was the B-side of "Golden Girl", a single released in the UK in 1984 as Motown TMG 1379 - here, and on YouTube here. They also released an album, Light the Night, in 1984 on the Morocco label (Morocco 6060CL), a Motown subsidiary, on which "Light at the End of the Tunnel" is the opening track. More details of the album here - according to which they were a band from the Long Beach, California area. Felber also recorded with Bev Kelly, on whom there is more information here. But, as to what happened to them after 1984, I have no idea, sorry - though perhaps Felber could be here. Ghmyrtle (talk) 23:01, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's the band. But I hope they re-release Light the Night on CD soon.24.90.204.234 (talk) 03:09, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Help me identify this singer

Please help me identify the pop singer who meets the following criteria:

1. Young (teens or 20s)
2. Female
3. East Asian features
4. Non-East-Asian name
5. Singing voice sounds a lot like Justin Bieber
6. Sings in English
7. Has a Christmas song out
8. Not Charice Pempengco

kthx, The Hero of This Nation (talk) 14:36, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Emmy the Great? 83.244.180.83 (talk) 09:51, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

What is this called?

In some songs a pianist will hit a high or low note then run their hand up or down the entire length of the keyboard, striking every white key in sequence. Is there a name for this maneuver? How does it look when a player reads sheet music? Hemoroid Agastordoff (talk) 17:43, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

It's called glissando. In notation, traditionally every separate key was written down, in small notes, but nowadays they often just write a sort of long stroke between the topmost and bottom-most (? sp) notes. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 17:48, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

PS. While they obviously use their hand, as you say, specifically they use their thumbnail. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 18:07, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Do any pianists nowadays "shoot" the keys, the way Chico Marx used to? (Here's an example of his technique,[1] and Chico also does the move discussed in this section.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:48, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I know of no-one apart from Chico who ever did that specific thing, and it seems to have been more for visual humour than for any special pianistic effect. I mean, I can't imagine him being bothered to do that if he were not being filmed. Along sort-of-similar-but-not-really-similar-at-all lines was Vladimir Horowitz, who "frequently played chords with straight fingers, and the little finger of his right hand was often curled up until it needed to play a note; to Harold C. Schonberg, it was like a strike of a cobra." -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 19:19, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

On the page, it looks like the fourth symbol in the list here. --Thomprod (talk) 00:03, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Toblerone girl

Who is the girl in the UK toblerone adverts? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.192.157.204 (talk) 22:50, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I think it's Sophia Raafat Worm 10:10, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

No Super Bowls

So far I know that Jacksonville Jaguars and Houston Texans have not won Super Bowls. Is there any other NFL team who has never won a Super Bowl? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.92.148.67 (talk) 23:00, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

As far as I remember Vikings, Lions, Falcons, Panthers, Seahawks, Cardinals, Bills, Browns, Bengals, Jaguars, Texans, Titans, and Chargers have never won. Dayewalker (talk) 23:03, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

The Eagles haven't won one either. Eagles 24/7 (C) 23:17, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Yep, Eagles is right. Sorry about that. I'm a Bills fan, I sympathize. Also the Lions, Browns, Jaguars, Texans, and Lions have never even played in a Super Bowl. Dayewalker (talk) 00:06, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

List of NFL champions and List of Super Bowl champions are a couple of useful articles on the subject. I don't see a List of AFL champions but that info is here.[2] The Bills, Chargers and Oilers (now Titans) won AFL championships prior to the merger. The Vikings won an NFL championship but lost the Super Bowl, the last one before the leagues completed the merger. The Eagles, Lions and Cardinals won NFL championships, a number of decades ago. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:38, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

We (Seahawks) was robbed! Clarityfiend (talk) 23:54, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I know more than one person who are convinced the games are fixed (I do not share that view). ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:58, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

For an even more fun article on the subject: List of NFL franchise post-season droughts. We have one for the NHL, NBA, and baseball. Aaronite (talk) 01:04, 9 December 2010 (UTC)