Tag Archives: tech

Podcasting equipment

I’ve been looking for some recording equipment, in order to improve the quality of my recordings. However, during the process, I was listening to some of my earlier recordings, and I’m really quite amazed at how much better the quality is now than it was when I first started. Between actually learning how to use Audacity, and, I guess, learning a little bit about what the recording levels actually should be, it seems that I’ve greatly improved. Still not perfect, of course, but better.

Anyways, I found this microphone, which, according to various reviews, will make my recordings better. They also recommended several recording software packages, including Audio Hijack Pro as one of the top contenders. I’m not sure I would know enough about it to use it to much effect, but the little bit I’ve learned about Audacity has helped a lot, so maybe it would.

Meanwhile, as you may have noticed off to the right side of the page (assuming you read this on my website, rather than in some RSS reader) that I’m doing two other podcast sites. JWHughes.org is, for the moment, the autobiography of John Wesley Hughes, who founded Asbury College. And the other site is the weekly (and, as time permits, the daily) readings of the Episcopal Church. In addition to all other considerations, the Bible contains some of the lovliest poetry around, and is great reading/recording material.

And my recording of A Christmas Carol is coming along nicely, although I’m having a really hard time figuring out a time to do my performance/reading of the whole thing, due to annoying schedule conflicts. And time’s running out.

Podcasting – the do-it-yourself guide (Review)

I just got done reading “Podcasting: The do-it-yourself guide” by Todd Cochrane. For the most part, a lot of good information, and very helpful on certain matters, such as hardware and software recommendations.

However, Todd seems to make certain assumptions about the potential podcaster. Specifically, he seems to assume that everyone is just like him. As such, much of his advice seems a little odd. For example, I don’t feel the need to plan for 5,000-plus visitors. I don’t expect I’ll ever have more than a few dozen. And he seems to assume (at least in some places) that we all have a news show of some kind which we need to research and interview for. So a lot of his tips seem like they will never apply to me.

Of course, if I start having tens of thousands of visitors, and make a lot of money on advertising, that would be fine. I think.

Of great use were Todd’s tips on using Audacity to edit the podcast audio, as well as tips on recording in the first place. I realize that I’m still just guessing when it comes to audio quality. Partially this is because I’m half deaf. Not a lot I can do about that. But part of it too is because I just have absolutely no experience with this sort of thing. I was amazed, however, with just how loud my house is, and how difficult it is to find a quiet place. Maybe if I shut myself in the closet …

For the most part, I recommend this book for folks that are interested in podcasting, but have no idea about the audio side of things. You can sort of get started with almost no initial investment, but it’s becoming quickly obvious that I’ll get a far better outcome if I can get a little recording equipment, like a decent microphone.

Oh, yeah, and I realized that I really have no idea what a mixer even is, let alone how to choose one wisely.

Sony’s CDs

Since I don’t own a Windows computer, and I don’t buy many CDs, I’ve been a little confused by the recent coverage of Sony’s silly “copy protection” software.

This started a few days ago when I first listened to an NPR technology podcast in which both the interviewer and the interviewee were grossly ignorant of what they were talking about. (The particular mp3 file is here and the NPR technology podcasts are here.)

The reporter stated that the CD might contain a “rootkit”, so named because, quoth she, “it’s at the root of the computer.” Brilliant. (For a better, and actually accurate, description of what a rootkit is, see Wikipedia.) It gets installed, she went on, after “popping a CD into your hard drive.” Again, brilliant. And that “rootkit codes create secret spaces in your computer, where all kinds of things might happen.” Clear explanation, hmm? Sheesh.

Next, she spoke to some talking head at Sony, who stated, in a brilliant moment of “let them eat cake,” “Most people don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?” He went on to say that the software isn’t spyware, because “no information ever gets communicated back to the user.” Yes, that’s a direct quote. What is communicated to me by these quotes is that Sony cares *only* about their bottom line, and intends to exploit the customer in any way possible in order to further that goal. No, I’m not anti-capitalist. Yes, I believe that companies legitimately exist to make money. But, at the same time, I refuse to do business with companies who are totally self-interested, and don’t care a whit for the (to quote Prince Charles) “bloody people.”

I’m also perplexed by the claim that the software hides itself. To quote the San Francisco Chronicle, the software “hides deep in the Windows operating system”, and “is difficult to remove without damaging the computer.” What does that mean, exactly?

Software consists of files, and, in the case of Windows, entries in the Registry. To remove the software, you identify and remove the files and the Registry entries, right? The only think I can imagine interfereing with that is if the software is modifying dll files from other applications, or if it is actually inserting code into, say, the kernel. Files can’t be hidden, and registry entries can’t be hidden, because they’re just files on a filesystem.

Now, granted, I don’t use Windows, so I may be ignorant here, but if a file *can* be hidden, then Microsoft is at least as much to blame here as Sony. Having files be genuinely “hidden” in some sense is just plain dopey and bad design. And, presumably, in order to be even there at all in any real sense, something (the software that wants to use them) must be able to find them and use them, so they’re not really hidden.

So once again, I’m perplexed as to how software can “hide itself” in any real sense.

Maybe that’s because I use a real operating system.

Upgrades

My main server (not this one, another one) has been acting exceedingly flakey lately, with significant outages caused by load up over 80 at times. Since that’s my main DNS server, this has had the side-effect of making many of my websites, as well as several other domains, unusable.

It’s an old refurb machine, because Mikro-data, my ISP, are awesome, and offered me a refurb at a rate that I could actually afford. Well, I let them know that the machine was having heartburn, and asked what we could do about it.

Today they yanked the existing processor, replaced it with two other ones, and doubled the memory. Just because they rock.

Before:

cpu MHz : 496.668
Mem: 126180

After:

cpu MHz : 496.671
cpu MHz : 496.671
Mem: 255896

Sure, it’s still not a high-end server, but it’s what I need, and they just did it because it was the right thing to do. Did I mention that they rock? They do. Wonderful people.

iPod

I got my iPod. It is shiny.

I’m *totally* impressed with the screen resolution and clarity. I watched the Pixar short film “Geri’s Game” on it last night, and it was simply amazing. I need to figure how to get movies on it so that Sarah can watch them when we’re driving. That’s got to be possible, right? Well, all the howtos I find are Windows-specific, or require software that I can’t get working. It can’t be that hard.

Calico Pie, by Edward Lear

Calico Pie, by Edward Lear.

On the technology front, I saw someone recommend Audacity, and decided to give it another try, and I’m very very pleased. I have been using HackTV, which is fairly nice, but a little too simple, and requires too many additional steps. It records .mov files, which I then have to import into iTunes and export as mp3 files. Not only is this an additional step, but I end up with 3 copies of the recording which I have to then go clean up.

Audacity seems to make a better recording, too, for some reason, and exports directly to mp3.

Calico Pie is a poem we used to read at Turi, so I actually did quite a bit of it from memory, which surprised me. I’m always amazed at how poems stick in my brain for years and years after I last heard/recited them.

Insufficient tuits

In the last few months that I’ve been working on The Book (have you preordered your copy yet?) I’ve been putting off a number of other things due to insufficient tuits. Now that I have more tuits (round ones, that is) I am having trouble choosing which thing to work on. There’s 3 (or maybe 4) different books that I’d like to write. There’s my new-found interest in podcasting. There’s some geocaching that I need to catch up on. And there are always numerous to fix, build, repair, or gadgetize around the house. I’ve started pecking away at one of the books, but it’s still a bit of a secret.

And I’m pondering whether I should get an iPod so that I can do more of the nifty podcasting stuff. I almost ordered one last night, but I’m still suffering a little bit of sticker shock. In addition to the podcasting I’ve done on this site, I’m actually doing some podcasting on two other sites that are still at least somewhat secret.

Unfortunately, I find that I’m no longer able to stay up past about 10 and have a coherent thought. Gone are the days of working until 1 or 2 and still producing reasonable output. By around 9, I spend more time staring blankly, and less time writing, or whatever else it is that I was doing.

Anyways, perhaps I’ll get useful things done today. We’ll see.

GPSr and iStumbler

Someone on #lplug mentioned that they had purchased a USB GPS thingy (not that actual one, but one very much like it) and had been playing with Kismet. I almost ordered one for myself, but instead got a USB/Serial converter for my existing GPS, since that was considerably cheaper. I just got back from driving around the neighborhood, and found several dozen wireless networks in my brief drive. Almost all of them have a default name (“default”, “linksys”, or “NETGEAR”) and are open. The iStumbler GPS plugin allows me to capture that information along with location coordinates. Very nice.

There are a few things that I wish it could do, such as give me a Google map of the area (that part it does) with a location pin in each wifi network location (that part it doesn’t do). However, I have no idea how hard that would be. I have been reading a little of the google maps API documentation, and I’m hoping to have a little time to play with that over the next few weeks. Maybe I can contribute something useful to this project.

It would also be nice to be able to export the data into some useful format. The most useful format, for me at least, would be GPX, which would make it easy to convert to dozens of other formats.

I guess at some point I should get onto the iStumbler mailing list(s) so that I can make actual feature requests rather than hoping that the author will notice that I’m blogging about him. 😉

Thunderbird smart folders and unread mail

I recently discovered that Thunderbird has smart folders. The reason that it took me this long to find this is that it doesn’t call them that, and it hides them in a rather unexpected place. You do a search, and then you “Save As Search Folder”. There are some problems with either the implementation, or how I’m using it, as it takes hours for the folder to populate itself and be useful, but I think it’s because I’m searching too many subfolders.

Anyways, I set up an “Unread” search folder. That is, everything that is not read. This cheerfully told me that I had 35,433 unread messages. That’s quite a lot, and I think it probably means that I should unsubscribe from about 20 mailing lists that I never ever read.

It’s funny how I’m attached to certain lists, even though I never read them. I feel like I’d miss something if I unsubscribe. And yet, if that’s the case, I’m missing stuff all the time. So today I’ll be trimming back on all those lists that flood in messages, but never get read.

Most of these lists, as it turns out, are Perl lists. I seem to have drifted almost entirely away from doing any Perl stuff. But, to be honest, I never read the lists when I was doing Perl stuff. So now I have, in some cases, 4 years of unread messages on some of these lists. Sheesh.