You are currently browsing the monthly archive for July, 2007.
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JP calls Buffalo home year-round, not just during football season.
Scott and I recently started recording weekly “Zubritsky’s Corner” podcasts, both to talk about sports in general and to prepare for the third full season of the BDFL podcast. This week was a watershed moment in our podcasting history. After I suggested that Scott and I could greatly improve the quality of the ‘cast by having each of us record our side of the Skype call with separate mics at CD-quality and then mixing the results together, he quickly purchased a decent recording kit. After setting it up with Audacity and sending me a test WAV, we were all set.
I haven’t sung the praises of REAPER in a while. It’s software I purchased last year that’s been my main audio recording/editing tool ever since. I used it to record my side of last Friday’s conversation; the signal chain was my venerable Radio Shack mic plugging into my Mackie 1202-VLZ mixer, which was monitored by my M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 card. It was very easy to monitor my recording level in real-time with REAPER. Once we were done I saved out the new REAPER project. The next morning I received Scott’s recording and after about 15 minutes in REAPER I’d cut, cued, and panned our conversation. In another 15 minutes I’d pulled in our intro/outro music (Brad’s “Look and Feel Years Younger”), spliced it in with fades, set all the channel levels and applied the excellent W1 Limiter to the mix. Then it was simple work to render the project as a FLAC and hand it off to Foobar 2000 for tagging and MP3 conversion. The results are here. Compare it to our podcast from the previous week. To my ears it’s a dramatic improvement. What do you think?
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Looking forward to seeing Lynch!
Got 6.5 hours of uninterrupted sleep for the first time in a while last night. Thanks, Zach!
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The guy isn’t even signed yet… sheesh.
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I’m the kind of guy who sees a difference between advertising and underwriting; and I’d love to find sponsors to underwrite my podcasts.
The USA Today NFL feature I blogged about before is all but done. I guessed #1 Joe Montana correctly (not formally announced yet) and got close on Emmitt Smith, but I disagreed with many of the rankings. I guess that’s the point of these lists. Still a fun ride.
Update (7/23): The voting results. I was glad to see that Jim Kelly nearly made the list. Darrell Green should have received more votes. Shame on the voters (”10 NFL reporters and editors at USA TODAY”) for completely snubbing Art Monk.
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Via Bruce Schneier. If someone in TSA thinks it looks like a bomb, it is treated like a bomb. Sad.
I finally got around to downloading and playing the SupCom demo and even though FarCry doesn’t have a kickin’ graphics card, it’s fun. I am a huge fan of Total Annihilation and have been playing TA Spring more recently. SupCom will definitely be purchased soon!
Ars Technica: Net radio “compromise” hinged on DRM adoption
The source also tells me that DRM is the only plausible “tool” at the disposal of webcasters to accomplish SoundExchange’s goal of working to stop music “streamripping.” It would appear that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The music industry is very worried about users recording Internet radio for the purposes of “disaggregating” music, and the message seems to be that if webcasters will scratch the industry’s back, then a better deal is possible. Too bad it’s a deal that could kill another potential avenue of fair use (recording radio), and limit users’ ability to enjoy radio by limiting playback to clients that support DRM.
Repeat after me, RIAA: “Streamripping librarians are not your customers.” DRM is way too high a barrier to prevent stream ripping. I disagree with the notion that stream ripping is commonly used to create libraries of music. More likely, it’s used to timeshift; that’s a fair use. The first hurdle to make it harder to stream rip would be to require HTTP authentication to connect to a stream.
The RIAA’s fight against internet radio will most likely succeed in driving the industry underground into the long tail, where it would be impossible to get station logs and collect royalties. Of course, at that point, they probably won’t care; they’ll refocus on traditional broadcasters.
This was overdue. I finally removed Ryan’s training wheels and we got out to the park today to get him going on two wheels. I should have brought a camera; he did great! He was already balancing pretty good when riding on the sidewalk, so after he got over me not holding his seat he did quite well. Then we went into the parking lot and that went great! He wants to go back tomorrow. There’s a bit of incline on our sidewalk so we probably will give him one more session on the flats.
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Jerks. One more reason not to listen to radio stations owned by Clear Channel, Cumulus, et al. Wait ’til SoundExchange turns on them now that payola has been outed.
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SoundExchange blinks.
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Nice dB meter for Foobar 2000’s Columns UI.
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“[..]I tried the high resolution two-channel mix, which offers users 24-bit/96kHz audio, which I found to offer more depth than the CD recording[..]” I disagree with this assessment based my own listening and analysis.
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And people thought the iPhone would have a removable battery? Only Apple could get away with making over $100 off a cell phone battery replacement.
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Verizon (and presumably other ILECs) is ripping out copper wiring when they run fiber from the curb to the home, which prevents CLECs from competing and also prevents a future downgrade to DSL service.
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Buffalo still loves Rush. They played at Darien Lake on the Fourth.
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Now *that* is marketing…
This weekend many of our extended family were present for Zachary’s baptism on Sunday. Melissa had planned a great menu for us after the baptism and it turned out great. Thanks to everyone who came to celebrate with us!
Yesterday we went on our first official road trip with Zach & Ryan, to the National Aquarium at Baltimore and Port Discovery. It had been a few years since we had gone to the aquarium, but the consensus favorite is still the dolphin show. It was our first time visiting Port Discovery, which was great for a child of Ryan’s age. Too bad they charge the adults full admission. All we can do for the most part is watch the kids! Unfortunately, both Melissa and I were tired from being up quite a bit the night before, so near the end of the trip we were looking forward to the ride home. Zachary’s “schedule” was definitely shuffled as he ended up sleeping for the majority of the trip. He was up quite a bit last night. I’m glad I took this week off!
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Can’t wait for Barcelona.
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Aww… don’t know that I’ll follow the Flyers any more now that Briere is with them.
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And there goes the other Sabres co-captain…
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