Summer Food Fun and Drink 15 Life in the now lane · Thursday July 29, 2010 by colin newell
One of the neat things about being over 40 – and being fairly hip to what is hot and happening in the early part of the 21st Century…
Is the fact that I am old enough to remember going into a record store to buy LP’s – when cassettes were actually available…
Photo at right: New copyright protection laws and digital locks – technology and new media – Stephen Harper wants to know: What’s on your iPod!?
(And)Seeing the arrival of CD’s in the early eighties was way cool as well.
I can recall shopping out my first CD Player (a Sony) with my one CD I owned… and then previewing the performance of new systems with Dire Straits “Brother in Arms” release (which by the way was the first million selling CD in 1985) – yes, I waited until at least 1985 to get my first CD player.
My Amp was (and is with my Mom now) a Class-A JVC high end amp with a pair of Boston Acoustic speakers (that I think need a re-coning by now…)
There was a time in the late 70’s when home video tape arrived in the form of the VHS and Beta tape – ushering in an era of home video rentals – something that is quickly going the route of DVD rentals. When DVD rentals arrived I think a lot of us figured that “this was it…” – this is the medium for home entertainment that was here to stay.
Then Blue-ray. And in some senses, that technology has hardly dug in its heels and the rental market is entirely drying up as viable internet downloading of individual shows as well as broadband on demand is becoming more available to the average person.
My point? I have seen it all – from the late sixties and album oriented masterpieces on vinyl from the likes of Led Zeppelin – and I heard ever album as they were released!
Nowadays one does not even need to leave their living room to acquire every bit of “entertainment” that is available. No need for video or DVD rental. No need for record stores. Game rentals? History my friend.
And I think that we are all poorer without the whole community experience. One wonders what kind of people we will become when we only need to go out for work or food. I wonder.
As of today, I have still managed to not download one song off of the internet – and I have never downloaded a TV show or movie. Call me square if you want – but I work with this technology all day. Which might explain something.
Currently, what is left of the music industry (and movie empire) is quickly trying to come up with some tough new standards on protecting intellectual property. I am all for supporting the artist – but everything so far has not worked.
Anyway. Stay tuned. Let’s see what is next.
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Summer Food Fun and Drink 14 Six years later and a re-launch · Wednesday July 28, 2010 by colin newell
Who is writing a book on global microfinance for Bloomsbury, puzzle maker for the New York Times op-ed section, travel writer, Forbes Traveler, author of Who Hates Whom, a pocket guide to global conflict outlining more than 30 of the world’s active wars and hot spots?
He is a former writer for CSI: Crime Scene Investigation – season 3 in which yours truly had a minute writing role – and a freelance writer for the show “Bones”…
Deep breath…
And a consulting producer for El Pantera, Mexico’s top original action series, former AP award-winning nationally syndicated radio commentator, former on-camera presenter for the TLC series Mostly True Stories, and a winner of over $350,000 in cash and prizes on Jeopardy! and other quiz shows…
He is Bob Harris of Los Angeles California and I have been his web specialist since 2004!
In the last couple of weeks we have been doing a soft launch of the new BobHarris.com online phenomenon. Bob, in the upcoming days, weeks and months will add to the nearly 1600 articles on the classic BobHarris.com website.
And integrate the other social media elements of Bob’s life into one great big shiny experience; Twitter, Facebook meets Web 2.0
Enjoy Bob’s website – and let me know if something is not working quite right.
Rites of Spring #28 Technology of our undoing - broadband over power lines · Saturday May 29, 2010 by colin newell
My day job is in multi-media design, modernization, implementation and blah, blah, blah…
…in the educational environment. In my case UVic.
(so)Give me a classroom or lab with a black board and a piece of chalk and I will give you video data projection, infinitely variable lighting controls, high speed internet, web-casting and sound so crisp you would swear it’s live.
because in the year 2010, it’s easily to learn when you have all the tools.
And this applies to the home as well.
I have a PC workstation for audio production and a MacBook Pro for doing the stuff I am doing right now… a very high speed internet connection… and Wireless-N that I do not even use. I like my cat-5 wiring if at all possible. It is secure… and it’s reliable as gravity my friends.
I also like keeping my bits and bytes contained within copper cable if possible. Not adverse to wireless… as long as it’s wireless-N or better. Which is secure as heck after all – low power. It’s safe. And nobody gets hurt, right?
Well, there is something that has come down the pipe (more popular in Europe than here) that is scaring the crap out of me – not for what it does to people or creatures – but what it potentially takes away from us… our ability to communicate.
It’s called broadband over the power lines or BPL and it uses house wiring for distributed ethernet. God knows who designed this stuff. It has the capability, ironically, of seriously interfering with existing digital radio and TV and old style AM and FM radio – impeding our ability to communicate with each other and enjoy our high tech lives. Now that is genuinely ironic wouldn’t you say?
The boxes (shown above and sold at COST-CO) are made in China and they are shit. Some colleagues and I are investigating an interference report from the area around Beacon Hill Park in Victoria – some 4 city blocks wide! And it is likely one of these little peckers (shown above). From some of the intelligence that we have gathered, people are buying these units at COST-CO and then returning them shortly thereafter – not because they don’t work… because they do – but because they are difficult to set up.
Wireless-N is tried, tested and true – sets up easily and does not interfere with any domestic or terrestrial radio or data services.
Now imagine that you neighbor down the street buys one of these boxes and your audiophile set-up is screwed… or your HD TV is now replete with interference lines or inexplicable odd behavior – and don’t think for a second that because it’s digital it is immune to interference – cause it ain’t.
So think about this: One device (shown above) and 4 city blocks wiped out.
How wiped out? I listen to CFAX 1070 AM in Victoria and the offending box (or something like it – we are not exactly sure it is this particular unit) actually interferes with a 10,000 watt radio station.
This should concern us.
Rites of Spring #15 - Gadgets - playing with the TASCAM US-100 interface · Saturday May 15, 2010 by colin newell
This is the first in a series of features focusing on the geek aspects of my life under the category of digital audio.
I have a home based studio powered by a 3.2 Ghz PC running Windows XP. One of my main audio interfaces in the M-Audio Delta 44 4 channel audio interface tied into a 12-in / 2-out Behringer analog mixing board. I use APEX floating plate microphones and Adobe audition software for multi-track audio recording and mastering.
An old friend of mine needed a portable USB interface device that would handle phono inputs from his turntable into his slightly older PC. After a bit a research and phone calls to the good folks at Long & McQuade, I had my hands on the very affordable TASCAM US-100 multi-mode USB audio interface.
The TASCAM’s US-100 bridges a wide variety of analog devices like cassette decks and turntables as well as guitars, basses, keyboards and non-phantom powered microphones into your PC or MAC. The microphone input handles any dynamic microphone (like the SHURE SM-58), or you can plug in your guitar or bass directly into the instrument-level input. Stereo line inputs can be switched to RIAA phono level for digitizing your LP’s from any turntable. A USB 2.0 connection guarantees hassle free playback on any Mac or Windows box, and solid aluminum construction looks like it could survive anything I could throw at it.
The online specs read: The US-100 records in stereo at CD-quality 48kHz/16-bit resolution and includes a free copy of Audacity software to get you started.
Oddly my sample did not come with any software but the fabulous AUDACITY software is readily downloaded along with a veritable forest of plug-ins.
I was up and running in minutes and playing my guitar directly into my PC (and then my MAC Powerbook for good measure) – I then patched one of my favorite semi-pro cassette decks from the 80’s – the JVC DD-5 into the RCA inputs on the TASCAM US-100 for some whisper quiet recording on the PC. Some of my song demos from the 80’s, however banal nowadays, sure sounded sweet through this set-up. And NO, no one is ever hearing those demos!
The TASCAM US-100 has a single balanced XLR and 1/4” unbalanced microphone input, as well as unbalanced stereo RCA line ins and outs. I have been using TASCAM products since the 1980’s (with the venerable TASCAM 144 and 244 cassette multi-track units.) As usual, TASCAM and Long & McQuade have never let me down. Their staff are awesome and no matter where you go in Canada, you are going to be singing the praises of Long & McQuade and Tascam products.
