The Daily Bits

Big Day in MacLand!

Tue, 9 Jun 2009 08:35:35 -0400

Yesterday was a big, exciting day for Apple geeks everywhere, with the announcement of a new iPhone model, and the release of version 3.0 of the iPhone operating system. There’s some very cool stuff coming to iPhone next week -- things like voice command and drag-and-drop and copy-and-paste abilities. Further people who actually upgrade to the new hardware will enjoy even faster 3G speeds and an improved 3MP camera with movie mode.

Unfortunately, the ability to use the iPhone as a 3G “modem” for my MacBook, which to me is a much more important feature than any of the other cool new goomies, won’t be available in the U.S. What’s more, there’s still no mention of Safari supporting Flash-based web content.

More interesting to me, though, was the official announcement of Snow Leapard. The new OS promises some huge improvements over the current version, Leopard, with regards to stability, speed and efficiency. And, almost all of the included apps like Quicktime and iCal get some major functionality boosts. Unfortunately, the new OS won’t be available until September. At least the upgrade price will be reasonable...

When The Nature Hides

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:40:50 -0400

We spent the weekend at my parents’ home on the Eastern Shore, and today, went for our usual drive to Assateague. Seems that most of the usual wildlife had Easter Sunday off -- we saw a grand total of 4 ponies, two egrets, one heron and one deer. The robins were out on a great Easter Egg hunt (or, more likely, worms), and quite a few vultures were lurking in the trees. So, other than the ever-present gulls, I was left with little to photograph.

But, the light was good, and I found a shadowed pool along one of the walking trails, and settled in to see what I could see. I found the reflections in the rippled pool fascinating, and the colors were extremely vibrant. I made the sensor my canvas, and used the light as a paintbrush, capturing what I think is a beautiful juxtaposition of reality and fantasy.

More images can be found by clicking on the snaps tab and choosing the Easter at Assateague album.

More!

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:53:08 -0400

I’m adding more things to this thing, a little at a time. Still lot’s of senseless place-holder text and pictures. But, it’ll get fleshed out as time goes by.

Soundflower

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 10:16:31 -0400

Soundflower is a Mac OS X (10.2 and later) system extension that allows applications to pass audio to other applications. For instance, you could use it to capture streaming audio from a web site (such as Wolfgang’s Concert Vault) and record it using GarageBand or Audacity. It works great (last night, I captured a 1977 Pink Floyd concert in its entirety), and best of all, it’s free!

By the way, for those who don’t know, Audacity is also free, and is a really capable audio editor. There was a brief gap in the stream while it re-buffered when I recorded the concert, but using Audacity, I was able to close the gap up with no audible glitch. One thing to bear in mind is that Audacity does not have built-in MP3 creation, even though it can edit existing MP3 files. So, if you want to be able to create MP3s, you’ll also have to download the LAME MP3 encoder (also free - the link is provided in the documentation).

Of course, you should only record streams for your own personal use, such as listening later on your iPod. It’s not nice to use tools like this to rip off recording artists. If you use this to record a song or songs, and you really like them, do the right thing and buy the CD or download it from iTunes.

Once you’ve got all the software loaded, there is a trick or two to using it. If you’re trying to record a web stream, your first step is to select Soundflower (2ch) as your default system output using the sound panel in System Preferences. Then, in Audacity, you need to select Soundflower (2ch) as the input source. To monitor the recording in progress, select your usual output (Built-in Output) as the Audacity output, and select “Software Playthrough.” All of the Audacity settings are made in the program’s Preferences... panel.

One last hint. Just to be safe, and make sure that none of the various system sounds wind up as part of your recording, go into the Sound preferences panel and turn off the “Sound Effects.”

Coming One Day

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:45:59 -0400

The two people who might be reading this site will notice a couple of new pages filled with stuff in Latin. One day, I’ll start putting music and short videos up. Until then, enjoy the Latin.

Blue Snow(ball)

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 21:21:24 -0400

Yes, it’s spring. Why would I be talking about snowballs? And what’s with this blue stuff? I mean, most people warn you about yellow snow. As in, don’t eat it.

Lately, I’ve been listening to lots of music on the MacJams site -- specifically, those made using GarageBand, ‘cause that’s pretty much what I have for music software on my MacBook. One thing I noticed about many of the ones that I particularly liked sonically (particularly vocals and guitars) were recorded with a USB mic. Specifically, the funny-looking round thing above -- the Blue Snowball.

This is an amazing sounding mic -- especially given that it’s got two things stacked against it. First, it’s a USB mic. Mics with built-in USB pre-amps generally sound like a cheap PC peripheral. This one sounds incredibly sweet and clear. The second thing going against it is price. Condenser mics with a street price of under $100 generally sound bad (there are notable exceptions, but not many).

Bottom line? Buy one of these things. Or two. Better yet, buy one or two for me!

Making Mac Music & MacJams

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 12:01:03 -0400

I got the itch ... Again.

One of the reasons I bought the MacBook was to start playing around with making music again -- especially once I learned just how cool GarageBand really is. I’ve even gone so far as it actually buy an issue of Computer Music magazine, which has for years been my favorite music creation magazine, to get the latest versions of all of their excellent included software instruments and effects plugins.

And, somewhere along the lines last night, I stumbled onto macjams.com, a community of indie musicians who use Macs! As with most music-sharing-community web sites, the range of quality of music is quite wide. There’s really good stuff there, and there’s really-not-so-good stuff there. But what’s different about this community site is that everyone there shares a common platform -- a Mac -- and there seems to be a genuine feeling of community. Best of all, it’s free!

Here’s a an example of a song by a MacJams user, blindsidedpoets, produced using GarageBand. I think it’s not bad!

Bird ... no ... Really

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:18:19 -0400

Bet you’d thought I’d forgotten about you, right? No, not me. I’ve just been really busy, and not had a lot of time to do fun things with my Mac.

I have been “playing trains” with my Mac, which is fun, but nothing I couldn’t have done on the PC, too. However, tonight I finally started fooling with EazyDraw, which I got as a freebie on an iCreate magazine disc.

I’m gonna stick it on the ‘fridge!

Final Cut Live Video Capture

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 07:17:24 -0500

In a grand experiment yesterday, I decided to try to capture a live video event (the Howard County Executive’s State of the County Address) from a DVCAM camera directly into Final Cut Express. The short of it is that it worked -- flawlessly -- after a bit of futzing around.

Initially, the capture module in FCE wanted to throw the camera into VTR mode and play back the tape that I was recording to as a “safety”. I tried all kinds of variations on starting the recording, but, the result was always the same. I finally figured out that I needed to tell Final Cut that the camera was not a controllable device.

The easiest way to do that was to run “Easy Setup,” which you can do as many times as you need to, even with a project open, and for the input device, select a DV input with appropriate video settings (in my case, NTSC DV), but without device control. Once I did that, it worked like a charm, flawlessly capturing almost 50 minutes of continuous video directly to the MacBook’s internal hard disk. This saved me almost an hour in “edit” last night, as I didn’t have to ingest the video from tape before assembling the program for air.

For those interested, the address will air on Howard County GTV beginning tonight at 7:30PM, and run every night through Tuesday, January 20. It will also air at 7:30AM beginning tomorrow morning. GTV can be seen on Verizon FiOS channel 44 in Howard and Anne Arundel counties, and on Comcast channel 99 in Howard county.

Say “No!” to iPhoto Bloat

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 18:57:41 -0500

iPhoto’s a really neat little application for organizing images, and for quick image editing. However, my friend Scott pointed out an aspect of iPhoto that will cause it to eat disk space like crazy.

By default, when you import images into iPhoto, it adds them to it’s proprietary library file in their entirety. If you also keep your original images on the same hard disk, that means your images effectively take up twice as much space! That’s pretty inefficient. However, there are at least two strategies for dealing with this.

Once your images are inside the iPhoto library, it is possible to export the photo again in a number of formats -- including the original format. So, if you’ve shot RAW images and imported them to iPhoto, it’s an easy matter to get your RAW files back out. Simply highlight the images in question, click File then Export... and select Original from the drop-down box. You can select any valid drive or folder as the export destination -- including your iDisk.

Another strategy is to not use iPhoto to copy images from your memory card or camera. Instead, use the Finder to copy images off the card to a separate hard drive or to a DVD-ROM. Then, import the images into your iPhoto library from there. That way, you have a backup of your original files from the get-go.

Yet a third way is to go into the Advanced tab of the iPhoto preferences, and un-check “Copy items to the iPhoto Library.” This option will force iPhoto to retain only the information about the changes you make to an image, and a small thumbnail for previewing, which will greatly conserve disk space. The drawback to this option is that it is more difficult to move the iPhoto library to another computer, since you have to set up the same sets of folders on both computers and be sure to move everything -- both the Library and the individual picture files should you need to migrate images from one computer to another.