It's a busy life...sure beats the alternative

It seems like forever since I've posted anything here. I'd apologize, but I only have two regular readers, so that would be silly. It's not like there are hundreds or even dozens of people hanging on my words. Suppose I can take however much time I want between posts.

Anyway, so one of the things that's been taking my time is a newsletter I'd love to show off to you. It's quarterly, so I only spend probably a total of five to six weeks a year on this, but I'm always so very pleased with the final product. It's a much more in-depth commitment than the weekly e-newsletter I throw together every weekend and distribute through Constant Contact. This one is actually a print newsletter and I do everything for it but write. Editing, photography (or image hunting; about half of the images are shot by me, while the others are either public domain or CC-sharealike), layout, electronic conversion, etc. are all me.

Please take a look at them here. Heck, if you're agriculture-minded, go ahead and inquire about signing up. It's free.

A free app that could save a life!

I don't remember how I originally discovered it, but CodeRED Mobile Alert by ECN is an app that everyone--and I mean everyone--should have on their smart phone.

The app ties into a national emergency notification system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency in your area. If an alert is issued for your location, a klaxon-type horn sounds and the app automatically pops up with a brief notice of the type of alert. When you select it, a recorded message from the issuing agency is played over your speakerphone, announcing the details and any instructions.

When you first download the app, you are given a trial of the severe weather alerts portion in addition to the free community alerts. After expiration of the trial, continued weather alerts are a premium service at $4.99 per year. But seriously, what is $5 yearly when it could let you know you are in the direct path of an oncoming tornado?

This morning the klaxon sounded to let me know police had in custody a two-to-three-year-old light-skinned black boy who had been found walking in the street in only his diaper. Just imagine, if the boy was yours and you had this iPhone app installed, you could say to yourself at 5:30 in the morning, "A light-skinned African American toddler boy in only a diaper? Wait a minute... I have one of those! Maybe I should go check to see if he's still in his crib where he belongs..."

If you DON'T have this app, you're likely to wake up later than 5:30am and say to yourself in a panic, "Oh my god! Where is my light-skinned African American child? Did he go outside? But he is only two-to-three years old, and he was only wearing a diaper!

Anyway, download the app. I've gotten severe weather alerts, missing elderly people alerts, amber alerts, attempted kidnapping alerts and similar notifications.

In all seriousness, this app could honestly help you save someone's life. Please download it. It's free in your app store.

Draw Something is amazing!

I have a confession. I am balls-deep into a Draw Something addiction right now. I cannot recommend a mobile app any higher than I do this game. It is so incredibly fun, even without purchasing the $1.99 premium upgrade, though I'm bound to do so at any time now.

I play this game whenever I have a chance. I currently have about 15 games going, and at times I find myself thinking that's just not enough. So far there are about half a dozen players I really enjoy volleying back and forth with (and one of those is an opponent that was randomly selected for me). I can still have fun with all the players in my games, but there is that handful whose drawings I truly anticipate receiving, not only to watch them guess my drawing, but to see what they have in store for me.

I try my best to avoid taking the easy way out on a drawing whenever possible. Of course, sometimes I am limited by the size of my iPhone, especially when coupled with the sausagelike fngers that are doing the drawing. But for the most part I have stuck to my plan of creating a challenge out of each round when I can, not only for myself, but for the guesser as well. For instance, last night the word I chose to draw was "red." I could have drawn a splotch of red paint and pointed to it with an arrow.

Instead--and I wish I'd done a screen grab of this now--I went with "red" as more of a theme. I drew (in this order) a wall splattered with blood, a huge puddle on the floor, a bloody, severed stick-man arm lying in the puddle, a kneeling, blood-spattered stickman sans one arm next to it, and the caption, "Oh dear. It appears my arm has fallen off."

One time for "blender" I drew (again, in this order) a nondescript green, red and slightly yellow swirl topped by a green splotch with what appeared to be two bulging eyes, a cup or jar surrounding it, a black base, some buttons, an electrical cord , and more colored splotches radiating out from the carnage; a frog in a blender.

Here are a few I did get screen grabs of. These are some of my greatest examples of not taking the easy way out. Once again, anyone can view my entire ongoing album of favorite original Draw Something screen grabs at this URL. Please stop by for a chuckle or two. Enjoy the preview below!

Thanks for reading! PLEASE SUBSCRIBE!!!

New version of Audacity looks good so far

As you know, I have recently discovered a software release that got me quite excited, the newest incarnation of Sourceforge's open source audio editing suite, Audacity. I downloaded it yesterday and I have had a little bit of time to fiddle around with it since then. After that brief exposure I can now give my initial impressions of its capabilities, some of the more obvious differences since the last version, and maybe even a couple of things I don't like or that will, at the very least, take some getting used to.

THE GOOD:

• Much faster MP3 export
• Variable speed playback slider keeps you from mucking about in the effects menu just to play something back a bit slower
• Playhead indicator goes across all tracks when using the time shift tool, making it much easier to synch tracks to each other
• Includes a sliding time/pitch shift tool - I'm very excited about this one!
• I'm also excited about the new vocoder tool, but I have not yet had the chance to mess with it
• New vocal remover tool
• More tone generators
• And best of all, NO CRASHES YET!

THE BAD:

• The reverb option is gone - perhaps it's been integrated with the echo effect
• The project menu is gone and I suspect it's been split up between the new tracks menu and some of the other menu options, making it difficult to navigate at first
• The ID3 tagging was also tough to find - in this version it's called metadata, which I guess is an appropriate name anyway; I liked the interface though, once I found it

THE WTF?

This release includes a DTMF generator, for which I cannot imagine a proper use. If someone has any idea, please fill me in. If you don't know what DTMF is, it stands for Dual Tone Multi Frequency... Basically it's the sounds a touch tone phone makes when you press the buttons. The new generator in Audacity allows you to input a string combination and it will insert that string in DTMF format into your project at the indicated point. What for? I don't know. Please help.

So that's my initial impression. If I discover any other new gems (or headaches) in dealing with this software, I'll be sure to post them right here. Any way you look at it, this version is a major improvement on an already superior piece of programming. As I mentioned before, you can't beat free, unless it's free and of a superlative quality; Audacity is both. Thanks, Sourceforge.

Sourceforge releases new version of sound editor

I was stoked to learn this morning that our friends at Sourceforge have recently taken their wonderful sound editor, Audacity, from its latest beta version to a full, new version release! On March 13 of this year, they unveiled Audacity v 2.0!

A screenshot from Audacity 2.0

I've been using Audacity for many years, and I can't be happier with its performance. For a free product, you can't beat it. Audacity outperforms some premium products I've used. This release addresses, among other things, some of the bugs that have been driving me occasionally nuts, primarily the one that causes the program to sometimes crash for no reason after recording in Windows 7. Even though the product has admittedly brought me infrequent headaches over the years due to glitches like this, I would still wholeheartedly recommend it to any audiophile who wants a powerful piece of audio editing software on a budget.

I have not yet had time to explore all the upgrades in this release. If I end up having more feedback on the matter I will definitely forward it on to the Sourceforge team and post it here for the curious.