Audacity is a highly-recommended open source audio editing tool that I’ve been using for years and have found both helpful and frustrating. Since I don’t really know what I’m doing, I waste a lot of time doing it.

For example, try editing out a section of a stereo track. You can’t do it. You can only select both tracks…until you figure out that you first have to split the two tracks by clicking on the “audio track” pull down to the left of the tracks. Then you can select a part of just one track. But then comes the next challenge: When you delete from one track, it’s now out of sync with the first one. You can get around this by generating silence of an equal amount to what you cut. Or you can do what I think is the right thing: Edit > Split Cut deletes the selected stretch and replaces it with blankness. You can then paste into the hole it leaves.

So, eventually I get it to work. Usually. And it’s free and open source, so how can I complain? Oh, I can whine a little because it’s of my nature. But not outright complain.

I did run into one weirdness today that puzzles me more than makes me whiny: When I try to copy and paste music from one recording into the track of another, it gets compressed to half its size, and thus goes up an octave. Instant chipmunks. I think this is because the music is saved at 48K and the track I’m pasting it into is 96K. But I’m just guessing based on noticing the multiple of 2. Yes, I am that type of mathematical prodigy.

In the end, though, I was able to record an interview over the telephone, with me recording into a mic, through a combination of an M-Audio Fast Track Pro, a JK Audio Inline Patch, a lot of trial and a heck of a lot more error, and a lifeline thrown by Colin Rhinesmith of the Berkman Center.

[Tags: audio audacity]

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After United Airline‘s online systems assured me as of 7pm that my 8:40 flight from Boston to DC was only 45 minutes late, I arrived at the airport to be told by the unhelpful person behind the counter that they’d actually cancelled the flight that afternoon. (I’d also checked with a living person over the telephone.)

But that’s just your usual traffic snarl. Kafka didn’t step in until I said that the subsitute flight they wanted to put me on at 2:30 tomorrow afternoon wouldn’t work, but I still wanted to fly back with my ticket on Monday. Fine, said the unhelpful telephone support person, but that will have to be repriced up as a one way fare.

Ah, yes, that’s how to develop customer loyalty! [Tags: marketing united_sucks airlines travel kafka whines]

I was supposed to join a bunch of folks I really like, talking with NPR about social media. But it looks like I may not be able to get there until late afternoon tomorrow, at which point I assume it’s not worth my going. (Disclosure: It’s pro bono consulting.) Too bad. I was looking forward to it.

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If I could write plugins, here are the plugins I’d plug in. Instead, I’m just pluggin’ for them:

1. When I want to put someone’s address in the body of a msg, I frequently will type that address into one of the “To” slots in order to use Thunderbird’s convenient auto-fill capability. But, all too often, I moronically forget to delete the person’s name from the To slot and end up sending it to her. I did that just the morning. So, I’d like to be able to select some text in the body of a msg and tell Thunderbird to do its auto-fill thing on it.

2. I’m waiting for a site to send me an authorization link. It’s taking a while. I’m afraid the msg has gotten filtered. So, I’d like to be able to tell Thunderbird to let through the next message that comes from a particular site or has a particular word in its subject or body. In fact, it should flag that message by coloring it, or beeping, or something. The dialog box that lets me flag a msg should let me indicate that I want only the next msg that meets the criteria to get through or that I want a permanent exception made. (Of course, a permanent exception is really just a new rule, so I could create a filter rule to do this.)

Thank you. [Tags: thunderbird plugins wishlist lazyweb]

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I’ve been using Kaspersky Anti-Hacker as my firewall primarily because it stays out of my way just enough.

But I just did some semi-controlled experiments trying to figure out why I’m getting less than a quarter the bandwidth I’m paying for (using my ISP’s bandwidth speed test, which is consistent with DSLReports‘s). I’ve tried lots of variables, but the biggest one so far is Kaspersky. If I have it set to Medium strictness, I get a third of my rated speed. If I set it to allow all (i.e., sort of off), the volume of bits almost doubles. If I go to Settings and turn the Intrusion Detection System to off, it goes up another third, getting me close to half the bandwidth I’m paying for.

In Safe Mode — yes, it’s XP — I get 66-75% of my rated bandwidth. So I’m continue to cycle through lots of the other programs that get loaded when I start up—putting them back in one by one and restarting. But, it’s in an inexact process since my ISP doesn’t deliver a steady stream of bits to me under the best of circumstances.

By the way, you know what’s a pain in the ass? Cycling through lots of the other programs that get loaded when I start up—putting them back in one by one and restarting.

Do other firewalls reduce bandwidth less? [Tags: firewalls bandwidth kaspersky]

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I went to the clinic today after two days of minor chest discomfort – occasional twinges – that then gathered some jaw pain, and then a wicked headache and nausea. But the ekg says my heart is fine. The rest of the symptoms are of a very nasty bug going around. I feel like crap – and believe me, I’m a moaner (because I’m a man)- but I’m not as scared as a few hours ago. I knew my symptoms were not strong infarction symptoms, but I was still more worried about looking like a nervous nellie than about being a dead nellie. Did I mention I’m a man?

So, I’m blogging this while chilled feverish, thankful that we can afford the outlandishly expensive insurance that let’s me pop down to a clinic for a little ekg and blood work.

So, if this post makes no sense – am I writing this in Klingon?
– blame it on the virus, or possibly Dick Cheney…

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I know my blogroll is suffering from link rot, so during this holiday interstice, I decided I’d finally get around to fixing it up. But first, to make it super-easy, I decided to put it into an iframe, an html widget that pulls in content from another file. That way I could simply edit a simple file and do so simply, without having to go into the Movable Type template editor. (Yes, I looked at one of the MT plugins, but it requires MT v3.3, and upgrading to v3.2 is a lot like installing 3.3, which I am certain I will screw up.)

So, today I’ve spent several simple hours trying to figure out how to get an iframe to size to its contents. It’s more complex than I can handle. PartMost of the problem is my own vagueness about how the object model works. For example, in the many solutions I found via Google, I’m never quite sure whether the code goes in the container document or the contents document. So, I try both. Every possible freaking variation. Some of the problem is that the object model is so rich with possibilities. Some of the problem is that there are differences among the browsers, so you first have to ask politely (and programmatically) which browser is in use and then provide the appropriate function. And part of it is that it’s too damn hard.

So, I’m giving up for now. And, believe it or not, I’m consoling myself by going back to the chief object of frustration in my life: MythTV.

I just love the holidays, don’t you? [Tags: iframe holidays html javascript I_am_an_idiot reasons_to_drink]

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I’m trying yet again to install Linux to use as a desktop machine. Ubuntu won’t install because it tells me there’s “no RNG,” which apparently is a random number generator.

Any way around this? (I’m trying to install Ubuntu 6.10, desktop edition, on a pretty new Intel machine.

I can’t say that Kubuntu handled this error very gracefully: No explanation, no hints, no joy :( [Tags: ubuntu linux]

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Richard Ericson has a very useful review of Office 2007 in Computerworld. It sounds like a user like me will get nothing of real value out of it, except that I’m a power-user of PowerPoint, so I’ll likely have to make the switch.

The review doesn’t mention whether Microsoft has managed to fix the Word revision tracking bugs that have been there for the past ten years. And not just the bug that causes files to go corrupt if they’re too heavily revised. I mean things like not handling paragraph joins correctly; after backspacing two paragraphs together, the only way to get rid of the invisible paragraph marker that remains is to delete a few characters backwards and a few characters forward of the join. Also, if multiple people go through multiple revision cycles, I haven’t found a way to show only the latest revision’s changes by a particular person. Also, if you toggle off displaying your revisions to a document and then make a change, it toggles the display back on.

I don’t know what software number Office is up to, but maybe after spending another $329 to upgrade to the Professional version (which should be called the Penultimate version since $539 is the upgrade price for the Ultimate version), I’ll have a word processor with rev tracking that works.

Or maybe it’s time to switch to Open Office for real. (Alas, I seem to be stuck with PowerPoint, though. I use all its animation features and I can’t show up to give a speech for which I’m paid with a presentation that my hosts can’t run.) [Tags: microsoft office reviews]

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When I’m reading something online that takes more than a screen, I find that I highlight a line near the bottom before I scroll so I can orient myself quickly on the new screen. Therefore, it might be useful if my software did that for me automatically. I can imagine (but, alas, cannot write) a Firefox extension that highlights the bottom line of the main frame (well, ok, so we’ve hit a snag here) whenever a page is scrolled.

Just thinking out loud… [Tags: firefox ereading wishlist]

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I am the sys admin for my wife’s PC. She’s a non-techie scholar who uses her computer for email, occasional browsing, and just about nothing else. So, it’s a straightforward job keeping it up and running. But yesterday I was on the verge of switching her to Linux. All because of Norton Antivirus.

What an arrogant piece of sw NAV is.

Yesterday my wife started getting error messages I haven’t seen in my twenty years of owning Windows machines. The desktop would only barely load and no apps would run. Guessing that it was Norton, I tried to use the Windows Add/Remove facility. It refused to uninstall Norton. So, I booted into Safe Mode as an administrator, but Norton will not uninstall itself in Safe mode.

So, I went through Norton’s instructions for manually uninstalling and removed the 2,035 places Norton writes itself into the Registry and the 367,222 directories Norton strews about your desktop.

But Norton Antivirus is like sand on a beach: Days later you’re still finding it in crevices you didn’t know you had.

As of last night my wife is using Grisoft AVG, the antivirus software I’ve been using on my computer for years. It’s simple. It works. It doesn’t think that it owns your machine. And there’s even a fully functional free version. But at $40 for two years, it’s worth every penny.

I should probably switch my wife to Linux anyway. [Tags: norton grisoft avg antivirus virus whines]

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