Tom & Nan Dot Com

Well we went to the Alabama Jubilee in Decatur again this year… I think this was the 5th year in a row. Weather was absolutely beautiful but the wind was almost dead calm. Only two balloons launched on Saturday evening and flew for about 15 minutes and only went about 150 yards. Got to see Joel, the Remax balloon pilot.  We were treated to the best balloon glow we’ve ever seen.

On Sunday we changed it up and went to the Tennessee Renaissance Festival, our first trip to a renfest. Saw the end of the only human chess game (huzzah) and two joust matches (HUZZAH). Since this was our first time to a Renaissance Festival we didn’t know what to expect, but had a pretty good time.

We toured the Castell Gwynn, the castle/home built by Mike Freeman… yes, it’s his home. We got to see the kitchen, a hallway lined with tapestries and a room that had a very high ceiling with a candle chandelier that is raised and lowered to light/replace the candles.

I don’t have a lot of pics to share but here are a few.

Alabama Jubilee Balloon Festival

Renaissance Festival

Castell Gwynn

Tape-a-Talk is a great app for Ham Radio operations.

I installed Tape a Talk on my Droid Razr Maxx “stupid” phone a few months ago and just found a great use for it. When I’m working HF mobile I record the contacts. I then dictate the contact time and frequency onto the recording and can log the contact on my paper log book and my HRD log book at a later date. Now I don’t miss logging contacts. Someday I’ll start sending QSL cards out.

There has been a lot of buzz on the Internet over the past couple of days about a kids rule book that was found by a young Citrus Heights, California Wal-Mart employee named Raymond Flores.  The book contains 158 rules, handwritten by a child that has to be around 7 or 8 years old.  Rule number 158 was not actually entered, there’s just a number for the rule.

There is a lot of buzz because he is trying to return the book to it’s rightful owner. I think we have a lot to learn from this smart little kid. In my opinion these rules go to the heart of what our mom’s and dad’s taught us when we were little. In my opinion they can be applied to life of kids and grown-ups alike.  I’m know guilty of breaking some them and I’ll bet most people are.

I transcribed the rules that Mr. Flores read in a video on his Facebook page.  I know there are three spelling errors and I’m sure there are others.  Since I do not know where other spelling errors are I’ve corrected the ones I know about. Here my transcript of all of the rules:

1. No talking back

2. No Pushing

3. No Screaming

4. Be Safe

5. Listen

6. No being gross

7. Help others

8. Care with others

9. No being bad

10. Have fun at all times

11. No lying

12. No whining

13. Be positive

14. Be a good Communicator

15. Be responsible

16. Be respectful

17. Say sorry

18. Say please

19. Say thank you

20. Have good manners

21. No yelling

22. Be nice to books

23. Use good language

24. No teasing

25. Don’t make fun of others

26. When sleeping, don’t wake others

27. Do what the parents ask you to do

28. Be unique

29. Be yourself

30. Don’t copy others

31. Don’t cheat on tests

32. Study for tests

33. Exercise

34. Do things equally with each other

35. Do things yourself

36. Do your homework

37. No stealing

38. No making unwanted noise

39. No saying ew when someone farts

40. Say excuse me

41. Don’t color on people

42. Don’t color on peoples paper

43. No spitting

44. No squeezing others

45. Try to compliment

46. Don’t say no

47. Don’t cry

48. No pulling hair

49. No turning your back

50. No punching

51. No getting into others faces

52. No going under the bed only if necessary

53. keep your gum in your mouth

54. No ruining bedding

55. No coloring in rule book

56. No jumping on bed

57. No ignoring others

58. No hiding from others

59. No being loud

60. Put your shoes by the front door when you take them off

61. Wear anything you want to

62. Keep dogs away from cats

63. Don’t call each other names

64. clean up your messes

65. no eating other peoples food

66. go to bed at bedtime

67. Do your homework

68. Don’t have a party without parents

69. If there is one bathroom go to the bathroom fast

70. Keep the environment clean

71. don’t  go running in the street or the parking lot

72. Don’t play with knives

73. Have a parent guide you when cooking

74. Sit on your chair correctly

75. Drink water a lot

76. Don’t touch hot things unless with a parent

77. Try to get good grades on tests

78. Share

79. Try to bee good big sister/brother

80. Stop at stop signs and stop lights

81. Wear a seatbelt

82. Pay attention in class

83. Don’t steal

84. Wake up when you need to

85. Don’t get into other people’s business

86. No running when it is slippery

87. Always be polite

88. No ditching

89. Go when you have to go

90. Never leave a friend behind

91. Don’t go running / walking on a basketball court if someone is playing basketball

92. Ask permission

93. Don’t promise if you’re going to break it

94. Keep hands to yourself

95. Don’t talk with your mouth full

96. Don’t pick other people up

97. Don’t eat right before going to the dentist

98. Don’t bite the dentist

99. Don’t drive into road work

100. Don’t suck your fingers

101. Do your chores

102. Don’t text and drive at the same time

103. No toys at the table

104. Eat the food you get served with

105. Tie your shoes or you will fall

106. no elbows on the table

107. Chew with your mouth closed

108. Don’t eat when your mouth is numb

109. No bribing

110. Help new students

111. Go through detector in stores

112. Try to make things fair

113. Don’t talk to strangers

114. Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to

115. Don’t go on top of other people in pools

116. Keep your friends secrets

117. If there is no space between one person you want to sit by don’t cry or whine because there is no room

118. Don’t keep plsaying please if someone says no

119. Don’t eat your boogers from picking your nose

120. Don’t sleep with your toys

121. Don’t keep other people awake after bed time

122. Pay for everything you want to buy at the store

123. Blow your nose not pick your nose

124. Don’t run in the house

125. No pulling hair

126. Recycle

127. No littering

128. Don’t be bossy

129. Don’t play with your toys at night time

130. Don’t talk people’s ears off

131. Read / listen instructions

132. Go to bed early if you have dance in the morning

133. Don’t stuff your mouth

134. Let the dentist work in your mouth

135. Let the doctor work on your body

136. Warn others about danger

137. No cheating on other people

138. Tell the teacher if you’re leaving

139. If you wet your bed wear a pull-up

140. Don’t watch TV after bed time

141. Don’t chew gum at school

142. Don’t chew gum if you wear braces

143. No toys at school

144. Act in a mature way with self control an respect others

145. Don’t ignore friends and parents

146. Don’t get into people’s way if they’re playing with a hula hoop

147. Don’t bounce on hula hoops

148. Don’t skip detention

149. Don’t skip school unless you’re sick

150. Keep your sleeves to yourself

151. Keep your feet and shoes to yourself

152. Keep your hair to yourself

153. Ask if they’re ok

154. Protect this rule book

155. Protect each other

156. No touching other people’s body parts

157. No poking

158

This is the final part of a 3 part series on digitizing vinyl.

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 1 (and Part 1-A)

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 2

So now we have a directory containing 10 MP3 files, 2 Audacity project files and 2 directories containing the Audacity raw data:

The MusicInbound directory is on my desktop.  I use it to save music I’ve imported from CD with iTunes and when I digitize vinyl.  This particular directory is Linda Ronstadt’s “Heart Like A Wheel” album, one of 12 albums I bought out of the 50 cent bin at Homer’s in Omaha last month.

In this final part of the series we’ll be tagging the MP3 files, adding an image of the album cover and adding info about the album to each track in the notes section of the mp3 tags.

Picking up where we left off in Part 2:

Step 24.

Open up MP3TAG and Windows Explorer (NOT Internet Explorer) and browse to your directory containing your MP3 files.

Step 25.

Drag all of the MP3 files over to MP3TAG.

Step 26.

Select all files by hitting CTRL+A.

Step 27.

Enter the Artist, Album, Year and Genre.

Step 28.

Select Track01 and enter the Title and “01” for the track number.  I do this in 2 digits so the tracks play in the correct order when I play them on my iPod or on WinAmp on my computer.

– Repeat step 28 for each song on the album.

Step 29.

Now you need your Album Art.  I download images of album covers at www.albumartexchange.com. Just click on the gallery and do a search for the album art you’re looking for. I usually use 600×600 images…

In this case we’re looking for Linda Ronstadt’s “Heart Like A Wheel” album

Just click on the cover you want and you’ll see it in the size you want. Just right-click on the album art and save as whatever you want to call it somewhere on your computer so you know where you can find it. I generally save it where the mp3 files it goes with are.

Step 30.

Close the browser and go back into MP3TAG and select all files by hitting CTRL+A (again).

Step 31.

Right-click where the cover goes in MP3TAG and select Add Cover…

Step 32.

Select the file you saved in Step 29 and click the Open button.

Your screen should have all of the files selected and the album cover image should show up in the box in MP3TAG.

Step 33.

This step renames the files so that they can easily be identified on your hard disk.  On the toolbar at the top of the window you’ll notice near the menu a series of short-cut buttons. There’s on that allows you to use the MP3 tags to name the file.  Make sure all of your files are still selected (CTRL+A) and select the button to rename the files based on the tags:   

 

A window will pop up allowing you to set the pattern for the filename:

If you use the pattern like I have in the “Format string” box, the first song of the record I’m working on gets renamed to:

“Linda Ronstadt – Heart Like A Wheel – 01 – You’re No Good.mp3”

When you hit the ok button the entire set of files representing the entire album will be renamed and the previous screen will come back showing the files with their new names.

Step 34.

Move the files to wherever you normally store your music.  I keep mine on an archive drive. Each album gets its own directory.  You can now load the music onto your iPod, iPad, Cell phone or wherever else you use to listen to it.

Important Note: Sharing this music once you’ve converted it is still illegal under Copyright law…  DON’T do it!

Ok, So it’s been a little longer than I intended, but here is part 2 of this series.

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 1 (and Part 1-A)

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 3

This part of the series will cover chopping the individual music cuts out of the long album sides.  Here goes:

Step 11. (picking up where we left off in part 1)

Find the beginning of the first beat of music at the beginning of the record side and then click just before the music starts.

Step 12.

Click the “Edit” menu, then “Select” and click “Track Start to Cursor”.

Step 13.

Hit the “Delete” key on your keyboard.  You’re deleting the leader up to the point where your cursor is, so make sure you really put the cursor before the music starts.

Step 14.

Find the end of the first song and put your cursor at the end of it where you want the first mp3 file to end.

Step 15.

Click the “Edit” menu, then “Select” and click “Track Start to Cursor” and then CTRL+X to cut the song out of the file onto the Windows Clipboard.

Step 16.

Select “File” and then “New” to Open a second copy of Audacity and hit CTRL+V to paste the first song into the new copy of Audacity.

Step 17.

This step is not required, I do it in case I need to tinker with the audacity file if I don’t like the way the mp3 turns out.  Save the file as “Track01” in audacity’s native format “.aup”.

Step 18.

Click the “File” menu, Select “Export”.

Step 19.

This window pops up:

Click the Options Button.

Step 20.

This screen pops up:

On the “Specify MP3 Options” screen, select the options you want to use to encode the mp3 file.  I like constant bit rate, 192 kbps and “Joint Stereo, then click the OK button.

 

Step 21.

You’re back on the previous screen. Name the file “Track01” and click the save button.

Step 22.

Select OK from the window that pops up, don’t worry about adding tags to the file just yet.  We’re going to do them later in part 3 with MP3TAG.

Step 23.

Repeat Steps 11 – 22 for each cut on the album (both sides) except make sure you name them sequentially. Side 2 track 1 would be “Track06” if there are 5 songs on side 1 of the record…

When you’re done, you’ll have the same number of MP3 files named Track01.mp3 through Track10.mp3 (or however many songs are on the album).

This is the end of cutting the file into individual songs and exporting them to mp3. In Part 3, we’ll tag them and add album art to the files.

This is an added part to part 1 of my 3 part series on digitizing vinyl:

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 1

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 2

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 3

Need to add a couple of items to part 1… this does NOT supersede part 1, it adds a “what to do if”…

I bought a copy of Herb Alpert’s Rise album, Originally released in 1979. It was in the 50 cent bin at Homers in Omaha, one of 12 albums I bought when I was on my trip last month.  The record is pristine.  Initially I wondered why it was in pristine shape and noticed a sticker on the front of the album cover… It’s encoded in dbx.

Not many of those dbx encode/decode units around anymore, right?  Well I just happen to have one laying around… I picked it up cheap at a yard sale when I was stationed at McGuire… you don’t know how many times this thing was almost dumped in the trash bin over the years.

So… I’m in the process of digitizing this album as I’m building this post.  The most notable thing to point out is the DEAD SILENCE between tracks.  I didn’t expect this but there’s absolutely no surface noise from the record:

This section is of the leader at the very beginning of the last track on side 2.  Notice how flat the wave form is before the first beat of the music starts.  There’s no additional audio processing there, just the decoding provided by the dbx box that I’ve had on the shelf in the garage for 15 years and before that was moved from place to place over the years while I was in the military… I’ve NEVER used it to decode anything before today, most tapes were recorded in Dolby-B or Dolby-C so it didn’t see much use… I did experiment with it, but found I couldn’t record tapes with it and expect them to sound good in the car unless the car stereo had dbx decode in it…

As far as digitizing, except for putting the dbx encode/decode box in-line between the turntable and the sound card on the computer, I followed the exact same steps to capture the album as part 1 of this series.

We went to Mackinac Island last week for a vacation. The trip was awesome.

Mackinac Island is an island and resort area covering 3.8 square miles in land area in Michigan. It is located in Lake Huron, at the eastern end of the Straits of Mackinac, between the state’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas. The island was home to a Native American settlement before European exploration began in the 17th century. It served a strategic position amidst the commerce of the Great Lakes fur trade. This led to the establishment of Fort Mackinac on the island by the British during the American Revolutionary War. It was the scene of two battles during the War of 1812.

In the late 19th century, Mackinac Island became a popular tourist attraction and summer colony. Much of the island has undergone extensive historical preservation and restoration; as a result, the entire island is listed as a National Historic Landmark. It is well known for its numerous cultural events; its wide variety of architectural styles, including the famous Victorian Grand Hotel; its fudge; and its ban on almost all motor vehicles. More than 80 percent of the island is preserved as Mackinac Island State Park.

We flew to Pellston Airport in the northern part of the LP of Michigan and stayed 2 nights in Mackinaw City and then rode the “Cat” to the Island.  In Mackinaw City we visited the Historic Fort Michilimackinac on the southern coastline of the Mackinaw Straits. The entrance to the museum is literally under the roadway under the Mackinaw Straits Bridge.  Here are four pictures we took during the Mackinaw City portion of the trip.

On Mackinac Island we spent 5 nights at the Mission Point Resort.

We walked or rode horse buggies everywhere. We even walked the 8 miles of M-185, around the coastline of the island and yes, our legs hurt after that one.

One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to the Grand Hotel. This hotel was featured in the movie Somewhere In Time, starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. Another highlight was a stop in the Mackinac Island Library.

As mentioned earlier, cars are NOT allowed on the island. When you get off the ferry for the first time it IS like stepping back in time, except there are still a lot of modern conveniences like your cell phone will still work, wireless internet is available and some places have air conditioning. But the horses and buggy, bicycle, and using your own two feet to get from point A to point B are your only forms of transportation. It was definitely a different kind vacation, we hope to be able to go here again someday.

Here are some pictures from the island:

The weather this morning was awesome for a balloon ride. We got to Point Mallard early enough to catch almost all launches.  Here are a few pics from this morning.

This year the weather was a lot more cooperative for the balloon glow.  On Saturday evening we attended the balloon glow and watched some tethered rides.

I’ve gone to the dark side… Partly gone to the dark side anyway. I went out today and bought a Mac mini.  Yes, I agree with Nan that I didn’t NEED it, but I wanted it so I could learn all about Mac’s. I still have the Windows 7 64bit beast and I won’t be giving it up any time soon, All of our pictures, my development tools, and my music is on it.

The Mac mini entry level system has an Intel Core i5 running at 2.3 GHz and 2GB of 1333 RAM. FOr the non-geekers out there it’s kind of on the slow side if it were a Windows PC… BUT, I’m told the Operating System is slimmed down. It doesn’t have to support the wide range of hardware that Windows tries to support… It only has to run on systems built by Apple… so, I was initially expecting it to be a little sluggish, but it’s not. It came with OS X Lion 10.7 and hooks to a standard keyboard, mouse, and monitor.  I’m surprised at how smoothly it runs.

So… Now I get to learn all about how the innards of how this system works too, and I’ll get to play around with interoperability of it with both Windows 7 and Ubuntu Linux. Will probably be playing a lot with remote desktop so that I don’t need extra monitors, keyboards and mice.

You can read all about the Mac mini on Apples’s web site (www.apple.com). When you get there just pick the Mac menu and then click on the Mac mini.

I included the picture so you could get an idea of how small the box is, EVERYTHING fit inside of the box.  Power cord, video adaptor, user manual, and the Mac mini.