Posts Tagged “Mac”
 Ask around my office, or around Podcamp, or a technology centric podcast or recording area. People can’t help but compliment Audacity, the free software program does everything you need to do to produce professional recording and media. The best thing about free software is the price, the worse thing is that there usually aren’t good directions for what to do with it. Enter The Book of Audacity by No Starch Press. No Starch press offers a line of books that take a relaxed approach to presenting good information. they have a tendency to publish technical books that are, gasp! Easy to read. Imagine that.
Carla Schroder, the author spends time to segment the information into each platform discussing candidly with little fandom attached to good things about each platform, be it Windows Mac or Linux. The graphics charts, and helpful hints are expertly placed to break up the flow of text and make the book easy to consume. Carla’s voice can clearly be heard throughout the text, so that it sounds less like a white paper and more like a discussion from an expert point of view.
How does it Read?
Dry subject matter is dry, but a complex concept explained in good detail with frequent examples and bite sized chunks of relevant information is always the best way to go. When you pick up a tech book, do you want to go from soup to nuts? Or do you do what the rest of us humans do, flip right to the section you NEED at that point. This book is designed to make both approaches easy t understand. A short introduction and focused chapters make the information compartmentalized and accessible for users of any platform.
I’ve been using audacity both in work and at home for over 5 years at this point and I picked up tips and tricks which I hope will make my future recordings, mixes and podcasts that much cleaner. I am constantly called upon to teach sessions on using Audacity. love helping others realize the value of a free program, you just have to provide the sweat equity to make it yours. With this book the time spent sweating is reduced and the time spent making good audio is increased!
The only area I saw that wasn’t really dealt with is What Happens when Audacity Crashes? But I have you covered there.
Rent or Own:
I judge all books based on whether or not you should buy them or take them out of the library. I would file this book in the Own category, not only is it a good reference for experiences users to eyeball when they are stuck on removing the last little bit of fuzz from a track or getting the most out of their setup. But this book is an essential tool for the new Audacity user.
Book Information
Record, Edit, Mix, and Master with the Free Audio Editor
by Carla Schroder
March 2011, 384 pp.
ISBN: 978-1-59327-270-8
$34.95 Print Book and FREE Ebook
$27.95 Ebook (PDF, Mobi, and ePub)
Consider Supporting the CaffiNation By purchasing this book from Amazon
* Full Disclosure: I was sent this book by No Starch Press, at no cost, for the purpose of reviewing it.
Tags: Audacity, book review, carla schroder, how to, Linux, Mac, PC, Podcasting, recording, The book of audacity, Windows
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A simple enough hack but ingenious. Take one part Wifi Detecting shirt from Thinkgeek, subtract fabric with scissors. Add in your car and shake and bake till it looks awesome. I’m not sure announcing your intent to go wardriving is the best practice considering the overall attitude towards borrowing another person’s poorly secured internet connection.
But don’t tell that to MACGEEK. All thats left is to have a ipod doc on the license plate, and the need to replace the car every year to something with less buttons. All snark aside; I’m a sucker for crazy license plates so this hit a couple buttons here.
SlipperyBrick.com
Tags: geeky, Mac, security, shirt, Wifi
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 I’m sure if you are even passingly interested in technology news you are probably aware that we are once again on the cusp of a big Apple event. This happens every year to some degree. Since the world went gaga for the iPod some time back this means tons of media coverage. Even the morning news shows now tart up a 4 day old story as Tech Bytes and feed it to the masses.
The iPod, the iPhone, iMac, iaM tired of it. Even the i fixture in front of the word speaks less of original thinking and more of branding, and its fast becoming hackneyed
I like a machine that does what it is supposed to do, hopefully with as much transparency as possible and then goes about its business. I have never been one to give in to devotion or cultish following of any tech products. At their core they are purchases to be made, or not. Ecosystems to support, as someone in tech support, and liars. All products lie to you either through omission, or through outright deception. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: apple, Bill Gates, devoted, fanboy, functionalism, Linux, Mac, Microsoft, open source, PC, Steve Jobs, Windows, your rights
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We are finally able to talk about the good news. A ton of great content and we wrap up the holiday news arc.
Tags: beer bottle tree, code red, Coffee, Mac, mountain dew, recycled trees, robot, roomba, tweet
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Just an FYI to people who listen to my show. I often post news from a site called mopo.ca, but today when i visited the site looking for the funny content I was accosted by a warning screen telling me i have a virus and the website is dangerous… OK, didn’t even look close to being real. i hit the escape button.
Then a fake virus scan ran and this lovely error message popped up in the window. The malware was trying to get me to install their “special” Antivirus, but the OS seemed a bit off. I’m working on a Mac right now… the Windows XP menu looks a bit out of place.
Sad thing is its very easy to have a website do a browser check to not only see what type of browser you are viewing the website with, Internet Explorer, opera Firefox ect, but also what OS th browser is running on. So if the scammers ever really got their act together they could theoritcally do a good job, but apparently they are slopy, so hold off visting that site until further notice and as always don’t install anything a website trys to force you to. To exit out of a program trying to hijack your machine on a PC, hti CTL- Alt -Delted and close the offending program, on a Mac hold down Option, Apple and Esc to force quit.
Tags: antivirus, fail, Mac, mistake, os x, PC, Scam, scamware, whoops, windows xp, xp
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Today’s Show: Lego, Olympics, Sandwiches, Virus, tiny things with big impacts.
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What am I reading? I usually don’t tip my hat, but i have to Slide:ology was sent to me By the fine folks at O’Reilly. Review to come, but listen to hear impressions thus far. in a word Fantastic… there i go tipping my hat again…
Big Change can come in little packages, but for some reason today we have a ton of small things making big impacts in the worlds of Tech and Caffeine Culture. There are stories from a wide array of blogs sources and viewpoints as always I invite you to join the discussion after the fact and comment, lead suggestions or contact me. Thanks for listening!
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Tags: dew, emily, Geoff Manning, knightwise, Lego, Mac, Olympics, pepsi, Starbucks, turtles
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The program that i recommend to any podcaster for recording, no matter how experienced they are is Audacity. Its free and rarely ever fails. However as with anything free there is some trade off, the trade off here is in the niceities of features, specifically the lack of a built in recovery tool. However despite any problems i have ever had with the tool the benefits of being a full featured audio editor have never been overshadowed by the occasional crashes. I have crafted this article to hopefully help you along recovering from a crash.
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Tags: Audacity recovery, audacity recovery help, audacity troubleshooting, chipmunk effect, instructions, Intel Mac, Mac, PPC, PPC Mac
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On Today’s Show: Upgrades, Hacking, Wind Up Cars, Caffeine and Superheroes
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Podsafe Music & Announcements
- WordPress 2.5 is now out, So when will I upgrade? Problem with free software
- The weekend begs of Spring, Trout Season Opened, Baseball Opening Day is tomorrow
Real News Bytes
Tech Cruft
Caffeine & Food
Want to Contact Me?
Thanks and Stay Caffeinated People!
Tags: caffeine, Coffee, hacking, Mac, Podcast, Superheroes, tech news, ubuntu, Upgrades, Wind Up Cars, Windows, Wordpress
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