Are you a Rhythm Gamer? Guitar Hero god? Completed Physcobilly Freakout on iNSANE? nicely done. However real guitar players have long since derided these accomplishments as “button pushing” and other less savory terms.
File Rock Band, Guiatr Hero and Dance Dance Revolution into the same catagory. Follow instructions on a screen to get better in a very specific set of tasks. I love those games. I beat my friends who are much better dancers than I am in DDR, but it doesn’t translate to real life. And that has alway left gamers at a disadvantage.
Enter Rocksmith. A game where you plug your real guitar into your Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 or even your PC! It comes with a cord with a 1.4 inch jack on one hand and a USB jack on the other.
The recent release of “Dead Island” has gained good reception on the gameplay. However, what made “Dead Island” a big success was something better than the game itself. When the trailer for the game hit the internet, about 10 million hits were made to the video in just 2 days.
With a huge response to the trailer, LionsGate Entertainment has bought the rights to the video game fromDeep Silver, who published the game. In a statement released from LionsGate, they said, “This is exactly the type of property we’re looking to adapt at Lionsgate. It’s sophisticated, edgy, and a true elevation of a genre that we know and love.”
Although it is still in the early stages of development, LionsGate has chosen Sean Davis, who has produced “Dazed and Confused”, “Tombstone”, and “The Mummy” series, will be producing this zombie movie.
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!
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.
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 »
Tonights show has a good mix of both sections. We go from how social media is effecting change in earthquake ravaged regions of Haiti to talking about the Universities being forced to pull Kindles. On the lighter side we discuss the evils of flavored coffee, dirty decaf, and soe awesome eating utensils for kids.
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.
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