This is a great product — Audio Hijack.
Allows you to grab audio from nearly any source, as long as it is playing on your computer. I’ve used it to capture some music performances from the Henry Rollins Show website. You can then use other audio editing software like GarageBand to put it in the format you’d prefer. Really cool.
Only for the Mac — so get yourself a Mac.
Speaking of music from the Henry Rollins show, if you like Thom Yorke, of Radiohead, check this out.
I’m really enjoying my iPod Nano. The old one — not the new one with the little video screen. I like to lay down on the bed with headphones and listen to music. That’s one of my preferred activities. Just lay down, turn on the iPod, and zone out. Good stuff.
Anyway, I got these Bose headphones for my birthday. They aren’t the noise-cancelling kind. But they sound really good. I hate ear-buds. Can’t stand having something stuck in my ears. These headphones are pretty light, so it’s not like wearing a helmet. For a nice set of ‘phones for laying around listening to music, I recommend them.
My wife’s Dell Inspiron laptop died last week. The fan will run, but nothing boots up. Took it to the repair shop, and they predicted $200 to diagnose the problem, and $700 – $800 to replace whatever electronics were fried. All this on a $1400 computer. I told them to do data recovery on the hard drive (Cost: $100.), as we were about to replace it with a new MacBook anyway.
The machine is 2 years old, has seen extremely light use, and has been well cared for. Piece of shit.
Last week in Monterrey, Mexico, we were at a cookout. Everyone at the table had a nice cellphone. There were two digital cameras on the table, uploading pics to a Dell Latitude laptop. Upstairs one of the teenagers was on the ‘net, chatting with friends via Instant Messenger. The house contained 5 or 6 computers of various ages, all connect via a home wireless network to the ‘net.
This was in Mexico.
Forget any notions you might have that Mexico isn’t sophisticated. Sure, there are lots of poor in the rural areas, but Monterrey is on the rise. The ‘net is connecting people everywhere. Global youth culture is web-enabled.
Prepare for the future. Learn a second language. Enjoy.
Here’s a story from Salon.com’s techie section, about Flektor, a new web-based video/media editing application (free). Pretty neat. Watch his little movie to really see it work.
http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2007/06/26/flektor/index.html
Thanks to my supercool wife for this link.