I've recently realized that I use websites besides Google to search for information. The heavyweight is of course Wikipedia. I read an article (can't remember where) decrying the fact that Wikipedia articles now frequently come up as the number one search result on Google.
The New York Times finds that many people (especially children) use YouTube as a search engine. I certainly have done that, especially when my searches involve a strong visual element, for instance, an obscure sport. I like using Youtube to bookmark favorite video clips. Even if I own the DVD, it's nice to instantly pull up a favorite scene from a TV show. As someone remarked in a post (forgot where this one came from, too), we don't currently have a standard way to bookmark and highlight video the way we can with physical books and papers. It would also be wonderful to search YouTube videos in more complex ways than just by title, description, and tags. For example, what if I wanted to find all instances of pigs in Youtube?
A couple weeks ago, I mentioned how Midomi allows people to search for tunes. I also used Flickr to look for photos of New York Comic-Con. It's my first big comic convention and I wanted to know what to expect.
Showing posts with label audio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label audio. Show all posts
20 January 2009
06 January 2009
Fun with Midomi
Midomi is a music database that allows you to search for songs by humming or singing a few bars. I heard about it over two years ago on Lifehacker. Then my dad reminded me about the site over the holidays and I went back to look at it.
The Midomi database/software was able to identify popular songs (e.g. "A Little Respect" by Erasure) and it even identified Chinese songs (my sister tried it). If you register for an account, you can contribute to the database by choosing a song you know well and singing into your microphone. I sang "How long has this been going on?" by George Gershwin and my sister gave a stirring rendition of "Twinkle twinkle little star."
Midomi is an example of "query-by-humming" software. There are other research projects underway to improve this software.
The Midomi database/software was able to identify popular songs (e.g. "A Little Respect" by Erasure) and it even identified Chinese songs (my sister tried it). If you register for an account, you can contribute to the database by choosing a song you know well and singing into your microphone. I sang "How long has this been going on?" by George Gershwin and my sister gave a stirring rendition of "Twinkle twinkle little star."
Midomi is an example of "query-by-humming" software. There are other research projects underway to improve this software.
23 August 2008
Alarm clock setup - August 2008
I wrote about my "new alarm clock setup" back in January 2008. I claimed it worked. Well, I lied. I would simply get up and turn the alarm off.
Fortunately, I have a new and improved setup! My sister bought me a very expensive sun clock. It's a special kind of clock that simulates sunset and sunrise. At a preset time, the bulb attached to the clock will diminish or increase in intensity. The idea is that the simulated "sunshine" will help you in the wintertime when there isn't much light.
My particular sun clock is the BioBrite Digital SunRise Clock - Advanced Model with White Noise. The BioBrite can simulate sunset and sunrise in 15, 30, 45, and 60 minute durations. I use the preset 30 minutes.
So here's my new alarm setup. My bedtime is 9:30 pm. Around 9 pm, I pull out my sun clock and put it on a chair by my pillow. I turn the sun clock lamp up, all the way to full intensity and set it to sundown in 30 minutes. You can see I was a little late getting to bed last night. The clock reads 9:37 pm.
This is what the clock looks like at 9:52 pm.
At 10:01 pm, the clock is really dim. And I should be in bed by now.
The sun clock is set to wake me up at 5:25 am. The lamp brightens gradually. This is what it looked like at 5:07 am this morning. Yes, the sun clock woke me up earlier than 5:25 am. I decided to get up and take a picture before hopping back in bed.
The lamp is really bright at 5:33 am, 8 minutes after the alarm was supposed to "go off."
At 5:30 am, my iPod alarm clock kicks in. When I hear my iPod, it means I have to get up. Currently, my iPod is set to wake me up to the opening number of Sondheim's Company. Too bad the actors sing "Bobby, Bobby." I think I should edit the mp3 to have them sing my name in the morning. Wouldn't that be cool?!
I didn't actually take this photo at 5:30 am. The picture is just to show you what my iPod alarm clock looks like.
Yes, there is a radio alarm clock (the thing with the giant green numbers) next to the iPod stereo. I *could* set the radio alarm clock for a third alarm, but I find that two alarms is enough.
The current setup works pretty well. (Thanks, sister!) Independent of technology, it helps that I am finally putting my body on a regular schedule -- bedtime 9:30 pm, wakeup time 5:30 am. I find that once you get a regular schedule started (at least 7 days of waking up at the same time), it's much easier to keep it going.
Fortunately, I have a new and improved setup! My sister bought me a very expensive sun clock. It's a special kind of clock that simulates sunset and sunrise. At a preset time, the bulb attached to the clock will diminish or increase in intensity. The idea is that the simulated "sunshine" will help you in the wintertime when there isn't much light.
My particular sun clock is the BioBrite Digital SunRise Clock - Advanced Model with White Noise. The BioBrite can simulate sunset and sunrise in 15, 30, 45, and 60 minute durations. I use the preset 30 minutes.
So here's my new alarm setup. My bedtime is 9:30 pm. Around 9 pm, I pull out my sun clock and put it on a chair by my pillow. I turn the sun clock lamp up, all the way to full intensity and set it to sundown in 30 minutes. You can see I was a little late getting to bed last night. The clock reads 9:37 pm.
This is what the clock looks like at 9:52 pm.
At 10:01 pm, the clock is really dim. And I should be in bed by now.
The sun clock is set to wake me up at 5:25 am. The lamp brightens gradually. This is what it looked like at 5:07 am this morning. Yes, the sun clock woke me up earlier than 5:25 am. I decided to get up and take a picture before hopping back in bed.
The lamp is really bright at 5:33 am, 8 minutes after the alarm was supposed to "go off."
At 5:30 am, my iPod alarm clock kicks in. When I hear my iPod, it means I have to get up. Currently, my iPod is set to wake me up to the opening number of Sondheim's Company. Too bad the actors sing "Bobby, Bobby." I think I should edit the mp3 to have them sing my name in the morning. Wouldn't that be cool?!
I didn't actually take this photo at 5:30 am. The picture is just to show you what my iPod alarm clock looks like.
Yes, there is a radio alarm clock (the thing with the giant green numbers) next to the iPod stereo. I *could* set the radio alarm clock for a third alarm, but I find that two alarms is enough.
The current setup works pretty well. (Thanks, sister!) Independent of technology, it helps that I am finally putting my body on a regular schedule -- bedtime 9:30 pm, wakeup time 5:30 am. I find that once you get a regular schedule started (at least 7 days of waking up at the same time), it's much easier to keep it going.
15 January 2008
New alarm clock setup
The most important part of my routine is to wake up on time (usually anywhere between 5 am and 6 am). I've tried various setups and each one failed for different reasons.
First, I setup Winamp as an alarm clock (using the WinAlarm plugin), left my computer on overnight with the speakers plugged in, and woke up to the Winamp playlist. Nothing more wonderful than waking to energetic music. Unfortunately, I would sometimes forget to plug in the speakers. Also, leaving your computer on overnight puts unnecessary wear-and-tear on your hard drive.
Second, I tried getting an iHome iPod alarm clock (something similar to this model but older). That was pretty expensive as I had to buy both the iHome system and an iPod. The iHome worked fine but it had terrible sound quality.
Then I went back to a conventional alarm clock. Unfortunately, I just can't get up to the sound of beeping. I get up, shut it off, and jump back into bed.
Finally, I did some research on better iPod sound systems. I found the Altec Lansing iM600. Altec Lansing has a reputation for making good speakers and this particular product had very good reviews on Amazon. So I coughed up some more cash , got the iM600 and plugged in my iPod Nano. It works perfectly and I can even setup multiple alarms using the built-in "extras" software on the Nano. I have one alarm that plays the Barenaked Ladies's song "Who Needs Sleep?" at 9 pm as a reminder to get to bed. Then I have an alarm at 5:30 am which launches a playlist of rousing country, bluegrass, and alternative songs. It works.
First, I setup Winamp as an alarm clock (using the WinAlarm plugin), left my computer on overnight with the speakers plugged in, and woke up to the Winamp playlist. Nothing more wonderful than waking to energetic music. Unfortunately, I would sometimes forget to plug in the speakers. Also, leaving your computer on overnight puts unnecessary wear-and-tear on your hard drive.
Second, I tried getting an iHome iPod alarm clock (something similar to this model but older). That was pretty expensive as I had to buy both the iHome system and an iPod. The iHome worked fine but it had terrible sound quality.
Then I went back to a conventional alarm clock. Unfortunately, I just can't get up to the sound of beeping. I get up, shut it off, and jump back into bed.
Finally, I did some research on better iPod sound systems. I found the Altec Lansing iM600. Altec Lansing has a reputation for making good speakers and this particular product had very good reviews on Amazon. So I coughed up some more cash , got the iM600 and plugged in my iPod Nano. It works perfectly and I can even setup multiple alarms using the built-in "extras" software on the Nano. I have one alarm that plays the Barenaked Ladies's song "Who Needs Sleep?" at 9 pm as a reminder to get to bed. Then I have an alarm at 5:30 am which launches a playlist of rousing country, bluegrass, and alternative songs. It works.
14 June 2007
Notes on interview with Mark Forster
I finally got around to listening to this interview of Mark Forster, a UK productivity expert. There weren't any revolutionary ideas, but I did find a few things interesting.
Mark Forster says that projects are really commitments. A commitment is not just a collection of promises to do things, but also a promise not to do others. For instance, if you are married, you promise to be faithful to your spouse and not chase other men/women.
Mark states that when you are stuck in your progress, the problem is often some rate limiting step and you have to apply overwhelming force ("overlearning") to fix the rate limiting step, so that you can move on. The example he gives is Morse code operators. When training these operators, it was found that they would often get stuck at a certain translating speed, no matter how much they practiced. The solution was to have the trainees practice the difficult letters. After they learned how to translate all letters equally well, they were able to improve their speed overall.
Finally, Mark emphasized the principle of "little and often." Your mind needs time to make connections. It is much better to spend 1 hour practicing the piano per day than to practice for 6 hours before your lesson. You often gain a new perspective when you come back to something later.
Mark Forster says that projects are really commitments. A commitment is not just a collection of promises to do things, but also a promise not to do others. For instance, if you are married, you promise to be faithful to your spouse and not chase other men/women.
Mark states that when you are stuck in your progress, the problem is often some rate limiting step and you have to apply overwhelming force ("overlearning") to fix the rate limiting step, so that you can move on. The example he gives is Morse code operators. When training these operators, it was found that they would often get stuck at a certain translating speed, no matter how much they practiced. The solution was to have the trainees practice the difficult letters. After they learned how to translate all letters equally well, they were able to improve their speed overall.
Finally, Mark emphasized the principle of "little and often." Your mind needs time to make connections. It is much better to spend 1 hour practicing the piano per day than to practice for 6 hours before your lesson. You often gain a new perspective when you come back to something later.
13 January 2007
Paranoia and CD rot
I was talking with a friend at lunch and he claimed that his entire CD collection had been obliterated by the Australian humidity. I searched Google and sure enough there is a phenomenon known as "CD rot." (Also, see a short Wikipedia article.) Apparently, some of the CDs manufactured in the 1980s were defective and extremely susceptible to rot. Present-day CDs are better now, but there is no hard evidence that they last a human lifetime (50-100 years). The best advice I've read is to rip all your CDs to lossless, open-source (and most importantly DRM-less) FLAC format. You could rip to mp3, but what would be the point of paying CD price and saving it to your hard drive in a lossy form? The makers of dbPowerAMP estimates that a 3 minute song takes up 30 MB in FLAC format.
27 November 2006
Tech: Zoom H4 digital recorder
The Edirol R-09 now has a competitor: the Zoom H4. They are similar products apparently, but the Zoom H4 has more features and costs $100 less. The downside to the Zoom H4 (according to Amazon reviews) is that it has a much more complicated user-interface.
21 September 2006
Digital audio recorder: Roland Edirol R-09
Digial audio recorders were featured today in the New York Times technology section. One exciting product is the Roland Edirol R-09. Unlike voice recorders, the Edirol samples at a much higher rate (44 kHz) and so can record music. The Edirol has a built-in stereo microphone. It also uses AA batteries and 2 GB SD cards, which is great if you are doing a marathon-recording session. One promising application is to record snippets of unconventional music (e.g. folk music in a remote country), particularly if you're a music historian or a composer. To learn more about this recorder, check out the review roundup here.
16 April 2006
Discovering podcasts
Podcasts have been popular for a while (the last year or so), but I had yet to give them a try myself.
I find that hobbies are much more satisfying if you do them consistently. They become a kind of familiar ritual and you can build upon what you've learned. I'd rather follow one hockey team then be superficially up-to-date on baseball, basketball, football, etc.
So of course, the first thing I had to do was find some podcast aggregation software (very similar to RSS readers). During my cursory experiment, I tried Odeo.com and the open-source Juice (formerly known as iPodder). Odeo is a web-based podcasting aggregator (the analogue of Bloglines). It seemed kind of slow, so I opted for Juice. The Juice software is installed directly on your computer (Linux, Mac and Windows are supported) and it downloads podcasts onto your hard drive, which seems more efficient since a podcast can be in excess of 10 MB. The neat thing is that it automates the downloading process so all you have to do is "subscribe" to some podcast feeds and whenever they post new podcasts, these will automatically be downloaded to your computer where you can watch them at your leisure.
Here are some podcast feeds I've been trying:
I find that hobbies are much more satisfying if you do them consistently. They become a kind of familiar ritual and you can build upon what you've learned. I'd rather follow one hockey team then be superficially up-to-date on baseball, basketball, football, etc.
So of course, the first thing I had to do was find some podcast aggregation software (very similar to RSS readers). During my cursory experiment, I tried Odeo.com and the open-source Juice (formerly known as iPodder). Odeo is a web-based podcasting aggregator (the analogue of Bloglines). It seemed kind of slow, so I opted for Juice. The Juice software is installed directly on your computer (Linux, Mac and Windows are supported) and it downloads podcasts onto your hard drive, which seems more efficient since a podcast can be in excess of 10 MB. The neat thing is that it automates the downloading process so all you have to do is "subscribe" to some podcast feeds and whenever they post new podcasts, these will automatically be downloaded to your computer where you can watch them at your leisure.
Here are some podcast feeds I've been trying:
- 43F Podcast
- NPR: Science Friday
- NPR: All Songs Considered
- NPR: Story of the Day
- KCRW: Morning Becomes Eclectic
- Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keiller
I like the idea of listening to radio/podcasts. It's a good way to practice focusing on one thing and listening carefully. The computer makes me too much of a distracted, multi-tasking, visual-oriented person.
07 February 2006
Digital voice recording
Over the weekend, I got an Olympus DS-2 digital voice recorder. My purchase was influenced by the enthusiastic review at O'Reilly.
I tried it out yesterday at a group meeting. It was amazing; I was sitting sideways towards the speaker and I still managed to get an excellent recording. It even picked up comments from the audience. I recorded in Stereo SP format (frequency range 44.1 kHz, 64 kbps). There's an even higher quality stereo recording mode that offers 128 kbps which is standard mp3 quality! I think the DS-2 is one of the few digital voice recorders to offer a built-in stereo microphone. The playback speaker on the (tiny!) device was remarkably good and there's also a noise-cancelling option for playback which I really liked. The DS-2 records in the WMA (Windows Media Audio) format. I'm not entirely happy that it's in a Microsoft file format, but at least it's easily convertible with sound utility software. Everything is recorded digitally in the onboard memory of the device, so no messing with tapes. After you make a recording, you can transfer it to your computer with a USB cradle.
The major drawback of the DS-2 is that the player only has 64 MB of memory. That means you can only record about an hour on the highest quality mode. What were they thinking?! Memory isn't that expensive nowadays.
In the future, I may try using the DS-2 as an audio diary (for those passing brilliant thoughts...maybe). I highly recommend the Olympus DS-2 for all your learning needs.
I tried it out yesterday at a group meeting. It was amazing; I was sitting sideways towards the speaker and I still managed to get an excellent recording. It even picked up comments from the audience. I recorded in Stereo SP format (frequency range 44.1 kHz, 64 kbps). There's an even higher quality stereo recording mode that offers 128 kbps which is standard mp3 quality! I think the DS-2 is one of the few digital voice recorders to offer a built-in stereo microphone. The playback speaker on the (tiny!) device was remarkably good and there's also a noise-cancelling option for playback which I really liked. The DS-2 records in the WMA (Windows Media Audio) format. I'm not entirely happy that it's in a Microsoft file format, but at least it's easily convertible with sound utility software. Everything is recorded digitally in the onboard memory of the device, so no messing with tapes. After you make a recording, you can transfer it to your computer with a USB cradle.
The major drawback of the DS-2 is that the player only has 64 MB of memory. That means you can only record about an hour on the highest quality mode. What were they thinking?! Memory isn't that expensive nowadays.
In the future, I may try using the DS-2 as an audio diary (for those passing brilliant thoughts...maybe). I highly recommend the Olympus DS-2 for all your learning needs.
05 December 2004
Rhapsody delivers Christmas cheer
I got a complaint that my blog was too "nerdy." So today's topic is internet music.
I have a great service called Rhapsody. For a small monthly fee, it delivers on-demand streaming music over the internet. You can choose from over 50,000 albums. As someone who is always looking for new music, I like how you can browse top ten lists to see what other people are listening to. The catalog is well-organized so you can find artists that are similar to your favorite musicians. You can also create your own "radio station" by picking ten artists you like. Rhapsody will then randomly choose songs by these artists and similar musicians. Of course, the best part of using Rhapsody is trying out lots of different music without having to blindly buy CDs.
Personally, I think that music will eventually fall into this on-demand model. The concept of buying CDs is a bit outdated in the digital age.
Lately, I've been enjoying two Christmas albums suggested by the Rhapsody editors. They are "Merry Christmas" by Andy Williams and "Wishes You A Swinging Christmas" by Ella Fitzgerald.
I have a great service called Rhapsody. For a small monthly fee, it delivers on-demand streaming music over the internet. You can choose from over 50,000 albums. As someone who is always looking for new music, I like how you can browse top ten lists to see what other people are listening to. The catalog is well-organized so you can find artists that are similar to your favorite musicians. You can also create your own "radio station" by picking ten artists you like. Rhapsody will then randomly choose songs by these artists and similar musicians. Of course, the best part of using Rhapsody is trying out lots of different music without having to blindly buy CDs.
Personally, I think that music will eventually fall into this on-demand model. The concept of buying CDs is a bit outdated in the digital age.
Lately, I've been enjoying two Christmas albums suggested by the Rhapsody editors. They are "Merry Christmas" by Andy Williams and "Wishes You A Swinging Christmas" by Ella Fitzgerald.
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