another cold snap hit overnight. windchill at the bus stop this morning was -39˚C. It got colder throughout the day. I’m so fracking ready for spring.
Monthly Archives: February 2011
exploring second life
Evan spent some time exploring in Second Life this afternoon, exploring Hawaii, NASA island, and winding up in Borocay. He loved the medical facilities on the island.
rocker
evan tried his hand at messing around with the delay effect. he picked it up really quickly, cranking out some awesome spacey sounds.
back behind the wheel
Bureaucracy finally moved, and I was able to get my license renewed today, after several months without. Awesome. I’d rather be riding my bike, though… We’ve gotten used to being a single-car single-driver car, so we’ll likely leave the second vehicle parked in the garage, uninsured, until summer.
leaving biosci
walking back after a meeting, it struck me that I’m going to be spending far less time in BioSci, and much more in other areas of campus.
the future of education, ca 1910
This is how education was predicted to advance by the year 2000, as seen from 1910.
Villemard, 1910 À l’ École
from visions de l’an 2000, via photozz
Turn that crank! Absorb those LORs! OERs for everyone!
Guitarcasting with Radio DS106
I had a bit of a duh/ahah! moment this evening. We’ve been messing around with Nicecast to broadcast audio from Skype and iTunes, and it hit me that it would be able to pick up sound from GarageBand just fine, too. Broadcasting live guitar jams over Radio DS106.
I plugged my guitar into my amp, and connected the headphone jack from the amp to the line-in on my MacBook Pro. I plugged my headphones into the headphone jack on the computer, so I could hear as I “played.”
Then, I fired up GarageBand and set up a new Acoustic Instrument project. Turned on “Monitor Input (no feedback protection)” for the track. Fired up Nicecast and set it to broadcast to Radio DS106. Selected GarageBand as the source app. Jammed away. Easy. (aside from the lack of skill or talent – the technical part of the setup worked well at least).
I picked a time when there was nobody tuned into the station (how often does THAT happen) but it seemed to work just fine.
I bet it’d be possible to do modify this to feed audio from a bunch of guitars (or other sources) through Skype or iChat on a conference call (assuming the latency isn’t too high) and from there out to Radio DS106, for a live performance or jam session…
Update: Of course, I could have done this more simply by just selecting the line-in as audio source in Nicecast, rather than routing through GarageBand. But I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hear if I did that directly. I’ll have to try that. Another duh/ahah! moment…
Update 2: yup. works just fine selecting Line In as audio source in Nicecast. The audio from the guitar gets pumped out to the headphones just fine, without having to go through GarageBand. Nice. I think I just scared off the 3 listeners that were on the station just now, to test this out… (sorry!)
into the cloud
gordie mah came down fron the U of A to share their experience in shifting to Google Apps for Education, followed by presentations by Google and Microsoft on the magical wonderousness of cloud-related buzzword compliance.
tracked
tracks on my driveway, just after getting home from a chilly ride.
moving beyond the automobile: biking
Yes please, Calgary.