Category: Internet and Computer

After all, I am a geek…

What I’m up to these days…

So I’m starting to get a little more settled in at my job (programming for the LDS Church). Recently we had a company meeting and activity. The activity was very interesting–It was a “spudwood derby.” We divided up into teams, and each team was given a set of pinewood derby wheels and axles… and a potato. We had a half hour to make a usable car.

On another front, I am trying to play with music (the mood has struck again)… I’ve got one of my older computers hooked up to the digital piano and I’m trying to figure out how I can get various sound fonts working (The digital piano is pretty good, but it’s french horn is horrible and it doesn’t have a cymbal roll)… For composing I’m using Noteworthy editor. Several years ago I looked around for some notation software, and virtually everything out there was $300 or more with all the bells and whistles, but Noteworthy cost $30, which was about right considering the fact that I really don’t know what I’m doing…

I also got a new phone (LG env touch), and have really enjoyed it. I’ve started looking into apps/sites that I can create that would be useful. What I’ve got so far is a scripture lookup page–you type in the book and chapter, and it will open up that chapter on the online version of the scriptures. It’s a work in progress, but coming along nicely. If you are really that bored you can check it out at lds.jersdesk.com/scriptures

The kids are doing OK, but they’ve had colds for a good while now. My youngest has gone from happy cheerful baby to whiny clingy baby—not so fun. We still manage to enjoy them nevertheless.

Dilbert Rocks

I set up my Outlook Program to recieve the Daily Dilbert cartoon, which is done via RSS feed. I have really enjoyed those. It helps each day to start work with a Dilbert. Yeah, some of them are dumb, but a lot of them are hilarious.

What is an RSS Feed?

An RSS Feed is simply a standardized format for publishing information, especially if it’s frequently updated. It is used a lot by News sites, blogs, and the like. You can view an RSS Feed in a feed reader and see a headline and/or description (or a comic). I’ve attached not only Dilbert, but some of my favorite blog sites to Outlook via RSS feeds, so that when they are updated, I get a copy of the new entry in Outlook. Obviously, there’s a whole lot more to it than that (most of which I’m not familiar with), but that’s the basic idea. There are tons of different ways to view RSS Feeds. Outlook works for me, so I haven’t really looked into other methods.

How to add Dilbert RSS feeds to Outlook 2007:

  1. Go to Dilbert.com and click on the RSS feed link.
  2. Choose the feed you want and click on that link (I chose the “strips” link, which is the Daily Dilbert)
  3. From there you can see the RSS feed along with options for adding the feed to a web reader. Look for a link that says: “View Feed xml” and click on that.
  4. Copy the URL from the address bar.
  5. Open Outlook.
  6. There should be a folder called “RSS Feeds” Right-click on that and choose “Add new RSS feed”
  7. Paste the URL into the window that pops up.
  8. You will then be prompted as to whether you wanted to add the RSS feed, so you’ll have to click on “Yes” for that as well.

If you have the actuall RSS URL, then steps 4-8 can be used to add any RSS Feed to Outlook.

Creating mp3?s

I mentioned that I had an mp3 player for running. One problem was that I’ve been using iTunes for some time, and my mp3 player doesn’t accept the default itunes format (.m4a). So I needed to re-copy those songs as either .wma (Windows Media format) or mp3’s.

Now, I don’t like to lose quality too much. As far as copying music to your computer is concerned, the standard metric for the song’s quality is the bit rate (how often the sound wave is sampled). In general, the higher the bit rate, the better quality the music is, but the larger the file becomes. A 64Kbps bit rate–64,000 bits/second–is a standard quality. Music that is streamed over the internet will usually be low-quality, since the smaller file-size allows for the music to be transferred faster.

So the next question is how to get high-quality mp3’s from your CD’s? Here are some freebies that I’ve looked at:

Windows Media Player can be configured to create mp3’s, and allows for high-quarlity bit rates. Windows Media Player will let you encode into mp3’s at 128, 192, 156, or 320 Kbps.

Exact Audio Copy can do similar, but adds an extra feature: Variable Bit Rate encoding (VBR). The idea behind this is that the mp3 encoder will determine what quality is needed for a given small section of the music and set the bit rate for that small section. This allows you to get high-quality music and save a little more space. The problem with this program is that the setup is more involved, rather than working out of the box.

iTunes also lets you configure your format choices, and so you can choose to have iTunes copy songs in mp3 format. I was pleased to note that they also have an option for variable bit rate (VBR) encoding, but on top of that, you can set a minimum bit rate. So when you’re copying your music to mp3, the bit rate won’t go below the threshold that you set.

Right now I’m using iTunes to copy my CD’s to mp3’s. I’m using the VBR encoding with a minimum bit rate of 192Kbps.