My planned moonrise photo has been delayed at least until the next full moon, depending on the time of day when the moon rises. Moonrises, in comparison to sunrises, are quite hard to capture, especially considering that the time of moonrise varies significantly on a daily basis, and moonrise is best captured with a dark sky. Ultimately this means an evening photo, any earlier and the sky is too light, and later and the nearest spot with a good view is a safety hazard.
I become very excited over the release of Ubuntu Linux 5,10, the expenditure „the Breezy of Dachses “. It has a number of improvements over the 5,04 „hoary hedgehog “version, including better menu line, friendlier Startein squirting screen and better multi-language support.
If the educational institute specific Edubuntu release is exciting, it intends for use in the educational institutes which are good thing over this that them seem to be practically perfect for schools inclusively some excellent opened source programs, which do the same, if not better, job than the equivalent programs for commercial ranges of application. With each possible luck should I play with this at the Dickson university once soon and particularly saw, since we have a delimitation on our Windows XP licenses and not really on the increase of the number… the terrible costs included regarding also to intend. The good thing is here the fact that there is a high probability that personnel and class participants finds it to a high degree useful and attached it to wish in more positions, which can only be a good thing.
Financially Shuttleworth, giving supports the attractive people with Ubuntu wegUbuntu CDs and DVDs for free, with free shipping and everything by gazillionaire marking. You can still downloaden it of the Downloadseite, but I ordered some CDs of them, and you can too, by preceding more rüber to the ShipIt side.
Alright, looks like WordPress reverted to the standard theme after about a half hour outage…and as such I see little point in fixing this mess until I get home.
However, first person to solve the flying picture problem wins an Audio CD copy of three Samuel’s Persiflage episodes of their choice, leave a comment below if you have a solution.
You have until 5PM Canberra time (see the flying current weather picture, it has the time on it) aka 7am GMT.
This must be my punishment for saying that I don’t usually believe in superstitions such as Friday the 13th!
FREE PUPPIES.
Mother, AKC German Shepherd.
Father, Super Dog… able to leap tall fences in a single bound.
FOUND DIRTY WHITE DOG.
Looks like a rat… been out a while.
Better be a reward.
COWS, CALVES: NEVER BRED.
Also 1 gay bull for sale.
NORDIC TRACK
$300 Hardly used, call Chubby.
GEORGIA PEACHES
California grown – 89 cents lb.
JOINING NUDIST COLONY!
Must sell washer and dryer $300.
WEDDING DRESS FOR SALE.
WORN ONCE BY MISTAKE.
Call Stephanie.
AND THE BEST ONE:
FOR SALE BY OWNER:
Complete set of Encyclopedia Britannica, 45 volumes.
Excellent condition.
$1,000 or best offer
No longer needed, got married last month.
Wife knows everything
Do you have something you would like to contribute to Friday Funnies? If so, email it to smoothwallsamuel@gmail.com. All contributions welcome!
Yesterday at work I was installing a network printer on two computers, and decided to use the same peice of paper for the test page from each computer, the effect was quite interesting.
Well in about five minutes it will be the start of Clive Robertson’s four morning stint on 2UE filling in for John Kerr and Stuart Bocking. I’m looking forward to this, Clive is great talent and it should be fun having him on during the wee hours, and I would imagine that 2CC will be pleased with nine hours of sharp-witted, quick-thinking, highly-entertaining presenters with Mike Jeffreys following Clive with the breakfast show.
But it is Friday the 13th, and whilst I don’t usually subscribe to such superstitions, this is a rather unusual Friday the 13th as the digits in today’s date add up to thirteen (1 + 3 + 1 + 0 + 2 + 0 + 0 + 6 = 13). I haven’t verified it, but apparently it is the first time since the days of Genghis Khan that such an anomaly has occurred. This does lead a pesimistic back-of-mind thought that on this particular day it might be wise to be wary of Murphy’s Law…whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.
So what could go wrong? Let’s see…2UE decide that Clive doesn’t need a producer and, just like Stuart and John, can answer the phones himself whilst running a radio show…a power surge causes various systems including the phone and the station audio computer to freeze, with the newsroom vacant Clive is the only person left in the building and so he sings to us for hours until one of the breakfast show staff turn up.
John Kerr, taking a flight out of the country today, suddenly finds that the airline have a pilot strike and he is now required to fly the plane…reluctantly John agrees and, due to a navigational error, lands at the North Pole where he is voted in as the new Santa Claus, and is not permitted to return to Australia except for present runs at Christmas.
2UE’s 11am fire drill sees everyone evacuated, including John Laws and the newsroom…a pre-recorded news bulletin is played, and a song scheduled to play after it, followed by an ad break…the chief fire warden accidentally locks the door to 2UE and leaves the key inside, providing 2UE and network stations with dead air for a couple hours while the locksmiths try to open a door which, due to extreme heat, has warped and has to be knocked down by the fire brigade.
When 2UE are finally back on-air, John Stanley proceeds with his “break mirrors and walk under ladders segment”, whilst trying to smash a mirror with a hammer he loses control of the hammer, which flies through the window and knocks out the station manager, who then falls down the stairs where all the staff who are due to be on air in the next 24 hours are standing. John Stanley is required to fill-in until 6PM Saturday, but due to a ladder falling on his head, a producer arranges a new “talking clock” network by dialling the talking clock and putting it to air, which is subsequently picked up by all network stations, but only for a few minutes as Optus D1 melts due to defective protective material, and takes out all Southern Cross network feeds with it.
Mike Frame and Kris McKenzie fill in on 2CC for the next three days whilst Southern Cross arrange a new satellite feed, taking six hours on/six hours off shifts.
At the very least, this proves that my imagination is still active!
Fire drills where everyone knows it’s a drill drive me nuts, because nobody treats it as an emergency…you might know where to exit if no doors are blocked by fire, but nobody gets any idea of how people will cope if they think the building really is on fire.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have calm practice evacuations, but we also need "real" evacuations where only the chief warden knows it’s a drill…overly calm wardens are a dead giveaway.
Anyway, have fun with your Friday the 13th fire drill…you said the notice states that all staff are to evacuate…surely this doesn’t include Lawsie and the newsroom…networked dead air or beeping noises!
Dreams can be very odd, and when they are, I generally post them here.
Take the two I had last night for example…the first one was a parliament setting, all the politicians were in their seats, and a see-saw started rocking back and forwards…nobody could speak unless the see-saw was pointing at them…and the speaker kept moving it.
The next dream took place as I was walking around Lake Burley Griffin, I was approached by two robbers and I was carrying my radio with me…so I threw it into the hill so they couldn’t steal it, they didn’t like that and started yelling at me…I fled to a supermarket where the person at the checkout told me I was “very naughty” for throwing things and told me to leave the supermarket.
Exclamation mark exclamation mark…hmmm, got on a role with those exclamation marks.
Anyway, John Kerr is now on holidays for three weeks, he is going overseas with his wife Rhonda, and will be back on-air on Monday November 6 (I don’t know why he’ll be back on a Monday…another holiday for Stuart perhaps?). He sounds very excited about it, and has been making some jokes about the fact that he will be flying out of the country on Friday the 13th.
John has been filling in for Stuart Bocking who is currently on leave, and seeing as Stuart doesn’t come back until Tuesday, Clive Robertson will be running New Day on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday…that will be interesting, Clive and middawn is not an obvious match for my mind, but we’ll see. I’m sure Mike Jeffreys will be pleased to hear his pal on the radio while he makes his way into work.
John seems to think that Clive will be filling in for him on the remaining weekends, although I would suspect that will depend on how Clive gets on in the middawn shift, and we will therefore have either Clive or Clinton Maynard.
I’m very confused about who will be doing what if somebody is ill or otherwise unavailable…perhaps if everyone is ill (Stuart, Clive & Clinton) 2UE could just ring up John Stanley and have him do a Midnight to 3PM shift…or perhaps John Mangos will find his way into the studio…he fills in for Glenn Wheeler on weekends, so it’s not impossible.
That being said, let’s just hope that everyone is well, and John & Rhonda have a lovely holiday.
ACTION have announced that their new controversial timetables will start on December 4, it comes after a lot of bickering between them and the Transport Workers Union, and despite the new network being pretty much set in stone, I don’t think the bickering is even close to being over.
For those of you who were in Canberra in 1996, you may recall that the Carnell government tried something remarkably similar to the ’06 network…it looks like the political roundabout has come full circle.
But it’s not all doom and gloom, I’ve spent a few hours looking at the timetables and comparing them to existing and old timetables, and I have found a few good points, the highlight of which is the scrapping of Flexibus (known here as Flexichaos)…it is unfortunate that ACTION management are insisting that it is a good thing even though they are killing it off, they still insist that it is inovative and wonderful and the best thing since sliced bread for evening travellers, but reality has set in, and they have finally realised that people don’t want to ring ACTION at 8pm, wait at a bus stop for an hour or so in the weather of the night, and end up at the interchange sometime close to 10pm…they would much rather a reliable timetable service where they just stand at the stop for a few minutes before the scheduled time, and they get somewhere relatively quickly.
I’ve also noticed a few increased services in peak hours, which is good for the federal public servants who happen to work in the Civic/Parkes/Barton/Russell area and people who work in major town centres, variable for people in mini-town centres (such as Dickson or Kippax) and sporadic for others.
Shift workers might want to find another way to get to work if they work anywhere other than a major town centre, most services have been cut back to effective Sunday services between 9am and 2pm, with some (the 40 being a prime example) being cancelled for other services which go a different way for large chunks of the day.
It’s going to really be a matter of “heaven forbid that you might miss a bus”, one of the beauties of the current system is that if you miss one bus, there is a decent chance that you will find another bus which goes a different way to the same area in the next twenty minutes or so…this was made more difficult with the Network ’05 changes when ACTION decided it would be a good idea for all buses going through areas to go through them in the same five minutes and then not be seen for half an hour or more. (The main road near my house was affected severely by this…only after I made plenty of noise about other problems in ACTION which made it clear what area I live in…but of course I believe ACTION PR nuisance Barb Barrett when she says that they don’t do things to spite people…)
Unfortunately the new system seems to have no lateness tolerance…all the buses seem to go at the same time, and very few seem to go near each other during the day any more.
I never cease to be amazed by the fact that ACTION are convinced that people work in Fyshwick, but nobody ever needs to buy anything there (I don’t know what they think all the shops are for), the hourly services are still hourly, and it looks like the rest of the network is based on it.
I also find it interesting that they are moving some of the articulated (aka long/bendy) buses to peak hour intertown services…they aren’t easy access and they don’t have bike racks…”oops!” so much for that “user friendly” initiative…and what about the school runs that need those articulated services…another “oops” perhaps? Just throw two regular buses on those runs? Oh dear…
It’s even more interesting to note that weekend intertown services used to mirror weekday services, not in regularity, but in terms of routes…the whole premise of the 3xx series of buses is that they cover a suburban run in the Belconnen area, do an intertown and then cover a Tuggeranong area suburban run…very handy if you need to get to a Belconnen or Tuggeranong suburb from anywhere else in Canberra. Unfortunately the new service turns weekends into confusion, suburban runs in the Belconnen and Tuggeranong, and generic 300 runs from Belconnen through to Tuggeranong…effectively turning a one or two bus trip from one end of Canberra to the other into a three bus trip, and hope they line up…ACTION say they will, but they are good at miscalculating timetables over long distances…and you can guarantee the suburbans aren’t going to wait if the Intertown is late.
A couple more things, the current capacity verse new capacity verse current occupancy graph in the Q & A Brochure (mirrored here) shows an odd trend. Whilst capacity (according to ACTION PR at least) outweighs demand at all times, capacity seems to go down when demand goes up between 10am and 2pm, and the opposite happens at night.
Of course they are talking about total capacity, which means that the suburban bus over there is only 25% full, whilst the Intertown over here is overflowing, and in all likelyhood exceeding the maximum licenced passenger numbers, with passengers spilling through to the stairs and luggage compartments and almost sitting on the driver.
It’s funny how that doesn’t rate a mention in the other brochure (OK I’m just being cynical now), the New Network Flyer (Mirrored here), a rather amazing brochure for the simple fact that it is a rather cluttered and baffling brochure…sure it makes sense if you read it properly, and to ACTION’s credit they haven’t tried to hide the fact that routes and numbers have (confusingly) changed, but to ye average Joe Public this brochure just confounds the already confusing raft of changes, swaps, cancellations and “see other timetable” messages being thrown at them.
All this network change does for my mind is confirm the words of Mike Jeffreys in a conversation I had with him in June
Well this is the thing Samuel, how can the government say on the one hand that they want to increase bus patronage while they remove the service. The reason people use their cars, apart from anything else, is the convenience. If there is no convenience with the bus system, or less convenience, less people will use it, won’t they?
And of course Mike is right…and we are seeing history repeat itself, this happened ten years ago with the Carnell government, and by Network ’98 they worked it out and increased services, hopefully the current regime of mismanagement won’t take quite so long.
Over the coming days I will try and work out what the bus drivers think of this, and why they accepted the shifts (or did they?). With any luck I should have a follow up story late this week.
But for now, I will leave you with a choice quote from a heading in ACTION’s baffling New Network Brochure…”Don’t miss the bus”.
On the weekend I reported that Google were in talks to buy YouTube, and today I can happily say that Google have bought YouTube for USD$1.65 Billion (a bit over AUD$ 2 Billion).
Many industry experts said that Google would never buy YouTube because of the sheer volume of copyright infringing videos on there, but as I pointed out on the weekend (and again on the John Stanley afternoon show on 2CC and 2UE today) Google are very well placed to handle these copyright concerns as they already have their own competing video service and even a highly controversial book scanning program.
So, where to from here for Google Video and YouTube? I would expect a merger over the coming months, with Google hopefully implementing some of the good features of YouTube in the merged service, and not just moving all the videos over. There will be a no-signup period for a couple weeks when Google move YouTube over to Google Accounts, muchy like what happened when they bought Writely…and ultimately Google will ensure the success and profit of the merged video service by expanding their video sales syetem to all countries, not just the US.
I’m quite happy about this, because I no longer have to upload videos to both services on the fear that one will fold, and I can be almost 100% certain that these videos will be there forever more.
Update 10/October/2006 @ 6:46pm: Video message from YouTube’s former owners:
When they say “it’s a dog’s life”, they must be referring to Nattie…especially after her relaxing day yesterday. As usual for Nattie she spent most of the day lazing about, and at one stage had a nap next to mum on her bed.
Nattie had a special lunch yesterday, two slices of bacon and two sausages!
Which was followed by a nice drink of water…and a nap.
Yesterday I reported that it was Rob Elliott’s birthday, during that report I mentioned something about it being hard to find videos and/or photos of him on the Internet at the moment…this was a brainfade, and Malcolm made sure I knew all about it with this short email
Rob Elliott Videos……….YouTube
Thanks Malcolm! A search on YouTube for Wheel Of Fortune proved quite fruitful, and I now have photos and videos of Rob Elliott at his best, hosting “Australia’s favourite game show (cue audience) Wheel…Of…Fortune!”
First up here we have Rob Elliott introducing contestants on a 1997 “Celebrity Week” episode of Wheel, the contestants are Ross ??? (anybody know who he is?), Tempany Deckert (Selina Cook/Roberts on Home and Away) and Andrew Daddo (various Channel Seven gameshows and lifestyle programs, currently a reporter for The Great Outdoors). I don’t know what the person who uploaded this video was thinking, they’ve split it in half and cut off the start of the show, and the part of the second round.
None the less, this shows what a fantastic compere Rob Elliott is.
And here’s part two!
We also have a poor quality video of Rob Elliott in March 2000 giving away a major prize with the mystery wedge…notice the nice set? I think it was their best.
I did promise photos…well they’re just screenshots from the video, but they might as well be photos.
Rob Elliott always came across as a jolly, happy man
Rob Elliott with Tempany Deckert
Rob Elliott with “Ross”, Tempany Deckert, Andrew Daddo and the Wheel Of Fortune (Update January 31, 2012: Reader Phil has informed me by email that the “Ross” in this picture is Ross Higgins, known for his role as Ted Bullpit in ‘Kingswood Country’ and as the voice of Louie The Fly, among other roles. Thanks Phil! End Update)
Yep, I’d be giving them odd looks too Rob.
I hope you had a great birthday Rob…what are you doing these days anyway?
Welcome to a new weekly feature on Samuel’s Blog, Samuel’s Download Of The Week. This week the series kicks off with The Levelator.
The Levelator is an audio post-production application, still in development to some extent, but quite excellent. As the name suggests, it “levels out” the volume of the podcast, in much the same way that radio is compressed. This tool is excellent for podcasters, audio engineers, and anybody who produces audio for public consumption…in my case as a podcaster, I am constantly battling to produce audio with relatively consistent volumes…I do my best, but I’m only human, and the volume does vary a bit too much…that being said, I pay more attention to the quality of my audio than a lot of podcasters, so the variations in my podcast aren’t too noticeable.
There are a few reasons why you would want the volume to be consistent, basically people are used to television and radio where, for the most part, the volume is a “set and forget” routine, this is possible because audio on television and radio (and even to some extent music) has a relatively consistent volume, acheived through audio compression, as a result, people are used to consistent volumes, and are easily annoyed by having to adjust the volume during playback.
The Levelator is produced by GigaVox Media and is currently available for Windows 2000/XP/Vista & Mac OS 10.4 on Intel or PowerPC. Windows users will need to ensure that they have Sun Java 5 (not the crummy version that comes with Windows CDs produced before mid-2003) installed, you can verify that you have the latest version of Java on Sun’s website. Reading between the lines of a forum post by GigaVox Chief Technology Officer Doug Kaye, the next version of The Levelator will not require Java, and the website indicates that Linux will be supported in the near future.
It will process Wave or AIFF files, both of which are uncompressed formats. It does not currently support MP3 format, GigaVox CTO Doug Kaye doesn’t appear to have plans to ever support MP3 due to the inherent loss of quality when you decode and encode MP3 files. Whilst he is right about the loss of quality in processing MP3 files, I think he will eventually bow to pressure and The Levelator will support MP3, maybe not as an input option, but most certainly as an output option.
Installing The Levelator is fairly straight forward, although it does appear to be slightly easier on Mac than on Windows, for the simple fact that Mac users are most likely more used to non-Windows Installer/Installshield routines.
Basically it utilises Sun’s Java Web Start program to download the program and install shortcuts etc. The program itself is, unlike most Java apps on the web, saved to your computer and then executed via Java Web Start…not that you really need to know that to run it!
If you’re using Internet Explorer, attempting to download The Levelator will invoke a Java installation if you’re version of Java is not up to date, however I don’t use Internet Explorer and I do have the latest version of Java, so my screenshots are of Firefox, not that there is much difference in the process.
The download page clearly reminds you that this is beta software and the installation is a bit complex, and also invites you to send bug reports to an email address.
Clicking on the download link will pop up a question about what you want to do with the file…you could save it if you want, but it is fairly pointless as all the file does is tell the Java Web Start application how to download and install The Levelator, by far the best option is to choose Open.
If you don’t have Java, it will become fairly evident around now, as your computer won’t know what to do with the file! If you do have Java, it will load…
…and download and install The Levelator’s components.
Java will then proceed to run The Levelator.
You will be prompted with a security warning informing you that The Levelator’s digital certificate is invalid, this should be fixed for the next version, but GigaVox were in a hurry to release the first beta and therefore didn’t have time to arrange a verified certificate. Click run (unless you’re overly paranoid or the details aren’t the same as the screenshot). You will be presented with this message every time you run The Levelator, unless you choose the “always trust content from this publisher” option.
The first time you run The Levelator you will be asked if you would like some shortcuts on the desktop or start menu.
And at long last you will be presented with The Levelator (it wasn’t that hard was it?).
All you need to do is drag a Wave or AIFF file onto the rectangle, and The Levelator does the rest.
Depending on the size of the file, it could take a few minutes…Samuel’s Persiflage #8 took about ten minutes to process on a 2.8GHz Pentium 4, you can do other things while it works if you like, when it’s done it will pop back into focus and make sure that you know it’s done.
The Levelator is non-destructive and saves the “levelated” version of the file with “.output” appended to the main filename.
(Click to see all the files in the Samuel’s Persiflage #8 folder)
I’ll admit, I was skeptical at first, but after comparing the released version of Samuel’s Persiflage #8 to the “levelated” version, I have changed my tune (no pun intended) completely. Here is a screenshot of the levelated and original version shown in Audacity (click to enlarge).
As you can see, the volume is much more consistent in the levelated version.
I was very impressed with what it did with an already fairly well engineered piece of audio, and so (no offence to Jim Boots intended here, as he does an excellent job under not so great recording conditions) I decided to try it out on another podcast which seems to have almost no post-production work done to it, and is recorded with a bunch of people sitting at varying distances from a central microphone. I am of course talking about Insatiable Banalities, and to be more precise, episode 45, which I appeared on all the way back in May. I consider this to be fairly representative of a lot of podcasts in terms of highly variable sound levels, and has just enough background noise to test how The Levelator handles it.
In this screenshot, you can see the original version at the top, and the levelated version below. (Click to enlarge).
As you can see, the volume is much more consistent. I had a listen to a few sections and the only way I could really tell that the levels had been altered was when one of the quieter speakers started talking and the background noise picked up a bit, otherwise it sounded like a professional studio recording. This episode wasn’t one where the music was about fifteen thousand times louder than the conversation, but even so, the moves in to and out of the songs were much smoother, and I didn’t have to adjust the volume when everybody started mumbling or laughing loudly. Even better, The Levelator was able to distinguish quite easily between program content and background noise, and did not attempt to boost the background noise between speakers, or (and this would have been annoying) between words and sentences.
Overall I’m very impressed with The Levelator, and will be using it on all episodes of Samuel’s Persiflage from here on. It is not a substitute for, at the very least, some basic production work, but it is a superb final touch, and will make a lot of podcasts easier to listen to…and for those who just hit record and use a computer’s inbuilt microphone, this will solve at least some of your problems with levels (but please do some noise reduction).
The Levelator:
Website: http://gigavox.com/levelator
Price: Free (for non-commercial use, although the developers don’t seem to care what you use it for at the moment).
Rating: 5/5
