The Daily Procrastinator

I am in the unfortunate situation of having bought a new car. Unfortunate, you ask? Yes, because I’m getting 2-3 auto-calls per day from companies trying to sell me a worthless extended warranty. This is a known scam and not even being on the Do-not-call list stops them from calling.

Fortunately, there’s a solution for those of us with iPhones. The Blacklist application for $1.99 in the iTunes App Store.

Blacklist creates an iPhone contact named “Blacklisted Number” full of thousands of numbers (over 30,000 and growing) belonging to US telemarketers, scammers, and prank callers so that when one of these numbers calls, you know not to answer because it displays the caller as “Blacklisted Number”. 

Blacklist connects to callerdb.com’s extensive database of problem callers every time you sync. Since I installed it two days ago, I’ve avoided four calls. Installation and sync is painless if you’re on a high speed wifi connection.

With the minutes it saves you, Blacklist will pay for itself. If you’re getting telemarketing calls to your iPhone, you need this application. Why isn’t Vonage doing this?

ABC News reports that Nadya Suleman, AKA Octomom, has filed paperwork with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to trademark the Octomom moniker. She plans to sell, “dresses, pants, shirts as well as cloth and disposable diapers.”

Considering the level of scorn that’s been heaped upon this woman since the birth of her octuplets, I find myself wondering who would purchase Octomom-branded merchandise.

I’ll leave the searing commentary to The Superficial.

When I was a child, Hershey’s Kisses were the coolest thing ever.  Perfectly bite-sized milk chocolate.  And the symbolism!  How could you go wrong?

For Valentine’s Day, my Nana — sweet as anything at 90 — sent me a package filled with Kisses.  Aww, so cute and kitschy, especially since I’m well past my grandma-sends-me-Valentines years.  I put them aside as a reminder of her warmth and generosity.

You know, they never look this well-wrapped and shiny in real life.

Last night, I was on deadline.  It was 11 PM, my energy was waning and there was just one thing that would save that whitepaper: chocolate.  I was lamenting the lack of chocolate in my house when I suddenly remembered my Valentine’s Day gift.  Salvation!  Chocolate!

I opened the lid, unwrapped the first one (an easy task as it was already partially unwrapped on its own) and popped it in my mouth.  A look of confusion crossed my face, and I spit it into a napkin.  Was this what Kisses tasted like?  There was no chocolatey mouth feel; it tasted almost like it was made with imitation chocolate flavoring.  In fact, the entire experience made me think of the Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

When the ‘Drink’ button is pressed it makes an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject’s taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject’s metabolism, and then sends tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject’s brain to see what is likely to be well received. However, no-one knows quite why it does this because it then invariably delivers a cupful of liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

But wait.  This can’t be right, I thought to myself.  I LOVED these as a child.  Maybe it was just stale somehow, since it had come partially unwrapped.  I searched for one that was still tightly sealed, opened it expectantly and discovered that no, the first one was not stale.  Did I really have such poor taste as a child?

I’m not sure what was more disappointing: the complete lack of chocolate to support my late night craving, or the complete distortion of my childhood memories.  Maybe next time I can convince Nana to send Ghirardelli squares.

Thinking about making the switch from a satellite service to AT&T’s new premium television offering? I switched on January 9th of this year and have been extremely happy with the service. I was a DirecTV subscriber for almost 10 years prior. Here’s my review of the service so far.

The only real negatives I can come up with are the selection of HD channels is not a diverse as DirecTV (though it’s not bad), and that it might take 30 days to have the service installed. AT&T is swamped with installations right now. But, don’t be too disappointed; what you get is worth the wait. The installers are professional, friendly and knowledgeable. Each television has its own receiver which is connected by a coaxial cable (I know. I was surprised too). Each box communicates with a separate unit that is your DVR and a router. With the router, you can connect your Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC, or just about anything else that uses an Ethernet cable. You also receive a USB-connected wireless unit (mine is a small 802.11g unit from 2Wire) for laptops and such.

As for the service:
• I believe the HD picture is clearer than what DirecTV offers. I have no more pixilation during action shots.
• When changing channels there is no more waiting for the next channel to load up.
• The DVR is very easy to use, and recordings can be scheduled from either the main unit or from a computer. The rewind and fast forward options are much smoother than my DirecTV DVR or my TiVo Series 2.
• A recorded show playing in one room can be stopped and then picked up where it left off in another room (this may be my favorite feature).
• Four shows can be recording while a fifth is being watched. The only drawback is that you can only record 2 HD shows at one time.
• On Demand movies.

I’m obviously a very happy customer so far, and I expect this service to only get better as they tweak it and add more HD capacity. I also saved about $75 a month by bundling the phone, internet and television service into one bill.

In the world of digital audio, few names are as respected as Edirol. In December, I started recording with their latest field recorder, the R-09HR, and I can honestly say that I now understand the fantastic reputation that the Edirol family of products enjoys. This particular recorder is designed to be a small, portable recording option for events outside the recording studio. It’s about the size of a first-generation iPod, but slightly thicker. It can be used to record meetings, band practices, interviews, and even concerts. I use it primarily for the latter.

The Edirol R-09HR is a device which is designed to record MP3 and WAV files directly to digital media, in the form of SD cards. A 512 MB card is included with the recorder, but it can accept cards as large as 8 GB, which is what I use. The R-09HR can record files ranging from relatively low-quality 128 kbps MP3s to 16-bit 44.1 khz WAVs (CD-quality sound) to 24-bit 96 khz WAVS, which are the highest-quality sound files for which anybody could have any reasonable use. At 128 kbps MP3, the 8 GB card can hold 7980 minutes of data, while 24-bit 96 khz WAV allows the card to hold about 220 minutes. I use CD-quality options, which affords me 720 minutes.

The device features a line-in option for recording directly from a soundboard. It also has a microphone-in, for the use of a range of external microphones. Most impressively, though, it features on-board stereo condenser microphones. I was skeptical of the quality of these on-board microphones, since the price of high-quality external microphones can range from several hundred to several thousand dollars. Upon taping my first concert from the audience using the on-board microphones, I learned that the R-09HR makes outstanding recordings without the use of external mics. Certainly, one could improve the quality of the sound by adding a high-dollar microphone to the setup, but the on-board mics created a warm, clear, natural-sounding recording. My only complaint is that the on-board microphones are not directional, which means that they capture sounds from all around the recorder. In effect, if the recorder is close to loud or talkative fans, their voices can become an annoyance in the recording.

When recording from the soundboard, the R-09HR makes recordings as crisp, clear, and true-to-life as I’ve ever heard. I have recorded two concerts from the soundboard, and I couldn’t be more thrilled with the results. I gave a copy of one of these recordings to the musician, a friend of mine, and he intends to release it as a live album. It sounds that good. The clarity of the R-09HR’s recordings is partly due to its Isolated Adaptive Recording Circuit (IARC), which prevents any kind of digital clicks or pops from reaching the final product. The device also features no moving parts inside, so the hum and hiss which can be produced by analog recording equipment is totally avoided.

The R-09HR runs on two AA batteries, which will last through a surprising six or seven hours of recording. It has an adaptor for AC power, which is included. Also included is a cable for high-speed USB 2.0 connection to a computer, which makes data transfer quick and simple. A small external speaker allows the user to review recordings in the field, and a headphone jack allows even closer listening. In fact, the user can even load MP3s onto the R-09HR and use it for a portable music player. While the functionality of this feature is acceptable, the interface is somewhat awkward.

The only problem I’ve had with using this recorder is with the buttons which govern the input levels from the microphones. The device allows me to adjust the input levels while recording, in case the music is suddenly louder or softer, or in case I’m able to move closer to the speakers. I made use of this feature at one concert I recorded, but pressing the buttons caused loud, audible clicks in my recording. While listening, I realized that these clicks are actually the sounds of me pressing the buttons. Luckily, this situation is remedied by using the remote control which is included. When the input volume is adjusted with the remote control, no clicks are introduced into the final product.

Other features include toggles for limiter, automatic gain control, low/high mic gain, low cut, and plug-in power for external microphones that require it. All of these features were new to me as a relatively inexperienced concert recorder, but I quickly learned to use them to my advantage through the explanations offered in the instruction manual and various internet FAQs.

On the whole, I highly recommend the R-09HR to anyone who is in the market for a portable digital recorder. Priced between $300 and $400, depending on the retailer, it’s a bit more expensive than most other recorders, but the quality of the finished product and the ease with which it can be used makes the Edirol R-09HR well worth the cost.

I use the coolest tool for managing projects and generally organizing the stuff that I need to do my work. It’s called Scrivener, and this thing rocks.

A client sends me a project. As my resource material, I have five websites, three PDFs, a slide deck and four Word docs. Normally, I would have to bounce back and forth between my browser, Adobe Reader and the Microsoft applications as I tried to distill the essence of the message. With Scrivener, it’s all in one place. I import all of the links and documents into the project (slides need to be converted to PDF first, a minor nuisance) and they’re conveniently tacked onto my project corkboard so that I can flip back and forth between them with ease. If I want to organize the project into sections or chapters, they get tacked onto a separate corkboard, and I can arrange and rearrange them to my heart’s content. If I need an outline to guide my writing, I simply select it to appear on the right side of the screen, and it helps me to keep track of my progress. All of this for the bargain price of $39.95.

Scrivener isn’t a word processing program, so if you need to format the text (endnotes, etc.), or if you need to send it along to someone else, you need to copy and paste the text into a Word document. But for the actual writing and research phase, Scrivener is an amazing tool. I wish I’d had access to this years ago.