Eyes to See, Ears to Hear

Archive for the ‘Software’ Category

This post has nothing to do with my mission work.  Just to let you know.

I’ve had a problem in trying to change notifications in the Skype Preferences pane (I’m using OS X, by the way).  But, every time I clicked on the red flag (Notifications), Skype would freeze for up to a minute, then crash.  BOO!

With some help through the Skype forums, I have fixed my problem with a small deletion.  Apparently the text to speech feature, the voice of Alex to be exact, caused the problem.  Being a dedicated non-text to speech user, I had no problem ridding of my new enemy. I went to the following location and deleted the Alex.SpeechVoice folder.

Main HD > System > Library > Speech > Voices

If you happen to stumble upon this post and have pulled out numerous hairs, I hope this helps more than Rogaine.

Some of my recent responsibilities have been to gather profile pictures of our language cluster project team for a collaborative branch poster.  Those posters are displayed at conference and each office location takes one back with them.  So, I gathered all the photos I could and began sending them to our communications guy, a PC guy.  He replies, “The emails labeled MICP Photos 2, and MICP Photos 3 came with the photos embedded in the email, which makes things problematic. The first one is fine. You’ll have to resend the photos as attachments. How many emails did you send?”  Huh?  Didn’t I send them as attachments?  If he had a Mac, the answer would be yes.  He has a PC, so the answer is no.  We worked around the problem when we examined the ‘first one’ to which his reply referred.  That e-mail was different in that it included a list sent as a text file attached along with the photos.  So, we used that method to get him all the poster shots he needed, but talk about going around your elbow.

Fast forward to today.  Dana asked for a picture I have of her and Asher in Kenya.  I send it to her.  She can’t save it.  Using Outlook 2007.  What the crap?  So, I research.  Low and behold, there is some kind of ‘bug’ when sending picture-as-only-attachments e-mails from Apple Mail to a PC.  Aside from the work around described above, another relatively quick one is to change the message format to Plain Text.  If you have Mail set to this as default, you’ve completely wasted 3 minutes of your life by reading this post. Pole! (‘pole’ is Swahili for “sorry for ya!”)  But for all of us HTMLers, guess the elbow is still in office.

P.S. Selecting this doesn’t make a difference:

… and even though I’m a Mac guy, I ain’t scared to say that Apple needs to fix this.

Ardour2 is a native-running Mac OSX Digital Audio Workstation (DAW).  I can attest that it can run with the big boys.  Until yesterday, I considered my best DAW software to be Adobe Audition, but unfortunately it only runs on Windows.  So, in order to use my firewire interface from my mixer, I have to run Boot Camp which then eliminates the use of all my other Mac OS X resources.  Yuck.  I have used Soundtrack Pro, Audition, Tracktion, Audacity and now Ardour2.  The latter is quickly becoming my favorite although it’s biggest downfall to me is the learning curve it requires.

Either way, yesterday I put it into action.  I was actually able to record all of the parts for Naomi and Town Women in the book of RUTH for the Nyakyusa language.  This is a huge step forward for me as I have longed to have a good DAW I could run natively on my Mac.  I’ve found it and I think most of the recording for RUTH and JONAH in Nyakyusa should be complete by the end of the week!  (barring NAC… Normal African Circumstances)

Ever hear of those?  Me either until I used them today.  They’re really just regular blankets tacked to the tin roof of the studio.  I woke up this morning listening to a gentle rain and hoping to have four Nyakyusa speakers to begin recording RUTH and JONAH.  I walked into the studio to do a final check before going to the office and what did I discover?  That all my insulation still was no match for millimeter-small drops of water falling out of the sky and banging one by one on a tin roof.  Noise isn’t good for recording.  Being in a limited resource area, I asked our plumber (still finishing stuff on the house) what his advice was.  “Mablanketi,” he said.  Or blankets.  So, I now have nine blankets tacked to the roof of the studio and they work great.  Since the tin is rippled, air should be able to pass underneath for drying.

So, the sound insulation was complete but I ended up with only one speaker.  We spent the afternoon doing sound and recording checks only for me to finally realize that I really need some good Mac audio software.  As I type, I’m downloading Ardour, an open-source digital audio workstation (DAW).  I like free.  If it is good, they’ll get a donation.  What stinks is the 100MB size coupled with my slow and expensive internet connection.  I got really happy a few minutes ago because it got all the way up to 19 KB/s!  It has been downloading for three and a half hours and says it could take one and a half more.  Our power is out right now, too, so I hope it finishes before my batteries do.

I took some pictures of the inside of the studio right before sundown.  I’ll try to snap a few of my colorful rain blankets tomorrow and post all of them here.

There’s no argument about the foulness of some web content.  It seems as though temptation can always be just a click away.

I cherish my marriage, my Dana as well as the One who gave us marriage.  That’s why I use an internet accountability software called Covenant Eyes.

Dana and I have tried a different setup by xxxchurch.com but it wasn’t a thorough as CE is.  But, xxx is free and CE is currently going for $84.95/year.

You choose your accountability partners and they log in to the covenanteyes.com to select how often they’d like to receive your internet usage log (every single URL with date and time) in their e-mail inbox.  But, even with an accountability program, the ultimate decision is whether you want to be held accountable or not.

It is worth every penny to protect our family.

I searched and searched for a good FREE FTP client for me to use in uploading files to our website. I was using a program called Fetch. I like it but my two issues with it are: it doesn’t ask for confirmation in replacing files on the web server and it can’t resume an interrupted upload. The latter is especially crucial here in Tanzania where the internet connection does what it wants to, up to and including quitting often and for no reason. That ends my uploads and with Fetch that means I have to start the upload over. Yuck.

So, yesterday, I found FileZilla, a FREE FTP client that is able to resume an interrupted upload. Hooray! Now, even though it may take an hour or two, I’m able to complete the upload of 1MB+ files.

Thanks FileZilla. You’re helping this missionary keep his mind. Or, what’s left of it…

We have a number of DVDs that we want to take to Africa with us and what better way to do it than have them ALL stored on my hard disk?! HandBrake makes this possible and what’s great about the software is that it is available for Mac AND PC. It allows you to rip your purchased DVDs onto your HDD in one of many different video and audio formats. I love it. It is extremely easy to use. 5 out of 5 stars!

Today’s good: We got to spend a good portion of today at a national wildlife refuge getting in some doses of American wildlife before we leave in LESS THAN 2 MONTHS! Dana got to see an Eastern Kingbird for the first time. We made some great new friends –> the Glock Family.

Do you take digital photos? If so, you have more than likely experienced what is referred to as ‘noise’ in some of your snaps at one point or another. Photography is a big time hobby of mine so finding software… FREE software that takes the noise out of them was a blessing! I highly suggest NeatImage. Here’s an example from their website of the program’s capabilities:

NeatImage is a very user-friendly program as well. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have!

They have the full program for Windows as well as a plug-in for use in Mac OS X.