Who’d thunk it, but a recent study done at Texas A&M university has discovered that watermelon relaxes blood vessels just like Viagra. The article seems to infer that now we’ll have bioscientists trying to develop new strains with more lycopene, the secret ingredient.

Texas A&M University (2008, July 1). Watermelon May Have Viagra-effect.ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 6, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080630165707.htm

Yep, we have a sponsor now. Believe it or not, Adam & Eve the world’s oldest and largest sex toy company and Vibe Reviews are now our sponsors. We’ll be able to offer the readers of this blog great discounts on all your products for more fun in the bedroom. What does this have to do with audio? Nothing. Tech? Check out the site because they have some of the most hi tech toys you’ll ever see. Click on the links to the left and check it out for yourself.

Maybe this should be under general, but I classified it as audio because it involves a song I recorded a couple of years ago. I heard a song by the band Pop will eat itself called, “Ich bin ein Auslander.” It translates to “I’m a foreigner” or “I’m an outsider.” I liked the song, but felt it wasn’t angry enough and re-recorded the song with a heavier industrialized sound. After listening to it the other day it made me realize how with the political campaigns getting messy, the war in Iraq and how it seems like everyone outside the U.S. doesn’t like us anymore that it’s become a song that signifies the current state of affairs in the world.

Give it a listen. 

Everyone tech seems to know about Skype. But if you aren’t aware of it then let me clue you in. It’s a VoIP piece of software that let’s you make phone calls through your computer to landlines all over the world from as low as 2.3¢ a minute. If they also use Skype it’s free. I personally run my business using a Skype In phone number that linked with Skype Pro lets me call anywhere in the US or Canada for free (at about $3 a month). The problem is that you need something decent to hear and talk through. With my new iMac that’s no problem. The sound quality of the built in mic and output through my 600 watt Hafler amp to the Tannoy speakers is great, but you kind of sound like you’re on a speaker phone. So what do you do? I purchased an Ipevo Free.2 Phone for $34.95. I was skeptical about “skype phones” at first so instead of shelling out a huge amount of money I went cheap. This phone is great. It’s something we’re all used to using and it just plugs into a USB port. I bring it to work to make calls because it actually sounds better than my work phone. I’ve hardly ever had a problem with my DSL line going down so I’ve ended up downgrading my landline service because my cell phone covers the rest pretty good. If you’re looking for a new toy, I’d recommend you try this one out. The black version is kind of stylish and if we can get Skype to let us send and receive faxes somehow it would make it great for small businesses. 

It’s 6am. I’m up early because I couldn’t sleep. So I walk into the studio and warm up the computer and see a headline that Jeff Healey has died. Death sucks, but in this case it sucks even more. Jeff Healey was a guitarist who had a weird cancer that attacked his eyes and made him blind. This happened at an early age and for some reason he decided to learn how to play the guitar. He didn’t learn the play the guitar in a conventional way though he played it by laying it down on his lap and playing it kind of in a pedal steel way, but  he placed his fingers over the top of the guitar neck instead of under the guitar neck like most people do it.Jeff wasn’t really well known, but he did make a hit with the song “Angel eyes” in 1989. His playing was really unique. It was bluesey, but different because of the way he played the guitar. I read the story of his life as it ended and I shed a tear. Jeff Healey was a great musician that got little attention.

RIP 

check him out on you tube

I know, I know. This is supposed to be about audio and technology. Why are you talking about politics?!?!?! Well, I don’t have anywhere else to put this so I’ll just say it here. I was thinking about the close race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and I have a couple of idea. One is the way I see it should go and the other is a what if kind of thing. So here they are.

The way I think it should go.

I think Hillary Clinton should get the nomination for President and she should choose Obama as her VP running mate. Why? Hillary has done her time and Obama hasn’t yet. Add to that this team would crush the McCain “juggernaut”. OK, calling McCain a juggernaut is a little overstepping the bounds, but this race has really been looking at 3 people and super Tuesday has proved that. It’s all about Clinton, Obama and McCain. Putting Clinton’s experience next to Obama’s inspirational speeches and there is no way the Republicans could possibly compete with that. I don’t think they could do this the other way around. While Obama could be nominated, Clinton could not accept the VP running mate simply because her time in office would make it look like a step down to America. Now let’s take a look at an interesting “what if.”

What if

Clinton or Obama gets the nomination and does not have the other as a running mate. During the actual voting because it was a close race for the democratic nomination some of the voters who wanted whichever person (meaning Clinton or Obama) was not selected writes in for the other democrat. This could cause no one to get the requisite number of electoral votes and cause a run off between the two highest. What if it turned out that the two in the run off were Clinton and Obama? This would cause a major hit to the Republican party that might just put the final nail in the coffin of a political party that people have been saying for years is on it’s way out.

Just think about that for a moment.
Eric
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Yep, it had to happen. I have a bit of extra time at work lately and need something to fill it so I’ve been looking through digg for interesting news stories and bits of info. I learn a lot, but unfortunately, I’ve learned something I wish I didn’t have to.

Digg has been infiltrated lately by spammers. Not really bad spammers, but small companies who are using the digg community to advertise to by posting diggs. This is a bummer because that means there’s more crap you have to wade through to get to the good stuff. Yes, there’s someone reviewing and dumping a lot of it, but there is still some that gets through and they need to work harder.

Eric
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Oh, by the way:

I saw a column today that Leo Laporte suggested changing the name of podcasts to “netcasts”. At least that his answer and that’s what he’s calling his. Let’s take a look at where this all started and come up with a better idea.

“Podcasting” as a term came from crossing “broadcasting” with an iPod. But how many of you listen or watch broadcasts? You don’t. You watch shows. So why not just start calling them what they are in reality? Take a TV show. See I called it a show, not a broadcast because that’s how we relate to them. TV shows are broadcast by a network.If you think about it, broadcasting is a verb yet podcasting is a noun. So what we’ve done is practice bad grammar by using a verb as a noun.

I think it would be good for us to start using the terminology used by broadcasting networks because it will give podcasts more cred. This is especially true with the writer’s strike giving viewers less and less to watch they are turning to new areas to get their entertainment. So let’s be honest and call them what they are. They’re shows. OK some aren’t that great, but you can say that about radio and tv shows in general as well.

So why don’t you go and give a listen one of my shows now.

-30-

Eric

OK, it’s been awhile, but I think I’ve finally got some pieces together for a decent lawsuit against Apple. It’s not because I have anything against them. I love them and I love their products. What I don’t have is the cash to upgrade my current 7 year old mac G4.

So I dug back into my blogging days to find an article that I wrote and that was hosted using a dead and gone program called “Blogwavestudio.” In this particular entry I mentioned how I had purchased an eMac for my in law’s because they were tired of all the problems they were having with a PC.

So they get computer and my Mother-in-Law calls me up because she knows she’s going to need help getting it set up. She plugs it in. Hits the power button and…

“Bong”

It boots up and is working just fine and she says…

“Wow, it just works.”

So in my post I suggested that Steve Jobs should use this in their ad campaign and say shoot an add where they show someone getting a mac and setting it up, plugging it in, hitting the power button, the computer boots and they say, “Wow, it just works.” Fade out to the Apple logo with the phrase underneath that says, “Apple Macintosh…it just works.”

Now I’m not a greedy bastard, but I figure it would have cost Apple a pretty penny to have Chiat/Day or BBDO come up with this. So in the post I asked Steve Jobs to go ahead and use this for their advertising and all I asked for in return was a new computer every year delivered on my birthday.

Now that’s an rather indefinite amount of time so I modified that in a recent letter to Steve Jobs about a week ago that said I’d like One (1) desktop model of my choice and one (1) laptop model of my choice each year for the next 10 years.

In the week since I sent Steve my email I haven’t heard back from him, which isn’t unusual I suppose. So I thought I’d post something here for the world to see since Apple is obviously using an idea i came up with that was posted to the servers under the .mac domain. Surely this is an adequate payment for the use of my intellectual property that I put forth several years prior to Apple coming up with their latest, “It just works” campaign.

So my wonderful readers I would like to ask you to help spread the word in a kind of grassroots sort of way and help me get my new computers for myself (and my wife & daughter). So that we can further enthrall you with our wit.

Oh and here’s a link using the wayback machine to prove it was up there in the first place.

Eric
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These are two mics that I own and have grown to love in podcasting and in my regular recording studio. I was at a local SF audio store [Leo's Music] and heard one of the guys point to the MXL 2001 aqnd say, “That mic will do 95% of what a Neumann U87 does for a lot less.” That stuck in my head because a U87 will run you about $5k. I was looking for a condenser mic and found a deal on musiciansfriend.com that offered both these mic s for $150. I was surprised by the quality of these mics. In the podcast thatI previously mentioned here you can hear the differences between these and other mics. Now the 2001 was compared to a U87 and I have to saythere are some serious differences. 

1. These mics pick up a lot more sound in a room, so if you have a noisy room these might not be the best for you. 

2. They have a bit of boominess, acentuating the low midrange area even thought their frequency spectrum doesn’t show this.These two things can be good if you’re not a very loud speaker and want to thicken up your voice, but if you’re trained in announcing I’d definitely back off the mic more than 12″.

For the price though, they are a really good set of mics doing decent emulations of the Neumann U87 and K47 microphones.