Of microphones and Mac's

A few months ago I tried making a movie in Final Cut HD 3.5 of a recent trip around the world. During the editing process I needed to make lots of voice over's, to say stuff like "..and here I am in New York, oh, and look, there's the Statue of Liberty"... As well as having a terribly boring and unexpressive voice I was also let down a little by the microphones that I was using to record the voice overviews. Today I decided to get to the bottom of what the problem was and try and figure out exactly what the issue was with my sound input. To do this I tested 4 different microphones that I've somehow accumulated over the years. The first was a simple Philips SBC ME570 showgun Mic (as shown to the left). This Mic is self powered (it has a battery in it) and plugs into the computer thru the standard analog audio-in Port. When using this the sound levels were terrible. Even when I raise the input volume to maximum on my Mac I can still hardly hear anything. After doing some reading up on this problem it seems that you really need to buy a Griffin iMic and connect the microphone thru that in order to get decent sound levels. I next tried the USB microphone on my Steel sound gaming headset. The volume levels this time were excellent, although it only picks up sound close to the microphone. For voice-overs it seemed fine, and the Mac was able to detect the "C Media USD Headphone Set" immediately. I next tried an external iSight camera, connected via firewire. This couldn't directly feed into GarageBand but I was able to record a voiceover into iMovie. Again the sound was pretty good, but the camera itself was somewhat unwieldy to hold when making the voice over. Lastly I tried the internal microphone on my iMac. Input volume levels were pretty ordinary unless you stick your face up right next to the screen. It also picks up a fair amount of background noise and there is a faint echo and the hint of distance when listening to the playback. 

I'll be using my USB headset next time I need to make a voiceover for a home movie. The sound levels are good and it let's me keep my hands free and doesn't pick up background noise.

HD LCD and a Mac G5

It's taken a few month to get to this latest blog but I'd like to share my experience of hooking up my G5 PowerMac to a LCD TV. I recently replaced my old 28" CRT TV with a 46" LCD HD monster from Sharp. My main reason for buying this particular TV was because it was just about the only one that had a DVI-In post, meaning I could hook my Apple G5 Mac into directly without downgrading the video signal to RGB. The idea was to use my Mac as a sort of media centre, to play DVD's, use iTunes to play thru the TV speakers, run Skype over the TV and at some stage buy a Elgato EyeTV adapter and run a TV feed thru the computer onto the TV, meaning that the G5 would also double up as a digital TV tuner. The TV could also be a big monitor, meaning we could surf the web or play games from the lounge.

  

I still think the whole concept is a good one and would mean replacing a whole lot of boxes that we have sitting under the TV with a P. However it hasn't worked out at all well, for a whole lot of reasons which I've listed below.

1. The best compatible resolution that the TV and the G5 seem to share is 1280x720. I can get output up to 1920x1080 but I have huge overscan problems. What this means is that the screen image that the computer sends simply doesn't fit in the screen. The top, bottom and sides and cut off so you can't see the top menu bar in OS X for example. Only 1280x720 works but on a 46" screen everything seems a little big and blocky. I've tried fixing the overscan issue using programs like DisplayConfigX but haven't cracked it. Kinda makes the whole DVI input thing a waste of time really, might as well be RGB at this resolution. I could possibly fix this by change the Video Card on the G5, but I'd be taking a punt there, there seems to be no guarantee it'd work.

2. Because the resolution isn't great any DVD's or TV played looks terrible. I'm much better off running it directly from the TV tuner or DVD player to the TV rather then thru the G5.

3. A G5 PowerMac doesn't come with a Airport or Bluetooth. This means I need to use either my standard wired keyboard and mouse or pay extra for a wireless USB combo. A wired keyboard/mouse isn't really an option in a lounge situation, so I'd have to invest in the wireless combo. Also, because I don't have an airport I need to run a Ethernet Cable from my router in the office to my G5 in the lounge, which means drilling holes in the floor.

4. The G5 also misses a inbuilt webcam and microphone, making the whole Skype idea a little defunct. I can plug in a Mic and buy a iSight camera but the whole idea of this was to reduce clutter and save on cost. It also doesn't support Apple's Front Row or the Front Row remote, and from what I've read there's no way to set this up either.

5. BIGGEST problem. This new LCD TV uses a whopping 262 Watts of power. Compare that to the old 28" CRT, which used about 75 Watts. I could have had three and a half of those old CRT's running for the same running cost as this LCD monstrosity. Setting up a dedicated media centre as I had envisaged would require having the PC and the TV both running a lot more then they are when separated. A PowerMac G5 isn't exactly cheap run either - it comes in at a maximum 450 watts, and 140 watts even just when idling (note the new Intel MacPro are somewhat more power efficient).

So, to summarise. My reasons for buying a new TV were somewhat flawed. A PowerMac G5 setup as mine is doesn't make a particularly good media centre. A Mac Mini would be a much better choice, although I'd strongly recommend checking the resolutions your TV supports with the Mac Mini before buying a HD TV.

 

Programming for Kids

Got kids who seem to think computers are nothing more then an expensive entertainment device, and the occasional source of copy and paste information to get tonights homework done quickly? Back when I was a kid with my little Apple //c there wasn't that much choice gaming so I tended to spend a lot of time programming in BASIC and Assembly Language. Nowadays there isn't quite the incentive for the kids to start programming which makes Scratch a neat starting point.

Scratch is a drag and drop style simple GUI programming environment and is available for both Mac's and PC's. It lets kids animate objects on a screen (much like Logo) using simple programming logic that they link together on a graphical scripting pad. A sample program might be Repeat 10, Move 10, Rotate 180, Move 50. Sounds effects can be added as well as cartoon dialogue boxes and a few other special effects. Scratch can be used to make little movies, simple games or animations and you can import your own photos and draw your own pictures. They'll learn programming topics like procedures, looping, sequences etc without even realising it.

I've only let my kids have one turn each so far but so far the interest seems to be there.
The main problem is going to be keeping there attention span up by encouraging them to work on small and achievable projects. Left alone at it and they'll get bored pretty quickly.

StoxWorth

In my spare time I'm trying to polish off a little application I've been developing to help people see of snapshot of their share portfolio. Usually I use MS Money to keep track of my shares but it has a annoying limitation of supporting online updates of shares from a limited number of countries, like the US, Australia and some places in Europe. If you own shares in any other countries then you need to make the updates manually.

To give me an instant overview of where my portfolio is right now I've created a little Mac OS X widget that shows you the current value of your investments (from just about any stock exchange) and shows you how much money you've made or lost on the day. It'll even convert foreign currency shares into your local currency so that your overall gain/loss can be calculated. Now that I've got Windows Vista installed on my iMac I'm going to get started writing a Vista Gadget version of this Mac Widget, prehaps with a pretty graph that lets you see your portfolio value over a pre-specified date range.

A competitive worldy footprint

One of the less pleasant aspects of living in a remote, isolated place like Wump does is that from an early age international travel as a certain allure and fascination. Travelling to a new country takes on a slightly competitive form as people try and outdo each other by claiming to have visited more countries then anyone else. Gradually as this friendly rivalry becomes more and more serious overseas holidays are not planned in the interests of having a great time or a break but rather as a scheme to get extra stamps in the passport and thus leapfrog ones opponent in the "most countries visited" stakes. btw: You can generate your own country maps like these on world66.

Wump has, unfortunately, fallen victim to this obsession and finds himself locked in battle with Bernie and Galbs (who's real names will be withheld here) to lay claim to the title of "he who is most widely travelled". Currently the lists stand as:

Wump (33): United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, Macau (Portugal), China, Ireland, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Switzerland, Russia, Latvia, Czech Republic, Greece, Albania, Austria, United States, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, Fiji, Singapore, Brazil, Chile, Argentina





Galbs (22): Belgium, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, France, Spain, Morocco, Austria, Switzerland, Latvia, United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Malaysia, Thailand, Denmark, Brazil, Netherlands, Argentina,Luxembourg, Germany, Czech Republic






Bernie (29): Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Cuba, United States, Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Switzerland, Austria, Ireland, United Kingdom, Croatia, Bosnia, Hungary, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Australia, Mexico, Guatemala, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belize