Acme Voiceworx

Spent a day last week at Westport Shipyards in Port Washington, WA, hanging with a buddy who designs and installs marine electronics systems in luxury yachts, ranging in size from 110 to 164 feet.

Of interest to me was learning that owners spend about $10,000 a month to get Internet connectivity at sea on one of these things, and the speed tops out at about 512 kbps (it comes down from a satellite). But like the rest of us, they’re waiting for WiMax to help increase their Internet speed and lower their costs.

The rich really are different, or are they?

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This has nothing to do with audio, radio, voiceover, teaching, or topics related to the aforementioned. It does have to do with life, and with my beloved ’65 Ranchero. Forgive me this indulgence, and thanks in advance.

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One of the things I really like about WordPress for websites is how diligent the developers are about updating their software… keeping it current and making the changes necessary to prevent WordPress from being vulnerable to the hack du jour. The best part is that the upgrade takes all of ten minutes to accomplish.

Heck, if I can do it in my current anti-histamine-addled condition then so can you.

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Pro Tools users almost got what they’ve begged and pleaded for o these many years — Digidesign just introduced the Mbox Micro, a USB stick audio interface with stereo outputs (but no inputs) for $279. It’s clever enough… on the end there’s a 1/8th-inch stereo output jack and a little thumbwheel volume control. Otherwise it looks like a USB memory stick, with no cables to connect and no controls save the thumbwheel. Digi says it’ll be available in mid-November.

Now before we all go bonkers, let’s remember that there are no inputs on this little dingus. So while it’s great for mixing and editing on an airplane flight, it won’t really do for cutting voiceovers in a hotel room, right? ‘Cause there’s no inputs, right? ‘Cause Pro Tools won’t recognize any inputs other than the one that’s on the Digidesign interface, right? And this interface ain’t got none, right?

Right.

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The school year is just weeks away, and with it will come a larger-than-usual boatload of email spam. The New Yorker magazine explains the problem of spam, and how we continue to lose the battle:

In 2001, spam accounted for about five per cent of the traffic on the Internet; by 2004, that figure had risen to more than seventy per cent. This year, in some regions, it has edged above ninety per cent — more than a hundred billion unsolicited messages clogging the arterial passages of the world’s computer networks every day. The flow of spam is often seasonal. It slows in the spring, and then, in the month that technology specialists call “black September” — when hundreds of thousands of students return to college, many armed with new computers and access to fast Internet connections — the levels rise sharply.

Hat tip to goodexperience.com.

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Summer’s here again, and that means it’s time to indulge in my other career… recording and editing dialog for video games. Got one booked, too, and it’s a biggie.

It’s great fun, really, although it involves a great deal of concentration and focus over a long series of 12-to-14 hour days. It keeps me sharp, and I get to work with great actors, directors, and staff. I’m most grateful to my friends at Cup of Tea Productions for the opportunity to do it yet again.

I’m under NDA so I can’t tell you the title of this summer’s project. But I can tell you that it’s version 5 of a popular FPS (first-person shooter) franchise, and it should be released before the end of the year.

So if I’m in and out for awhile you’ll excuse me… at the end of a day of ADR, about the only thing I’m good for is an hour of “Hitman” on the Xbox. After that I’m horizontal.

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It’s finals week and I have no life, hence the dearth of postings. I’m swimming in yet-to-be-graded papers on Internet Radio, audio imaging projects, and unfinished exams, at least until May 15th.

More will be revealed after that date. Please stay tuned — it’ll be worth it, promise.

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