High-Quality Digital Recorder
I had no audio-recorder of any kind before I began this process, so I started doing a bit of research on the Internet and by talking with colleagues. Everyone told me not to skimp on the quality of the recorder, since you don’t know what kind of control you’ll have over your interview environment and some recorders are better at dealing with ambient noises than others.

I went ahead an purchased a Sony ICDUX70 Digital Voice Recorder for $60.00 online, and was very happy with it. It records directly to mp3, holds 12+ hours on the highest quality setting, and has a USB port for downloading with no special software required (works great on my Mac).

I’ve had two interviews in noisy areas, one was at a bar with not-so-quiet music and not-so-quiet guests, and was impressed by how audible the interviews came out.

Take Lots of Notes
Hey, you’re recording this with your fancy new digital recorder, so no use in taking copious notes, right? Wrong. Whenever your interviewee references a new name (organization or individual), acronym, or jargon, write it down. At the end of their response (or the end of the interview if you don’t want to break the flow), go over those names/terms and make sure you’ve got them right. Humans are agreeable creatures, and sometimes I find myself thinking that I’ve understood a term or reference, only to find out that I’m not 100% sure during the transcription process. This step saves a lot of time and prevents you from having to write a potentially embarrassing follow up email.

Voice Recognition Software
Here’s where I got a bit creative. Speech-recognition software has come a long way since my last encounter with it back in 2000, but it still can’t accurately understand a voice that it hasn’t been trained to recognize. So, if you’re hoping that you can just run your recorded interview through a computer and receive a relatively accurate transcript, you may have to wait another decade.

That doesn’t mean that it can’t be pretty useful, though. I already had a copy of MacSpeech Dictate (equivilent of Dragon NaturallySpeaking for Windows), and I invested about 30 minutes of training-time before the software could do a pretty good job at understanding what I was saying. This kind of software isn’t cheap ($99-199), and it works better with some voices than others (for example, accented speakers). I really would recommend playing around with a demo or an internet copy to see if this will work for you in the long run, before investing in something which may not be that useful for your specific situation.

Here’s my process:

• Spend some time training your voice software (and yourself) until you get to a point where it can understand a good deal of a practice text.
• Copy mp3 interviews onto your computer.
• Fire up an mp3 player capable of adjusting the play rate without changing the pitch (QuickTime will do), and set it to half speed playback.
• Plug in your headphones and make sure you can clearly hear your recording.
• Start your voice software.
• Playback your interview and speak out-loud what you hear through your headphones. This takes a bit of practice but at half-speed playback it’s not too big of a challenge. Don’t worry too much about errors, your job is to get as many of the words as possible into a text-editor.
• Close your voice software, and go back and format the messy document you’ve made as best you can.
• Now play back your interview again (possibly at normal speed), and edit your transcript as you normally would, pausing after each sentence and rewinding during difficult moments.

This process is far from perfect, but I’ve found that listen-and-repeat method can usually get a good chunk of the data into text format which I can then edit. Editing an incomplete transcript, of course, is always easier than doing the whole thing from scratch. I’ve been able to use this method to get transcribing down to a 4:1 or sometimes 3:1 ratio of transcription-time to interview time, which isn’t too bad.

So I finally got internet access (a neighbor was nice enough to let me install a wireless access point), but I found that I could not use my Vonage Softphone to make calls back to the states. This is the third network I’ve been on here where it would not work.

The thing they all have in common is that KPN (dutch telco) is their ISP. Looks like KPN doesn’t like their users using VOIP to make cheap/free long distance calls, so they block SIP. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that they’re idiots. The block configured on the DSL modem/router which is not password protected. The option is pretty hidden though, you have to telnet into the modem to change it (it’s not in the web-interface).

So, if you have KPN and a Speed Touch 500-series DSL modem (Thomson or Alcatel), here’s how to hack it (mine says it’s a 546, but this should work for 510 or 530 models too):

• Telnet to 10.0.0.138 (modem’s address)
• Login as “root” or “Administrator” (both work on mine). It should not prompt you for a password.
• At the => prompt, type “nat unbind application=SIP port=5060″
• type “config save” to make the changes permanent
• type “system reboot” to restart the modem.

This worked great and allowed me to use Vonage with KPN. It took me forever to figure out how to get it working, but after I did I searched for that command and found that this seems to be the fix for a whole lot of providers who block this same way (BT, Telstra, and others).

Blocking SIP may kill iChat and other video/voice/chat programs as well, so it’s not a very nice thing to do.  Bad KPN!

Wow.

Since it’s the first hit on google I assume a lot of people have seen it, but if you haven’t, you should. It’s hilarious.

Today I read about how true that statement really is. Chinese President Hu Jintao’s first visit to the U.S. will not be to Washington D.C., but instead to the state of Washington. C-net is reporting that he will be attending a dinner at Bill Gates’ house, along with other top pacific economic players.

This comes on the heels of the Chineese government requiring all PC makers to ship their product with a “licensed” operating system. Someone should tell them that Linux is both free and licensed.

So… when do you think Microsoft will get a seat at the U.N.?

For example, if you’re using vim, emacs, or you’re ssh’ed into another computer and using a command-line irc client (in my case, irssi), you may want the “page up” command to be sent to that program. Holding down Shift *should* make this work, but on my MacBook Pro it doesn’t (maybe because I also have to hold down fn?).

Anyhow, open up a terminal, go to the Terminal menu, and select “Window Settings”. Select “Keyboard”, and now you can see all of the actions for various key commands.

We’re trying to set the following keys to do these actions:

• PageUp = “\033[6~”
• PageDown = “\033[5~”
• Home = “\033[1~”
• End = “\033[4~”

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. If you go find the PageUp key and click on “Edit”, you may notice that when you try to type a backslash (\) it enters a double backslash (\\). Also can’t use your delete key to edit the string.Do the following:

• Find the key “F20″ and click on “Edit”
• Highlight the String (\033[34~) and hit command+c to copy it.
• Close the window -Find “PageUp” and click on “Edit”
• Make sure the “key” is PageUp, the “Modifier” is none and the “Action” is send string to shell:
• Hit command+v to paste the string from F20 into the box.
• Use the “delete” button in the window (NOT on your keyboard) to delete the last 3 characters. (3, 4, and ~)
• Enter in “6~” (you will have \033[6~ when you are done)
• Hit “ok” and the window will close
• Click “Use Settings as Defaults” to keep your changes.
• Repeat process for PageDown, Home, and End (the string will be different, see above listing).

Again, don’t forget to save your settings as deafaults otherwise new terminals won’t have the same settings.

Enjoy your (now working) Terminal.app.

If you need to scroll up or down in Terminal.app ‘s buffer, use the slider or arrows on the right, or you can hit command+up arrow or command+down arrow on your keyboard.

This works on Mac OS X 10.4.5 with Terminal.app version 1.5 (133)

First off, my new roomate moved in, and he’s got a nice big screen TV and Tivo.  We’ve been playing around with Tivo Desktop, transfering files and such on and off of the Tivo, allowing it to access our mp3′s and movies, and all sorts of other fun stuff.  I’ve also convinced him to add a second drive, which will be done as soon as we get the mounting bracket’s he ordered.  That may end up being a full post in the future.

My Macbook Pro also arrives today.  Well, technically it already arrived, but I was in the shower so I didn’t hear the doorbell.  To make things worse, I got to watch the FedEx truck drive away from the little window in my shower.  So sad.  Anyway, I’ll be picking it up tonight and play with MacOS X a bit before I try to repartition the drive and install Gentoo.

This frees up my Dell, which is headed over to my dad’s.  Since he lives 2 houses down the street, this will revive the 802.11 antenna project (the pictures are more interesting), which died when (or slightly before) my brother moved up to Sacramento.  When I went up to investigate why it had stopped working, I found the entire Linksys WAP 11 was completely corroded internally, I guess my home-made seals didn’t work out too well.

Regardless, I was rather impressed with how long the little guy held up (it was clear that he had been rusting for a very very long time), so I ordered 2 more of those guys on ebay.  This time I’m trying to get access to the whole house, not just the closest room, so I’m going to be using (at least) one of the 4 ultra-high-gain antenna’s which Dan over at oiccam gave me (thanks Dan!).

I’ll post more on the wifi thing as soon as I get my AP’s and figure out what I’m doing…

It’s a music streaming service, where you input your favorite songs and end up with a personalized radio stations based on what it thinks you may also like. You then approve or disapprove of the songs it plays, and it gets a better feel for what you like and plays more good music. It takes some fiddling with, but it’s quite neat.

Plenty of other music services make recommendations of music, so what makes Pandora different? First, here’s a little background.

A long time ago I came across a plug-in for my music player (xmms) called Audioscrobbler. It looked at all the music in my playlist and indexed it on a website. It then made recommendations on what it thought I might like, based on what other people like. Basically, a lot of people who like Radiohead also like Coldplay, so perhaps I should check them out. I found this to be a neat trick, but rather unsatisfying because, frankly, people listen to crap.

Audioscrobbler morphed into last.fm, a streaming music service which does the same thing (Yahoo music also does something similar). What you end up with is basically a personalized ClearChannel radio station. Whoopee. You get all the songs from your favorite genre(s) that everybody likes, minus Green Day or any other band you dislike. You don’t get exposed to new bands or b-sides of good albums; instead, the songs you know you already like just get reinforced over and over again. Steven Krause aptly calls this the “echo chamber of overly like minds”.

Pandora works a bit differently. They have people (maybe computers?) which analyze music and index it based on certain criteria (see Music Genome Project). It then suggests music based on this information, instead of the will of the masses. This is wonderful because maybe Green Day has a song which is very much like a Radiohead or Coldplay song you like. Better yet, if a band isn’t yet popular, it still may end up on your radio station. This happens occasionally on other music services, but happens a whole lot more on Pandora (in my experience).

I greatly prefer Pandora to amassing a gigantic mp3 collection, which I’ve done in the past. Andy calls my problem “mp3 fatigue” Keeping track of my collection and organizing it into various playlists is a pain, and to my suprise I found it’s easy to get bored with a 60 gig mp3 collection. Pandora solves this problem, playing songs I forgot I liked from bands I forgot existed, and at the same time exposing me to new music. When I hear somehting I want to hear again, I jot it down and grab it later. Of course, you can always just click “buy on itunes” if you want it right away.

Anyway, try it out. Both last.fm and Pandora let you filter out junk, which makes them better than conventional radio by a long shot. Now if only you could stream to an ipod…

If this all really interests you, then take a look at the aforementioned blog of Steve Krause, which goes into way more detail on the differences and advantages of each.

While I invariably have to solve desktop problems at some client sites, I am primarily a server guy. Most of the servers I supervise don’t even have a mouse attached to them, so you can pretty much guess that I’m not the best guy to help you fix the red-eye in your wedding photos.

Now that isn’t to say that I won’t try to lend a hand, if I can. I’m a generally nice person. The other day I had an opportunity to drive through a gigantic puddle and splash some teenagers, and I didn’t take it. That’s just me. So, if I have time, I’ll help you try to get rid of some spam or clean up some space on your C: drive. It’s important to remember, however, that the receptionist at your company is probably better than I am with excel and word, and your average 14 year old can whip up a nice looking business card.

Bearing that in mind, you’ve asked me for some help, so here’s how to keep from being blacklisted from Derek tech support. First off, people seem to think that computer favors are somehow different from other favors. You wouldn’t invite your mechanic friend over to change your oil or rotate your tires without offering him something in return. Money isn’t required, but a nice bottle of wine or dinner will not only make me happy, but will also make me want to return your phone calls in the future.

Secondly, pay attention. As mentioned earlier, I often don’t know why your outlook express is acting weird. So when I figure it out and explain it to you, at least pretend to be paying attention. DO NOT just go “oh man i never get this computer stuff, if it happens again I’ll just call you..” I’m not going to ramble on about some techno-geek-gobbetly-gook to an obvious novice. I’m giving you tips so that you have the means to solve your own problems, which should be the objective here. If I’m mistaken, and you just want to be able to call me when something goes wrong, then we can draw up some paperwork, my rates start at $80/hr.

Thirdly, everyone has something to offer. So if you’re a tax attorney or vacation planner, or just someone with a pickup truck, feel free to offer your services in return.

Too often people think that since we’re in the computer field, we’d just love to come over and install your new DSL modem. We don’t, but if you’re willing to scratch my back…..