workin it
well, since i’ve been working here at the Office of Education for a coupla weeks now, i guess it’s about high time i mention what exactly i’ve been doing. the answer is that i’ve been doing a lot of little things around here — stuff with the Web site, research on the net about various things, and other stuff. but the main thing i’ve been working on is a major sound recordings archival project.
over the past 50 years or so, the New Church has maintained a large library of recordings — mostly sermons and religious classes, but other events as well, including plays, commencement addresses, and other recordings. my task is to design a process to convert this huge volume of material (thousands of cassettes and reel tapes) to digital format. i’m doing this with the idea in mind that volunteers, not professionals, will be doing the conversion. i’m also keeping in mind the possibility that in the forseeable future, the digital archive will be offered online for download in MP3 format or listening in a streaming format. so there’s more to consider than you might realize at first.
a very neat piece of the equipment, the Tascam CC-222, is going to make the cassette -> digital conversion a lot easier. it records directly from cassette to CD-R (and vice versa) with the touch of one button. the CC-222 also has analog inputs for recording, allowing for the output of a reel-to-reel to be directly transferred to CD-R.
anyway, the process goes something like this:
- record cassette/reel to CD-R
- rip the audio CD to .WAV
- optional: clean up the .WAV up in Cool Edit
- optional: burn the mastered .WAV onto a second CD-R
- save the .WAV as a high quality MP3 for digital archiving
all of this is done with the database in mind, so that in future online applications, it will be easy to produce an e-commerce/download site. it has sooo much potential, but who knows if the money or manpower will materialize.
anyhow, in other computer news, today i came over to the Sound Recordings Library and found that the password for the Win2k box had been changed. i had no way to log in. i called the Help Desk, but that was a waste of time. i decided to take matters into my own hands and hack into the box via a linux bootdisk, and hot damn was it EASY. i downloaded chntpw, wrote the floppy image to a blank disk, booted, followed the directions, selected “Administrator,” and set a new password. SO easy. yay Microsoft!
the devil (220k) has infiltrated the Sound Recordings Library! ha, playing with Cool Edit is fun.
now i’m all tired and shit
whew. i know i’ve already mentioned the heresy of enjoying soccer on TV, but lemme tell ya, playing it is another beast altogether. that shit is TIRING! plus, the game is like, a mystery to me. i don’t know what to do when. or maybe i just physically suck at it. in any case, i was no superstar in my first competitive soccer game since, oh, age 7.
oh, and speaking of soccer (ar-oooooo!), get your act together, Ben, you lazy sonofabitch. jeez. “on aging bands?” more like “really quite an uneventful day, part 2.”