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1029usr078198
Forum Admin
USA
333 Posts |
 Posted - November 11 2008 : 07:39:28
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Listen now. or Download the archive.
Question: I’ve got a bunch of old cassette tapes. How can I convert these to CD or MP3?
Answer: This is a good question because there’s more than one answer depending on whether or not you have a cassette deck handy. If you still have a stereo cassette deck that works, take a look at your outputs. You might have a stereo headphone jack, or separate connections for the right and left channels. Your computer will have a one-eighth-inch stereo input with a light blue connector. Go to Radio Shack or wherever and get a cable with a 1/8” stereo connector on one end and whatever you need to connect to the cassette deck on the other. If you don’t have a working cassette deck, you can get a tape deck that connects to a USB port on your computer. The next thing you’ll need is recording software, like Audacity. I like Audacity: it works well, it supports more audio inputs than just microphone, which you’ll need to do this, and it’s free. That’s the right price every day. Connect it all up, fire up Audacity, set its input to “Line In” if you’re using the cable, or “USB”, then use Audacity to record what you’re playing on the cassette deck. After that, save it as an MP3 file and you’re good to go.
Cool Site: www.joetheplumber.com: With Election Day just four days away, I thought it would be timely to check out Joe the Plumber.com. As it turns out, this is the website of a real plumber named Joe Francis in Amarillo. He’s a real plumber who services clients only in the Amarillo area, but you can get a Joe The Plumber T-shirt at the site. I must admit, the site’s not necessarily all that cool, except for the name. Appscout.com reports he’s been offered “thousands to hundreds of thousands” for his domain name.
Cool Gadget: USB Microscope: This week’s cool gadget is the USB Microscope. I don’t know who makes it, but you can get one at firebox.com. I have seen USB Microscopes before, and truthfully, they are probably about as cool as this one, because with USB Microscopes it’s really all about the pictures. After all, you can only look through a standard microscope one at a time, but with the USB Microscope, everyone can gang up around your monitor and look at the same time. Even if your friends can’t attend, you can save the images for later sharing, or posting on flickr or even YouTube because this thing does video as well. But when it comes to microscopes, magnification is key. This scope will magnify whatever it’s looking at from 20 to 200 times so extreme close-ups are no problem. It’s a great Christmas gift idea for that geek-in-training you might have hanging around the house.
It's All “Geek” To Me: POST: This week’s word has nothing to do with letters, although it can refer to the articles listed in a blog or a forum. Today, I want to focus on the acronym POST. POST stands for Power On Self Test and is the first thing that happens when you turn on your computer. As part of the Self-Test, the computer checks memory. This is the most visible thing that happens, but the entire system gets a quick checkup. In the eighties when the IBM PC was being developed, memory was less reliable than today. It was decided that the system should check its memory and freeze up if an error was detected rather than jeopardize the accuracy of the system’s results.
Links
Audacity:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net
Joe The Plumber:
http://www.appscout.com/2008/10/why_joetheplumbercom_loves_joe.php
http://www.joetheplumber.com
USB Microscope:
http://www.firebox.com/product/2161/USB-Microscope?aff=512&awc=550_1225361641_58d602d6f064efcc991237c517bb3145
USB Microscope on Gaj-it
http://www.gaj-it.com/index.php/2008/10/23/usb-microscope-zoom-in-on-your-desk-dustmites/
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10/31/2008-Cassette to MP3,Joe,USB Microscope,POST
