Computing This Week

Today I took some time at work to work on getting our FreeBSD server more space. That turned into a bit of a project, for the first disk I tried to clone the system onto didn’t seem to want to take it. Then one of the RAM sticks in the machine went bad, which took a while to diagnose. Finally succeeded in transferring the system from the original 80GB drive to a 250GB drive, which will give us some much needed room.

Fridays are also now audio days. We at NCSE are making podcasts each week using Glenn Branch’s news summary for the week. For over three years now, Glenn has put together summaries of the top stories concerning evolution education each week. Carrie Sager reads the news summary as a script, and we record it using an Ampex microphone directly into the Audacity sound editing program. A little touch-up, and we can export to an MP3 and publish it on our weblog. The latest podcast is linked in this page.

Another project this weekend involves taking a five-minute segment from a VHS tape and convert it into a file suitable for playing on a Video iPod. I’m capturing from an analog source via my Pinnacle DV500 DVD card. For editing and transcoding, I’m using the Sony Vegas Movie Studio application. Fry’s had a special on the Sony/Corel Visual Creation Studio. Between in-store discounts and rebates, the total cost for the package was \$10 plus tax on \$90.