Comments | cellio: random bits (and browser-tab-cleanup day)

cellio

random bits (and browser-tab-cleanup day)

Feb 15, 2009 15:44

Query to the brain trust: I have USB headphones that include a microphone. What free software can I use to record voice from that microphone (preferably on Windows XP but I also have an iBook with OS 10.4 available) and produce something like WAV files? (I know I'm not going to get stellar audio quality from this setup; that's ok. The immediate ( Read more... )

sca: barony, car, judaism, brain trust, software, humor, links

Comments 8

siderea February 15 2009, 22:57:19 UTC

I suspect "mad engineers" is redundant, and possibly what happens to scientists who get prion diseases.

mamadeb February 15 2009, 22:58:33 UTC

Birkat ha Chamah will be a big deal here in Brooklyn, eruv Pesach or not.

Not that it would hurt to get an early start *that* day - and maybe it's enough of an event to engender a siyyum for beckorim...

cellio February 15 2009, 23:24:57 UTC

One unanswered question (so far) for me is whether our presumed obligation to be in another city before the seder starts will preclude my attending anything. :-(

("Presumed" obligation because that's where Dani's family is and I'd like to see them, but their s'darim are religiously unsatisfactory for me and I'm tired of that, so Dani and I are still talking about what to do about that. I think "go find my own seder in Toronto for one night" is more likely than my staying home, but an open question is who is going to be how torqued off by which options.)

530nm330hz February 15 2009, 23:28:02 UTC

As I understand it, al pi halacha, all you need to do for birchat hachamah is say "baruch ... oseh ma'aseh v'reishit." Everything else is added to make the once-every-28-years thing feel more significant. And yes, it is awfully inconvenient that it falls on the busiest morning of the year.

cellio February 17 2009, 03:51:12 UTC

Yeah, there's what halacha requires, and then there's taking advantage of a rare event to do something more. I wonder what my local community will be up to.

merle_ February 16 2009, 14:25:08 UTC

[...] are those the cars for which they want to minimize driving?

I have that issue out here, where a certain number of passes were sold allowing hybrid/electric vehicles to use the high-occupancy lanes no matter how many people are in the car. It makes sense to give people an incentive to purchase more efficient vehicles, but really, I'd rather the person getting 3mpg is allowed to get off the road first, even if that is a horrible negative incentive.

bitsy_legend February 17 2009, 03:31:22 UTC

>Should we try to get the gas guzzlers to stop on the first floor instead?

How much sense does it make to force the drivers of heavy gashogs to actually move them farther up in the parking building, going at super-slow speeds, potentially with lots of idling during peak hours? One of those no-good-answer dilemmas which generally points to flaws in the underlying design/assumptions.

Like a thumbnail of the human condition.

cellio February 17 2009, 03:53:04 UTC

Yeah, no good answers here -- reward the behavior you don't actually want (choosing gas-guzzlers) or admit that what you're doing is only a feel-good move -- which is fine so long as you don't have illusions to the contrary. Me, I'm taking advantage of our landlord's feel-good program, not anything that actually encourages green choices.