software

I've been slowly putting my collection of vinyl into the computer, and found the best program to do it so far. I have an ION USB turntable, so the turntable goes straight into the computer, no issues there. Not the best turntable, but certainly good enough. I had been using Audacity, but it seems to really run the CPU even when it's recording. Don't know if it's a PPC issue, or just the program in general. I like the click/pop filter it has, and the MP3 encoding with LAME. I tried doing the recording with Final Vinyl, which works well enough to just record, but is a bit too simplistic.

So I just started using VinylStudio, and it's great. Interface isn't totally Mac, but it makes sense from a process standpoint, and works great - especially since this is the first Mac version (v7) of a longtime Windows program. It's worth the $30 registration for making the process that much easier - the automation of getting and inputting MP3 tags is a huge help and the biggest thing missing in my other methods. Audacity helps a bit with that, by at least remembering the tag info within the same recording, but it still requires manual input, and if you record in different sections you have to type it all in over again (yes, you can save the info and reload it, but it's a cumbersome process).

Well, the blog has a new look and is running on some new software. I switched to drupal for this and my photo galleries. I had been running the galleries on 4images (which I created an extension for to use the Google RSS Feed AJAX code to create a slideshow viewer) and my blog on MoveableType 3.2, but I wanted more features than 4images, and at some point I'd need to update the MT software. Drupal is great, flexible, content-management software, and it has a relatively easy to work with structure. I've already created my own custom module to list the galleries, and have been hacking away at the Brilliant Gallery module to customize how my pictures are actually shown. It also has user and access management, so I can now have some of the galleries public, and others only to registered users. Sorry for the inconvenience of having to register to my friends. If it helps, I'd recommend signing up for an OpenID login, a portable login identity which you can use at an increasing number of websites so you don't have to create a separate login for each one (and of course, this site takes OpenID). Please let me know if the layout looks strange, I don't get much chance to test on Windows. UPDATE: Now you can login using your facebook login.