Category: Technology

So, I’ve been trying to get more out of my music in terms of sound quality and experience. 6 years ago, I thought $30 Sony in-ear earphones were just as good as $200 earphones. Clearly my ears were not trained to know any better. As time went on, I slowly began to notice the difference between quality speakers and crappy ones. I still wanted earphones for their small size and I eventually settled on the BeatsX (bluetooth) which cost $109. The BeatsX are definitely much better than my $30 Sony earphones. Then, as time went on, I noticed that music played in my car sounded better than my BeatsX. One particular experience is the surround sound feeling you get from music in your car. With 6 separate speakers, the sounds from different instruments would appear to come from different directions in a very harmonious way. Since I wanted that experience at home, my research led me to a sound factor called soundstage. The soundstage is a speaker’s or headphone’s ability to add spatiality to the music you’re listening to. Rtings.com explains soundstage in detail and sorts headphones by soundstage. You can see the explanation and ranking at

https://www.rtings.com/headphones/tests/sound-quality/soundstage

With this ranking, I just went down the list and picked the best headphones in my budget. Here are the prices for the top 4 headphones as of this writing:

Test Equipment

• Audio Technica ATR2100-USB
• Pop filter that goes over mic head
• Brand new DELL Inspiron 13 5000 series laptop
• Audacity Audio Editor

Note: I tried recording to an old 2013 Lenovo ThinkPad laptop and the sound was crappy.

Steps

1. Open Audacity and use the following settings
   • MME
   • Mic: Audio Technical 2100
   • Microphone Volumne: 80% or max, if you can
2. Record your voice in Audacity using the mic
3. There will be some hissing in the beginning and ending of the track. So, select a part of the hissing and hit Effects > Noise Reduction. Then, select the entire track, hit Effects > Repeat Noise Reduction.
4. Select the entire track and, in the Effects menu, click Amplify
5. Select the entire track and, in the Effects menu, click Truncate Silence
6. Select the beginning and end of the track which is before and after the vocal section.
7. Delete or remove sound from the  beginning and ending of the track

1. Create your slides in Powerpoint
2. Add narration notes for each slide
3. Narrate each slide by clicking “Start Recording from Current Slide

   

   When you’re doing recording your voice for the slide, click the Esc key to stop recording for that slide.

4. When done, Save As .wmv. Unfortunately, this only produces a 720p video and not a 1080p video.
5. If you want to create an intro video, you can video stock videos at shutterstock.com and stock audio at premiumbeat.com.
6. Create you intro video using the free OpenShot video editor.
7. Export your intro video using as a 1080p or 720p mp4

   

8. Create a new video in OpenShot that joins your intro video with your Powerpoint video.

If you want to just merge two mp4 videos, use the free MP4Joiner.

If you want to just split your mp4 videos, use the free MP4Splitter.

Link Your Google Account

If you linked your Google Account with your phone, if you lose your phone, you can go to the Google Android Device Manager and 1) lock your phone and 2) locate it on Google Maps so you can get it. If necessary, you can also erase the data on the phone as well.

Enable USB Debugging in Developer Mode

USB debugging allows you to transfer data between a computer and your phone. It’s handy if you broke your phone’s screen or otherwise can’t get into your phone to back up data. Many backup utilities only work with USB debugging enabled.

Back Up All Data including App Data to Google Drive

If you back up all your data such as photos and WhatsApp messages to Google Drive, then if you lose your phone, you’ll still be able to access your data.

Install WheresMyDroid

Install a app like WheresMyDroid to be able to control your phone from other another phone or computer. This can be handy when you want to unlock your phone, make your phone ring, etc.

As time goes on, you may find that you have many duplicate files on your computer whether they’re music files, photos, or documents. One program I found that is free and does a great job and finding and giving you various options for handling duplicate files, including deleting them, is CloneSpy. I’m currently using is to deduplicate mp3s and it works great. I set it to ask me what to do for each duplicate file match so I can checking and manually choose which duplicate files to delete. Below is a screenshot.

1. Twister pair phone wires come to the AT&T Telephone Network Interface Device (NID) outside your house
2. In the NID box is a balun that converts twister pair to a RG6 coaxial cable
3. The RG6 coaxial cable from the balun connects to the VDSL input of a Holland Electronics DPLS-2AR Diplexer
4. A RG6 coaxial cable is run from the “Combined’ output of the diplexer to the coaxial input on your AT&T 2Wire 3800HGV-B VDSL Residential Gateway (RG) modem / router
5. A RG6 coaxial cable is run from the “HPNA/TVRF” output of the diplexer to the input of a Holland Electronics GHPNA splitter
6. A RG6 coaxial cable is run from each of the outputs of the splitter to your AT&T set top boxes (STB)

Recently I wanted to take a picture of one of my bathrooms. Unfortunately, the half bathroom is a bit small and my phone’s camera couldn’t take a shot that could show most of the bathroom. Even though my phone, a Samsung Galaxy Note 3, has a pretty impressive panoramic picture feature, it only creates horizontal panoramas. Fortunately, though, there is a free program called Panorama Plus which can take a series of photos and stitch them all together. Below are the individual pictures I took of the bathroom from different angles and below them is the panorama of all of those pictures stitched together. Not bad!

Continue reading Easily Create Panoramic Pictures from a Series of Photos