Peter Sullivan's Journal

Username:	Password:
Forgot your password?	Remember Me

Thanks on Thanksgiving
Thanks to the ever-wonderful Danie Ware, I now have Google Wave. Which also means I have a few Google Wave invites to spread the Google-lovin'. If anyone wants one, please e-mail me at ceemage "symbol" googlemail.com

Current Mood: geeky

Eastercon 2011 News
The buzz on teh interwebs is "rumours of an Eastercon bid for 2011 at Novacon." Well, given that the flyers are up on many walls, I would say that Illustrious is a bit more than just a rumour. Many of the names on the flyer are reassuringly familiar, including Chris O'Shea and both Dowds.

ETA: Website is http://www.illustrious.org.uk/

Novacon news
Busy at Novacon helping to sort out some of the webcasting (see http://tuckerverse.livejournal.com passim, as Private Eye would put it). Have also realised that I have yet to have lunch.

Novacon schedule
Details of our proposed webcasting schedule from Novacon this weekend are now here.

You couldn't make it up, pt. 95
China is auctioning off 5,000 spare condoms from the Olympics, reports the BBC. On each wrapper is the Olympic motto, "Faster, Higher, Stronger."

Current Mood: amused

Random Things You Never Knew You Never Knew Until Google
Drawing a smiley face on the check increases a waitress's tips by 18 percent but decreases a waiter's tips by 9 percent.

Current Mood: croggled

Paging Mr. Jarse
Oh dear. I gather from the comments by the presenters on the breakfast show on Spark FM 107 that the presenters on the evening show last night were caught out by the old "send in an e-mail/text with a rude name and see if they notice before reading it out" trick. And in their first week, too. Moe Szyslak would empathise.

Please check the safety catches on your cuteness meters before clicking
This BBC story ("A webcam allowing the public to monitor the progress of nine Northumbria Police puppies has gone live.") for some reason doesn't include a link to the webcam itself, but it's not difficult to find.

Sparking off
OK, so I suspect the overlap between my friends list and people actually within the reception area is pretty close to zero percent. And I'm personally probably about as far outside the target audience age range as it's possible to be and still be breathing. But I'm still getting unreasonably excited about the launch of Spark Sunderland, a new local community radio station. The website is currently in countdown mode ahead of the 8 a.m. launch tomorrow morning, but there's already a live stream (at the moment carrying pre-launch testing) here (MP3 link).

First sign of the End of Days?
"And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and

johnnyeponymous said he was 'too busy' to do NaNoWriMo this year."

Cory Doctorow and Lesbian Experimentation
Now *there's* a phrase that the good doctor probably wasn't expecting to pop up in his Google Alerts in-box this morning...

It's just that this article about Cory's project to do a scientific 'control' test of self-publishing vs conventional publishing put me in mind of an old xkcd cartoon.

But then, I've always been at least slightly twisted.

Current Mood: amused

How modern technology wrecks the plot of various classic movies
Brad Majors and Janet Weiss use their cellphones to call for help from the AAA, and never need to investigate the light "over at the Frankenstein place."

An inquisitive journalist checks the "Early Life" section of the wikipedia entry on Charles Foster Kane, to confirm that Rosebud was ( spoiler ). (The article on this controversial media mogul, which was semi-protected anyway, has been completely locked down as news of his death breaks.)

Other examples welcome.

Current Mood: whimsical

Two new arrivals at the Rainbow Bridge
Two separate friends have lost a pet today; one cat and one dog.
Take every creature that you love, with two legs or four, and tell them that you love them.

Current Mood: sad

We need some new cliches
The exit polls suggest that the Irish Referendum on the Lisbon Treaty is going to be a Yes vote, which, according to people whose opinions on such matters I value, is a good thing. But I have a more pressing question. Why does the British media always feel the need to illustrate any story about voting in Ireland with a picture of a nun? Are we meant to assume that no-one else but nuns vote in Irish elections? Is it a nunocracy? Are British nuns presumed disenfranchised? And, more to the point, have any Irish orders cottoned on to this and managed to develop a profitable sideline in merchandising their "image rights" to British media of Sister Mary popping one in a ballot box? I think we should be told. Or, at any rate, told off.

Current Mood: silly

Late, as in the late Dent-Arthur-Dent.
Finishing my contribution for e-APA with a mere hour and 15 minutes to go to the deadline. But I still manage to reference both Cardinal Newman and Dolly Parton in the opening paragraph. Now there's a pair you don't see together every day.

Current Mood: rushed

An Award-winning Website Designer
I'm at the Conference for the Regions for CIPFA (the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy), where several awards are traditionally presented at the conference dinner. The Most improved regional website of the year 2009 was a tie between CIPFA in Yorkshire and the Humber (web-coordinator: me) and CIPFA in the North East (web-coordinator: also me). So I have, in effect, tied with myself. Most pleasing.

(The story of how I ended up being web-coordinator for two regions at the same time is not as interesting as it should be, so I won't bore you with it at the moment.)

Current Mood: accomplished

AKICILJ, especially when it comes to microphones
OK, I have been tasked with going away to procure some audio kit for my accountancy body's regional exec. (I am the "Website and New Media Co-ordinator," so it does fall within my remit.) However, I am a complete clueless n00b when it comes to things like microphones and audio generally.

We have evening seminars from various guest speakers about half a dozen times a year. General format is probably not that far removed from a panel session at a typical science fiction convention, but with Powerpoint as the norm rather than the exception. What we want to do is record the speakers (with their permission, of course), and then make the recording available as an MP3 on the web-site for people who couldn't make it in person to download.

Given that our guest speakers won't necessarily be paying much attention to the microphone, is there a particular type of microphone I need? Come to that, what different types of microphone are there? Will I be able to pick up audience questions as well? (Not essential, but a nice-to-have.) Will a normal-looking microphone be adequate, or do I need one of those things you sometimes see on TV that looks like a womble's todger?

I would like to record directly on to my laptop, which has both USB and a 3.5mm microphone jack. Are either of these useable? Or do I need a USB mixer of some kind? Is a hardware mixer pointless if I only have one microphone?

My initial budget is £500. Is this excessive, or not enough?

Am I basically over-egging the pudding, in that there's little point trying to maintain audio quality in the recording process, given the final format will be mono MP3 anyway?

All comments/queries/feedback welcome.

Current Mood: confused