i ordered a usb turntable last week and it arrived on friday. since then i’ve been going through some records of dad’s and that i got from gaiadea and geminid‘s dad and have been importing some of them into the computer. oh, i’ve imported some of these a few years ago, yes, but this is better. why? here’s why:

i had tried to import some of these records several months ago but our record player seemed to be acting up, so it couldn’t be trusted to play back properly (though dad tested it after i got my turntable in the mail and he claimed it seemed to be working fine, huh). at least with the usb connection to the computer it sees the turntable as just another audio input and i actually haven’t needed to mess with levels and all sorts of knobs just to get a good sound of the the record player.

a month or so ago i was also importing some of my cassette tapes of my high school band’s performances from freshman and sophomore year (junior year and senior year we finally got into the 20th century and started releasing cds of the performances) and was frustrated at the amount of hiss on the tapes and tried to find a good program to lessen the hiss sound. i’d looked at programs like soundsoap years ago, but that’s $130. since then i found these programs clickrepair and denoise, made by a retired australian mathematician professor or something, and they’ve been AWESOME. and only $40 US each if you order them one way (through the automated online software licensing system), or $40 australian each if you order another way (he sends you a paypal payment request and after you’ve paid he sends you the license). so the $40 australian way is a little slower, but cheaper because of the exchange rate, so it cost me only $65 for the two licenses. what i really like about it is that you can listen to the incoming file, the output, or the noise that’s being removed. so, by listening to the noise, you can tweak your settings so that you don’t remove any of the actual music and that you remove only the hiss and such that you don’t want.

some of these albums are taking more tweaking than others, but some are pretty impressive. i imported some 78s earlier tonight on shellac (which creates a pretty severe hiss, much worse than vinyl because of the physical media, vinyl is much smoother), and after i removed the clicks and pops with the clickrepair app on the default 78 mode and the hiss with denoise on the default 78 mode, it doesn’t sound perfect but it sounds incredibly better than it did originally.

when i originally imported these records years ago, the software i used just put a filter on the entire recording to remove the hiss or the rumble or clicks, so it really degraded the sound. these new recordings with the clickrepair and with denoise are terrific since they work on only the actual clicks and pops and such.

i was going through my mail while some of these records were being imported…

first letter: bill from auto insurance (which reminds me, i need to put my new insurance cards in my car)

next letter, also from auto insurance. ooh, a check! free money!! i guess i overpaid… oh, wait, it’s only for $3.24. turns out it’s what’s left over after i cancelled my renter’s insurance, hah.

still no word about the position at work. we moved our desks today to temporary cubicles, since where we’re going to be moving hasn’t been fixed up yet. we don’t like our new spot, though — it’s right in the middle of a bunch of supervisors so there’s always people coming and going and they’re all surrounding us and it’s loud and there’s some motor that keeps starting up right underneath us and making our floor vibrate and it’s freezing cold and far away from the bathrooms and the people who previously inhabited these cubicles were pretty gross and so even though we cleaned the desks and computers and keyboards and mice and chairs it’s still pretty gross. rumor is we’ll be in these seats for the next two weeks (which i guess is ok by me, since if it’s three weeks i won’t notice since i’ll be leaving for london as of next friday).

i went to the baseball game with bruno_boy on saturday and we saw matt wieters hit his first major league hit (a triple!). i guess you should believe the hype. i partially went to see the game, but also to pick up an awesome father’s day present for dad (ssh! it’s a secret!). i saw on tv the other day that the orioles are selling game-used baseballs at the park after the 6th inning for their “orioles reach” charity – they have a spreadsheet printout with the date, the opponent, the pitcher who was in the game at the time, the player who was up to bat, and what inning it was, and you pick which ball you want from this list and they find that ball in a box with other balls from that game (each has a hologram with a serial number, also on the spreadsheet, and there’s a website that major league baseball has where you can put in the hologram info and see that same information about the item as well if you want to verify it). premium balls (i guess yankee games and red sox games) and if balls from that current day’s game are $50 each, and all other ones from the previous games are $30. so, i bought dad a baseball from the second game this season when the family went to go see the orioles play the yankees. unfortunately they didn’t have any left thrown by uehara, probably since it was his first game in the majors leagues, so those were gone. but still i think it’s a pretty neat surprise for a present. picked up a display case for it and everything.

a week ago, cynicalscribe‘s dad was trying to talk her sister, her sister’s roommate and i into doing the marine corps marathon’s 10k run (gotcha! bet you thought i was going to run a marathon. yeah right.) later this year. i kind of haw-haw’d it (which is a bit like pooh-poohing it), but i warmed up to it more once i remembered it was a 10k run and not a half-marathon like i somehow thought it was, and also when i realized that it’s not until the end of october so it gives me plenty of time to train. plus, my nike+ has a special training thing so i told it that i’m a beginning runner and that i needed to train for a 10k run and it plots out a running schedule for you for 12 weeks, and so today, day 1, i had to run 3 miles. i ran 1 mile around the track around the stadium next to my house a week or so ago and probably did half-run and half-walk. this time i still probably did half-run and half-walk, but triple the distance from that last time, so go team me! plus, i uploaded an appropriate image for my nike+ training regimen:

there’s also a similar one on my website, over on the right-hand side where i keep fit.

i don’t know if cynicalscribe should approve of me running around the track, since there are some very attractive ladies who also go running around said track, or walk their dogs, or go for a walk themselves. but then again, maybe she doesn’t have anything to worry about because i generally have to take my glasses off when i go running so they don’t get all sweaty or bounce around, so i can’t quite get that good of a look. but let me tell you, those are some attractive blurs i can kind of see when i go around that track. and speaking of running around a track, i remembered these pictures i put together years ago when i took a running/jogging class for my phys-ed credit at umbc:

thank you, i’ll be here all week. try the veal. etc.