Anthony’s Ramblings

My dad was pondeirng purchasing some fancy software to record his LPs to CD. I told him not to waste his money. With a couple extra steps (and $0 spent), Audacity may do what he wants. So I showed him the semi-complicated mess on how to connect his laptop to his turntable.

• Turntable connects to the Receiver’s Phono jacks.
• The lapop’s Line-In connects to the Receiver’s Tape Out (or Record Out)
• The laptop’s Line-Out connects to the Receiver’s Tape In.
• Select the proper recording source on the laptop.
• Adjust record levels on the laptop so that the peak volume in doesn’t exceed max threshold.

This works, and works extremely well. You can record and playback without having to swap anything (except pressing Tape on the receiver when wanting to hear the laptop, and pressing Phono on the Receiver when wanting to record/hear the LP).

I record the first side of an LP and play around with it in Audacity. I have found the easiest way to filter out most of the “snap, crackle, and pop” associated with LPs.

1. Make sure you have a good portion of silence where the LP is playing but there isn’t any music. You need a sample of the “snap, crackle, and pop”.
2. Apply the Click Removal filter to the entire recording. You may play with this filter’s adjustments if you wish, but I just left them at their defaults.
3. Find a section of silence that has the most “crap” in it. You only need a few seconds. Highlight this section, open the Noise Removal filter, and click ‘Get Noise Profile’.
4. Highlight the entire recording, open the Noise Removal filter, and click ‘Remove Noise’

The recording won’t be perfect, but it’ll be a heck of a lot better than it was! If you are a perfectionist, you can tweak with the recording some more. However, my dad and I have been satisfied with the results by just doing the above. (It’s his project, so I’ll let him do watever ).

Samples:

Original – 128kbps MP3 – 4.6 MB
Edited – 128kbps MP3 – 4.6 MB

Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken or turkey
• 1 large lemon, cut into halves
• Sprig of rosemary
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Butter or olive oil, whichever you prefer

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Rub butter or oil over the skin of the chicken/turkey until it is completely coated.
3. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and any other seasonings you prefer.
4. Take a knife and gently separate the skin from the breast meat.
5. Slide lemon halves under the skin with the peel side up, one on each side. This way the juice from the lemon will release into the breasts.
6. Place sprig of rosemary into the chicken/turkey.
7. Cover and bake for 30-45 minutes.
8. Remove cover and continue to roast until juices run clear, basting every 15-20 minutes.

If you’ve followed these steps correctly, your chicken/turkey should look like the one in the picture below.

Bon Appetit!

This was e-mailed to me a few days ago…

1. A man comes into the ER and yells, “My wife’s going to have her baby in
   the cab!” I grabbed my stuff, rushed out to the cab, lifted the lady’s dress, and began to take off her underwear. Suddenly I noticed that there were several cabs -and I was in the wrong one.

   Submitted by Dr. Mark MacDonald, San Antonio, TX.

2. At the beginning of my shift I placed a stethoscope on an elderly and slightly deaf female patient’s anterior chest wall. “Big breaths,” I instructed. “Yes, they used to be,” replied the patient.

   Submitted by Dr. Richard Byrnes, Seattle, WA

3. One day I had to be the bearer of bad news when I told a wife that her husband had died of a massive myocardial infarct. Not more than five minutes later, I heard her reporting to the rest of the family that he had died of a “massive internal fart.”

   Submitted by Dr. Susan Steinberg, Manitoba, Canada

4. During a patient’s two week follow-up appointment with his cardiologist, he informed me, his doctor, that he was having trouble with one of his medications. “Which one?” I asked “The patch ?”. The nurse told me to put on a new one every six hours and now I’m running out of places to put it!” I had him quickly undress and discovered what I hoped I wouldn’t see. Yes, the man had over fifty patches on his body! Now, the instructions include removal of the old patch before applying a new one.

   Submitted by Dr. Rebecca St. Clair, Norfolk, VA

5. While acquainting myself with a new elderly patient, I asked, “How long have you been bedridden?” After a look of complete confusion she answered…”Why, not for about twenty years – when my husband was alive..”

   Submitted by Dr. Steven Swanson, Corvallis, OR

6. I was caring for a woman and asked, “So how’s your breakfast this morning?” “It’s very good, except for the Kentucky Jelly. I can’t seem to get used to the taste” the patient replied. I then asked to see the jelly and the woman produced a foil packet labeled “KY Jelly.”

   Submitted by Dr. Leonard Kransdorf, Detroit, MI

7. A nurse was on duty in the Emergency Room, when a young woman with purple hair styled into a punk rocker Mohawk, sporting a variety of tattoos, and wearing strange clothing, entered. It was quickly determined that the patient had acute appendicitis, so she was scheduled for immediate surgery. When she was completely disrobed on the operating table, the staff noticed that her pubic hair had been dyed green, and above it there was a tattoo that read, “Keep off the grass.”

   Once the surgery was completed, the surgeon wrote a short note on the patient’s dressing, which said, “Sorry, had to mow the lawn.”

   Submitted by RN (no name)

8. As a new, young MD doing his residency in OB, I was quite embarrassed when performing female pelvic exams. To cover my embarrassment I had unconsciously formed a habit of whistling softly. The middle-aged lady upon whom I was performing this exam suddenly burst out laughing and further embarrassing me. I looked up from my work and sheepishly said, “I’m sorry, was I tickling you?” She replied, “No doctor, but the song you were whistling was,

   “I wish I was an Oscar Meyer Wiener.”

   Dr. wouldn’t submit his name

A few days before Halloween, I was forwarded some pretty cool pictures of carved pumpkins. Check ‘em out:

             

Do not drink a Rockstar at 10 PM. It’s why I am wide awake now. Normally these “energy drinks” don’t have much affect on me, but this one sure did.

I was working on my Dell Inspiron 5150. The machine appeared to work just fine. I decided to wipe the drive and install Microsoft Windows Vista RC1. During the install process, random files would appear to be corrupt and wouldn’t copy from the installation CD. I figured that this was an issue with my copy of Vista and didn’t think much of it. So, I decided to install Xubuntu. The installation process went just fine, but it would not boot. I didn’t think much of it and decided to put Windows XP back on it. When installing Windows XP, I was encountering similar issues. Eventually, it would refuse to repartition my hard drive, claiming that it could not access the drive. Everything pointed to hard drive failure, and I was so sure that was the problem. However, I had forgotten about the dead wireless card sitting in the miniPCI slot. I removed the card, and volla! The problems disappeared! Except…I still cannot install Vista. I think my ISO is corrupted or I have a bad burn or something.