Learning How To's on My New Computer

About a month ago I got a new Dell Studio laptop computer.  I love it.  It came with Windows 7, which I also love.

I am interested in downloading YouTube and other videos as well as recording streaming audio.  The first thing's not so hard -- just go to keepvid.com, put the URL of the video into the download window, click on the "Download" button and a copy of the video will be deposited onto your hard drive.  Very cool.

The other thing -- recording streaming audio -- wasn't as easy.  You can record from your computer speakers easily enough, but the recording can be distorted by background noise and the quality is mediocre.  You can't, for instance, record in stereo this way.  To get high quality recordings from streaming audio (meaning, audio from videos, from internet radio, from Yahoo Messenger or Skype), you need to record directly from your sound card.  Also, you will need third party software to do it, but I found a great free program on the web, called "Free Sound Recorder 2010."

This was easier to do in Windows XP, but both Vista and Windows 7 made it more difficult.  I could find nothing about it on the web, just a forum where someone asked how to do it, and no one knew the answer.

But I figured it out.  You just need to change a setting in your recording devices.  Now I can record the audio from any video, Rush Limbaugh broadcast, whatever.  These recordings can be in stereo (if the original is in stereo) and there is no loss in quality at all.

When I am figuring something out, I often forget the time.  I didn't get to bed until well after 1 AM.  That's why I haven't posted anything since Saturday.

Apple Unveils the New IPad

Steve Jobs unveiled the new Apple IPad yesterday.  It is a new computing device somewhere between an IPhone and a laptop computer.

The Ipad has a much larger screen than an Ipod or an Iphone and only weighs one and a half pounds.  Users can watch movies, listen to music and surf the web, send and read email, and look at photos, among other tasks.  Unlike an Iphone, the Ipad can download files from the web.  Like an Iphone, the Ipad has a digital keyboard that Jobs says is very easy to use.

Pricing for the new device will be between $499 and $829, depending on options like 3G and storage space.

Apple continues to be the number one innovator in personal computing, in my opinion.  The new Ipad is a computer, one that can easily fit in a briefcase.  However, can it be programmed for Excel and Word?  Without these office applications, the Ipad's use will be limited and it will be the equivalent of a very large Iphone:  still very useful, but not a replacement for a laptop.

Would I buy one?  You bet.

Via:  UK Mail Online

Synthetic Sex: Will Your Daughter-in-Law be a Robot?

This is truly pathetic.  Some company in New Jersey (where else) has invented "the world's first sex robot."  It is a fake woman with realistic skin, facial features, eyes, hair and other unmentionables.  Now women don't have to fake orgasms as the whole woman will be fake, so nobody cares.

Those of us who are hoping our last remaining son will get married and start a family have a new threat:  a robot for a daughter-in-law.  Unless the robot can produce live grandchildren, that will be cold comfort.  Hmm, not to fear, the company, True Companion LLC, can just do a follow up line of fake grandchildren.  They will spill milk, scatter cookie crumbs and break things by remote control.  When they get tiresome you can just switch them off.

In any case, think of the possibilities.  The world's biggest Nerd can now get a date.  (Not me, I retired from the dating scene years ago.)  It will no longer be necessary to attain social skills, to carry on a conversation, to learn table manners, or even to clean your fingernails.  Just plug her in and she's ready to go.  If she gets bitchy, just reboot.

This all reminds me of an old Yul Brynner movie, "West World," that came out around 1973.  Vacationers to a high tech amusement park could make love to sexy robot women in a cowboy setting.  Of course, high tech things have to be programmed and programs have bugs, and there's nothing worse than a pissed-off, turbo-charged robot...