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Monday, August 15, 2005
OffAudible 
| | The main problem will be what in sales they call call "channel conflicts", which are more political than technical. NPR essentially wholesales programming to local stations, which retail them to listeners. The new strategies will need to help, rather than hurt, local stations and networks, which are the final "sales channel" of programming to listeners (and sponsors). |
(Not a) shaggy dog story
Curing computing monoculture
Transcription services?
| | There are lots of companies that do transcription services. Too many, in fact. A remarkable percentage of them don't give their prices, or turnaround times, which would be helpful to know, I would think. |
| | Anyway, I need a 45-minute interview transcribed in less than 48 hours. Obviously, I'd like to get it as cheaply as possible, too. Any recommendations? |
Cast your schwag to the 'pod
| | Speaking of which, here's the video. Amazingly, it's just 111Kb. Err... that didn't work. The 21.7Mb file is now up there. |
| | Is that a vlog? A podvlog? I dunno; I'm new to this stuff. Whatever it is, you can watch it and save yourself the 45 minutes it takes to listen to the 40-some Mb podcast that goes with it. |
It's got a great beat, you can burn to it
Subject to review
It adds up
It helps to know it's not really empty
| | ...the Internet began life as a big government project too -- without those efforts, the tech revolution never would have gained traction. Space exploration needs another shot of big-government money and big-government commitment, something we doubt it'll get. |
Hunger no more
The Continuing Death Failure of Radio As Usual
| | Bill Claxton: Radio is not dead, it is being reborn in a new distribution environment. |
And it's funny
| | Not sure what this is about, but it mentions approximately everybody. |
Where there's no smoke, there's a chirping sound every 30 seconds
| | We have Kidde smoke alarms in our house. They're wired into AC, but have 9-volt batteries as well. Lately some have taken to blinking, and also to chirping periodically. I've gone through all of them and replaced their batteries, even though they all measure more than 9 volts. Makes no difference. |
| | The Kidde site is useless to the verge of hazardous. Searches at the company's Home Safety search page (for Homes / Consumer smoke alarms / United States of America, in the three pop-out menus) do nothing when I hit "go". The site's response is glacial in any case. |
| | When I look in the catalog for AC Wire-in Powered, I see that we have Model 1276, with a user's manual here. (A large number of minutes have passed between the last paragraph and this one.) |
| | The document is titled Manual1276en.rsf, which appears to be a .pdf file. (Did I say how much I hate fucking .pdfs? Good. Glad to say it again.) The @#$% print is too small to read, and my printer hates the format even more than I do, so it won't print the @#$&* thing. |
| | It the house burns down, it'll be because my head caught fire. |
| | [Later..] Okay, here's the small print: |
| | NOTE: IF AFTER BATTERY REPLACEMENT THE ALARM CONTINUES TO CHIRP, PUSH THE TEST BUTTON. THE "HUSH" FEATURE MAY HAVE BEEN ACTIVATED ACCIDENTLY WHILE CHANGING THE BATTERY AND PUSHING THE TEST BUTTON WILL END THE HUSH CYCLE. |
| | In other words, the noisy TEST button you use the HUSH button to hush is what you also use to reset the HUSH button. Got it. |
| | YOUR ALARM SHOULD BE CLEANED AT LEAST ONCE A YEAR |
| | To clean your alarm, remove it from the mounting bracket as outlined in the beginning of this section. You can clean the interior of your alarm (sensing chamber) by using compressed air or a vacuum cleaner hose and blowing or vacuuming through the openings around the perimeter of the alarm. The outside of the alarm can be wiped with a damp cloth. After cleaning, reinstall your alarm, verify the green LED is on and test your alarm by using the test button. If cleaning does not restore the alarm to normal operation the alarm should be replaced. |
| | And if the alarm is attached to the electrical system through a hole around which it is affixed to a ceiling 12 feet above the floor? No problem. |
| | I think I'll go down and try the compressed air option. Bought the handy cans, shrink wrapped in 3s at Costco, a few months back. Now's the time to use the things. Goody. |
| | So I guess this means it's just a bad unit. |
| | [Later...] And that's exactly what it is. I just talked to the Kidde tech support line (in Mebane, NC... sounded like home), and together we confirmed the failure of the unit. It's two years old, and the warranty is for five years. So a new one is on the way. |
| | Meanwhile, some advice to the Kidde folks: Fix that website and make it simple and easy to navigate and use. And make the .pdf support docs available in html form, so any browser can read them. |
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