Much going on in preparation for BlogHer
BlogHer is this week; I’m leading a session on podcasting for beginners. Have been working like crazy on it.
Hope to have a new video treat on the front page of this site. (that old article has been there too too long) Plus (gasp! at long last!) some How-to stuff! I’ve been delving into making how-to movies, and can’t wait to adapt what I’ve done for Podcast instruction to use for how-to instruction. Plus, I hope to have a new podcast from discussion of BlogHers (and BlogHims) who attend there (there = San Jose, CA).
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Housekeeping
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Boots on the Ground: The Technology I Use
James L Clark, (US Army Civil Affairs soldier serving in Iraq), draws his personal history of war inspiration inspired by past war historians, and takes full advantage of personal media to record his personal history of the war in Iraq. He describes the equipment he uses to make photos, video, and audio recordings.
Not many people think about their deployment as being anything more than just that—a deployment. They accept their responsibility, duty, and privilege to serve our country in a war zone as “just part of the job.” The problem with this thinking is that it ignores the incredible opportunity that each soldier has to document not only “the” war but “their” war.
Dr. Forest C. Pogue was an official US Army historian during WWII and attained the rank of master sergeant. He was a proponent of “oral history” techniques and collected many such histories from the war during his career. During D-Day, Dr. Pogue (then SGT Pogue) interviewed wounded soldiers about their experiences both on the transport from the beaches and on the hospital ship anchored off the coast.
[...]To me, history is a living, breathing thing; it is the story of mankind. History offers a glimpse into who we are, what... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Audio
• Audio: Hardware
• Personal History
• Photographs
• Video
• Video: Hardware
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Quiet American on why to use Minidisc
Quiet American (who’s made field recordings all over the world) tells why he likes minidisc. He speaks to the needs of the traveller. If you’re making a decision what recorder to get, and you travel, bear what he says in mind:
The large capacity of [Hard Disc] recorders on the other hand is itself a double-edged sword. Convenience comes at the cost of the exposure of relying on a single mechanisms to safeguard hours (if not weeks or months) of one’s work. And drives are delicate mechanical mechanisms almost all of us have personally watched fail, even when not subjected to the rigors of travel.
[...]Mechanical failure is not the only risk. I have, sad to say, had a recorder stolen in the field. If I had been using a HD recorder instead of minidisc, I would have lost an entire trip’s worth of recordings, instead of a day’s worth. That’s something I will not soon forget.
But travel concerns aren’t the only thing he addresses here. If you’re debating whether to get MiniDisc or Compact Flash, or something else, his discussion is worth a read.
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Audio
• Audio: Hardware
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Podcast 3: MemoryMiner and John Fox
An interview with John Fox, MemoryMiner’s developer. MemoryMiner 1.1 (MacOS) is released today, July 14, 2006, MemoryMiner for Windows is in development. I interview John Fox about the software and his inspiration for creating it. (Interview from May, 2006)
Show notes:
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Family History Software
• Personal History
• Photographs
• Podcasts
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In the first person: Spanish Peaks
There’s a brilliant site out there: In the First Person. It’s a repository of kerjillions hundreds thousands of first-person narratives: Oral histories, memoirs, diaries, letters.
3,350 collections
650,000 pages of full-text by more than 15,000 individuals
pointers to some 3,500 audio and video files
index of 30,000 bibliographic records
and 20,500 months of diary entries
and 63,000 letter entries
and 17,000 oral history entries
Hm. D’ya think there might be anything useful or worthwhile in there?
So I went poking through, looking at the names of collections. Maybe I’ll find some interesting stuff to look at and feature on this site. You know, a kind of regular feature or something.
And then I found this: Spanish Peaks Library District Oral History Interviews. Location: Walsenberg, Colorado. A Gold mine! No, the Spanish Peaks area is not a place where people mined for gold. But it was a major mining area…. for coal. My grandpa grew up in Walsen Camp outside of Walsenberg, and then later his parents moved into Walsenberg proper. My great grandparents are buried in... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Online Oral History Collections
• Oral History Projects
• Personal History
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Latest Sony Minidisc MZ-RH1
A [p]review of the RH1 (called preview because it’s with a pre-release model). Overall, things look good. Most importantly: Both Mac and Windows users can upload recordings made with the minidisc to the computer over a USB connection using Sony’s Sonic-Stage software. Even better: Directly upload recordings made from older, low-density. The upshot, overall, looks good. With this model, both Mac and Windows users can record onto minidiscs and then directly upload to the computer via USB and Sony-supplied software. Highlights follow.
Some background: In the olden days, there was something called “regular MD.” More recently (January 2004), Sony introduced a new format called Hi-MD. “Hi” stands for high-density. With the new format came a new 1GB Hi-MD disc, or old standard discs could be reformatted for double the capacity. Two years later, Sony is now onto the third generation Hi-MD portable recorders. (Some of the [p]review discusses 1st, 2nd, and now 3rd generation recorders.)
With the MZ-RH1, Sony has abandoned its old strategy concerning Hi-MD. The MZ-RH1 is no longer meant as a competitor for Mp3 players, but is aimed primarily at people looking to buy an MD with unequalled upload capability and an affordable price. The MZ-RH1 is therefore ideal for musicians and journalists amongst others, who for these reasons require a portable recording studio. [emphasis mine]
The Good News:
Perhaps the most important new function of the MZ-RH1 is the... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Audio
• Audio: Hardware
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Vloggercon session video on Oral History and Digital Storytelling is up
It’s viewable two ways: See it on the web, download the QuickTime file. Interested in other stuff from Vloggercon? Here is the video archive of all the sessions devoted to vlogging, or video blogging.
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Afterwards
• General
• Personal History
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