The Professor's Notes

As many of you know, I have had my run-ins with US Airways. The stories continue to pour in from friends and family about the evils of USAirways and the way they handle customers. Fortunately I had an experience that led me to conclude all is not lost in the airline industry.

I flew last week on American Airlines, to St Louis. As you may recall, St Louis was the hub for TWA, which was acquired by American. Despite that, I had a connecting flight out, and back, through Chicago. Every connection is an opportunity for an airline to have problems, and rise, or fall, on the opportunities to deliver customer service.

American Airlines rose.

On the outbound leg, I arrived in Chicago 20 minutes early, and the jovial command pilot asked that we bank it–so next time they run late we can “give it back.” Good humor. Ultimately I arrived on time in St Louis and when I talked to the staff about seating arrangements they were ever congenial.

The return leg was  a bit more problematic.  I arrived at the airport several hours in advance, but unfortunately the airplanes weren’t cooperative.  The flights to Chicago were being shifted back by one flgith schedule each.  My 6:30 departure had turned into a 7:45 departure with an arrival at the same time as my connecting flight.  The customer service line was quite long, but everyone in line was fairly positive.  When I got to the ticket counter the gentleman asked me what I needed.  I responded with “I need to be at [destination] by midnight.”

Guess what? He did it.  He moved me on to the earlier flight, and ensured that my connection wasn’t going to be a “miss.” He even looked, and was able to accommodate my desire to have an aisle seat.  Being 6’2″ I need the legroom.

Of course, problems tend to pile up.  I arrived at Chicago and found that not only was my final flight delayed,  but there were extended delays on the ramp.  Every step of the way the entire American Airlines team made sure that every passenger felt special, and that they knew that each passenger had requirements that they needed to meet as a service provider.  My final arrival was 1 am, later than I had hoped given a two hour drive that followed, but I arrived safely, and well cared for.

I had a choice, and I chose American.  I chose to not fly with US Airways.  I will make the same decision again.

I couldn’t pass this one by. Now that the internet is back up, I want to share it with you.

Breaking News: All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash

It’s time for a techno-geek update.  As you know, I record not only podcasts for this site, but also several other podcasts.  One aspect of my podcasting is recording my lectures so that the students can go and review the material again at their own pace, in their own time.  I had originally started with the Griffin iTalk (no longer available) and my 60 gig Photo iPod (also no longer available).  I had issues with sound quality and a “skipping” and “repeating” when it recorded.  So, I moved on.

The university graciously provided me with a 30 gb iPod video, and the XTreme Mac MicroMemo. The quality was quite good, but unfortunately the iPod dock connector is not designed for rigorous use riding in my shirt pocket, while bouncing around the front of a classroom lecturing.  In addition, the battery would last only for about 2 hours between charges, so it was not a good solution for back to back lectures.  So another solution was required.

My brother had recently purchase, on the advice of Scott Bourne (of applephoneshow.com fame among others) a SamsonTech ZOOM H4 Handy Recorder.  After listening to him talk about the features, I made the plunge, and purchased one for myself, along with an Audio-Technica lapel microphone.  So far, I have decided this is “the best” solution, and I would recommend this to most anyone, with only a few reservations and caveats.

The H4 is quite powerful and I encourage all of you interested in such things to go read the specs.  While it’s appearance (see below) can lead one to suspect a tazer and not a recorder, it is quite useful as a standalone recorder, or with  microphones.  The two built-in microphones are quite good to this layman’s hearing, and have that angle to them so as to record true stereo sound.  I used the standalone feature to record audioscapes during my recent trip to Monterey CA, and perhaps will post an “audio adventure” podcast, for those interested.  At the bottom of the recorder the astute observer will notice two black round “circles” that are actually inputs for microphones.  This ingenious design will allow for both Phono jack connectors and the XLR connectors for microphones.  One can record up to four tracks, overlaying one track while listening to the others.  Not useful for lectures, but I can see how musicians can fall in love with this portable mixer!  On top of all these cool features it runs on 2 AA batteries and they last over 4 hours–more than enough for the stresses of my lectures!  Oh–and did I mention it stores your recordings on removable SD cards, so that you can choose the size storage you want, and can easily swap it out for additional storage.

So how did I get all this to work?  Well, first the lavalier microphone has a powerbox that clips to the belt, and the XLR cable connects into that box.  The XLR cable then will plug in to the H4 and I am off and running!  Sort of.  The shortest XLR cable I have found was 3 feet, which meant I had an audio cable belt, so I cut it in half, and created my own, shorter cable.  Once I worked that out, I was off!  I recorded initially as “track 1″ and found that it quite easily recorded my lectures.  The only drawback here is when recording as tracks one is not given the option to trade quality for recording time.  That is, I could only record as a .wav file, and not as an mp3 file.   Easily fixed.  I record as one channel of stereo, and when I bring it in to my audio editor, I just restore it to Mono.

Drawbacks?  Well, some are little inconveniences and nothing is a real showstopper.   The H4 isn’t designed to be worn, so unfortunately it doesn’t come with a belt clip.  I would love to see that as an optional accessory.  For now, I shove it into my pants pocket.  That’s not a real “flaw” as much as a merchandising opportunity.  Also, I haven’t been able to figure out if I can set the date/time stamp for the files.  I am not sure that one can, but this leads to another problem–the menu.  There are several different context sensitive menus which are fairly easy to navigate, but you have to work a combination of the joystick style button on the front, and the selection wheel on the side of the unit.  This can get confusing, especially when the joystick also can be used to serve other functions as well.  Finally, as I mentioned, I would like to be able to select .mp3 format when recording tracks.  I suspect that the designers assumed users of that mode would want the highest quality possible, but they shouldn’t overlook other possible reasons to record a mono track.  Obviously the CODEC is there, so this should be an easily modified feature.

Overall, it is a great product, and an absolute joy to have when travelling.  I will be conducing my first formal interview using it in a few weeks, so hopefully I can have more thoughts on this product in the near future.

The Prof

PS:  I should be receiving a Zoom H2 soon, and will be posting my review of the unit soon thereafter.  It looks like a great unit, and apparently others agree.   I am told there is a backorder in the 10′s of thousands for this unit.  So, go check out the specs.

I wondered what people were saying when they said their screen went black… mine didn’t either.

Well, you regular reader(s) know my love-hate relationship with technology.  It’s time to renew the hate part of it.

I went to update my TomTom One GPS unit yesterday, and downloaded the software updates.  When I went to install it, the hard drive on which I had downloaded the file chose to go Tango Uniform.  Yup.  Dead.  Doorstop.  Of course, as is always the case, it didn’t just die outright.  It chose to tease me, to let me think I could revive it. After 10 hours–then it died.

So what is “at risk?”  Hopefully not much.  I had 5 years of digital photos on there, but I also had that backed up to an external drive.  I had the raw files for much audio and video work, but the final versions were saved elsewhere, as well.  I am hoping that, all in all, I dodged a bullet there.  It goes without saying that I am currently backing up the back-up.  Can’t afford two crashes.  Once this “online hard drive” backup is done, I will be making the backup to DVD-RL (8 Gigs each).  Only 10 of those disks required.

That said, the TomTom was current enough, and I loaned it out to the in-laws for their trip to Florida. I hope they enjoy it.  At least the voice on there should keep them company.

For those interested in PodCasting in its various forms, there are events (or, unevents) called PodCamps.  These are “un-conferences” where people gather in a rather unstructured way, to share, learn, and perhaps just make friends, based on the “barcamp” concept.  There are many scheduled around the US, and my son and I are considering attending two of them.  There is the PodCamp Pittsburgh August 18th and 19th, and then PodCamp Philly Sept 7-9th.

Why my son?  Well, if you haven’t already made it over there, he and I have our own little podcast, “The Father Son Chats.”  It’s mostly about Penn State football, because he is amazing at breaking down the team, but we do occasionally talk about other things.   Go visit there, and check out some of the graphic work he has been doing as well.

Let me know if any of you are attending and we can plan to get “un-together” and have an “un-chat” about all things podcasting!  I am planning on bringing some of my equipment, so perhaps we can even have an interview or three!

Also, since so many people prefer to call rather than type, I have decided to try out this free voicemail service!   If you want to try it out, just call my new voicemail number, and let me know what you like about the blog or the podcasts, or hey–leave a request for a topic you would like to have me rant about!

The number is:

206-339-4715

Let me know what you think!