Typical Mac User Podcast

This show is brought to you by me! If you haven’t done a review for the show please consider it it’s easy, just use this link. If you have already done a review, I thank you. Show Notes Fantastocrats where you can get StudioMini and StudioMini XL Audio Setup Show notes Victor’s Setup Mic Shure SM7  Retail $349 Processor Aphex 230 vocal strip Retail $799 Mixing Board Mackie Onyx 1220i  You can get this board for $599 Recording Tascam HD-p2  Retail $999 Post I use Levelator to even-out the sound levels of any files sent to me or when I record interviews.  It’s software that runs on Windows, OS X (universal binary), or Linux (Ubuntu) that adjusts the audio levels within your podcast or other audio file for variations from one speaker to the next, for example. It’s not a compressor, normalizer or limiter although it contains all three. I use Sound Track Pro for multi Track editing. This is where i put in all my audio clips, interviews, music etc to build the show. STP is part of Final Cut Suite which is $999 but you can also get it with Logic Pro for $499 I use Bias Peak Pro 6 Retail $599 for mastering the final product that gets turned into an MP3 in iTunes and sent to you So my total investment is roughly $3844 US Georges Audio Chain Mic I have Victor’s old original mic.  It is an xlr condensor mic, approximately $100. Processing (Hardware) dbx 266XL - $130 I also have Victor’s old dbx 266XL compressor – gate.  This is great for just a touch of compression and gating out background noise when I am not speaking. Mixing Board Mackie 802-VLZ3 – $200 I have a simpler board than Victor.  One aux bus.  This is important for what we call mix minus.  I have the Mackie 802-VLZ3.  It is pure old school analog audio.  No usb or firewire. Recording (software) I tend to record most often in an old podcaster reliable package called Audio Hijack Pro.  I use a couple of audio plugins to do processing saving me work in post production. Soundsoap – $129 Izotope Alloy -$249 Sometimes I use Wiretap Studio where I intend on doing less post production since it lets me do very basic editing on the clip before exporting it.  I also use my audio plugins in this processing stack. Audio Hijaack Pro – $32 Wiretap Studio – $69 I don’t use it often since most of my recording is made to be handled in post rather than “live to hard drive”.  But I also love and sometimes leverage Wiretap Anywhere – $129 Recording (Hardware) Sometimes if doing critical long recording I will hang either my iPad or my Zoom H2 recorder off the mixing board as a backup recorder. On my iPad I record using the app Fire Field Recorder.  They have licensed iZotope plugins and I find the Noise Gate plugin works great and makes a nice low work in post production file. Fire Field Recorder Post I too live in Soundtrack Pro from Apple.  I very rarely bother with other apps but have used Audacity and Garageband over the years.  I very often setup multitrack templates for regular shows I edit.  Even ones I just edit and not record.  I have a good video on my youTube channel on how I do this template.  It includes the processing stacks I put on each host and leave there to reduce my time spent tweaking the sound quality.  It is the “Setting up a Podcast Multitrack Project Template in Soundtrack Pro” on George’s YouTube Channel I used to use Levelator a lot.  But these days I have things so dialed in that I rarely have to use it.  But then I achieve the same result by doing some RMS and Peak leveling as part of my workflow in Soundtrack Pro.  Now and then I will still use Levelator especially if I get tracks from someone else. My Total Investment ignoring my ipad and Zoom H2 is about $1800 for what is really used constantly in my chain.

This show is brought to you by me! If you haven’t done a review for the show please consider it it’s easy, just use this link. If you have already done a review, I thank you. Show Notes Cocktail Onyx Super Duper Carbon Copy Cloner launchd Repair Permissions Cache Unix Commands I spoke about: Running Daily, Weekly or Monthly scripts via Terminal At the the Terminal prompt type (you will need to put in admin password because of using the sudo command) sudo periodic daily (for Daily script) sudo periodic weekly (for weekly script) sudo periodic monthly (for monthly script Checking the last time the scrips were ran, using a terminal command type the command ls -al /var/log/*.out You will get a result like this.... johnnyAppleseeds-Mac-Pro:~ jas$ ls -al /var/log/*.out -rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  1321446 Oct  9 03:15 /var/log/daily.out -rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel     2455 Oct  1 05:30 /var/log/monthly.out -rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel     4959 Oct  9 03:15 /var/log/weekly.out

This is a short show to announce the winner of the Drobo contest. The winner will be contacted by Drobo and will get to choose between a Drobo S and Drobo FS. The Winner is Norman Hollyn Also as a part of this contest Drobo has set up these special deals for TMUP listeners. To take advantage now, go to www.drobostore.com

Smilesoftware.com and Drobo Enter the Drobo Contest here Last day for contest is 9/15/2010 Show Notes Text Edit Terminal App

Smilesoftware.com and Drobo Enter the Drobo Contest here Show Notes MailSteward Apple MacMini server

Ken Ray from Mac OS Ken , Adam Christianson from the Maccast and I have one of our Three Amigos talks about the next 18 months of Apple. Check out Ken’s Mac OS Ken’s Day 6 subscription show. This has already been played there and it gives us all a great example of the quality content Ken has on that site.

In this show I interview Cali Lewis from Geekbeat.tv and I cover file and folder permissions with all of you Smilesoftware.com and Drobo Enter the Drobo Contest here Today’s Featured Application MacKeeper I have been using MacKeeper and it is a fantastic solution for your Mac. Check them out at MacKeeper and try it for free. Show Notes Tools Cali Mentioned PrompDog Tweetdeck Mailplane BaseCamp Adium Skype GeekBeat.tv Revision 3 Geekbeat Blog Calilewis Blog File Sharing in OS X

Today I cover some of the great features found in Mac OS X System Preference. This is part 1 of a multi-part series. Tonight’s show is brought to you by: SmileOnMyMac and Drobo TMUP Drobo Deals Help Victor and the show by purchasing items at the Typical Mac User Amazon Store Show Notes

Today George Starcher and I talk about power management and my disaster that provided the lesson I needed.   Tonight’s show is brought to you by: SmileOnMyMac and Drobo TMUP Drobo Deals Help Victor and the show by purchasing items at the Typical Mac User Amazon Store   Show Notes Wikipedia UPS APC 1500VA Battery Backup with LCD $175.00 Monster MP PRO 1000 with Clean Power Stage 2, 2775 Joule Surge Protection shutdown -u Manual Page Radio Toupe article on how to do shutdown -u script   What to look for in modern ups units regardless of manufacturer: 1.  Information display on front.  Shows capacity remaining, load etc .2.  Does it talk to your computer EVEN Mac via USB? 3.  When was the last time they updated their control software for Mac?  And can the software tell the Mac to shutdown in power loss mode? 4.  Do they use clever plug enhancements such as right angle or rotating plugs? 5.  Pay attention to total number of outlets vs surge/battery outlet distribution. 6.  What type of insurance level does the unit provide? 7.  Can you control the alarm beeping?  3am beeping will drive you nuts. 8.  Does the unit have surge outlets for network cables?9.  Does the unit provide network based management instead of USB?Rule of Thumb Run Times:In my experience with a 21” approx iMac, minor peripherals with an external hard drive.Capacity Run Time           Approx Cost 550VA5-7 mins$601000VA15-20 mins$1301200VA30 mins$1701500VA45 mins$200What does ups unit distribution look like in George’s house?1.  Cable Modem + Router with attached hard drive.  UPS 1000VA (this can run an hour on this UPS)2.  21” iMac with two external drives, UPS 1100VA auto shutdown configured. (I will get more like 30 mins if display is asleep)3.  42” TV with Mac Mini and Xbox 360, UPS 1000VA; only mac mini is usually on.4.  Living room TV and Direct TV receiver, UPS 1500VA 5.  Bedroom alarm clock, Cordless phone base station 550VA UPS Maintenance: You should change out your batteries every two years.  There are different options.1.  APC is good about sending you a recall box to recycle old batteries if you order new ones.2.  Maybe you have something like a Batteries+ store nearby and they will recycle your old ones.3.  Have a good grounded outlet.4.  DO NOT use a UPS if you think the unit has taken a significant electrical hit.  I have a UPS that blew up a new TV because the UPS was damaged and sending out bad power levels.5.  Check your UPS units at least every month or two for temperature.  If they are damaged and cause over heating charging you could have a fire.  I have only seen this once ever.  But it could have been bad.  I also place UPS units on a piece of floor tile which is on my carpet to keep the UPS from being insulated by the carpet. APC Battery Near Disaster Photo:                  

Tonight I do a primer for Time Machine. This is specially good for new users of Time Machine. George Starcher gives a great GMail Tip as well as a review of a very cool iPhone-iPad GPS like application called Motion X GPS Drive   The show is brought to you by: SmileOnMyMac and Drobo Show Notes: Time Machine Basics from Apple Time Capsule George Starcher Motion X demonstration Motion X GPS Drive

Tonight I get together with lister Rand “Randulo” and he takes into the world of Voice Over IP (VoIP). You will love this hour long discussion on all things VoIP and Macs.   The show is brought to you by: SmileOnMyMac and Drobo Show Notes: Granddaddy of all voip sites for info on everything VoIP dslreports and dslreports forums SIP CLIENTS Blink Telephone Bria X-Lite SJPhone SERVICES Google Voice SipGate Other General and Mac related programs Phone Amego lets you use your Mac as a powerful “front end” for your Bluetooth cell phone, your Google Voice account, a VoIP telephone adaptor, and even landlines. “Voice Mac” is a client for Google Voice the features are described below. Short Message Service (SMS). Voicemail. MOBILE iPhone iPad, iPod Touch (Needs mic) Radulo’s web site vuc.me Lots of articles on our site about iPhone SIP vuc.me Tech review of a lot of iPhone apps Mobile Apps Media5Fone Acrobits WeePhone Black Swan is a free Google Voice app for iPhone – also, BREAKING NEWS… Google announced *today* an HTML5 site to use GV on the iPhone (since the app was banned) :    

Tonight George Starcher and I talk about the Mac OSX Security preference panel.   The show is brought to you by: SmileOnMyMac and Drobo Show Notes: About File Vault About Firewall and OS X PGP  Whole Disk Encryption for Mac Knox Encryption

I visited the guys at mcetech.com and we will show you how to install their OptiBay which is a great alternative to having your DVD drive on a laptop. I promise I made the video size as small as I could without sacrificing quality.

We continue our Snow Leopard from scratch series. Today we talk about Quicktime. We also have a review of the Pico Projector, and an interview with Global Delight software. Makers of Viola   My apologies if you were one of the few people that got a partly unedited version of the show this week. There was a problem between the seat and the keyboard. Tonight’s show is brought to you by: SmileOnMyMac and Drobo Help Victor and the show by purchasing items at the Typical Mac User Amazon Store This show is a member of Friends In Tech Show Notes: Apple’s information on Quicktime iPad Possibilities Podcast Global Delight (makers of Voila, Camera Plus and Camera Plus Pro) Voila ( use promo  code typicalmacuser (one word) and get  25% discount on Voila)

This is a keynote presentation where I give the reasons for me making the switch to SSD and I also review and benchmark, the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro RE 200GB SSD drive. I compare it to the Hitachi 320GB 7200 RMP I had in my mid 2009 13″ MBP. A couple of post show observations. Seeing that I was not getting the kind of throughput that was advertised for the drive. I had an email discussion with my contact at OWC. He said this is do to the fact that I have an older Unibody MBP.  Apparently prior generation of MacBook Pros (which I used for my tests) have a performance cap at that 170MB/s range for write speed. The new April/2010 models have a better SATA controller that lets the speed kick up well over 200MB/s and thus how the drive gets it high sustained spec rating. Secondly, during the presentation I mention that SSD drives can be as much as 10 times more expensive that traditional drives. As you see on the presentation , I am getting much more than 10 times the speed and for me money means time. I don’t think SSD’s are for everyone yet, however for me this speed and ability to work faster is totally worth the money. Product Reviewed OWC Mercury Extreme Pro RE 200GB SSD drive