Workshopping with WSU j students
Posted: October 31, 2009 Filed under: Audio, Work Comments OffI popped down to Washington State University on Tuesday to lead a multimedia workshop with former colleague Ben Shors’ journalism students. The class is working on a reporting project that will appear in The Spokesman-Review, and this time they wanted to add an online component. (Check out the first story generated by the class.)
Despite their interest in producing video, I suggested the students start with an audio slide show. So I set out to show them how to do two things: 1) Create a multitrack audio file in Audacity. 2) Combine this audio with photos in the irresistibly simple Soundslides program.
If you’re curious, here’s the rough outline I followed. And here’s what workshop attendee Rikki King of the Daily Evergreen took away from the session.
Finally, a couple useful links for anybody interested in mastering audio slide shows from Colin Mulvany.
How to rediscover forgotten iTunes songs with smart playlists
Posted: October 4, 2009 Filed under: Just for fun | Tags: iTunes, playlists Comments OffHere’s a trick for those who have a couple thousand songs in iTunes and feel like they’re often overlooking some old favorites.
(Disclaimer: File this under “off topic,” “not rocket science” and “somebody has probably written about this elsewhere.” I’m just pleased as punch about this discovery, I wanted to share, and this is my soapbox.)
Create a new smart playlist with this criterion (brackets denote dropdown-menu variable):
[Last played] [is not in the last] x [months]
I went with 12 for an even year, and I also added a genre specification. So for me, the settings looked like this:
Give it a name, and you’re done.
When I load this playlist, I’m guaranteed to get a bunch of songs I haven’t heard for a year. And let me tell you, when it’s been a year since I’ve listened to Ween’s “Push the Little Daisies,” something was out of whack.
I’ve long known the smart playlist tool was there, but only today did I get up the curiosity to see what I could make of it. Hope you like this trick, and feel free to share your own from this highly customizable feature.