Now here's a technical question (re: computer audio recording)

I have a piece of software called "Woodstock Chimes SereneSaver" that I picked up some years ago. Apparently it's still available here and there online -- see here, for example.  The software very accurately duplicates the sounds of the famous Woodstock Chimes, and also has a screensaver element (not of that much interest to me, as it's a fairly basic slideshow image player, and I have a fair number of those already).

Anyway, what I'm interested in doing is recording extended chunks of the chime sounds for use as background in podcasts. Does anyone know of any audio software that could straightforwardly capture this sound, while the program's running, and save the output as an .MP3 or whatever? (I need something with a very shallow learning curve, as I just don't have time to spend right now wrestling with something complicated.)

For reference purposes:  my computer has what would have been a moderately high-end audio setup a couple/few years ago (Creative SB Live!Platinum, I think it is, with the Live!drive jack "console" -- the guts of it being a Creative EMU10K1 processor).

If anyone has any thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them...

"The Big Meow" ch. 6 goes up Sunday PM

Just for those of you who might be interested  -- The Big Meow's sixth chapter will be going up for the subscribers on Sunday evening, the 17th of December. Subscribers, please note: the login location and username/password info  for ch. 6 will be the same as it was for chapters 4 and 5.

Thanks!

Blame it on Science Fiction

Or Orson Welles. Or somebody.

Last night the Belgian state broadcaster's news program announced that the Vlaamse-/Flemish-speaking part of Belgium had seceded from the country.

Over the next hour and a half, the ... anchors ...cut to live footage from the Royal Palace, where an emotional crowd had gathered to protest for the survival of their country. A reporter in Kinshasa, capital of the Congo, commented on rumors that King Albert II had fled to the former Belgian colony. A crowd waved Flemish flags behind the live reporter at the Flemish Parliament. The ring road around the capital, Brussels, was blocked, NATO headquarters on red alert, and police controls thrown up along the border between Flemish-speaking and French-speaking regions. A parade of prominent politicians and public figures opined on the grave development, and there was even a report of julbilation among Catalans keen to separate their region from Spain.

Except whoops, it hadn't really happened.

Love it. Love it love it love it love it.

 

This has been driving me crazy, might as well see if it's doing the same to other people (or: Ekaton

I'm about to coin a word.

I don't know if the thing I'm going to coin about is happening in the US right now (or elsewhere), but it sure happens a lot on this side of the water, and it is driving me nuts.

It happens in commercials on both radio and TV. They'll show you, or tell you about, some consumer item. Let's say it's a sofa.* And (on TV) they'll show you the price. (Let's say it's $499.) And then they'll say it out loud. They'll say:  "Now -- only four nine nine!"

Not "four hundred ninety-nine".  These commercials seem to be utterly terrified of saying the word "hundred" out loud.

So there's the word I'm coining. Ekatonosmilophobia. The irrational fear of saying the word "hundred".

Why won't they just say it?!  Do people at all the ad agencies responsible for those commercials really think that if you want that sofa, the pronunciation of the word "hundred" is genuinely going to stop you from buying it? Or do they think we're so stupid that we can't read the numbers and see that there are at least three of them, and know perfectly well that this means the word "hundred" is going to be lurking in there someplace? Because the people in the store sure aren't going to be afraid to say that word at the cash register, and charge an amount containing the H word  to our credit / debit cards or take the h**dred Euro/pound bills/notes out of our hot little hands.

(It just happened again, in a Dell computers commercial. "Five seven nine."  Oh, come ON, Dell!! Aaaaaargh!)

Seriously! JUST SAY HUNDRED, commercial people! (And don't even get me started on the four-digit numbers.)

(sigh) Okay, that's my rant for this year. Back to work.

*And another thing. What is it with the approximately eight million sofa ads on TV the day after Christmas? Do people really trash that many sofas over the holidays?