Transferring a tape to a CD

My wife is getting ready for a reunion and needs a tape of praise music that was made when she was in college transferred to CD. So, how do you go about doing that? Here's one answer if you use Windows XP. And, here's some pointers I learned while I was doing it.

• Audacity's a pretty nice little program for free.
• Put some thought into where you select the background noise for the noise cancellation step. In this case, if you select too early the recording hasn't actually started so you won't cancel out any noise. Be sure and pick a dead spot that is being recorded. It's an art getting the noise cancellation right, so play with it a little bit using a small selection.
  
• When it comes time to make tracks, you can select a song and then do a 'Save selection as wav'. This will save copying it into another project. Also, if you hover over the edge of your current selection the cursor will turn into a hand. Using it, you can change the start/end of the selection, and can use it to leapfrog tracks by grabbing the beginning and making it the end of the next track. You will save a lot of time this way.

Simple Outdoor Games

Geekdad at Wired goes unwired with 30 simple outdoor games. Some of them I remember playing, some not so much. But, overall a pretty nice list. Here's some I would add.

• Cowboys and Indians, Cops and Robbers, War (guns or swords) and other imaginary games. Or, are we to PC for this now?
• Spotlight. Hide and seek in the dark. The person who is it gets a flashlight to 'tag' people with and send them to jail. You can release everyone from the jail if you can get there without getting spotted.
• Whiffle Ball. Or any similar baseball type game with a bat and ball.

Part of the problem these days is lack of space. If you fit a house on .12 of an acre there isn't a lot of space left for a lot of games. And, newer developments tend not to have a lot of open space since it doesn't make the developer any money. Since I grew up in a more rural setting and now live in a suburban one, I guess I will be learning and teaching my kids those outdoor games that don't need a lot of space.

The Electric Chopper

If the Tesla Roadster is the show car for electric 4 wheelers, then this would have to be the 2 wheeled equivalent.

230 MPG? Really?

Chevrolet is putting out that the Volt will get an EPA rating of 230 MPG. That begs the question - how in the world do you determine something like that? Well, the answers are out there, but they are not easy to find.

Autoblog digs up some facts:

According to a commenter on TTAC.com, the EPA would first drive a PHEV with a full charge until it reaches a charge-sustaining mode, after which it completes a normal cycle of 11 miles. The Volt, therefore, would presumably go 40 miles before activating charge-sustaining mode, and then travel another 11 miles for a total of 51 miles. Thus, GM can claim the Volt will achieve 230 mpg based on 51 miles of driving during which only .22 gallons of fuel would be used. Likewise, if we know the Volt would use .22 gallons of fuel while traveling 11 miles in charge-sustaining mode, we can calculate that it would achieve 50 mpg while traveling with the generator on.

That helps, but it isn't enough. Theoretically, if you drove <40 miles every day, and charged your Volt every night, then you would never use any gas. That kind of makes the whole Miles Per Gallon thing superfluous. However, if you are on a long trip and are going to get 40 miles of battery only travel before the engine kicks in for the rest of the trip then it is not going to be that much different than a regular car. How can you take into account both extremes?

It seems to me that we need to move towards some kind of energy use measurement that would take into account all forms of propulsion be it electrical, hydrogen, gasoline, cold fusion or whatever. We just have to get used to talking in kW per Mile or Miles per kW or something similar. The hybrids are still going to cause problems because of their multiple sources of power, but I'm sure the EPA can work out the details. Then the question becomes whether or not the public can make the switch, and this in a country where we can't even adopt the metric system.

On another note it will be interesting to see what mileage the EPA actually puts on the Volt. Of course, when you consider that Chevy is now owned by the very entity that will be determining the rating, the question is probably moot.

Windows 7 XP Mode RC

Microsoft released the Release Candidate of Windows 7 XP mode today, and as luck would have it I just finished installing it on my laptop. And... it looks a lot like Windows XP, if you can imagine that. My main goal for installing it is to get SAS Enterprise Guide up and running since it doesn't seem to like Windows 7 very much. We'll see if XP Mode is any better. So far, Java seems to run OK, and Flash is working even though it threw up a window saying the install failed. Of course performance takes a hit so I wouldn't expect to play any old XP games on it. Although, I am certainly going to try.