Rachel Ramos

@walkside3
221 Followers
199 Following
1.5K Posts
Assistive technologist, audio enthusiast, bass guitarist and drummer. Reader of mysteries and thrillers, but also enjoy biographies, memoirs, tech history, and any recommendations. Rock/metal are my musical genres of choice, but there's a special place reserved for '80s-'90s songs in my rotation.
Microsoft’s Windows XP Crocs are no joke

Microsoft has created limited edition Windows XP-themed Crocs. The Crocs even come with a Clippy shoe charm.

The Verge
Engineer Restores Pay Phones For Free Public Use - Slashdot

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Patrick Schlott often finds himself in a cellular dead zone during his drive to work. "You go down the road, you turn the corner and you're behind a mountain and you'll lose cell coverage pretty fast," he says. The 31-year-old electrical engineer says po...

If this book is anything like "Losing the Signal", it will be a great read. Iconic Phones: The long-awaited coffee table book is coming this Fall - PhoneArena https://www.phonearena.com/news/iconic-phones-the-long-awaited-coffee-table-book-is-coming-this-fall_id172840
Iconic Phones: The long-awaited coffee table book is coming this Fall

A love letter to some of the most impactful phones of the last two decades.

PhoneArena
"The squirrel walks across the porch and exits." Like, it's proud of its performance.
So, the Ring doorbell has been reported to now have AI descriptions for events. It's always said: "There's motion at your front door." or "There's a person at your front door." It's new one is, "There's an animal at your front door." When it said that today, I had to know what it was! So I put the video threw Omni Describer, and it said: "A squirrel scurries onto the porch." Then, "The squirrel moves to the left side of the porch." And, my favorite ...
My city's department of transportation has a sense of humor. Someone got clever due to the heat. There's a sign posted above a highway that reads: "That's the temperature not the speed limit".

I've started messing with a programme called Omni Describer. It's a Windows Programme, and it's for getting audio descriptions of videos using AI. You can import a video in to it which you've already downloaded, or you can also paste in a link directly from YouTube. Once you've done that, you then go to the option to describe the video. Once it's finished generating the description, it'll come up with a video player to play back the video with the audio description in it. The audio description will be read out using your screen reader, using whichever voice you use normally set at the rate you normally have it at. The player has the usual options on it to play, pause, rewind and fast forward. You can also if you want export an mp3 file of the video with the description in it, and if you do that, the description will be read out by one of the Microsoft voices. There's different settings too for example how descriptive you want the descriptions to be, the speed of the voice and other things. One thing it does seem to do though is interrupt itself to go on to the next description before it's finished the one I'm on, but it was suggested to me to speed up the voice a bit, and then perhaps that might prevent it doing that so much. Oh and you can also export a txt file of all the descriptions on a video, so if you do miss anything, you can look at them. I'm loving it though so far.

You can get the programme from https://audioses.com/en/yazilimlar.php

Software | Ömer Yılmaz

Various tools and software that I have developed

As always, Twenty Thousand Hertz does a spectacular job with everything they produce. "The Music of Jeopardy!" is no exception. I've loved the show for what seems like forever, so having a chance to hear how the music and other sounds included in the show came to be was so much fun. https://castro.fm/episode/LjwYp8
Twenty Thousand Hertz: The Music of Jeopardy! From a Lullaby to $100,000,000 (26m)

It’s the most recognizable TV theme in America. But Jeopardy’s “Think Music” wasn’t originally written for a game show… It was written for a toddler. In this episode, we trace the unlikely journey of the Jeopardy theme, from Merv Griffin’s living room to over 10,000 episodes across six decades. Along the way, we explore the show’s sonic evolution, including honking buzzers, 80s synths, and orchestral remixes. Featuring Lisa Broffman, Jeopardy’s Consulting Co-Executive Producer. Subscribe on ⁠⁠Y…

Its new video time again folks. Did you know that with REAPER version 7.42 a new scrubbing mode got introduced? No? My newest video tells you all the differences between the three available REAPER scrubbing modes, how they can be used and what neat little keystrokes we now got on the OSARA keymap to make our lifes so much easier. Plus, I give you a demo on how I use them when editing VoiceOvers. Enjoy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0HbxFOm9KQ
All three scrubbing modes in REAPER demonstrated

YouTube
Next week is Breaking Benjamin unplugged, and the following week is Shinedown with Morgan Wade and Bush. This city is amazing with all the music here! (2/2)