April Apple Meeting #1 Wrapup 07 Apr, 2005
Our last Apple meeting was Tuesday, April 5, and we had several interesting things on the program. First was my presentation on RSS which went okay, although I think it was way too technical and I rambled a lot (but I’m my own worst critic). Next we had Jonathan’s presentation on podcasting and the wonderfully-named program, “iEatBrainz.”
Michael and Eric showed up, as did a couple of people from physics (where I wrote down the date/time on an unerasable whiteboard… which I need to fix in the near future). We had a contest to see who could come up with the most original iPhoto book and/or slideshow set to music (just the slideshow, not the book). By the sort of weird irony that seems to occur at these meetings, I ended up on the same team as Kate (coworker) and Jonathan (other presenter). Weird.
Afterwards, I went over and jammed with Cameron P
(his rapper name) and we did a few songs involving horns replaced with steel drums
(his roommate’s most recent acquisition). We initially were recording in GarageBand
using the Powerbook’s built-in mic, which picked up a lot more than we wanted,
especially the “click-click-whirr” of the hard drive. Next best thing (and the
only other mic we could find)? A Logitech QuickCam USB. No, I’m not kidding,
it’s Mac-compatible and we didn’t have anything else. I happened to have a USB
extension in my bag too, so we were able to get a little more distance away from
the monitor (a pair of earbuds, no, I’m still not kidding). Here’s the
product of those efforts. If we were playing
places, we would call ourselves “I hope I never see those guys play live.” I’d
do that too, just to mess up people who keep their music meticulously stored
under c:\Documents and Settings\My Long Username\My Music\Artist Name\Artist Name - Album Name\01 Artist Name - Album Name - Track Name.mp3
as our contribution to long band names such as “…and you will know us by the
trail of dead.”