Testing for upcoming Happy Hour broadcast.

Here is a screenshot of what I shall be using to broadcast to the Quackhouse Radio server starting Jan 2015 after a four-year hiatus.  The old Saturday Night Trifecta shall be resurrected as Happy Hour.  The new show will be broadcast on Saturday evening from 8PM – 12AM Eastern time starting with 3 Jan. 2015.

RadioBossplugins0This is the RadioBoss main window, running through a test run of the beginning of what will be the first return broadcast.

RadioBossplugins1.jpg

Here, you see the RadioBOSS main window, which is mostly obscured except for the two main output plugins that I am using: Izotope Ozone 4 and ToneBoosters ReelBus.  They give excellent control over the broadcasted signal, including adding some analog tape effects to counteract the harshness of digital mp3s.  😉

One real problem that I noticed was with keying up the dynamic voice mic that I’m using for ‘voiceovers’.  There seemed to be a great deal of hiss and background noise.

RadioBossplugins2.jpgHere, you can see me setting up the VST plugins that I inserted into the mic chain.  On the top, is ToneBoosters De-esser, and below that is ToneBoosters Gate.  Not shown is the built in compressor that I set to -6dB.  To the left is the output plugin Ozone that you can see is 15dB down since the mic is keyed.  I think this is a winning combination, and after another test or two, I shall try to set up the podcast blog.

 

 

New bitrate and new radio show

crab_radio_01It seems that CRAB is always about one step behind our sister station, QUACKHOUSE Radio.  I have decided to push the bitrate and sampling frequency from 32/16 to 64/22.  This is all in preparation of the Saturday night radio show resuming.  This should happen just after New Year’s day.  The format will be similar to the Saturday Night Trifectas that ended in Jan 2010.  I shall try to set up a podcast blog page to allow you to listen to the shows ‘after the fact’.

Error 0x8007232B occurs when trying to activate Windows 7

Over the weekend, got the following error message when trying to activate Windows 7 Pro:

Windows could not be activated.
Key management services (KMS) host could not be located in domain name system (DNS), please have your system adminstrator verify that a KMS is published correctly in DNS.
Error: 0x8007232b
Description:
DNS name does not exist.
IfKMS activationwill not be used, and if there is noKMS server, the product keyshould be changed to an MAK. For Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN), or forTechNet, the stock-keeping units (SKUs)that are listed below the media are usually volume licensed-media, and the product key thatis supplied is an MAK key.Change the product key to an MAK. To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Click Start the Start button, click All Programs, click Accessories, and then right-click Command Prompt.
  2. Click Run as administratorUser Access Control permission  If you are prompted for an administrator password or for confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation
  3. At the command prompt, type the following command, and then press Enter:
    slmgr -ipk xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx
  4.  Note This command, slmgr, is the Windows Software Licensing Management Tool.  The placeholder xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx represents your MAK product key.  After this, you will be able to activate Windows 7 normally.

Webserver passwords, as well as web ‘symlinks’ WERE broken due to ONE bad .htaccess file!

Well, I unexpectedly caused the web server’s password protected directories ALL to go down the drain with just ONE mistake in ONE .htaccess file.  Not only that, but many symbolic links stopped working in apache, even though they still worked in a CLI.  I am such a dumbass, heh.  Here’s what I did:

This is an example of the .htaccess file I created:

# cat .htaccess

AuthUserFile /XXXXX/XXXXX/XXXXX/.xxxxx AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName “Sam’s Blog”
AuthType Basic

<Limit GET POST PUT>
  require user xxxxx yyyyy
</Limit>

The offending line is in Bold Blue, more specifically that one little old apostrophe.  😉

All fixed now, boys and girls. 😀

Tech, music, and general ramblings…..