The Ottermanempire.com

Nice scenery , customer service taught by Klingons. The drinks where really nicely thought out, kicked like an arcturian megadonkey and were,surprisingly, priced ,fairly. Shame the bar has to go as it was one of the better “imagineering” that’s functional E.g it looks more real than many things in Vegas that try to emulate the real world.

quarks vegas,
originally uploaded by haltse.

Oh damn it sucks that this place is closing . They mix some strong ass drinks..

Nice decor.

In , there’s hope for humanity for recognising a good thing dept,   Goodnight Burbank   the  ruthless self promoters that gave me so many postcards at the podcast expo that I wallpapered the spare room with them  have “graduated” to  an HBO pilot.  While I’m still awaiting them to  “Drop the Dead Donkey”  a  reference to a    obscure UK tv show ( for Americans anyway)  I can’t find a clip on You Tube, the   “breaking news”  being the broken news staff has so far made it to a must watch part of my cable tv replacement …Oh crap Hbo’s on cable isn’t it.. 

Just go check them out.

NewTeeVee » G’night Burbank Scores HBO Online Pilot

Podcasters seem to be making the resellers of  telephone hybrids very happy indeed. I’ve spent several weeks trying to get a regular price on an item that until  a year ago was rather likely to shoot straight through the auction with 0 bids.    Basically a hybrid lets my talk on my mic and the person I am connected with hears the entire show, IE I send them all the sound going on at once, but  all I return from them is their voice . It’s also known as “mix minus”  ie the output of the mixer  minus their voice, if their  voice was present it would  become part of the total mix  and delay enough to annoy the caller.  I think I must be ill I didn’t buy a firewire mixer when I had the chance.. waiting to see what the sales on Friday bring.

At long last I have the inkling of an upcoming show but it’s a practice that is rarely found in AZ and a lot of phone interviews are going to be necessary.

I’m losing enthusiasm for the mobile web  and until the carriers grow the fuck up we’re going to be stuck with “stupid web tricks”  tied to  content  owned by the networks partners rather than developing anything universal.

In, the  I told you so section:

People can’t readily distinguish between an image taken at 13mp 8mp or 5 .. If you read the article in isolation that’s what you would likely come away with.  Ah but we all get to pile in and ask about the test, the assumptions and the results are being vigorously debated in a manner that politics rarely is.. Kinda shows you just how little import the latter has

Came home to a box from BSW. The Zoom H4 had arrived. I have read the manual once all that follows is an initial impression only. I saw the demo one at the Podcast Expo and had BSW send me one ( in exchange for cash and $20 off coupon ) Definetely a company I will be doing more business with.

Good: Pretty good stereo on the inbuilt mics when the compression is turned off. When it’s got the pop shield on and about 4 inches away it’s pretty damn good I’ll be carrying it to meetings over the coming weeks ( not at work so don’t worry) to see if I can use it as a back up to boards
The mounting bracket it comes with fits on a standard mike stand ( necessary .. it pics up handling noise like a motherforker. Runs on AA cells, no panic when the inbuilt battery dies
Access to monitor for record to recording falls naturally in the handheld grip for me.
price. $299 for a recorder, audio interface and an “effects” unit
Phantom power , drove my mikes no problem , preamps don’t seem too bad.

Bad: All the effects are noisy and you hear most of the phase type effects with no input , others you hear a heterodyne like whine ( no that’s not me)
Build quality around the memory card / battery flap.
Comes with 128mb card, I know the $299 is a damn good price to offer this at in relation to the competition but come on, add the cost of a reasonable size of recording time into the price and drop the effects 12 mins at CD quality , er thanks.

Clickwheel, not responsive, doesn’t seem to seat on center clicks all the time
no immediate access to gain controls other than gross hi/mid/lo the access to gain,
User interface is a pain, the 4 track section is certainly interesting though swapping effects in and out and configuring them per track, just ick. Maybe if the device can be remotely controlled by a pc this would rock.

Undecided. Not sure if it’s noisy in general or if it’s the headphone amp in particular going to transfer it to pc and have a listen over the monitors , turning on the compresser is it’s excuse to ramp
Turning on the compresser ramps up the noise level, doesn’t seem configurable in two track mode ( this may be ignorance on my behalf and I’m going to look at it

More , and possibly sound samples as I play with it.

What another trip?  I’ve still not managed to get the last one documented and here we are  heading out to Ontaria CA  for the Podcast and Portable Media expo  which was held  on the 29th and 30th of October. Over the coming days I have some thoughts to relay on where many items  which to be honest  are likely to be cross posted from my “professional” blog. This one though is a rant against the State I left  because it sucked so hard that the other 49 had to blow just to equalize the pressure.

We’d booked with the Doubletree  through Amex travel services. We paid for a specific class of room ( no kids,  king size bed and non smoking)  and ended up  in ..  floor that had kids,  separate beds and smoked in.   To go the rocky route they were more into the horse brutality than hospitality and said…  that we can ‘t have the room we’d paid for ( not just reserved,) and , well that was it.  The Wifi sucked  and they carded me just to stand in a bar, they wouldn’t allow a friend to access their bar /club, just to  tell them we’re ready for dinner ($30-50 an entree and you still have to put up with this)  to have 3-4 security types lurk around just in case we proceded to enjoy  bad disco and some pretty skanky ho’s  while prying the rest of the dinner party  free from the room. Bar staff that didn’t know what cider was and how it relates to the bar setting.. tip? sure I gave a tip have some fucking interest in your job.
Call to Amex  sorted out the former bullshit and they moved our toom, er well it felt like it, room.  I have never stayed in a place with so many security people yet  yet  hey there’s yelling in the hall, some guy’s threatening to see everyone in hell if they don’t let him go on our nice , quiet , $130 a night  room …

The staff are dismissive of your concerns.
Service is slow

Food is damn good though, not life changing good, but well executed  with an attention to detail that I hope they can pass on to the desk staff.

Company was excellent, I’ll write more on that in a bit since it’s more tied up with the conference, and possibly , just maybe Erin’s sufficiently interested to podcast a bit herself she won a mic from the nice people at Samson  , they get a free review soon:) , and I got to fondle some nice hardware  but no booth babes.