Sean Caldwell

Memory prices currently low

2011-08-11T09:03:00.002-04:00

In May we built a new workstation for audio/video editing and paid $100 for 8 gigs of memory. Today the same memory is 50 cheaper. That's quite a swing in under six months.

Need 4 gig sticks of DDR3 memory? Here's a good start:

G.Skill Ripjaw has worked well in many machines that we've put it in. Currently $30 with a $5 rebate at Newegg.

Back to school computer ideas 2011

2011-08-10T16:20:00.003-04:00

Face it, back to school time is one of the best times to buy a new computer. Whether for a middle schooler, high schooler, or a college student, here are my suggestions for computers as of August 2011.

Netbooks often suffer from poor keyboards, 10" screens, and slooooow processors. The Lenovo ThinkPad X120e is faster than most netbooks (it uses a new AMD dual-core processor that beats the intel atom), has a slightly larger screen (11 inches) and a nice keyboard. You'll pay between $450 and $500 for it.

Need something cheaper? The Samsung NF310 is a good choice. It's under $400 and features an Intel atom 1.5ghz N550 processor and 250 gig hard drive.

Want a full size laptop? The Asus A53 series is nice. 15" screen, 4 gigs of memory, and 320gb hard drive. Under $400.

These recommendations should be good through December, 2011.

Easiest upgrade to your current PC? An SSD drive

2011-08-05T12:45:00.001-04:00

The single easiest upgrade you can make to your current desktop? Adding an SSD drive. Nothing will help your computer speed up than putting in a drive that is usually 5 times faster than what is in your machine right now.

The strategy I like to use is to put in a 60GB drive in for the operating system, then have an additional traditional hard drive in the machine for storing your data (audio, video, pictures, etc.)

OCZ is a great brand (Intel is another strong leader). Here's my favorite for around $100: The OCZ Vertex 2. Get it for around $100-$120. Put it in, reinstall Windows (Windows 7 can be optimized for it... search for AHCI and switch your bios from IDE to AHCI for the drive *before* you install windows).

Add some NAS to your home network

2011-08-02T09:33:00.003-04:00

We take a lot of pictures and have other digital assets that we want to be able to access on any computer in the house or home office.

Putting some network attached storage on the network solves many problems. Which one to buy? One of my favorite is the Synology DS211. Two hard drives so you have redundancy, and it's fast. Buy it for $300 and then add two hard drives. I'd suggest the Samsung F4 2tb. It's fast, cool, and quiet.

Best pocket camera 2011

2011-07-11T11:54:00.002-04:00

DSLR users have a dilemma when planning to go out to an event where you want good pictures, but you don't want to bring the big bag with a DSLR and a lens or two that weighs in a 5+ pounds.

2011 brought a new pocket camera that I can honestly say is a significant advancement in many areas. Most pocket cameras take decent pictures in daylight or bright light. Most of them stink indoors when you have low light and moving subjects.

The Canon S95 is a game changer. It's low light shows are fantastic. Colors are great too. It's light weight, fits in a pocket, and comes much closer to the quality you get from a DSLR than any other pocket camera in the past. Pick it up for $400 or less as of July 2011.

Tiny computer builds

2011-07-06T13:34:00.001-04:00

I love building computers. Last year it was a small micro atx box that could serve as a backup for audio editing.

I used the in-win BK644 case paired up with an ASRock motherboard. The case worked well; but it seems to be out of stock as of July 2011.

Someone asked if I considered building a mini-ITX. Not yet, but when I do, here's one case that I'm looking at. The Antec ISK 100. It comes with a power supply and is ready for it's tiny slice of your desk.

How to get started in voiceovers

2011-07-01T14:46:00.000-04:00

Want to get started in voiceovers? This is not intended to help anyone that is already in the business of providing voiceovers. I wrote it to guide a person that asked how to get started. Also note, that although I specialize in broadcast promos, my advice for someone starting is to go for local advertising and similar.

Steps to start a career in voiceovers by Sean Caldwell. 7/2011

1. Listen to the radio and TV and find some advertisements that use a voice similar to yours. Record it on a voice recorder or similar. Consider texture, pitch, emotion, excitement. Find three advertisements for this.

Write out the scripts and start practicing. Ask yourself, why did they emphasize here and there; are there similarities between the three? Differences? Imitate the flow and sound of each one. You don’t want to become them, but you do want to understand the various styles that are being ‘bought.’ Do this for one week, practice 5x a day or more for 15 minutes at a time.
Now find three more advertisements and do the same. Are you quicker to learn the styles and imitate them? If so, you’re making progress.
Ready to record your demo. Take the scripts you copied and record them, have it produced up. Listen to it for a few weeks. After you hear it 100 times (seriously!) you’ll find things you wish you would have done differently. Re-record the demo.
Send it out. Send it to local cable companies, advertising agencies, friends in the media, people that use voices for on-hold messages.
You’ll need a studio to use. Or build one for $2,000 to $10,000. Speed is key, when someone wants a voiceover recorded, they can’t wait 3 days for you to make arrangements. How will you record your work?
Don’t expect to get rich. You might make $25 for a voiceover, or you might make $150 for a voiceover. It will probably take 5 years or more to be able to make $25,000 a year at this. Many people never make it to that level…the market is saturated with people trying to make big money with their voice. It can happen, but it doesn’t happen often.

Serving in the body

2009-11-06T12:18:00.001-05:00

Preached at church in October about serving in the body.

Sean put on the DJ headphones

2009-03-25T16:45:00.002-04:00

One weekend in March, 2009 I flew out to Salt Lake City to visit some friends. Great friend AJ Carson at KZHT put me on the air! Many people have said stick to being a voiceover guy and leave the dj'ing to the professionals. Maybe they're right.

Click here for the aircheck

Preaching on Getting It Said

2009-02-15T16:38:00.003-05:00

February 2009, I had the opportunity to preach two Sundays about Evangelism. The walk out on week #2 is pretty funny.

Something to Say :: Getting it Right. Sean Caldwell @ Harborside Church from Sean Caldwell on Vimeo.

Something to Say :: Getting it Said. Sean Caldwell @ Harborside Church from Sean Caldwell on Vimeo.

Week #1 about Getting It Right

Week #2 about Getting It Said

Sandisk Cruzer Speed Test: 16gb vs 8gb

2008-11-28T14:37:00.007-05:00

Black Friday 2008 brought a great deal on the Sandisk 16gb Cruzer drive. I wondered how it would perform next to the older 8gb model I had. The 16gb does not say it is ready boost compatible, you can see why. Here are the results:

In Windows Vista:
16gb
write speed: 5.3 mb/s
read speed: 23 mb/s

8gb
write speed: 7.4 mb/s
read speed: 27 mb/s

So, the read speed is relatively close (the 8gb is still faster). The write speed is about 40% slower on the newer 16 gig memory stick. That's a step backwards.

Here are some results inside XP Pro:
Using a 454 megabyte directory of files:

16gb wrote it in 1:41. Read it in 21 seconds.
8gb wrote it in 1:12. Read it in 20 seconds.

Summary: Great increase in space, it's slower than the older model...especially the write speed.

Want to read a really intense comparison between 20+ flash drives 12/2008? Click here.

Best pocket cameras Q4 2008

2008-11-27T22:48:00.006-05:00

DP Review is where I like to go for camera reviews and active forums. I shoot with a 40d and a couple nice lenses most times. For out on the town with a tiny camera needs, two cameras came out on top of their latest review:

The Sony W120 ($130) and the Panasonic LZ8 ($110). You can read their conclusion here and click through to the whole detailed article too.

DP Review review link.

Update: In 2011, the best pocked camera for under $400 is the Canon S95. I have it and it is fantastic. A huge improvement over cameras from a few years ago.

Sean preaches for the first time

2008-07-16T17:02:00.003-04:00

On Sunday July 13, 2008, I got to preach my first sermon! It's about friendship. Take a look. It happened at my home church: Harborside Christian Church in Safety Harbor, Florida.

Sean Caldwell on Friendship @ Harborside Church from Sean Caldwell on Vimeo.

To archive to DVD or hard drive or both?

2008-05-15T10:54:00.010-04:00

My backup needs at work and home may be a little more than the average computer use. Each day I generate a few hundred megabytes of digital audio & video files. My wife is a photography nut (currently shooting a Canon 40d).

Previously the backup strategy was to burn the material to recordable dvd's and store them in a safe. Even though the speed of dvd burners is now 18x+, it still takes quite a while to archive onto 3 or 4 dvd's every couple months. Then I thought, with the prices of hard drives being so low, wouldn't it just make sense to backup everything to a $130 500 gig external drive? That's how I mirror my main audio/video work station. I was using an Icy Dock MB559 eSATA external enclosure ($60) with a Samsung 500 gig drive ($100). It works great and is just as fast as an on board sata hard drive. The only issue is you have to buy caddies for each hard drive you want to use ($20).

That's great for day to day, but what about permanent archiving? Is a hard drive fine? Well, an event last month made me reconsider moving entirely to a hard drive based archive system. One of the drives I was using to backup my wife's pictures died. It was a western digital mybook 300 gig drive. It just stopped working and would lock up any machine I connected it to. Thankfully my strategy also included burning dvd's with the same content. The hard drive is so much faster to write and read from than a dvd...but hard drives fail. Yes, dvd's can fail too, especially if they're not handled carefully.

Going forward I plan to still use an external drive for quick access to archived stuff as well as burning irreplaceable things (family pictures, etc.) to recordable dvd's. A new product from Thermaltake has made it even easier.

Now, instead of having to put a hard drive inside an enclosure to access old archived stuff, I can just pop the hard drive inside the Blacx (roughly $35 to $45). The original version is USB 2.0 speed (model N0028USU) and in use it operates as fast as the fastest external usb drives. They have another version with eSATA connection (Newegg and Buy.com have it in stock, model # ST0005U). I bought one of each and have found the eSATA to be roughly twice as fast using the same hard drive.

My test data: Moving a 1.067 gig file from the main computer to the external drive:
USB 2.0 took 45 seconds.
Utilizing eSATA took 20 seconds.

For the important audio & video, I plan to have two hard drive backups of material. I fill up about 500 gigs in a year, so buying an extra drive each year to help keep things safe will only set me back $120 or so.

Years ago I had a system hard drive fail. It took me two to three days to get my system set up the way I had it before. Over the past five years I've been using Acronis True Image to make a system backup a couple times a month to a separate hard drive. Now if my system drive fails, it should take me under an hour to install a new drive, use the image to re-install windows and be back on my way. Sure a lot better than having to reinstall windows & all the software that makes my studio run.

So that's my backup strategy, what's yours?

Church of Oprah?

2008-04-04T10:39:00.004-04:00

Oprah has built quite a following; fortunately for me I work during the day and have only watched her show once in the last twenty years.

Have you seen this? Are you aware of what she 'preaches?'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW4LLwkgmqA

Here's the verse that came with an email from a friend:

"There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death. " Proverbs 14:12

so if you're a believer, let's pray:

Dear Lord

Many of your followers have been tricked. Many have found other things to worship that do not bring You glory. Oprah has bought into a lie because it’s easier to live on the earth believing that we are all little gods and think that we are great than to admit that we all fall short of your holiness and we need your Son to give us a pass.

God, please protect the hearts and minds of the masses from the trickery of Satan. We ask that you would open Oprah’s mind to the truth so she may use her talents and resources to bring people to you instead of leading people toward eternal separation from you. Whatever your plan, help us to be bold and confident proclaiming that You are the one true God and your Son is the only way to salvation. May it never be about us but always about You.

In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Recording audio on the road

2008-03-19T09:45:00.007-04:00

People often ask how to record high quality audio on the road...this could also work in a normal studio.

I use the Sound Devices USB Pre in my studio & on the road.

Link here:

http://www.sounddevices.com/products/usbpremaster.htm

the biggest plus is it has an awesome mic pre-amp…really high quality. It will also take ¼” inputs, digital inputs, etc. It’s very well built, and it costs $550 or so. I just bought one on ebay for $350 so I can keep it in my road bag, so you can sometimes find them used, but not often. I’ve been looking for six months.

Another one that might make sense would be this one:

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/FastTrackPro-main.html

$225 or so. One benefit would be the ‘insert channel’ so you could run a tiny compressor or something similar to make sure the sound was already compressed a little on the way in to the computer. If you want a really good compressor that is tiny and cheap, this one is the best there is for under $500:

http://www.fmraudio.com/RNC1773.HTM

looks like junk, sounds really good. It’s $199.

If you wanted to go as cheap as possible on the sound card, the one that would still sound 90% as good would be this one (it doesn’t have the insert patch for an outboard compressor):

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/MobilePreUSB-main.html

it’s about $150.

If you want to get a great mic that is good at rejecting side noise and stuff, one mic I use often is the Sennheiser MKH-416 shotgun. You can sometimes find them on ebay for $750 used, they’re $1000 new. Just make sure you get the P48 version (phantom power). It should be black, not the silver one.

I usually get the best prices and cheap shipping from a guy at Full Compass. Call Martin Vire at 800-356-5844 x1179. He’s also really good with advice and is usually dead on with his suggestions. Feel free to drop my name to him.

Sean

Willow Creek admits they've done it all wrong?

2007-12-19T17:39:00.003-05:00

There's a note going around that describes how Willow Creek Church has admitted they've done it all wrong. You can read an original here.

I believe the case against Willow has been overstated... here were some of my remarks to some fellow elders that discussed it:

Thank you for that insightful note. A few months ago I listened to Willow’s vision series that they taught early this year. They admitted much of what is covered in this note. I didn’t get the idea that they believe their ‘seeker driven’ services are the problem, it is what they’ve done after someone becomes a Christian that they have evaluated as ineffective. Their “next steps” weren’t leading people where they hoped they were. Their people were being held back.

They admitted the failure: they haven’t taught people to be self feeding. You simply can’t come to church one day a week and eat enough to last an entire week was a line I remember. They are now building a process that allows Willow to partner with each member to build a custom spiritual growth program. They are making a heavy investment in it.

The other thing Willow covered in their vision series was a desire for their congregation to show love and grace all across Chicagoland and the world. They strongly challenged their people to continue inviting people to come to church, and to make positive impact in the world around them with community service.

It’s a similar dilemma some of us have had with what our church is doing. Have we paved a good clear road for the Christian who wants to do more than just attend for an hour on Sunday?

October 12, 1975 they started a church revolution that was felt around the world. God has clearly been with them. Now they’re modifying their model to make deeper disciples; seems like God would welcome that as well!

How are we doing at it?

Sean Caldwell

DTS...here I come

2006-10-18T17:59:00.000-04:00

I was accepted to DTS today!

Found a couple cool tech sites

2006-09-18T17:18:00.001-04:00

great free software links:

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best_46_free_utilities.htm
enjoy...