ByMike Moffit

Dear Friends,

It’s a heat wave in Vermont! The first official days of summer set new temperature records here in the north country. Our normal warm days and cool nights turned into hot days and humid nights. It was definitely not a three-dog night as I had to keep pushing Hammerhead out of the way because he generated too much body heat. We should be back to the normal pattern of 70s during the day and 50s at night this weekend.

All of the newly announced Apple products are starting to come in, with the notable exception of the new MacBook Pro with Retina display. We have gotten a few of those in, but all signs point to a very scarce supply of these top-of-the-line units for the next several weeks. Get your order in now and we will ship them first come, first served as the supply becomes available.

I am very happy to announce a new member of our management team. Matt Curran has joined the company as our Assistant Controller and will be working with Hapy and the rest of the accounting team. Matt moonlights as an NCAA Football Umpire and with Hapy, Matt and Nick, we have a substantial “front line.” These guys may be big, but Rob, Artie and I figure our craftiness, speed and dirty play should be able to give them a run for their money in touch football.

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  • NH Fisher Cats Baseball Ticket Giveaway!

    Hey baseball lovers, you heard it here first: We are giving away tickets to see the Class AA NH Fisher Cats this season! Watch as the 2011 Eastern League Champions (part of the Blue Jays’ farm system) take on the minor league affiliates of the Red Sox, Tigers, Pirates, Mets and more.

    We’ll be giving away 4 tickets per day, starting tomorrow (June 23), for two weeks!

    Here’s what to do:

    * Visit our “*Facebook page*”:http://www.facebook.com/smalldogelectronics between 6/23 – 7/6 to enter
    * One entry per -corporation- person

    Further details and contest rules will be posted on our page tomorrow. Check out the “*Fisher Cats*”:http://newhampshire.fishercats.milb.com/index.jsp?sid=t463 website here to learn more and check out the team.

  • SPECIAL: BooqPad with free Hammerhead Pen Stylus

    Protect your iPad 2 or 3 with this stylish and functional case from Booq!

    The BooqPad comes with a replaceable paper notepad on the inside for those of you out there that still prefer to jot down notes the old fashioned way. To help you out with that we are throwing in the new Hammerhead Pen Stylus (HPS). The HPS has a removable cap allowing you to use it as both a stylus and an ink pen.

    Write on!

  • Weekly Apple News Recap | 06.22.12

    *iTunes Store Launches in 32 More Countries*
    As mentioned by Tim Cook at WWDC, Apple is expanding iTunes Store availability.

    “*Read more here.*”:http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2406180,00.asp

    *How Much Does Your iPad Cost to Charge Per Year? $1.36*
    CNET writes about the findings of a new study about electricity use and your iPad, with interesting results.

    “*Read more here.*”:http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57458653-37/apples-ipad-costs-you-$1.36-per-year-to-charge/?tag=mncol;txt

  • MAC TREAT #182: Tips For Audio Processing

    To coincide with Mike’s article below regarding recording audio on your Mac, here are some basic tips to optimize audio processing and get maximum quality sound.

    * Check your audio settings, particularly the latency/buffer size
    * Connect to a power supply
    * Limit what other apps are open (preferably none)
    * Turn Wi-Fi and Bluetooth off

    To get more detail about why these matter, check out this great “*knowledge base article*”:http://www.native-instruments.com/knowledge/questions/974/Mac+OS+X+Tuning+Tips+for+Audio+Processing on Native Instruments’ website!

  • Capturing Audio from your Mac

    As some of you may know, we have begun spreading the gospel of Small Dog through a new medium. And by “new” medium, I mean very old medium: radio. “Small Dog Speaks!”:http://www.smalldog.com/sdspeaks airs every Thursday from 1-2pm Eastern time on “WDEV”:http://www.wdevradio.com/index-home.asp in historic and beautiful Waterbury, VT. For those of you who don’t live in Central Vermont, you should move here! Failing that, you can “listen to the show online.”:http://icecast.stretchinternet.com:8000/wdev

    As the go-to guy for all things audio, it fell upon me to find a good way to record the show so that we could post it to our “audio archives”:http://www.smalldog.com/sdspeaks-archive as soon as possible. There are a number of ways to get this done. The straightforward old-fashioned way would be to put a microphone in front of a radio. Due to the uncertain nature of radio reception in the mountain valley we work out of and the problem of background noise, this was quickly abandoned as a possibility. I decided to find a more high tech solution.

    I decided to find a way to record the online audio stream. I looked at GarageBand and Logic Pro and did not find a native way to record the audio from my computer. A quick internet search turned up a solution, though. “Soundflower”:http://cycling74.com/products/soundflower/ is a system extension that allows applications to pass audio to other applications. It is free, open-source, and runs on Mac Intel and Power PC computers. Once installed, you can go into System Preferences > Sound and set your audio output to Soundflower. When you open your recording program (I use Logic Pro) you can then select Soundflower as the input source for your recording. Please note that any sound that plays on your machine will be recorded so make sure to turn off audio alerts in any other programs you may be running. Also, your volume control will affect the signal level, so make sure to turn it all the way up and use the monitor controls in your recording program to control the monitor level.

    Once I capture the audio, I convert it to mp3 and post it to our archives. I also take soundbites out of context and remix them. “Enjoy!”:http://images.smalldog.com/static/sdspeaks-archive/June-21-Remix.aif

  • VT eWaste Recycling Event: June 30 (and FREE!)

    June is here, and your overstuffed garages and basements will thank you when you decide to recycle your old electronics at one of our two eWaste Recycling Events.

    If you’re in or around the Rutland, VT area (new location this year!), come out to Rutland High School *next Saturday, June 30 from 9-3pm.* “*Check out our event page on Facebook here.*”:https://www.facebook.com/events/370407646353422/

    More details are available on our website as well:
    “*http://www.smalldog.com/ewaste2012*”:http://www.smalldog.com/ewaste2012