Concord Police Reverse 911

March 18, 2017 by cryan.com

This audio clip is from 2003. It demonstrates how the Concord police stays ahead of criminal activity.

Listen to what the residents of Concord, Massachusetts heard in early September 2003:

There was no follow up in the local newspaper on if the people were caught.

iMovie Swoosh Video Overlay

December 18, 2016 by cryan.com

I created four-wave or swoosh graphics that can add a nice touch to any iMovie videos. These are all available in the 1920 x 1080 format.

In this package are the following graphics:

• Black Gradient
• Red Gradient
• White Gradient
• Blue

These are perfect if you're looking for a lower third graphic. You can simply use these and add text in front of the images.

iMovie Integration Instructions

Easy steps to apply to any iMovie project:

• From any iMovie Project, drag and drop the Swish onto the location of the track that you wish to use.
• Select the dragged image and in the Video Overlay settings, make sure that cutaway is selected.
• You can stretch out the image to last as long as you wish.
• Then add the text track over the Video Overlay.

1992 Election Montage from WRKO

November 5, 2016 by cryan.com

The day after the 1992 election, November 11, 1992, Jerry Williams started his afternoon radio show with this montage. It's a collection of sound bites from the election mix in with the song 'Back in the High Life Again' by Steve Winwood.

The quality of the audio isn't all that great because I recorded this from Concord, Massachusetts which didn't get a very strong signal from WRKO.

Top Song of the 80s

October 29, 2016 by cryan.com

If you're involved with an 80s theme party, check out this list of the number one song of each year..

When I was helping planning for an 80s party, I was very surprised that no one else had a list of the number one songs of that year. (This should be in any 1980s playlist!)

Number one songs of each year

There is no album that has all ten songs. You need to rip/mix/burn your own album. This playlist has 10 songs and is 43 Minutes long (85.4 MB)

What about Michael Jackson?

Michael Jackson had lots of hits, but none of his songs actually made it long enough to be number 1 of the year. His best song was Billy Jean in 1983, but the Police "Every Breath You Take" spent more time at number one. Check out the Billboard's list of popular Michael Jackson songs.

Bonus Idea

Listen to iHeart Radio and you might get lucky and capture Casey Kasem announcing the number one song of that year. Wouldn't it be cool to have that played as a lead into the song?

Check out this as an example:

Best Summer Songs

June 12, 2016 by cryan.com

This weekend I was busy putting together a playlist of the best songs of summer. The songs would be played as background music at a school field day.

The goal was to find songs that mean summer, not songs that we may remember because they were popular in a summer that we remember.

Here's the list that I came up with:

Pat Buchanan in 1996

May 29, 2016 by cryan.com

An audio clip of the debate from the 1996 Republican Presidential Primary debate. I believe that is Pat Buchanan response to the question, "What is your vision for America."

Let me tell you where I stand
You know where I stand
I will fight to be the most Pro-Life President in the history of this country.
I will stop illegal Immigration cold.
There will be no more $50 billion bailouts.
We will end foreign aid
There will be no more American troops in Bosnia.
Downsize our Government.
Cut taxes on the American people
and we will restore the Constitutional Republic of the founding father's dream.
That is a conservative vision and a conservative agenda.
Senator Dole has no vision.
and when there is no vision, the people will perish.

The last line in the speech is a quote from Proverbs 29:18 - "Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he."

Golden Gate Coverage

April 17, 2016 by cryan.com

Bay Bridge Cranes Coverage on KGO

April 2, 2016 by cryan.com

Big changes this week over at KGO. Here's the announcement from March 31st:

Cumulus Media announced Thursday, many KGO Radio and KFOG employees were laid off due to restructuring purposes.

Legendary talk show host Ronn Owens signed off from KGO Radio for the last time, but his fans will be able to follow him to another station.

Owens has dominated Bay Area radio for 40 years and is now moving to Cumulus Media sister station, KSFO.

When I lived in California, I enjoyed listening to KGO as I was traveling around the Bay Area. My office had a good radio signal and I would bring in my CC Radio and listen to all the things that were going on while I was working.

On the morning of May 1, 2002, KGO broke out of their traditional radio schedule to cover tall cranes that were being transported to the Port of Oakland from China. At the time, there was some concern that the cranes might be too high to go under the bridge.

Let's step back in time and listen to the KGO Bay Bridge coverage:

Complementary Bahamas Cruise

September 25, 2015 by cryan.com

Earlier this week I got a robot call to take a survey and I would get 2 tickets for a "Complementary Bahamas Cruise" for taking time to answer the questions. The survey was basically inquiring if I would be willing to try some new muscle medicine that would be available only by a prescription. It also appeared that the survey was doing some data gathering such as asking how many people were in the household. Since I there was no penalty for giving the wrong answer, I volunteered some unique data.

About 10 minutes later, the phone rang and it was a live person congratulating me on the Complementary Bahamas Cruise. The lady went on to talk about the cruise on the Grand Celebration. While she was talking, I was Googling all about the cruise boat and the scam. I found out that the Grand Celebration is basically more of a shuttle boat than a cruise line. There's lots of information about the cruise on Yelp and Trip Advisor. Then read what a news station found out about the scam.

I played along with the whole scam pretending to want to go on the cruise. The longer they talk to me the less time they will talk to someone who isn't educated about the scam.

Surprise Surprise...It turns out that it isn't all free. Apparently you have to pay the $59 dollars per person in taxes otherwise, you can't get off the island.

Suddenly this complementary cruise was now going to cost $118. Once I heard that money was involve it was time to end it.( Also I am sure that this "payment" wouldn't be refundable.)

I ended the call simply by telling the person that we only carry American Express. That shocked the scammer and the called ended shortly after, but not before I heard a strange blimp sound.

Thanks to SoundCloud, you can hear the ending part of the conversation. This is perfectly legal recording because the operator started off the call letting me know that they were recording the call for quality purposes. Its only fair that I have a personal copy of the call.

The moral of this story is that if someone calling you with some complementary deal, chances are there will be some kind of catch. However, I encourage you to play along with the scam and keep them on the phone as long as possible. Have fun playing the "Wow, this is the best deal ever!" customer. Then make the call as difficult for the operator as possible. Try to get them to hang up on you.