ShowerUp - How To Help

There are so many ways to help ShowerUp serve our friends in need here in Nashville! Here is the website where you can learn more about what we do: www.showerup.org

DONATIONS:

On the website, there is a “Donate” button available if you would like to make a monetary donation. For those who prefer to mail a check, the mailing address is: ShowerUp, 5016 Spedale Ct., #235, Spring Hill, TN 37174

There is also a ShowerUp Amazon wish list available here: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/dl/invite/48qSaPl

There are some needs that are constant all year long like underwear, socks and walkable shoes. This time of year, the needs increase substantially as our friends without shelter struggle to stay safe and warm. The following is a list of current needs. If you are local and have some of these items you no longer need, please let us know if you would like to share them with our less fortunate neighbors, and we will make that happen. 

Just some of the supplies we’ve already received.

Just some of the supplies we’ve already received.

Clothing Needs

Men & Women’s gently used comfortable/walkable shoes, work boots, non-skid shoes, rain boots

  • Underwear / Socks / Bras / Belts

  • Coats / Jackets

  • Sock Hats / Gloves (a constant cold weather request)

  • Jeans / Khakis / Dickies work pants / Sweat pants

  • Long sleeve/cold weather shirts

  • Thermal underwear (absolute gold for our peeps) 

(NOTE: Please do not send shorts/summer clothes at this time. We have very limited storage space.  Fall/winter clothing is bulky and desperately needed and will take up all of the space we have. If you have warm weather clothing you would like to donate, we would be thrilled to accept it next Spring!) 

Other Community Needs

  • Backpacks & string bags

  • Tents

  • Blankets / Pillows

  • Rain ponchos

  • Hand warmers 

ShowerUp Truck Needs

  • Toiletries (especially hotel/travel size)

  • Disposable Gloves (for cleaning showers)

  • Lawn and leaf size garbage bags

  • Bath towels and wash cloths (gently used)

Some folks find they have some items on the lists they no longer want/need, and send them our way. 

Some people decide to ask friends, family, neighbors or people in their workplace or church if they have items to contribute, and take up a collection. 

Others choose a specific item (shoes/coats/underwear/socks/hats/gloves), and do a collection drive for that one particular thing. 

Lastly, there are those who like to shop, and stop in at places like Good Will to pick up discounted items to donate.(NOTE: Every 1st Saturday of the month, everything in the store is ½ price at GW.)  

VOLUNTEER:
If you are interested in volunteering, we are under the Jefferson Street Bridge every Sunday from 1:30-3:30 providing showers, toiletries and community. We can always use your help passing out towels, toiletries, etc., cleaning showers, truck set up/take down, and most of all offering warm smiles and conversation to the friends who come to see us. This is the link with more detailed information on volunteer needs and our exact location on Sundays:  http://www.showerup.org/location-details

Thanks so much for your interest in ShowerUp, and helping us bring comfort to our neighbors who are struggling in the Nashville community! 

Baby Steps to Better Sounding Podcasts

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I listen to podcasts. 

I edit podcasts.

I love that this medium has seen the tremendous growth that it has over the last few years. No matter how esoteric the subject, there is probably a podcast about it. The chances are also good that the audio quality is, shall we say, lacking. Let's see if we can do something about it. I'd like to propose a small step in the right direction. 

First, let's get some caveats and assumptions on the table. For the purpose of this discussion, I am going to assume that GarageBand is the editor that most folks use for their burgeoning podcast empires. The underlying technique is useful regardless of your choice of editor. The steps will just be different. I am also going to assume that folks know GarageBand well enough to add effect plugins to tracks, as well as the master output.

What I am proposing are two simple adjustments that will help raise the bar for consistent audio across varied listening environments. It will not magically make your podcast sound like NPR. It might even reveal other shortcomings in your recordings (EQ, mic technique, reverberation, etc). This is OK. That's how we improve.

OK. Let's talk 'audio levels'. When I listen to podcasts, differences in audio levels are more frustrating than virtually any other issue. This is most evident in podcasts with two or more participants. Quite often one person's voice will be louder than the other's. If I'm listening with headphones or earbuds, I can usually find a volume setting that's tolerable. All bets are off when I listen in the car. The inherent background noise in a moving vehicle makes those quieter voices very hard to hear. I find myself fiddling with the volume constantly.

Let's see if we can improve this.

In GarageBand, we are going to add a compression plugin to individual audio tracks, as well as the master output, and make a few simple tweaks. Let me introduce you to AUDynamicsProcessor. This is a basic AudioUnit compression plugin that's available in GarageBand. Start by adding this to each voice track in your project. We are going to focus on making two simple adjustments. Take a look the screenshot and notice the two controls highlighted by the circles.

Make these adjustments while listening to a representative section of the voice track your working on. When I say 'representative', I mean a section where the voice sounds 'conversational'; no yelling, no whispering, etc. Grab the point on the graph and drag it down the line until you see a tiny bit of red where the two lines diverge (see screenshot). Next, grab the 'Master Gain' control and slowly drag it to the right until the blue level meter dances around the 0dB mark.

That's it.

Now use your ears. Adjust the control on the graph to find what sounds best to you. Make very small adjustments. You should be able to hear the difference. Keep an eye on that level meter to ensure that the overall level remains near 0dB.

Repeat this same process on all voice tracks. Once all of those are done, add this plugin to the master track and repeat the process. This should give you a podcast with much more consistent levels.

Give this a shot. I think you'll find that it makes a difference. 

Adding a Mac OS X Lion Recovery Partition to a 1TB Drive

Apple’s Lion Recovery Disk Assistant allows users to create a bootable recovery disk on an external hard drive (1 GB or larger). I have a 1TB external drive that I use for backing up my MacBook Pro. I figured that adding the recovery partition to this drive would make for a nice backup/recovery solution to have ‘just in case’.

When you run the Assistant, it will ask you which mounted external drive to use. There’s also a warning that it will erase any existing data from that drive.

I can live with that…I have backups of my backups.

The problem is that the partition that’s created is hidden. If I try to format or partition the drive to use the remaining free space, the hidden partition is overwritten.

Yeah…I know…this isn’t rocket science.

My solution: Using Disk Utility, create two partitions on the drive. Set the size of one of the partitions to 1 GB. Once those are created, launch the Assistant again and choose the 1GB partition as the drive to use for recovery. The Assistant will hide, format and copy the necessary files to the partition, leaving you with a partition to use for backups.

Happy Easter

“Non-Christians seem to think that the Incarnation implies some particular merit or excellence in humanity. But of course it implies just the reverse: a particular demerit and depravity. No creature that deserved Redemption would need to be redeemed. They that are whole need not the physician. Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it.”

- C.S. Lewis

Be it a sunrise service, an Easter egg hunt (or a lazy afternoon sipping a latte on the veranda of a hipster coffeeshop while making fun of other people’s silly holiday rituals), do this one thing today: Steal one quite moment, bow your head and say ‘thank you’.

Start Caring...

A simple start would involve each of us learning to care just a little more about a handful of things that simply aren’t allowed to leave with us—whether today, tomorrow, or whenever. Because, I really believe a lot of nice things would start to happen if we also stopped waiting to care. A whole lot of nice things.

You know he’s right. Stop with the dismissiveness of something so seemingly trite. Why don’t you try it.

Go ahead.

I dare you.

Care More

I love the acerbic wit of Mr Mann.

He nails it though.

Care more.

That might be our problem.

And by ‘our’, I mean ‘my’. But it makes me feel better to lump everyone else in with me, so deal with it.

We often toss out resolutions with the best of intentions. The problem is this unspoken and unconscious expectation that someone or something will magically show up and keep us on-task. That doesn’t happen and the resolution gets flushed just like Mr Mann’s goldfish. We might feel bad for a brief moment. But hey…no external influence or consequence means no motivation for compliance.

I wonder if the solution is for us to care more. The problem there is that it requires us to work harder. Our motivation has to come from within. You know…discipline …things like that.

Maybe that’s why resolutions don’t often ‘stick’.

I have a hunch that caring more might help our situation.

And by ‘our’, I mean ‘my’…