I. equipment to buy
CAMS production classes require students buy a 500 GB harddrive with Firewire 800 and USB. CAMS recommends bus-powered, ruggedized hard drives of 1 TB or larger. An hour of footage transcoded as Apple ProRes 422 can take about 65 GB of space on your drive.
...
Students wishing to buy their own PCM-based audio recorder might wish to consider a model with XLR inputs, such as the Zoom H4n available from the CAMS Production Office. IMPORTANT: devices such as the Edirol R-09 or Tascam [DR-05|http://tascam.com/product/dr-05/specifications/], DR-07 or DR-08 might suffice for homework assignments but not Comps projects. These devices have 1/8" mini phono plug inputs and not XLR inputs. It's possible to purchase XLR-to-1/8" adapters and physically connect a professional mic. However, one test made with such a device and several mics in a suitably quiet environment produced a recording with a level of self-noise accompanying signal that would be unacceptable in a professional production setting. The device fared much better using its built-in mics on stereo mode, with special care to noise generated by handling the device.
...
11. I will not bring food or drink of any kind into the Media Lab (136 Weitz) except during receptions such as orange couch sessions.
IV. other useful things
How to make clicking a mailto: link in a Web page launch Zimbra.