I am a terrible note taker
There. I said it.
While some people struggle to find a system to organise what I can only assume to be an encyclopaedic volume of written materials, you can give me the most streamlined, efficient and lowest friction scheme and I will, within twenty four hours of committing to it, stop using it.
Notebooks, org mode, obsidian, GTD, kettlestan, you name it and I’ve looked at it and thought “ooh, this seems like an excellent idea” and manifestly failed to do anything with it. Which is a shame because my workload (although less than it used to be) is heavy and my skills at procrastination deserve formal recognition.
Regardless of what I commit to, I end up keeping it all in my head or I try to make a mental note of which document or one of the 16000 emails the information is in.
Clearly this is not an Optimal way of living but somehow I am completely incapable of changing this!
Brew - “Couldn’t find manifest matching bottle checksum”
This is just a quick note mainly for myself but also for others, if it manages to turn up on a search of some description.
Problem: Installing packages on Brew returns: “Couldn’t find manifest matching bottle checksum”
I presumed that this was unique to running the Sequoia beta, but apparently not. The fix:
rm -rf "$(brew --cache)"Emacs? Are you mad?
Because I have a modern M3 Macbook Pro, it is only right that I use an editor that is fast approaching fifty years old.
That makes me sound a bit hipster, so perhaps I should clarify - while I have been aware, broadly, of emacs, for most of my Life In Computers, it has only been since I tried to get a handle on Tidal Cycles that I’ve really started to understand emacs.
I say “understand”. Anyone reading this will probably nod sagely when I suggest that this may not represent anything like actual understanding.
Really, the purpose of this post is to try out the markdown mode. S’alright!
It’s for the birds
Seabirds, in this case. On Titchwell Marsh, an RSPB Reserve on the North Norfolk coast.
A brief outing to trial the CM4s, and despite the shoestring approach, I am happy with these mics. It wasn’t a proper AB test, but I much prefer them to the Clippys that people are keen on - it is a much richer sound (although the omnis do have their place) but I’m probably approaching it from a live sound/music direction rather than from a sound recordists view.
Heckin’ windy, though. Even the dead cats struggled with the breeze so if I were doing it again then I might be looking at a) a blimp or b) an old fashioned wind break (much to the consternation of the professional twitchers).
Inadvertent Dark Ambient
I forgot to note in the last post that the kit list also includes a rather fine contact mic (A JRF C-Series, you should buy one as they’re made by the artist) which today, instead of doing any real work, has resulted in a 3 minute track that could, if you listen gently enough, qualify as an actual dark ambient piece.
The instrument, of course, is a traditional Aga oven, left to go cold.
Behold! I never thought I’d ever boast about being able to mic one of these up…
Cold Aga
A New Start
Yes, yes. Frequent updates and all that.
As alluded to previously, I have had a bit of an obsession vis a vis field recordings. The kit list has now expanded to include:
- Zoom F6
- Zoom H5
- 1 pair Clippy omni-lavs + stereo bar
- 1 pair Line Audio CM4 Cardio + (really heavy) stereo bar (with handy markings!)
- 1 JRF C-Series contact mic
I do need to sort out the mic stand situation, alongside the general lack of cases, but I think we’re there or thereabouts. The next trick, of course, will be to get out and do actual recordings.
Some sample audio I quite like - Squabbling rooks from a nearby rookery, recorded with the CM4s using ORTF spacing. The dripping onto the decking is annoying, but that’s the rain for you. The target audio was about 80m (as the rook flies) from the mics, and were off axis by about 90 degrees, so the quality is excellent. I do like the open sound you get from the ORTF layout, I’m starting to become a big fan.
I have had the OS maps out looking for some suitably distant spaces, but of course anthropogenic noise is always going to be an issue in the UK - you’re never more than a few miles from a road and a big trunk like the A1 (other big trunks are available) is going to dominate the soundscape for miles around. One of the big reasons for putting my hands in my pockets for the LM6s is for the off-axis rejection. The rooks, for example, would have had some real background noise if it were the clippys. I am going to do a side by side comparison at some point just to see how bad it is (or not bad - I remain open!)