The Daily Report

Last year, I finally gave up on what had previously been my main criteria in a cell phone: a physical keyboard. As a result, I got a newer and spiffier phone than I’ve ever had before, and one of the things I noticed when playing around with it was that it made for a far better recording device than the headsets or built-in mics I’d used before.

I quickly tried to make use of this with a few small, side projects that I used as incentives for miscellaneous crowdfunding, but I started to run into a snag pretty early on that has just gotten worse: while it performed flawlessly in my initial tests, it seemed like the more I tried to rely on it, the more it would tend to skip and distort the recording at odd moments.

The problem has only been getting more pronounced. I’m not sure why that is, but it’s really affected my Tales of MU worldbuilding podcasts, which were supposed to be a quick and easy thing that would answer some reader demand and then move on from. Because I can’t tell when and where it skips until I play it back, I often have to throw out entire takes as unusable.

Well, the good news is that I don’t have to wrestle with this anymore. Through an act of reader generosity, I now have a decent USB condenser microphone. I’ve been testing it this early afternoon, figuring out things like optimal distance and speaking volume. I haven’t quite worked out how the accompany mic stand is supposed to work, as there are no instructions for its assembly/deployment and I’m a bit reluctant to just force it. I’ll probably look for any demo videos/reviews on YouTube after this that might show it in action.

This is going to be a huge deal in getting more worldbuilding podcasts up, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a number of things I started last summer when it seemed like my phone was going to be a serviceable recording solution which I left off in the middle due to frustration (and then forgot about the frustration and committed to doing the worldbuilding podcasts).

So, in the near future, expect more of the MU podcasts. In the slightly beyond that future, expect more filk, satirical relaxation tracks, et cetera.

The State of the Me

Doing well. In addition to the gift of a microphone and webcam, I also was gifted some art supplies  and vitamin supplements yesterday. In addition to the practical value of these gifts, it just makes me feel good about myself that people cared enough to do this.

Plans For Today

Man, you have no idea how much I want to say “play around with microphone”, but I have a bunch of writing I need to do.