Holidays, procrastination & tech
I went on my first holiday in nearly 4 years. It was lovely. Four days on the Isle of Arran and I barely scratched the surface, will definitely go back aiming for better weather so I can put a drone up and get the mics out!
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