Passive voice must not be used.
January 23rd 2006 -
I’ve been very, very busy over the past week, and this week is likely to be just as busy. Last week, Anna made a short film “Westenders”, for which I did the technical stuff like camerawork and sound etc. (which turned out very well despite my fears that her enthusiasm would lead to it being somewhat in bad taste – I just get paranoid sometimes.) Thus, there were many late nights and frantic work to get the film finished before the tropfest due date, and we just squeezed it in – I ended up doing a few hour’s worth of editing just before running the Wednesday D&D game. And there was lots of preparation for the SVG Working Group meeting, which just started today.
This week, Ev’s staying with us for a week, and so is Chris L. from SVG. Ev and I have re-recorded five old Spit songs: The Chorus Rhymes With Fire, The Mackeral, Metaphysical Meanderings, Just Fine, and Stuff The Whales. We gave Garage Band a try, and although it’s a little primitive, it did just fine in the end, though we had to start over on TCRWF when we realised we’d forgotten a verse – it’s just not as good at cutting and pasting as the more professional packages.
On the very, very bright side: I found out – at last! – what was wrong with the FocusRite, and it was, of course, very simple. Ever since I got it, there has been the occasional circumstance where the audio out of the FocusRite (which is a compression thingy and power source for a good quality Rode NT2 microphone) had some buzz on it. Incredibly frustrating! Sometimes, it’d even pick up radio.
The problem? The entire unit is mono, and I was connecting to it with a stereo cable, because I didn’t realise it’d matter. In retrospect, of course, it’s obvious: the FocusRite connector inside the box had two contacts, and the stereo cable had three, so the third contact was just floating, or connected to the case, or something. And thus, because the other side would pick up the voltage on that third wire, which would be a buzzing sound. As soon as I connected with a mono cable instead of a stereo one (which I’m quite sure I’ve done before, by accident, and thought that the problem had solved itself) it worked again. Hooray!
Anyway. Chris & Amanda came over on Sunday and we had a BBQ lunch and recorded backup vocals on “Just Fine” and did a new version of “Stuff the Whales”, and then they took off and Jon & Kate came over and Ev went out to see Elvis Costello, and we played music and watched “Lost” and “Battlestar Galactica” with Chris L., who must have been horribly jet-lagged (he arrived at 6:00am on Sunday morning from France), but he was very patient and agreeable.
Today? Frantic lack-of-organisation, including a very poor internet connection at the hotel, for the SVG WG which *really does require a very excellent internet connection, which I specifically asked for*. Everyone’s a little bit grumbly, and I’m feeling very guilty and disorganised, but there’s just been so much happening lately, so very much…