I thought it a nuisance that I’d had a fairly energetic (by my standards) weekend planned, not after, but just before, the day of my liberation from my hand splint. It was irritating in the sense that I kept thinking how much easier all of this would have been if delayed a day or two. But I also thought there was some benefit in spending the last two days of bondage busy, rather than sitting around wishing the time away.
(The splint is gone now, by the way. Free at last! Oh the joy of having ten (OK, nine—one needs a little work) fingers to use again!)
Saturday I did a lecture for a Sons of Norway lodge in Minneapolis. They were an excellent, attentive audience, they paid me a nice honorarium, and they bought books way out of proportion to their numbers. That’s pretty much my definition of a good lecture day.
Sunday was Svenskarnasdag (Swedish Day) at Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis. I brought the minimum of my equipment, and sat trying to sell books all day, letting others (mostly younger) do the fighting. Which is probably as it should be. The weather was iffy and the crowds thin, but I got my RDA of Vitamin D from the sunshine that came and went.
A friend who owns a big, powerful PC let me load up my book trailer movie project on his machine. It was exhilarating to finally run it in on something that could handle the file sizes, rather than my laptop. On the downside, better equipment made several problems apparent. My big challenge is sound. I’m fairly certain I should have done the project in some other program than Windows Live Movie Maker (even the old Windows Movie Maker), because I could really use some functionalities this stripped down software lacks. I’m reluctant to start from scratch again, though.
I think I could fix it up with recordings and overdubs. But that’s a further problem. Using the mike I’ve got, I have to be right on top of it to get a decent sound level, and that generates popping and wind noise.
Anybody know any cheap cheats for making a filter at home? I’m really not able to spring for a professional microphone at this point in my career.
Try covering the microphone with some layers of fabric or a foam of some sort.
You could always try doing this. Doesn’t look very pretty, but I’m pretty sure it would work.
That looks promising. I suppose I’ll have to buy a woman’s sock, though, not having a woman in house.
There may be other ways of doing it. There are a ton of instructional videos on YouTube about making a pop filter. It really helps with one’s recording, though.