In a reversal of recent efforts, I waited until the morning warmed up before heading out for the walk. The rest of the day has been delayed accordingly.

I talked about writing – particularly the shift from “writing about the cat” to “visiting with Roger” and reading Wandering Inn.

What a long strange trip it’s been.

Didn’t talk much today. A little about the usual suspects.

Wandered around about the batch files. (Note: the Dropbox link didn’t work this morning). Talked a lot about Wandering Inn and how it’s a very interesting story structure.

Almost 5:30 before I got up. I’ve been running a bit late all morning. There’s still time in the day.

ETA: To save y’all the trouble, learned about using wget to grab the file and mutagen to tag it. Haven’t spent the time to try it yet, because Roger needs me, but I’m on the path. Thanks.

I’m pretty scattered this morning with very little to talk about beyond the morning I spent at the KIA dealership.

I’ve stripped down the post production stream to the minimum steps to get the file from my phone to the server, encoded as an mp3. I didn’t add a duplicated second track to make it stereo. Didn’t do any “cleanup” of the audio. Didn’t even use Audacity to convert it, just a ffmpeg commandline call. Let’s see if that helps.

I talked about the problems from yesterday, visiting Roger, playing X4, and reading Wandering Inn. I’m almost done with book 2 and that series still astonishes me.

Another day, another trial. I think this file is marginally better but listening to it, I’m really not happy with the quality. Even with the mic gain pushed almost to nothing, I’m still getting clipping. It’ll have to do until I come up with something better. I’m open to suggestions.

I got the new mic and it’s not the panacea I hoped for. At least not entirely. The mic volume is still too hot and I noticed a lot of clipping. I tried a light clip repair through Audacity but it’s not ideal. I’ve got a lead on an app that lets me lower volumes on an app by app basis and I’m going to do some testing with that today and hope for a better file tomorrow.

Off to a slower start this morning in spite of getting up early again. Talked about finding an old friend (Ashley’s Book of Knots) and struggling to clean up the audio for this podcast. (A new mic is on order). I went back to the old phone to record until the new gear arrives. It’s not good but it’s better than the new phone – which doesn’t seem right. Also Square One with the van. Again. Tedious.

Oh, and I had to go back to listen. I did actually hit the Monk Post. Just it’s so automatic now, it didn’t register.

Finally. Lovely 40F morning with only a few clouds. Talked about writing a lot. Not much else.

The recorder flaked out on me around minute 21 and I had to clip out some weird, unintelligible bits in post production. Listening to the audio quality, I’m rather distressed that the new phone isn’t nearly as clear as the old recorder. I’m going to try to fix it.

ETA (10/5) Fixed it (again) and resaved it.