Podcasting: microphone woes

I recently purchased a professional microphone set-up, called the MXL Desktop Recording Kit, marketed as an all-in-one solution for podcasters. It’s a battery-powered condenser mic and it comes shipped with a nice little tripod and a number of connections, including a standard mini-jack found on all computer sound cards. This baby was £60 plus shipping from the USA.

I’ve got the mic now, and I’m expecting it to be worth the money, except I can’t hear what it sounds like. Why? Because the crummy sound card on my laptop doesn’t have a “mic in” socket. And no, I wasn’t stupid enough to buy this mic without checking. The laptop has a socket with a little microphone symbol over it, but it turns out this is a “line in” socket. So why put a mic symbol on it, eh? Beats me. I tried the mic in another laptop by a different manufacturer, and it was the same story. I tried it in my work PC; same story. I’m seeing a pattern here. Basically, if you’ve got a PC with a basic three-socket sound card labelled headphones, speakers and mic, that really means headphones, speakers and line in.

I checked for support on online forums. Somebody suggested turning on the “mic boost” function in the audio control panel. Wonderful advice … not. All that does is amplify everything, including the background hiss (which sort of negates the reason for buying a professional mic, doesn’t it?). The bottom line is, a proper mic socket is much more sensitive than a line in socket, so there’s no solution except to obtain the right input.

So, what do you do with a laptop that you can’t plug a new sound card into? You get an external USB sound card. I’m hunting eBay for one right now, but they keep going up to around £50. A basic one will done. All I need to see are the magic words “line in” and “mic in” labelled on separate sockets.

This is all pretty new to me. Keep me right on this, DJ Eddie.

Where’s Chion?

Okay, it’s almost the end of September, and regular blog-readers will know that I intended to publish Chion at some point this month. Am I going to make it? No. October, then? Maybe not.

Here’s the deal. Earlier in the year, I entered a short story called “Time Travel for Dummies” into The James White Award competition. The results are due in October, and I have to believe there’s a chance I can win (otherwise I wouldn’t have entered, would I?).

My guess is, the magic words “I won this year’s James White Award” would go a long way to attracting the attention of a literary agency. And in order to approach an agency, I need to have a fresh, unpublished product available to shop around. So, it makes sense to hold off from self-publishing Chion until I see whether I’m in with a shot with the big boys.

After all, as indie writers, finding an agent and being traditionally published is our big aspiration.

Midnight Pictures goes broadcast quality

Several months ago, I discovered a mutual interest in filmmaking with a guy called Jonny Martin, who handles tech support for the school. On Monday past, he announced that he’d invested three thousand pounds in a whopping great video camera, the Canon XL2. Last night, I introduced Jonny to Andy for the first time, and the three of us had a look at the camera. The first thing that hit me was the realisation that the photo doesn’t do justice to the sheer size of the beast. And as far as cameras are concerned, big means good. Here’s the spec. The most exciting feature for me is the film-like texture the camera can generate, because one major factor that has held back Midnight Pictures’ credibility is the “camcorder look” of our movies. We tested the camera last night in various lighting conditions and were especially impressed with how it handled poorly lit areas. Excessive grain has always been the curse of cheap camcorders, when filming in poor light; with the Canon XL2, we filmed the exterior of my house, with no illumination but the porch lights, and it looked beautiful, with very little trace of grain.

So, there are no prizes for guessing who’ll be doing camera on the next Midnight Picture. Long-time readers of the blog will recall Andy and I drawing the outfit to a close about a year ago. Speaking for myself, even back then I sort of knew that all we needed a break.

And what is the next Midnight Picture? All I’ll say at this point is that the working title is Not Alone, but I’m determined to think up something better.

Getting back into gaming

I’ve been thinking about getting back into gaming for a while, and over the weekend I decided to bite the bullet and purchase an xBox 360. I went for the full pack, which has a wireless controller, built-in hard drive, and xBox Live goodies. I’m not intending to do internet gaming, and I only realised later how useless the HD is going to be without the net. You can rip your CDs to the hard drive and store your photos. That’s about it. It won’t let you copy your existing MP3 collection, whether obtained legally or not. The HD is capable of storing and playing WMV videos, too, but the only way to get them on there is to download (or buy) them from xBox Live. The xBox even has a USB port, which can support pen drives. It’s just such a shame that a piece of kit, capable of so much more, is held back because of piracy (I presume).

I’m really into online DVD rentals, and when I receive a disc that has four episodes, I usually image it onto my computer and convert it to xVid for watching later (I have a nifty living-room player capable of playing that format). I’m not building up a collection of pirated media; as soon as I watch the files, I delete them. If you want to nit-pick about it, technically it’s breaking the law, but all I’m doing is time-shifting - allowing myself to get the disc returned and another on its way to me while I watch the current stuff. It would have been nice to be able to use the xBox as a buffer for these videos. But it’s not allowed. Had I researched just how restrictive the HD was before purchase, I would have bought the basic Core System and a memory card for game saves.

But no matter. I bought the machine to play games on, and how does it fare? Excellent. I’ve bought Perfect Dark Zero and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. PDZ is a first-person shooter, where you play a sort of female James Bond. Beautiful game, tough learning curve, and difficult controls to master. I really miss the mouse-control of a PC, but I’ll persevere. I think it’s going to be a great game when I get some practice. Oblivion is a massive role-playing game. I was initially a little put-off by all the statistics (you know, health, fatigue, magic, etc., etc.), but once I’d gotten a feel for the game, I fell in love with it. There was one particular breathtaking moment, when I first emerged from the castle and looked around at the stunning landscape, and I realised, “It’s like a whole world, and I can go anywhere.”

Beating up school kids

For the fourth year running, the Junior Filmmakers Club kicked off this afternoon with a new bunch of kids. I think this is the only after-school activity that’s running on a Friday. A dangerous move, maybe, with the weekend looming. But then, I’m not looking for a high turn-out, just a dedicated turn-out. About eight pupils showed up, which is a good number. We spent the afternoon testing out various camera tricks, including how to fake a slap across the face and other forms of attack. See below; I’ve made a little video for you …

If you haven’t watched last year’s production, Cat Trap, don’t forget that it’s currently available for download over on the sidebar.

[ Play Movie ]

Going for walks at night

I love walking, and for many years I’ve had the unusual custom of going walking at night. There’s nothing creepy or vampiric in this habit; I just love the solutide and the absense of traffic noise. Nothing but me and my MP3 player. Usually I’ll head outdoors for an hour around 10.00 p.m., but occasionally as late as 11.00. Of course, night-time being what night-time is, you occasionally have an encounter that you wouldn’t normally experience in the daylight hours … like last night.

I was walking down Killicomaine Road. Bins had been placed outside most houses, ready to be emptied by the bin-men the following day - except the bin right in front of me had already been partially emptied … on the street. About forty metres further, I saw a gang of boys in their mid-to-late teens hanging around, making noise. And on the way up to them, every bin had been knocked over. (Thankfully, none but the first had spilled its contents.)

I proceeded to lift the first bin up onto its base. As I reached the second bin, I bent down and lifted it, too. Likewise with the third. Why? Because I care about the neighbourhood and because I don’t want to be spineless (which is what modern society teaches you to be).

By this stage, one of the guys saw what I was doing and started getting sarcastic: “Those wee rascals! The youth of today - what’s the world coming to?” That kind of stuff.

The boys were on the opposite side of the street. I didn’t once look over or even make eye-contact. But as soon as I raised the final bin, suddenly one of them (too drunk to notice what I had been up to until that moment) shouted angrily, “WHAT THE F*CK!”

Guys like that amaze me. They are on self-destruct without even knowing it. There I was, six-foot-three and built like a tank, with a intimidating goatee board, and this guy had no hesitation in speaking his mind. For all he knew, I could have been a knife-carrying psychopath on the prowl, rather than a gentle giant. The trouble with guys like him is that, sooner or later, they pick the wrong fight. About ten years ago, I was attacked by a similarly tempered teenage punk. Years later, he ended up getting murdered. (The answer to the question that’s in your mind is “no,” incidentally.)

Anyway, back to last night. I kept walking, and the only thing that pursued me was a string of verbal abuse. Mind you, the guy didn’t have much imagination; the best name he could come up with was “Speccy.”

I have a rule when someone tries to pick a fight with me (which doesn’t happen very often): I don’t engage and I don’t run. The reason I don’t engage is because I’ve never been a fighter (i.e. I have no practice and might end up hurt, or worse, humiliated). And the reason I don’t run is because I won’t be seen as a coward. However, I’ve made one exception to that rule. Once, I was out jogging (at night, of course), when some teenage guy I recognised came staggering along the street, singing his heart out. I remembered him as one of the kids I had gotten to know slightly a few years earlier, when I used to bring the Gospel to the neighbourhood (that’s another story!). He had always been a brat, poking fun at me as a Bible-carrying weirdo. But on that night, when he spotted me, he spoke to me with the kind of honesty that only drink can bring out in a person: “F*cking Christians! I’ll kill you! I’ll slit your throat!” (The Gospel was always like water off a duck’s back to this guy, but you’ve got to wonder what kind of an effect the Word of God is really having on a person, when they come out with words like these.) Anyway, when I encountered this guy, I was already running. So, heck, it didn’t seem like cowardice to keep on running.

But the worst thing about experiences like these is not the encounter itself, but the way your mind keeps wanting to replay what happened and to fantasise about differing outcomes. With the gang on Killicomaine Road, I just couldn’t keep myself from imagining something like this: I stop and turn to face the guy who had called me names. I remove my glasses. “There,” I say. “Not so speccy now. But you’re still a moron.” His face fills with rage and he strides across the road towards me. Unexpectedly, I deliver a swift kick between his legs. He doubles over and falls to his knees. I look angrily at his mates and shout, “Get this c*ck on a leash!”

I hate being like that. You have to really try hard to pull your mind away. I suppose it’s pride. Nobody likes to be seen to be a coward, even by a bunch of worthless teenage parasites. So, walking away rather than running is my compromise. But what if the guy had advanced on me without provocation. Would I stand or run? I think pride might force me to stand (or at least walk away without it turning into a power-walk), but maybe I should aspire to the standard that the Shaolin Master once set when speaking to Caine (David Carradine) in Kung Fu:

“As we prize peace and quiet above victory, there is a simple and preferred method [for dealing with force]… Run away.”

Junior high ninjas

The photo shows one of the few items that still remain in my possession since childhood (I sold everything else on eBay). At the moment, I have it hanging in my hall. I suppose you might call it a Japanese dart-board, although those holes weren’t caused by darts. They were the result of hundreds of shuriken throws (shuriken, for the uneducated and less geeky among us, is the proper name for a ninja throwing star).

Back in junior high, this kind of stuff was all the rage. Some of us even made our own nunchakas by sawing a broom handle in two, covering it in black tape, and joining the two halves with a chain. Ah, those were the days. I recall that the only fun I had in metalwork class was when I would sneakily cut shuriken out of sheets of copper, behind the teacher’s back. But of course, that wasn’t like having the real thing. Thankfully, there was a shop in the neighbouring town of Lurgan (where I bought the board) that sold all manner of martial arts gear, including genuine shuriken. Unfortunately, today, any that I owned are lost.

Shuriken are now illegal to sell in this country, and it’s no wonder. We brought these things to school, purely out of innocent fun, not considering that, technically speaking, we were bringing a concealed weapon. I remember practising with mine in the playground one lunch-time, throwing it at a tree that bordered with the neighbouring high school. Simultaneously, there was a guy on the other side of the fence taking motorcycle lessons. I didn’t miss my intended target, but I do remember him stopping the bike and giving me an earful. Once, I heard about another more dangerous near-miss: my friend Andrew put his hand on the door of the gym and a shuriken struck the wood right between his fingers. And hey, there were no secret ninjas in Killicomaine Junior High School; nobody’s aim was that good. The thing could easily have struck him in the hand, or the head. And that reminds me of my other friend Maurice. He was unlucky enough to end up with one protruding from his head for a time (incidentally, he lived to tell the tale).

Despite all that, my board is lonely without shuriken - which brings me to my question: does anyone know how I can get a couple of them? I have scoured eBay, and all I can find are a load of toy cosplay shuriken for anime custume parties. Help me, somebody. I don’t want to play darts. Besides, a few shuriken would be useful to have on hand if I should hear the floorboards creaking in the middle of the night.