On Mac OS I use Sountrack Pro, and on iOS 5.1.1 iPad 2 I use a whole plethora of apps, including Hokusai and TwistedWave.

I just can’t wait to get my hands on some magical foam. Combined with my generous supply of rubber bands they will most definitely mean victory. The thing is that I’ve been wanting to make my own pistol grip for my Sennheiser m64 and now I think I know how I should go about it without spending a huge pile of money. I’d also like to find someplace here in Sweden that sell those gooseneck stands, seems very handy indeed.

/Magnus

Thank you so much for bringing a little bit of magic to my day.

However, I didn’t write, or even like this story. I thought that when the girlfriend discovered her boyfriend’s bullshit, her responses were unrealistically friendly, happy and supportive. I would have expected her to ask why he kept choosing to address his problems like a 4-year-old by repeatedly hiding and lying, when he could have chosen at any time to discuss them with her like an adult.

He spends the entire story trying to disenfranchise his girlfriend’s sexuality, and all she wants to do in response is laugh and reward him with sex? No, I don’t think so.

This is a man’s fantasy, and a man wrote this story. I just presented it with a rubber chicken.

I think that was why I didn’t mention colours of clothes at all – however I do think the comfort, close fit, and quiet principles apply for any recording environment, don’t you? Aside from that, I do agree that appropriate garb for the environment is a good principle regardless of audio and no matter what a person is doing.

I think what I learnt was that our mutual recording environments are incompatible, clothes-wise. That’s ok, I suppose I’ll manage to struggle on… What I’m wondering now is, if you’re colour blind (depending on what variety of colour blindness you have), what was it about my colours in particular which bugged you?

Anyhow, aside from that, I truly appreciate you coming along to read and comment and say nice stuff. Thank you.

I can better illustrate this by using two extremes – which you may find a bit humorous on reflection.

remember some of your earlier recordings made at the railway station………….let’s do a re-take, but this time you arrive wearing a ghillie or a yowie suit. What would the reaction be from the Station Master – would he have given you permission to sit there and record or would he have called the Guarda and had you removed? – but at least you would have kept warm!

Similarly if I were to take my recording gear wearing a suit or some other fancy garb and wander in the surrounding fields and woods here, then I would stand out like a sore thumb and soon be spotted and thrown off the land by the local farmer or gamekeeper.

There are also exceptions – here’s one – you could get a lovely recording of the bees in my garden during the summer months – especially with your purple dead-cat and other brightly-coloured clothes. However, you may also receive a lot of unwanted attention from them!

I think the subject of sound recording is so diverse that generalisations should be avoided where possible. A single set of rules and/or equipment cannot be applied to all aspects of the subject.

Having said that, I think you have produced a great article – colour – solarized images – what next!!!

ps: Did I mention the fact that I am colour-blind – true

And yes indeed, I remember many times getting in a position I regretted the next day because I got all sore from staying still for however long. I find that being still for any length of time is often surprisingly more stressful than moving. :p

Thank you for your comment, I’m so glad you found this useful, that’s great.

I find that getting the recording I want is easiest if I leave the effects settings strictly alone. I can always apply them later in a sound editor if necessary. I find that effects can mask parts of the signal which sometimes I can end up wishing I had or didn’t even know were there. My experience is that this is the best thing to do for field recording. I mean, I know they’re there and tempting to use and all pretty and gadgety and everything, but in this case, I think simple and easy is best.

So the only settings I use during recording are the record level, and I’d recommend that to all beginning audio recordists.

I hear you about the colours. My experience with colours and mic windscreen accessories is as follows:

- When recording nature, birds and insects have seemed more willing to tolerate a mic with colours from the blue side of the spectrum rather than red side.
- When recording in populated areas, I’ve been approached more times with suspicion and asked to switch off when I’ve used black or yellow, but the purple has been received by people much more warmly.

So that’s why I chose purple. I did make and use a black one too, which is how I know the difference.

The clothing was just what I had, and sound-wise it fitted the bill, I wasn’t actually thinking about the colours.

You raised a good point about the colours, I’ll have a think and observe and incorporate that more in my decision making. Thank you for bringing that to my attention.

There is one however – however – I don’t think much of your colour choice including dead cat, footware & clothing (I’m not not being personal here), especially if you intend recording outdoors for nature purposes or just blending in with the background.

Just to ensure clarity, when you said “it”, did you mean “a penis”?

Sure, men get erections, but men can get erections over practically anything at all, so the only thing I know for sure when I see an erection is that the penis is erect. That tells me nothing about the man’s state of mind otherwise, because as you say, attraction and arousal is more than physical for men as well as women.

I think you may be mistaken about the physical signs. I think all genders show pretty categorical signs of interest or disinterest. Is she still there talking to you? Is she still in the room? Is she sitting near you or far away? Does she seem animated or bored? I admit that I have more difficulty telling when women are interested in me than men, but then I have less experience with women, so I expect that will change over time. The signs are there, believe me, it’s just a matter of training yourself to notice them. And you can always ask, because you know, a worded answer is pretty informative too.

I’m guessing that what you’re actually saying is that you personally are unable to tell when a woman is attracted to you, and you find that problematic. I’m assuming you’re heterosexual, because if you were bi, then you’d know that you had the same problems with men.

And if you’ve had problems with women who didn’t know how to handle your penis pleasurably, then why not say something and show them? I’d've never learnt anything if my partners hadn’t spoken up and shown me what they liked.

As for your friend who couldn’t have intercourse, some people have issues which mutually exclude each other and sometimes there’s nothing you can do except work on your own self awareness. Extreme care and precise explicitness with words is an incredibly useful skill to have, and can lead to a lot of very wonderful things.

What gets – maybe not so much missed as downright suppressed – is that real satisfaction is more than just physical for men too. I noticed it a bit when I knew some teenage girls about 20 years ago. Some of them had a very ‘masculine’ attitude that would rather get pounded than delicate stuff, but I think that’s ‘flush of youth’ and they soon grow to expect more. It’s notable that those were the promiscuous ones – they evidently didn’t find it satisfying. We should be more like Latins (without overdoing the worship stuff) that the real sexual measure of a man is his ability to satisfy a woman, not the tape sort.

The trouble is that it is such an obvious thing and reaction so apparant. Women show few obvious physical signs of just how they’re feeling. It can be hard to convince a woman too that it doesn’t always need to be wrenched around like a poker in the fire to feel good (or maybe O-O in Japanese)

It must make a difference that men’s emotions will follow the physical, while with women it is much more the other way round (or rape could barely exist). So it’s possible to be physically finished but still irritably feeling incomplete with nothing to do about it. Reverse, it’s possible to feel satisfied but too tired for an actual ejaculation.

Where I got caught was a friend who couldn’t have intercourse. It didn’t matter to me but it did to her and trying to convince her that I couldn’t really want it unless she enjoyed – I’d see that as rape – went all the wrong way. She made me feel like she saw it as something I must need and she felt bad about not being able to supply. I saw it like there are some fetishes I like that border on yours (without the power emphasis) but having a good time with somebody that enjoys what they’re doing far outweighs wanting them to play games.

So I don’t find the reaction of the man in the story to be all that unusual. As far as I’m concerned, the most unrealistic fantasy part of the whole story is the girlfriend’s tolerant amused sexual arousal every time he acts like a dick. No matter which character has which gender in this story, the accommodating reaction of the transgressed-against partner is totally unimaginable to me in any reality I’ve encountered.

And thank you for your explanation of “post-feminist victim”, I hadn’t encountered that term before, and web searches turned up a only a few examples of it without defining it. A search for the term alone yielded one page of results. I must say, I haven’t personally encountered any people who fit that description.

‘Post-feminist victims’ are women with all the traditional ‘Victorian’ views about the general nastiness of sex as something men do to women for men, but expressed in feminist language, so instead of despising sexual women as ‘sluts’ they pity them as ‘sex objects’ – no better than ‘fallen women really’ – and similar.

But then, this is a fictional male sexual fantasy written by a man, so it’s only to be expected that he would fantasise about his unacceptable behaviour being rewarded with lots of sex.

One thing, what’s a “post-feminist victim”?

Are we talking about different things?

One problem I do have is that it takes a while for WordPress.com to send the correct content type in the feed so my enclosures aren’t recognized when I first post them.

The only alternative I can think of is to do a page or pages with audio previews and link to those from the podcast posts, because pages are excluded from the feed.

I hope that helped.

Any suggestions on how to have a enhanced podcast post with audio preview?

Since the player doesn’t support m4a I have to give a mp3 version for the player. But then, the mp3 always gets in the feed as the first enclosure, no matter what I do. The podcast subscribers then get only the mp3 file, not the m4a.

Regards,
–
Ornitologia

Questions about my accent aren’t annoying at all, but answering them would be telling.  

Your suggestion of a FAQ is a good idea, so thank you for that.   When I do get around to making one, I’ll put in about my refrainment from answering questions about my accent.  

“If you want to find my blog and can’t spell…”

I’m going to ask you a really annoying question now and you may want to put it in some sort of FAQ so you don’t have to answer it over and over again – which areas of the world help to make up your accent? I can hear a warm Irish lilt, a slight intonation of American and a little Scandinavian too… That might be totally wrong but you have a beautiful voice, either way!

Unfortunately, I don’t believe that I was actually able to add the duration to my feed. Did you see it in mine? I had assumed from other wordpress forum posts that it wasn’t possible, so if you did see it in mine, then I have no idea how I did it, sorry.

The blog title as podcast title is limiting. And I thought I could set my feedname in FB, but that didn’t work.
Same thing for the icon, actually. Set it on FB’s SmartCast (several times) and it doesn’t seem to stick.
I’ll probably use format-specific categories but one thing I don’t like is that the main feed will include all versions. FB does have media-specific features, but all audio is taken in the same way.

Cheers!

As far as I know, the blog title is the only way to name your podcast, as you have discovered.

The mp3 feed can be managed by creating a category for it, and burning a feed in feedburner for that category specifically, for example:
spleencast.wordpress.com/category/mp3/feed/

As for your overall podcast icon, where isn’t it showing up? Did you link to it on feedburner in YourFeedburnerFeed – Optimize – Smartcast ?

You’re very welcome for the help, I really appreciate that you took the time to say so.

One thing I wasn’t able to do is have a feed-specific title. Ended up using my main site feed and changing the title of my blog. Not sure how I’ll handle having an MP3 feed apart from the main one (meant to be AAC only).
Another thing I notice is that my podcast icon isn’t showing up, maybe because my first episode doesn’t have an icon. Other episodes do have their icon.

One thing which was surprising is that I sent my podcast for iTunes approval around 4am (EDT) and it was approved by 10am. Was expecting to have to wait a couple of days.

So, thanks again for your help.

There, is that better?

Thank you for your input about the volume levels. I did try several different levels, and then I downloaded that test signal sound from the BBC website, and matched all the levels to that, and a bit higher. The level seemed right on my end, both through speakers and through headphones. I’m guessing you were listening through speakers?

My rationale on the levels was that I’d rather have it too low and have people turn it up. rather than have it be too high and possibly damage people’s hearing.

I checked the levels in iTunes, Quicktime, VLC and on the flash player in the post. By far, the flash player was the quietest. If anybody else mentions this issue, I’ll raise them for the next episode.

By the way, VLC displays the images from the enhanced version, although not the links, so it looks like everybody can enjoy the enhanced version and get the links from the post, if they want.

Also, because I made some use of pan effects during the initial foley section, I recommend listening using headphones. That should help too.

Thank you so much for listening, and for your input. I’ve already recorded your mention in a conversation with kvetch earlier this evening, so you should get that in the next episode.

The volume seemed a bit low, and I tried it on 2 different PCs, with different players. I don’t know if you can work on that.

Heh, you expected me to sound like an old hag? Well, on some days, I do, heh.

For being a listener, and the first commenter, and for being all yummy and stuff, you win a special mention in the next spleencast.

How’s that?

Also, what do I win for being the first comment?