My first attempt at recording a podcast was predictably frustrating. I managed to set-up the equipment without much trouble, and played around with the software for a little while. But the mixer was a complete mystery.
It’s not very big, and somebody with experience would likely laugh in my face, but the thing looked like the dashboard of a 747 to me. So many knobs… Am I supposed to know what to do with them all? How would I have obtained this information? Osmosis or some shit?
I eventually found a video tutorial on YouTube where the dude shows the camera how he has his set, and I used that as a starting point. Then I tested it for a while, and made some slight adjustments.
And everything works, but there’s a lot of noise during playback. It sounds like I’m traveling down the interstate in the back of a dump truck. Yet there was no noise in the room… it was completely silent. I thought it might be my laptop, amplified a million times, so I put a big fluffy towel underneath: no difference whatsoever.
I think one of the knobs is cranked to the extreme, and it’s just going over-the-top. I don’t believe it’s picking up any actual noise, I believe the unit itself is generating it. So, I’m going to have to play around with it again on Thursday or Friday.
And so, if you have any questions you’ve wanted to ask me… leave ’em in the comments. Someday in the near future I’ll answer them all, via my own hillbilly robotics voice.
Stay tuned.
I’m taking a vacation day tomorrow, so this is my Friday. Yes, on Tuesday. How cool is that?
However… we’re supposed to get the snow I was hoping for, starting later tonight. And by the time I’m driving home, at 1:30 am, it should be interesting out there. In corporate-speak, it might very well be an “opportunity.”
But, you know, it’s winter. And these kinds of things happen in winter. Right? I’m not going to start bitching until I’m out there shoveling, or stuck in a ditch in the dark of night… along I-81’s Corridor of Fiery Death.
Oh shit…
Earlier I was listening to an album by a great old British band called 999. I had the LP back in my Dunbar ludicrous-afro days, but my current copy was downloaded from eMusic.
And it’s weird. On the record, from 1980, there was a loud pop in one of the songs, and I still anticipate it thirty years later. It was just a minor flaw in the vinyl, very standard stuff, but the pop is permanently coded in my DNA now. And it’s disconcerting not to hear it.
Do you know what I’m talking about? Have you ever grown accustomed to a pop or a skip on an album, and now consider it a legitimate part of the experience?
And since we’re on the subject, there’s a song on the first Cars album with the lyric “I kinda like the way it skips.” And at that very moment my record would skip — just slightly.
I thought that was incredibly cool. And when I replaced my LP with a CD, years later, I was disappointed (shocked and disappointed!) to realize it wasn’t intentional. It doesn’t skip on my CD copy at all. So, I guess the Cars weren’t quite as clever as I first believed? It’s too bad, really.
On Saturday I had my very first Rice Krispies Treat. Well, to be more precise, I had the corner of one, and pawned the rest off on one of our kids.
Blecch. That shit is nasty. I often hear people raving about those so-called “treats,” but it tasted like a block of densely-packed sugar to me. What am I, Secretariat? What’s next, a carrot and a brushing?
Man, that’s one sad excuse for a snack food… Might as well sit down and gnaw on a radically-sweetened air conditioner filter.
Are there any well-known and semi-popular foods out there that you’ve never tasted, not even once? Tell us about it, won’t you?
Just so you know, I’ve also never tasted Lucky Charms. Those marshmallows look like pencil erasers to me. And I can’t have that.
And I’m calling it a day here, my friends. Have a good one, and I’ll be back tomorrow.
See ya then!
First?!
Zippity Doo Dah!
This is a good question, Jeff. I am completely stumped. Now I feel like a big fatty because I can’t think of a “semi-popular food item” that I haven’t eaten. Hmmmm…..
I happen to love Rice Krispie Treats. Not out of the pre-packaged store kind, mind you, but the gooey, fresh kind. Starbucks makes them & those can be pretty decent. Unless you get one that resembles a white brick & can be used as a tool to win the Stanley Cup.
I can’t wait for the podcast, Jeff! We need more hillbilly robotic voices in our lives. Really, we do!
Now Playing on iPhone: “My Best Friend’s Girl” by The Cars (Coincidence to “I kinda like the way it skips” mentioned above? I think not. Paging Mulder & Scully!)
Oh and Sophia Loren looks H-O-T making whatever it is she’s making. Even I was a bit, ahem, distracted….
I’ve never had guacamole or avocado and other people seem to really like it/them. As far as Rice krispy Treats, you’re nuts!
I have never had a moon pie.
I love Rice Krispy treats. I don’t like any of those strange ho hos or whatever they’re called with fluff in the middle or those pink snowball things or twinkies. All GROSS.
Did your RKT’s have peanut butter in them? Because that’s the only way they are truly inspirational!
It’s been snowing all day here and quite frankly I’m just about ready to start running around in shrub maze out back.
Top 10!!
No peanut butter on the top. It came out of a blue package, with those Snap, Crackle, and Pop weirdos on it. What’s their deal, anyway? Why are they dressed in those uniforms?
There are several spot on Let It Be where I expect skips because my first copy was taped from a CD with skips…
Also, a Dylan song that skiped but kind of worked by repeating a word…now I always expect it but never get it on my new CD….
RCT’s are great but you have to make them yourself with more butter and marshmellow and less rice krispies….
Back in the olden days of making mix tapes I’d try to squeeze a 5 minute song at the end of a tape that had about 4 minutes 50 seconds left on it, so there were bunches of songs that when I heard them played all the way through kinda jangled me. Also, there was the effect of hearing one song and anticipating the next song to play would be the same as on your Killer Driving Fast Mix tape or whatever. I fell asleep once with David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” spinning on the turntable and that bastiges developed a hiccup and sat there and repeated for what must’ve been an hour. I still brace for impact when I hear that song now.
Jeff…maybe you should check in the Control Panel settings and see if your Mic Boost is turned on. Just a thought.
I have sort of a take it or leave it attitude about RKT’s. Not a real big fan but I wouldn’t turn one down. I am a chocolate freak though.
Never had kraut…never want kraut. Thank you. Regular rice cakes confuse me. I tried one and found it amazingly similar to packing peanuts. They charge for those things? Yech!
Jeff, I believe if you stop whipping your hand thru your hair the noise on the podcast might go away. Just sayin…
Never had (nor never will) Slim Jims or Pork Rinds.
Hell, it was only a few years ago I had that green bean casserole at Thanksgiving.
RKT, absolutely Yuk. My wife and daughter can devour an entire pan in about 3 minutes. I would rather die of starvation than eat one. They remind me of styrofoam soaked in Karo syrup.
I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. Just about the only type of candy / cookie / cake / pie I can take is my mother’s home made chocolate chip cookies, made with real butter, no goddam shortening for me.
I have an old EP of Holiday in Cambodia with a skip -right near the end of the bridge as Jello goes into his “Pol Pot” rant . Over the years I made about 20 tapes of it, so that skip is burned into my mind. Whenever I hear a version of the song without the skip it drives me frickin’ nuts.
Popular foods I’ve never had: I’ve never had Mountain Dew (at least as far back as I can remember). Never eaten at most of the big U.S. hamburger chains so I’ve never had White Castle, Popeye’s, Hardee’s, Jack in the Box, etc., or any of their signature foods. Also on the list:
Lamb (can’t get past the smell)
Jell-O pudding pops
5th Avenue, Baby Ruth, Dove Bar, Milky Way, Malo Cup chocolate bars
Tang
Here is a crazy thought–remove the mixer from the equation.
Not understanding why you need one anyway. You are using Audacity.
RKT’s are heavenly. Must be homemade though. Freshly melted marshmellows, butta…still warm…KILLER. I just duct tape one square on each side of my ass cuz that’s where it’s going anyway. The prepackaged RKT’s don’t even compare and I agree…blecch. Not even in the same ballpark.
Little Debbies…never had one. That goes for those marshmellow “peeps” and “snowballs”. Back in the day King Dongs were the shit. Now they taste like the box they come in. And the chocolate permanently coats the roof of your mouth.
When we lived in Chicago, my dad used to bring home Tastycake Butterscotch Krumpet’s from Philadelphia when I was little. He traveled a lot for his job. They were yummy. When we moved to Pittsburgh and they were readily available, for some reason, they just weren’t as good as I remembered.
Question For the Hillbilly Robot: Why did Bill Oates just suddenly up and end his blog on 1/25/2007, right in the middle of telling us the very compelling and humorous tale of Christmas 2006, leaving us all hanging?
And follow-up question: Will we ever find out how Christmas 2006 ended?
I always hated Lucky Charms as a lad, because the only good part was the marshmallows. The brown thingies tasted terrible — which I guess back then simply meant they were unsweetened. But they were such a jarring “unsweet” in comparison to the highly-sweet “charms,” that they were awful if you didn’t also get a goodly supply of charms in your spoonful to counteract the nastiness.
And to answer the question of the day, I don’t think there’s any well-known semi-popular food that I haven’t tried. But there was a few years ago — chocolate-covered pretzels. I used to think that was a horrible combination of foods, like why not chocolate-covered sardines? But then just a few years ago I tried ’em (the pretzels, not the sardines), and damn, they sure are good.
I always thought that the lyric was “I kinda like the way she dips”. I always imagined a girl with a pinch of skoal in her lip.
I have been meaning to try that so-called “ice cream”. I understand that it is delightful.
Just marking my place for now… I’ll be back later with a real reply.
My etched-in-the-gray-matter memories of Santana’s “Black Magic Woman” include a spot near the end of the song where the 8-track tape changed tracks (hey–I was really young). Right in the middle of Carlos’s wailing guitar work. I guess there’s a reason those damned tape players went the way of the Dodo Bird (which I’m NOT old enough to remember, thankyouverymuch).
I’m having a difficult time coming up with any food that I haven’t at least tried. I was an active kid, and ate just about anything I could get my hands on. Nowadays I stay away from the sickly sweet crap (ETW’s mention of those pink snowballs and related “snacks” is dead on), preferring to get my go-straight-to-fat calories from alcohol.
Now playing in iTunes on the work computer: Crash Test Dummies/God Shuffled His Feet.
I’ve never eaten a Twinkie, a Ding Dong, a Moon Pie… or most sweet snacks. I don’t have a sweet tooth, never have. I like salty foods. Peanuts. Potato chips. Popcorn.
Tofu. Can’t get into it. I’ve tried a couple times, but it just doesn’t work for me. Years ago, I used to buy vinyl albums at a Peaches Store in the St. Louis area. More than once, I got home, put the record on, and it waivered. I found the problem: the hole wasn’t centered in the record. I ended up with a lot of Stevie Wonder records with that problem. Probably why they’re not around anymore.
Jeff, the sound problems you heard on playback are most likely echos from the walls of the room.
Try moving the equipment onto the floor of a small room that has lots of curtains, furniture, pictures on the walls, etc, i.e. no flat surfaces for sound waves to bounce from, directly back to the mike.
Underneath a table is a great place to record. Windows are bad (flat surfaces).
It’s Mr. Wizard, at it again…
Let me know if this helps, I’m curious, as I had to do this once while being interviewed over skype for a podcast (sit under a table)
I am suddenly inspired and compelled to relate my one and only personal experience with the Chili’s chain:
I went to one in 2005 somewhere in the middle of nowhere Missouri with a group of folks I worked with. We were travelling back from a conference, needed to grab a bite, and Chili’s was the place that the majority in the car decided upon. There was nowhere to sit in the main dining room, so we opted for the smoking section (the bar area). It was around noon, so we figured what the hell, people probably wouldn’t be smoking all that much at that time of day. Grabbed a table and ordered some food, and within about five minutes we realized that we were completely surrounded by dozens of chain smokers. If he would have been sitting with us, Keith Richards would have been batting away the smoke, and making comments like “enough is enough”. And guess what: The food sucked. Big surprise. I can’t figure out the draw of any of these chain places. Maybe if you’re a smoker, it all tastes the same (shit, shinola, whatever).
Pink Floyd: Animals. Always had pops on the album, drove me batshit. Now I listen to Classic Rewind on XM and they add the sound of the stylus setting down on the album, funny how things come around.
RKT – uck
lots of things I have never eaten and a few I have and regretted it ever since. how does anyone eat boiled peanuts, been 20 years and still can’t get the taste out of my mouth….
btw, it’s “I like the way she dips”
saw a book one time about all the lyrics people don’t understand and what they think it says. there are quite a few I have to look up.
can’t understand ANY rap lyrics and don’t want to.
Lee Harvey Remone: Keith Richards batting away the smoke – LMFAO!!!!!!!!!!!
I have never eaten tuna from a can.
And P.S., I downloaded some 999 tracks from eMusic just yesterday! Like Jeff, I grew up listening to these songs on vinyl, and now in MP3 format they sound weirdly hyper and speedy (apparently because my junky old record player was spinning just 32 or 31 RPMs).
I have never had…
…a Yeungling.
Shhhh, Alex – you don’t want to admit that to this crowd!
Try making a RKT with Fruity Pebbles. Seriously. And smash them down in the pan really hard so they are compressed.
A little bite of heaven!!
The 8-track version of “Ballroom Blitz” by that awesome hairband “Sweet” got played so damned much my sophomore year in college that the bleed-through just became part of the play. If I ever listened to it again I’m sure my brain would fill in the missing bits.
Premade RKT? Shoot – they’re prolly shipped from China and are chock full of yummy melamine. Best to make them yourself – they take about 3 minutes to make!
Also – I rather miss the old week-end roundup. That have a chance of coming back, ever?
When I was a kid, I had Cyndi Lauper’s “She’s So Unusual” on vinyl and it had many skips that I still hear (in my mind) when I listen to the CD now. Whew, glad to know I’m not insane.
Love RKT’s! The only non-homemade ones that are any good, are the huge ones at Starbucks with mini-marshmallows throughout. I’ve tried to duplicate them, with no success.
I’ve never had Mountain Dew. Citrus sodas (except orange) just remind me of being sick and unable to drink anything except small sips of 7Up. And the color of Mountain Dew looks gross.
I’ve never eaten grits or spam and I never intend to. I’ve also never had a Clark bar. I heard Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper”, or whatever after watching the SNL skit and I have to say, the song does sound better with the cow bell. My brain tricked me into thinking that the cow bell was there when I heard it on the radio.
I remember one thing from yesterday that I’m not going to be eating anytime soon and that’s ass. A construction guy came in and told us that his wife let him poke her in the ass, but only after he licked it. He licked the actual asshole and seemed to be proud of himself. I almost barfed up the grits and spam I’d just eaten – I was barely able to choke down my Clark bar hours later.
O.K. This is totally off topic but freaking me out!! You know Norf of da Border in Michael Moore land, pretty much nothing ever happens, well it seems one of our top Air Force Colonel’s the guy who flys our version of Air Force one (except in our case it’s a Cessna rather than a 747.) has just been arrested as a Major Serial Killer 2 known murders a possible 3rd & a whole bunch of other freaky textbook stuff!
Pagan-Sweet!
Since Jason brought it up, the best damn spam sammich you can make is right here friends. Slice it into 1/4″ thick slices fry in a skillet until it is browned and crispy around the edges. Slather a slice of white bread with grape jelly insert one slice of spam fold bread over and enjoy, rinse and repeat as needed.
Madz1962 – Slim Jims Rule.
fryguy-With ya on the Boiled Peanut thing. First had them at Dirt Race track in tampa a few years back. Even with mud and dirt mixed in with them, (it could only improve the flavor) they still tasted like wet cardboard.
Retrollama- Please don’t keep us waiting.
And the best thing I regret not trying earlier in my life? SUSHI. I had the redneck mentality of “I’m not eating bait” But, boy was I missing out. I seek out sushi joints now in towns I go to.
Thanks to the above posts, I’ve ID’d two things that I’ve never eaten: spam and ass.
I’ve never had spamshi
But I’m willing to try it
I’ve never eaten a girl scouts cookie.
My Mother used to feed us ‘Klik’ sandwiches – I think Spam was for rich people.
Not Opera ~ your suspicions were correct!
“Klik and Kam or Prem are the Canadian version of the America Spam, only it is not a ham based meat product just a fatty pork cured meat product.”
from Yahoo Answers
Not eating mountain oysters ever!
I’ve eaten lots and lots of ass in my day. Things were tough back then and you did what you had to in order to survive in the Navy. I’ve never eaten a pig foot. We used to go to this great BBQ place in Texas and this one pervert that we hung around with always ordered a pig ear sandwich. Fucking bizarre.
This morning I ate a bucket of pimento cheese for breakfast. I bet none of you can make that same claim.