Technical Difficulties of Life
Wednesday, August 31st, 2022 04:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudioWell, here we are at the last day of August, and I don't have a ton to show for it, as far as field recording goes. So far, the dusk recording is the only thing that's been uploaded.
I did finally get a chance to listen through the five hours recorded on Thursday and Friday night, while i was out on the side porch.
Thursday's canopy recording had some great wing tappers, but man is that drone from the bush crickets loud! I did, however, go through and remove all the loud passing cars, barking dogs, and a long train roll.
And Thursday's front yard recording of field crickets was good too. After removing all the passing cars and another train roll from that, I ended up with a good 45 minutes.
The Friday canopy recording wasn't so great. And the Sunday back yard recording with the tripod had potential, but trains rolled through the entire two hours, making it useless.
So, in addition to the dusk recording, what I have from August is about 80 minutes of good field crickets, and 70 minutes of good wing tappers from the canopy, but with super loud bush cricket drone, and no field crickets.
And then last night, I did record in the back yard again from the tripod, but haven't listened to it yet. It was chilly out there. I think, if anything, there might be some good mole crickets on that one... with the drone of the bush crickets toned down a lot.
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The front yard field cricket recordings are exactly what I've been trying to capture... good field crickets, with some mole crickets, wing tappers, and check tails... but with the bush crickets way off in the background!
Unfortunately, they have really only been active enough, out front, to record, a few nights the whole month!
The problem with the back yard is the overwhelming volume of the bush crickets which... is coming from all the back yards, not just mine. Since they all sing with a non-stop trill, they just reinforce each other thorugh the whole block interior and it doesn't matter if the S8 is up high, or down low, they just dominate the microphones.
The lights in the back yard... and the rock gardens... seem to have done nothing to encourage more field crickets back there. The height of the grass also doesn't seem to matter.
There never was a population boom like I expected. To this day, I'm still hearing what I took for juvenile field crickets all over the place. To the point where now, I'm starting to think maybe I was wrong, and they're just some other species of smaller field cricket.
------------{=0=}------------
Well, at any rate, I still have September to try and scrape together a bit more listenable material.
But I'm also feeling the pressure to get something done with the 80 minutes of good field crickets that I do have. Should I just make two 40 minute tracks of them? Should I mix in some canopy stuff?
I guess nobody really cares, huh?
------------{=0=}------------
While I'm fighting for time to make such decisions, and do the editing, Dad's recovery continues to be rather time consuming. He's not yet able to walk his dog, so I've been doing that.
And today I took him to get his groceries. He was able to make it around the store using a shopping cart as a walker, but I still needed to be there to help him in and out of the car, and to load and unload his groceries.
He's got a home care nurse that will be coming to check up on him a couple times a week, and we're trying to straighten out his prescription situation.
Meanwhile, I got the onboarding package for my new job in email, but something was wrong with the website, and I couldn't submit the forms. I spent over two hours at the HQ of the employer yesterday trying to straighten that out and they couldn't fix it!
I literally just went there... proved to them that there was a technical glitch that would not let me submit the forms, and then my manager called HR, and we were on hold for 90 minutes, and HR never picked up!
But presumably I will be starting work at some point in the next week or two.
°¦}
https://soundcloud.com/snoozefestaudio
I did finally get a chance to listen through the five hours recorded on Thursday and Friday night, while i was out on the side porch.
Thursday's canopy recording had some great wing tappers, but man is that drone from the bush crickets loud! I did, however, go through and remove all the loud passing cars, barking dogs, and a long train roll.
And Thursday's front yard recording of field crickets was good too. After removing all the passing cars and another train roll from that, I ended up with a good 45 minutes.
The Friday canopy recording wasn't so great. And the Sunday back yard recording with the tripod had potential, but trains rolled through the entire two hours, making it useless.
So, in addition to the dusk recording, what I have from August is about 80 minutes of good field crickets, and 70 minutes of good wing tappers from the canopy, but with super loud bush cricket drone, and no field crickets.
And then last night, I did record in the back yard again from the tripod, but haven't listened to it yet. It was chilly out there. I think, if anything, there might be some good mole crickets on that one... with the drone of the bush crickets toned down a lot.
The front yard field cricket recordings are exactly what I've been trying to capture... good field crickets, with some mole crickets, wing tappers, and check tails... but with the bush crickets way off in the background!
Unfortunately, they have really only been active enough, out front, to record, a few nights the whole month!
The problem with the back yard is the overwhelming volume of the bush crickets which... is coming from all the back yards, not just mine. Since they all sing with a non-stop trill, they just reinforce each other thorugh the whole block interior and it doesn't matter if the S8 is up high, or down low, they just dominate the microphones.
The lights in the back yard... and the rock gardens... seem to have done nothing to encourage more field crickets back there. The height of the grass also doesn't seem to matter.
There never was a population boom like I expected. To this day, I'm still hearing what I took for juvenile field crickets all over the place. To the point where now, I'm starting to think maybe I was wrong, and they're just some other species of smaller field cricket.
Well, at any rate, I still have September to try and scrape together a bit more listenable material.
But I'm also feeling the pressure to get something done with the 80 minutes of good field crickets that I do have. Should I just make two 40 minute tracks of them? Should I mix in some canopy stuff?
I guess nobody really cares, huh?
While I'm fighting for time to make such decisions, and do the editing, Dad's recovery continues to be rather time consuming. He's not yet able to walk his dog, so I've been doing that.
And today I took him to get his groceries. He was able to make it around the store using a shopping cart as a walker, but I still needed to be there to help him in and out of the car, and to load and unload his groceries.
He's got a home care nurse that will be coming to check up on him a couple times a week, and we're trying to straighten out his prescription situation.
Meanwhile, I got the onboarding package for my new job in email, but something was wrong with the website, and I couldn't submit the forms. I spent over two hours at the HQ of the employer yesterday trying to straighten that out and they couldn't fix it!
I literally just went there... proved to them that there was a technical glitch that would not let me submit the forms, and then my manager called HR, and we were on hold for 90 minutes, and HR never picked up!
But presumably I will be starting work at some point in the next week or two.
°¦}
