Monday, June 3, 2019

The 9:12 Streetcar To Better Days

The 9:12 PM street car that I used to be on every night when I didn't have a bike has rolled by.

I slept right up until about that time when I found myself antsy and unable to sleep any more. This is from force of habit; from having had a surge of adrenaline every night at that time over the past 7 years.

I had gotten in from busking at the relatively early hour of 2 AM, after having made something like 8 bucks.
But, I had been there early enough to get a hug from Lilly, who appeared in front of me, along with a couple ladies who bore the same Castilian/Celtic traits that Lilly does.


I spent the morning cleaning the apartment getting ready for an inspection that I became aware of through a piece of paper stuck in my door Friday.
It gave me 2, or 3, or 4 days to get ready for it, depending upon which of the three scheduled inspection days they come to my place (Bobby in building C said that they inspected his place today (Monday) and so, if I were a gambler, I might bet that they have started with building C and are going to work backwards, to "A," and will come to my place on Wednesday.

The reason that I am just now getting back to regular blogging is that getting wi-fi in the apartment led to a binge of Youtube video watching, which had me falling asleep sometime in the middle of what, because of that happening, would become the last one of the night.

Then, I would wake up with sunlight streaming through my windows, and some video streaming through my laptop which was navigated to by Youtube's artificial intelligence-driven selector of videos, which is based upon my viewing habits.
Since I would not have been awake to indicate that, no, I really don't need to watch the Patriots come back from a 28-3 deficit to beat the Falcons in the Superbowl again, I might be woken up by the sound of fans screaming, as Tom Brady has the ball, first and goal at the 12 yard line, ready to throw a pass to Hogan, who would drop it, but it would be OK, because the Falcons will be penalized for defensive interference. Again.

I would get up just to shut the computer down and turn the lights off (since the sunlight is so bright you can't really tell that they are on) and go back to sleep, until such a time that the 9:12 PM street car rumbling past would act like the sound of reveille to me. After that, sleep would become impossible for not being able to push away thoughts of what I was missing right then at the Lilly Pad.

Then, it would be; right out to busk, no time to blog, type of thing....

In the meantime, other pursuits would also get put on the back burner, such as the reading of any of the two dozen books that I have marked my place in and returned to the shelf.

And the making of recordings, videos, etc.

Never mind running out for things like toilet paper and food....
 


It seems like time is flying, and if I want' to grab an energy drink and some cat food, I need to hop on my bike very soon. But, I am posting this quickly in order to "post at least something every day to let your readers know you are still maintaining the blog," type of thing...

OK, I am back from running to the Family Dollar for what amounted to an energy drink, a half gallon of apple juice and one can of cat food for Harold, and more importantly, 1,200 sheets of toilet paper.

On the way in, I shot the video which is above, after I noticed that yet another work of art had been pulled down from the wall in the hallway leading from the candy machine area to the smoking area, and then spent just about 3 hours putting it together, to include composing the music using a sample of the deaf girl who lives here yelling.
On the particular night that I had my phone on and recording, Bobby in building C had gotten fed up with her and had yelled "Die, Bitch!" to no avail. She's deaf.

My question to blog readers who comment would be: Was that video "Vandals" worth 3 hours of my time, or should I try to economize it (time) better??

It is almost 5 AM, and that means I can start making noise pretty soon. My next project is to do something with the Lilly Pad recordings that I have started making, to document each night of busking, if nothing else.

By wedging a fully extended "selfie stick" with my phone on the end into a gap between an electrical box and Lilly's steps, I am able to have it hovering right over my head, sort of like how they position microphones on talk shows -right over the head of the person in Johnny Carson's guest chair, just barely out of the frame.

This has produced the best sound quality to date, but...

Now I have an appetite for an external microphone that would plug into the phone, would be unidirectional, would cancel out noise, etc.

I found this out by Googling "how to get the best live music recordings using a smart phone."
I was thinking that there might have been a setting in the phone somewhere, under "audio" which might say something like "Optimize microphone for speech," and that it would be toggled on in my phone. This would account for the fact that the microphone picks up almost no vibrations below 100 hertz. "Helps eliminate background rumble while amplifying the frequencies that help make human speech intelligible," the dialogue box might say...

But, instead, all the top search results had headings like "Why you should never use the built in microphones in your phone to record yourself playing guitar and harmonica"

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