For the second day in a row, I video-recorded the first half hour of my song practice and audio recorded the whole thing with the mic connected to my old computer in the bedroom through the Scarlett interface. I turned up the gain a bit more this time to see if there was a difference.
I kept thinking about the clipping problem that occurs when I’m recording on the new computer and I wondered if it would help if I uninstalled the NVIDIA gaming card. I knew it was on the computer when I bought it and I thought it would help me make videos but it’s really just for gaming and I don’t use it, so I just uninstalled it. I was worried that it would screw up my system or my ability to watch videos, but I checked and saw that it seemed to be okay. I’m just trying to figure out how to stop my internal mic from controlling recordings because that’s the mic that’s clipping. I was thinking the gaming card had some kind of a negative effect on recording.
I had to restart my computer a couple of times this morning because I’d accidentally created an icon on my desktop that I wanted to get rid of but when I right-clicked on it the computer stalled like it does when I right click on thumbnails. It didn’t occur to me right away that I could have just slid the icon into the recycle bin.
Perhaps because my second restart was so close to the first I ended up erasing all my torrents, since they hadn’t fully loaded before restarting. I was able to recover the crucial ones by going to C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\BitTorrent. I had to click on each file one at a time, but it didn’t take that long. They are all fully or partially downloaded in my Downloads folder but I have to guess how much they’ve seeded because that amount goes back to zero on the torrent list.
I weighed 84.4 kilos before breakfast.
Around midday I called Tom at PC Plus about my clipping problem. He told me to bring the computer in and so I rode down to 561 Queen West. I brought along the Scarlett interface and my microphone. It turned out that my PC does not have an internal microphone after all. What showed up in the microphone menu at home as “USB Audio Device” was not on my computer in his shop. He suggested that my monitor might have a microphone. My Scarlett interface worked on my computer in his shop although it didn’t at home. He said if it’s the monitor that has a mic, it’s overriding the Scarlett.
I asked him about my problem of Windows Explorer shutting down whenever I right click on thumbnails. He said that he could definitely fix that problem but he would have to restart Windows. All my files would be preserved but I would need to re-download some apps like the 4K Downloader. I decided it wasn’t worth it since it only takes a minute to work around the right-clicking problem to rename or move pictures.
When I got home and reconnected my computer I found that the Scarlett interface worked and when I used it with the Windows Voice Recorder I got a recording with no clipping and no humming. In my microphone menu the “USB Audio Device” was not there. The only thing I hadn’t reconnected was my webcam, which I hadn’t realized had been plugged in since my Zoom classes ended in April. That was the USB Audio Device that had been interfering with my recordings. I didn’t even know it had a microphone, let alone such a powerful one.
I weighed 84.1 kilos before a late lunch. I had a toasted Montreal-style bagel with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade and then I took a late siesta until 16:10.
I tried some more recording tests and found my clipping problem is over and I can start recording my song practices on the new PC.
I was caught up on my journal around 18:30.
I uploaded the video and audio I recorded this morning. I think my next purchase needs to be a pop filter for my microphone.
With my clipping problem solved I could return to my Movie Maker project. I synchronized the concert video and the studio audio at the point when I sing “Now turn the shock power switch on” in the video that I’m making for my song “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy”. But it goes out of sync again when I sing “and rotate the dial to choose the voltage you want.” That line is pretty easy to fill however because I have video footage of turning the dial in the 1940s electroshock therapy video. I was smarter this time though and imported the footage into another Movie Maker project, then immediately made it into a movie so that the clip and my project would be in the same video format and therefore wouldn’t freeze during editing. Then I imported the converted file. I’ll carve out the dial-turning clip and insert it in the video in the next session.
I made four ground beef patties and grilled them in the oven. I had one on a toasted Montreal-style bagel with a beer while watching season 2, episode 8 of Star Trek Picard.
Picard and Guinan are under arrest and have been taken to an underground and run-down FBI facility. The agent interrogating them seems troubled. He has phone footage of Picard materializing by way of a transporter, and also surveillance camera images of Picard and his team at the Europa gala. He also has documentation of something Rios said to an ICE agent about being in the company of a cybernetic queen intent of wiping out humanity.
Picard and Guinan are separated and in the interview room where they place Guinan, she is visited by Q in an FBI uniform. He admits that he has lost his powers and that he is dying. When Agent Wells returns to continue interviewing Picard, Guinan appears in Picard’s mind to tell him that humans are stuck in the past. Picard now understands that Agent Wells is obsessed with aliens because of something that happened to him. He offers to trade truth for truth and so Wells tells him about an encounter he had with aliens who dematerialized in a column of light in the same way that Picard did. The alien grabbed his head. But Picard asks exactly how he grabbed him. Picard shows him how a Vulcan would have touched him to make a connection so he wouldn’t be haunted by a memory. Wells realizes that is what happened. Picard shares his truth that he is from the future and he’s in the past to save humanity. A little later Wells comes in to reveal he’s been fired and he lets them go.
Meanwhile Seven and Raffi are tracking Agnes. They find that under the influence of the Borg queen in her head, she has already killed one person. They find she has been consuming stabilizing metals like lithium ions from batteries. Seven says the queen is compelling her to do this so that her body can better handle the Borg nanoprobes. They catch up to Agnes but she is now very fast and strong and almost kills Raffi but at the last moment before doing so she hears her own voice in her head saying “No” and drops her. Agnes leaves and Seven and Raffi recover. They realize that Agnes has yet to be lost to the Borg because she resisted killing them.
Rios discovers that the transporters have been compromised on his ship. He also tells Teresa Ramirez that he’s fallen for her and the feeling seems to be mutual.
Kore, Adam Soong’s adopted daughter whom he cloned, puts on virtual reality gear so she can enter her father’s lab without being environmentally compromised and dying. In virtual space she encounters Q, who has put himself into the VR program for this moment. He says Soong created her and locked her in prison and that he’s sending her the key. A box arrives by courier containing the serum that will allow her to breathe normal air and walk in sunlight. She leaves Soong and walks to freedom.
Agnes comes to Soong and tells him that if Renée Picard does not go on the Europa mission the resulting future would make him powerful on Earth. He agrees to help her. He gains access to a group of special ops mercenaries and Agnes begins to assimilate them.
Jean Luc Picard is of course portrayed by Patrick Stewart, who in his teens began acting, journalism, and training as a boxer. At the age of 26, in 1966 he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and was with them until 1982. In the 1970s he made his Broadway debut as Snout in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. In 1987 he signed on for six years for a revival of Star Trek, not knowing anything about the original series. Marina Sirtis says that half the reason the show was a success is because the cast was inspired by Stewart’s professionalism. Despite being initially skeptical about Star Trek he now considers it his greatest achievement. In the late 1990s, he signed on to play Professor X in the X-Men film franchise. He moved back to England in 2004 to work more in theatre. In 2010 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth.
For the sixth night in a row I found no bedbugs before bed.
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