Author: Alex Nonnemacher

When I Decide to Mic It

Inspired in part by Michael Lopp’s “Good Meetings are Jazz,” I started looking at my audio setup, such as it was, on my home computer setup. As we moved from providing school in meatspace to a virtual model during the third and fourth marking periods of the 2019–20 school year, I upgraded my setup by adding a Tandberg Precision HD webcam, which I paid too much for due to demand, but which offers silky-smooth 30 fps video (if only at 720p) [1]. I already had a microphone, and it seemed to serve me well, sitting on my desk. I eventually added a mic stand, because I need as much desk space as I can get and it also think it looks cool.

Tandberg Precision HD webcam

Tandberg Precision HD Webcam

The issue of audio quality was nagging me some, though. No one said anything about my mic, which was a Best Buy Insignia NS-PAUBMD8 I bought to record myself while I was taking classes online and needed to complete an assignment, but it sounded a bit muddy to me when I recorded some segments in Audio Hijack so that I could hear where best to position the mic, and what impact the window unit air conditioner had on the input. And I will say that the first thing that sends me running from a podcast is noisy, poor quality audio. I thought that if my setup sounded better, it would come across as more professional. I am part of the leadership team, after all.

Best Buy Insignia USB Mic

Best Buy Insignia Mic

This happened to coincide with me cleaning up my old-but-still-great Washburn MG401 Mercury Series II electric guitar, which played fine but crackled a lot and suffered a number of cut outs when amplified. Having disassembled the thing and finding that there was nothing wrong with it, I sprayed the pots and selector switch with electronics cleaner, and played it on the clean channel of my son’s tiny (and cheap) practice amp.

Washburn MG 401

Washburn MG401 Mercury Series II

Here I was reminded that while I (still) had a nice guitar, I had no effects: I sold them all when the kids were little because I wasn’t playing much and mom wanted to stop working and stay home with the kids. Being a fan of digital solutions, I figured some way of integrating my iPad or Mac into my gear instead of buying a bunch of stomp boxes and plugging them into barely audible amplifiers would be preferable.

Lopp’s article helped me understand that what I needed was a digital audio interface for my Mac and/or iPad. I did some reading and found the Scarlett Solo, which was priced just right and perfectly suited to what I needed: it works using USB C (no adapters needed for either my iPad Pro or my Mac Mini), offers XLR input for a microphone, and an input for my guitar. So I could hypothetically play my guitar through Garageband or Amplitube by night, and enjoy crisp, clean, podcast-quality audio in Google Meet by day.

Scarlett Solo USB Audio Interface

FocusRite Scarlett Solo USB Audio Interface

But what mic? I found a lot of information online, and a variety of prices. I googled “directional mics.” I googled “best zoom microphone.” I googled cardioid mics. I made a list.

I Digress

Do you often head over to Lowe’s or Home Depot when you need to fix something, and you look for someone to help you, but you can’t find anyone? Or you try to search for a solution yourself but find yourself overwhelmed by choices?

I have, and that’s why, despite slightly higher prices, I go to my local hardware store. There are enthusiastic people there who immediately try to help you, and they know a thing or two. I think that’s why they work there.

Narrowing the Field of View

So after a brief bit of online browsing, I decided to call up my local music shop. They guy who answered the phone asked, “What are you trying to do?” Enthusiastically, I might add. I explained my use case, and he recommended three mics that they had in stock. He didn’t need to look anything up in the computer; he just dished. Here they are:

None of these come up in “best mic for Zoom meetings,” mind you. I read a few reviews of these mics and headed over to the store to see them for myself. I was pretty sure I wanted the X1S and that’s what I decide to buy. It looks spectacular.

SE X1S Mic

SE X 1S XLR Mic

I thought it would be interesting to compare some audio samples from the Insignia and the X1S, and a third and later entrant to the race, my MacBook Pro 16“ from work.

While I’m still learning about where to position a mic and things like gain/input level, the X 1S sounds better–way better–than the cheaper USB Insignia, and the considerably-improved-for-a-built-in-laptop mic on the MacBook Pro. The Insignia has a ton of background noise in an otherwise quiet (but not soundproof) room, despite being about the same distance from my face as the X 1S.

But why?

Casting aside rampant consumerism and the occasional tech obsession as possible explanations, I refer to Lopp:

So, yeah, I’m investing a lot of time and money in working to make this box we’re all stuck in a little more humane, a little more connected, and a bit more fun. I consider this a critical investment.

  1. 1 my school district uses Google Meet, though, and you have to adust the video settings from the default 360p to 720p if you want to take advantage of the camera  ↩

Scribble on iPadOS

Very excited today to see that what the Newton was essentially capable of twenty years ago is finally coming to iPad. I don’t mean that in a snarky way; it wasn’t a priority until recently, and that’s OK. But right down to drawing shapes that snap to scalable graphics, I recognized features of the Newton OS notes app. For demo purposes, I would always show people how that worked on my MessagePad 2100. Here’s a cool demo.

Summerfest 2020 and Take Control Books

SummerFest 2020 is happening and you can grab Take Control books at a 30% discount. I bought Take Control of TextExpander[1] and Take Control of LaunchBar for seven bucks apiece.

Both are terrific apps that I feel I use daily, but lack an appreciation for the full feature set.

  1. This ebook doesn’t cover version 6, but according to the publisher, “nearly everything in the book is still applicable to newer versions as well.”  ↩

Things That Go Bump

The iPhone 4 was introduced alongside Apple’s first official phone case: the bumper case. Rather than wrap their phones in a plastic coffin, Apple saw fit to design a case that would provide drop protection around the edges without spoiling the device’s visual asesthetic. The demand for these cases was such that they were hard to get after the device launched (although Antennagate found them giving them away to any aggrieved party who asked for one).

I was able to score one early after the 4’s launch because I knew someone who worked at an Apple retail score. That case provided effective coverage until the rubber gap that allowed the bumper to stretch to fit the phone started to lose its elasticity, and the case no longer fit snugly.

Apple never made another bumper case. Starting with the 6 Plus, I have wrapped my phones with Apple’s own leather cases. Despite my affection for these leather cases, I’ve always fondly remembered the bumper case.

My newest phone, the green 11 Pro Max, has a back worth looking at. The red leather case I bought when I got the phone provided a peek at the green color between the lenses, but otherwise you have to pry the case off to enjoy the frosted glass and sage green backing. Every other phone I’ve had has been black or space gray: they looked good, but it was all shades of gray. The green on the Pro Max, on the other hand, is really nice on the eyes.

My son asked for a bumper case that we saw on amazon for his XR, and I’ve admired the minimal wrap every time I’ve seen it. So here’s my 11 Pro Max, with a matching green bumper case.

In the bumper, the device feels minimal and sleek, without feeling dangerously naked. It weights 10 grams less than the leather case, so the phone drops from 250 to 240 grams in the bumper. On the other hand, there are edges where the Apple case was smooth and rounded. So while the phone feels smaller, it doesn’t feel better. It looks great, though.

There is somethig to be said for Apple’s leather cases: ‘Busage. They look fine out of the package, but they age well. I’ve never once retrired an apple leather case without a note of regret, because it was this thing that traveled a journey with me, and bore the scars to prove it.

Trump’s Golf Expense

SV Date, writing for HuffPo back in February:

And because Trump insists on playing at courses he owns, the cost to taxpayers has been nearly four times as high as it was for Obama. More than two-thirds of Trump’s golf outings involve seven-figure trips aboard Air Force One, mainly to Florida and New Jersey, but also to Los Angeles, Ireland and Scotland. Obama, in contrast, played most of his golf on courses at military bases within a short drive of the White House.

The cost equates to 334 years of the annual salary Trump brags he doesn’t take.

Trump’s 29th Trip To Mar-a-Lago Brings Golf Tab To 334 Years Of Presidential Salary

My Own Private Teleprompter

Mad scientist Brett Terpstra on his excellent Marked application as a teleprompter:

Once you have the theme, you can start prompting just by hitting the ‘s’ key in a Marked preview. That will start autoscroll at the slowest speed. Use left and right arrows to speed up/slow down the scroll speed. (You can also click and drag on the meter that appears in the lower left of the screen.) That’s all there is to it.

If you’ve ever made the jump from writing a how-to to recording one, you know how hard it is to narrate what you’re doing on screen. Marked is a neat tool but this is just next-level cool.

Marked 2 as teleprompter, revisited

The Best Camera is the One in Your Pocket

I wrote before about the 20k photos I have in Photos (and more accurately, on some servers somewhere in iCloud). I’ve been trying to clean up my collection, mostly organized using a mix of albums and smart albums. I noticed that I had been in the habit of making smart albums for each phone I had: iPhone 3G, iPhone 4, etc. I added my last two phones as smart albums and took a look at the totals. So here’s the big picture:

Photos all

iPhone 3G iPhone 4 iPhone 5 iPhone 6 iPhone 7 iPhone 10 iPhone 11 Pro Max Total
Photos 972 1780 2048 1974 1802 2122 838 11536
Videos 0 268 135 27 57 47 17 551
Months in Service 10 23 24 23 23 19 6 128

The big picture is that I take about a thousand pictures a year. Because I tend to keep my phones for about two years, that’s around 2k pictures a year. My first iPhone was an exception: I only took about 1000 pictures in the time that I had it. I don’t remember being especially judicious with it. Apple must have added the device information to the photo metadata at some point in the iPhone 3G’s lifetime, because the earliest pictures include “Apple iPhone” in the file metadata, while “iPhone 3G” doesn’t show up until mid-September of 2009.

Photos photos

My shutterbugging reached a peak with the iPhone 5, then dipped a bit again until the X came out. You can say that each phone offered a greatly improved camera, but the X really blew me away. Until I got the 11, of course.

And the 11 is interesting to look at. I’ve only had it for about a quarter of the life that I typically keep an iPhone, but I’ve already taken 800 photos. Assuming that I keep up that pace, I will be adding about 2400 photos over the lifespan of the device.

Videos are a different story, and here the data surprised me. I was apparently smitten with the ability to take video with the iPhone 4 (I took video because I could), but my interest waned to a nadir of 27 with the iPhone 6 Plus, and leveled out to about 50 per device ever since. In terms of file space, though, video accounts for around 20 GB of my Photos library; this represents about a third of my 60 GB library.

Photos videos

There are photos and videos from other sources, too. I was adding pictures to my iPhoto library for almost nine years before I got an iPhone. And since April of 2013, I’ve taken over 5,000 photos with an Olympus E-PL5 mirrorless camera, which I still take with me when it’s feasible (I blame Shawn Blanc’s review for inspiring the purchase). It’s hard to believe it’s seven years old and still takes amazing pictures (thanks in no small part to a pricey but Panasonic Lumix F1.7 prime lens, with which I’ve taken over 2000 photos).

By Crom… It’s Conan!

About two weeks ago, Super 7’s Conan the Barbarian action figure arrived after a long wait. I ordered it in March of 2019, about one year before the coronavirus shut the country down. A number of production issues delayed his delivery, but Super 7 communicated with customers to keep everyone updated.

The short take? It’s a great piece. But first, a little background.

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When I was a kid, and pretty young, too, I saw a Mego Conan on a peg at a store in nearby Deptford, NJ, and asked my parents if I could have it. After some negotiation, I ended up choosing a Jaws tabletop game, which was a fun kind of sudden-death game that the whole family could play. But the Conan always stuck in my mind. I had great memories of other Mego figures: Thor, Falcon, Batman and Robin, Iron Man, and Superman, to name a few. But I never saw that Conan again during my childhood.

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Unlike many other Marvel characters, there was never to be another iteration of Conan[1]. Mego Superman and Batman gave way to the awesome Super Powers collection. Mattel introduced the Secret Wars collection around the same time. Both lines introduced interesting characters beyond the usual suspects.

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But Conan? No one was making Conan figures. The Mego figure stood alone in the recesses of my mind.

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Fast forward a couple of decades: I did finally treat myself to a Conan figure: a Toy Biz figure from a two-pack we happened upon at a local toy show. (My kids got bit hard by the love of plastic at an early age, which is no surprise–I haven’t always said yes when they asked to buy a toy, but I surely gave many more nods than shakes. We discovered toy shows, and I always saved whatever money I had for the boys, the only exceptions being this Conan and a punisher figure, before the Hasbro reboot of marvel legends.) And there was Vikor, too, the Viking from the North from the He-Man line, who was a thinly disguised Conan, complete with chains and everything.

When the Super 7 announcement came out, I didn’t have to think hard on whether or not to order the figure.

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And in a moment of synchronicity (synchromicity), I found a collection of Conan stories for the Kindle. For a mere 99 cents.

  1. There was a Hasbro line of figures that appeared while I was in high school, with a pull-cord in the back of the figure that seemed antiquated even at the time. I’m not counting them just because. 10-year-old He-Man figures were done better.  ↩

Federico Viticci’s Use of Contexts in OmniFocus

Federico Viticci describes his use of Perspectives in OmniFocus to group his work by tags. Ignoring the perspectives themselves, it’s an interesting application of tags in OmniFocus that would surely make a GTD purist turn away in horror.

Viticci uses dates and a combination of tags, a feature not added to OmniFocus until version three, and one which was eschewed by the developers. Prior to version three, they weren’t called “tags” even–they were, in strict GTD parlance, “contexts.” You got one context per action item. No more.

Trying to glean a bit from his screenshots, it seems to me his use of projects are more like areas of responsibility (eg “Podcasts”). For this, I would be inclined to use folders. A project would be a specific episode of a podcast, with the corresponding tasks that are required to enact the goal–in this case, posting the episode. As in GTD, a project is something that takes more than one step. And to the degree possible, a project’s name should specify the desired outcome.

His use of emoji in contexts is clever as a visual cue for reviewing your tasks. I found that using font symbols in Things to differentiate “Areas” (like OmniFocus’s folders) was helpful in the same way.

Similarly, using a tag to help you separate areas of responsibility can certainly help you focus by grouping related tasks (and obscuring others). One of the key reasons I preferred Things for a time was the ability to tag actions not just with contexts, but with another bit of data. For example, anything that I might have to submit for school board approval was usually a task I tagged with the @writing tag, but I would also tag it with “Board Agenda.” The action itself wasn’t part of a project dedicated to that month’s agenda, but seeking approval was an important step in completing the project. At a particular time of the month, it was necessary that I was able to see items that had to be submitted to the board secretary. Multiple tags were the best way to get this done, and it was not a true context in GTD.

But OmniFocus has always been flexible, and version three the most flexible to date. You don’t have to be a GTD practitioner to get value out of it. The truth is, so much of what a context once meant–@phone, @computer, @online–is irrelevant now: you can often do any number of tasks no matter where you are (even working from home). This is an interesting take from a recognized power user.

How I Use Custom Perspectives in OmniFocus – MacStories

“This Latest Remarkable Hour of Trump’s Presidency”

The Washington Post crafted a video showing the events leading up to Donald Trump’s photo-op outside of St. John’s church.

Drawing on footage captured from dozens of cameras, as well as police radio communications and other records, The Washington Post reconstructed the events of this latest remarkable hour of Trump’s presidency, including of the roles of the agencies involved and the tactics and weaponry they used.

Amazing.

The crackdown before Trump’s photo op

Karens and COVID-19

Kaitlyn Tiffany, writing for The Atlantic about ‘Karens’ and COVID–19:

The posts in these subreddits can be insightful when they acutely criticize entitlement. They get—rudely—at the most destructive logical fallacy of the pandemic, which is any wishful thinking that we won’t personally become a vector for disease, even if we’re breaking rules and taking risks for our own comfort. In some cases, these memes are encouraging awareness of bad health practices and singling out behaviors that health experts agree will legitimately kill people.

There are people for whom the assumption is: I can’t get this. And however much the world bends to the demands of public health officials, they–Karens–should not be inconvenienced.

How ‘Karen’ Became a Coronavirus Villain

The Truth About Email

A Twitter thread about email turned me on to a newer email client called Twobird. Twobird resurrects one of Mailbox’s most groundbreaking features, which was putting email that it calculated was truly important to you in a separate inbox, and sorting the rest of the chaff into a place you could examine later (if ever).

Twobird shunts everything else into a category called “Low Priority.” If you use Gmail’s default categories (social, updates, forums, promotions), these messages are considered low priority. There are other interesting features, but I’m not going to review the app here.

I tried Twobird out with my home gmail account. What struck me was how little personal email I got was considered worth of my inbox. Like maybe one email a day. So I put my work gmail credentials in. The result was basically my inbox in MailMate or Spark: almost every message was Inbox-worthy.

Personal email has become what snail mail became two decades ago: Junk.