Monday, August 07, 2006

Five More Chapters

I have published chapters 7 through 11 of The Boats of the "Glen Carrig." Six more to go! I'm almost two-thirds finished! See the Hodgecast.

There are still occasional glitches in the audio files I recorded using the Logitech USB headset. I've gone ahead and released these episodes even with the occasional glitches in the recording. Trying to re-record and patch in a single word, phrase, or sentence, or even a few sentences, generally sounds worse than just leaving the glitch alone, and it is extremely time-consuming.

For the next few chapters I will try doing two complete takes of each paragraph, in the hopes that I can get at least one of the recordings glitch-free. That will slow down the initial recording, but I'm hoping that I can finish out this project without any major changes in process. For the next project I can then consider switching back to the BLUE Snowball microphone, or some other microphone. Maybe then I will be able to focus more on the glitches in my performance, rather than constantly working around limitations in the hardware.

Basically, although I'm not completely happy with the audio quality, I've had to decide whether I'm going to compromise my perfectionist standards and finish the project in a reasonable time horizon, or obsess over the glitches and push the completion date out indefinitely. I don't want to turn this enjoyable hobby into something punishing, or I'll never finish it because I'll start to dread working on it.

We're also facing some big changes when the new baby is born, and it is quite likely that if I don't get it done now, I won't get back to it for months, which could easily turn into abandoning the project altogether, as my focus moves on to something else.

If you are a perfectionist yourself, my apologies, but here it is anyway!

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