Another day where I'm thankful I had a Studio Maintenance class when I went to school.  My Sound Devices 744T audio recorder had some buttons that were becoming unreliable.  I delicately disassembled it, removed the faceplate, and discovered some grime building up on the switch contacts on both the front control panel circuit board and the contacts on the back of the white rubber buttons.  A few Q-tips and a little 99% isopropyl alcohol cleaned them right up and the old girl is back in service and good as new!

Football has been shut down due to COVID-19, but the TCU Horned Frogs are preparing to return to the gridiron with their annual half time hype video.  (Audio recorded by yours truly.)

Working on some social media videos for Promised Land Dairy.

Working on a promotional video for Devils River new coffee infused whiskey.

I've finally got my 5.1 surround sound studio up and running again since our move.  I've recently started doing some editing and post production work in here.  Very excited about how things are turning out!

In the past when I got calls in the car, I'd have to take the phone out of it's holder and hold it to my head if I wanted any kind of clarity.  I didn't like fiddling with this, so I recently purchased some adapters that allow me to hear phone calls out of my car speakers and talk to the person on the line with an external microphone.  Not satisfied with most of the external car microphone offerings available, I purchased the recently released Rode Videomic ME, which is a sort of "boom" microphone for your phone, and used some adapters and extension cables to mount it in my car.  It even has a "dead-cat" for wind protection, and the option to add a second microphone for a passenger!

Creating educational material that is also entertaining makes for a more enjoyable experience and better learning retention.  A few years ago I had the pleasure to work on an industrial video on business ethics for the American Association of Professional Landmen.  (They oversee the purchasing and leasing land for the purpose of drilling for oil and other energy sources.)  It was one of the most cinematic and well acted videos I've had the pleasure to work on.  We just wrapped on another ethics video for the AAPL, and I hope it turns out as good as the last one did!

The studio computer got a couple much needed upgrades today.  I replaced the comically large rack mountable server case I had installed it in with a (still large, but) more reasonably sized more traditional tower case.  ALSO upgraded were the system fans in the case.  At times when the CPU was under particular strain, you would not be blamed for mistaking the sound of this PC with a leaf blower.  Now, with the ultra quiet Noctua fans installed, it's almost quiet enough for you to wonder if it's actually running!  The colors Noctua chose for this series of fans, tan and brown, are definitely... distinct.  I'm sure they would look amazing in a custom PC built with wood panelling. Fortunately, I'm more concerned with performance than looks (and there aren't many LEDs inside my computer case), so it doesn't bother me.

I've been traveling more often recently, plus I've had a lot of gigs that only require up to 3 tracks.  So, I decided I could use a recorder that was smaller and lighter than my 8 track Sound Devices 788T.  I purchased a Sound Devices MixPre-3, an Orca OR-27 bag, and an additional Tentacle Sync-E timecode box.  The result is a much smaller and light weight recording rig that has industry leading Sound Devices quality sound with timecode capability that will run for a REALLY long time on a single NP-1 battery.  The only down side I've found so far is that the recorder doesn't have a secondary drive for backup recording.  It's not perfect for everything, but it's more than adequate for a lot of things.