Upload Overload - Saturday 16th August

Yeah yeah yeah I know - why such a big gap?...have I been slacking? NO!! I've been at work. Although I love my job and I am very grateful to have it - DON'T EVER TRY TO DO AN MA AT THE SAME TIME!

As it is I have an 80 mile round journey back and forth to work - never finish at 5 because, as I'm sure you can imagine - news doesn't just stop at five (although sometimes I reeeeeeeeeeally wish it did!) I do have to eat sometimes as well, and by the time I actually get back during the week, and feed my poor broken and beat-up tired self - I'm knackered! (pardon the phraseology!) I have tried to do MA stuff in the evening - but I'm so tired I can't concentrate on it and then I get scared I'm going to mess it up! AND usually by the time I get back from work - I've been concentrating at a computer for so long already - I can't see.

Happy stupid days!

I am a stressed wee one - a wee one that is stressed is me.

I CANNOT believe it has taken me this long to even get the blessed audio uploaded on to my computer!

And oh God - did that want to run smoothly? Did it hell.

So the equation was this earlier on today...

(F x 8gb) + (c + usb + aa)
____________________________ =ma
N

(Key: F = Fostex, gb = gigabyte, c = computer, usb = usb lead, aa = Adobe Audition, ma = the alleged MA, N = Me! Natalie!)


It just looks so simple doesn't it?!

So I plugged it all in - the Fostex spoke to my computer and my computer spoke back - they had a nice conversation and decided to strike up a relationship.

But, like all relationships struck from the workplace - it went sour.

My computer started bending my ear about how the Fostex just doesn't communicate properly and everything it's saying is just gobbledygook (and oh how I'd love to know the Collins Dictionary definitive spelling of gobbledygook!)

The Fostex, like a typical partner (non-gender-specific) was carrying on blindly thinking everything is ok - and everything it was doing was right and it's the computer's problem.

"It's not me...it's you."

Adobe Audition meanwhile, like the good marriage counsellor, is sitting there just saying, "You're not communicating together, I'm not hearing anything. Talking to each other is something you need to work on."

Basically, what was happening was that ALL 8gbs of my audio was stuck on my Fostex and wasn't loading into my computer properly - they kept on coming up in Adobe as blank - which I knew they weren't, particularly after some frantic checking.

Hours had gone by already, many of my grey cells had evacuated the quickly crumbling matter that was my brain, and one half of me was waving goodbye to my MA project - over-reacting - I thought not (at the time).

But after checking things for the umpteenth time (again - Collins spelling!) and a very good nicotine fix I realised the only way to do it was to painstakingly transfer each one in the most manual way possible - namely click and drag and check, click and drag and check, click and drag and write down which one doesn't work, click and drag and check - FIFTY EIGHT TIMES!!

And some of them took around 15 minutes or more to transfer each - I was there for hours.

And I'm running out of time on my first day off since I got back, and it's my niece's Christening tomorrow - so no worky worky gonna get done then - we're expecting about 40 people (wish I were that popular!)

I still lost some audio - apparently the 25th July was a bad day - nothing from that day works...seriously.

I've cut my losses though- to be honest I can't exactly remember what happened on that day anyway - and I've double checked that I didn't do any interviews (via my useful notepad blog!) and I've found all that audio anyway...

Oh and just as a final thing - yes I am still writing things in my notepad-long-hand-COMPLETELY-UN-TECHNOLOGICAL-RELIABLE-PEN-AND-PAPER blog - as I can write stuff down as I'm going and not have to overload my computer by running two programmes (internet and Audition) at the same time (no -because that's too hard for my pc (a.k.a. Pretty Crap) AND it means I can get away from the evil glare of technology and run to the comfort of my slightly coffee stained notebook, probably curled up in bed and have a Bic-sponsored whinge.

So, this is why all the blogs are still having to be back-dated - because it's not working trying to blog on the actual day I'm talking about. I have found it is much quicker to just type it up (and add caustic remarks here and there!!)

Anyway - most of the stuff is on my computer - and backed up on an external hard drive - and it's still on my Fostex.

I just need to name them all now.

Oh and there's the small thing of editing and putting it all together...

6(ish) weeks to go...and I'm working 2 weekends this month, already done one, one to go next week in a glorious 6 day week.

Fudge.