I don't have a television. I don't have a television licence so I refuse to use the watch again services of the terrestrial channels. My closest interaction with terrestrial television occurs when I pay for each Doctor Who series as it comes out and download it weekly as it becomes available. Otherwise my go to source of mindless entertainment is Netflix. Many times now I have found myself caught in the spiral of watching a series until it comes to an end. Unfortunately some are just too badly written to make it. A series I am currently watching started with a promising premise - a bunch of genius young adults with mathematical, engineering, computer and problem solving skills decide they need a "human" (their affectionate term for the rest of us) to help them negotiate their way through life. In their world EQ is not the equalisation I apply to my recordings, but "emotional quotient", something that scores far less highly than each individual's IQ. Their interpreter turns out to be an attractive young mother of a child who refuses at first to interact with the outside world. This team of exceptional people, known as "Scorpion" (giving the series its title) comes into the orbit of Homeland Security and is pimped out to solve problems and save the world - a different and often unbelievable crisis featuring unlikely solutions that are written to sound quasi-plausible per episode. As I said the premise sounds interesting, but after so many episodes and so many seasons the arc of most of the stories has become predictable. I may not make it to the end if it doesn't pick up.
I'm no genius, but ideas I have a few, though mostly these days it is my own fear and lack of knowledge that prevent me from getting on with carrying them through to completion. I have a page on Bandcamp where visitors can listen to whatever music I decide to put up and they can even buy the download version should they so wish (that would, of course be marshlander.bandcamp.com) There is a "merchandise" option and I thought that some people might like to buy one of the limited edition and remaining copies of my CD. You know, Christmas is coming and all that. However, dealing with postage costs, returns policies, codes for esoteric functions ... I look at the page with all the boxes to fill in and my heart quails, I can feel the quailing. I have blank greetings cards of the album cover with the beautiful Mark Whittle-Bruce portrait of the not so beautiful me and the same applies. More quailing.
Another brilliant idea I've wanted to implement for some time is to make videos of some of my songs. I have lots of footage of boat trips I've undertaken, but somehow using iMovie or Final Cut Pro X escapes me altogether. I fall at the first hurdle. If I decide to start a new "project" why is anything I've imported from a previous failed project still on the screen? In my imagination "new project" suggests a blank page. If I start deleting the leftovers, what am I deleting? Do I lose the video altogether or is it simply removed from the "new project"? The video I have recorded is mostly loaded on to my computer from my phone. I attempted a Facebook live stream. I was proud of myself for managing to keep a fairly coherent commentary running during the filming while I was trying to keep the boat on course and not crash into bridges. However, somehow the audio track has been chopped into unintelligible machine gun rattles of sound. I realise that an audio commentary is of limited use in a music video, but it should make sense if I want to edit together a record of a journey I've undertaken and post it here, for example. It does nothing of the sort and the video is also pretty jerky. The "mute audio" function in iMovie took a moment to find so I clicked it, but the stuttering noise persists. What!!?
I quite like the idea of having my music collection in one small place. After much research I bought a Brennan BB1. This has the advantage of being an internet radio as well as a music player. I can use it to listen to my friends Richard Penguin, on Future Radio and Simon J on the famous ex-pirate station 242 Radio. Unfortunately it does not seem to find West Norfolk Radio, so I can't listen to yet another friend, Jane Clayton. Regarding its other main function, it looked perfectly straightforward to copy the albums I have stored on my computer to the BB1. It is not. My BB1 seems to have given up at about 250 albums. I bought a large capacity USB key that should have had enough additional capacity for my whole collection. The BB1 does not instantly recognise the music on the key, but instead shows lots of folders that need to be scrolled through before getting to any music. The key filled up a whole lot faster than I was expecting too, so I spent more money on a solid state drive. That drive is not recognised at all. There is a computer app that is supposed to be the interface between the computer and the BB1. It is supposed to make the whole process easier. It does not.
In desperation I have referred to YouTube instructional videos, my usual source of helpful knowledge, but I've yet to find one that addresses my problems. I have registered with the Brennan users forum where the uninitiated can seek help for whatever ails them. If help is there it has passed me by because even the questions appear to be asked in some secret language. This is supposed to be a consumer product, but it is seriously "nerdy" - sorry, but I cannot think of another and less emotive adjective to describe the discussions. The questions just about make sense, but the answers are riddled with the kind of jargon that leaves me reeling. Support? It does not.
There was a time when my job was to help teachers cope with new technology in music. Maybe my brain was better joined up in those days because I thought I did a reasonable job of interpreting some tricky concepts and processes. Now, the shoe is truly on the other foot and I am lost. I think I need to engage the services of a younger enthusiast, I wonder if Ralph, the twelve year-old genius from Scorpion could help. Probably not.
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