hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3838.txt

Episode: 3838
Title: HPR3838: Biking to Work
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3838/hpr3838.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 06:20:00

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3838 for Wednesday the 19th of April 2023.
Today's show is entitled Biking to Work.
It is hosted by John Culp and is about 13 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is emergency show John Culp records an episode while riding his bicycle to work.
Oh dear, something has gone terribly wrong if you're hearing this show.
This is an emergency show and so that means the HPRQ has gotten dangerously low.
If you'd like to help out then please consider it recording a show.
Email admin at hackerpublicradio.org for more information.
Please help us out or else you're going to be stuck with more shows like this one. Bye.
Hey, just a quick word about the recording you're about to hear.
I used an app on my phone called HighQ MP3 recorder and one of the things I talked about
while I was recording was the fact that I couldn't control the input level and I was hoping
that it would sound okay and I just want to say that it sounded really really good in my opinion.
When I opened it up in audacity the wave forms were consistently strong and I had put it through
quite a lot of different scenarios from a very noisy situation on the street and riding along
on a bicycle with wind blowing and then ending up in my office where it was nice and quiet and
the sound quality was consistently good. A little side note here I just I've been poking around
in the HighQ MP3 recorder settings and this thing I'm recording right now I'm using what they
call an experimental feature recording to flag instead of to MP3 and so I'm curious to see how that's
going to sound. I'm not using the same microphone right now that I used when I was riding my bike.
This is my slightly more expensive Sony stereo mic and I think it was about 20 bucks or something.
So it's a little nicer than the $2 microphone but still I think this shows that you can make a
pretty nice recording with just a phone and really lowers the barrier for as far as recording
episodes for HPR. So anyway I hope you enjoy hearing the recording that is immediately following.
Are we recording? Looks like it okay. Hey everybody this is John Culp and Levy at Louisiana
and I'm doing a little bit of a different kind of recording today. I'm going to try to record
while I'm riding my bicycle to work. Just walking out of my house now out to my shed where I keep my bike
and I'm riding my bicycle because you may have heard a couple of my episodes in the past where I
walked to work and talked while I was walking. I could still walk but it would take a lot longer now
because they have closed off the little bridge that for well ever since I've lived in this house
has served as a shortcut to get to campus. My house backs right up on the campus of the university
where I teach kind of on the edge of the campus but nevertheless we have always been able to walk
through the apartment complex parking lot and then across a little bridge and be on campus.
Well they've closed it off because now they say that the bridge is unsafe. The city has closed
it down saying that the pilings which are made of wood are unsafe and that at any moment during a
heavy storm which we get kind of frequently here all the rushing water could wash away the pilings
and hurt people. So they've closed off the bridge and there's no indication as yet of when or if
they're going to replace it or repair it. So instead of walking like I did sometimes
I'm pretty much riding my bicycle every time because now I have to go all the way to the end of
the street and around and it adds I don't know if it's twice the distance but it's pretty close
to twice as far as I used to have to go to get to my office. Okay I'm on my bike now riding
down my street and I'm using one of the things that prompted me to try this was after I did
my episode about I think it's the one about headphones but anyway the one where I introduced
the $2 mic which I'm using right now by the way. I think it was Lord Jack and Blut emailed me and
said that he had bought some of those $2 mics on my recommendation but then when he tried to
use it on his phone it didn't work because he plugged it in and you know the phone connection is
for headphones and a microphone and he he mentioned that he was going to try to get one of these
little adapters they would split that audio output from the phone into a headphone jack and a mic jack
and I thought man what a great idea I'm gonna get one too so I ordered one and it finally came a
couple of days ago I think it must have been coming from China or something because it took forever
to get here. Okay I'm at the end of the street probably here the traffic now I have to go out to this
one main road and ride down this main road for maybe 200 yards it has a bicycle lane
but as you can hear trucks are going cars and trucks are going really fast right next to me so I
don't like staying on this road any longer than I have to. I'm gonna accelerate a little bit here.
Coming up to the turn where I can get on the campus and should be a little less noisy starting
all right about now after I turn on the campus. So anyway I got the adapter in the mail
and I'm using it now it's plugged in to my phone and I've got my two dollar microphone plugged
into the microphone side of the adapter and then I've got my two dollar microphone
clipped on to my shirt about I don't know six or eight inches below my chin so I think it should
sound okay. One thing I don't like about recording on the phone is that I have no control over
the input volume. I'm using an app called high QMP3 recorder which does high quality MP3 recordings
and it does pretty well. I don't think the Android platform supports any kind of
adjustments of input volume it does everything automatically and I have not seen any apps
that will allow you to adjust it okay making a turner into our I do a little shortcut
but once I get on the campus I do a little shortcut through the parking garage
so that I can get over to another street and I don't like to ride on any of the big sidewalks if I
can help it because there are a lot of pedestrians and I don't want to scare them or crash into the
marrying thing almost through the parking garage
and out I go man look at the lineup of cars waiting to get into the parking garage
got a skateboard coming at me manage not to hit each other that's good
never seen such a lineup of cars here for this wonder what's up
I don't think I'm late for class or anything I've got a class at nine o'clock and I think right
now it's about eight thirty but maybe that's about right I'm gonna I'm gonna sneak
past here cars lined up in the road waiting to get into the parking garage driveway
okay I'm almost to school now almost to my office it'll actually be quicker going this way
on the bicycle than it was to walk using the shortcut
and I hope the wind noise isn't isn't too bad the two dollar microphone does have a wind screen
but I'm not sure how effective it is when you're on a bicycle it seemed to be pretty good when
you're walking but I'm going a lot faster on a bike than I do on foot
anyway oh I was talking about how you can't adjust the volume input level on my zoom I never
use the auto recording level I always like to adjust it manually or else you end up with
recording where it sounds like you're constantly zooming in and out but I don't have that option
on the phone so hopefully it'll sound okay okay I'm at the corner now waiting to cross to my building
and here we go crossing the street
up the curb take a truck on the left here
okay I've been crossing the courtyard to the music building
smoothly off the bike and up the stairs I've got this down I should make a video showing how to
get into a building with a bike open with the left hand hold it open with the heel in the door
all right good morning how's it going today oh pretty good
all right I think I will probably end up cutting out just about all of that except for maybe
my greeting with my colleague our coral director because our conversations about departmental stuff
is not necessarily appropriate for a podcast but anyway I'm at work and I might as well finish
the thought about the audio recording the zoom and many recorders are capable of doing what they
call the auto level where it will automatically adjust the input level according to how loud the
sounds are that are coming in and in some circumstances that can be really good like if you're
trying to record a meeting maybe where you're at like 10 people around the conference table and
you get the recorder right in the middle well you're probably going to want to do the auto
leveling there because some people are going to speak quietly and some are going to be loud
and they're going to be different distances from the microphone and so the auto recording the auto
level might be appropriate there I don't usually like it if I've got a microphone clipped
to my shirt like I have right now but on a phone at least as far as I've seen there's no way
to adjust the input level so you have to trust the auto leveling so hopefully it'll be okay I might
be able to fool around with a little bit in post production as well but I think I'm going to just
kind of see how it goes as it is it might end up being really really good I don't know I don't
think I'm going to go so far as excuse me a recent contributor who did the beginning to end on the
phone where he did the upload from the phone and they show notes on the phone and all that I think
I'm going to dump it off to my laptop and do the post production work and all that stuff but
anyway I hope you've enjoyed hearing me ride my bicycle to work maybe this will be one of those
emergency episodes where if the queue gets just too low then you get stuck with this but anyway
thanks for listening I will talk to you later bye
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