Now I’m sure most people rely on TV News weather forecasts or online resources, but depending where you live these may range in how specific they are… Locally I really appreciate the rain radar here which provides an animated display of rainfall over a 3 day or 5 day period…. which lets me change my thinking from ‘Saturday is going to be rainy’ to ‘Saturdays going to be wet but late afternoon should be ok…’ (I put a red dot on my house – its going to rain about 2am tomorrow morning!)

But slowly I decided I want to learn more, to understand whats happening and why. Having lived in Wellington for a decade or two now I know what to expect from different fronts eg a cold front from the South will be bitterly cold, while from the North (as per that chart above) will be blustery, warmer & likely less heavy rain. But come September I am going to spend 2 months on an island in the Seto Inland Sea, where I will be outdoors as much as possible, shooting photos, timelapse & video along with recording sound, and I do not know anything at all about the weather patterns there…. but I will need to!

I grew up on a farm, so weather dictated what my Dad did each day. And one of my most distinct childhood sonic memories is of my Dad walking down the hall after breakfast or lunch & tapping the barometer before he headed out to work. Now this shows how naive I was – I never really appreciated why he tapped it. In a vague sense maybe i thought it was a bit old & cantankerous & needed a prod to make sure its working. But a month or so ago I bought myself a barometer & finally realised why you tap it: its about change!

The advantage of owning a barometer is that it provides very local feedback on the weather. So as per that barometer above, you can see it has a little rain icon on the low pressure side and sunny on the high pressure, but it isn’t like you sit & watch it change. And thats why you tap it: to see which way the pressure is moving. I tapped mine just before & sure enough the needle jumped 2 or 3 stops – the pressure is dropping due to that northerly front coming through tonight.

OK so thats about the limit of my knowledge for now – please feel free to share any valuable insights you have or resources…. I just went to the kindle shop and bought a few ebooks on weather for homework

Understand The Weather: Teach Yourself’ by Peter Innes

Weather Forecasting Made Simple’ by Stan Yorke

And just for fun (& really due to shooting timelapse)

The Cloud Collector’s Handbook by Gavin Pretor-Pinney

So who do you rely on for weather info when heading out recording or shooting?

> Seriously great advice from Ken Loach (thanks Brita!)

frequencies (a) | nicolas bernier from Nicolas Bernier on Vimeo.

> This is a great idea, which hopefully more developers will try: you can rent SyncroArts ProTools plugins (VocAlign pro, Revoice Pro but not Titan, which is a shame since if you inherited a project with a messed up workflow then Titan might well be a one off solution) – plus if you rent the same plugin three times & you get a free permanent license, so its like rent-to-buy! via PTE

love how the 1D almost sounds like a Bolex!

> Imagine if Alexander Calder was still around & got into 3d printing….

> A new field recording blog to read: SoundMindFX

> Love these new wooden pinhole cameras – photos from pinhole cameras feel so mysterious… and I am not 100% sure quite why….

> Great read about Terrence Malick

I have a theory this is actually a Chemical Brothers track with 3 or 4 elements muted….

Sound Picking – Teaser from Haakon Mathisen on Vimeo.

A master thesis by Jonas Barsten at the Norwegian academy of music – more info here

well, one of my current obsessions, which will see the light of day as the next HISSandaROAR library

> The traditional view is that words can’t survive for more than 8,000 to 9,000 years…..

Whats that saying about never meeting (or listening to a stream of consciousness of) your heroes?

> a 3d printed ear!!

more info – thanks Tom

> one of the most interesting sounds I heard today: a musical siren
(would love to hear this tree instrument too!) – thanks Richard

> A camera that sees sound?

> Totally LOVE the ideas behind these acoustic laptops! – check some videos of performances

60 medical infusion sets, water, fire, metal sheets 20x20x4cm by Zimoun

Sonic water

mercury with a 10Hz > 120Hz sine wave (not sure what the point of the soundtrack is)
thanks Joe

Analog Hard Disk 2 from Gijs on Vimeo.

>The 10 rules of a Zen programmer/field recordist/sound designer/pretty much anything involving sentience, presence & sensitivity…

> Maybe this is in Avids future for ProTools? Adobe announce move to subscription based license for ALL apps!

> This sounds like a rather unlikely thesis: predicting hit films via maths #groan

OSCILLATE from Daniel Sierra on Vimeo.

thanks Miguel!

> Fascinating population distribution image: more than half of the world’s population lives inside this circle

> Lessons from a dog

> I bought a stick-on label printer a while ago, primarily to label a few studio conenctions, but I started printing useful sayings & one was: MONO-TASKING and this article is directly related: Focusing on distraction

Micro Mayhem! from Stoopid Buddy Stoodios on Vimeo.

getting staunched out by some cows near Tunnel Gully, Wellington 5th May 2013

shot on Brooklyn Hill, Wellington 4th May 2013

I just got a Canon 40D mod’d to capture InfraRed, original image ex the camera below

shot in Pukerua Bay, 25th February 2013

> I caught a bus into town the other night, on my way out for dinner & when I got off I walked past 3 bus stops & as I walked I counted the people waiting, who were hunched over their smart phones. I don’t know when the next bus was due but there was exactly ten people, and every one of them was staring intently into their teeny tiny little glowing screen… I am pretty sure I could have been a ten foot tall hallucination and they wouldn’t have noticed… I felt sorry for them & in hindsight wish I could have sent them this link to read while they waited for their bus… And this one

> “Flying has changed my life”

> Good advice about copyright infringement from an attorney

> If you’ve seen the excellent films Old Boy, or Thirst, or Sympathy for Lady Venegance then Park Chan-Wook will be a familiar name to you, but there is one film I hadn’t seen by him and it intrigued me as apparently it was a short film shot using an iPhone 4… Thankfully someone has uploaded it to youtube, who knows how long it will stay there but if you have an interest in his work then check out Night Fishing

61Hz tone shot at 60 fps via petapixel

Patti Smith: Advice to the young from Louisiana Channel on Vimeo.

> How many books do you read at a time? Are you a serial monogamist reader? I have to confess I am a chronic parallel reader – I must have at least 20 books on the go at any one time….. and I just added this one to the list – Cutting Rhythms: Shaping the Film Edit

SCREENGRAB from Willie Witte on Vimeo.

> An interesting read/experiment: a year without internet

I first met Paul prior to working on the film MISTER PIP, as I knew my work would involve a field trip to Papua New Guinea and I was very keen to talk to someone who had spent time there. A friend who works with Paul at Victoria University introduced us & Paul was very generous with invaluable advice, and not too much later I got to see one of Pauls feature length documentaries that he filmed in Papua New Guinea: STORI TUMBUNA: ANCESTORS’ TALES, which is such a great film! It is incredibly engaging, but the pay off of the film is pure genius and I cannot reveal it without spoiling your potential viewing. So I strongly suggest you check it out! But it is his next project that I wanted to discuss.

Below is the opening 6 minutes of “Nga Reo O Te Whenua: Voices of the Land”, which to quote Paul is a feature documentary “about Richard Nunns and Horomona Horo and their shared journey of acoustic discovery in the resonant landscapes of Aotearoa (New Zealand). The film explores the public and personal journeys of these two extraordinary musicians as they reflect on the revival of taonga puoro (traditional Maori instruments) and the place of these instruments in the culture and landscape of modern Aotearoa.

Nga Reo O Te Whenua – Trailer from Paul Wolffram on Vimeo.

These opening scenes were shot in Ngarua Caves, Takaka and Karamea Beach in Feburary 2013, and Paul has the next stage of production scheduled and planned but needs some financial help to achieve it, which is where you come in. If you’d like to help make this project happen, and be rewarded for your contribution please do check out the PLEDGE ME page for the project. (Pledge Me is a bit like a local version of Kickstarter) Rewards include a CD of Richard Nunns exquisite music, a copy of the final film on DVD and even the option of attending the New Zealand premiere!

And in terms of full disclosure, I am onboard to work on the film once it reaches post production. A good friend & talented local soundie Bernard Blackburn is the production recordist for the project and along with recording the performances has also been capturing beautiful ambiences which I will be working with a lot once I start on the film. But don’t worry, you aren’t contributing to my pay – by contributing to the Pledge Me fund raiser you are directly helping make sure the shoot of this vital project happens.