Summer sniffles
It sucks getting sick during the summer. Something about coughing, nose blowing, etc. when it's shorts weather temperatures feels so wrong and even more miserable.
What I've been doing to keep me company, pass the time since I can't concentrate on harder things, and haven't been sleeping well:
Started an ORPHAN BLACK rewatch. I'd forgotten how good the early episodes were. I was reminded of Tatiana when I eventually realized she was on Star Trek: Academy and I didn't even recognize her until much later in the season.
Watched random episodes of GHOSTING, hosted by Matthew Finlan and Luke Hutchie. I picked episodes based on if the location sounded interesting. Best episode so far was season 2, episode 5, where it appears they did catch something on camera. Who knew there were so many gadgets for paranormal activity? Not me. This show doesn't take itself too seriously, and sitcom length episodes were perfect for what I needed.
Also, I feel like I unlocked a new level of technical loonacy.
HR fans, you may have come across the tandem read concept of Role Model and The Long Game. Since I own the audiobooks, I decided to tackle this in audio after reasonably enjoying the text (ebook) experience as a reread. Jumping around for 2 ebooks was not too annoying. But, I have the Volume 2 omnibus edition of books 4-6 (the 1-3 narrator is unbearable IMHO), so I didn't want to manually jump through with audio.
If you also have the omnibus audio version from audible, use Libation to backup your books. If you were smart enough to buy a DRM-free version you don't need this step. If you're already using Libation with mp3 output, there's an option for saving per chapter. I use the default m4b format. Then, thank you random stranger for this super useful tip, you can use Freac audio converter by just loading the cue file from your backup m4b file, in order to generate mp3s into 1 file per chapter.
Remove Common Goal chapters (not sure if doable in bulk since this is the first time I've used Freac. Yes, I did it individually.)
You could rearrange the tandem chapters just from the remaining chapters in Freac, I think? Except they are only named generically as Chapter One, etc., not helpfully with the corresponding book name included. When you first load the cue file, yes, this means you see Chapter One listed 3 times, once per book in the omnibus.
What I did instead, which is more work, is ALSO save / export each book separately first as mp3s, taking the time to rename the file and chapter name metadata with the book names as well. I used Mp3tag for the retag and did it manually, but maybe could've used Freac for this step too if the naming convention template output setting was changed beforehand? There are several to choose from, but I didn't look at this too closely at the time.
- Then, in Mp3tag I changed the track numbers, file names, and all other metadata to the tandem read order as if it were a single book. If I decide I really like this in audio, I'll probably resave it as a m4b later. Right now it's not really hitting the same for me as it did in text, though.
I thought the paper book people were dealing with a lot, since you have to prep and mark the sections, but reading over my audio process, nah that was easier than what I ended up doing!
Also, I haven't touched my library book yet, hopefully this passes soon, so I can read it before my renewal limit hits.