The Continuing Adventures of the First-Time Podcaster

The air-conditioning unit in my dorm room has turned on.

Couldn't record yesterday because somebody's building a new building right outside my window. I spent the time editing and doing some rehearsals, figuring I would make it up today. Then what do you know but I come home this evening, and it's freezing cold in my room, and the air-conditioning unit over my closet is going rrrrr-rrrr-rrrr. Very loud.

I can't control the air conditioning. I cranked up the thermostat all the way, but it still won't turn off.

I went to my RA asking about how to turn it off, and though he couldn't help me with that, he did tell me about the "make-out closet." It's a useless little room on the floor that used to be a phone booth back before the rooms all had phones in them. Now it's kind of like an appendix, just sitting there. The RAs jokingly call it the "make-out closet." Anyway, it's kind of like this little sound booth, and when I tried recording in there, it worked. Chs. 8-9 are going to sound a little funny, but that's okay.

Lord of the Rings: Presidential Campaign 2008

The politics on this one is getting a little bit dated. I wrote it for the campus humor magazine back in the fall:

J.R.R. Tolkien once said that his Lord of the Rings Trilogy was not intended to be an allegory. That is, he didn’t intend it to be “about” any particular event in the real world, such as World War Two. Instead, it was supposed to be a story for the ages, whose lessons could apply to the real world no matter what the time and place. Yes, it should even apply to modern U.S. politics. Here goes.

Me: Good morning, Mr. President.
Bush: A new power is rising!
Me: How do you think we’re doing in Iraq?
Bush: Its victory is at hand!
Me: Is there anything you’d like to say to the soldiers who are over there?
Bush: This night, the land will be stained with the blood of Rohan. March to Helm’s Deep!
Me: What are your long-term goals for Iraq?
Bush: Leave none alive! To war!
Me: And what about the children’s health insurance bill?
Bush: You shall not pass!
Me: Al Gore, would you care to comment on that?
Gore: Sounds like Orc mischief to me.
Me: Yes?
Gore: Nobody cares for the woods anymore.
Me: So, now that you’ve tackled global warming, deforestation is next?
Gore: Many of these trees were my friends. Creatures I had known from nut and acorn. They had voices of their own.
Me: You sound rather upset.
Gore: Mrawwwwwr!
Me: What are you going to do about it?
Gore: The Ents are going to war!
Me: As for Alberto Gonzales–
Gonzales: Master’s my friend!
Sen. Leahy: You don’t have any friends! Nobody likes you!
Gonzales: I’m not listening. I’m not listening.
Sen. Leahy: You’re a liar and a thief.
Gonzales: Master looks after us now. We don’t need you.
Me: That’s enough, you two. Mr. Cheney, why won’t you release those documents to the press?
Cheney: Not its business, Precious.
Me: Right. Ms. Clinton, how would the United States be different if you were president?
Clinton: Instead of a Dark Lord, you would have a queen!
Me: I don’t think it’s entirely fair to call Bush a Dark Lord–
Clinton: Beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Treacherous as the sea! Stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love me and despair!
Me: Um… that’s nice.
Helpless bystander: Help! Help!
Me: What is it?
Helpless bystander: A Balrog of Morgoth! It’s a hideous, enormous creature that breathes fire and tramples anything that gets in its way!
Me: You mean Michael Moore?

Yikes. Time for me to get out of here.

21 Accents

This lady can speak English in pretty much any accent imaginable.

21 Accents

Hearing her do this is an inspiration. When I read the chapters of Grizelda aloud, I try to "do the voices" for the characters. I know I'm not ready to do accents yet, but when you listen to Ms. Walker do 21 different accents all strung together, you get a sense of how it is people speak differently from each other. It's got a lot to do with the vowels, and with pacing.

Her California sounds like a lot of people I knew going to high school in the Los Angeles basin. But by no means do we all talk like that there.

Noooooo! Or, always back up your files

It's been an incredibly busy week here at lake Wobegon, but Thursday evening I had a couple of hours to myself and I thought I'd record a couple of episodes of Grizelda. Recording Ch. 3 went just fine, until I went to save it and accidentally called it Ch. 4. Lo and behold, when I open the folder of Audacity projects, I discover that instead of asking me, the program went and overwrote the existing Ch. 4, which I had already recorded and put a lot of time into editing! Trying to fix it I ended up breaking the Ch. 3 that I had just recorded. About three hours of effort, vanished into the digital aether.

I went to the Podiobooks author help site to see if there was any way I could salvage the two chapters, and came across a forum post with this title: Always Back Up Your Files.

I've learned my lesson.

Arrgh!

All the sound I recorded for Chapters 3 and 4 have to be thrown out because I keep breathing into the microphone every time I say "p" and "t." I'm making progress up a steep learning curve, but it's going slower than I expected. I might have to postpone Grizelda's air date so I have the summer vacation to work on it.

I can has light?

So the Lolcat Bible will likely induce eye-rolling for most people, but I think it's kind of an interesting linguistic phenomenon. Lolcat is a brand new language, spawned by the Internet. Is it a natural language or an artificial language? Semi-synthetic, maybe?

Progress

After some intensive recording, I've got the first five chapters in the can (which is how much Podiobooks requires you to submit up front). Now, onward to sound editing!