Tag Archives: books

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Just got done listening to “The Lees of Happiness” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Two quick observations.

1) Wow. That guy is brutal. Sheesh. Shouldn’t he at least have the courtesy to put a little sugar-coating on real life? I mean, come on, F.! (What kind of a name is F. anyway?)

2) Turns out that free, amateur recordings of great literature are every bit as good as ones that you have to pay for. I really like Audible.com, but if folks keep turning out free recordings of this quality and talent, I might just be compelled to drop my subscription. Unfortunately, this particular site hasn’t recorded anything new for months, so maybe it’s a little premature to send in my cancellation notice.

Podcast literature

It seems that there are a number of other sites that are podcasting literature. It would be really cool if someone could collect these recordings in some way, so that there was an audio Gutenburg project.

Some of the ones I’m currently listening to are Podcast Shorts, Bartlett Reads, and A Blog of Bosh. There are some others out there, some of which I even listen to, but these are the good ones.

On a related note, I’m curious what license, if any, folks are using, either explicitly, or in their minds, when they are doing podcasts. I am, in my mind, putting stuff in the public domain, or, at most, Creative Commons, but I haven’t done anything explicit so far as listing a license anywhere.

The Boarded Window, By Ambrose Bierce

The Boarded Window, by Ambrose Bierce. It’s a short story (12 minutes) by Ambrose Bierce. If you haven’t read any Bierce, be warned that Bierce likes to write seemingly benign stories that give you a nasty start.

I’m still experimenting with recording. This time, I recorded in a fairly noisy room, and then used the “noise removal” feature of Audacity to see what it could actually do. The resulting recording seems a little tinny to me. I really wish I knew more about recording. Time to find a comfy chair, and start reading the podcasting book that was handed to me this week at work.

Calico Pie, by Edward Lear

Calico Pie, by Edward Lear.

On the technology front, I saw someone recommend Audacity, and decided to give it another try, and I’m very very pleased. I have been using HackTV, which is fairly nice, but a little too simple, and requires too many additional steps. It records .mov files, which I then have to import into iTunes and export as mp3 files. Not only is this an additional step, but I end up with 3 copies of the recording which I have to then go clean up.

Audacity seems to make a better recording, too, for some reason, and exports directly to mp3.

Calico Pie is a poem we used to read at Turi, so I actually did quite a bit of it from memory, which surprised me. I’m always amazed at how poems stick in my brain for years and years after I last heard/recited them.

A Christmas Carol, Stave 1 preview

Just to give you a quick preview of what I’m working on for later this month, here’s
A Christmas Carol, stave 1, preview recording.

I’ve heard a number of recordings of ACC, and I don’t really like any of them. Patrick Stewart’s is pretty good, but it’s abridged. There are several complete recordings, but none of them seem to know what the book is about.

For those of you who have been listening to the Edward Lear recordings, sorry for the interruption. 😉

Insufficient tuits

In the last few months that I’ve been working on The Book (have you preordered your copy yet?) I’ve been putting off a number of other things due to insufficient tuits. Now that I have more tuits (round ones, that is) I am having trouble choosing which thing to work on. There’s 3 (or maybe 4) different books that I’d like to write. There’s my new-found interest in podcasting. There’s some geocaching that I need to catch up on. And there are always numerous to fix, build, repair, or gadgetize around the house. I’ve started pecking away at one of the books, but it’s still a bit of a secret.

And I’m pondering whether I should get an iPod so that I can do more of the nifty podcasting stuff. I almost ordered one last night, but I’m still suffering a little bit of sticker shock. In addition to the podcasting I’ve done on this site, I’m actually doing some podcasting on two other sites that are still at least somewhat secret.

Unfortunately, I find that I’m no longer able to stay up past about 10 and have a coherent thought. Gone are the days of working until 1 or 2 and still producing reasonable output. By around 9, I spend more time staring blankly, and less time writing, or whatever else it is that I was doing.

Anyways, perhaps I’ll get useful things done today. We’ll see.

Done writing

As of just a few minutes ago, I’m done writing the book. Yay. Now, just the edits remain. I’m so very glad to be done. Now you should rush out and pre-order, because it’s going to be a really great book. I hope.