Audio Editing for Podcasts

By Shamus Posted Thursday May 28, 2015

Filed under: Projects 87 comments

Once a week, I sit down with an hour of raw audio and Audacity and produce our weekly podcast. It’s a really annoying job to me, mostly because it doesn’t seem like it should exist. You record audio, you upload audio. What else is there to do? Why mess with it?

But no, apparently it takes a lot of work just to create the sort of medium-quality audio we have on our show. It’s like when I found out about foley artists, who painstakingly record all the everyday sounds to put in a feature film, because normal boom mics don’t pick them up and the world sounds mute without the footstep, clothing, and door-slamming noises we expect to hear. Tons of work goes into something I always assumed was effortless.

I’m not an audiophileI actually call myself an audioslob: I’m not very picky about fine-detail sound quality. I listened to all my music on cassette in the 80’s and the lack of quality never bothered me., I have no training in audio production, and I barely know what I’m doing. I’ve mostly had to figure this gig out on my own through trial-and-error, with some guidance from Josh.

Once in a while people ask questions about how this is done, so I thought I’d document the process…

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Audio Editing for Podcasts”

 


 

Diecast #105: Zero Escape, Life is Strange, The Witcher 3

By Shamus Posted Wednesday May 27, 2015

Filed under: Diecast 113 comments

Note that this podcast and the previous one were recorded back-to-back. No, this isn’t a permanent music change. I just wanted to do something different since this is a special episode.

Download MP3 File
Download Ogg Vorbis File

Hosts: Shamus, Campster, Josh, Chris Franklin, Mumbles, and Mr. Errant Signal.

Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #105: Zero Escape, Life is Strange, The Witcher 3”

 


 

Experienced Points: 50 Shades of The Dark Knight

By Shamus Posted Tuesday May 26, 2015

Filed under: Column 187 comments

My column this week is a little talk about what Batman: Arkham Asylum and 50 Shades of Grey have in common and no that’s not a joke.

Really, this is just my swipe at the long-standing trend of condemning art because you think OTHER people are too stupid to enjoy it responsibly. “This art promotes [longstanding social ill]!” Now, the response to my sort of article is usually, “It’s just criticism! Don’t be such a butthurt fanboy! If games are art then they deserve criticism like all other forms of art!”

But we’re talking about really different sorts of criticism here:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Experienced Points: 50 Shades of The Dark Knight”

 


 

Also By The Author

By Shamus Posted Tuesday May 26, 2015

Filed under: Notices 120 comments

Here is something I’ve been thinking about: Readers come and go. There was a time when I refreshed Lileks.com obsessively. I’m a sucker for nostalgia and ruminations on the first half of the 20th century, and if you want to cruelly mock while also secretly appreciating the quaint, kitschy, corny styles of middle America then he’s the best in the business. I’d read everything the guy wrote, and when he didn’t post new content I’d go back and re-read some of my favoritesThis retrospective on the 70s is pretty cathartic, for my money. I think that was my introduction to his work, actually.. His blog was pretty influential on my own writing and is probably why I drop into autobiographical mode once in a while.

Then one day I just… stopped. I have no idea why. James Lileks didn’t lose his mojo, sell out, offend me, or or anything else that usually causes a rift between fan and artist. I just finally got enough of whatever I was looking for, and I stopped going. I know the same thing happens to people who read this site. They eventually get enough of my crap and move on. It happens.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Also By The Author”

 


 

Diecast #104: Nvidia HairWorks, Star Trek 3, Marvel Movies, Supergirl

By Shamus Posted Monday May 25, 2015

Filed under: Diecast 146 comments

The bad news: No Spoiler Warning this week. The good news: Double Diecast. I don’t even know why, but later this week you’ll get another installment. So that’s nice.

Download MP3 File
Download Ogg Vorbis File

Hosts: Shamus, Josh, Chris, Mumbles.

Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #104: Nvidia HairWorks, Star Trek 3, Marvel Movies, Supergirl”

 


 

Top 32 Posts, by Comments

By Shamus Posted Sunday May 24, 2015

Filed under: Random 73 comments

On Friday Krellen said this to me:

Yeah, the Supergirl post exploded in just a few hours. Partly this is my fault. I was trying to do this hairpin turn argument where I would list all the ways the trailer looked awful and then pull a 180 and argue why it was just fine, and might even be a good thing. But either I whiffed the turn or some people stopped reading halfway through, because a lot of people pushed back, thinking I was attacking the show. That probably made the discussion a little more controversial than it needed to be. Ah well. We hammered it out.

But it did get me thinking: What are the most commentedAnd thus, probably the most controversial. posts on this site? So I did a little MYSQL querySELECT comment_count, ID, post_date, post_title FROM `wp_posts` ORDER BY comment_count DESC LIMIT 32; to find out. Below are the results and my analysis.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Top 32 Posts, by Comments”

 


 

Resident Evil EP3: Meet Scott Umbrella

By Shamus Posted Friday May 22, 2015

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 78 comments


Link (YouTube)

I don’t watch a lot of horror movies, so I’ll crowdsource this question and see what we can find: Has there ever been a time in a movie / game where a male protagonist has backed slowly away from a threat, fell on his ass, and then stared helplessly as the threat overcame him, when all he needed to do was stand his stupid ass up and walk away from it? Because that happens a lot in movies, I only see it happen to women, and I think it has the opposite effect the writers intend.

It’s clearly supposed to heighten the tension. Get up! Run away! Hurry! It’s going to eat / dismember / suck the brains out of / stab you. And you know what? The first couple of times, it worked. But after a couple of decades of this I find it really annoying. Whenever I see someone sit of their ass instead of fighting for their survival, I kind of feel obligated to let Darwin have his way with her. No offense lady, but I don’t want your lack of intelligence and survival instinct to get spread around the gene pool.

Does this make me a horrible person? Probably. Although bear in mind we’re talking strictly about fictional women. I like to think I’d be more charitable to someone real.

I will say that Jill Valentine spends entirely too much time screaming for help and gawking at things trying to kill her. I give her a pass for her first encounter, but somewhere around zombie number ten its time she got with the program and stopped being so surprised. Particularly since she’s supposed to be a capable police officer or whatever she is.

So that’s Resident Evil. It’s an interesting specimen and even though I don’t care for the franchise, it’s the great-grandsire to a bunch of stuff I really love.