This charity drive is a live, online auction to raise money for the trust fund of Tee Morris’ daughter who lost her mother on January 5, 2010. There will be at least 5 hours of entertainment hosted by Podcasting’s Rich Sigfrit. We’ll be in the live audience cheering everybody on, and likely on camera on the main feed as well. It’s shaping up to be a really fun time. You’ll be able to bid from the chat room, through e-mail, proxy-bid on the website, and I think via video or audio on Skype or UStream.

And with over 70 items up for auction (so far!!) there is something for everyone to get excited about and bid for! Everything from jewelry, to pictures, paintings by celebrities, custom music, book dedications, food, clothes, signed DVDs and books, knitwear, and even Mozart’s Balls!! Seriously, go check out everything up for auction!

Hope to see you there!

Lyrics: Kim Fortuner and Patrick E. McLean
Vocals: Kim Fortuner
Guitar: Tim Dodge
Orchestra and production: Chooch Schubert

The song was originally written and recorded at Dragon*Con 2009 in about 30 minutes. Tim and Kim agreed to record clean versions of their parts and let me wrap other instruments and sound effects around them.

enjoy!

I’ve got a few other songs in this genre that are getting close to completion and hope to make my first fiction post soon as well.

If anybody is interested I’ll post the individual tracks for remixing. As you see the license below, everything is Creative Commons: Attribution, NonCommercial, ShareAlike – so it can be copied freely, remixed, and used elsewhere for free as long as you give me credit (and preferably some link love so I can check your stuff out too).

I had time this morning, so I made some attempts. In short, it didn’t work.

I’m not entirely sure why it didn’t work. As I play back the recordings that were made, the volume seems ample. The podcast recordings come across like somebody on a speakerphone, which I think would be a common practice for somebody calling you from a car.

It may be that Google hasn’t tackled taking on multiple voices yet and simply cancels the transcription process when a certain percentage of the attempt fails. My control recordings show that a short message transcribes well (even if all words aren’t 100%), but when I make up a bunch of words the transcription is “not available”.

It is also possible that it is just the phone I was using. I’ve received a few voicemails from people “in the wild” and the transcription was much more accurate. I’d say around 95%, where even the successful control test totally munged the end of the quote.

Here are the files and results:

• Control recording which was successful
  • Transcription text: “hi presented quotes by thomas jefferson a government big enough to supply you with everything you need is the government big enough to takeaway everything that you have the courses history shows that i got a very close to pretty decreases”
• Control recording which was unsuccessful
• ITB recording which was unsuccessful
• TheCommandLine recording which was unsuccessful. (excerpted from his show released May 7, 2009).

If you have an idea of a different approach let me know and I’ll be happy to try it!

With all that being said:

As a traditional voicemail service Google Voice absolutely rocks and the transcription is really cool. Above and beyond the actual coolness of having a transcription of people’s voicemails, the web interface is very slick in how they are presented. The text of the transcript is just below the audio transport bar.

Sample of a Google Voice transcription

Words that Google thinks it got correct are traditional black text. Words that it wasn’t sure of are gray. As you play the voicemail it actually highlights each word as they’re spoken and if you click and drag the progress pointer the word highlights follow the movement. Very slick.

Perhaps Google may shoot off an automated transcription service. I’m sure it would be in support of audio web searches, with inevitable Adwords, of course. It sure would make a lot of podcaster’s lives easier!

I believe that this was the first panel I was on during the weekend, and was chosen as “moderator” on the spot without having any notes or talking points to go from. Luckily, we all talk a lot, so there wasn’t a lack of content

From the Balticon program:
Upgrading your gear is a serious temptation. In these trying economic times, bargains abound and the desire for some new shiny device in your studio sometimes outweighs the other factors in your life. Our panel of technophiles talk about what’s out there, where to buy it cheap, and when you should buy it. We all love our gear, but we shouldn’t deprive our families of food and shelter for the next new gadget.

The version I am posting is not edited for content, but has been processed to remove noise and (hopefully) make it more listenable.

Cmdln has posted his own recording from this panel at Archive.org in uncompressed FLAC, MP3, and Ogg Vorbis formats.

From the Balticon program:
This session will go beyond the basics of recording a voice with your built in audio program. We will give an overview of the various types of audio recording equipment and techniques of non-linear audio editing. This should help you in creating advanced productions such as multi-voice dramatizations, music recording and mixing, as well as carry over into video production.

Products we discussed during the recording:

• The book that Dan mentions during the discussion is Modern Recording Techniques, Sixth Edition.
• The midi controller I mention is the Korg nanoKontrol. Apparently they changed pricing, or I just got a great deal because they are $60 which is almost twice what I had thought. Still, I think it’s well worth it
• There is some discussion on the Zoom H2 and Zoom H4
• Thomas mentions his use of  a M-Audio MicroTrack II

The version I am posting is not edited for content, but has been processed to remove noise and (hopefully) make it more listenable.

Cmdln has posted his own recording from this panel at Archive.org in uncompressed FLAC, MP3, and Ogg Vorbis formats.

From the Balticon program:
There are a lot of tutorials, presentations, and classes on how to record a podcast but when it gets to posting and sharing your cast, things seem to get glossed over. There are many components working in concert to make a podcast feed. This session aims to explain what each of those components are and how they function together. Further, we hope to show you how you can save money by picking and choosing what services provide each piece.

I’m still deciding whether or not to also enable a podcast feed* since there won’t be any kind of schedule for audio posts. Well, for any posts to be honest. What do you think?

As the sub-title says, this is “a place for my stuff”, not a formal project or “show” so I have no idea how frequently things will get posted here.

With that being said, I hope you find something you like!

* Since WordPress makes it so easy to actually create  a podcast feed, I’ve gone ahead and created some. You can see all of the feed options at the Subscribe page. I have not, however, registered with iTunes or any other podcast directories.