How I Edit
Posted 10 years, 6 weeks ago.
Up until about Tuesday this past week, I had an episode ready to launch as Topical’s first (or its first legitimate episode, anyway). This changed pretty soon after the Apple event that occurred on the 9th, as Rusty had some feels to get out.
This lead to recording an episode, and as I was otherwise occupied for the remainder of the week, handing over the editing reins to Russell. He had never edited audio before, but I gave him the best start I could and left him to it. The result? A Friday where we each took turns making improvements to his original edit and prepping it as quickly as we could so we could get it out there on-time, or as close to as was possible.
With that in mind, I’ve decided to somewhat document my editing process in a series of blog posts. These are mainly for his sake, but also because there are a lot of potential podcasters out there who would like to know how this process takes place. While I am by no means an expert in audio editing, I pride myself in the quality I put out, and maybe this will help others improve theirs.
I’ll be writing and publishing these over the next few weeks and linking to them from here. I hope you enjoy the read, and maybe learn something. If you think I’m doing something wrong, please let me know; I’m always up for learning a better way of handling this stuff. God knows I could do it better.
Soothing the Itch
Posted 10 years, 7 weeks ago.
Earlier this year, Russell Ivanovic convinced me that I needed to add a new show to my repertoire. It didn’t take much, really; I’ve wanted something new for a while, but I just didn’t know what it would be. Over the next few weeks we tossed around the idea of what the show might actually be, but it wasn’t until we decided on the idea of a short, focused show about a single topic that I really got that interested.
Today we’ve announced Topical, and released episode zero. It’s funny to release it now, after having recorded several more. There’s still a lot of upheaval and change going on while we find our rhythm, but it’s all exciting. Personally, I feel like the direction we’re going has potential, and maybe we’ll get to talk about things that don’t get much attention in our little world. Maybe we’ll get to talk about some things that are entirely stupid. Who knows.
If you’ve joined us for the ride, thanks! We appreciate your support and are crazy excited (we’ve been chatting about stats all day like giddy school girls), but most of all, we really hope you enjoy what we’ve got planned. If you haven’t listened yet, you can subscribe in Pocket Casts, iTunes, Overcast, directly via the RSS feed, or even via Twitter.
♥️
Stringing the Pieces Together
Posted 10 years, 12 weeks ago.
Recently I talked about building web services and backends with the other co-hosts of Mobile Couch (…and Rusty… hi Rusty!). We talked about everything from spooling up a VPN and building something in your language of choice, to using a service like Azure or Parse to string together other third-party services into a cohesive platform.
When we discussed backend services on the show, timeframes were a big part of the discussion. Spooling up a server and rolling out a web service does take time, but my argument then, and still is, that you can build a level of expertise, as well as have tools in place so you can do it over and over again. This means that you’re ready when you need to do it, and it becomes easier to manage.
My Process for Illustrations
Posted 10 years, 16 weeks ago.
I’ve wanted to share my current process for doing illustrations for a while (it’s changed a lot over the years), but never had a good, simple example to work with. This year, I felt like it was time for an avatar upgrade: my previous one was an illustration done in 2011 for my wedding. So! Time for a new self portrait.
A Letter to Palace Electric
Posted 11 years, 12 weeks ago.
This weekend, I went to see the new Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit at Palace Electric with the ladies from Silver Screen Queens. The movie was OK, maybe 3 stars, but the experience I had was the worst.
In their defence, they did reach out to ask me for feedback, and so I wrote a rather long email to explain what went wrong, and how they could have improved it.
This is that email.