The latest edition of my book, Take Control of Podcasting on the Mac, Second Edition, has been released! It took five months and a lot of sweat, but it’s out and I am extremely pleased with how this edition came out. One thing I always wanted to do was cover audio effects and include sample recordings illustrating what they do. This edition includes these as well as coverage of new programs WireTap Studio and Ubercaster. It also updates the other tools for the latest versions and contains substantial rewrites of much of the rest of the book. Finally, it also includes a new section on interviewing techniques.

From the Book’s Web Page:

Beginning a podcast is easier than starting a radio station, but it's still hard to assemble your hardware and software, and learn the tricks of the trade. You can easily meet that challenge with start-to-finish guidance from long-time podcaster Andy Affleck...

The ebook begins with a look at how to plan a podcast's topic, format, and polish. Then Andy focuses on choosing the right microphone and audio software, followed by step-by-step instructions for recording using Audio Hijack Pro, GarageBand, Sound Studio, WireTap Studio, and Übercaster, with advice about conducting interviews by phone, iChat, and Skype. Once your audio is in the can, you'll learn how to use audio plug-ins to make the recording sound better, complete with downloadable sound files to supplement the text. You'll also find out how to edit out any awkward bits, plug in additional audio, and mix tracks. Finally, the ebook covers how to encode your podcast, add useful tags and chapters, find a publishing tool, and publish your podcast for the world to hear.

Links:

• Take Control of Podcasting on the Mac, Second Edition
• Promo
• Podcast

Tags: writing, Podcasting, books, audio, mac

I’m thrilled to announce that my “True Life Tale” appeared on NaNoWriMo’s blog today. I won’t say anything about it here. It speaks for itself.

Tags: writing, NaNoWriMo, Creativity, resolutions

This post over on Wired’s GeekDad blog was very well timed. I am currently reading Half Magic by Edward Eager, a childhood favorite of mine, to Jack. He’s loving it. I wasn’t sure how a book set over 80 years on the past would go over but he gets very upset ever night when it is time to close the book and turn out the light.

I was casting about for what to read him next. We’d just finished Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling. We’re on a schedule with Harry Potter: he gets one book every six months. This is mainly because the later books are too old for him now and we wanted to pace them so he would be old enough by the time he reached them. Sure, we could have just waited to start them altogether, but we couldn’t help ourselves. And it was hard to keep him away from them when Ann and I were both re-reading books 1 through 6 to get ready for book 7 last summer. I couldn’t think of anything to read him and then I rememberd Eager’s books on magic. The problem: where on Earth were they? I told Jack that I’d be right back and to get into bed to wait and then tore downstairs. I checked the collection of paperbacks in the front hallway (moving a pile of catalogs out of the way to get into the cabinet). No dice. I checked the armoire in the living room. Nope. Went into my mother-in-law’s room and pulled out ever box Ann stuffed books into on the shelves (Books in boxes on shelves. Go figure.) No luck. Dejected, I went back up to Jack’s room resigned to reading him one of the many other books there. I told him I was sorry, I couldn’t find the book I wanted to read him and proceeded to look at his shelf and wouldn’t you know it? There they were. On his shelf. In his room. Right in front of my face.

Prior to Azkaban, I read him the complete Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander. More than any other books, these were my all time favorite books. My sister sent Jack a complete collection of hardcover editions (with the old-style covers) and we read through them over the next five or so months (a little at a time).

Meanwhile, my wife has been reading her favorites to him including Watership Down by Richard Adams, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, and is planning on seeing if he’ll like Ann of Green Gables or the Little House on the Prairie books.

Anyone out there have their own favorites we should consider?

Tags: Childhood, books, reading

I did it! I completed NaNoWriMo with just over an hour to spare! I wrote about 10 thousand words this week but it all came quite easily. I was worried in week three as my plot was wrappinng up at around 40,000 words and I had to either do the literary equivalent of thinking about baseball players or let it run its course and fill in the missing 10K words in other ways. I chose that path and spent this week adding a good amount of missing description, additional chapters in the middle which better fleshed out some sections and a whole series of events after the grand climax of the book which effectively added a second (and then third) larger set of climaxes (multiple climaxes, my book is so lucky!)

But it's done. Amusingly enough, the differences between how Pages (iWork '08) counts words and how NaNoWriMo's validator counts them meant that I wrote about 50,200 or so. When I uploaded it for counting, it came back as 49,999. So, I added two more: "The End."

This was a fantastic experience. I have always wanted to write but never had any ideas. This process where I just start writing and see what happens had some really interesting ideas come out of nowhere. Now I know I do have ideas and feel a lightness and freedom I have not felt in ages. I can't wait until next November. In fact, I won't. I plan to rework a lot of this book or just shelf it and work on something else.

But, first, time to do some reading and some crossword puzzles. I've been starving myself this month to get the book written. Now I can relax and return to my vices.

Tags: NaNoWriMo, writing

I am doing National Novel Writing Month, writing a science fiction story called "Surprise Utopia." The idea came to me after listening to a number of podcasts about the Singularity. The idea that the exponential growth of technology, especially artificial intelligence research, will lead to a point where the curve of our growth goes nearly vertical. Life after that point in time will be incomprehensible to us on this side of that point. My thoughts got me wondering what would life be like for every day people if they woke up one morning and found that life had fundamentally changed. Originally, it was the singularity and life was surprisingly similar to how it was before (just a hell of a lot better, hence the title) but as I write I find strange things happening to and among my characters and now find that the singularity is still coming and I don't even know what form it will take.

I am fascinated by this process. I remember reading the story by JMS, creator of Babylon 5, about when the Centauri Emperor was murdered. As the story was outlined, it was going to be Londo. He had a darkness to him and it was a natural fit. But as he wrote the actual screenplay, when he got to that particular scene, it was innocent and timid Vir who stepped up to do the deed. JMS was very surprised at this twist in events but your characters take on their own lives and if you are a good writer, you get out of their way and let them do what they need to do.

And so, I find that all of my ideas of where this story was going to go have gone out the window. My antagonist is no longer an antagonist. One person was shot. One person killed another person. None of these events were planned but just appeared out of the ether as I wrote. I can't wait to see what they do next and I can't wait to see where this story goes and how it will end. It's strange to think like that when I am the actual writer but that's exactly what is happening and I love it.

It may well be that I am writing complete and utter drivel. But that's a worry for December. For now, I am doing a crazy sprint (over 8,000 words alone today, doubling the size of my book in a single day) and not editing as I go. I only turn back to previous pages and chapters to make sure that I am not forgetting key plot elements and that I am staying consistent to my timeline. I'll worry about cleaning it up and whether it's even worth reading in December. For now, I'm just having a lot of fun.

Tags: NaNoWriMo, writing

My review of WireTap Studio has been published and is up on TidBITS' website. I really enjoyed playing with this tool and as much as I am huge fanboy of Rogue Amoeba's products, I have to admit that they've been leapfrogged by Ambrosia. Of course, that means that the next releases of Fission and Audio Hijack Pro will both be very exciting as I have no doubt that they will, in turn, leapfrog Ambrosia.

I would love to start producing podcasts again, especially my long dormant Take Control of Podcasting Podcast. What I lack is a studio (I had to move my desk into the back of the kitchen for many reasons -- right near an old, noisy refrigerator) and every day my aging 1.25GHz PowerBook G4 just seems slower and less able... we're going to get a new, hot stuff iMac soon and when we do, I fully expect to go a little crazy on that and other projects. So, I'm itching to do more with these audio tools but don't feel I really can just yet.

For now, I'm content to digitize old cassette tapes and clean up the audio as best I can.

Tags: writing, tidbits, mac, audio, Podcasting

My latest article for TidBITS is now live. "Cook from your Mac: 10 Recipe Tools Compared" has been many months in the making. It took more work, more testing, and a lot more time than I thought it would but I am very pleased with the results. And I found a program, MacGourmet, I love using and have been moving all of those recipes lying around the kitchen on little pieces of paper into it. Now I just need to stop playing with it so I can actually get back to cooking! Update: The article finally went out in an issue of TidBITS and I'm starting to get some email feedback. I'll respond to the more interesting comments in this blog in a day or three. Thanks for the comments!

Tags: recipes, cooking, Software, mac, tidbits