Below is a link to download the interviews Chad did with the Fear the Con attendees. WARNING: These interviews contain unedited, explicit language! So please use discretion when playing them!
There are two resource documents for episode 31. I'm still putting the finishing touches on them, but they should be up by the end of today (Wednesday).
In episode 18, we declared a particular character as the winner of our "freak show" contest. However, the winner declined the prize and, due to some technicalities, may not be eligible anyway. The prize therefore goes to Mister Plug with his living marionette. If you haven't read his character, you can find it in the "Contests" area of our forum.
Congratulations, Mister Plug! We'll be emailing you a confirmation shortly!
Our next regular episode will be posted tonight (Wednesday night). I apologize for how late the show iwas this week. When we started FTB, our intention was to release the shows late Sunday night, with people picking them up Monday morning. Lately, we've consistently missed that target. Rest assured we're were on some changes in the way we produce the shows to correct this problem.
The reason we went to Gencon this year was to participate in a big podcasting event called "Gencon Almost Live". Though we screwed up and didn't find our way into the mix, we still hope you guys will head over and check it out. You can find the stuff at...
http://genconlive.dragonslanding.com/
If you want to hear our brief and tragic take on Gencon, scroll down right here to episode 14.
As you may have noticed, our forums seem to come and go from one moment to the next. My webhost has told me there's another database running on our server that has some runaway scripts. Supposedly, those scripts keep bringing the server down and they're working to fix the problem. Hopefully this will pass soon.
Though this is ultimately beyond my direct control, I still apologize for the inconvenience or annoyance this is causing our listeners.
After a really messy conversion, the forums are now up and running on the new hardware. Unfortunately, we had some database problems after the conversion, so we had to roll back to an older copy. A bunch of posts and users got lost because of that rollback. I apologize for that, and even if this new hardware is no better than the old stuff, this migration was such a cluster that I have no interest in moving again.
If you lost your user account due to this rollback, I hope you'll come back and join us a second time!
We're in the middle of our site migration right now (see previous post). The good news is that our web content was migrated flawlessly. The bad news is that our database migration has hit a hitch. I'm working with tech support to get this straightened out. In the meantime, the forums and resources section will be temporarily offline. We should have this worked out by tomorrow morning!
The content of our website is divided between two hosting companies. The blog and media files are on Liberated Syndication, but the forums, resource page, and the domain itself are located with a standard webhost.
We've been having some problems with that second host. We're on a shared server there, and it seems our current location is exceptionally lagged out. I'd wager we're sharing the box with someone that generates enormous amounts of traffic during the day. To remedy this, the host has agreed to move our site, but any content located there may disappear for a few hours.
If you attempt to use our site and get errors, please just check back in a little bit. To reach our media files during that downtime, you may want to go directly to our Liberated Syndication site since the primary domain will be busted.
http://feartheboot.libsyn.com
I apologize for any inconvenience this causes. We'll have it resolved soon! And when we do, our forum users should (hopefully) be enjoying much faster page loads.
After posting that episode, I had to pull it down and post it again. So if you got a sound file that's incomplete or sounds funny, delete it and try downloading a second time.
If you've been following this podcast for any length of time,
you've heard me talk about the significance of episode 5. Just in case
you're new, I'll review: traditional wisdom says it takes about five episodes
to work out your creative voice and the show's rhythm. I don't know if
that estimate is correct for every show, but it was certainly true for
us. Episode 5 was very easy to record and edit. In fact, I only
noticed one production error: I forgot to introduce the hosts. A bit
embarrassing, but hardly a major problem.
Since recording episode 5 went so well, we had some time leftover at the end of
our session. We used that to record bonus episodes we'll be releasing on
Wednesday nights for the next couple of weeks. These bonus shows are only
about 10 - 15 minutes in length. They're very casual, meaning they are
not edited in any way. It's just us chatting for a few minutes about
topics that don't fit within our normal episodes.
The first three shows discuss the creative, hardware, and internet aspects of
making the podcast (in that order). They're primarily aimed at anyone
who's either looking to make their own show or just curious how we do it.After that, we've got several other items on
tap, all of them a bit off topic from our normal shows.
First and most importantly, I wanted to let you guys know we're having some problems with our domain email. It looks like they're getting blocked by some SPAM filters. So if you wrote us but haven't heard back, that's probably why. Until I can hammer out why that's happening, I've created a Gmail account to respond from.
If you've already listened to episode 4, I'd like to explain the "dead space" thing. When we make these episodes, we inevitably screw up. We get distracted, lose our train of thought, and so on. During editing, I typically delete these errors so you guys get clean audio. However, for whatever reason, the other four hosts absolutely insisted I leave one in this episode. So I hope you enjoy our mess-up, complete with a brief song of "Dead Space" to the tune of Ogden Edsl's "Dead Puppies".
That aside, I think the episode came out pretty good. If was more informative and less comedic than the previous episodes, but that wasn't anything we planned. I'm sure our episodes will waffle quite a bit between information and comedy, and this one just so happened to be on the information side of the aisle. I was also talking a bit fast, but that's something I can easily address in the future.
I hope you guys enjoy the episode! Write us back and let us know what you thought.
Sorry I didn't get this post up sooner. I wasn't sure how many people even read these things until I started getting emails asking why this one wasn't up. I guess that answered my question.
Before I talk about episode 3, I'd like to say I'm glad to have the new site colors up. If you're not seeing those, hit the old "Refresh" button on your browser. The original colors were based on a template provided by the host, and they were a bit...um...cheerful. Yeah, that's a safe word to describe it. Looking good now though. A big thanks to Tim for the logo drawing and revised colors! Also a big thanks to Karla for helping me get a clean, user-friendly layout together when we kicked this site off a few weeks ago.
I know we keep saying this, but I want to extend another big "thanks" to the folks that post or email us about the show. You guys rock, and you're one of the big reasons we're excited to hit the mics and do it again.
Now, on to the podcast review...
I felt episode 3 was a solid step up from episode 2, particularly in the advice portion of the show. It didn't have the sort of drastic improvement that episode 2 had from episode 1, but then again, I'm not sure we needed it. Did we need tweaking? Yes. But another overhaul? Probably not.
This episode was a bit longer than episode 2, but still within our goal. We want our shows to be between 30 and 45 minutes. This one was 44:34, so we're still in that realm. I'm not sure what length our audience prefers yet, so hopefully you guys don't object to the longer format!
Walking away from 3, only one thing really concerned me: I had mixed feelings about the presence of six hosts. When we started this show, we invited seven people to work on it. One declined, six accepted. As hectic as our schedules are, I just assumed this would be a rotating cast! I never thought everyone would show up at once.
As I listened to the show, I think the hosting still worked out ok. We had some moments of crosstalk, but I think that's something we can nail down as we build our chemistry and rhythm on the mics. I don't think we'll consistently have all of the hosts present for every show anyway, but if we do, that's just fine with me. Though some of them talk less than others, these are all good guys with great stuff to say. Everything else we can get down with experience.
I wrote a review after episode 1, giving my take on what we did right and wrong.I'd like to do that again for episode 2.
I'm not sure if these posts will become a permanent tradition of mine, but I'd like to do them for at least the first five episodes.Why five?Almost every source I've read agrees it takes about five episodes to get the format and creative voice of a podcast straight.Sure, you need to improve all the time to stay on top of your game, but your first several episodes is when you have to work the hardest to get things right.You can research yourself silly, but some things just come best through trial and error.
Before I dive into my comments on episode 2, I'd like to thank everyone that's been giving us feedback.Some of the things you guys said just confirmed what we already knew, while some was completely new information to us.Regardless, all of it was important since it's hard to notice these things from our side of the mic.So please keep the compliments and concerns coming in!
On to the review...
I hoped episode 2 would be a big improvement over episode 1, and without a doubt I got that.We made a few improvements to the sound quality, implemented a new outline for the show, and covered some good material.There's also broad agreement in our feedback that we have a great mix of personalities, making the show fun to listen to.
Despite these leaps forward, we still have things to fix for episode 3.I think we need to be a little more informational, especially during the review and advice portion of the show.I'd also like for us to balance our perspectives with more positive affirmations.Sure, like most gamers we're pretty cynical, but let's talk more about what we like and what works, not just the things that annoy us.
We're going to kick off episode 3 with a discussion of the feedback we've been getting, followed by some tips on character creation.I have the show notes in front of me right now, and this is shaping up to be an awesome episode.I look forward to making it!
One last tidbit before I sign out. A few paragraphs up, I mentioned we have an outline for the show we started using in episode 2.It worked well, so we'll likely stick to that for many episodes to come.In case you're wondering, that outline is...
a. introduction of hosts and topics (1 - 2 minutes)
With episode 1 now live, I've had some time to scrutinize our work and think about the things we've accomplished.
Before we started this show, we spent weeks reading books and browsing forums to learn everything we could about podcasting. We were excited about the effort, but knew very little about the hardware and software involved. We came a long way, and considering this was our first attempt at podcasting, I'm very pleased with the quality of our first show. I think we found a solid creative mix and discussion format, and the recording itself sounds good.
However, some things just come from experience. We learned a lot about the compressor and sound editing software as we made this recording. There are some rough edges in episode 1, particularly in regard to volume balance. I may go back
and fiddle with the recording at some point in the future, but for now I'll let it be. I don't want to risk over-editing, damaging the show as I attempt to straighten out relatively minor flaws.
I think we also spent that episode just getting comfortable behind the mic and testing our interpersonal dynamic. I want to shift the show to be a bit more informational in the future, though without losing our wit.
I'm very excited about recording episode 2 this weekend. Armed with everything we learned from making the prior episode, I'm confident the next one will be just as entertaining, while having an even higher polish.
