Jesse Willis – Page 23

Commentary: How to add art to your MP3 podcast episode using iTunes

SFFaudio Commentary

No podcast art!

Too many professionally produced podcasts, including such for profit ventures as CBS’ 60 Minutes podcast, don’t add art to their podcasts.

That’s sad.

Making sure your podcast episodes have art should be the final step before you upload your MP3 to your server.

You may think that because there is art on your iTunes page, or in your RSS feed, that means your podcast episodes automatically have art.

They may not!

To guarantee that your podcast episodes have art you must add it the individual MP3 file’s metadata.

There are other programs which allow you to edit your metadata, but there is probably already a program on your computer than can do it for you pretty easily: iTunes.

Here is the official iTunes description of the process:

To embed art within an individual episode’s metadata using iTunes, select the episode and choose Get Info from the File menu. Click the Artwork tab. Then click Add, navigate to and select the image file, and click Choose.

I found it to be a bit tricky so I’ve made a visualized step by step guide showing you how to do it.

To add art to your MP3 file follow this recipe:

1. Start iTunes.

Step 1 - Start iTunes

2. Go to File → New → Playlist (or CTRL + N) to make a new playlist.

Go to File - New - Playlist (or CTRL + N)

3. Drag the MP3 file into the now open playlist and click “DONE”.

Step 3 - Drag the MP3 file into the now open playlist and click DONE.

4. Next, navigate to “Music” (under LIBRARY).

Step 4 - Navigate to Music (under LIBRARY).

5. You should see a Playlist with the name “Unknown Album” and inside it your MP3.

Step 5 - You should see a Playlist with the name

6. Right-click on the MP3 and select “Get info” – this will create a pop-up.

Step 6 - Right-click on Get info - this will create a pop-up

7. In the pop-up select the rightmost tab, it’s labeled “Artwork.”

Step 7 - In the pop-up select the rightmost Artwork tab

8. Now, select the artwork you’d like to add to the MP3 and drag it into the tab.

Step 8 - Select the artwork you'd like to add to the MP3 and drag it into the tab.

9. Hit “Ok.” Your art will now be linked to your MP3.

Your art has now been linked to Your MP3

10. Repeat the process every time you make a new MP3 episode.

Repeat the process every time.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Canal by H.P. Lovecraft

SFFaudio News

The Canal by H.P. Lovecraft is a short 1932 poem usually published as a part of the “Fungi from Yuggoth” sequence. Some printings mistakenly change the last word from “clay” to “day.”

The Canal by H.P. Lovecraft

Somewhere in dream there is an evil place
Where tall, deserted buildings crowd along
A deep, black, narrow channel, reeking strong
Of frightful things whence oily currents race.
Lanes with old walls half meeting overhead
Wind off to streets one may or may not know,
And feeble moonlight sheds a spectral glow
Over long rows of windows, dark and dead.

There are no footfalls, and the one soft sound
Is of the oily water as it glides
Under stone bridges, and along the sides
Of its deep flume, to some vague ocean bound.
None lives to tell when that stream washed away
Its dream-lost region from the world of clay.

The Canal by H.P. Lovecraft

There was a very very loose comics adaptation of The Canal found in Richard Corben’s Marvel Max series H.P. Lovecraft’s Haunt of Horror (issue 2):

The Canal adapted from the poem by H.P. Lovecraft - for Marvel Max series H.P. Lovecraft's Haunt of Horror, #2

Posted by Jesse Willis

The House, by H.P. Lovecraft, is a short poem first published in The Philosopher 1, No. 1, December 1920. The illustrated version, below, came from Weird Tales, March 1948. The artist was Boris Dolgov. Based on the at you’d think it was a Halloween poem. But the poem is explicitly set in June.

The House by H. P. Lovecraft

’Tis a grove-circled dwelling
Set close to a hill,
Where the branches are telling
Strange legends of ill;
Over timbers so old
That they breathe of the dead,
Crawl the vines, green and cold,
By strange nourishment fed;
And no man knows the juices they suck from the depths of their dank slimy bed.

In the gardens are growing
Tall blossoms and fair,
Each pallid bloom throwing
Perfume on the air;
But the afternoon sun
With its shining red rays
Makes the picture loom dun
On the curious gaze,
And above the sween scent of the the blossoms rise odours of numberless days.

The rank grasses are waving
On terrace and lawn,
Dim memories sav’ring
Of things that have gone;
The stones of the walks
Are encrusted and wet,
And a strange spirit stalks
When the red sun has set,
And the soul of the watcher is fill’d with faint pictures he fain would forget.

It was in the hot Junetime
I stood by that scene,
When the gold rays of noontime
Beat bright on the green.
But I shiver’d with cold,
Groping feebly for light,
As a picture unroll’d—
And my age-spanning sight
Saw the time I had been there before flash like fulgury out of the night.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Virtual Panel: The Future Of Audio Drama

SFFaudio News

Fred Greenhalgh, of Final Rune Productions (and Radio Drama Revival podcast) moderates this “virtual panel” entitled The Future Of Audio Drama – and though this thing needs serious editing, (not everybody has headphones) it does have the virtue of being brand new, recorded live from 3pm-4pm EDT, August 30th, 2013.

Participants include: Clare Eden (Minister of Chance), Christof Laputka (Leviathan Chronicles), Monique Boudreau (Aural Stage Studios), Joel Metzger (Hothouse Bruiser)

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Graveyard Shift: The Whisperer In Darkness by H.P. Lovecraft (read by Dudley Knight)

SFFaudio News

The Graveyard Shift - Readings by Dudley Knight I’m not sure when this reading would have been broadcast, likely sometime between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s, but what we do know is the narrator, Dudley Knight. Knight was a U.C. Irvine professor of drama, who voiced a long running radio series called The Graveyard Shift. This is from that series.

Part 1 of 4:

Part 2 of 4:

Part 3 of 4:

Part 4 of 4:

Posted by Jesse Willis

Silly Asses by Isaac Asimov

SFFaudio Online Audio

Maissa Bessada narrates for us Silly Asses a one page (400 word) satirical short story by Isaac Asimov.

|MP3|

Also available is a |PDF| made from a scan of the original publication in Future Science Fiction, February 1958.

And here is the complete text:

Silly Asses by Isaac Asimov

Naron of the long-lived Rigellian race was the fourth of his line to keep the galactic records.

He had a large book which contained the list of the numerous races throughout the galaxies that had developed intelligence, and the much smaller book that listed those races that had reached maturity and had qualified for the Galactic Federation. In the first book, a number of those listed were crossed out; those that, for one reason or another, had failed. Misfortune, biochemical or biophysical shortcomings, social maladjustment took their toll. In the smaller book, however, no member listed had yet blanked out.

And now Naron, large and incredibly ancient, looked up as a messenger approached.

“Naron,” said the messenger. “Great One!”

“Well, well, what is it? Less ceremony.”

“Another group of organisms has attained maturity.”

“Excellent. Excellent. They are coming up quickly now. Scarcely a year passes without a new one. And who are these?”

The messenger gave the code number of the galaxy and the coordinates of the world within it.

“Ah, yes,” said Naron. “I know the world.” And in flowing script he noted it in the first book and transferred its name into the second, using, as was customary, the name by which the planet was known to the largest fraction of its populace. He wrote: Earth.

He said, “These new creatures have set a record. No other group has passed from intelligence to maturity so quickly. No mistake, I hope.”

“None, sir,” said the messenger.

“They have attained to thermonuclear power, have they?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, thats the criterion.” Naron chuckled. “And soon their ships will probe out and contact the Federation.”

“Actually, Great One,” said the messenger, reluctantly, “the Observers tell us they have not yet penetrated space.”

Naron was astonished. “Not at all? Not even a space station?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“But if they have thermonuclear power, where do they conduct the tests and detonations?”

“On their own planet, sir.”

Naron rose to his full twenty feet of height and thundered, “On their own planet?”

“Yes, sir.”

Slowly Naron drew out his stylus and passed a line through the latest addition in the small book. It was an unprecedented act, but, then, Naron was very wise and could see the inevitable as well as anyone in the galaxy.

“Silly asses,” he muttered.

Asimov wrote Silly Asses on July 29, 1957. To put that in context, just ten days earlier (July 19, 1957), as a part of Operation Plumbbob the USAF filmed five Air Force officers standing directly under an atmospheric nuclear detonation. The idea was to demonstrate the safe usage of nuclear weapons over civilian populations.

Silly asses.