Charles Tan, over on his Bibliophile Stalker blog, has a lengthy and detailed analysis of the “Best Fancast” category nominees for the recently announced Hugo awards. It’s HERE.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #156 – READALONG: The Odyssey by Homer (Books IX – XII)
The SFFaudio Podcast #156 – Scott and Jesse talk, in the third of a six part series, about the books IX, X, XI, and XII of The Odyssey.
Talked about on today’s show:
What’s the plural of cyclops?, cyclopskin?, cyclopean, Charybdis and Scylla, from this book many books have come, Philip K. Dick’s early fantasies are peppered with Odysseian goodness, Upon The Dull Earth, On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers, Odysseus is a smart liar, “my fame has reached the skies”, Telemachus runs the first four books, Odysseus in third person runs in the second four books, Odysseus in the first person runs the third four books, Calypso vs. Circe, “deep in her arching caverns”, the land of the lotus eaters, lotus addiction, Piper In The Woods by Philip K. Dick, “I’m a plant, doctor”, the 1968 Italian miniseries adaptation of The Odyssey (L’Odissea), why does Odysseus listen to the Sirens?, Circe’s wand, Hermes’ wand, the origin of wizards and sorceresses, Polyphemus, cheeses!, Beowulf, Grendel’s attack in the hall, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, a bachelor’s home vs. a maiden’s home, the cyclops island is a libertarian utopia!, Zeus vs. Poseidon, twenty-power wine!, manifest destiny, the guest gift, “I’ll eat nobody”, “I have a cunning plan my lord”, Odysseus is always messing with the gods, “you shameless cannibal”, the prophecy that Odysseus would blind Polyphemus, raider of cities, swag, Odysseus is not a righting-wrongs kind of hero, Polyphemus’ prayer to his father, Poseidon doesn’t make an on-screen appearance in The Odyssey, what is Aquaman’s hair colour?, Circe (the bewitching queen), Ian McKellan‘s narration of the audiobook, “and so he mounted her bed”, “breeding” great trust, tame lions and wolves, Eurylochus goes on the “away mission”, Eurylochus was “unmanned”, Hermes and the moly, the Wikipedia entry for moly, potions and poison, “The Book Of The Dead”, Cimmeria, Robert E. Howard, “the original Fantasy”, Odysseus becomes the bard, “one death is enough for both men, but you shall now have two”, Hercules, Achilles, Agamemnon is bitter about Clytemnestra murdering him, Charybdis and Scylla is like an old fashioned version of The Cold Equations, O’ Brother Where Art Thou, Dante’s Inferno, Paradise Lost, Riverworld by Philip Jose Farmer, The Aeneid, Strange Eden by Philip K. Dick, Star Trek (Who Mourns for Adonais?), Beyond Lies The Wub by Philip K. Dick, “oh boy”, Hyperion, Odysseus never takes the blame for anything, immortal zombie cows, how does Odysseus end up in that tree?, Ithaca at last!
Posted by Jesse Willis
The House On The Borderland by William Hope Hodgson – Read by Wayne June
The incomparably awesome-voiced narrator, Wayne June, has completed a terrific sounding narration of William Hope Hodgson‘s The House On The Borderland. This is the famous supernatural horror novel, from 1908, that H.P. Lovecraft described as “A classic of the first water” – I looked that phrase up – “of the first water” means means “of the highest quality.”
When you combine the wonder of Wayne June’s narrative powers with a classic of this magnitude you’re bound to get something special.
And he’s selling it for just $10 HERE.
The book comes in five MP3s. But, and this is a pretty interesting experiment, Wayne June is also giving away the entire novel there, on the site, in a streaming format!
Yup, if you want to listen to the novel streaming you can hear the whole thing FREE!
Posted by Jesse Willis
Sword & Laser’s new YouTube show starts tomorrow
It wasn’t shown in the trailer but I’m assuming there’s a bookshelf full of books somewhere in that android’s dungeon!
Posted by Jesse Willis
The Audacity To Podcast: TAP065: Audacity Compressor Showdown
The Audacity To Podcast is a podcast about the freeware program Audacity. We use Audacity to edit The SFFaudio Podcast. It’s wonderful and it’s free. Back in January, in episode TAP065: Audacity Compressor Showdown the host, Daniel J. Lewis took several podcaster’s recordings and ran them through various compression software programs – it’s pretty technical – but the results seem to be pretty conclusive – if you’re not getting paid by the hour to edit audio and you want to make your podcast sound nice and loud Levelator is what you want to use. Here’s the conclusion Lewis makes:
Surprisingly, Levelator did a consistently fantastic job on the audio and handled background noise well. It gives no controls and may add an extra step if you don’t record into WAV or AIFF. But it’s easy (albeit slow) and very effective.
Here’s the |MP3|, and HERE‘s the informative post (with all the samples you can play with).
Podcast feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheAudacitytoPodcast
Posted by Jesse Willis
The effect of Levelator on a low volume podcast (SPOILER: it’s striking!)
Here’s a rather striking visualization of the difference the use of Levelator makes. The podcast name has been blurred so as to not prompt any more threats of physical violence (humorously intended or otherwise).
On the left we see an original podcast, with a volume so low that you can’t hear it wearing earbuds (in a noisy environment) on the right is the levelated file, showing the effect that Levelator has.
I’ve just made a donation to Levelator in the amount of $10.00.
Just think about that, if poor poverty stricken Jesse gave Levelator $10.00 from his coffee fund it must be absolutely wonderful!
It is. Get Levelator, it’s free and it makes quiet podcasts loud.
Posted by Jesse Willis