April 2005 Archives

I've been setting myself up for a fall. Err, I mean, for a podcast. There's a wealth of information out there for how receive podcasts, but I want to record one. I want to be the podcast-er, not the podcast-ee. To make matters worse, I'm doing this for work. I pitched the idea to my boss already, and he said, "Cool, put together a prototype and show me how it works!" and has then proceeded to get excited about the idea himself. So now I have to get this working. To complicate things, I'm the only Mac guy in the whole company, so its up to me to do this and prove that I am not a freak, and that neither my PowerBook nor I are incompetent.

There have been many stumbling blocks and many steps over and around said blocks.

Step One was writing a script and getting a real plan in place. That didn't take too long, and was the easiest part (so far).

Step Two ended up being "laptop replacement" due to an unforeseeable accident (and some fortunate insurance coverage on my part) that caused the old 'book to fall to pieces (literally).

Step Three was to set up a mini-recording studio in the office. Lucky for me, I'm in kind of a quiet area, so I don't have to worry too much about ambient noise. All I needed to do was to find some decent inputs for a semi-professional microphone (one with an XLR jack) and some way to record a telephone interview.

Step Four was to start recording. This turned into two mini-steps for me, as I needed to show the boss something but the equipment to record a telephone call hadn't arrived yet.

Step Five is to set up the RSS feed, download podcasterX (or equivalent) and test the whole thing out.

For now, I'll skip step one, and step two gets its own separate blog entry so I wont bore you with that here. Step Three proved to be a chore, so I'll cover that in as much detail as possible.

Building the Studio
-or-
Surprise: the M-Audio FastTrack doesn't entirely suck!
The equipment I ended up ordering is:
1) A Shure Microphone
2) The M-Audio FastTrack USB "guitar/Mic Recording Interface"
3) A RadioShack 43-1237
4) A Plantronix MX10 headset unit
5) Garageband (part of iLife, which I already owned. All Mac users should buy iLife. It rocks)

The microphone is nice, cheap, and comes with a tiny mostly-stable tripod. Enough said there. I'm just recording speech, so I dont need anything too elaborate. It has an XLR port at its base and comes with one cable that turns that into a 1/4" plug. Also included is a 1/4" to 1/8" adapter.

The FastTrack USB ended up working, but it was rough road. This unit plugs into a USB port and provides a stereo mini-plug (1/8") connector that can be used for "guitar" or "line" input (there's a switch to change between the two). There is also an XLR Mic input. On the front there is an "input" knob, a "mix" knob, and an "output" knob, as well as some indicators.

I bought the M-audio Fastrack USB microphone from the Apple Store, and although I generally trust the guys there, I was very disappointed with it. While it was plug-and-play (no drivers needed for OS X), it just sounded terrible. The mic was plugged into the line input using the cable and adapter that it came with, and it just sounded like crap. I did eventually get it to record clean sound by fiddling with Garageband's built-in amps and effects, but the volume was still terrible. Lucky for me, this is because there is little to no gain on the "line" or "guitar" inputs. Also lucky for me is that the Apple Store is far away, meaning is was inspired to fiddle a lot before committing to another drive down there. In the end, I bought an XLR cable and plugged the microphone directly into the XLR jack on the FastTrack, and all of my problems were solved in an instant. This was probably a no-brainer to an audio pro, but I am not an audio pro.

I could now record my own voice and edit it to my heart's content within Garageband. Excellent.

The Phone calls were a different story. The RadioShack thingy is a small coupler that goes in-line between the phone and the handset. It then hands off a small cable with a 1/8" plug. It only cost $15, so I didn't feel too bad throwing it away. Save yourself the trouble, and dont buy one of these. It introduced so much noise into the system that you couldn't hear anything at all other than buzzing.

I did some research, and found that there were some higher-end digital couplers that should do the trick, but they were $200 and up, with some topping out at $1000! Too rich for my blood. I Googled around and found the Plantronics MX-10, which is just like the Plantronics "vista" unit I have on my desk now, only it has inputs and outputs built into it, so you can record directly from the unit, or inject computer generated sounds directly into your conversation (I'm not sure why, but cool). This unit will not arrive until Monday, but I'm convinced it will do the trick for $165 list.

Garageband, much to my surprise, makes an awesome editing deck. I've used some of the included loops to whip up a quick (5 second) musical introduction, and bought a CD of royalty free sound effects to add some ambient noise. All of this was put together in less than an hour. Export directly to iTunes and podcast away!

My brother had a great idea that is worth repeating. We need another layer on the OSI model. Something for us. Layers 1 through 7 are all about inhuman chunks of data... don't we deserve something? I mean, we're the ones who toil all day trying to put networks in order. The concept bounced back and forth between my brother an I on IM as a harmless joke (for which he deserves the credit)... but then the concept started to go around the office a little bit, and other friends in the industry caught wind of it... and now its grown into something akin to "The Thing".

So what should the eighth layer of the OSI model be? We came up with some pretty good candidates. For some reason a lot of them ended up rhyming with Layer 7 ("Application"), but it certainly wasn't a requirement, it just turned out that way. Of course, I waited too long to write this, so I've forgotten a lot of them. Anyway, I'm turning comments back on for a few days in case any of you have some that I can add to the list.

New OSI Layer 8:

• The Imbibation Layer
  
• The Procrastination Layer
  
• The Exacerbation Layer
  
• The Masturbation Layer (ewww)
  
• ... you get the idea.
  

There is a point when writing a book when the bulk of the creative work has been finished, and a first draft is born. It's not that much different from a roller coaster ride. In a roller coaster, the ride begins with a long climb. Tension builds. Anticipation rises. Blood-pressure rockets to unhealthy levels. In book-writing, the creative energy culminates as well; perhaps not quite as exciting as a roller coaster but with similar biological side effects.

What comes next, interesting, is very different for writing and roller coasters. The point where a roller coaster topples over the apex marks the beginning of a fast and terrific ride. In book writing, when everything is finally pulled together and the lose ends are knotted into literary drama, the author topples over the edge into a very slow, hardly terrific and indeed quite boring series of edits, re-writes, proofs and draft after draft after draft after draft after draft... ok, you get the point.

I find that its usually at about this point that I distract myself with dreams of publication, big advances, best-seller lists, and book signings. To make this seem real, I like to print my drafts with working covers and titles, almost as if they are already completed and published works.

It helps me to re-gain the excitement, to keep some of that creative energy flowing, to sustain during long hours of copy-editing. This is the current working cover for Cluck: A Murder Most Fowl. This working title (like the working cover) will almost definitely change, but I thought I'd share it because I'm rather fond of it. I'm an amateur graphic artist at best, but I think I like it. The new cover and subtitle are in an attempt at making the book a bit more approachable and less sinister.

[Edit: I left the old cover on the books page for reference.

Maybe it's the recent passing of the Pope, or maybe it's the cataclysmic flood that is drowning my back yard, but I think it just might be time to build an ark.

For those who are wondering: No, that's not a pond, that's typically my back lawn.