Is This Thing On?

We mentioned in the last podcast that we wanted to hear from you, our beloved listeners. In a small attempt to know what you guys think, I decided to give something a try. We are currently conducting a survey of our listeners. We hope you'll take five minutes to participate. Click here to take the survey. You will remain completely anonymous when you take it. Thanks all, Dan

This is Episode #23 for June 21, 2006. Hey, Is This Thing On?
(Download MP3 or listen to the stream)

* My name is Dan Shaurette, welcome to the podcast.
- Music this week — “Persephone” by Ethereal Vox.

* So, last week, Michelle and I went over to our friend Karl’s house and we started recording part of Chapter One of “Lilith’s Love” for the podiobook. Karl is voicing Christian Armstrong, and I’m voicing Donovan McElroy and the Narrator. We’ll probably end up with more roles down the road. Michelle will voice Lilith Thompson, and Karl’s wife Nikki will voice Anna Foster. They are the main four characters, and amongst use we’ll have a few other roles. But our friend Ed has volunteered to do some voice work also.
- After the recording, Karl and I sat down and chatted with Michelle, who did a sort of impromptu interview of us.
- I plan to make that interview, and other chats and bloopers available as well on the Lilith’s Love Podcast.
- They will be separate files from the audio book files.
- I listen to a lot of PodioBooks, and recently even finished a couple. I like how many of the authors do chat a bit before they jump into their readings, but I prefer the idea of “metacasts”. These are separate files for discussing the book. So that is what I’m choosing to do.

* Folks whose podiobooks I’ve finished are “Spherical Tomi” by Jack Mangan and “The Pocket and the Pendant” by Mark Jeffrey. I would love to interview both of these authors.
- But I pointed to some examples of other podiobooks and podcasts where they have some amount of lead up of stuff unrelated to the book before the story starts. A prime example of this is Scott Sigler. I’m listening to “Earthcore” and “Infection”. (I missed “Ancestor” but intend to go back to it after the other two.) In both cases, he talks for about 5-10 minutes about whatever he wants, like a podcast, then jumps into the story. Maybe it adds to suspense, but I personally wish it was separated out. I’d love to interview him after I finish his books. Great gory goodness.
- Then there’s Mur Lafferty’s Geek Fu Action Grip. Man, another name dropped for someone I’d love to interview! In her current podcasts, she has her usual wonderful geekgasmic discussions, for roughly 20 minutes, then reads the next installment of her story “Heaven”. I really wish this was separate. She intends to make a podiobook out of the first 12 episodes, and I presume she’ll only do that with the story parts. She did this with “Lessons From A Geek Fu Master”, which is a podiobook of just her essays from her podcast.
- I just plan to do it from the start. One story audio file, one chat audio file. Both in the Lilith’s Love Podcast feed, though.

* Michelle and I went to a costume shop here in Scottsdale called “Mardi Gras Costumes”.
- We absolutely loved this place. The have a very nice selection of costumes, masks, makeup and more. They do costume rentals, probably even mask rentals.
- We will be going back soon, with business cards and some flyers to see if we can place them in their store.
- Maybe work out a coupon deal with them.
- We’d also link to them on our website, http://www.MasqueNocturne.com.
- We also hope maybe they’d consider having a table at the Ball. It’ll be their busy season, but it is a Saturday night, so I see it as extra business for them.

* Then we talked about the Madonna concert we saw last week.
- We both have a fear of heights, so our nosebleed seats on what seemed to be a cliff face were very disturbing. But we eventually got used to the seats… sort of.
- Once the concert got underway, we had an awesome time. We are both huge fans of Madonna, and this concert was a once in a lifetime event for us. Very happy we went.

* After that, we discussed going to Big Surf later, and the troubles we had last year.

* Turning to the news… which as always comes from http://feeds.feedburner.com/ShauretteGazette
- Tribute album to Neil Gaiman, featuring the likes of Tori Amos (of course), Voltaire, The Cruxshadows, Hungry Lucy, and many others.
- TeenBuzz, teen-repellant high-frequency sound file turned into a cell phone ring tone that adults can’t hear.
- The Net Neutrality debate gets more air time, especially on my blog.

* Music to wrap up — “This Is Rome” by Ethereal Vox.

That wraps up another episode of Is This Thing On?
Thanks for listening.

This Blog and PodCast are © Copyright 2006 by Dan Shaurette, under the Creative Commons “Attribution with No Derivatives” License. Some Rights Reserved.If you want to join us on the podcast, send a message to me on Skype at IsThisThingOnPodcast.If you have any comments about this podcast, feel free to drop a note at shaurette.net/podmail.Or, if you’d rather leave us some voice mail, you can call us at 1-206-350-7638 that’s (206) 350-SNET.

Music for this podcast was NOT provided by the PodShow Podsafe Music Network, as usual, but from Ethereal Vox herself. Make sure to check out her websites: http://www.myspace.com/EtherealVox and http://www.EtherealVox.com.

The theme music came from the royalty-free collection at http://www.musicloops.com

Technorati Tags:Podcast, Ethereal Vox

 

 

GothicRave.com - Gothic Music and Television

Rock on, Chuck. It looks like I’m not the only one putting in overtime with many projects. Although, and of this I have little doubt, Chuck will probably get this going before any of mine see fruition.

USATODAY.com | Don’t let ‘net neutrality’ become a roadblock to progress

This was a great article by Andrew Kantor to help clear up even more of the mire around the Net Neutrality issue.

Will there be speed differences from site to site? Of course, just as there are now. Haven’t you ever found a site that’s slowed to a crawl from a ton of traffic? Getting a message “Our servers are overloaded” isn’t a cry for a more-regulated Net, it’s a cry for that site to buy more bandwidth.

You’ll hear that Net providers will put non-payers in an “Internet slow lane,” while only the folks who pay will get to go full speed ahead — as suggested by The New York Times.

That’s one way of looking at it. But it’s more accurate to say that Net neutrality would prohibit companies from building fast lanes. In other words, it would force everyone into the slow lane.

I’m all for fast lanes and slow lanes. I’m not against companies paying more for faster connections. If you can afford it, jack in and jack up. So I agree with him here.

Think about it: Google owns Blogger. Do you think Blogger users are going to be deprived of bandwidth for lack of funds?

No, but would users of SixApart’s blogs, like WordPress, suffer because they aren’t as big a company as Google? That’s the question that is being asked. But that isn’t even my concern.

The most a Net neutrality law should say is that A) network providers must carry any legal data regardless of the content or who it comes from, and B) network providers must offer the same services at the same prices to any customer — i.e., they couldn’t charge YouTube more for a connection than they charge Disney.

But those kinds of rules already exist, and where they’re unclear the market is pretty good at correcting. Can you imagine the business a broadband company would lose if it started censoring websites?

These are my concerns. So, whether there’s a Net Neutrality law passed to ensure these two things OR the new bills for granting corporations the leeway they want protects these two things, then I’ll be happy. So if we have these safeguards… why is there a debate?

Save the Internet » Blog Archive » One Million Americans Urge Senate to Save the Internet If you haven't heard about SaveTheInternet.com, they are collecting signatures for a grassroots petition to encourage Congress to pass "Net Neutrality" legislation. Net Neutrality is a political issue with implications for independent websites everywhere. The nitty-gritty of Net Neutrality is that ISPs should not give preference to sites that pay them money, and block those that don’t.

During the event we urged Congress to protect Net Neutrality and stand firm against efforts by phone and cable companies to control the Internet.Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) joined us to call on their colleagues to support the “Internet Freedom and Preservation Act” (S. 2917), a bipartisan bill that would bar companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from blocking, degrading or interfering with content or services on the Internet.