On iTunes Now, A Trend Reversal

So, if ya’ pull up iTunes and type Davis Sickmon or Midnight Ryder as a search, you’ll find me now.  Not too impressive – it really falls under the category of “Tricks Any Asshole Can Do.”  What I’ve done is taken my Midnight Ryder blog and made an associated Podcast with it.  The Podcast is just the same text as the blog, but spoken by me.

Yes, that’s right, you can load your favorite MP3 player with my voice tellin’ ya about some sort of technology as it applies to culture (or, culture as it applies to technology) sort of thing.  

The goal behind the podcast is just exposure – if I’m going to bother writing more than one book, then I need to bother with the slow process of marketing myself as an asshole with a loud voice (the word generally used for that is an expert, but we all know the truth 😉  Exposure brings sales.  Hell, proved many times now, even BAD exposure brings sales.

The secondary goal is to get more polished at reading material on screen and making it sound good (or at least reasonable 🙂  I’ve never been great at following a script (thus one of the reasons for a non-scripted approach to the World of Gamer Zone TV show), so spending a little time practicing while improving my exposure at the same time?  Bonus.

The first episode is… eh.  Bleh.  It’s just a re-introduction of the blog (since it’s been stagnant for a while – BAD DAVIS.  I have a Google Page Rank of 3, which is by no means awesome, but by not continuing I’m allowing that number to start slipping again.)  The audio is “iffy” – too much extra noise, there’s a low level hum, and the profile of the mic might work well for telephony applications, but it sucks for “broadcasting”.

The second episode is much better acoustically.  I scrounged around and looked to see what I had for parts, and built a studio mic setup out of spare parts (Well, I did have to spend $3 on a pair of panty hose from Walmart).  Took my Logitech mic from Rock Band, removed the head on it, added a six inch foam lined pipe to it and re-capped it, turning it from an omni directional mike to a poormans shotgun mic.  Then suspended it, and added a pop filter to the front (make from a pair of panty hose and a knitting loop), and suspended all that, keeping it vibration free and smoothing out my voice a bit in comparison to episode one.  Shit, and I thought all that info that Vince at KTQW taught me about mics was gonna be worthless information!  Looks rather silly though, since the only thing I had laying around to create a mic stand arm that could hold the mic suspended and hold the pop filter suspended was a yard stick.  Shooting for broadcast quality on a budget of nearly zero is kind of hard 🙂

It’s still not perfect – turn it up enough, and you’ll still hear a low-level hum (bad grounding – not surprising in this house), and you’ll hear a hiss when I speak loudly (an artifact of Audacity not being able to recognize noise under all circumstances.)

Content wise, I’m talking about the old BBS days and how one application of Twitter reminds me a lot of those days.

Work flow wise, this reminds me a lot of the World of Gamer Zone stuff.  Record, do takes (though I can edit a flub on the fly, instead of waiting to cut in in post), listen to it all, edit, throw down intro / exit music, export.  It’s just a HELL of a lot faster than having worked with the show.

Anyway – here’s a link to the iTunes versions:

And then for the regular, non iTunes version:

http://www.midnightryder.com/blogs

Nowwww…. if everyone who uses iTunes could do me a small favor 🙂  Hunt down the podcast, subscribe to it (you don’t actually have to LISTEN to it :-), then gimme a quick review (preferably a 5 star rating).  That just moves me up in the ranks of the iTunes system a little faster.  ‘k Thanks! 🙂

Over the years, slowly my group of friends has been dwindling – partially thanks to SOME of you people moving away.  Sheesh.

Well, talking with a female friend of mine online I haven’t seen in… “good god I’m old” years.  Anyway, chatting, and she’s moving back to Wichita – well, this is a trend I could get used to, having friends move BACK to Wichita for once 🙂

Not sure what the circumstances of the move are though – she said she’d tell me in person when she got here in town.  Hrm.  She always had a little taste for drama so, it’s probably nothing THAT bad.  

Though I have to bemoan something here… get talking to her, and she’s done martial arts tournies, was a GM / tester for EQ, EQII, and Star Wars Galaxies.  Oh, and time has been very kind to her looks wise 😉  Let’s see – pretty, intelligent, and fun loving.  My “preferred mate” trifecta, with “geek”, “gamer”, and “martial arts” thrown in on top.  Annnnnd she has a girlfriend.  Shit.

Now why would the universe find it so fun to tease me by flaunting another one of those awesome women (who I even dated for a little bit – we didn’t part on bad terms, we both decided it wasn’t the right time for either of us.  We were both too nerotic at the time) and then make her unavailable.  Sheesh – who’s ass do I gotta kick to get a good girlfriend around here? 🙂