I hate it.

I really, really, really, really, really, REALLY wish Adobe made a Mac version of Audition. THAT was the best audio program I have ever used. Audition was intuitive. Audition was money well spent. Totally worth it. Didn’t mind the high price.

Audition lives up to “you get what you pay for”. I no like.

For instance, I have a nice wav file of my podcast’s first episode. Converting it to an mp3 in Audition is a breeze.  In Audacity, no matter which setting I use (96-210kps), I sound like I have a cold. I had to resort to copying it into iTunes to convert it to a 96kps mp3. Maybe I’ll try 128 to see if the file size increases much.
Everyone seems to rave about Audacity. I just can’t see why.  Though, I’m open to being enlightened, I really need to fork some money over for a real audio program.

As for my podcast, actually, there are 2! And a 3rd in the future.  The first one is a revival of SpudCast which I faded last year. I’ve redeveloped into talking about my adventures in writing, drawing and publishing a comic book. I also plan on talking about my other drawing and online branding adventures.

The other podcast is called The Laughing Podcast. I’ll talk about that in a future post once I have my first episode uploaded.

And the third will be revealed once I get content!

I’ll list the rss feed and stuff in my next blog post.

Technorati Tags: SpudCast, Audacity, Audition, podcasting, podcast

I am back home from Podcasters Across Borders in Kingston (not Hamilton) and what a blast! Mark Blevis and Bob Goytech (and their wives) did a tremendous job putting together a great convention.

My brain is too tired for me to write deep, deep stuff so all I will say is it was fantastic, I learned a lot and have a metric tonne of new ideas that I can’t wait to get started on (darn my fulltime job!).

If you are a podcaster, or just listen to podcasts or just have an interest altogether, this is a convention you don’t want to miss next year.

There were so many funny (and therefore engaging) presentations with very skillful use of slides (I always knew PowerPoint sucked big time but I never, ever would imagine how great Pages is). I can tell that Neil Gorman will go far. Ditto about Jack Ward of Sonic Society and Andy Bilodeau of AndyCast.

One thing I will take with me from PAB2007 is the sense that podcasters help their community.

Speaking of community…

At one point, someone had lost their digital camera. Everyone pitched in some money so he could get a new one.  Later, his camera was found but what to do with the money? Donate it to the school we already donated over 80 children’s books to! Are podcasters a great bunch of people or what?

I have renewed faith in my podcasting ideas and will proceed with them. Look for the relaunch of SpudCast (thanks to Sean McGaughey) and the new Laughing Podcast…

Technorati Tags: PAB2007

Podcasters Across Borders Day 2 just wrapped up and I am back in my hotel room blogging about today and yesterday (see immediately below). I haven’t had a chance to absorb everything so I will write off the cuff. Forgive me.

Podcasters Across Borders, or PAB2007 as it’s tagged, is a podcasting conference for Canadian and American podcasters. Actually, any country in the world. It is superbly organized by the funny duo of the Canadian Podcast Buffet, Mark Blevis and Bob Goytech. This is it’s 2nd year and I heard so much positive reviews of last year’s I thought I’d give this a try. I enjoyed PodCamp Toronto tremendously and I am happy to report that so far, PAB2007 is enjoyable and most importantly, of course, I’ve learned a lot. Plus, all of us attendees donated more than 80 children’s books to a local school.

While today was the meat of the conference with seminars throughout the day, yesterday was like an introduction and meet and greet– on a cruise on the St. Lawrence iver (directly behind my hotel room). Very nice. ‘Twas fun meeting a lot of new people with such a wide variety of podcasts. The sights were terrific– and of course, by the time I decided to start taking photos, I disocvered that my batteries went kaboink. Andmy spares were back in the hotel room. Fortunately, Dwight from the Much Ado About Nothing Podcast was very kind to lend me some and I was able to take two photos before the sun went down (see above and directly below).

I also got to meet Daryl Cognito of Atomic Suburbia who is also a big fan of newspaper comic strips, Melinda Mason of the My Marilyn podcast, Charles Cadenhead of Mostly News and so many others (my apologies that I didn’t mention your name. This blog post is getting long!).

Of course, the stars were there, Mitch Joel, Julien Smith, Hugh McGuire, Tod Maffin and a last-minute addition, Christopher Penn. Unfortunately, I couldn’t draw with Chris Brogan as he couldn’t make it.

What did I learn so far?

A lot of people think my idea for a podcast is a great one (still not announcing it here yet) and although I had planned to do some recording at PAB2007, and although I kept reminding myself NOT to forget to bring my minidisic recorder, I did, however, forget to bring MY MICROPHONE! AARRRG!!! A lot of people liked my idea for my podcast– what encouragement!

Social networks don’t care about technology.

48% of leisure time is spent online.

Podcasts with background noise are more engaging.

People will create their own online communities to support your product. If my Spud comics ever hit the big time, I will need to keep this in mind.

Creative Commons Licensing in Canada. Mark Blevis approached the Law & Technology people at the University of Ottawa to write up a Canadian podcasting guide on fair dealing (or fair use as they say in the US). creativecommons.ca

How podcasting is going to save the world. How can my skills as a podcaster help solve problems? This is exactly what I was pondering the past few weeks (also to blogging and the rest of my online concoctions). Hugh McGuire did a fantastic presentation about this.

The Arc of the Whale Model in storytelling. Sonya Buyting of Sassy Science put on a very informattive presentation that will be very useful to not only my comics, but Twitter Spud as well. Well, to anything really. Podcasts, radio documentaries, etc. It’s basic storytelling 101 that I was never, ever taught in school.

The view from my hotel window (6am)

Technorati Tags: PAB2007

I am in Kingston and tonight’s the first night of PAB2007. A.K.A. Podcasters Across Borders a.k.a. podcastersacrossborders.com. It’s my first time in Kingston and my hotel (and hotel room) is right on the water’s edge on the shore of the St. Lawrence River. My room is right beside the terrace and lots of seagulls :)

Technorati Tags: PAB2007

Today’s post was written from a Nintendo DS!

Most likely old news but I just got a DS Lite and was everso excited that you could also surf the web with one! And play a number of paint-based games.

I was never really into gaming except for Pac-man and Tetris, so that pretty much explains everything.

Still, being an illustrator, I should be open towards what’s going on in the gaming world.

I can sit outside and enjoy the weather and blog without exosing my real computer to the elements.

The DS is hard on the eyes though,

Technorati Tags: Nintendo DS, blogging

I just finished up my first official broadcast on Ustream.tv. Because my SightFlex hadn’t arrived yet, I had to build my own iSight stand from an old gooseneck lamp which made drawing uncomfortable. The “lamp” was in my face, its base took up most of the desk space along with my PowerBook which left me no choice but to use a smaller sketchbook than I had planned.

When I had everything in place, I went to Ustream.tv and logged into my account to start my show. Once I was in, I was able to further adjust my webcam to the optimal position so all that my audience would see is just my sketchbook. Well… mostly.

Boy does my back hurt.

Before I started broadcasting, I loaded up Twitter and Facbook. On Twitter, I wrote that I was now broadcasting and updated my status on Facebook with pretty much the same info.

After a few technical difficulty (my fault), I was on the air and had 2 viewers! Unfortunately, I never found out who they were. Actually, throughout my broadcast, I always had 1. A 2nd would pop in and out.

I noticed, though, that everytime I added a new message about my show on Twitter, I’d get a 2nd viewer.

My observation is, someone on Twitter saw my post and clicked on the tinyurl directly to my show and for whatever reason, popped back out.

I have no idea if it was because Ustream was slow to load (I don’t know if it was), what I was drawing wasn’t interesting, what I was drawing wasn’t viewable, or by astonishing coincidence, those 2nd viewers got abducted by aliens.

That other viewer who was always watching turned out to be me. I realized that because I also had the chat window open, Ustream counted me as a viewer.

And here I was a bit nervous about what I was drawing. It was like having someone watch over my shoulder.

So what I learned from the hour was:

1. Yes, yes, content is king. Make sure what I draw is suspenseful. I’ll have to plan ahead interesting drawings.

2. Commercial radio is asobnoxious as ever. I rarely listen to it except for CBC Radio and Radio-Canada but I needed some background music.
Usually on Friday nights Radio-Canada (Espace Musique) plays cool house music but tonight it didn’t. I had to resort to CHUM-FM and 103.5. Ew. Oh those commercials are baaaaad.

3. Get an ergonomic desk.

4. Wait for a SightFlex to come in!

I began by working on the drawings for the character profiles
that I will feature on superspud.com.

I couldn’t really concentrate so I started doodling at random.

I worked on 2 more dawings, first in pencil then colouring in with an orange gel pen

Followed by an idea of how to bring some suspense into my show. too bad the only markers I had within reach were the Crayola sketching markers. They tend to show up really dark. I decided to record this and had no idea I was already recording for 17 minutes. I haven’t figured out how to delete it.

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why WordPress isn’t showing my embedded video. I embed the code and it changes it t “ibed” whatever that is. So here is a boring text link.

Thanks WordPress!

Technorati Tags: Sketchy Adventures, ustream.tv, ustream, illustration

Last week I posted about the SightFlex I ordered for my Ustream.tv show. The package arrived today and to my dismay, MacMice sent me the wrong item. What a let down. All excited and my first show is coming up in a few days. Now to go through the hassle of hoping and hoping that they send me the right package. What if I send back this one but never get my SightFlex?

I sent a message to them asking what the next step is. I hope they allow me to wait until I get my proper item before I have to ship the wrong one back. I hope they pay for shipping. Watch this space!

Update: I gave them a call since I didn’t receive an email reply (then again, most times when I do send in an email anywhere, I never get a reply). So I called them up and the nice lady on the phone, apologized and said she’d mail a new one right away and have someone call me back to arrange for a pick up of the iBreeze. How nice!

Technorati Tags: SightFlex, MacMice

Ever since I started up my Sketchy Adventures show on Ustream.tv, I’ve been thinking up ways in how I can broadcast a drawing show from PAB2007 with my fellow participants. What’s stopping me is it isn’t podcasting. M-a-y-b-e it can be seen as video podcasting but you can’t download the videos from UStream.

On the other hand, it would be cool to get a video of Chris Brogan sketching with me.

But how do I carry around my precious PowerBook and iSight camera safely? The iSight isn’t internal. In other words, how can you do mobile Ustreaming? I could just use a video camera then upload the video to YouTube but that’s so early 2007. Where’s the live interaction in that? :)

If you’re interested in social media, podcasting in particular, PAB2007 is the place to be!

edit: Forgot to think about bandwidth. See comments below

Technorati Tags: PAB2007, Ustream.tv, Sketchy Adventures

My jump page for my Sketchy Adventures show on Ustream.tv is up and running. You can see the link on my left nav.

Included is an embedded player for the Ustream show for your convenience along with a link to the site.

Next week I will set up an RSS feed to keep you posted for when my next show will air. For now, you can keep an eye on my twitter account at twitter.com/danielerossi. I will also add more information about my show.

Technorati Tags: Ustream.tv, Sketchy Adventures

I was so happy to find out that some very, very nice and thoughtful people created a mount for the iSight that is high. Really high. High enough to… maybe even use it to provide something like a bird’s eye view of your sketchbook as you draw in front of a Ustream.tv audience.

This device is known as the SightFlex by MacMice. If you go to their site, you’ll see it works like a gooseneck lamp (like Pixar’s Luxo, Jr. lamp) except you can twist and turn the iSight in any direction, location, whatever!

Like say you’re broadcasting yourself playing drawing games with your friends, like me!  No need for a cluttered desk trying to get the drawings to be viewable on screen! I can’t wait to receive it in the mail and start experimenting with it.

Technorati Tags: SightFlex, Ustream.tv, iSight, Sketchy Adventures