About

{margin-right: 50; padding-left 60px; text-align: justify;} p {style="text-indent:20px"; font: .9em Myriad Pro;} h1{font: bold; font size: 150%; "Helvetica";} h2{font: bold; font size: 200%; "Helvetica";} h5{font: bold; font size: 200%; "Helvetica";} Written in the Sand Episode 10: There is a Harkonnen Among You If you are just joining us today for the first time, I usually have something here to strongly hint that you should go back to the first episode and listen to them all in order. I’m not necessarily going to do that today because this is a minisode, a break in continuity where I talk about things that have to do with the podcast in general and so can be safely listened to out of order. For returning listeners, yes, I went with the mini episode option, and I have posted the entire transcript because I wanted this one fully available. The reason why I decided to do these things is actually multiple reasons, not the least of which is that shortly after posting this episode I will be knee-deep in forest, tent, and camp fires, rather than a couple of days to myself where I can refine the normal episode format, and then record and edit it. There is a holiday for me and the rest of the US this weekend, and it occurs to me, and I'm not sure how I managed it -- although I assure you it was not intentional -- that the release of my episodes seems to coincide with a number of holidays, and at least one wedding, so far. I have to say it is amazing what one will subconsciously subject oneself to when plotting things out. But I still persevere in the happy thought that any day now will come a conveniently long stretch of peace and quiet where I will magically be able to get a lot of things done in a single go. So what will I talk about in this shorter, non-canon episode? Happily, it will be a bit of this and a bit of that. Yes, quite definitely. Unfortunately, while doing the last two episodes I noticed a certain amount of dryness that distressed me, but of course not enough for me to not go ahead with them stubbornly. Of course, my subject matter was decidedly depressing, nonetheless I feel that I do want to take a bit of time to think about some questions of style. I actually listen to a number of podcasts myself and I'm often quite envious of the more professional ones. Of course some of those podcasts, I suspect, are done in a nice quiet studio with expensive equipment and a team of people paid to make sure it all sounds good. I do not have that luxury, I am a single person, whose equipment is decidedly unprofessional. I am still inspired, however, by a few podcasts that I do listen to that I definitely know have none of those expensive advantages and manage quite well, so I do remain optimistic. I have spent much my life teaching myself various things and becoming quite good at them over the years. There is always a chance -- and there are number of endeavors in my past that have failed utterly -- that becoming a one man public orator and sound production team will not be successful. But as I said just a few minutes ago I can be stubborn as all get out. I am going to be upgrading some of my equipment, though. I realize that it is coming up on a year since I seriously started to plan out getting started and that some of the equipment that I bought at that time was more about frugality then quality. I think it may be time to correct that and also to pick up some other things that I want to bring to bear. One of those will most certainly be a potentially better microphone, as this one, while it works and was within budget at the time, also has to be kept distressingly close to the mouth necessitating a lot more editing of unpleasant noises then I really feel like doing anymore. And while I'm at it, my computer is also rapidly going out of date so that should be done as well and with all the things that I have planned, there will be a lot of upgrading over the next few months,