Changeling Turkey --All the Grizzly Audio There Is

National Blog Posting Month -- Day 1

grizzlysgrowls@gmail.com (grizzlysgrowls@gmail.com) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:24:00 +0000

I'm going to give NaBloPoMo another shot this year. I completed it last December, the month after The Big One. Didn't find it all that hard, but this year I'm lots more busy, with school and whatnot. Not that much whatnot -- like work & such, no job -- but school is plenty.

Heck, I may even manage to have something to say, rather than just rambling incoherently -- which might leave you wondering if you are reading the right blog. So I better avoid that.

Click here to play

JC Hutchins, I Knew Him When -- sorta

grizzlysgrowls@gmail.com (grizzlysgrowls@gmail.com) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:56:00 +0000

If you've been listening to my podcasts from the beginning, you might remember my reviews of JC Hutchins "7th Son" books. Largely due to the great popularity of the books on Podiobooks.com, Hutch managed to get the book published by a real-deal publisher, St. Martin's Press. And you can order it now!

If you liked the books as much as I have -- and I'm also listening to the new edition of the Podiobook -- I hope you'll want to own your very own, shiny new copy! You can click on this link to order the book 7th Son: Descent from Amazon.com, if you'd like.

You could also go to Hutch's own site to order. Up to you.

And to think, I reviewed his book back when he was just Some Guy. Mostly. :)

Click here to play

Coffee Hunt

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:46:00 +0000

Here's another little project I did for school. Not brilliant, but rather clever:

Hiber-Nation 87 -- Heretics by GK Chesterton Part 15

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:00:00 +0000

Part 15, "On Smart Novelists and the Smart Set"

"Heretics," a series of essays by Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

Book Theme: "Thaxted," written by Gustav Holst, arranged by Kevin MacLeod

Series Theme: Pachelbel's "Canon in D," performed by Owen Poteat

Hiber-Nation 86 -- Heretics by GK Chesterton Part 14

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:00:00 +0000

Part 14, "On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family"

"Heretics," a series of essays by Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

Book Theme: "Thaxted," written by Gustav Holst, arranged by Kevin MacLeod

Series Theme: Pachelbel's "Canon in D," performed by Owen Poteat

My new Video promo for The IDSL

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 04:30:00 +0000

As I may have mentioned, I'm currently in the Media Studies and Production course at Lake Superior college since August. I just today completed my second project for Video Graphics class. Came out kinda cool.

Since I can, and since I haven't done a podcast in a long while, I decided to put that video out on the feed here. Dunno if anyone will see it go by. UPDATE: I finally decided running my voice audio through Levelator wasn't cheating. I'd do it for work, why not do it for school? Glad I did. Made a real improvement, I think.

See ya around campus!

Promo for "The IDSL" - Take 3

grizzlysgrowls@gmail.com (grizzlysgrowls@gmail.com) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 18:55:00 +0000

I put this together this weekend for my Video Graphics class at LSC. It's not perfect; there's a spot in the audio I should fix, and that white bar where the URL appears is a bit unsubtle. But it's still pretty cool for a beginner. And I had fun making it! UPDATE: Fixed the audio. Decided to not change the one tiny thing that bothered me in the video. Just as well. ANOTHER UPDATE: Finally decided running my voice audio through Levelator wasn't cheating. Glad I did.

Natalie Brown

LeVar Thomas

Chris Kirby

Click here to play

What should I look for in a laptop?

grizzlysgrowls@gmail.com (grizzlysgrowls@gmail.com) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 17:58:00 +0000

My sister's XP laptop died. It was kinda old, and she got it used.

About a year and a half ago, she'd bought me a brand-new Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop for Christmas and by birthday, and I've been quite satisfied with it till recently. Now, for my Media Studies class, I've been doing and will be doing a lot of video editing, which is hard work for any computer and (they tell me) requires serious hardware to do reasonably quickly. My current laptop is adequate for this, sort of, mostly. The machine's been upgraded to 3 gig memory and a 360 gig hd both which seem adequate. I haven't discovered any way to upgrade -only- the Video hardware, and I suppose it's built into the motherboard and can't be upgraded.

My sister, who is an email-and-web person mostly, has suggested buying me another brand-new laptop, and taking over my "old" laptop for her own use. This would be wonderful, of course. She has more money than I do. But she's asked me to just tell her what sort of computer to buy, and she'll see about buying it. Thing is, I have no idea what specifically to look for, other than "larger" and "faster" and "better video" and other vague generalities. Twenty years ago I coulda told her, now, not so much.

Any suggestions or hints? I have heard for years that Macs are generally "better" for video editing. True, somewhat true, not true anymore? There is a premium to pay for Mac hardware. How does the price for a Macbook Pro compare with the price for a PC laptop "adequate" for video editing in particular? I've been using Windows since 3.1, DOS before that. I know Macs only by reputation.

What would be considered big or fast these days? I know what the numbers mean, to the extent they're larger versions of the old numbers. I don't want her spending the cost of a new car, though, for example. What would you say is a "reasonable" price for a laptop for "reasonable" video editing functionality and speed?

I pre-ordered a copy of Windows 7 a few months back, which I gather will help this old laptop somewhat. I doubt it would help enough. Am I wrong?

Thanks for your input.

Griz

Click here to play

Hiber-Nation 85 -- Heretics by GK Chesterton Part 13

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:00:00 +0000

Part 13, "Celts and Celtophiles"

"Heretics," a series of essays by Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

Book Theme: "Thaxted," written by Gustav Holst, arranged by Kevin MacLeod

Series Theme: Pachelbel's "Canon in D," performed by Owen Poteat

Hiber-Nation 84 -- Heretics by GK Chesterton Part 12

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 22:00:00 +0000

Part 12, "Paganism and Mr Lowes Dickinson"

"Heretics," a series of essays by Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

Book Theme: "Thaxted," written by Gustav Holst, arranged by Kevin MacLeod

Series Theme: Pachelbel's "Canon in D," performed by Owen Poteat

Hiber-Nation 83 -- Heretics by GK Chesterton Part 11

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:00:00 +0000

Part 11, "Science and the Savages"

"Heretics," a series of essays by Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

Book Theme: "Thaxted," written by Gustav Holst, arranged by Kevin MacLeod

Series Theme: Pachelbel's "Canon in D," performed by Owen Poteat

Hiber-Nation 82 -- Heretics by GK Chesterton Part 9 and 10

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:00:00 +0000

Part 9, "The Moods of Mr. George Moore"
Part 10, "On Sandals and Simplicity"

"Heretics," a series of essays by Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

Book Theme: "Thaxted," written by Gustav Holst, arranged by Kevin MacLeod

Series Theme: Pachelbel's "Canon in D," performed by Owen Poteat

The IDSL 09/08/2009 (Comment line 218-234-CALL)

grizzlysgrowls@gmail.com (grizzlysgrowls@gmail.com) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 07:05:00 +0000

You can directly download the file from Archive.org here.

On "The IDSL" today:

"Chandeliers, Scientists, Freaks and Aliens" from Dallas Orbiter

"Change Again" from Midriff

"We Dream For Jeanne" for Spider Robinson

"Change is in Season" from Matthew Anderson

"Change" from Schiek

"Feedback PSA" from Nobilis

"Chap My Pride" from Static Captain

"Golden Year" from Chris Kirby

"In My Dreams" from Natalie Brown

Thanks for listening!

Theme: "140 Times" from RockOn

Want to hear it all better? Try here!

This program sponsored by You, our loyal listeners! Want to help? Go to our Donate page!

Click here to play

IDSL from 09/08/2009 - High-quality version (Comment line 218-234-CALL)

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 07:03:00 +0000

Episode 117 -- A Helluvathing! (Comment line 218-234-CALL)

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 12:50:00 +0000

Decided to try a Grizzly's Growls the old way I used to do it. Turned out pretty good, I think.

Part 1 -- A Hell of a Thing

My rant about taking a beginner's writing course -- blatantly swiped from my blog.

"We Dream For Jeanne" from Spider Robinson

Part 2 -- Thinking in Pictures

This video stuff is very new to me, and now I'm learn to do it professionally? Yikes! A bit of story about my life in pictures.

Part 3 -- Bits and Pieces

I've gotten pretty good at all those little bits that get added to podcasts. There's a story behind that.

"Feedback PSA" from Nobilis

And Finally...

Comments to 218-234-CALL, grizzly@grizzlysgrowls.com or here at the website.

Theme: "Hot Swing" from Kevin MacLeod.

Closing Music: "Vampire Hotel" from Chris Kirby.

Now, ain't that a hell of a thing

grizzlysgrowls@gmail.com (grizzlysgrowls@gmail.com) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 08:12:00 +0000

I'm in school, now, studying Media Production. There's a lot I need to learn there. I'm pretty confident with audio, though I find Adobe Audition quite daunting. Video, well, I just don't get that. I suppose if I'd grown up with access to video recorders and such, like some of these kids did, it'd be another story. Never could afford video hardware, never had the option to simply fiddle and try things, so I never developed the sort of confidence these younger folks have. That's okay; I'll get there eventually. I haven't grown stupid in my old age.

Only one obstacle is utterly beyond me. I'm required to take a course in "College writing." I know I'm not a brilliant writer. I know a number of brilliant writers, and I've read their work, and I pale in comparison. I'm fine with that. I am a good writer, and certainly a practiced one. I spent a significant part of the last thirty years in jobs where my writing skills were vital to my work.

And now I'm taking a mandatory course that is apparently designed to turn an incompetent writer into a barely adequate one. The course requires following a very strict format, word by word, sentence by sentence, resulting in writing that shows every seam, crease, and scotch-taped-together phrase. And to pass the course, I need to spend the next four months writing down to this standard, rather than up to my own standards. This lock-step blather is better suited to a computer program than an actual writer. And it's presented as "College writing."

I don't want to do that. I doubt I can do that. I sure as hell can't do that for four straight months. To quote Truman Capote, "That's not writing at all, that's typing."

I certainly understand the necessity of the course for students who have never really been expected to write. Coming into this straight out of high school, some of my fellow students might have no idea how to write a simple declarative sentence. I can. I can't write like someone who doesn't know how.

But to be able to graduate from the Media Studies program, I am required to write badly for four months straight. Even now, I'm wondering what they'd do if I dropped the class. Probably kick me out.

Now ain't that a hell of a thing?

Griz

Click here to play

Merchandize Me

grizzlysgrowls@gmail.com (grizzlysgrowls@gmail.com) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 21:35:00 +0000

I have a whole lot of reading and writing to do for school. Which explains why I spent the last couple hours fiddling with the Merchandise on my Cafepress Store.

I decided the logo for The IDSL looks much better than the logo for Grizzly's Growls, so I switched everything over to using that logo. Had to resize a bit for some items. Came out okay, if not to my satisfaction in all cases.

One minor niggle with CafePress. What I want for myself is a nice black mug with the nice black-background logo from The IDSL on that. Turns out CafePress doesn't offer any black mugs, only white mugs. What were they thinkin'?

Another thing their product design software should allow is to resize the selected image up to whatever size the product allows. If I find a graphic simply doesn't resize well enough to suit that item, then I can create a new graphic reaching that size. But their software only allows resizing up to a given size, and doesn't provide sufficient info as to what the largest possible sizes are. So I have to create graphics by-guess-and-by-golly, upload them, try them, and if they don't work, go through the whole process again.

They also have some decidedly weird items in their product selection. I could, for example, offer a thong with The IDSL logo on it. A thong. Huh?

I don't know why I worry about it. No one has ever bought anything from the Grizzly's Growls CafePress Store, not so far, not even me. So what does it matter what merch I do or don't have, or what color it is?

Hmmm... Wonder if they'd have a thong in my size? :)

Click here to play

The IDSL 09/04/2009 (Comment line 218-234-CALL)

grizzlysgrowls@gmail.com (grizzlysgrowls@gmail.com) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 18:39:00 +0000

You could download direct from Archive.org, if you'd like.

On "The IDSL" today:

SPECIAL!!! Interview with R&B artist Chris Kirby, with music and discussion of his new album, "Vampire Hotel." Listen in, call in, join in!

Thanks for listening!

Theme: "140 Times" from RockOn

Want to hear it all better? Try here!

This program sponsored by You, our loyal listeners! Want to help? Go to our Donate page!

Click here to play

IDSL from 09/04/2009 - High-quality version (Comment line 218-234-CALL)

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 18:37:00 +0000

You could download direct from Archive.org, if you'd like. On "The IDSL" today:

SPECIAL!!! Interview with R&B artist Chris Kirby, with music and discussion of his new album, "Vampire Hotel." Listen in, call in, join in!

Thanks for listening!

Theme: "140 Times" from RockOn

Want to hear it all better? Try here!

This program sponsored by You, our loyal listeners! Want to help? Go to our Donate page!

IDSL from 09/03/2009 - High-quality version (Comment line 218-234-CALL)

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:11:00 +0000

You can download a copy directly from Archive.org, if you'd like.

On "The IDSL" today:

"cephalopoda of the desert" from Frowning Trees

"chainlink" from melisma

"Feedback PSA" from Nobilis

"Chalkboard Fingernails" from sombertown

"Podcast Bailout" from John Bell

"Chance Life" from Anoran

"We Dream for Jeanne" from Spider Robinson

"Chance" from Morrisson

"Lift This Fog" from Chris Kirby

Thanks for listening!

Theme: "140 Times" from RockOn

Want to hear it all better? Try here!

This program sponsored by You, our loyal listeners! Want to help? Go to our Donate page!

The IDSL 09/03/2009 (Comment line 218-234-CALL)

grizzlysgrowls@gmail.com (grizzlysgrowls@gmail.com) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Click here to play

Really Rather Graceful, Mainly

grizzlysgrowls@gmail.com (grizzlysgrowls@gmail.com) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:36:00 +0000

Something I wrote for College Comp I class the other day.

“Do you even ride that thing anymore,” my sister asked me, pointing to my bicycle in a corner of the garage. She seems convinced, now that I walk with a cane, I'm not likely to ride a bicycle. “Why yes, of course I do,” I answered. This is entirely true. If it weren't, I'd still keep my bike. Bicycles have always meant freedom to me.

I was never well coordinated as a kid, much less graceful. I grew up in the 1960s in a fair-sized family, one older brother, three sisters, lots of pets. What we had wasn't new, usually hand-me-downs, but still usable and in good repair, cause my Dad could fix things. All my siblings had bikes, that was a given back in those days on Trinity Road, the outskirts of town. My first bike was a one-speed, kinda beat-up, roughly the right size for me, mostly mine because the three older kids had newer bikes.

And those three knew how to ride, cause kids just did. I was born clumsy and uncoordinated. I tried to figure out bicycling by looking at what they did: sit on the seat, balance, pedal to go forward. Looked easy. I sat on the seat, tried to balance, and tried to get my feet on the pedals, by which time the bike was tipping over. Back to step one. No luck there. And my Dad wasn't that guy from the TV shows, running along side your bike, pushing and encouraging.

Eventually, the Abbotts from down the street somehow got all the neighborhood kids down to their front yard, a long, grassy slope. We lowered the seats on the bikes and coasted, feet easily reaching the ground. Coasting made balancing easy, and once I was coasting and balancing, pedalling was pretty straightforward. In later years, I read books by cycling professionals who taught kids to ride bikes. That turned out to be The Right Way to Teach Biking, as much as there is one.

Now I could ride all the way up to the Abbots and the Petersons, across to the Fosles, and down to the Stewarts, even all the way to Paul's Texaco. We'd ride along the dirt shoulders of Trinity Road, back when it was still a narrow, two-lane road with no great amount of traffic. And when my birthday came and I got my fancier, newer, more stylish five-speed with the big banana seat and the sissy bar and the high handlebars, my freedom of the neighborhood was nearly complete. The house where we went to get my new, used bike is still there, by the way – just to the right as you come in the main entrance of Lake Superior College.

I've had bikes ever since. Due to various sensory problems, I've never had a driver's license, and my basic transportation always had two wheels and pedals. But there was something perfect about that particular five speed. I could travel as fast as I needed to, come within a hair of a dead stop and stay balanced, even coast a bit backwards and downhill with no worries of falling over. I could ride it on the little foot trails through the woods, along the paths by Miller Creek, Chicken Pond, Coffee Pond. Our whole family would ride along the dusty and desolate shoulder of Miller Trunk Highway up to the Target store for groceries, past the abandoned miniature golf place on the corner, and the big billboard that was there in that empty, open field for much of my childhood it seemed: “Coming Soon: The Miller Hill Mall!” I wondered what a Mall was.

If I still had that big purple five-speed, I'd still ride it, not worrying about appearances. And I could go anywhere anyone else could go, and I'd get there eventually. On that five speed, nowhere else, on no other bike, just that one – I was graceful.

Click here to play

Hiber-Nation 81 -- Heretics by GK Chesterton Part 8

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 22:00:00 +0000

Part 8, "The Mildness of the Yellow Press"

"Heretics," a series of essays by Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

Book Theme: "Thaxted," written by Gustav Holst, arranged by Kevin MacLeod

Series Theme: Pachelbel's "Canon in D," performed by Owen Poteat

The Podcast Awards Are Coming!

grizzlysgrowls@gmail.com (grizzlysgrowls@gmail.com) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:05:00 +0000

Since I have 3 podcasts, you could nominate me three times! Just sayin'.

2009 Podcast Awards

It’s Podcast Awards Season again and I am preparing the site tonight the firm that manages the site will be putting us in pre-nomination mode tomorrow.

Podcast Nominations by your audiences will open at 2100 EST on Oct 4th so start getting your audiences prepared today to nominate your show.

We will be accepting sponsorships exactly as we were last year so be the first to get your sponsorship dollars in.

The awards take a huge amount of work each year, so much in fact that I had considered not holding the event this year. Over the past three weeks my email inbox has been exploding and I decided to go ahead and hold the event again. I am hoping that the volunteers step up like they did last year to help because without them it is a monumental job.

Get your audiences ready

Todd Cochrane
Found Podcast Awards!

Click here to play

The Podcast Awards Are Coming!

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:00:00 +0000

Since I have 3 podcasts, you could nominate me three times! Just sayin'.

2009 Podcast Awards

Itâs Podcast Awards Season again and I am preparing the site tonight the firm that manages the site will be putting us in pre-nomination mode tomorrow.

Podcast Nominations by your audiences will open at 2100 EST on Oct 4th so start getting your audiences prepared today to nominate your show.

We will be accepting sponsorships exactly as we were last year so be the first to get your sponsorship dollars in.

Get your audiences ready

Todd Cochrane
Found Podcast Awards!