Time to do some more recording, quick, while the house is empty! :)

>

-R

Man, I've been busy today and so much left to do... anyway I have my new (secular, but family-friendly) podcast going now, Sturgeon's Law, so feel free to drop by and check it out! But trust me, I'm still very committed to TWT. Very very much so.

>

-R

Done with the Gospels for the year!
Done with Acts for the year!

And that means it's time for... letters!

>

-R

And this is the end of Acts. See you tomorrow for Romans!

>

-R

Nice to see the number of feed clients picking back up. Welcome, welcome! It occurs to me that sites like Podnova and Odeo, which I like quite a bit, will confound me using Feedburner stats, since they'll only show up as one client each. Back to trying to farm numbers from raw logs, I guess...

>

-R

Sorry about the lateness of the hour; life got in the way. And more recently, so did recording -- I just finished edits on a few future TWTs. Anyway, here's today's.

>

-R

Pardon my Odeo thingy below -- just getting an official listing with Odeo to be owned by me. Will try to get an Odeo tag on this page soon!

>

-R

Edit: Got the Odeo listing set up so removed the aforementioned thingy. Plus, the Odeo link is now on the sidebar.

No longer still in Colorado! That's right, I got home about an hour ago, which is why this post is so late in the evening -- I've been in the car all day! Anyway, I'm back, I've had a chance to think about many things, and I've still got a few days of TWT buffer and hope to keep it that way. Hope y'all keep listening, 'cause I'm gonna keep posting!

>

-R

Still in Colorado!

>

-R

In Colorado... will write more another day. Enjoy!

>

-R

Leaving in a few minutes to start our trip. More or less convinced I have things squared away here. Y'all be good now! :)

>

-R

TWT #201

Can you believe it? Off on another trip tomorrow, this time to Colorado. We'll be gone for almost a week but I'll have heaps of net access so I'm not posting in advance. Post times may be a little random, though. But then, aren't they always?

>

-R

TWT #200!

Yep, today's is the 200th post of The Whole Truth. And about now I'm finally starting to feel like I'm getting the right tools together to make it what I want it to be. :) Having said that, I stopped using Audacity (and thus the LAME engine) to encode the mp3s and switched to another using... well, never mind the details, the point is that at a low bitrate like 64 kbps, this one gives less distortion. I think I'm about at the wall on improving the quality aside from just being attentive to mic positioning, not causing clipping by being too loud, and, you know, speaking clearly. A friend in the audio industry complimented me on the mix of the music and voice in the intro to yesterday's and I'm happy about that.

1. podcasts! Maybe now I'll actually have the chutzpah to get involved in the podcaster communities. :)

Spread the word, won't you?

>

-R

TWT #199

So here we are -- tomorrow is #200, Thursday the family (including me) leaves for Colorado for several days, by Wednesday the 27th'll we'll be back and Thursday the 28th is the end of Acts. Onto the letters after that.

In the end blurb I nowadays mention that in addition to financial help, you can also help out by voting monthly on Podcast Alley (it's not so much that I want my name up in lights as a desire for people to find TWT at all) and telling friends about the site (which is really much more of a direct way to accomplish that.) Well, here's another way someone could help me out: I could use a logo image to put in the feed (and on the iTunes feed) and I am the Worst. Graphic. Designer. Ever. iTunes uses 300x300 I'm told. As for including in mp3 tags or whatever, I can't find any information on doing that. Anyway. I don't promise to use anything someone comes up with, but I will be grateful for any help. :)

>

-R

Oops! Well, the network was down this morning, and I've been busy since, but here's today's a bit late. On the bright side, this is the first of several I did in a run, and I'm really happy with the results. Let me know what you think! Oh yeah, and need I add -- only two days to #200!

>

-R

I disabled pingbacks and trackbacks (I was getting trackback spam, sigh) because really, if you want me to know that you mentioned me, just leave a comment, and I will be genuinely appreciative, I promise! Yeah, I guess that's more work than the automated trackback stuff some blogs have, but oh well.

-R

This is it -- the first TWT done with the Plantronics headset and the iRiver. Positioning of the mic and some other details still need some finetuning which I hope to get done today (along with several recordings, as Thursday we're off for another week-long trip.) Still, I'm really, really happy about getting rid of a big chunk of background noise and -- hey! check out that stereo sound!

>

-R

The iRiver is here! Testing will begin almost immediately. Today's TWT, of course, wasn't done using it.

>

-R

My extreme apologies for being late with this again. Long story. Here it is -- by the way, this is the first recording with the new Plantronics headset.

>

-R

Due to fabulous success of the approach to get rid of comment spam, I have actually relaxed the rules on comment moderation. Which means, if you, real user, post a comment, it will now go up immediately instead of silently refusing. It's a good thing! So feel free to make use of it! (Comment spammers, however, may continue to go away.)

Today I am picking up my new Plantronics headset, and you who donated money -- if you give me permission, I will gladly and gratefully give your names -- are to be thanked for it. Moreover, my big surprise is that The Godcast Network has donated a new iRiver 790, an excellent tool for mobile (read: away from all the computer fans, hopefully) recording. Thanks so much, Craig! The new headset plus the iRiver (which should arrive Friday) plus the Bibles on my Dell Axim (and a copy of the reading schedule) should allow me to go wherever's quiet whenever I want and record with good quality. No doubt there will be a few growing pains but I'm very happy about this and hopefully that will pass on to you listeners. (It may also result in getting ahead enough to start a separate weekly podcast or two... ahem.)

Any further donations that come in will go to offset the rest of the headset cost (not much) and then possibly a Griffin lapel mic for further flexibility. As I promised, the numbers are all being kept track of. (Well, except I haven't been keeping a total of money spent on the hosting fees, which is going to get more expensive before the year is out with me keeping every episode onlien, but I'm paying that happily for now, so that's why.)

Oh, right, today's reading. :)

>

-R

Hot hot hot outside. Hot. Hot.

>

-R

And here's today's. Again, sorry about the delays!

>

-R

Ack! I can't believe I FORGOT after recording last night (as I said I probably would.) Mea culpa, folks. Nothing to blame this on except my brain. Will post today's directly hereafter.

>

-R

Today's post will be delayed somewhat, probably until late tonight. Sorry about that.

-R

What I did: Jeff Barr's Blog » WordPress Comment Verification (With Source Code)

Thanks, Jeff!

-R

The comment spam thing is still being a problem, so I've implemented a new safeguard, which will become obvious when and if you post a comment. If it goes well, I may even be able to relax on moderation, but we'll see.

I believe that TWT is destined for a major improvement in sound quality (well, to my ears, anyway) soon thanks to some very generous support. More on this when it all comes together.

>

-R

Speaking of comments... I'm having to spend an annoying amount of time dealing with comment spammers. Obviously the comments aren't getting past the screening but it's a waste of my time. Not sure what I'm going to do about it yet. Suggestions are welcome... if you don't want to put up with my comment screening you can always email me suggestions at the address linked over on the right (don't forget to "fix" the address.) Sigh.

>

-R

I've been thinking about some changes to the podcast (in the framing, I mean; the reading is what it is) to make it a little less stiff and formal or something. Thoughts?

>

-R

This is the last one recorded with the driver-side noise cancellation turned on; the artifacts it causes drove me crazy to listen to myself.

>

-R

Whoops! After all that, I simply forget to post this morning. My sincerest apologies; I had everything ready to go and then it just fell through my fingers as I was getting ready for work. Here it is now.

>

-R

Ahem. Well, more or less on time! The power went out last night for two and a half hours, and for various reasons that translates to me not sleeping during that time, so I slept in today (luckily a holiday here in the US.)

A comment spammer has been trying to post comments to this blog several times a minute for at least half a day now. Comment spammer, please knock it off. It's not actually getting you anywhere and it's annoying.

Happy Independence Day to all the American listeners!

>

-R

My apologies for being nearly a day late with this installment. The one for the 4th is ready and uploaded so I should be on time "tomorrow" and hopefully can find some time to get a buffer built up again. Still looking for feedback on the audio settings -- I'm kind of skeptical about them myself.

Also, I hate to do this, but nudge nudge: it's a new month and some votes on Podcast Alley could get TWT some nice visibility. Sharing the New Testament with people is what I'm here for, and I'd like to see it get as far as possible. But fear not -- even if there was only one of you listening, I'd still do it. Numbers are nice, but the work is what's important.

While I'm musing aloud, thanks to the three people who've donated to TWT since I put up the link -- after Paypal took their piece I've gotten about $15 and will not forget to account for how it gets used. My recent PC problems have made me even more keen on the idea of getting a low-capacity iRiver to record with, so that's a possible purchase down the line as finances permit. Fear not, though, I'm not asking for pledges. :)

>

-R

I am in fact using the built-into-motherboard sound device now (although it's not clear my sound card was in fact bad, but I don't feel like putting it back in, at least just now) so I had to redo a bunch of settings. I did get a software noise filter for my troubles, which may be good or bad, but I gave it a try. Anyway, in general, let me know what you think of how things sound now.

>

-R

It seems very much as if my sound card has gone glitchy on me. Fortunately, my machine's motherboard has a builtin sound device, so I've pulled the card and switched to the builtin. However, that means a certain amount of resetting things to make sense of using the different device, so I'm not sure if this'll cause any delays in recordings (I'm out of buffer, so to speak.) Just a heads up. Computer hardware, go figure it.

>

-R