Category: Uncategorized

Just a quick post

Just a quick post … to say … I made some changes to the main page of Modern Evil today, and what do you think of them?

It actually took me the better part of the day to get the code working correctly, even if it does look like it was just a simple thing. This is because either PHP in general, or the particular weird version of PHP that Easypace uses, does things WRONG. It’s WRONG in so many ways.

Note: whenever the year designation on the front page is negative (ie: 632.-1), it’s because PHP decided to do the math differently for some reason.

Also, a quick post to bring the Thursday total to a nice, round 20 posts. Since Friday is typically the high-post day of the week, I’m looking forward to seeing Zero posts tomorrow (impossible, since Michael already made a post for tomorrow).

Moo!

One more, before bed

And now, a post for while I wait for that 11Mb file to upload. See, I’m actually writing all three (or more, if this takes long enough or I think of something else to say) of these posts in a text editor so I can do other things with my internet access (ie: uploading those darned MP3s) and write at length if I want without worrying about losing too much (I save frequently… which reminds me…).

Anyway, I was in Phoenix Monday night/Tuesday all day, and watched Kill Bill Volume 1 (which I most thoroughly enjoyed, btw) AND rented (courtecy of my loving sister, Angela, thanks again!) The Matrix Reloaded and watched all (yes, literally ALL) the special features… and, while we let the movie iteself run from beginning to end, I don’t think any one of us (myself, my father (who started it in the first place) or my brother (who came home from school about 40 minutes before the ‘end’)) actually “watched” the whole thing. Although my dad was watching some of it in slow motion, and zoomed in… even scenes that were already in slow motion and/or close-ups. Hey, whatever gives him the enjoys, as his father would say. Overall, the “special features” weren’t particularly special… especially for a big Matrix fan… except for the documentary about the making of the freeway scene, which gave me more information than I had … but still disappointed by not giving the depth I wanted. And now I’m back in Pine.

I DID get that book, by the way. It had been waiting for me since Saturday, but since the office is only open M-F, they couldn’t have given it to me then, since it needed to be hand-delivered, I guess. There was a problem/non-problem with it, though. See, when I went to Amazon.com to look up Oscar Wilde, to see about ordering The Picture of Dorian Gray and/or De Profundis, I found that for about the same as JUST getting those two works, I could have my choice of two editions that claimed to have the ‘complete works’ of Oscar Wilde. One was The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (available for $10.45, used and in good condition) and the other was The Complete Illustrated Works of Oscar Wilde (available for $6.99, used and in good condition). I read through the descriptions of both books and it looked like they were both long enough and sized to be ‘complete works’, and figured saving $3 and getting the original illustrations along with the complete works was a turn of luck, so that’s what I ordered. That’s what the emails I received said was being sent to me “The Complete Illustrated Works of Oscar Wilde”.

What arrived today was “The Complete Illustrated Stories, Plays and Poems of Oscar Wilde.” It has all his stories, plays, poems, and the one novel he wrote, The Picture of Dorian Gray. It does not contain any of his essays or letters (De Profundis is a letter, nearly 200 pages long, which he wrote while in prison). It is not the ‘complete works of Oscar Wilde’. BUT, I went back and looked at the Amazon.com page for the product I ordered (following the link from the confirmation email, to be sure I was looking at the right item), and while the title I’d thought I was purchasing was there, the ISBN matched the one on my book and the official ‘description’ was verbatim from the back of the book I received, though the cover image they display is different. I looked at their return policy for Amazon Marketplace sales and … well, it says that if I was shipped something that was different from what I ordered, they’re supposed to exchange it (I pay shipping both ways, of course) or offer me a refund (which is much more complicated than a regular Amazon.com refund, and may take over a week to even be acknowledged before they try to process it), depending on what was wrong… but … it has the ISBN of the book I ordered, so is it the right book or the wrong one?

I submitted a ‘change of title’ to the book, with the title carefully copied from the book in my hands, so that future visitors will know what they’re ordering. I also sent a long email to the general Amazon.com customer service people explaining the whole thing, and that I really, really want to have the real, and actually ‘complete’ works of Oscar Wilde, and asking what I need to do to get it, asking whether I was even allowed to send back this book I’ve received to try to exchange it or WHAT. SO, we’ll see how THAT goes. Hopefully it will all be worked out peachy-keen and I’ll eventually get my hands on what I thought I was ordering… or some content-equivalent.

I’m getting tired, but this upload is taking forever. Silly dial-up. I think I’ll go take a nap, setting an alarm for half an hour from now, and see if it’s done then. I’ll let you know. …***/// \\\***… Yep, there is goes. Now, to post these three posts. And then go back to bed, where my mind was just beginning to calm down. Quiet down. Down, down, down…

And on that subject…

One of the complex reasons I’ve recorded that first ‘audioblog’ is that I am lazy. I didn’t feel like typing out a post. Well, obviously, that didn’t work out. I’m already working on typing out my second post!

Another was that I have been thinking more and more about the recording of the audio version of Lost and Not Found. I found myself recently listening to the audio recording I did of myself reading The Princess Bride (Available only as a gift, not for sale. Ask me about what size donations you can make to Modern Evil to receive this FREE GIFT!), noticing the little things about it I don’t like, that I don’t want to be features of the audio recording of Lost and Not Found. And the opposites. I spent more time happy with my recording than unhappy.

But I feel like I need to practice recording. Practice reading, even. Would you like to hear some samples from my novel? Well, as soon as more people have read it, I’ll ask them what parts they think will make good ‘excerpts’ to share with people who have never read it. Angela, go ahead and tell me now. Play with file sizes and formats and audio levels and environmental sounds … figure out what is going to work best for the ‘product’.

Now, with The Princess Bride… I was intentionally reading it a little fast… At this point I don’t remember what my intention was, but I remember doing so. And that book is about as long as mine. I just looked at the page count, and considering possible differences in fonts and page size, it appears to be within just a couple of percent of the length of my novel. The full audio recording of me reading The Princess Bride is about 7.7 hours. If I read my slightly longer novel 15%-25% slower (for clarity), it will likely be about 9 or 10 hours long, finished.

For the quality of the recording I used for The Princess Bride, it took me on average not less than four times longer to record any segment of the book than the final recorded audio. I do not expect to be surprised if that number is doubled for Lost and Not Found. Then cutting it into ‘tracks’ and spacing it across CDs (for a potential CD release) and adjusting file sizes and formats (for the definite MP3 release and other potential distribution methods) and getting the web space set up for it and it all uploaded…. I know how long it’s going to take me (in raw man-hours, though not actual days/weeks) to get this thing together and I’m certainly going to charge you an appropriate price (secretly based on the actual costs of audio books in stores and for download online… not on personal greed, mind you)… and I let that price determine the quality level I’m going to try to hold myself to. Does that all make sense?

Anyway, yeah. I’ve been thinking about that. And about doing audioblog entries. And actually, I’ve been thinking about Speech-To-Text software, too. I keep wanting to get some, and see if my thoughts are anywhere near coherent enought that I could possibly speak something worth reading. I know my hands are well-trained at converting my thoughts into coherent words on a screen or a page, but my voice has never really been used to convert my thoughts into words on a page or a screen, but in someone’s ears. Will it translate?

And if I speak, does anyone listen?

635.0 – audioblog entry

And now, for the Fuck Yourself To Hell audioblog.

I waited until after I was pretty sure the whole idea of an ‘audioblog’ had come and gone, passed almost entirely out of the consciousness of the blogging community, and THEN I decided to start thinking about doing it.

But none of that RealCrap or WindowsMediaCrapper. Not even the “open source” Ogg Vorbis, which is only playable on a fraction of players. No, I’ve decided to go with the format I know can be played on any platform and nearly any player, the format that has no way of being “digital rights managed”, which certain organizations (RIAA) blame for lagging CD sales (despite vastly fewer CDs being made available one year after another), the MP3! Most modern browsers will play the common MP3 without even bothering to launch an external player, and the rest of you can right-click the link and save the MP3 and … open it in your player of choice.

Tomorrow, when/if iTunes for Windows becomes available, and AAC audio becomes easy-to-use cross-platform, I’ll probably switch over to AAC. So there.

Oh, and for those of you at work and/or without sound capabilities on your computers…. you didn’t want to listen to it, anyway. I mostly just ramble about love and emotion and … Laura… I don’t remember, even though I’ve heard it over four times through now… yeah… don’t remember…

I’ve saved the file at a low-low-low-bitrate, because upon my testing, you can hear me just fine.

The length is 00:11:45, which means it’s eleven minutes and forty-five seconds. The file is only 2.6Mb (encoded@32k), which means that if you were using my ISP it would take you approximately three and a half days to upload or download the file, or if you were using broadband, your computer has probably already downloaded it before you even finished reading this. Because of the low quality it has been encoded at, there is some occassional distortion of my voice. If you are an audio-quality-snob, I’ve also created a version (encoded@128k) that is 11Mb. Again, those of you on broadband will probably find yourselves listening to both versions to try to tell the difference. Wheee! I just spent fourteen weeks uploading it! Anyway, here are the links:

The 2.6Mb file (actually took me 00:15:15 to upload)
The 11Mb file (don’t even ask… over an hour on dial-up)

And yes, there is music playing in the background. I had a heck of a time getting my audio recording software to NOT cancel that out, so it would be audible in the background. It was not as loud as I’d have liked in some places, and too loud in others. It may or may not be present in future recordings.