Category: Just mumbling along

No foolin’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
The 2009 iMac, resurrected (however temporarily) for service as a podcasting tool.
The 2009 iMac, resurrected (however temporarily) for service as a podcasting tool.

Consider this your shelter from the storm that is April Fool’s Day.

Here at Mad Dog Media we do the perpetual tee hee, 24/7 and 365. As George Carlin noted on “Carlin at Carnegie Hall”:

“I am a professional comedian. As opposed to the kind you see at work all day long.”

To be honest, it’s been something of a pro-am week here at Ye Olde Gagge Factorie. I had professional obligations to Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, and despite being sidetracked by the death of one of my favorite authors I managed to, as we say out here in the West, “Git ‘er done.” It was not unlike shitting a full case of broken whiskey bottles.

During rest intervals I reacquainted myself with the ins and outs of podcasting. This was strictly amateur hour.

Longtime victims of the blog may recall that I’ve dabbled in audio a time or two, but it’s been a couple years since my last episode of Radio Free Dogpatch. I even pulled the link off the site. It felt like driving past the same shuttered storefront every day.

GarageBand '11, v6.0.5, had a dedicated "Podcast" option. The "improved" version, not so much.
GarageBand ’11, v6.0.5, had a dedicated “Podcast” option. The “improved” version, not so much.

I started out recording with Felt Tip’s Sound Studio, an application I got for free, I think, maybe with a hardware purchase from Other World Computing. Then I tried Audacity, another gratis bit of software, and finally moved over to Apple’s GarageBand, which I considered the least user-friendly of the three. But it comes with every Mac, so there you have it. And there was a dedicated “Podcast” selection in the startup menu, plus you could pull jingles and other sound effects out of the library it shared with iMovie.

Well, that’s all history. If anything GarageBand is even less user- and podcast-friendly than it was before. And I’m a couple years dumberer. So, yeah, there was a little bit of the wailing, the gnashing of teeth and the rending of the garments as we became reacquainted. It was like running into the smartypants kid from high school, the one you hated, and finding out that he had landed a job providing a service you needed.

Once I got back up to speed with recording myself as a solo act, I studied up on adding additional voices (and no, not the ones in my head).

The fun part was learning how to record a Skype call and import the audio into GarageBand. Any old scribbler has spent a fair amount of time recording phone interviews, but a painstaking transcription traditionally followed and the quotes gleaned thereby were worked into what we used to call “a story,” or “copy,” as in, “O’Grady, where the fuck is my copy? News editor has a two-inch hole on D42 and the slot man is drunk again.” Journalism 101, right there in the tar pits, next to the brontosaurus.

Here at the FutureFair a modern Bozo (or Bozoette) wants to add the actual audio from that chat to a podcast. It’s a breeze, thanks to the brainiacs at Ecamm. Their Call Recorder records both sides of the Skype call directly to your Mac, and a widget lets you split the recording into individual tracks. Another widget converts those files into mp3 and you drag them sumbitches into GarageBand for editing. It’s easier than slipping a fabricated quote past a drunk slot man.

Anyway, my man Hal Walter and I did a short test drive yesterday. The wheels didn’t fall off, and nothing exploded, so our next attempt will be an actual podcast. No foolin’. Don’t touch that dial.

 

Wild, wild life

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments
That's what I call an ex-dove.
That’s what I call an ex-dove.

Between episodes of “Attack of the Booger Monster” it’s been National Fuckin’ Geographical lately around El Rancho Pendejo.

Yesterday afternoon I was slouched in the office, trying feebly to generate some paying copy with a skull full of Claritin-D 12 Hour, when I heard a bass thump! in the living room and assumed another dipshit dove had augured into the picture window by the cat tower.

It was a marvelous night for a moondance.
It was a marvelous night for a moondance.

Well, close. A falcon had chased a dove into the window and was sitting on the lawn, plucking the dumb sonofabitch like a harp, while the cats watched with professional curiosity. No photo of the raptor at work, alas; I went for a camera but he took off with his dinner before I could make a Kodak moment of it.

Then last evening I took a few snaps of the post-eclipse supermoon, having intercoursed the penguin the night before (check those ISO/f-stop settings, kids). We had a few shooting stars to keep Luna company when it was all red in the face, too. Quite the night.

Today I felt capable of a short bike ride for professional purposes — the reviews don’t slow down just ’cause I do — and afterward I treated myself to a second dose of green chile stew. I’m hoping it succeeds where the Irish penicillin failed. It’s a rare bug indeed that can withstand the one-two punch of chicken noodle soup and green chile stew.

 

System maintenance

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 27 Comments
Enchiladas de Herrera from El Bruno's on Fourth.
Enchiladas de Herrera from El Bruno’s on Fourth.

Downtime. Hasn’t been much of that sort of thing around here lately.

If you haven’t moved for a dozen years or so, it’s something of a shock to the system, like waking up in a strange room with the notion that you’ve been misbehaving again. The police may or may not consider you “a person of interest.” Nothing is where it should be — groceries, banking, your favorite ride.

Little disruptions abound. Walls without art, windows without shades, a wife with a job that no longer permits working from home three days a week.

Things need doing, and all of them take more time than they did back home. Just where the hell are the English muffins in this Bizarro World Whole Foods, anyway? Not where I’d put ’em, that’s for sure. The eyeball doc says Mister Boo needs another procedure? Put the English muffins back, we’re all gonna be eating dog food for a while. The city won’t pick up glass for recycling? No wonder the bike lanes are full of it.

Oh, the humanity. Caninity. Velocity. Whatever.

Then, suddenly, a pause for the cause. Nothing needs doing. Well, not right now, anyway. So there’s time for a short ‘cross-bike ride through the desert, a fiery platter of enchiladas de Herrera from El Bruno’s Restauranté y Cantina, and our millionth viewing of “Blazing Saddles” in honor of David Huddleston, a resident of Santa Fe.

How ’bout some more beans, Mister Taggart?

HTFU?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 42 Comments
uisce beatha
There stands the glass. …

Outrage repeated ad infinitum is like an overlong intervals session. At some point you come up off the saddle and then sit right back down.

I’m not even in the saddle for the news about Stuart O’Grady and the rest of them from 1998. I’m back at the house, with the bike on its hook, and looking longingly at that unopened bottle of Bushmills in the kitchen. My performance-enhancer of choice for longer than I care to remember, even if I could.

So, instead of me struggling to gin up an anemic burstlet of apoplexy, how ’bout we take a trip down memory lane to August 2007, when “Friday’s Foaming Rant” still bestrode the narrow cycling world like a Colossus?

Postage due

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Random observations on a snowy Wednesday:

• Sloth apparently has a genetic component. So, now, in addition to everything else, you can blame your parents for making you a lazy fat bastard.

• It doesn’t matter if you get shot by a loony. What matters is how many lawmakers might lose their jobs if even a watered-down bit of gun-control legislation were to pass Congress.

• Great idea, bad optics. I’m all for Denver making 2014 “the year of the bike,” having lived there for a few years that weren’t. But if you’re going to argue that bike-ped programs should be among your top budget priorities in a tough economy, it’s probably a good idea to not let a Denver Post scribe snap a staged photo that makes City Council look like a bunch of kids enjoying spring break on Mommy and Daddy’s dime.

• Seen descending a slushy Bibleburg hill: An Audi driver motoring one-handed with a cellphone clamped to her right ear. The very personification of the Angel of Death.