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Friday, May 9th
May. 9th, 2014 01:34 pmThe Daily Report
So, as part of building up my confidence at speaking in public (WisCon panels coming up soon!) and recording myself/being on camera, the other day I recorded some audio. I've been told that I have a very soothing voice ever since I was doing telephone customer service and I spend a lot of time listening to soft-spoken relaxation videos from YouTube, so I've wanted to do something similar for a long time but I've lacked the confidence.
Then when spring thunderstorms kind of altered my day's plans earlier in the week, I decided to just sort of go for it. I asked around for suggestions of things to read/recite, and the least awful suggestion resulted in Relaxing Craigslist and Relaxing Machiavelli's The Prince.
This is the first time I've ever experimented with putting musical backing on YouTube videos. Even though I spent more time verifying the public domain status of my source files than I did recording the spoken audio, both of them were initially flagged by YouTube as copyright violations (one dispute has been resolved, the other is still in process). Which is... an interesting insight into how their algorithms work. I used different tracks by the same performer for each video, but they both got flagged because someone somewhere used them in a commercial project available on CD Baby or Amazon.
Dealing with the copyright claim made this little side thing done as a lark eat up more of my brain and time than I intended, but now that I've gone through the process and understand how quickly it can be cleared up, I'm a little less leery about it.
I'm still trying to do some last minute saving for WisCon, and I'm offering more of my recording experiments as an inducement. For every $50 I get between now and May 22nd, I will record and upload another ~5-6 minute track. If any one person contributes $50, they can pick the reading material (subject to approval and necessary "cropping"), otherwise I'll choose. The next one I have slated is "Relaxing First Two Chapters of 'My Immortal'" (the infamous fan fic, not the song).
Kick in here if you're interested.
If I can get to $300, I'll record an epic, 18-20 minute track entitled "Relaxing Epilogue To Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Except Backwards". I'm not going to tell you what's going to be in it. You'll have to wait and see.
The State of the Me
We're at the time of the year when temperatures yo-yo. We're done with snow (I'm pretty sure), but the first time I had to run my A/C here was actually before the last snowfall. Last night I had to do it again.
In 80 to 90 degree weather, my rooms remain comfortable enough for working during the day but are much to hot to sleep in at night, unless the temperature plummets overnight. Last night, it didn't. It takes a few hours for the window unit to overcome the thermal inertia, especially since it has two rooms to cool. By the time summer proper is here, I'm going to have a heavy curtain between my office and the bedroom... closing the door is not an option because it cuts my cat off from his restroom.
So to make a long story short, last night I was up until the wee hours waiting for it to be cool enough to sleep, so I'm a bit tired today.
Plans For Today
By the time I'm really up and going today, I'm going to be focused entirely on Tales of MU.
So, as part of building up my confidence at speaking in public (WisCon panels coming up soon!) and recording myself/being on camera, the other day I recorded some audio. I've been told that I have a very soothing voice ever since I was doing telephone customer service and I spend a lot of time listening to soft-spoken relaxation videos from YouTube, so I've wanted to do something similar for a long time but I've lacked the confidence.
Then when spring thunderstorms kind of altered my day's plans earlier in the week, I decided to just sort of go for it. I asked around for suggestions of things to read/recite, and the least awful suggestion resulted in Relaxing Craigslist and Relaxing Machiavelli's The Prince.
This is the first time I've ever experimented with putting musical backing on YouTube videos. Even though I spent more time verifying the public domain status of my source files than I did recording the spoken audio, both of them were initially flagged by YouTube as copyright violations (one dispute has been resolved, the other is still in process). Which is... an interesting insight into how their algorithms work. I used different tracks by the same performer for each video, but they both got flagged because someone somewhere used them in a commercial project available on CD Baby or Amazon.
Dealing with the copyright claim made this little side thing done as a lark eat up more of my brain and time than I intended, but now that I've gone through the process and understand how quickly it can be cleared up, I'm a little less leery about it.
I'm still trying to do some last minute saving for WisCon, and I'm offering more of my recording experiments as an inducement. For every $50 I get between now and May 22nd, I will record and upload another ~5-6 minute track. If any one person contributes $50, they can pick the reading material (subject to approval and necessary "cropping"), otherwise I'll choose. The next one I have slated is "Relaxing First Two Chapters of 'My Immortal'" (the infamous fan fic, not the song).
Kick in here if you're interested.
If I can get to $300, I'll record an epic, 18-20 minute track entitled "Relaxing Epilogue To Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Except Backwards". I'm not going to tell you what's going to be in it. You'll have to wait and see.
The State of the Me
We're at the time of the year when temperatures yo-yo. We're done with snow (I'm pretty sure), but the first time I had to run my A/C here was actually before the last snowfall. Last night I had to do it again.
In 80 to 90 degree weather, my rooms remain comfortable enough for working during the day but are much to hot to sleep in at night, unless the temperature plummets overnight. Last night, it didn't. It takes a few hours for the window unit to overcome the thermal inertia, especially since it has two rooms to cool. By the time summer proper is here, I'm going to have a heavy curtain between my office and the bedroom... closing the door is not an option because it cuts my cat off from his restroom.
So to make a long story short, last night I was up until the wee hours waiting for it to be cool enough to sleep, so I'm a bit tired today.
Plans For Today
By the time I'm really up and going today, I'm going to be focused entirely on Tales of MU.