September 2013 – 106 drop in

Late Creates

I have been completely missing from DS106 this week, time to catch up?

Today I had a a pile of stuff I wanted to get done, websites to update, blog posts to write, a pile of audio from TeachMeet to edit and publish.
I decided to go for a hillwalk instead, the wind was fair the weather looked as it was too. I needed to be back fairly early so headed for Glen Findlas, half an hour or so drive from Glasgow.
As I walked up the farm road at the start of the walk I realised I could kill a few daily creates at the same time. I could also manage a photoblitz.
I’ve done the photoblitz suggested on the Headless ds106 Week 5: Telling Stories in Photos before using haiku deck to display. I decided to use my wee app and knock up a new list:

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Obviously the ear and a wheel were going to be difficult. So I jsut skipped them.
I did get a good pair of ears later in the day:

Half way up the first hill I stopped and listened for the dailycreate 628: Sit for a few minutes in a quiet space. Write about what you hear.

On a hillwalk, I pause to listen, I do not sit down the grass is wet. At first all I hear is the wind, my breathing and heart thumping, my breathing and heart calm. The wind is blowing, quite hard, in my ears, across the opening, through the reeds and grass nearby, over the hills on the other side the reservoir below. Down the glen a buzzard mews. My eyes close and I hear more, a lorry 3km away on the Loch Lomond road, the outlet from the reservoir.

And at luch I did a quick timelapse, not quite right for Make a time lapse video that shows a transformation. as there is no transformation.

I took a lot more photos: Glen Findlas Sept 2013 – a set on Flickr and had a great walk, more Glen Findlas notes.

I also fell down on making comments this week, only three, Pinboard: bookmarks for johnjohnston tagged ‘headlessweek5’. I am starting to try and keep a record of comments I make on pinboard, but do not alway remember.

I have not been completely uncreative, I’ve been playing with JavaScript on thimble again, somewhat cogdog tweet inspired: 5Dogs and flipcard. I also got distracted trying to find a way to create a map with content from a question on a mailing list, this is my solution: a wordpress blog a plugin and a google map.
Next week I must get back on the ds106 horse. I’ve also had a nice idea for a personal ds106 dashboard on a page in this blog, should keep me busy (along with all the stuff at the top of this post)

Headless Week 4 – on a break

I was on holiday this week. I did have broadband in the cottage I was staying in, but was out and about most days away from a connection. This meant that I didn’t do ~~much~~ any of the listening required for Headless ds106 Week 4: Introduction to Audio- Listening First. I normally listen to audio when commuting. I did manage to here most of the first Scottlo archive and have the others queued up in instacast (my podcatcher) for listening next week.

Daily Creates

I did pretty well with these:

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I was taken to task by Tina, for not reading the instructions, so I’ve put that right (not sure if right is the appropriate word).
tj-crop

I also completed the What is Philosophy to you? Record an audio definition in 30 seconds or less create:

and yesterday’s video:

I had a lucky accident in the video, I was trying to keep to the one take rule and making a ‘cut’ I swiped across the lens with my thumb to make the cut. On opening the shutter (my thumb) again I gor an interesting fade in from headless by an accident of light, here is the gif:
ghostin 1
Quite strange.
I also made a bumper, messed around with NiceCast and figure out a useful mobile broadcast workflow for ds106 radio (and other icecast servers).
I made a shot 10-10-10 chicken podcast, where I did talk a wee bit about listening to audio, so that might do for the reflective bit this week;-)

iCast Pro, Voice Record Pro and DS106 Radio an iOS workflow.

5SecondsApp_401553536.794480
After a couple of days fighting Nicecast and talking to the Skype lady I took a wee break today. I remembered Scottlo had blogged about a new iOS app for broadcasting to icecast and though I’d give it a spin. The app is iCast Pro.
I had occasionally used papaya but this has been discontinued. The developer has developed a new app KoalaSan which looks great, especially as it handels audio from other apps and records broadcasts. Unfortunately it does not support mp3. I konw that that will not work on EDUtalk where I do most of my broadcasting so I put my money on iCast Pro.
The setup is straighforward once you note the gotcha from Scottlo’s post. you need to choose icecast as a server in the settings, the icons are not, imo, easy to spot.
I made a couple of quick tests on both EDUtalk and ds106 radio and the app works with both. You can setup multiple stations.
The interface is a wee bit distracting, full of cogs but most of the buttons are clear.

The next bit I wanted to figure out was how to record the broadcast. I had looked into this before with out much success. i have two apps on my iphone that support background recording, Audio Memos and Voice Record Pro. i gave them a quick test and the quality was a lot better in Voice Record Pro so when for that for my main test:

Opened Voice Record Pro and started a recording
Switched to iCast Pro and started broadcasting.
When I finished I stopped broadcasting and returned to Voice Record and stopped recording.
In Voice Record I converted the file to mp3 and uploaded that to dropbox.
Opened the mp3 in audacity and trimmed the start, exported to mp3.

I didn’t try to adjust the audio in audacity at all.

Here it is:

download iCast-Pro-Voice-Recorder-HD

Chicken Nice

chick-wall
A few notions around the use of audio and some notes on nicecast.

‎www.idlewords.com/audio-manifesto.txt
advancednicecastusage – sirdarkstar
ds106 – Community – Google+

After all the nicecast changing and testing of effects I’ve been doing the audio on this one is pretty rough.
I also got some, quite a few, sections of silence.
Screen Shot 2013-09-21 at 20.31.59
Not sure where they came from, I am putting it down to nicecast flakyness, perhaps due to the fact I’ve been hammering it (had a crash just before broadcast).
download chicken-nice.mp3

Credits:
Mel Blank and sound effects Man – Chicken farm song Creative Commons license: Public Domain.
Gif from NYPL Labs : Stereogranimator.

DS106 Radio Bumper Dub Number two

I love audio, but am fairly scared of music making. I am a bit of a klutz musically, can’t clap in time or keep a tune.
I’ve already created a couple of bumpers for ds106: Jim Says, Listen to the LoDown and DS106 Confusion. both relied on music from someone else, one a GarageBand loop the other a steal.

This time I though I might step up and make a noise. Given the lack of musical talent I decided to try a Magic Garageband production.
This allows you to make some ‘music’ by choosing a genre and playing with the variables (instrument styles). I did this for a while and then passed it on to the ‘real’ garageband interface. There I chopped it down to a very short segment and added my voice. Some effects added to the vocals. Then I dropped out a few bit to give it a dubish feel.
I ended up with this:

I quite like the announcement feeling from the brass. I made a quick edit of the ds106 skul and crossbones to make a skull and trumpets.
My GarageBand screen looked like this:

The number two in the tile comes from the fact I ‘saved as…’ at one point where I did’t want to lose something that sounded better than nothing.
The text plays on the idea of ds106 being open, I am more of a ‘romantic socialist’ than a business man. I am also thinking of ds106 being play rather than work.