IOBY

Yesterday I actually used some of the audio I had acquired  from bunches of interviews and the launch itself to quickly produce a short segment for the local news show I engineer for at WORT F:  IOBY  (In our Backyard).  Along with a sweet Dutch volunteer journalist (and one of the hosts) Yvonne,  who wrote the copy, I managed to cut a few of those audio segments in to a 'audio postcard' of the launch.  My main goal was to play the entire minute of audio of the launch itself. I did, and I think it worked. The recording I made, is a darn good one of the intensity of the sound during the launch. I think it really captured it. The cheering people helps too.  If anyone wants to hear it, it's available for the next two months on WORT's archive page.  It's labeled : "In our Backyard - Tuesday"  with the date: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 6:30 pm.   I've already downloaded it, so, at least on my computer (and the Google cloud, where I'll email it to myself), it will live forever. My segment starts just after 22 minutes into the show. Give it a listen.

Considering I have probably an hour or more total of  recorded interviews and other audio, and I wasn't really planning of doing anything for yesterdays show, I think it ultimately came out pretty good. Unfortunately, Yvonne and I were doing that while I was supposed to be engineering for the preceding shows (BBC news, and FSRN). Both of those shows are pre recorded, so there really isn't a lot to do.  I usually follow along with the production of the live show (IOBY) by pre reading the script, test playing all of the audio files (as they are finalized), and do other things, like verifying telephone #s for phone interviews, etc.... I'm usually very organized because there's nothing else to do. This time I was out of time. Of course it wasn't until seconds before the show was actually starting that I finally saved my audio segment.  I hadn't even looked at the script, or opened any of the show's other audio files, not to mention that I didn't even get a chance to hear Yvonne's copy for my piece.  Of course I paid for the lack of preparation. In the very first news segment, the audio file went crazy, skipping, and stuttering. I, in a near panic, tried to stop and start it (probably more than I should have) before Stacy, the show's producer, finally said to scrap it.  I feel bad for all the people who had to listen to that awful sound. On the bright side, cutting the rest of that story, put the show right on time, even after a late start and Ryan (the real astronomy guy from the UW) didn't get his segment chopped up, as happens too often.

I had a bunch of prints made of some of my photos using Walgreen's online service. I used them before to have the photos of my club initiation day ride made up, before the club meeting that night. I thought they came out pretty good. Here's a few of them. If you're all geek, and don't have a wild side, you can skip them.

Anyway, I used them again. I even ordered a t-shirt with one of my launch photos on it.  Some of my car photos came out pretty nice. I may even enter them into the BMW Oktoberfest photo contest this august,  right here in Wisconsin, at Road America in Elkhart Lake.

Oops, I'm out of time. Time to get on the old bicycle and pedal my  butt to work.