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Available through iTunes – http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=378799971

I got the idea from a couple of places on the web, here’s a link to another set of instructions with pictures, not that I’m sure pictures are necessary.

Go to your favorite Wal-Mart, Hobby Lobby, Michaels Crafts or any sewing type store and pick up a cheap Embroidery Loop.   Now take a pair of your wife’s knee-highs, or your own, I make no judgements here, and slide the knee high over the inner circle of the loop.   Stretch the fabric a bit and then tie a knot on each side close to the hoop, essentially you’re trapping the inner loop inside the hose.

Now slip the outer loop down over the hose and tighten the screw down.  Snip off the excess hose, you should have a little knot on each side.

Now get a heavy piece of copper wire (or alumnum or a coat hanger snipped up or whatever) and make a hook in one end.  Hook the screw on the embroidery loop and then twist it tight like a bread tie locking the wire into the hoop so it doesn’t shift around.

Get a binder clip and hook the other end of the wire through the clip and twist it up.

What you should end up with is a embroidery hoop with two layers of panty hose material with a flexible piece of wire sticking out of one side with a clamp on the end.

Bend the wire as needed so that you can clamp the clamp onto your microphone and position the hoop between the mic and your speakers.

What this does is help reduce the high ‘clicks and pops’ that I’ve had issues with up till now.  And it costs you like $2, less if you steal one of your wives hose without her being the wiser.

Or you could buy one from amazon or some other place for $15.  $1.50 or $15?  Not a hard decision to make.

I just added one in front of my mic which is now located directly above the gaming table and the clicks that were ear popping before when played back are now not so annoying that I’ll go to the trouble of deleting all of them from the podcasts like I had been doing.

You wouldn’t want to miss the pre-game warmup where we talk about gay chicken now would you?  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

I can always download my web traffic logs and parse them (Episode 10 Part 1 has been pulled 355 times since it went up 3 days ago for instance) but that’s a chore and I only get 9 log files from my isp (www.1and1.com) which auto recycle when they hit around 40megs.  Right now that only let’s me go back about 3 months. And the time frame between them is shrinking the last one only lasted a week before it was archived and the oldest one deleted to start a new one.

In an effort to get some easier stats to view and some more long term stats I’ve invoked the stats option on my blubrry plugin which is what I use to show them in posts here and auto submit them to itunes.  For easy podcasting through wordpress blubrry does a great job by the way.

I’m not sure what using their redirect might change and what that might screw up so you 355 people that are listening to my podcast please let me know if you run into any problems.  I’ll be deleting it and resubscribing from time to time in the next few days to check but if it breaks let me know.

I’ve also noted that itunes was only showing the last 10 podcasts.  Not very new listener friendly.  I’ve made some changes that should make it possible to pull all the casts going back to the first one from either the podcast feed or through itunes or from you ipod/iphone (open itunes on the phone and search podcasts for key our cars) directly.  If you’re a new listener and started somewhere in the middle, again my apologies for the quality of the first couple of episodes.  Recording casts is a learning experience.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

I don’t really have a reason to cut them up at all, my initial thought was release them over time to give people something to look forward to but really the post work necessary means I end up getting each of the sessions cleaned up and have my wife (Elisssa) record the intro that delaying publishing any of them would be pointless.

Honestly who wouldn’t prefer to download the entire Penny Arcade podcasts at one time rather than 30 minutes  a week?

Another reason to keep them chopped in blocks is to make it easier for people to skip ahead without missing a lot.  If they want to jump to the end of the current battle, it’s not a hard thing to do.  If the recrding was 5 hours long with 4 battles in it, then it might be a little more difficult to skip the parts you in particular didn’t want to listen to.

Image Credits

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

I’ve also run volume equalization on the sound files such that everyone should be the same volume regardless of where they are in relation to the mic.  This may have a detrimental effect of enhancing background chatter in some locations but we’ll see how it goes.

The podcast files are ready, I just need to schedule some time with my announcer to do the recap and lead in for me and then put some public domain back beat under her.

My molding efforts are steadily showing fruition.  I’ve run easily 20-30 moldings, with Laura’s help, of the ones I own and the bags of pieces are growing at a steady rate.  Since I really want all the pieces to be color matching I’m not going to even consider painting until I have way more than I need for what I want to do with them.

I may start considering my basing options though in the near future.  I am going to be going with low walls for viewing purposes which will also help with the obvious (to me) seaming issues with the fieldstone.  I may try to come up with a technique to help minimize that as well using some kind of filler materials here and there to break up the horizontal seams.  I’m also going with a more modular approach than the one posted on Hirst’s web site for flexibility’s sake at the cost of set up time.

In regards to the painting, I’ve been perusing various other people’s efforts in painting and IMO too many of them are following Hirst’s color schemes to the letter and as a result they all look identical.  And, again my opinion only, those colors are hard to get realistic especially if they’re the only coloring you apply.  The color values are too separated and garish and too bright.  Part of the problem is I believe that the molds overly emphasize the texture. I do though realize that roughness to scale would be invisible at standard viewing ranges much like it is now if you stand and look at a brick wall from 100 feet away but I think a more subtle color scheme would work better and then use washes to highlight the texture could look better.

I aspire to this kind of coloring/shading (images pulled from this thread where you should go look if you have any artistic appreciation.  Absolutely gorgeous game board in the making for HeroQuest):

Floor Tile Coloring

Wall Shading

Not this (Image from Hirst Arts) :

Speckled

In other news I see I’ve surpassed a quarter million unique visitors since this site initially went live with this inaugural post on April 21st, 2007.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

It’s a USB mic so you’ll need a PC of some kind to use it and you won’t be able to feed the input through a mixer or anything like that.

Previously I was using the mic on a Logitech Pro 9000 webcam as my mic.  If you’ve listened to the podcast you can tell the quality isn’t all that and that’s after extensive cleanup and tweaking.

I think you’ll find the next podcast release to be significantly better in quality with everyone audible and without overload.  Probably doesn’t hurt that I parked the mic in front of me on the gaming table and put Temple at the far end of the table.

I’m not an audiophile, I don’t really know cardioid patterns or impedance or pickup sensitivity.  I do know that the recording with this mic is very acceptable to me and although I cringe at the price, its worth it IMO.

D

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Ohhh if I only had better hardware to do the recording….  If only….

A pole

So anyway, if you have any input, make your voice heard and click one of the radio buttons.

Tossing it up raw like most of them is of course the fast easy way to go.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

For the curious I’m using an old craptop, a Dell Latittude P4 single core with 256megs of ram under XP and using the mic from a Logitech 9000 webcam, recording through Audacity, then transferring to my file server where I can run Adobe Soundbooth against it to do clean up.

Anyway sound levels, snap crackle and pop, breath pops etc. are a problem but it’s still listenable too in my opinion.  Yours may vary and you’re welcome to it.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

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SPOILER ALERT!!! DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T LISTENED TO THE 10/16/09 #8 PA PODCAST AND PLAN TO –

Edit: i have since learned that was in fact the end of this series of podcasts so Aoefel’s death isn’t nearly as gruntling to me.

I will make a prediction that Aoefel will return as a warforged. The ambershards will take his remains from the acid and convert him to a warforged revenant. That’s what I’d do and it makes perfect plausible sense.

I listened to the latest episode of the Penny Arcade Podcasts last night. I thought it was pretty funny in a lot of ways, quite possibly to me the most LOL episode yet. My wife and I have been listening to DnD podcasts a few times a week for a little bit after putting the kids to bed and before going to sleep and all in all it’s pretty enjoyable way to spend an hour or so.

I was talking to her last night about Al’s death and thought it would make a reasonable blog post. Frankly I didn’t like it for a number of reasons and I’m harsh, note the byline of this site for goodness sake. I strongly believe that killing Al in that fashion, unrecoverable, hearkens me back to losing a corpse in EQ due to bugs with lava flows and losing a corpse in EQ meant you lost all your gear.

I would like to state up front that I could be wrong in my “What was he thinking?!” in regards to Chris Perkin’s because obviously we don’t know what happens next. So bear in mind I’m only basing my reaction on what I know happened so far.

When Whil aka Aeofel rolled that 18 to climb out of the pit I would have immediately retcon’ed the DC of the pit to a 15. No one knew what it was and it would have made for a good story. That would have been a instant reaction / no brainer move on my part. If he’d of rolled a crap roll, I’d of had him roll a Perception roll with a non-announced DC of 1 for him to notice where the acid was shallow due to bones or rocks or whatever and given him a place to stand and given him quarter or half damage per round rather than 12 damage per round. For a character that apparently has only 26 hit points (???) that was already wounded to inflict 12 points a round…??? That would have made for a good story too, the avenger trapped with his feet and calves slowly dissolving in the acid as his friends struggled to break someone free to go rescue him while the remaining two finished up the bad guys? Epic storyline.

And I would have done that as a reward for his roleplaying. An Avenger is a single target focused class. They pick a single enemy and attack it until it’s dead. Hell without buying a feat they can’t even shift the target of their Oath of Enmity which is their very schtick. The character was behaving exactly as it should have been doing, any other actions would have been OOC. You don’t punish that kind of play.

In addition I’m a very strong believer in not letting the dice force the story. Random is too random for a good story. Certainly the dice influence, flavor and nudge the stories I try to tell as a DM, most certainly they do. But I never let the dice dictate the story. And making a character’s permanent death hinge on a single die roll at fairly bad odds? I would guess he had less than a 25% chance at making that roll. That should have never happened.

Other reasons I’d of worked some way around it -

Aeofel is a very well developed, enjoyable and obviously loved character of the player. You don’t permadeath that kind of character. With the exception to fit storyline reasons at the end of a campaign storyline. That last I have done, several times.

The conditions of their play time/session time. The players and DM have all traveled to some central location to play this game which is a one off game with months between sessions. You don’t kill off one of the characters after 4 hours of game play in such a session by letting a single random die roll do it.

The permanency of the death. His corpse was dissolved by acid in the middle of a bad guy infested stronghold. There’s simply no plausible way to get that corpse back for a raise dead ritual before it’s dissolved into its component parts.

Now if Chris has some plan in mind, maybe he wanted Aoefel dead so he can bring him back in some fashion, perhaps a cyborg undead given the obvious artificer nature of the bad guy? Then I can forgive him some of this although a cyborg Aeofel would be directly ripping me off. Been there and done.

I would like to say in closing that I really like Chris Perkin’s. I think he’s a very good DM especially after he’s gotten used to his players, even in the first PA podcasts with complete unknown’s he was good and now with the third podcast they really gel as a group. I also want to say that it’s not Aoefel’s death that I strenuously object too (although killing a player in the middle of a game session under these session circumstances is bad), it’s the apparent permanency of it that bothers.

Image Credits