Ear Whacks - I Apparently Suck at Game Show Pilots

Right then, this is the start of a new series I've been meaning to do for some time in which I highlight some of the podcasts and other audible musings I keep myself entertained with. Over the summer, I whittled my backlog of unheard podcasts down to nil, and wanted to celebrate by reporting on some of my favorites. However, this past week, I was at band camp, and the backlog is now back up to twenty unheard podcasts. Kinda unfair, really.

Anywho, the first podcast I wanted to highlight was a little game show podcast called PinPoint. This is the second podcast game show put out by Alex Davis and company, who run the immensely popular (if you're into game show news) game show news site, Buzzerblog (see also: Double Cross).

The object of PinPoint is to guess the results to survey questions, trying to come as close to the actual percentages as possible. The questions range from interesting and topical, such as how people feel about the proposed Ground Zero mosque, to the bizarre and thought-provoking, such as what people think about s'mores and Ouija boards. The contestants play for Oodles, which are GSN's (formerly the Game Show Network) online virtual currency redeemable for prizes and whatnot. The farther you are from guessing the correct percentage, the more Oodles you lose, and the greater danger you're in of leaving the game.

The weird thing about this game is that I had a very small hand in its production. I was involved in two test pilots, and I had a blast playing. I was also relatively good at the game, nearly nailing a couple of questions on the nose. In both cases though, I lost in the final head-to-head question, missing by a major margin. I wouldn't have won anything for taking first place anyway, but I got some major harassment from my friends when I tried to explain the show to them the next day. (Now that the show's finally available to the public, these friends can hear how tricky the show can be. And subsequently start apologizing. Use the comments box below, thanks.)

PinPoint is a fun game for people who think they know people, and is rather easy to play along with. I was initially critical of how the game is split into three separate podcasts over the course of the week, but the fifteen-minute segments are just the right size for a quick dose of fun and really manages to effectively stretch the suspense over the week. (By the way, definitely listen to week three's game, the entire game is really intense and it had some of my favorite questions of the series so far.) Bob Hagh does a great job of keeping the game moving while bantering with the contestants, and gets right into the heat of the game along with the players. On the whole, PinPoint is a great listen and makes reading America's mind fun (so long as the questions don't involve politics, they kill me every time).

iTunes Link - Official Site

"In Case You Missed It...." 2009 Year in Review

If you've been listening to my radio show or the clips of it I've been posting here, there's really not much to add. Just enjoy. Happy New Year!

...It's not too late for one of these, is it?

In Case You Missed It... 2009 Year in Review sound bite

(Note: There's a loud bit near the beginning, so you might want to keep your finger near the volume knob.)

"In Case You Missed It...." Round-up 2

What happens when a quiet radio station gets swarmed by a crew of unruly staff members? About the same thing that happens on most other radio shows on WNTE. But in this episode (from last week), "In Case You Missed It..." opened the studio doors for a visitation day, and several other hosts came for the fun. And chaos ensued.

In Case You Missed It... 12/4/09 sound bite

Check us out at wnte.com, or listen to this week's clip to find out who is the reason why we can't have nice things.

"In Case You Missed It...." Round-up 1

I've been waiting for a good chance to mention this, and this is probably about as good of a time as ever. I have a radio show on the campus radio station in which I play music and talk about the news of the past week, usually with terrible jokes thrown in for good measure. This week happened to have a ton of great news stories, and I'd like to believe (oh dear, my head's swelling) that it was one of my better shows to date. I managed to record most of my segments, clipping only a few seconds off at a couple of places, and uploaded the result for you to enjoy. (You know, in case you missed "In Case You Missed It...")

In Case You Missed It... 10/20/09 sound bite

If you're in the area (and I do mean really local, the signals can't travel far due to terrible terrain), you can tune in to the show Fridays at 1pm EST at 89.5 on the FM dial. Or, you can listen on the web at http://www.wnte.com and join us for the fun.

Celebrate Good Times, Come On! It's a CelebrOOWWWWW MY EARS

I'm sorry to inflict this sort of cruel punishment on you, but I have to celebrate right now. Back when I was a music major, we had this weekly performance hour on Thursdays (called Promenade). Depending on your specific major/concentration, you had to perform once or twice a year for credit. Somehow, I always ended up performing on the same week every year (first week in April). (If ever I decide to post it, there's an interesting little story that goes along with this. We'll see, maybe later.)

Anyway, this particular week that I was performing, I did a piece called Luke Havergal by... I forget. I'll look it up and keep you updated. But anywho, I was first on, and my performance was... meh. This was back when I was still a nervous performer who didn't particularly like his vocal professor and had nothing but negative thoughts about his own abilities. The truth of the matter is, the recording IS pretty terrible, that hasn't changed at all. I flub a few notes, I miss at least one entrance, the diction is pretty mushmouthy, I don't project well enough, there's just a lot wrong here altogether.

Following the performance, I took the master recording (one of the perks of working stage crew... although it would have been preferred if I didn't have to work stage crew on the day I was performing, thank you very much) and made a copy of the CD. But I didn't do this so I could hear my own performance, no no. David Wert, a good friend of mine, did a vibraphone duet with (insert second person's name here... I need to look this stuff up somewhere) that I really enjoyed. I made a copy of the disk, returned the original, and that was the end of that for a while.

There was a slight problem... I had forgotten what I had done with the disk. In fact, I had completely forgotten that I had even made the copy. At the time that this was all taking place, I was in the middle of swapping out one crappy Dell computer for another (I could go into long details about the fight that occurred, but suffice it to say that it all boils down to the biggest oxymoron around anymore: Customer Service). I managed to keep my old hard drive, and for whatever reason, made the copy using the software on it, rather than the new hard drive. However, while recalling these events, I had myself convinced that I simply ripped my piece and Dave's onto the old hard drive, and forgot to transfer it over with all of the other old files.

Since about that time, the old hard drive remained wrapped in a static-free cloth bag of sorts, with some extra padding around it inside a plastic bag. For months, I kept telling myself that I needed to find a way to transfer the song from the old hard drive to the new one, but never really got around to it. Also, I lacked the means to transfer much more than 4GB, because at the time, I was limited to either using re-recordable DVD's or a flash drive. I made several DVD transfers at the time my new computer arrived, but couldn't figure out why I never transferred the song.

This changed recently, when I bought myself a new 320GB hard drive, and I realized that the reason I was never able to transfer directly from one old hard drive to the other (sorry for the confusion with all of these hard drives) was that I had the power cable hooked up to both, but still only had one data cable. Upon a little beg/borrow/stealing from good friend Steven Gustafson, I had meself a new used data cable, and all that was left was finding the time to do the transfer.

That all happened tonight. Sensing a bit of free time on my hands, I grabbed the old old hard drive, popped open the side of my tower, and started to dig in. Much to my dismay, I couldn't find the file that (I thought) I had ripped from the disk. I spent about 50 minutes trying to run searches for "*.mp3" between 4/1/08 and 4/18/08, but nothing came up. It wasn't until late in the night when I tried to recall the events of when I first borrowed the master copy, and I realized that I might not have ripped the songs at all. Luckily, I found my spindle of used-but-unmarked CD's and DVD's, went through the CD's in the stack, and bingo, EPIC WIN.

So to celebrate me finding Dave's performance, which I have now listened to several times while writing this, I thought I'd upload something completely different. Yes, Luke Havergal. Aren't I swell?

Luke Havergal sound bite

Luke Havergal
Baritone(ish): Stephen Lewis
Piano: Kristina Moritz
Recorded April 3, 2008