Posts from — January 2008

Okay, it’s not exactly a panel, but it is sort of weird… And it did clue me into the some arcane tidbits of film history. For example, I didn’t even know about the fifteen part-serial Nyoka, the Jungle Girl (1941), which claimed to be based on an Edgar Rice Burroughs 1929 novel, Jungle Girl, even though ERB’s book takes place in Cambodia, and Nyoka (“snake” in Swahili) is clearly set in the Hollywood mythos Africa.

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After lengthy consideration, I finally shelled out for some recording gear, so that I could produce audio content. You can see the complete set up for Diamond Bay Radio in the photo above. The basic necessities are the digital audio interface (an M-Audio Mobile Pre, which I got on Ebay for $80) and a decent vocal microphone (a Shure PG-48, also purchased on Ebay for $15). Since the Shure came with an XLR to 1/4″ jack, I had to go to Cambridge Music and pick up a Whirlwind XLR to XLR cable.

The Mobile Pre just looked like a better piece of gear than the Fast Track, and generally cost less than the similar models from Edirol, Tascam, etc; and also was the only model that boasted Windows drivers going back to Windows 2000. As it turned out the drivers did work on my Fujitsu lifebook, running Win2K. Once I had the drivers installed, and figured out how to turn on the input device monitor in Audacity, I was up and running! In fact, Audacity is so totally amazing, I was ripping some background music and recording separate voice tracks for the intro in minutes!

As a result, I can proudly present the premiere podcast of Diamond Bay Radio! A short reading from the Life of Mayakovsy. Hope you like it!

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Yet another delightful find on my recent trip to Berlin, was a pamphlet I found when I stopped into the Zeughaus Kino to see what movies were showing that night. They happened to be in the middle of a cool exhibit at the Deutsches Historiche Musuem and a retrospective series of films based on the works of Karl May, one of the most popular German authors of adventure fiction during the first half of the 20th century. May’s life was both difficult and colorful, and his constant reinvention of himself as the protagonist of his own stories makes for some interesting reading. May’s most succesful series were those set in the American West, narrated by Winnetou, the Indian chief; and those set in the Ottoman Empire, narrated by Kara Ben Nemsi. Karl May went around masquerading as Kara Ben Nemsi…which makes me think of what would happen if all of today’s trekkies, furries, cosplayers, and LARPs carried their identities over into the workplace! If anyone reading this wants to start a trend, you can blame it on me. Or the two prototypes in the photo below, dressed as Winnetou and Kara Ben Nemsi, circa 1900!