Michael and Evo: Wingin’ It!

World Jump Day: “Join us in the attempt to drive Planet Earth into a new orbit, by letting millions of people jump.”

Hundreds of millions is more accurate, since the site says they need 600,000,000 synchronized jumpers.

Is the science behind the mass jumping accurate? Sounds more like an investigation for Slacker Astronomy than for li’l ol’ me… but hey, I’ll try almost anything once.

But honestly, I’d prefer to come for a cause, just like last year…

Update from Evo:Utter crap. Google the reported comet, date and even professor name. Squat. And then there’s the little matter of conservation of momentum to contend with. Now, if we had 600 MM people come crashing down to Earth from another planet, mabye. But since the mass of those folks doing the jumping would remain constant, the foce of their imact would be equal to the force of their leaving a moment earlier. The net result is… nada.

I love following links and ending up in some of the most unexpected places.

Seems like Tad Williams’ Otherland series is being produced as a radio drama for German station Hessicher Rundfunk.

Thanks to Babelfish, I can get the gist of most of it, but I’m an info addict… I wanna know what it really says.

Seems like it’s a 24 hr long show, and 12 hrs have already been produced and it looks like some will be airing from May to June 2005, and the rest at the end of December 2005.

Can any German speakers/readers tell me if that’s correct?

I see links on the site to Real Audio samples of the production, and the options to buy German language CD’s of the first two “shows”.

Even though I wouldn’t understand it, I think it’s cool, because in some way, radio dramas could be considered the grandfathers of audiobooks, which in turn leads us to Evo’s favorite new word, podiobooks.

What’s on this week:
- Michael & Evo cover the wonders of Beer.
- Stormtrooper TD0013 gives us another installment from the Imperial Battlefront.
- Mur Lafferty (Geek Fu Action Grip) tells us more about Getting Into Gaming (Part 3).
- We Announce our winners for the big MST3K volume #7 giveaway!
- Rich Sigfrit gives us a sample of his humor. (Finally)
- Evo reads some fan mail.

 

 Dragon Page Wingin' It #07: MST3K Winners [53:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (89)

Many of you (ok, damn near *all* of you) know that we’ve been in a neck and neck race with The Catholic Insider on Podcast Alley this month. Both of our shows have one thing in common: we bring a whole mess of new folks into the podcasting world. Come to find out, we’ve got another thing in common with Father Roderick:

I noticed that the ‘Trekkies’ are approaching the number one position on the Podcast Alley, so perhaps now is a good time to start my Star Wars Chronicles in Thursday’s show. Yes, I am a Star Wars fan, and before I started podcasting, I had quite a few adventures in the Star Wars universe. I’ll tell you all about it in my next show. Stay tuned

That was printed on the very first page of his site today, with a nice big poster of Epi III.

I’m by no means a Catholic, but I simply must subscribe to Fr. Roderick’s feed to see what he has to say about the movie!

So while I’m getting my daily dose of Dave’s Evil Genius Chronicles (and yeah, I got my tee-shirt, and it’s sporty!), I hear a spot that catches my ear. It catches my ear as I recognize the melody as one of MOREVI’s riffs. The podcast is Slacker Astronomy, a show where three very smart and very hip astronomy geeks (one with an MA, one with a PhD, and the other…well, he’s just along for the ride…) get together and talk about the stars.

Informative, fun, and quite cool in their candor and dry wit. (C’mon, you’ve got to love an astronomy show that ends their shows with Vogon Poetry and sound effectsw from classic Midway video games!) I frigign’ love this show!

Yeah, so I’m kinda on this podiobook kick. Deal with it.

I’ve posted a poll on Podcast Alley that isn’t getting as much attention as I’d like. Maybe podiobooks are under the radar for most podcasters, but for you podcatchers our there, I’d like you to play, too.

The question is: what amount (if any) would you pay for a podiobook?

What’s on this week:
- Evo goes head to head with a Battlestar critic.
- Mur Lafferty (Geek Fu Action Grip) tells us more about Getting Into Gaming (Part 2).
- Mur joins us on the phone while I recounts my experience with two golf geeks.
- Stormtrooper TD0013 gives us another installment from the Imperial Battlefront.
- We give away some really cool stuff! (See the first comment on this post for how to enter. It’s very easy…)
- Jay Hinkleman gives us a great report on Dr. Who.

 

 Dragon Page Wingin' It #06: Gaming and Golfing [51:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (96)

Yesterday, over at the Phoenix Craigslist Barter pages, someone decided to take into consideration that these ads can now be listed in outer space, and offered a unique trade: his body to extraterrestrials for testing in exchange for space travel.

The original offer appears to have been removed, but a followup ad seems to have been posted, also rebutting some complaints about the ad. Do a search on “alien tests” in the Barter section to see the few remaining responses.

So that I can get this down into the historical record that is the internet, I’m hereby coining the term “podiobooks” to describe books delivered in serialized audio format via XML fees and the tag.

Now let’s talk about the timeline:

Tee Morris was the first author I’m aware of to release his novel MOREVI in podiobook format. There had been other sites releasing portions of books and shorstories in podcast format, but to my knowledge, all of those were public domain stories. But hey, I could be wrong. If I’m not, Tee gets the nod as being the first author to take advantage of this delivery format.

Mark Jeffrey quickly followed Tee, podleasing his novel THE POCKET AND THE PENDANT in podiobook format as quickly as we could find a way to make it happen.

Hats off to Scott Sigler for his podiobook EARTHCORE, who stepped the format up a notch by only releasing his book in podiobook format. The books written by Tee and Mark are available in print form, but the only way (for now) you can get Scott’s is in podiobook format.

OK. Think that stake is planted pretty firmly in the ground.

MOREVI: The Chronicles of Rafe & Askana by Tee Morris & Lisa Lee

I got two “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” e-mail’s this morning concerning Chapter Nine that was a LOT shorter than Chapter Eight…in fact, the original podcast of Nine was a whopping 1 minute, 9 seconds.

Well, Fetch told me it was uploaded…

Check now…Chapter Nine: The Consort Who Would Be King, in its entirety, is now online!