Samuel’s Blog

Persiflage Update

The moment you’ve all been waiting for…Samuel’s Persiflage Episode 4…will be online later today, possibly tonight, just in time for Easter.

I can tell you that it will contain a new feature which will appear a few times during the episode.

Hopefully this will mean a return to monthly episodes, I certainly hope it does.

Samuel

25 comments April 13th, 2006 at 09:10am

Samuel’s Persiflage Update

I think a late March episode is now out of the question, so the plan is now for a bigger than normal April episode. It looks like I may have a big name and very interesting guest lined up (hopefully that interview can be done in the next few days), and I will follow up on an interview request which was treated with enthusiasm by the guest, and then they just fell into a black hole…this time without a timezone conversion. And also, being Easter time I’m thinking of having an Easter themed interview.

All that, as well as the usual listener feedback and odd news stories should be coming your way around April 10.

Samuel

3 comments March 28th, 2006 at 04:11pm

Audio Quality

Every now and then, when I take a look at the blogs that have linked to this site, I notice comments about this site and its content. A couple days ago Thomas Baxter was talking about Ricky Gervais’ decision to charge for his podcast (a topic I covered here) and started talking about the podcasts he listens to. Whilst he didn’t exactly mention a reason for listening to Samuel’s Persiflage, he did mention that he likes the audio quality. I’ll let him explain.

But, thanks to the medium of podcasting, many many people are able to grasp the technology and put things from utter tripe on the net, to well crafted and presented podcasts - Samuel’s podcast is a fine example of the latter purely from the perspective that even though he is doing it himself, he puts out a podcast that has very good (compared to many others) audio quality, another example of a similar podcaster (however he has fallen by the wayside in recient times) is Andy Grace.

Thanks for the feedback, it is good to see people talking about the audio quality of Samuel’s Persiflage, especially considering the amount of work I put into it. Naturally, if somebody has a gripe about my podcast, I’m more than happy to entertain it as long as it is constructive, there is no point emailing me to inform me that my podcast is “the worst waste of the internet” and not tell me why or what you think would make it better, as one anonymous correspondent did a couple weeks ago via the contact form.

For the record, my aim with all audio in Samuel’s Persiflage is to create something which sounds decent, is legible, and doesn’t having annoying sudden variances in volume, preferably remaining roughly the same for the entire duration. Where possible I try to do this without audio compression or excessive processing. In some cases, such as the phone interview with Danny O’Brien from the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the last episode, it was necessary to do a fair bit of processing to even out the volume, even if it wasn’t particularly successful, in the end, it came out a lot better than it originally sounded.

Samuel

9 comments February 26th, 2006 at 07:42am

Samuel’s Persiflage #3

Samuel’s Persiflage episode number three, the February 2006 edition is online. There is also a low quality version for the bandwidth impaired here.

This episode kicks off with Samuel somehow managing to call it “episode number two” and make very little sense in the process. This is followed by an interview with Danny O’Brien from the Electronic Frontier Foundation talking about the privacy issues in the new version of Google Desktop, Internet companies in China, as well as various other things about your rights online.

We take a look at the listener feedback, which for one reason or another seems to be somewhat of a multimedia explosion this month. As promised during the feedback, here is the link to the old intro of Samuel’s Persiflage.

If you have any feedback don’t hesitate to send it to podcast@samuelgordonstewart.com, or leave a comment below.

The person who was going to be up next on the show got lost in a timezone conversion and hasn’t been seen since or heard from since, thankfully John Kerr’s birthday saved the day, my conversation with John can be heard here in lieu of the missing interviewee.

We have four unusual news stories, including something about fluorescent pigs.

That concludes Samuel’s Persiflage #3, there will be another episode in March.

I did make mention near the end of the podcast that there will be a “Best of 2005/2006″ episode after the December edition. What I have planned is that, once the December edition is online there will be a webpoll where everyone can vote for their favourite interview of the year (I’m including 2005 because it only has one episode) and the top two (or possibly three if I’m feeling generous) voted interviews will form the “Best Of” episode.

The Samuel’s Persiflage #3 file itself is available here, and is 41:15 in length (37.7MB) at 128kbps stereo. The 128kbps format was decided upon because it produces a very good sound quality, and doesn’t “flatten” any music used in the podcast. I do, however, acknowledge that this is just unreasonable for dial-up, so a 16kbps mono file is also available here. The sound quality is pretty dreadful, but it is understandable for the most part. The low quality version is 4.72MB

For those of you who are using podcast software to receive your podcasts, the feed can be found here and if you are using iTunes you can subscribe to Samuel’s Persiflage by clicking here.

Podcast related questions and comments can be sent to podcast@samuelgordonstewart.com or left in the comments section of this post.

Samuel

16 comments February 19th, 2006 at 11:17pm

Samuel’s Persiflage Update

Those of you who keep track of this kind of thing would know that we have just passed the middle of the month, and it is about the right time for another episode of Samuel’s Persiflage.

It’s coming, probably early next week, just need to get the interviews out of the way, then I can do all the post production work. Unfortunately I made a mess of scheduling one interview, all these timezones can be a pain in the nexk, especially when trying to calculate what some future time on another day is over on the other side of the world. Hopefully that interview will be appropriately rescheduled in the next couple of days.

On another topic, we seem to have a bit of a multimedia feedback section this month, with a few people sending in remixes of the original intro music, as well as one original song about this blog. If you would like to slip some feedback in you can do so by emailing podcast@samuelgordonstewart.com

Samuel

5 comments February 15th, 2006 at 01:34pm

Samuel’s Persiflage Original Intro Remix

With many thanks to Michael, I present the remixed version of the original Samuel’s Persiflage intro.

Michael writes:

I had some fun with this enjoy !!!

I can believe that…I have to wonder what made you want to do it, but I’m glad you did.

Thanks Michael!

Samuel

2 comments February 3rd, 2006 at 10:57am

Old Intro for Samuel’s Persiflage

Due to popular demand, I have now placed the old intro for Samuel’s Persiflage online.

It may make an occasional special appearance in future episodes of Samuel’s Persiflage, but not as the intro.

The original Samuel’s Persiflage intro can be downloaded here.

Samuel

11 comments January 30th, 2006 at 11:52pm

Wayne Mac Book Signing

Earlier in the week I interviewed Wayne Mac for Samuel’s Persiflage episode two, where we talked about Wayne’s book, Don’t Touch That Dial. On this occasion Wayne had to rush off after the show and as such was unable to sign the book or have his photo taken.

We made alternative arrangements, which involved meeting for lunch and coffee today. During this time Wayne signed the book with the following:

Here is Wayne signing the book:

And a photo of myself with Wayne:

This was also a good time for me to hand Wayne an audio CD copy of Samuel’s Persiflage episode two and a thankyou letter. My standard policy for guests on Samuel’s Persiflage is that they receive a letter with information about the show (including the fact that it is now archived by the National Library of Australia), as well as an audio CD copy of the show, and monthly download statistics. At this stage the podcast hasn’t been running long enough for me to establish how long these monthly updates need to continue for.

You may recall that during my interview with Wayne, he was talking about John Kerr’s jingle from 1963 and was just starting to say something about John Vertigan when we were forced to cut to the jingle by an unexpected banging on the front door. Today I took the opportunity to ask Wayne what he was going to say, and he informed me that the jingle was part of a package of jingles where the main song was recorded and the names inserted later. Upon listening to the jingle closely it is quite possible to hear the difference in the way the various bits of the song are sung. This jingle package was used by many stations for many DJ’s.

For the record, the book weighs in at 1.88 KG according to my weighing of it.

Samuel

1 comment January 20th, 2006 at 03:30pm

Samuel’s Persiflage #2

Samuel’s Persiflage episode number two, the January 2006 edition is online.

The first thing you should notice is that I’ve done away with the previous cringe inducing intro, in favour of something much more useful, in fact Samuel’s Persiflage now has a regular piece of theme music, which certainly helps make the show sound much more professional. During the show you may notice some voiceovers as well, a very big thankyou to ausvoice.com who have done a fantastic job with those.

The main content of this episode of Samuel’s Persiflage is a somewhat comprehensive interview with Wayne Mac, radio historian and author extraordinaire who, as previously noted, has released a book titled “Don’t Touch That Dial, Hits ‘n’ Memories of Australian Radio”. Wayne and I have a good chinwag about Australian radio past and present (mostly past) as well as the book.

We suspend the interview half way through for the listener feedback (podcast@samuelgordonstewart.com), due to time constraints I had to select a few and leave others out, those that were left out should have received personal replies anyway. The listener feedback segment starts with an intro which I spent about an hour on, which I think works quite well…keep an ear out!

We return to the interview, there is plenty of discussion to be had. Nattie can be heard joining the conversation at one stage, just prior to the playing of a John Kerr jingle from 1963, after which we discuss the book and wrap up the interview.

Unfortunately there was no time for any odd or quirky stories, but that doesn’t matter, the interview is great fun.

The file itself is available here, and is 63:00 in length (57.6MB) at 128kbps stereo. (I’ve decided that I can’t stand most of the music used in the podcast being converted to mono, it just sounds very flat. If there is significant demand, I may provide a lower quality dial-up version.)

For those of you who are using podcast software to receive your podcasts, the feed can be found here and if you are using iTunes you can subscribe to Samuel’s Persiflage by clicking here.

Since the last episode, Samuel’s Persiflage has been added to a few podcast directories, so a special welcome to those of you who have come in from a podcast directory.

Podcast related questions and comments can be sent to podcast@samuelgordonstewart.com or left in the comments section of this post.

Samuel

1 comment January 19th, 2006 at 04:24am

Progress report on Samuel’s Persiflage #2

I’m not going to make these progress reports a regular thing, but I thought you might like to know that Samuel’s Persiflage is looking like it might be a monthly podcast, with the occasional extra episode.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has listened and/or sent me some feedback, I wasn’t expecting a response anywhere near the size which I have received, so thankyou. (Note: The response hasn’t been huge, just more than I expected)

Samuel

Add comment January 11th, 2006 at 10:51pm

Samuel’s Persiflage #1

Well, it’s been a long time coming, and now, at long long last, after lots and lots of behind the scenes work, my podcast, Samuel’s Persiflage, is online.

This, being the first episode, I run through what Samuel’s Persiflage is all about, and why I chose the name, then there is a brief discussion of the John Kerr situation.

Next up we have an interview with Dave Smith from the Plain English Campaign where we discuss all manner of things to do with Plain English and the campaign, including a look at some of the gobledegook they found in their latest Plain English Awards. A minor technical issue created some telephone line echo during this interview.

There are some interesting little news stories and even an email from a listener.

There is also have an interview with Gary Floyd, a teacher/librarian who used to work in radio, he has an interesting tale or two to tell.

There is a bit more news, and then it is time to wrap up the show.

The file itself is available here, and is 49:01 in length (22.4MB) at 64kbps mono.

For those of you who are using podcast software to receive your podcasts, the feed can be found here. I actually decided to hand code the feed as I didn’t like the way WordPress produced it, and also felt that I had more control over it by hand coding it.

I am currently waiting for the podcast to be added to Itunes, I have submitted it, and just have to wait for it to go on the list. I will also be submitting it to other podcast directories shortly.
(Update: iTunes Subscribe Link here)

Podcast related questions and comments can be sent to podcast@samuelgordonstewart.com or left in the comments section of this post.

Samuel

13 comments December 30th, 2005 at 10:29pm