Posts filed under 'Samuel’s Persiflage'
It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost four years since the last episode of Samuel’s Persiflage was released, so it’s great to be able to announce that I have a new episode for you (you can stop fainting in surprise now).
Today’s guest is one of the legends of Australian radio, and an institution in the New South Wales town of Deniliquin and surrounds. I speak, of course, of Paul Dix, who has been hosting the breakfast show on 2QN Deniliquin for the last 49 years.
In today’s episode, Dixie discusses his thoughts and memories of the last 49 years in Deniliquin, and even more time in the radio industry. He reflects on some of his more memorable moments at 2QN and even provides a few pointers for up-and-coming music jocks.
This episode can be downloaded by clicking here.
If you so desire, you can even listen to it online, just click the play button below.
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/SamuelsPersiflage/persiflage017.mp3]
All listeners are invited to send in feedback or questions for me or Dixie. Feedback can be sent to podcast@samuelgordonstewart.com or you could leave a comment below.
You can also send feedback by post
Samuel’s Persiflage
PO Box 1272
Dickson ACT 2602
Australia
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 (or maybe not, it looks like the podcast has been removed from the iTunes directory…I’ve resubmitted it).
I also intend on getting a transcript of this episode done, hopefully within the coming week.
I would also like to thank 2QN for providing the use of one of their studios for this interview.
For those of you who are wondering, there was never an episode 16 of Samuel’s Persiflage. Well, technically there was, but it was never published for technical reasons.
Enjoy the show!
Samuel
March 8th, 2011 at 08:39pm
It’s been almost four years since the last episode of Samuel’s Persiflage; this week that clock should reset to zero.
I’m not going to tell you much about it yet, but suffice to say that I’m excited about it. I’ll keep you posted.
Samuel
March 7th, 2011 at 08:09am
I don’t know if any of you remember PodZinger as it came and went from the public spotlight very very quickly a few years ago, but basically it was a semi-promising new search engine which aimed to automatically index and transcribe podcasts. If it worked, it would have been a good way to find information in what is otherwise an awful medium to search.
But of course, it was doomed from the beginning as anybody who has ever used voice recognition software would have known. To get a computer to recognise a voice with any amount of accuracy, you have to train it. Usually this involves two steps, the initial preset “read these sentences” training exercises where the computer gets to hear you say things that is asks you to say, and then the ongoing “no, I said “cat” not “hat”, the hat is not in the hat, the cat is in the hat…no, the cat is not in the cat either” intermittent corrections which also help the computer to learn how to understand your voice.
The reason we need to teach the computer how to do recognise an individual’s voice is that everyone has a slightly different voice and a slightly different speech pattern…and if humans who are predisposed to understanding the speech of other humans have difficulty understanding people with accents, what hope does an untrained computer have?
As far as I can tell, PodZinger had no form of quality control…the robot listened to the audio, produced a mangled transcript of it, and nobody bothered to check the accuracy of it. A system where corrections could be submitted by listeners could have worked better, but I don’t think PodZinger were ever interested in having masses of voice samples floating around in their system, nor do I think that having masses of voice samples from different people would have helped with individual transcriptions.
So, why am I babbling about an ultimately failed search engine of little-to-know consequence? Because they’re still around under a different name (EveryZing) doing much the same thing, albeit with expansions in to the more profitable and sane market of search engine optimisation, and expecting people to pay them for it. Maybe the transcription software is better today than it was in 2007, but I wouldn’t be willing to pay them in order to test the theory.
I noticed that they are still around on the weekend when I was wondering if they are still around and was shocked to find that they are. They also have all of their old archives…and if you search for my name, you can be informed about my Chinese communist leanings by their transcription robot.
It has transcribed the Feedback segment from Samuel’s Persiflage #13, specifically the section from 47 minutes and 58 seconds. According to their robot, in that segment I said:
can go to get sort of course if you concentrate back podcasted Samuel Gordon Stewart — Communists the email address or you can leave comments in the China nights or irritants Samuels who supplies were sought to
Maybe the robot’s ears are blocked, because when I listen to that segment, I hear:
feedback to get through and of course if you’ve got some feedback, podcast@samuelgordonstewart.com is the email address or you could uh leave the comments in the show notes or go to the samuel’s persiflage website and
That said, I have been (jokingly) accused of encoding secret messages in Samuel’s Persiflage…maybe they were on to something…I would have to be among the last people on Earth that anybody would consider as a possible communist, so I would have to be the perfect vessel for hiding and broadcasting such messages.
It leaves me pondering the question: “Why am I giving the conspiracy nuts something to work with?”
Samuel
June 30th, 2008 at 06:10am
I’ve been thinking about this for about two months now, maybe longer.
Samuel’s Persiflage is taking an indefinite break. Originally I was going to end it completely, but I have decided that I don’t want to completely end it. The reason is simple, I don’t have time, and haven’t had time for most of this year.
I had produced an “episode 16”, but Audacity is producing a wave file which contains things I deleted from the project hours ago, and silence in place of things that should be there. I’ve battled with it for too long now, I can’t be bothered, episode 16 might be released in the not-to-distant future if I find the time to work out why Audacity is playing up, but right now it’s not important.
Samuel’s Persiflage will return at some stage in the future when I actually have time to make it work.
Samuel
October 3rd, 2007 at 08:19am
On Thursday and Friday I replied to a handful of emails from people wondering when the next episode of Samuel’s Persiflage would be released. It was supposed to be a short episode, and I was going to release it today, unfortunately that hasn’t been possible.
I have set myself a new target, I will put it together tonight, and it will be slightly longer than I had originally planned. It should be online tomorrow morning.
Samuel
October 1st, 2007 at 03:07pm
Postponed: Due to technical difficulties where Skype will not let me control the skypecast, the Samuel’s Persiflage Skypecast has been postponed until further notice. I apologise for the inconvenience.
Apparently I’m not the only person having this problem with Skypecasts, it has been an ongoing problem for weeks, and seems to now be affecting people intermittently.
I’m very disappointed as I had a good show planned, and now I’ll have to toss the plan in the bin.
Talkshoe looks like it might be a viable alternative to Skypecasts for this kind of interactive show, however I am going to do more reasearch on it before committing to it…I don’t want another debacle like the one tonight.
I could go into a large amount of detail here but instead I’ll just skip straight to the point, if you would like to take part in the Samuel’s Persiflage Skypecast (which starts in at 8PM Canberra time) you will need a copy of Skype from http://skype.com. This is a free download, and once you have downloaded and installed it you will be prompted to setup a free username and password.
The Skypecast will become active from 7:45 and I will post the link here when it does, just click that link and you’re in the Skypecast.
From there, if you have a microphone please feel free to take part (click “request microphone” to have your say), or just send me a text message.
Samuel
July 17th, 2007 at 07:33pm
I hope you can join me for the Samuel’s Persiflage Skypecast tonight between 8pm and 8:30pm Canberra time (10am and 10:30am GMT).
Further details this afternoon.
Samuel
July 17th, 2007 at 06:45am
It was a marathon effort due to technical hassles and a headache, but I am very pleased to be able to announce that Samuel’s Persiflage episode number fifteen is now online and ready to be downloaded . As usual there is also a low quality version for the bandwidth impaired here.
If you so desire, you can even listen to it online, just click the play button below.
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/SamuelsPersiflage/persiflage015.mp3]
The editorial this month focuses on Australia Post’s amazing ability to not deliver Express Post on time, but the episode is dedicated to John Laws who announced his impending retirement last week.
Former executive producer of the John Laws Morning Show, Stuart Bocking (aka The Co-Driver) joins us to have a chat about what it’s like to work with someone as legendary and well known as John Laws, and why he became the king of radio.
Frankster from the Frankster Archives Library has dug up some old commercials read by John Laws for us.
The details of the upcoming Skypecast episode are announced (Tuesday May July 17 at 8PM Canberra Time/10AM GMT), and I’ll post more details online a bit closer to the date.
And of course we have the feedback, and I include a thought for the month…and I even play a song for Lawsie (I like it when the copyright expires on music).
All listeners are invited to send in more feedback, both in written and audio format. As per usual feedback can be sent to podcast@samuelgordonstewart.com (text, MP3, Wave or Ogg Vorbis), spoken feedback by clicking here or on the button below would be great, or leave a comment below.
You can also send feedback by post
Samuel’s Persiflage
PO Box 1272
Dickson ACT 2602
Australia
The Samuel’s Persiflage #15 file itself is available here, and is 33:50 in length (30.9MB) at 128kbps stereo. The 128kbps format is used so as to provide you with a high quality and good sounding 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 isn’t as good, but is much better for those on dial-up or with small download limits. The low quality version is 3.87MB
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.
The next episode of Samuel’s Persiflage will be in a couple weeks.
Enjoy the show!
Samuel
July 4th, 2007 at 07:31am
If you were planning on waiting up for Samuel’s Persiflage (I’m always surprised that there are people who do this), then you will probably appreciate this notice that it won’t be online until about 3 or 4am.
You can stay up if you want, but I wouldn’t recommend breaking your sleeping pattern for it.
Update: Technical difficulties during the recording of an interview, plus my headache didn’t help. It’s nearly there. End Update
Further Update: Final Processing and MP3 Encoding in progress. Upload shortly. ETA 6:30am End Update
Samuel
July 3rd, 2007 at 11:06pm
I haven’t had time to record a promo and put it on the Samuel’s Persiflage feed, so I’m writing this instead.
The next episode of Samuel’s Persiflage is due for release tomorrow night, the main topic being the impending retirement of John Laws…and our guest is someone who worked with Lawsie for a few years.
Also, the full details of the upcoming Skypecast episode, including the date, time, and how you can take part…plus, the response from last episode’s annoying telemarketers…and ad or two from years gone by, read by our main topic, and the listener feedback.
It should be fun!
Samuel
July 2nd, 2007 at 03:07pm
I can hardly say that I’m surprised, but Samuel’s Persiflage is now officially delayed until tonight.
A number of reasons including technicial difficulties have forced this, and I apologise. I will not sleep until it is online, however I do have to go to work.
Update: Who wants to hear a story? I have a bit of time to elaborate on the rushed text above, so I will. At about 4:30 this morning I interviewed Bill Grady, this was fine apart from a few technical glitches which resulted in multiple files and more editing being required than I originally expected. The interview itself was a bit under an hour in length, but we didn’t finish up until just after 6am, at which time I decided to finally go to bed and get some sleep. A bit before 11am I got up and did a number of things I needed to do, which meant it was a bit after midday when I finally got back to the podcast. There was some editing to do, a few script changes, more editing, lunch during the times when the computer was processing bits and pieces, and I even got the show notes done during processing times…3:45pm was my deadline, I had to be out the door by then, everything was going to plan and I was to start the upload of the mp3s when I noticed something rather odd…the mp3s were saved, but then blanked. The plan had been to start the upload from home and then post all the show notes remotely, but that plan was no longer plausible.
There is one good thing to come from this delay. In my haste I used the wrong intro for one segment and I can now go back and fix that. As I won’t be in a position to even access those files until a bit after midnight, it will be a bit after that when the show gets online.
I think it will be worth the wait as I have taken a lot of the feedback from the last year and a half of podcasting on board in an effort to make Samuel’s Persiflage more of what the listeners want…there are still a few changes to come and I’m happy to receive more constructive feedback from listeners.
I’m sorry about the delay, this is one project where I really did try to meet my self imposed deadline, and then when I saw that it wasn’t going to be possible I tried to get things done within a few hours of the deadline…I even had a plan devised to allow me to get some of it done from elsewhere, but in the end a bunch of inconvenient technical problems prevented it.
One of the big changes is that the podcast is going to be shorter (after this episode…I had far too much to discuss with Bill to shorten this episode), probably around 40 minutes per episode. This will allow me to easily have more regular episodes…I’m hoping that you will take part in some of them…although that gives away a bit too much information about an announcement in the episode, so I’ll stop writing and let you hear it for yourself.
End Update
Further update: Looks like it’s a good thing everything went pear shaped earlier as it looks like I didn’t use the wrong music to introduce the editorial segment…I didn’t include the editorial segment! Everything has been fixed up now and I am on track for a 3am release.
End Update
Samuel
May 22nd, 2007 at 03:45pm
Over the last year and a bit I’ve received plenty of feedback, both good and bad, about anything and everything to do with Samuel’s Persiflage. As a result, Samuel’s Persiflage is changing, it’s still the same show, but it’s been tweaked and (hopefully) improved. The first change you will notice is the one you are reading right now.
A few days before a new episode of Samuel’s Persiflage is released I will publish a promo…so here it is, coming up on Samuel’s Persiflage #14.
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/SamuelsPersiflage/persiflage014-promo.mp3]
If the Flash MP3 player doesn’t work for you, click here to download the promo.
Samuel’s Persiflage, hitting the netwaves Tuesday at Midday, on samuelgordonstewart.com
Samuel
May 20th, 2007 at 09:49am
Samuel’s Persiflage Episode Number Thirteen has arrived at long long last, and is ready for download . There is also a low quality version for the bandwidth impaired here.
(Update: Links corrected, sorry about that)
This month we solve the mystery of Frog from Songland Records and chat with Frankster from The Frankster Archives Library.
The episode starts with Frankster, we talk about his radio and television archive, copyright laws, strange programs on Channel Nine and a few other things.
Frankster’s website can be found at http://frankster.zanyspace.com/ and he may be able to assist with transferring your old memories from tape (of just about any sort, even waterlogged) to DVD.
Frankster can be contacted by email. archiveslibrary at optusnet dot com dot au
Just about everyone in Canberra has heard of “Frog from Songland Records”, but why is he called Frog, and just why is Songland Records the “home of the hard to find”. I chatted with Frog to find out the answers to these questions and more in the the first ever on location Samuel’s Persiflage interview.
Songland Records is located opposite Coles Supermarket in the Tuggeranong Hyperdome and would love to help you find that hard to find bit of music. They can be contacted by phone on (02) 6293 4677 or by email, songland at protel dot com dot au.
The classic ad this month is one that is very well known in Canberra and still on the air after at least a decade and probably more, and I have an anecdote to accompany it.
There is also plenty of feedback from the last two episodes, and even some for episode four.
All listeners are invited to send in more feedback, both in written and audio format. As per usual feedback can be sent to podcast@samuelgordonstewart.com (text, MP3, Wave or Ogg Vorbis), spoken feedback by clicking here or on the button below would be great, or leave a comment below.
You can also send feedback by post
Samuel’s Persiflage
PO Box 1272
Dickson ACT 2602
Australia
The Samuel’s Persiflage #13 file itself is available here, and is 56:00 in length (51.2MB) at 128kbps stereo. The 128kbps format is used so as to provide you with a high quality and good sounding 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 isn’t as good, but is much better for those on dial-up or with small download limits. The low quality version is 6.41MB
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.
There is no Persiflage Puzzle this month as the overwhelming feedback for it so far has been negative. I would like more feedback on the issue before making a final decision on whether to keep it or discard it. Do you want the Persiflage Puzzle to be a part of Samuel’s Persiflage? Let me know.
The next episode of Samuel’s Persiflage will be next month, I apologise for the long delay between the last episode and this one.
Enjoy the show!
Samuel
April 22nd, 2007 at 03:59am
I have been pleasantly surprised over the last few months to see that the number of hits on the Samuel’s Persiflage feed have not dropped, and that despite the lack of recent episodes people are still subscribed and looking forward to more episodes.
I’m pleased to be able to announce that Samuel’s Persiflage returns later this week with a new episode, and I’m sure that for people who don’t read this message, it will be a pleasant surprise in return for their loyalty.
Samuel
April 18th, 2007 at 01:55pm
At long last, and despite a burn on my right index finger, it’s here, the Best of Samuel’s Persiflage for 2005 & 2006…it’s episode #12 of Samuel’s Persiflage.
The high quality version can be downloaded by clicking here, the low quality version for the bandwidth impaired can be downloaded by clicking here.
This month we have highlights from a number of interviews (some are a tad long winded, but it was very hard to decide what to cut), a couple songs we heard during the year, a collection of audio feedback from John B1_B5, the strangest classic commercial I ran during the year, the strange feedback of episode seven, and a revelation about what I wear while podcasting!
There is no Persiflage Puzzle or feedback segment this month, they are being held over until the next episode, so as per usual…All listeners are invited to send in more feedback, both in written and audio format. As per usual feedback can be sent to podcast@samuelgordonstewart.com (text, MP3, Wave or Ogg Vorbis), spoken feedback by clicking here or on the button below would be great, or leave a comment below.
The Samuel’s Persiflage #12 file itself is available here, and is 1:49:31 in length (100MB) 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 isn’t anywhere near as good, but some people like it. The low quality version is 12.5MB
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. Spoken feedback is preferred (but not mandated) and can be sent either in MP3, Wave or Ogg Vorbis format, or sent even more easily by clicking the button below and following the prompts.
Things should be back to normal on Samuel’s Persiflage in the February edition.
Samuel
January 31st, 2007 at 06:41am
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