G’DAY WORLD #304 – Social Activism update

As you know, I’m trying to figure out how I can make the world a better place. Today I had a chat with Richard Giles about some of the recent attempts I’ve made to volunteer for organisations like LifeLine and Big Brother Big Sister, my vision of a 21st century geek version of Rotary, and the following sites:

Change.org

Mobile Phones and Social Activism

Witness.org

Father Bob Maguire’s podcast

The track for today is:

Heresy and the Hotel ChoirMaritime
“For Science Fiction” (mp3)
from “Heresy and the Hotel Choir”
(Flameshovel Records)

More On This Album

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Ducking in Adobe Audition

Here’s a great tip for any podcasters using Adobe Audition. Since I started using Garageband on my Macbook a few weeks ago, I have come to enjoy the wonderful “ducking” tool that is built into GB. Ducking automatically dips the volume of your backing music when someone starts talking in another track, and then lifts the volume again when the vocal track stops or there is some silence. It’s very cool. And it made we wonder why I had never seen that tool before in Audition which costs about $1600. Sure enough, there doesn’t seem to be a ducking effect in Audition. There is, however, a free plug-in that will do the trick for you. I’m using it now while I edit a particularly troublesome show and it’s saved me hours. Literally.

Fortunately, someone has already written step-by-step instructions on how to download, install and configure the plug-in. The guide is written for Audition 1.5 but worked fine for me in 2.0. Check out the ducking in Adobe Audition guide here.

My Strange Gift

I got home from a lunch today to find a notice in my mailbox (the analogue one) from the post office. A parcel to collect. So I walked down to pick it up, thinking it might *finally* be my copy of Leopard from Apple (nope), and what I received was a package wrapped up in plain brown paper and string, with no details of the sender. I opened it up walking back down the street to find… this:

my strange gift - front

“Okay….”, I’m thinking, “I’m *finally* famous enough that people are sending me anonymous porn. I don’t remember *this* being in my Amazon wishlist… what a bitch it’s VHS… I’ll have to borrow the kids’ old VHS player and move it into my “special place”.”

I turn it over and see more of the same:

My Strange Gift back view

I opened it up and got this:

my strange gift - open

A close-up will show you what it actually is:

my strange gift close up

I think it’s from my friends at Paramount. Nice packaging! Certainly amused the hell outta me.

G’Day World – Three Years Young

Yesterday, November 26, was the third anniversary of G’Day World and Australian podcasting. What started off as an experiment to see how to record two Skype calls turned into a full-time job. Check out the first show here. I hope that’s a lesson to all the kids out there. If an idiot like me can make a living out doing something fun like making podcasts, what can smart folks like you do?

That said, I still feel like we’re just starting. I’m frustrated on a daily basis with how little I have achieved in the last three years and the road ahead seems daunting and exciting at the same time. Not a bad way to be actually.

I’d like to thank everyone who has listened, commented, provided advice, support and money to the show over the last three years. I especially want to thank my guests and co-hosts. It’s been great to share the journey with you. I especially want to thank my family to allowing me to piss $500,000 of our life savings into TPN without lopping off my nads. And to my TPN partners (aka the ‘hosts’), Mano , and the guys from AnyWebCam.com who have kept us running over the last couple of months – without your continued support and vision, none of this would be possible.

I thought I’d take this opportunity to review some of the 300+ shows that I think have been significant (in no particular order):

#147 – John Romero – creator of DOOM

#242 – Vint Cerf – co-inventor of TCP/IP and hence the Internet

#42 – Dr Aubrey de Grey – life extension researcher

#56 – Noam Chomsky – world’s leading intellectual and critic of American foreign policy

#57 – Ray Kurzweil – scientist and author, prophet of the Technological Singularity

#60 – David Weinberger – co-author of “The Cluetrain Manifesto”

#61 – Doc Searls – co-author of “The Cluetrain Manifesto”

#264 – Dr Peter Ellyard, Futurist (Part 4) – Australia’s leading futurist

#243 – Dr Peter Ellyard (part 3) – Australia’s leading futurist

#238 – Eliezer Yudkowsky – world leading AI researcher and futurist

#302 – Dr John Demartini on overcoming your fears – inspirational speaker and author

#271 – Vernor Vinge, SF Author Extraordinaire – Award-winning SF author, predicted the cyberspace in 1981

#290 – Julian Burnside QC – one of Australia’s highest profile barristers and human rights advocates

There are heaps more but this is a start.