I’ve seen people posting details of their rig on other sites, so I thought it was high-time I did so here too.

To walk through the image:

• On the far left: HP LaserJet 2420 printer - far better than my old printer by leaps and bounds.
• Tucked in under the printer - Apple Mac Mini computer. The workhorse that has been the centre of the rig since I started and now relegated to just file and print sharing.
• ProLine mini boom desktop mic stand
• Kel HM-1 condenser mic, in a shock-mount
• Sterling Audio PF-1 pop-filter - gets rid of the nasty pop noises of “p” and “b” blowing air into the mic.
• At the back, my Alesis mixing desk with firewire hookup to the studio computer.
• Samsung 22" widescreen LCD monitor
• Apple MacBook laptop - now the centre of my world. Not only did it supplant the Mac Mini for podcasting, but its beaten off competition from my Dell Inspiron laptop to become my main machine.
• Tucked between the MacBook and the big-ass monitor, is an Apple Keyboard (for the Mac Mini)
• An ancient pair of Labtec speakers that provide me with sound
• Underneath the speaker, Western Digital “MyBook” 750 Gb external drive - there are only 2 kinds of people in the world … those who obsessively back up their data, and those who have yet to experience a hard-drive crash. There are 3 Apple computers in my house, and all three run “Time Machine” for backups. (Drive/volume names: Zippy, Bungle, Geoffrey & George … can anyone guess what inspired the names?)
• Lastly a lovely old Logitech “TrackMan Marble” trackball

This is proof, from episode 21 of the podcast, that I script the whole thing. To the left is a text editor with my script, and to the right is Apple GarageBand, showing the first 40-seconds of the episode.

My very first steps in podcasting made us of a tool called Propaganda - surprisingly capable for the price but it had some severe limitations too. On the strength of Propaganda I took a look at the DJ Mixing software from the same company and fell in love with MixMeister Express.

In January 2007 I posted to my personal blog about issues I’d encountered with Flash based audio players. Detailed there was my next step - record raw audio in the fabulous “Audacity” audio editing software. Export, and use MixMeister or Propaganda to do the mixing/editing of things. Save as a WAV file and encode to MP3 using a command-line utility called “lame”. I mentioned yearning for the simplicity of the one-stop Propaganda software.

Then I took a look at what Apple had to offer, and was seduced by GarageBand. All the mixing and editing power I needed, great audio recording, and could export into iTunes for final ID3 tag editing. All-in-all my new favourite tool.

So, that’s the rig. Modular enough that different pieces can be upgraded for better at any time, but still within the bounds of reason as far as price. I believe (before the most recent upgrades) I’d invested around $1200 in things but that was before adding the backup disk and new laptop.

I went back through the trivia scores this evening, overall scores ranged from 21 - 32, with a distinct cluster in the upper 20’s. Khatie was given the names of the 4 highest scoring entries, and it did come down to the tie-breaker question to make the final determination! Great work everyone. Khatie was also notified of the winner of the fiction contest. That wraps up all 5 of the beta keys I was given and I have to say, they were well deserved in all cases. I wish I had a bunch more to give to the runners-up!

Yes, I know that the SGW Quiz site has beta spots to giveaway, but then, so do a lot of fan sites. It’s no use searching for “sgw quiz answers” and “stargate quiz answers beta key” - I’m not about to tell you the answers to their quiz. It wouldn’t be fair!

Seems like spots in the SGW Beta are hot property though. I have 5 beta keys (now, now … “beater keys” indeed!) to give away.

One spot is going to the winner of the fiction contest, four are going to the highest scoring responses to my own SGW Quiz - its probably more a GateBuzz trivia contest, as I need to know answers to SGW trivia (based on the last 9 months of news) and also when it was that I reported on it in the podcast. Having looked at the other SGW Quiz, I think that mine is easier (but I am biased).

I will say a hearty “well done” to the people who’ve entered, especially the individual who admitted to listening to every episode of the podcast in order to answer the questions correctly. That’s going above and beyond the call of duty, and it shows in the quality of the answers.

Why did I run a fiction contest? Its simple: I believe that this game will differentiate itself from the rest of the MMO pack by the quality of the story telling. We, as a community, cannot expect CME to spoon-feed us content so we must get to the point of creating high-quality RP events ourselves to supplement the official content. None of the players of Stargate Worlds will be a main-cast character, but they might feature as NPCs who give us missions, or we meet briefly in-game. The fiction contest aims to stir people into thinking along the right lines, and rewards it with a meaningful prize.

Not only am I offering an official Stargate Worlds beta key as the prize for the competition but I have also got the buy-in of a celebrity judge to decide the winner!

The official bio from the Wizard’s of the Coast author/artist bio page says:

Denise Graham is the author of two books in the Knights of the Silver Dragon series and a number of shorter works. She lurks in her supervillain secret lair deep in the heart of darkest mid-America with her co-supervillain, the inimitable Ron Morris, and their henchmen, er . . . henchdemons, Kafka and Morrigan.

The rules of the fiction contest:

1. Write a Stargate Themed story WITHOUT using any well-known cast members, except in a peripheral sense (pass them in a corridor, see them in the cafeteria, etc)
2. Only one entry per person
3. 500-1000 words in length, using proper grammar and spelling
4. Closing date for submissions: July 17th
5. Email entries to: gatebuzz@gmail.com
6. Entries will be judged by Denise Graham - a published fantasy author
7. The winner will be submitted to CME to receive a spot in the beta and further contact regarding the beta will be handled by them
8. The top 3 stories (maybe 5 if I am feeling generous) will be read on-air on upcoming episodes of GateBuzz

I look forward to hearing from you!

We’re sitting at 9,933 downloads of the podcast. Only a few more and we break the 10,000 download mark. Way to go folks! This is a huge moment and something I find quite humbling. Thanks for listening!

[edit, 8:00am, May 7th]

9,990 and counting…

[edit, 8:17am]

9,994 …

[edit, 9:55am]

10,000 downloads, and it was a Linux user no less!

I created my account on Facebook ages ago and have done my best to neglect it. Honestly I blame atrizu - he was the one who convinced me that I really needed to bother with it again. So, if you’re on Facebook, feel free to friend me.

I’ve updated my Progress of the Beta page - Desy stumbled upon something that looks a lot like a login page for beta testers…

The observant visitors will have noticed that my phone number has changed. I’ve moved over to a far more versatile voice-over-IP provider - the venerable Skype. Voicemail there has proven to have higher sound quality, and be orders of magnitude better for sound editing afterward … just judge from the audio in episode 17 of the podcast!

I’ll be re-recording the intro to the podcast for the next episode … something I have been meaning to do ever since I got the new mic and mixing desk! I’ve been thinking about the intro music too, but I’m not musician enough to go writing and performing something of my own there! I’ll settle for just talking and creating websites.

There’s a really cool website if you’re a Doctor Who fan. The theme for the TV show has evolved over the 30+ years that the TV show has been on the air while keeping the essential elements the same. This has spawned an entire website of people creating their own remixed and re-imaginings of the Doctor Who theme. The podcast (”Whomix Radio“) is really worth subscribing to. The thing it makes me wonder is this: where are all the remixes of the Stargate theme?

Anyhow, feel free to add me to your Skype contacts, and if you see me, drop me a message (or chat to me, I don’t bite!)

What’s so cool about this pie chart anyhow?

Over ¹/₂ of people (51%) who listen to the podcast do so right here on the website.

4% of the listeners are using a Zune player to listen to the podcast. I am glad that I listened to the feedback from people and added the Subscribe in Zune button on the site. It’s nice to see a new feature actually being used.

Apple might have 70% of the overall market-share for portable MP3 players, but according to the stats, around 90% of the people who grab the podcast to listen on their own machine, do so with iTunes.

The other 1% of listeners use either WinAmp, iPodder and Apple TV to download and listen to the podcast, proving that it’s not just the well-known pod-catcher applications that are being used.

Pulled these numbers from the podcast stats:

5000 total downloads of the podcast, and counting, awesome news! That’s a cool milestone to pass!