Podcast Ping's Christmas Calendar Day 6

Day 6 deals with the depression many go through at Christmas.



http://www.archive.org/download/PodcastPingsChristmasCalendarDay6/ppcc06.mp3

I probably should have redone the poem since I feel I rushed it and didn't give it the proper pacing. But there's only so much time worth devoting to the podcast and I've still got more work left. Had I not done the Halloween shows I probably would have had the time to perfect the Christmas shows. And because I had to write scripts, I probably did more writing for the thirteen Halloween shows than I'm doing for the twenty-five Christmas shows. Although I am writing much more longer show notes.

I also feel I'm coming down with a cold. Fortunately, recording poetry doesn't require the vocal dexterity the Blue Hot Gossip Comedy Show does because I use my own voice. But I've only got five more to record (and write) and more than a week to get them done, so I don't think it will be a problem. That's one of the reasons I wanted to get the shows finished early. I'll have to push at it the next couple days to finish things up. With Christmas coming there's enough to do.

I'm going to have to set a New Year's resolution to not keep any games on my computer. Although as it is I don't keep them; I remove them as soon as I've finished playing them.

Podcast Ping is licensed under Creative Commons, Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0.

My online toy shop can be found at http://patrickjmcnamara.webs.com.

Podcast Ping's Christmas Calendar Day 5

Day 5.



http://www.archive.org/download/PodcastPingsChristmasCalendarDay5/ppcc05.mp3

I didn't get as much done this week as I hoped; I still have five more poems to write. But I've got episodes finished up to the 17th so I've got a couple weeks to finish up. I do have poems for the last two days, and music for all days, so if I really get stuck I'll just skip the poetry for a few days. But I doubt it will be a problem. It's just not all that big a priority at the moment.

The release of the Calendar just happened to come about a week after Mininova decided to drop it's illegal torrents. Since mine were all legal it wasn't a problem. In fact I've seen a jump in overall downloads as a result, although individual downloads seem about the same so far.

I've now passed a collective total of half-a-million downloads on Mininova (helped a great deal with the sudden surge in downloads). Since I don't know what the numbers are for other torrent files at other sites I can't be sure what the overall total is. The torrents have done far better than the podcast feed and made the work worthwhile.

I have found one other site with some torrent numbers that total about three hundred and twenty-five thousand, but they're incomplete and I'm not sure how those numbers were arrived at. So I could have passed the million mark and don't know it, but I can only work with justifiable counts which means I can only rely upon the Mininova count.

And I am going for the million mark.

Podcast Ping is licensed under Creative Commons, Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0.

My online toy shop can be found at http://patrickjmcnamara.webs.com.

Podcast Ping's Christmas Calendar Day 4

Day 4.



http://www.archive.org/download/PodcastPingsChristmasCalendarDay4/ppcc04.mp3

Three weeks left until Christmas.

Growing up Catholic, Christmas for me is first and foremost a religious holiday. (Even though I would have ranked getting gifts above going to church.) So I do have some religious content in the calendar. And Christmas itself it too closely tied to Christianity to completely eliminate it. But I've tried to keep it general enough to interest those who aren't Christian.

And there's no reason a non-Christian can't enjoy Christian music. I will admit that a large amount of it is bad. This is usually because everyone it too polite to tell the artists how bad it is. But there is some talent and every now and then an artist who isn't part of the Christian music scene will do something suited to that genre.

Ayla Brown (who I didn't know about because I never watch American Idol) would probably consider herself mainstream. Despite the AI connection, she does have a good voice. I happen to also have another of her songs later on in the Calendar. This is one song that could fit with Contemporary Christian music.

Podcast Ping is licensed under Creative Commons, Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0.

My online toy shop can be found at http://patrickjmcnamara.webs.com.

Podcast Ping's Christmas Calendar Day 3

Day 3.



http://www.archive.org/download/PodcastPingsChristmasCalendarDay3/ppcc03.mp3

In comparison with the last two days I'm a tiny bit late, however this is being posted the night before so even if I didn't get it posted until the morning I really wouldn't be late. I just got caught up in stuff tonight.

I find I tend to use rhyme in my poetry more often when I'm trying to push it or when I'm restless. When I'm relaxed I can write prose poetry easier. And then there's those poems that just happen to come to me and I have to write them down, which are usually rhymes.

"Snow and Sullen" is a rhyming poem but I'm using a slightly less common rhyming scheme of a,b,c, a,b,c. Even when I do rhyming poetry I try to avoid doing the same rhythm and meter for the same theme otherwise I feel I'm just writing an extension of a previous poem.

Although when I'm really pressed I'll often just use the cliche a,b,c,b pattern. Of course in that case a rhyme isn't really necessary since it does nothing for the poem. Still, I have written some good poems using it because the important aspect of the poem is the theme. I'll also often use it for humorous poems. However I try to avoid using it too often.

I feel a good poet can work in any form. While I tend to favor rhyme, I've also written a number of non-rhyming poems. I find that having to work within a framework gives me more of a challenge.

Of course posting twenty-five episodes of Podcast Ping in a month is also a bit of a challenge. And if I get the New Year's show done it will be twenty-six. But I've got to finish the Christmas episodes first.

Podcast Ping is licensed under Creative Commons, Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0.

My online toy shop can be found at http://patrickjmcnamara.webs.com.

Podcast Ping's Christmas Calendar Day 2

Here's day 2 of the Christmas Calendar. Although I don't exactly have themes for all the shows, the theme for this show is the Christmas tree.



http://www.archive.org/download/PodcastPingsChristmasCalendarDay2/ppcc02.mp3

I've been doing some re-arranging of the order of the shows. I had thought of announcing the day at the start of the show, but deliberately decided not to do so for that reason. I realized that the show I was going to do had both a poem and music I had used before in past Christmas shows and I didn't want to be using so much old material so close to the start of the calendar.

I've only got about five old Christmas poems; the rest I've written this year. (With only six left to write.) I used the old ones because I knew how much work it would be to write so many poems just about Christmas without making them seem too similar. I have however re-recorded the poems so that I'm presenting them a little differently than I did in the past.

While I've probably used about ten songs that I've played before on past Christmas shows, I feel they're good songs. And I felt it better to reuse a good song rather than play something uninteresting just because I hadn't played it yet. But I am trying to get as much new material into the Calendar as possible. Just yesterday I replaced a number of pieces with new material that appeared on Mevio's Music Alley after I initially tried to round up songs for the podcast.

But I don't think there's more than eight or nine reused songs, and I might still replace some of those. In fact if I had been able to find enough good new music I would have put two songs in each since it would only require a little more editing, but I didn't want the shows to sound like repeats.

Podcast Ping is licensed under Creative Commons, Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0.

My online toy shop can be found at http://patrickjmcnamara.webs.com.

Podcast Ping's Christmas Calendar Day 1

This is the first of twenty-five episodes of Podcast Ping's Christmas Calendar. Unlike the Halloween episodes, I don't have a host. The episodes are more like regular Podcast Ping shows.



http://www.archive.org/download/PodcastPingsChristmasCalendarDay1/ppcc01.mp3

These episodes are shorter than regular episodes, with only one poem and one song, but collectively they add up to about one-and-a-half to two hours. And considering they're daily, it would be difficult for many if they were too long.

I've currently got about seventeen episodes completed. I've got about six more poems to write, but with more than two weeks before I need them I should have no trouble getting them done in time. I know from the Halloween episodes that it can get to be a bit of a marathon to post, especially around the second and third weeks.

I expect most of the work will be in posting the episodes; not only do I have to post for the podcast/blog site but I'm also going to post them on Mininova. And I'm doing that every day. Which is why I'm planning to post them the night before as I did with the Halloween episodes. The early posting also makes it easier for someone overseas, especially in Japan or Australia, since a morning posting here could come to them in the evening there.

And I may be late with some posts depending upon what my schedule is like. But in most cases they will be up by noon EST, if not the midnight before. I'm also susceptible to server problems so if Blogger, The Internet Archive or Mininova is having trouble the posts could be late.

There's more to say but I'll save that for later posts. I do have twenty-four more to go.

Podcast Ping is licensed under Creative Commons, Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0.

My online toy shop can be found at http://patrickjmcnamara.webs.com.