Friday, October 30, 2009

Podcast Ping's 13 Days of Halloween-Day 13

The finale show of the series brings you something special, "Monster Beach Surf Party." I've been sitting on this for a while, although I have redone it a couple times to get it right. I created it early on after coming up with the idea for the series. And (for the time being) you'll only hear it here. I used a podsafe piece called "Phantom Surf Party by Get Three Coffins Ready" as the background music. I plan to play that piece in it's entirety on the New Years show along with the full version of the title music.



http://www.archive.org/download/PodcastPings13DaysOfHalloween-day13/13Days-Day13.mp3

Working on this series has given me a lot of ideas about how to approach the Christmas calendar. I don't know if I'll do it again next year; it depends on how things go and whether I can come up with enough original podsafe Halloween music. As it is I'm going to be reusing some music for Christmas that I used before, although at least half of it is new music (or at least music I haven't used before). And if I do it next year, it's most likely going to be a Blue Hot Gossip show, which would work considering I used a character from that show to host this one.

The amount of work for this series has given me some idea of how much work Christmas will be. One practice I got into was posting the night before and I'll probably continue with that. It happened that I had a few appointments these past two weeks so having to post in the mornings would make things more complicated.

And given international time zones, it makes it easier for those in other countries to get the material within reasonable time. For instance, there's up to a fifteen hour time difference between where I am (EST) and Australia. So 8am here is 1am the next day there. That means they could be getting the Halloween show on November 1st. This way they get the show at least by the afternoon. And of course it takes some time for the show to trickle down through podcatchers and such, so those subscribed through iTunes may not see it right away.

The next podcast for Podcast Ping will be the first Christmas calendar episode on December 1st. I would like to fit a Blue Hot Gossip episode in before then if I can, but I'll have to see how things 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.

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Thursday, October 29, 2009

Podcast Ping's 13 Days of Halloween-Day 12

A relatively quiet show before the big night.



http://www.archive.org/download/PodcastPings13DaysOfHalloween-day12/13Days-Day12.mp3

I've got something special for tomorrow's show which you won't hear anywhere else. Then again, most of this show isn't heard anywhere else. But this is special.

My Legosi impression probably is the most severe in this episode. The intent for the accent was to get something between Dracula and Mr. Roarke. But I don't do Ricardo Montalbam well.

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.

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Podcast Ping's 13 Days of Halloween-Day 11

The theme for today is fear.



http://www.archive.org/download/PodcastPings13DaysOfHalloween-day11/13Days-Day11.mp3

Just two more postings left, with something special for the last day.

Since Geocities is now dead, I've been going back and fixing many older posts so that the graphics point to the ones I have on webs.com. I'm not sure how far back I'll go; earlier posts don't tend to get a lot of downloads. But I have fixed as far back as the middle of March of last year, just about where Beowulf ends. The primary fixes are for the "play episodes" button and for the iTunes and Zune subscription buttons. The last two aren't as important (since someone subscribing is likely to do so from a newer post) but since I was fixing the "play" button I thought I should fix those as well.

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.

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Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Podcast Ping's 13 Days of Halloween-Day 10

Day 10 deals with creeps.



http://www.archive.org/download/PodcastPings13DaysOfHalloween-day10/13Days-Day10.mp3

Back into the new songs. I didn't realize when I put it together that I would have three re-used songs in a row. And only three more postings until Halloween.

Geocities is now finished, but I didn't realize that I was still using the play button graphic I had there, so I've got to go back and fix them. Since I have to do them one at a time, I'll fix the newest posts first. I seem to have lost the old button, but it gives me a good excuse to make up a new one.

I don't know if I'll get any more work on the Christmas shows done this week, but I'll have the month of November to work on it. Based on the amount of work this show has been, I was considering just doing it weekly or bi-weekly, but it wouldn't be a proper Christmas calendar without a daily post. I would like to squeeze in another Blue Hot Gossip show before Christmas, although that depends upon how things go.

I'm thinking over the design I'm going to use on the pumpkin this year. While a lot of people who put any effort into the pumpkin use templates, I like to come up with an original design. I've tried doing it a day before, but the pumpkin tends to dry out a lot overnight and can loose or change design details.

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.

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Monday, October 26, 2009

Podcast Ping's 13 Days of Halloween-Day 9

Not the most exciting episode, but a good song nonetheless. I do have something special coming up for the final Halloween episode.



http://www.archive.org/download/PodcastPings13DaysOfHalloween-day9/13Days-Day9.mp3

Almost forgot about today, although I could still have posted it in the morning.

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.

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Sunday, October 25, 2009

Podcast Ping's 13 Days of Halloween-Day 8

This is the show for Monday, Oct. 26th. When I refer to "4 days left" I'm counting Tuesday to Friday, although technically Saturday should be included since Halloween is in the evening.

I believe I have used "Live" before, although it's such a good Halloween song it's hard to not use it again. I've listened to it many times myself. And chances are, most who have heard it haven't listened to it since last year.



http://www.archive.org/download/PodcastPings13DaysOfHalloween-day8/13Days-Day8.mp3

Technically, this is episode 64, although I've dropped the episode numbers since I'm doing more specials than regular episodes. I would like to squeeze in a New Year's episode this year but it depends upon how soon I get the Christmas shows finished.

As with the Halloween episodes, I'm re-using a lot of Christmas songs. I've found it easy enough to come up with enough music for 25 shows but many of them aren't that good. So I decided just to use one good song for each episode rather than filling it up with lame music or using all new music with filler songs.

Although the shows are far from finished so I could still try to get two songs into each episode. But I've still got about 18 poems to write so it will be a while before I decide that. (And it's really hard to think Christmas just before Halloween.) Based upon the work required for the Halloween shows, I probably won't do a Christmas calendar next year but I could do the 13 Days of Halloween again--provided I can find enough good podsafe Halloween 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.

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