DiggerCast

This is just a heads-up to let you all know that new episode of the DiggerCast will be up within the next couple of days, and also by the end of this month, it’ll be at a new place. More on this later.

Honest we ain’t!

Anyway, just to inform everyone that there will be 2 new episodes of the DiggerCast coming before the end of the year in addition to the 2nd and 3rd episodes I’ve yet to upload >.>

The order of the episodes may be a little fuzzy in that I may upload November’s episode (4) first, then edit upload Eps 2 & 3 after I get back to the UK (I’ve had issues that prevented me from doing so) ; however, I will be backdating the blog posts to be in line with when they were supposed to be uploaded.  Admittedly, this’ll mean then that you’ll be listening to them a little out of order at the start, though with the format being nailed down for the show proper, it now means that there will be less confusion regarding things.  I may consider doing one final run with the Weekly Fark though, just to give it a proper sendoff, and though Ollie may or may not balk at this, but I think we should do a longer special, which will be the final one in the pre-production series.  Essentially, in this one, we’ll do the Weekly Fark, followed by the new section that replaces it, that being a few definitions from the Urban Dictionary.

It’ll make more sense when the new ep is published, but as far as a schedule goes, there will be a recording before the end of the month, and an upload around a week (maybe sooner) after.  No matter what though, the 4th episode will be edited and uploaded before eps 2 & 3.  As for the December ep, we have plans to have that uploaded for just before Xmas day, where it’ll start to more closely resemble the series proper; this means that there is no more Weekly Fark and the UurbanDictionary section will instead replace it.  Keep in mind though that even though the series will be going into production, with the first (proper) episode ideally being published by the 15th of January, it won’t be quite perfect, thougfh at least I’ve determined a show format and frequency.  It’s hoped that with properly going into production, things can start going up a gear and become a lot more defined.  Admittedly though, with my list back home, I’ll have to improvide a little, so likely I’ll just choose a site off the top of my head.  What it is, I’m not saying just yet, but watch out for the update.

Lastly, with the DiggerCast folding back into Stormhaven Radio, albeit in a more organised way, everything will be changing eventually, in terms of the path of the site, though this won’t happen just yet.  You’ll always be able to access the site via www.diggercast.com though, so overall, it may not actually affect your surfing experience, but I’m mentioning it more as a heads-up.

Watch this space for updates, and expect an episode soon, one way or another.

I apoligise for not releasing these sooner. I’m still actually editing the two episodes that have been recorded and I’m also optimising them as well as locating all the links we looked at too. Additionally, I’m looking at optimising filesizes too since I learnt that I have been recording at too high a sampling rate, which increases the filesize further! Initially, I was recording at 48KHz, but since learning that the human voice tends to peak at 5KHz, it seemed rather pointless exceeding 16KHz, so this is what all episodes will be recorded at in the future. The initial recordings will be staying at 192Kbps, although I’ll be lowering them to 64Kbps, which halves the file’s footprint. What does this mean overall? Well, it means that the MP3 of each episode will be much smaller to download, with very little discernable difference in audio quality. This means it’ll make the episodes faster to upload and download.

One thing I plan to do is to record short clips of myself and Ollie saying similar stuff in 4 different clips (one each at 16KHz, 32KHz, 44.1KHz and 48KHz), then bringing them down from 192Kbps to 128Kbps (CD quality), 96Kbps and 64Kbps respectively. This will allow you to hear the differences yourselves and also compare the filesizes between them. There will always be a 128Kbps version of each podcast available, though the 64Kbps version will be the standard version. The 128K version will have to be requested and if there’s enough demand, I may also start developing an edited 192K version as well. The only 192K version available at the moment is what I term the “raw” file, which means that it has all the bits I edited out. As for why I edited them out, it’s usually because the bits were too boring, or there was a little too much dead air, or there’s certain parts I deemed inappropriate. The inappropriate parts are essentially me getting the wrong idea about something and continuing on about it, or parts I deemed unsuitable to discuss on the air.
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