JanerBlog

Battle of the Audiobooks

Okay. Persuant to yesterday's nerdout about the O'Brian audiobooks, I present a comparison of the Doctor Crankypants scene. Here's Not-Patrick-Tull. Now here's the same scene, done right. Tell me honestly, which storyteller would you prefer to listen to for over two hundred hours?

The guy's voice is fine, mind; I'm sure his other readings are lovely. It's just not right for this book. Like, at all.

Media clips excerpted for review purposes only; material is copyright the estate of Patrick Tull, Blackstone Audiobooks, and Recorded Books Incorporated, yatta yatta yatta.

Seekrit Project: Announcement Coming Soon!

For those of you who haven't been beta-reading the Seekrit Project, good news!

I will be launching the project here, and in the Vögelein newsletter, on April 1st. Once you know the subject matter, that date will make perfect sense.

I have twelve finished inked pages so far, with a thirteenth fully pencilled and on my desk. I was hoping the new style would go faster than the old, but between the breaking-in period, getting accustomed to new tools, and the stupid-hard backgrounds I'm giving myself (my next book will be set in a blank room and populated by stick figures, I think) each page is taking nearly as long as those from the Vögelein books. Here's hoping for improvement.

The game plan is to have twenty pages done by the time I launch. You'll get the prologue, which is five pages, and the first page, to start. Then it'll run once-weekly. One-a-week is about all the page rate I can handle and work full-time and still have a life. The 15-week buffer will ensure that it runs on time for the immediate future. As much as I wish I could go twice-weekly, like all the cool kids... alas. I'd rather only promise what I know I can deliver.

And there will be extras. Oh.... just y'all wait.

Moohoohahaha. Stay tuned!

Pam, what have you wrought?!

Three weeks ago I found out about the O'Brian books. I managed to lay my hands on most of the talking books, and am now happily chugging my way through the third, H.M.S. Surprise. There's only one catch, see.

The narrator-who-isn't-Patrick-Tull is terrible.

Tonight, after he got home, I wailed at Paul like a petulant child forced to listen to her favorite book, formerly read with care by her mother, dictated instead by a bored, disinterested stranger: "He's not doing the voices right! Aubrey -- he's supposed to be a big, red-faced buffoon, but this guy makes him sound like a -- a Disney buffoon! And Maturin is an Irishman, for God's sake. He should be crankier! I want my crankypants convalescent doctor to sound like he actually means to throw his posset at Bonden's head!"

Twenty minutes later I had downloaded the Patrick Tull version of H.M.S. Surprise from Audible.com.

Heavens help me, I think I'm obsessed.

Glad we had those out, then.

Got the pathology reports today for the lumps we had taken out of Zoë. Turns out they were both malignant: the big one that was causing problems (and that was the instigator of the surgery in the first place) was Stage Three, and the smaller one they found during the surgery was Stage One. So now, along with my monthly self-exam, we have to give the dog one, too -- apparently a dog's mammary glands are all connected, so although the margins on both extractions were clean, there's always the chance of recurrence.

Paul and I are considering getting her a little pink ribbon for her collar.

POD Poll

Hey, everybody. A friend of mine needs information about Print on Demand. Has anyone who reads this blog done a POD Project, specifically POD comics? If so, who'd you use? Did you like them? Prices fair? Turnaround time?

You can either answer here or drop me a line at fierystudios@hotmail.com.

Thanks in advance!

I love you, MIG welder!^*

So today I went down to the Smartshop for my second day of Welding class. I was mistaken, earlier -- I'd forgotten I'd signed up for a welding class; if I want to take the blacksmithing class, I'll have to do more art for Holly in trade for another workshop!. Fortunately for me, I'm having so much fun that I'm already planning to do so.

Despite the fact that I grew up on a farm, I've never played around with welders. We had a welding setup -- even a coal forge -- but things just never turned out that I got taught how to use them. This weekend was the first time I ever laid hands on anything stronger than acetylene. (I once participated in a bronze casting using oxyacetylene, but the person in charge of the cast operated the torch.)

Therefore, today was my very first crack at a real honest-to-God MIG welder. Holly Fisher, the founder of the Smartshop, walked us through basic use and safety, showed us how to braise and weld with oxyacetylene, then moved us right into MIG welding.

First we learned to tack-weld, then we did corners, uprights, thin-to-heavy gauge welds, and then we learned to seam-weld. Then, she turned us loose in the shop. For another glorious four hours, we welded and angle-ground and patinaed our little brains out. The night before, Holly had presented us with a 5 x 10' table covered in about an inch of scrap 14-gauge steel, which we rooted through to find interesting bits to weld. From these, I welded the neat-o raven sculpture you'll see in the pictures below -- and I only set myself on fire once! Hey, kids! Here's a hint if you've never welded before: don't wear your favorite flannel shirt to the welding studio, 'cause sparks that fly at 2600F really pack a wallop. (caught one down my left glove, too. Owie.)

Yes, I really only picked up an arc welder this morning, swear to God. Holly's an amazing teacher, and she's a total stickler for safety and shop cleanliness, which makes her the perfect person to learn from. So if you've ever wanted to learn to play safely with some serious tools -- be they welders or blacksmith's bellows -- you should come on out to Kzoo and take yourself a weekend course from SmartShop. 'Cause they rock, and stuff.

^*Long Tail Kitty copyright Lark Pien.

Conehead.

Point and laugh. Get it out of your system. We have another week of this.

Well, shit.

A few weeks ago, there was this really super wonderful thing that I was hoping would happen. Prospects looked encouraging, and I wanted it really, really badly. And I found out this morning that it didn't happen. So I'm pretty bummed out right now. Not to go out emotionally-panhandling or anything, but if you'd been thinking about giving me a call, I could really use some good spiritual company right about now.

Well, starting Monday, anyway. This weekend, I get to attend a free metalsmithing workshop (I received it in trade for some artwork), which means I get to hit inanimate things with hammers for three days straight. I expect this will improve my mood considerably.

Still. I'll be on the desk a lot next week, and talking would help me stay on task.

Home again Home again, diggity dog.

Zoë just got home from the doggy hospital, where she had her mutant, vestigial hind dewclaws and three (!) tumors removed. One turned out to be a fatty tumor (no big deal) which we had removed anyway, because it was growing pretty fast. The other two got sent out to histology to find out what they were: one'd been biopsied with inconclusive results, but was in one of her breasts and was growing fast and causing other problems, and the other was found during the process. We'll know in 7-10 days, which is also when she gets her stitches out.

She's currently sacked out on the carpet, heavily doped up and wearing her cone collar and a big blue bandage on one hind foot. It's really darn funny-looking, but she's really miserable right now, so pictures will have to come later.

Into my pants.

So last night, Virus drove out to have dinner and rub brains over the seekrit project. When I showed him the photocopies I got from the research library on the East Coast, he first opened his mouth and couldn't shut it for a minute and a half, and then he tried to stuff the photocopies down the front of his pants *.

So yeah, I guess that bodes well for the quality of the source material.

* As a comparative data point, he also said he stuffed his new iPhone down his pants as soon as he got it home from the store.

Goddamnit, Pam.

So because of the seekrit project, I've been watching a lot of period films, mostly for costuming and speech patterns and stuff. Some of them have been good, and some unbearably slow (I'm looking at you, BBC's Pride and Prejudice). So then Pam suggests that I check out Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. I usually don't go in for Big Damn Movies (Serenity excepted, of course) and especially since I thought Gladiator was really not all that great, I had tuned out the whole "OMG Russell Crowe on a boat!" fervor when it came out -- what, jeebus, five years ago now?

Holy crap, was I ever wrong. This was a fantastic movie. The director was the guy who directed Dead Poet's Society, and he handled the huge ensemble cast's nuances as well as he did in that old favorite. He does action really damn well, too, especially for someone that had never made an action movie before; the scenes felt like actual naval battles, rather than some big overblown Hollywood nonsense. Add this to the fact that Tall Ships Are Awesome, and you've got quite an engaging watch, even if I did have to re-view it with the subtitles to get all the naval jargon.

So then Pam informs me that the movie's script is in fact a kludge of several of the books; essentially an effort to get the feeling of the whole series onscreen at once.

And the next thing I know I'm getting all twenty of the books on audio. God help me.

Well, at least the series is done, unlike that heartbreaker Martin, with his Song of Ice and Fire books. But still. Twenty.

Guess I'll have plenty to listen to till spring.