Behind The Scenes of Yesterday's Post

Here's a few things about the podcast I made yesterday.

• The raw audio file was one hour and four minutes long. The finished podcast was thirty-eight minutes and eighteen seconds long. That included an added one minute and five seconds of the introduction and closing, and the audio of Al remarking how international the conversation was. (That was from our first conference call.)
• The raw audio was out of sync due to a program I was running that interfered with my connection. This also caused my computer to freeze when I disconnected a call.
• I used Call Graph to record. It records the audio in stereo with my audio on one channel and my callers' audio on another channel. Not only does this make a nice sound for the podcast, it was also VERY helpful when re-syncing the audio.
• Long pauses were edited out of the raw audio. So were unrelated bits of audio, including the actual beginning and end of the call.
• Al did not mean to permanently leave the call. He had some problems with his hardware that prevented him from returning, so I edited the audio to make it sound like he was leaving. This required a cut where Sam said he hoped Al would return soon and I explained what had happened. (I also had my instant message software going. No, this was not what caused the interference.)
• All of the software I used to make the podcast is available for free. The call was made with Skype (it's free to call another Skype user, but you must buy Skype credit to call landline or mobile phones), the call was recorded with Call Graph, and the audio was edited with Audacity.
• We have not yet set a date for the second part.