msb-0311 Reflections In A Limpid Cerulean Pool

Direct Link to episode -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/msb-0311_Reflections_In_A_Limpid_Cerulean_Pool.m4a

"Paper" video by: "The Get Out Clause"

. .

The band had no money to produce a video.

Manchester is full of closed circuit television cameras (CCTV.)

Since necessity is the mother of invention, the band set up their equipment, drum kit and all, where they knew the cameras would be pointing and used the freedom of information act to retrieve the footage from all kinds of cameras shooting video footage.

Clever use of equipment for the purpose for which they were intended (capturing video of public places,) but not for the purpose for which they were intended (helping the band make a video for nothing.)

Intro

Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

Survey

Feedback comes first, so...

Like the title for this episode?

I did.

It doesn't mean a thing but it still a nice turn of phrase; evocative of cool waters under a clear sunny sky at some low-latitude locale.

[beep]

"This is a test of the Emergency Podcast System."

If there had been an actual emergency, a terrorist attack, a fire, a famine, a plague, a tornado, a flood or other example of extreme weather, a tsunami, an earthquake, a declaration of upcoming imminent thermo-nuclear annihilation, or the sun exhausting its fuel and blowing its shell before collapsing and contracting into a cold brown dwarf, leaving the cinder formerly known as earth orbiting in the inky depth of space, you would have had to figure it out for yourself, wouldn't you.

Podcasting, using RSS to distribute "deltas" in a list of files, is "exactly" like using e- or snail-mail.

You wouldn't send a letter to your great aunt Fanny telling her you'd cut yourself and were asking for her advice for stauching the bleeding would you? You be a dessicated husk lying on the kitchen floor if you were that helpless or that, uh, Darwinian-ly disposed.

There are times when you "need" a megaphone and somebody with a really loud mouth.

So don't get too cocky about podcasting taking over everything, Its capable of filling all of the niches, like mortar between the bricks, but we still need broadcasting.

(Otherwise, "Bush"or "Mugabe" or any other tyrannical tin pot dictator monkey in a three piece suit or an army uniform might declare a war an' nobody'd show up.)

This was a test of the "Emergency Podcast System"... And it failed...

[beep]

---- "No Use Denying" by:"The Cool Waters Band" http://www.coolwatersband.com/

FeedForward

---- "Don't Forget Where You Came From" by:"The Cool Waters Band" http://www.coolwatersband.com/

FeedMe

---- "Get On" by:"The Cool Waters Band" http://www.coolwatersband.com/

"Thesis:"

I keep evaluating text to speech software, preparing for the eventuality of being unable to utter anything intelligible, uh. make that "of insufficient clarity to be decipherable", by anyone else.

So far, bubkiss, nada, nuttin', it ain't happening. Fuggedaboudid.

As it turns out, generating speech is a hard problem, relying as it does on idiosyncrasies of the speaker's pacing, the wider problem of tone and the indescribably variable problem of regionalism.

That we can understand each other at all is already a friggin' miracle.

Trying to do so with any kind of speech impediment, (beyond the wit or witlessness of the stuff I'm spouting,) is extremely difficult.

That's why I admire Shauna so much. She's really got the gift of gab. She speaks clearly and succinctly.

I regret to say that, while I "used" to have the same gift, I am now reduced to barely coherent mumblings and mutterings.

But perhaps I can teach myself to speak again with the help of certain pacing and cadence devices.

---- "Do What You Need" by:"The Cool Waters Band" http://www.coolwatersband.com/

"Synthesis:"

In order to stave off that day, I am implementing some suggestions by my Friend Eugene, the SysAdmin.

You should have noticed that my delivery has been a lot more, uh, measured the last few shows.

That's because I am using a teleprompter type system which presents the words of the script to me at a slower pace than I would otherwise read them. Its not that I can't speak intelligibly, I can, as evidenced by the present, but its that when I read, I read full-speed and often get to the end of a paragraph before I have even uttered a few words of the first sentence.

Since I wrote the entire thing, I further trip up my tongue by actually remembering the words I wrote and skimming instead of reading and getting even further ahead while my all to fallible tongue stammers, tries to get the rest of my mouth in position and tries to get the words out.

We should see if this metronomic systems of pacing my otherwise racing speech-box helps with my comprehension.

---- "On My Mind" by:"The Cool Waters Band" http://www.coolwatersband.com/

"Conclusion:"

God helps those who help themselves and in this case the help has come in the form of a metronomic prompter, just like the use in TV studios.

Waddaya t'ink? Any better? :-)

---- "Hell or Highwater" by:"The Cool Waters Band" http://www.coolwatersband.com/

Outro

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Theme and 'incidental music' from:

"msb_theme",

by: "Guy David",

http://www.guydavid.com/