Ben McKenzie

New episode alert! With the fabulous Sharmini Kumar. Available everywhere you listen to podcasts!

Discussing #Bridgerton S4E3

I only vaguely know, but I think this is a great compliment? So thank you! I think.

Casting call! Looking for a woman voice actor, 50+ who is versatile and a vocal chameleon / can play many different bit parts in an audio comedy.

We’re recording in London on 13th & 14th April. This is a paid opportunity. Actor does not need to be autistic!

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A b&w sketch of a skeleton clambering through dense forest. They are looking at a small bird on a nearby branch.

More skeletons

I love this skellington! I would live for them.

My cats have invented their own form of wrestling which feels kind of like a reverse WWF. Instead of winning a belt and proudly showing it off, the goal seems to be to make your opponent lose their collar and then run away from it as much as possible.

Ah, I misread. Yes, when we switched to remote recording in 2020, we used Skype (!) and local recordings. But it was a whole extra layer of difficulty to coordinate with guests.

(You can record via Discord, but I think it’s either a paid feature or requires a bot or something.)

We nearly had the technology. Though even when I had actual fibre to the premises it wasn’t always good enough.

I think it’s just that these kinds of services are created assuming the quality of internet that every other country has, and so not optimised for the shitshow we’ve got.

Discord doesn’t do separate tracks or high quality audio though, does it?

I don’t know how strong the editorial decision behind this is. There’s a huge team of community volunteers and presumably there’s criteria they use?

I’m not suggesting you have to fix everything, only that the way a community project gets better is each of us making the changes that matter to us!

Maybe it’s the number of participants; I stopped using SquadCast because it became so unreliable, and Riverside is now getting pretty bad too. Some participants struggle to connect; I get dropouts. Maybe it’s that we have three or four people, but there must be a way?

It’s a community-run website; submit a request for the change! But isn’t the new HeroQuest identical to the original aside from nicer miniatures? I thought that was the whole point?

Australian indie podcasters - how have you made Riverside or SquadCast etc work?

I find that Australian internet is frequently not up to the task. Even a good NBN plan drops out and has lag.

What do you use that actually works consistently, recording platform or internet provider-wise?

Tasmanian Games Tasmanian games, and games with Tasmanian developers involved.

Getting a nice list of #Tasmanian made games up on the @tasgamemakers.com website! This is only the beginning of the list! 😍

tasgamemakers.com/tasmanian-ga...

S4E1 - Ghostbusters

We just dropped episode 1 of the new season of the Quinns Quest actual play show. Who wants to hear me GM the official Ghostbusters RPG from 1986? open.spotify.com/episode/4hdy...

Are we being held back by, I dunno, the US? I’ve been able to send/receive any amount from my bank account to another Australian one for a decade or more. These days it’s instant, and uses emails or mobile numbers. All without fees!

But online - credit card or (shudders) PayPal.

The problem, in part, was that existing financial mediators and platforms couldn’t figure out how to effectively extract rent from micro-transactions. It’s one of the reasons why crypto is so seductive: the promise to break free of all that. (The downsides aren’t worth it with crypto.)

I remember the efforts by @scottmccloud.bsky.social and others to make online micro-transactions a thing. Imagine the world where it worked out (with no crypto!), instead of this subscription hellscape!

But we are seeing some small shifts - eg Patreon now supports buying access to individual posts.

Meant to let you know I got this sorted - but even a Proton account didn’t work. I had to create a mailbox on the service hosting my domain and it would only deliver there, not via any forward.

Will make a complaint. Some folks would be locked out forever by this behaviour!

Ah. Well, looks like it’ll have to go to a new account. Though everything else gets forwarded just fine (and I did set up all the new security stuff they started enforcing a few years ago).

I can redirect this email address! It’s a simple forward from the domain in question to my primary GMail mailbox. That’s worth a shot!

Might explain why the support emails still get through, since they probably use a different third-party platform to handle that.

Thanks Kat. Fingers crossed!

This is a long shot, but does anyone know anyone who works at Soundcloud?

They forced me to reset my password, but the reset email doesn’t arrive.

The email address is working (support emails arrive). The support team just keep sending the same canned (AI?) message to check my spam filter.

Help?

We Read The Bloggies (@WeReadTheBloggies) • Episodes We’re volunteers turning Bloggies-nominated blog posts into audio. So you can enjoy them anywhere, in a more accessible format.

The RPG scene still loves blogs - especially the OSR, a philosophy of play evolved from early D&D.

The #Bloggies are awards for the best RPG blogging, started in 2022.

We Read the Bloggies is a community podcast of readings, to help more people vote!

I joined in to read three of the debut posts.

Never enough.

It’s one thing to know you’re in a bubble, and another to have it burst right in your face. Shame on them all!

Just happened to be in the right place at the right time! I also flagged this same quote.

I am feeing this as a teacher as well!

I did like the (brief) acknowledgement of partners who isolate or otherwise reduce their risk too. But they’re just using the knowledge we gained from COVID - that many viruses spread via aerosols, and how to avoid them.

I also enjoyed the second half being all about the Finns! Torilla tavataan!

Like most academic stuff these days it’s digital-only I think!