Author: Eneasz

I knew this would probably happen eventually, and now it has… the podcast project has altered how I read HPMoR. It’s much harder to get wrapped up in a chapter than it used to be. Before, I was in the world by sentence 2. Now I keep thinking “How am I going to phrase this? How will this sound? What sound effect should I insert here? Who all will I need to contact to do the voices? How long before they can get the recordings back to me?” It’s made it a little less enjoyable to read. I got past it eventually and finally lost myself in the story again (yay!), but it took me more than halfway through the chapter to do it.

On balance, I’m glad I started the podcast when I did. It’s led to a lot of other great things in my life, and I’m now 103 chapters closer to finishing it than I would have been if I’d waited until it was fully published to start. But there’s a tiny bit of regret mixed in, that now there’s this process working in my head, distracting me, putting a touch of distance between myself and this awesome fic. Can’t have everything, I guess. :)

But daaaaaaaaaaaamn am I excited to see the final arc!!!!!  So… hard… to… wait!!

If only I hadn’t bought this house, I would have enough extra time to keep doing the podcast *and* insert the new voices! :( I’m sorry to let everyone down. In the meantime, here is some other rationalist fiction which I wanted to put into audio format, only to discover that someone else had already beat me to it! Hopefully it will help cover some of the time that I’m not producing anything. All three are very good.

The Cambist and Lord Iron

The Secret Number

The Dragon Tyrant

And did I mention that I managed to get published? :) It’s not available in audio, but if you’re into reading text, I have written some down.

The audio medium has it’s advantages, but there are quite a few disadvantages as well. There are quite a few good posts (or “essays”) of Eliezer’s that I doubt I’ll ever podcast, because they contain illustrations or graphs which can’t be translated into audio. Even the ones that are translatable lose something. People who haven’t seen one in it’s original format probably don’t realize that they are often heavily inter-linked, to remind a reader of points made earlier. For example, this line from Fake Explanations contains a separate link for each word: “And as we all know by this point (I do hope)” It has led me on many a groovy multi-hour wikiwalk.

In unrelated news, I recently toured a local sports stadium as part of a corporate event. We got to see the press room, with fancy audio equipment! I posed with one of the microphones, putting on a “serious broadcaster” face. There’s nothing like photo-bombing coworkers to remind you not to put on airs. :)