Author: Eneasz

Every day I will repeat to myself: Any time you see a “ch” in a word you haven’t heard someone pronounce IRL, it is ALWAYS pronounced like a hard ‘k’. Grrrrr.

I wasn’t sure about doing Religion’s Claim To Be Non-Disprovable. Religion isn’t really a big deal in Rationalist circles, it’s basically a solved problem and no one much bothers with it anymore. Why resurrect it now? Well, I still love the Story Of The First Experiment In History. Massive fun! :) But more to the point, as Scott Alexander wrote, “I re-read the Sequences”, they tell me, “and everything in them seems so obvious. But I have this intense memory of considering them revelatory at the time.”  I also find this to be the case. And I have a memory of this post being awesome when I read it, so I will trust that this continues to be the case for first-time readers/listeners.

An Alien God is, of course, a foundational classic. Azathoth has become standard terminology, it’s been expanded on over the years, and the original post still sends shivers down my spine. I hope I did it justice.

I just wanted to say that the Welcome to Night Vale live show was fantastic! It’s too late for those of us in the US, but the lucky listeners in Europe still have a chance to see it.

Great story, funny as hell, and touching on the nature of what it is to be a sapient being destined to die. So basically all the best things WTNV delivers so well. Getting to see the actors actually acting out their lines was great, and added quite a bit to it. There was good audience participation, as well a going meta, although I won’t give away any spoilers here. Seriously, one of the best things I’ve done all year.

Also, I went with the voices of Voldemort and Lily. Neither tried to kill each other, and they had a good time! If Welcome To Night Vale can bring those two together in a spirit of friendship, obviously there is nothing it can’t do.

I wasn’t kidding about loving this story, I’ve blogged about it before. Although to be fair, I’ve loved every story I’ve ever podcast. It’s one of the advantages of having your own podcast. :)

You may be wondering why the next episode in two weeks isn’t going to be chapter 102 of HPMoR, seeing as the text will be released July 25^th. The answer is “production schedules.” I like to always be a full episode ahead of what’s airing, to cover for any sudden unexpected life events. This has saved me from missing an episode release on more than one occasion. As I’m typing this on 7/22, the next episode (airing 8/6) is already be complete. Normally I would already be working on the 8/20 episode. Production begins nearly a month before an episode is due to air. As such, I do not have enough time to get chapter 102 recorded and produced in time for the next episode on 8/6. Especially if there’s going to be voices other than mine in it, which nowadays is almost assured.

Technically this isn’t completely true – if I wanted to sacrifice a number of other projects I could probably get it done in time. But I’m still working on renovating the new house, and every day that isn’t done is extremely expensive, and I don’t want to kill myself. So next episode is essays, and Ch 102 will air 8/20. :)

I’m still mega-busy, so brief production notes today.

(And if you’re wondering why, I purchased a house. I got a steep discount due to the fact that the previous owner had smoked in it for 20+ years. Figured some cleaning, some painting, new carpets, shouldn’t take THAT long. But everything is a bit longer than I thought, and more importantly – new things I didn’t anticipate keep cropping up. DAMN YOU, PLANNING FALLACY! /shakes fist So this project has kinda taken over my entire life.)

Things I Thought Were Annoying: Having to re-record every single line with the name “Lachlan” in it in the first episode, because I found out I had mispronounced it a few days before it went live, and then having to splice them all in. /grumble

Things I Found Out Are ACTUALLY Annoying: Having to re-record the entire friggin’ second episosde because when I was done recording it the first time I clicked “Save” and my computer thought it would rather hard-crash than save. /killmenow

Things I Was Surprised By: When trying to make the water sound-effects go from above-surface to below-surface I wasn’t sure what to do and started playing around with the effects options. Almost the first thing I tried worked (literally – it was the second thing I tried). An extremely simple low-pass filter gives you that trademark Murky Underwater sound. Which immediately made me suspicious. Maybe being underwater sounds like that *because*it’s an easy effect to do, so it’s used a lot, and we associate that sound with being underwater. Does being underwater actually sound like that IRL? Now I have to go a swimming pool and test. It’s entirely possible that water acts as a great low-pass filter IRL, but I got my suspicious-eyes on you, Hollywood!