However: in a way, we did go somewhere. Away. Back in October, or so.
But now, we're setting up to start up Radio Free Grempire again.
We stopped doing that for a number of reasons--not the least of which was the format. It was far too specialised, which was limiting what we could do with it. That's changing now. The new RFG will be more of an Open Topic thing. Anything can--and probably will--happen.
Coincidentally, the Programme Director for FreeThought Radio EMailed me yesterday. It looks like he's moving to Denver now. So that has a bit of potential: we get a lot more things discussed IRL than over the phone or by EMail. We drink a lot more, too.
Whether RFG is going to have anything to do with FTR is still kinda negotiable. But there's a potential there. And upsides and downsides. One of the upsides is that FTR are setting up to play on Satellite. Which means that, depending on what the FCC have to say about a few things, RFG could end up on SatRadio sometime this year.
Again: it's a possibility; there's a lot to work out before we can announce something like that. Still, it might be kinda cool to be able to listen to RFG in your car. Particularly if it's on the next time you get pulled over >:)
FTR aside, RFG is nearly ready to return. The only thing really left to work out here is the location. Everything can be done with the laptop, so we can be anywhere at any time. Now we're just trying to work out whether broadcasting from a restaurant or a church or wherever is technologically viable. Background noise and stuff. I think it could work; maybe it will.
Which means that, now, I really just have to go drink too much with Clint and work out what sort of deal we're looking at with FTR. If we can come to some arrangement that everyone likes, we can do things that way; if not, the show will remain here in the Grempire.
The radio gig is kinda cool in general. Mostly because ninety-eight percent of Duhmericans are functionally illiterate. Personally, I kinda prefer writing this stuff out--you can do a lot more with punctuation and formatting than you can with speech. But, the majority of people out there are happier listening to inflexions than trying to sound out anything but the debilitatingly vernacular. These people can't even read for context anymore; there are too few words in a given paragragh that they can actually grok.
The Decline of the Western Civilisation. And we've got a nice seat in the front row.
One more thing: depending on what comes of RFG, it's likely to expunge Radio of the Stoopid. The original reason for RotS was to expose general idiocy, since RFG was specialised to the specific idiocy of theism. With RFG opening up to include whatever we like, whenever we like, wherever we like, RotS becomes kinda redundant.
So: by getting rid of RotS and dropping everything into RFG, we free up more time to focus on BotS [Broadcast of the Stoopid], which works for even more imbeciles than radio does. Which essentially means that we're rewarding people for being idiots now. Which isn't really a good thing; it's more of a profitable thing.
Then we just set up some sort of Moron of the Year contest as a writeoff. Or something like that.
Very loosely on the subject: we're still working out Subheroes here. I still haven't quite decided whether to do it as a cartoon or in CG. Each has its advantages. I'm starting to think more about CG though. Mostly because the show is set here in Denver anyway, and we can save a hell of a lot of time by literally filming the show, and dropping in the CG elements in postproduction.
The major downsides to CG are time. It takes a lot longer to build a CG character than it takes to draw one in Flash6; it also takes a lot longer to render the character in LightWave7 than it takes to compile a cartoon in Flash6. It might take less time to genetically engineer these characters and have them do what I tell them in front of the camera. But probably not.
I'll figure it out eventually.
Oh yeah. We've had a bunch of people ask whether the old RFG episodes will ever be released on CD. The answer is a solid Maybe.
Initially, we hadn't really considered that. Since we're just storing the archives at rfg.grem.tv anyway, it seemed kinda dumb to bother setting up CDs of the same stuff. But the reason people want these things makes a little bit of sense. There are still a few people--most of them amish, I think--who aren't online yet. So one reason to have CDs is to let them hear this stuff too. Also, since RFG isn't in .mp3, you can't just download the episodes directly to an .mp3 player. So it's all about portability. People want to listen to the show in the car, or wherever they can't take the desktop tower.
So, again: maybe. If we do CDs at all, we're more likely to do them for the new shows than the old ones. Mostly because the old ones are encoded directly into .ram, which kinda sucks. With the new ones, we're planning to record to MiniDisc and then translate that into something smaller than ten megabytes per minute for download; if we have a 600MB master, we can put that on CD [or MiniDisc, which I prefer all to hell] without losing whatever audio quality we start with. Although I'm not expecting too much of that if we're recording in restaurants and all.
This, for example, would be a bad time to record in a restaurant.
Fight! Fight! Yay: a couple of morons are screaming a bunch of vowels at each other. Man I hate ebonics.
Fights just aren't entertaining anymore. If you can't scream something articulate while getting all froggy at each other, then go away. I hate having to wonder what the fight was all about just because 'ooh a uhih ih, ooh uhih ih!' doesn't make any damned sense to members of chordata.
Which is not a racist comment, by the way. It's a mentalist comment. And I'm not sure whether you can really have a prejudice against an idiot; you kinda have to determine that an idiot is an idiot before disliking him over his idiocy.
I'm not racist anyway. Partly because homosapiens are a single race; to be truly racist, you'd have to hate any species but sapiens. Also, I look at people from a scientific perspective, and just wonder how certain traits evolved. For example: I'd like to know exactly when and how black male homosapiens evolved that Ernie Muppet laugh. I think it may have begun with Lou Gossett in Enemy Mine; it's hard to say.
See? Not racist: inquisitory. Big difference.
It's too bad I'm not a monority; then I could ask these questions without being a racist. I could ask why these crackers dress up as cowboys and things. No one would mind that at all.
Of course, I am a minority; I can read at a collegiate level. I'm just not one of those minorities that the majority get to consider inferior. That's the problem here.
You never hear that from a racist. You never hear 'all them geniuses are the same--readin' them big polysyllabic words and doing that thar quantum theory in they heads an' shit; wuzzup widdat!', or, better: 'I don't mind if they're smart in private; I just wish they'd act dumb in public, you know?'
Maybe I'll just stick to being totally apathetic. It's easier to be honest when you don't actually care how people react to reality.
More later....
--Gremlin
Update: 6.39 AM
So this is just ginchy.
For the last hour, since I got home, I've been trying really hard to connect to the damned server. Which hasn't got much of anything to do with the server, of course. Because connecting to the 'net at all is difficult too.
Let's see here....
Ah-hah: the problem may be telocity.com.
It would appear that these people might just happen to suck. Not that they're willing to admit that in so many words. Instead, I get this brainless and desperately inaccurate message from DirecTV about the DIRECTV DSL(tm) gateway, which is apparently fucked enough on their end that all they can really tell me about it is that they can't tell me much of anything about it; but it shouldn't affect my ability to use the internet.
As what, exactly? Something I wish I still had? Fond memories of a time before I installed the DirecTV virus on the laptop, thus guaranteeing that I had no chance in hell of ever getting online again?
I've actually asked Telocity about that.
Is there any reason to think that, eventually, you'll be getting the service for 65.186.201.54 - dsl-65-186-201-54.telocity.com to work for more than a few minutes at a time? Right now, we have rare bursts of 64K downloads, occasional bursts of 300bps downloads, and large spans of inabilities to connect to anything at all.
Eventually, once I was online enough to actually send the damned EMail and they'd got it, they replied:
Dear DIRECTV Broadband Customer:
You have reached an email box that is used for sales and information. Please help us serve you better by submitting your inquiry via the membership site at www.DIRECTVInternet.com You may also reach our Technical Support department by dialing 1.888.773.3349 and pressing option 3. They will be happy to assist you.
Sincerely,
Your Friends at DIRECTV Broadband, Inc.
Wasn't that nice of them? To tell me that they'd got my message, totally disregarded the fucking problem, and sent me the URL I can't get to because I can't stay online long enough to download it and the toll-free number where I can sit on hold for several hours before talking to a guy who couldn't find his ass with both hands and a roadmap whose idea of troubleshooting is seriously asking me whether the fucking gateway is connected to the computer? This is why I'm giving these fucktards fifty bucks a month: to receive EMails in which they admit that they don't fucking understand dick about the technology they're trying to control.
I guess I'll go back to trying to upload this so you can all see how fucking pleased I am with Telocity/DirecTV now....
--Gremlin
Update: 7.09 AM
Yay: I think I'm actually online again.
I'd tell you how pleased I am about that, but I want to get this uploaded before DirecTelocity notice that they've accidentally stopped sucking and cut me off again....
--Gremlin