Technical Difficulties: It's All Part of the Show

That is a HUGE spider!

Often we have joked about how here at Minions Headquarters it's not the polished, professional product most other "good" podcasts strive for.  We're down and dirty, record fast and loose, and in the end we hop there's a bit of a niche out there for putting you at the game table on your random game night, hanging out with your buddies, having a drink, and rolling some dice...all vicariously through the podcast itself.

Even with the admitted lack of professionalism, there's even standards that aren't good enough for us.  You see, we though that the "four channel" mode on the recorder was a good idea.  We figured, four channels has to be better than two channels, right?

Wrong.  When the Zoom H2 recorder is in four channel mode it automatically converts sound files to .WAV type files, recording MP3s (like we have always done) is impossible.  .WAV files are limited to a maximum of about three and a half hours after which it stops recording and technically starts a brand new file to pick up where the old one left off with "several tens of seconds of lost audio".  We are fairly certain that the last half dozen or so podcast episodes suffered from this problem causing some very severe "cliffhanger" moments in the actual play. 

The bad news is that almost all of these recent episodes are cut off at the end, losing up to thirty to forty-five minutes each.  One episode isn't cut off but that was because it was a short episode anyway.  The good news is that we figured this problem out before it got too out of hand and starting with episode #67, we should be back on track. 

I suppose there is a ghost of a chance that there are some "tail end" clips on the device we didn't think to look for where it rolled over, but we may have to just bite the bullet and count our losses.  So, whereas we may indeed play fast and loose, we still try to at least keep the technical side of things in the clear.  Sorry for the cliffhangers friends, we're now good to go!

Heavy Metal Action

Above's an "action" shot of episode 32's game, the Fiasco Heavy Metal edition. It gives you a sense of the high-tech recording techniques we use and what's going down in the center of the table we all sit around.

Rock on.

The ultimate gamer's tool

I saw this at Lowes, and realized it is the ultimate miniatures gamer's tool. Note the small fridge, built in XM-enabled stereo with mp3 player hookup, top display shelf with built-in LED lighting, and tons of rubber-lined shelves for miniatures and gamers. It has sturdy construction, rolls, and can hold several hundred pounds of miniatures.

The only drawback is the $1800 price tag.