Mark, We Are Okay

There's a lot of that going on, running low on an ammo, being chased by undead hordes, trying to survive.  Pretty much everything that's been going on with the Minions podcast; just trying to survive.  

Duck Sauce runs the server that hosts the episodes out of his home, but it crashed, then he fixed most of it but other stuff didn't get fixed.  Then his upstairs bathroom exploded into the kitchen below.  He's also a family man, so life doesn't pause so he can fix podcast issues.

He tried to clue Gyro in on the technical side of things, why he picked Gyro I will never know since both Americano and Mystery Meat work in the computer-go industry and neither are more than a foot from the latest technology at any given time.  T-Bone isn't in the industry but he does tech-stuff on the side as a hobby, so he would've been a better choice as well.  Gyro surfs the web and checks email, and up until recently, plays World of Warcraft, that's the extent of his tech-fu.  

What we need to do is just sit back, take a moment, sip some Bourbon, inventory, and start anew.  As with most things in life, with the new year weeks away, that may be the jumping on point.  Here's our action-item list:

• Gyro and Duck Sauce need to be in the same room with their computers
• Gyro needs to take notes on what steps to do to get an episode air-ready
• Duck Sauce needs to do whatever it is to get the podcast server limping along
• Episodes that need to be published need to be...published
• We need to figure out where we left off
• Get season four intro theme song from Spacejacker
• Start recording again, week night sessions, Around the Horn, whatevs

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!

Elf on Elf Action

Where are the heroes?  Where's the latest podcast?  All in due time my friends!  I must say, and with Duck Sauce's own admission, that at least two episodes are forthcoming due to "guilt" and "sloth".  Duck Sauce's own words, I swear, err more or less!

We just wrapped up episode 63 and it was an all-Elf party romping through the Rise of the Runelords adventure path for the Pathfinder RPG.

We also have the last episode of the Mass Effect story arc soon to be aired as well as the character creation/bull session of the aforementioned Pathfinder campaign. 

So not only have we not forgotten you, we've got a whole lot of episodes ready to unleash!  Until then, enjoy!

-Gyro