The first and last letter of mine to ever be read on RFN involved the accusation of me recreating my manhood in pictochat to lure an unsuspecting female. I am pleased with my legacy.

Here is a picture of the Gulf War Gameboy:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/33/45214051_48ee39c14f.jpg

graybrick is blue now.  It's weirding me out.

You could always make me grey, note the proper English spelling.

-I would totally buy Dark Side of the Endless Ocean, I don't think that Floyd LP has left my record player in over a year.

Nuts, Jonny's out this week. I was hoping he'd be out next week for 203.

Then we could get Karl and Stan back on.

I thought about it when he told us he would be out.

I was relieved.

Is my IPhone stupid or are the chapter pictures and breaks missing from the last 2 episodes? If they just aren't being done anymore I’m formally complaining. The pictures make it more distracting on my crappy Monday mornings at work. The chapter breaks let me and my friend discuss the episode better and more clearly. And I already commented on ITunes that I love the editing and I consider this part of the editing process.
I still love the show keep it up.

The chapter art and breaks are still being made, however what's happening currently is that the enhanced AAC file is going out a little while later (so far it's been under 24 hours)--if you download 200 or 201 now, you'll find they have the chapters as normal.

This disruption is due to the fact that the method we non-Mac users have been using to create the enhanced AAC file for the past two and a half years was discovered to be incompatible with iOS4 (people couldn't stream the file on devices using it), so now the enhanced file has to wait until a Mac user on staff (great thanks to Andy) can create it using my instructions. Obviously I don't want this to delay the episode being posted for everyone, so for now we have this unfortunate lag.

Clearly this isn't ideal and we're looking into ways we can eradicate this problem going forward (Apple tech support have been of no help so far), but to be clear you can still get the enhanced version of the most recent episodes after iOS4 hit. 

Clearly the remedy here is for Greg to buy a Mac.

One of us. One of us. One of us.

As the point man on the iOS4 recovery unit I can expand on what Greg is discussing.

My exchanges have gone as follows:

"Hello, my name is James Jones. I am part of a podcast (iTunes listed) that has, until recently, been providing an enhanced AAC feed for our listeners. However, our listeners reported that after upgrading to iOS4 they were unable to stream the file. Because we use PCs we are unable to use an Apple product for this task, and have instead been using the tool Slide Show Assembler. This had not been an issue for the prior 2.5 years, but now is an issue.

Our listeners like the additional content we provide them in the enhanced feed. Any help you can offer would be appreciated."

"Slide-show Assembler is not an Apple product. Please contact the creator with all questions."

"Dear sir/madam,
The AAC and enhanced AAC are both Apple creations. As is the iOS4. Clearly if SSA worked prior to iOS4 then SSA was creating valid AAC files. I simply want to know if something in iOS4 was changed with respect to this."

"Podcasts created using Garageband are working under iOS4."

"Well that's great for you. Enjoy your antennas."


I don't do well with tech support.

And people complain about governments investigating Apple for antitrust violations...

Sounds like Super Stardust HD is quite different from regular Super Stardust, for example regular SSD had 5 weapons IIRC, one for each world.

I'm not seeing James' supposed blog entry regarding his thoughts on Mirror's Edge.  Was that just something he intended to put up when you recorded this episode?

No, it's currently hidden, since I'm unhappy with it but cannot discern what I dislike and how best to fix it. Jon got confused because staff members can see it ("it's rambling" "Thanks Jon") and it looks no different than stuff that is visible to the site viewership at large. On the old site hidden content was denoted more clearly.

I protested its inclusion in the Now Playing segment during recording but I guess Greg "Scissorhands" Leahy removed my objections.

James' your memory is deceiving you here somewhat--your discussion about the blog not being visible yet was not recorded for me to "remove" any "objections" (I assume you're not charging me with travelling back in time and somehow erasing your words from the space time continuum), and secondly the last thing you said about the blog before we recorded the segment was that you were likely to make it visible between then and the episode's post date.

I'm not sure if this is entirely true.  Those files don't work as well (or sometimes, at all) on several Windows-based AAC players either.  The previous iOS player might have been more lenient to badly-constructed files.

Greg, I probably did. I teetered on the issue for a bit. I don't remember which option became the final decision, so I'll assume you're correct. Suffice to say, that blog post ready for human consumption at this moment. It's a wordy, a bit wayward, wall of text. Jon also totally misrepresented the post's nature, but it isn't his fault. Too many big words.

Aaron, I've never had any trouble playing the AAC files SSA creates, nor can I recall any specific instances of similar concerns. Be that as it may, I cannot understand why they would have locked down the file type for the latest iteration of their OS unless they deemed the previous methodology to be a security risk, at which point you would think they would have released a patch to previous versions as well. As far as I know only two programs in existence can create the damn things as it is.

Do the GarageBand-created files with slideshows still work?  It might not be something intentionally broken, just something that SSA wasn't doing quite the same and Apple didn't test.

Most professional podcasts are made on Garageband, so I would guess that they work.

It seems SSA is currently a suspended project; the author noted back in 2008 that "by now I have to guess others have figured out what it takes to enhance podcasts." Nope.

There is a pay product, ProfCast, that I'm going to start exploring. However it's $60 and it's completely possible it A) doesn't work well or B) has the same issue.

How about:

Chapter and Verse (Free): http://lodensoftware.com/chapter-and-verse/
Chapter Master ($15 Shareware): http://rightwordsoft.com/products/chaptermaster/default.php

Ha ha! More toys!

Inside Baseballcast.

There's also http://id3v2-chap-tool.sourceforge.net/ and others http://www.id3.org/Implementations for making chapters in MP3 files.

You are aware that Greg is a heterosexual man. Why on earth would he get a mac unless he was attracted to the same sex? Silly questions needs silly responses. A mac? Ha!

By the way, can we still submit DS stories?

OH NO!

And I guess if you want to submit them and hide the DS story as a question...

Gay jokes, really? Okay.

Anyway, Apple Customer Service has a pretty bad record when it comes to dealing with Windows-related issues. They're great for OS X, but there's no denying that air of pretentiousness. It might be worth it to just go about things in another way.

Thanks guys! I guess I didn't need that whole self-conscious preamble to the story I submitted. I'm glad you guys liked it. Personally, I think it would be awesome if you did a podcast dramatization of it.

I'm considering what I'm going to do with King of Clubs. I hadn't really thought about it. Do I dare put it on display with my other games, and risk it infecting them? Also James, PM me about sending it, if you're just gonna put it in the mail or whatever.

If Jonny's out this week, then maybe the episodes go 103, 202, 301? At least then it's palindromic. Karl's probably right though, spontaneity is what made it funny.

Dude, That's funny! You have no sense of humor, but then again, I think that's the reason I didn't win the contest. It seemed I "offended" people with my story.

Is it just me or The Drunkcast story is not all that shocking. I listened to it two times and all I did was shrug. Maybe it's just me.

Yeah, Neal told me and Andy, and I don't understand why Jonny or Greg or whoever didn't want it aired. I did, however, get to make a hilarious DIY game based on the story, though.

All I got from the story is that Jonny is sort of awkward with girls. :confused;

Yeah, I told them that by holding it back, they were building it up too much. It's a funny story, but the way they were making it seem, you'd think Jonny and I got into a knife fight while Lindy, Sklens, and Neal shot pistols into the air.

I'm not really sure why they decided to not air it for everyone, either. We tell WAY worse stories on Rough Draught.

Also, for the record, it's not that Jonny is awkward with girls, it's that we were all pretty hammered. It's hard to be smooth when you're rocking a drunkard's limp.

You're right, I'm having trouble editing my post and even singing in, but I understand the site is under construction. I was going to edit and put in that he was drunk. Also, I agree they hyped it up too much. It's good, but it would have been a better impact if it was left in the original podcast.

It's funny how my story was the complete opposite. Let's just say it involves an act every man does.

PAX East Circle-Jerk set to chiptunes?

I was just embarrassed for them all. Not Jon, he has no shame, but the rest of them certainly.

Sadly, there will be no PAX Prime grappling. We were turned down (again!).

Dude, I was reading The Village Voice (I believe) a couple of years ago, and it told a story on a group of soldiers in the Iraq war who was so bored they had a circle jerk.

o_o

Another  podcast?

They're just some West coast haters...

Yeah, Sklens and I (among others) do a monthly beer-tasting podcast called Rough Draught. There's a segment called Tales of Drunkenness where we tell embarrassing drinking stories. On the most recent episode, Mike and I actually told the drunkcast story (as well as another, unrelated story). You can find it over at Crosstawk.com.

*twitch*

Hyping up the story and holding it back was all part of the fun. Of course it wasn't really "too shocking" to air, but if there hadn't been any mystery or anticipation surrounding it, we wouldn't have got some of the really amusing and creative stories that we did--obviously it would have been nice to receive a few more entries, but the ones we did get made it worthwhile.

The only reason why I didn't include the story in an episode for everyone is because I set up the contest rules to incentivise listeners to exercise their creativity in an amusing way, and then I had to follow through on those rules (like the Joker I'm a man of my word, but when it comes to winning a prize like King of Clubs I'm afraid we have to live in a world with rules).

Well congrats to Bboy for winning the contest! As for what to do when you get the game, surely there's nothing for it other than to take your balls and go home! I have to say I was expecting there to be dramatic readings of the winning entry at least, but I'm guessing some of the stories were quite lengthy? Still Bboy if you wanted to you I'm sure it'd be ok for you to post your story on here for all to admire. I agree that the drunkcast was somewhat tamer than I had been led to expect but it still managed to be plenty better than the inoffensive story I sent in! Clearly I don't possess the dirtiest mind in the forums by a long shot. All this Victorian erotica I have lying around at the moment is clearly not having the effect I thought it would...

Bboy, I am looking at your copy of King of Clubs right now.  I dug it out of the concrete bunker this afternoon and have begun to disinfect the game.  You should probably go ahead and move now, because I'll be mailing it tomorrow and your home will never be safe again once it arrives.

I think my Wii is worried that it's in the same room as this game yet again.  I know I am.

Does it still smell like paint thinner? Or was that just Miami Nights?

I dare not sniff this game.  It is unclean.

Were you guys really surprised at the low turnout? Even the WSR contest was won by a handful of votes and that was on the front page for weeks.

Given that it was for King of Clubs, in a word: "no"

I think back when we announced the contest I protested revealing the prize.

Hey, if you're going out, go out on top, right?

That has to be double entendre.

I'm more concerned for the poor mail workers.

Do people want me to post the story? It probably ruins all chances of a reenactment then.

Hold off for a bit. I have plans.

*Dun Dun DUUUUUN*

It was one of those cases where it seemed funnier to censor it than to include it. I don't particularly care if people hear the story, but at this point, the denial is a joke with momentum.

For the record, I AM quite awkward with girls, but my behavior that night was more due to the vodka than my typical nature.