All the episodes from here are now live in your normal feeds.
Give the new set up a test spin and see how well it works under load!
Thanks for all your donations and patience during this awkward time.
And thanks to Evo, Chris Miller, and all the people working hard behind the scenes who don’t get enough credit for their roles in helping to give people like me a place to put our works.
Great news!
Testing now Epsiode 22 downloaded OK.
Thank you Nathan,
Just updated my feeds and made a donation.
Keep up the excelent work.
Will you post something here when the episode goes up so we know if Podiobooks is working? (I know you probably tweet it, but I don’t do twitter. I’m a 23 year old tech curmudgeon. My phone even makes a ringing sound when it rings). I’m hoping you;ll make that morning release, because Thursday is a No Good Very Bad Day in which I leave my house at 7 am and don’t get home until 10 pm and spend the interim alternating between class and sitting in the library waiting for class and a new episode would make it all better :)
I just replaced all those non-QC ‘bridge’ episodes that Nathan used to try and bring his hosting service to its knees as well. Downloads went smoothly, all looks good from here.
All the stuff I had here is now at podiobooks. The next epi – 25 – will go into their stack sometime this afternoon for an evening release. I’m trying to get it done before my checkup this moring, but the day has been a bit disjointed so it doesn’t bode well.
Fine, don’t ruin your health to make the update. See if we care about your health…what? You say if he keels over we never find out how the stories end? Nate old pal, take care of your health and take any time you need to stay healthy for six more episodes. After the ending we may or may not be concerned about your health, no pressure. ;)
Downloaded 19 forward to 24 at Podiobooks, all downloaded good.
@Jamming – Speak for yourself about concern for his health! He’s still got Cape Grace to write, and more Ravenwood, and who knows what else?????
@Jamey – Fine, take the long view. I’ll stick with the immortal words of Freddy Mercury, “I want it all and I want it now.”
First his Daughter’s Band, then going to the Doctor, and then what’s next “Sleeping”???
Nate, aside from Evo’s podiobooks.com specific tags is there any difference for the listener between the files you loaded here and the ones in the feed?
I don’t want to re-download if I don’t have to… save on server load.
Normally I take the files as they come off the feed and change some of their settings in itunes so each ep reads to my ipod touch as an audiobook. this way it does better at keeping my place and I can keep everything around to re-listen without having to re-download.
Thanks for posting here in the interim! Now that podiobooks is back, I downloaded their versions of the latest episodes, no problems. Then to ease my conscious, I donated to your latest book.
Nathan, I was also looking to buy your latest book Half Share. Do you know if it will become available on amazon.ca? Otherwise I may just have to pay the postal charges from the US to get it.
Just made a donation. And I will be getting the print paperbacks at some point. Keep up the good work Nathan! Don’t burn yourself out just to keep your addicts satisfied. You have us pretty much hooked so we can wait for a few days. Just will have to deal with the shakes for a bit. :D
@katie – i would have *assumed* it would be available in amazon.ca eventually. Shipping from Ridan to Canada is about $US5 and you can get an autographed copy if you like.
@josh – thanks
@roz – no, i’ll be putting the books on Podiobooks from here on.
@laith – no they’re the exact same files. It’s just that now they’ve passed QC. I was worried that I’d botched something and Evo didn’t have time to check them. He’s checked them now. They passed and I didn’t have to reload any of them. You’re good.
@jamming – no, sleeping is probably not happening. the appointment is a routine check up for my arthritis (I hope).
@Laith Any chance you could tell the computer illiterate among us how to do that? Having them saved as audiobooks would be really convenient, and I had also put some audiobooks on my computer from CD and they got stuck in music.
@be”etlh I’ve done that for most of my favorite podcasts. Is fairly simple. (it’s the same in almost all Players)
First you find the file you want to change
Right click
in itunes it’s Get info or edit info in most others.
In Itunes click on second tab. edit to hearts delight
now the tricky part is that you have to change the Genre. most players will have audiobook(s ) as a choice or add it your self.
if you change the the album name to the title of the BOOK it will then place all the files you edit to that folder.
once you’ve done that you can select all the files or do it one at a time. and it’ll be done.
@Norman728 That I can do, but even though I found the control for changing, say, music or a podcast to a book (type of media) after I change it nothing happens, and if I go in again it hasn’t changed.
@Jamming – You crack me up, man. Keep it up. I do enjoy reading your comments.
@Nate – You take care of yourself. And don’t *twitch* mind us addicts. *twitch*twitch* We’ll be okay… Most of us should survive a few more hours before our next fix.
On changing file tags, I’ve found a nice freeware utility that does the job well when I have to do sweeping modifications to a directory called Hanso Tagger. Any google or bing should get you a link.
Thank you for supporting Podiobooks Nate, and for keeping your rabid readers updated during the outage.
To those who haven’t yet donated, please donate to Nate and/or Podiobooks directly. The idea that we’re getting something “free” is nice, but these people need help keeping the lights on and the service running. A labor of love can only carry that so far, and beyond that money is needed.
Personally, the first thing I did upon finishing through Captain’s Share was to send a donation to Nate, and also begin purchasing kindle copies of the books as they are released. As soon as Podiobooks put up its donation plea I sent even more money off.
In other news, last night as I was making some popcorn (Ye Old School Jiffy Pop in a tin pan style) before sitting down to listen to episode 24… Well, I had a flaming tray of bacon style incident. The foil for the popcorn bulb blew out on one side with a loud bang and popcorn blew out everywhere. Outside of being startled by it I just quickly pulled the pan away from the flame, which spilled more popcorn down onto the stove, and as I turned the gas off the popcorn burst into flames in a big long stream starting at the stove and down along the counter as it spread from popped kernel to popped kernel.
I think that’s the first time I’ve literally burned popcorn. It took a good hour to get the smell out of the house once the flames were out.
@JasonR – you know what that will do to the scrubbers :)
@ Nate,
Be sure to bring along plenty of elephant repellent. :D
@JasonR – Did your Smoke Alarm go off? If not replace the batteries or buy one. Believe me the only thing that saved a friend of mine and his pets was the Smoke Alarm. Luckily his wife and daughter were at a Girl Scout Weekend Campout. I would hate for the world to lose someone with obvious good taste in literature.
;)
@Griffyn – Will do, say hello to Ringo for me at Ravencon, tell him he’s almost as good as Nate. ;)
@norman728 Or get mp3bookhelper and change all the tags at once. It’s available at sourceforge. Been using it for mass tag changes for a couple of years now. Easy and best of all, open source and freeware. Donate a couple of books for further development.
I hadn’t realized Half-Share was available in physical form yet. Purchased!
@Jamming – Ringo’s fun, I’m glad we’re having him back. My current personal mission on staff is to get Mr. Lowell on the guest list, for 2012 only because I think it’s already too late for this year.
@JasonR – What Jamming says is true. I have an extra-sensitive smoke alarm that goes off at the slightest provocation and I like it that way. Early warning systems are your friend.
And I agree on putting your money where your heart is, I’ve just picked up both books on kindle for the strict purpose of loaning them out so that more people will come and donate/buy. The kindle system is nice in that you can now loan a book out for 2 weeks and be sure of getting it back to loan out again. A flaw to print books, can’t tell you how many copies of Silverlock I’ve gone through over the past 20 years.
@Jamming & Griffyn – Nope, no fire alarm set off. I have 3 different fire alarms in my home, one of which is tied directly to the alarm system. I really don’t want any of them going off hap-hazardly. Years ago in my first home I had one that was hard-wired into the house and it started chirping, and chirping, and chirping. I replaced the battery, I looked everywhere for smoke, I opened all the windows… And it would go off, and then be quiet for an hour or two. Eventually in a sleep deprived rage I took a baseball bat to the offending unit. You see, the house had 4 such units all wired up, and I could move them around in place of each other. I had taken it out and moved it to a different location in the home and it was still the only one going off.
It was only the next day that I learned that you should periodically vacuum/air-dust your fire alarms.
In this case I had the fire out in under 30 seconds. Now to see about getting the scorch marks off of the counter top. :)
Excellent news!
Any update on the hard cover HS?
@beâ€etlh
@Norman728
What I change is the genre to Audiobook and in the Options tab set the Media Kind to Audiobook. if it is giving Book as an option don’t use it I think that is intended for PDF and EPUB files for iBooks
I have noticed in the past that if you don’t change the genre it will hang around in podcasts (and maybe reset the media type)
I’m also subscribed to the feeds from the Funny Music Project http://thefump.com and change good songs from there from podcast to comedy and podcast to music so I can keep them around.
it used to be trickier but Apple made some improvements in the newer iTunes…
now to wait and get home and dl ep 25 when it drops… :)
@JasonR – ‘Kay your life, your choices. Try that Comet Soft Cleanser Cream, no-scratch particles instead of the abrasives in normal Comet to get rid of the burn marks. Unless it compromised the surface then you can use regular Comet or you might want to order a new stovetop surface if it needs replacement, as it will be a problem to clean. I had to help my friend clean up parts of his house after the cleaner service got most of it.
@laith I’ve noticed that too That’s why I mentioned changing the genre.
@be”th if you switch it to music it should work. but Genre Is most Important as most media Players will List Genre and type as Podcast you have to change both. also if you i tunes it gets weirded as if you don’t check off each track(ie: 1/12 and so on) and you click compilation it can screw up.
Twenty-five, twenty-five, twenty-five!
not sure why it doesn’t show up yet, but I already got my listen in for 25. If you go directly to the file it should be there. http://media.podiobooks.com/ownersshare/PB-OwnersShare-25.mp3
I want another one just like the other one!
@Sean Twenty-five, twenty-five, twenty-five! Twenty-five, twenty-five, twenty-five! Twenty-five, twenty-five, twenty-five!
I want to give Podiobooks a real test drrve!!!
it’s in qc review – Evo will release it later tonight if I haven’t screwed it up.
Excellent! Thank you, Osman!
Nathan, I’ve been meaning to ask. You list that you served in the USCG. Commissioned? Enlisted? Rating?
Oh… and… Twenty six! Twenty six! Twenty six! :)
@Jamming – Believe me, I know the smoke detector works as my wife set it off a few weeks back making bacon. (Literally, not figuratively mind you…) We have multiple fire extinguishers in the home. I’m all Eagle Scout prepared.
@Osman, Nate asked us not to download the files from a link like you just posted. It could mess up things. — Please do not post any more links like that. — We all enjoy the audio books too much to have more problems! — Thanks Nate for all your hard work!
I have read paper books for over 55 years and now can not read them. My eyes are too tired. Thank you for making it possible for me to hear the books.
Thanks,
Sandy Crawford
@Osman Thanks!!
Yup. Direct links like that can do weird file locking things. Don’t ask why its just something that has been learned the hard way by the podiobooks staff over the years. Best not to.
@sean – enlisted – Radioman 2nd Class when I got out back in ’75.
@sandy – we try :)
Thanks for posting your awsome work for us here on your website while podiobooks was down and for everything youve done for us i know we all appreciate it. Also of course itunes is back up to and up do date so for anyone with itunes we are good.
what branch were you in nate? i am a marine and i was enlisted but a little more recently… anyway 75 was vietnam conflict? Did you have to serve over there or did you have another location that you served. Well it always nice to meet another brother who served and i say that to all out there who have thank you.
Dang! Lost a bet with myself; I figured subsistence specialist. Oh, well. Good thing I don’t trust myself. The bet was that the loser had to buy a signed hard copy when available…
WRT direct links to files, it depends on how the system is configured. FTP usually has a higher que priority than other server software so it becomes possible that it grabs a file in mid stream, so to speak, causing a fault. Faults tend to accumulate as hung threads, each of which consumes resources. Eventually… Poof.
Of course, some operating systems are more stable than others.
Imagine if a solar clipper ran a Windows system. Ish would be rebooting his ship every time he turned around!
@Sean – It’s actually more likely a NFS share problem. I’ve seen that one occur from time to time.
Donation done! Told you, did’nt I sar. Thanks for a marvelous adventure.
On another note, I think this little incident will have shown peoples that Podiobooks.com is not a free endeavor for Evo and that donations are really important. Kind of a wake-up call. That’s good for everyone, podiobooks, the authors and us listeners too. Yes, awaiting 26, 26, 26!!!
@Jamey – could be. I’m not sure what they are running for server apps or OS. The important part is that file sharing apps don’t always play well together… So end running the intended path can be a ‘bad thing.’ I once had an interesting file server conflict between an Apache system and a RealNetworks server. Any time someone asked for a stream it kicked the Apache software in the face. The system would recover, but wound up with a hanging thread. After a while the hung processes ate enough system resources to create havoc.
I guess no matter what universe, once you start dealing with shares things get interesting!
Yeah… From what I got from Evo, they are running Apache. And there was some problem too with disk failure. I was one of the ones that encouraged Evo to put up a link to garner donations for updating Podiobooks. Good hardware and bandwidth are NOT free.
Come to think of it, I think I owe Nate again as well. I donated after I finished Full Share two weeks ago, but I think for all the enjoyment I have gotten out of this story I really need to contribute again. I really cannot express how much I have enjoyed your stories Nate! Cheap at twice the price doesn’t begin to cover it…
I honestly don’t know what I will do when Owner’s Share is done. I want more. I do.
I should have known Nate served on vessels; from someone who has spent some time sailing large wooden vessels, you pegged watch standing, the watch merry-go-round and the rest of shipboard life very well!
BTW, how is it that everyone on the ships doesn’t weight 300lbs? I mean the way they eat? Three full-serving meals a day and then most all the work involves sitting watches and other such sedantary behavior? I want some of whatever it is they got to let them eat so unconcernedly!
Oh, and where to I get some of those special edition, hardcover versions of the book written in red? *grin*
Welp, I done searched Podiobooks for “Owner’s Share” and thar be none!
=
@ delbert
Try this link:
http://www.podiobooks.com/title/owners-share
Happy reading. :-)
Twenty SIX, twenty SIX, twenty SIX!
:)
Twenty Seven, Twenty Seven, Twenty Seven! :)
I think the traveler is a member of the crew. :)
@scotts Nate indicated who the Traveler is; the article ended “it’s a small universe”, the same phrase used by Mr. Tharpe when he debarked the ship. Add that to Mr. Tharpe’s excellent handling of grav trunks, the clear sign of a very experienced traveler indeed!