The Agrinautica

I was interviewed the other day for Ben's Bees. He had interviewed me once before for his podcast a few months ago, but this time we did it "via zoom" (actually some other program) broadcast live onto the youtube!

   I have posted another episode of the podcast! This one explains the current Ethiopian civil war in Tigray and tells some stories of my time in Tigray in better times.

Ethiopia Episode II



   Today we continued cutting back the blackberry brambles by the river. Myself and two other regular volunteers have come to be referred to as "the three musketeers of the blackberries" (: Today we were also assisted by a a four person conservation crew that apparently roves around the region.

   But we had an exciting development today, we seem to have inadvertently conducted a bit of archaeology! As we cut back the impenetrable brambles the pilings of an old bridge emerged. None of the current old lifelong residents of the town have any recollection of their having ever been a bridge there, but our wee little village is complete with a historical society so hopefully they can find some record.



   After cutting blackberries until noon, we three musketeers had been encouraged to stop by the golf clubhouse for pizza. It was apparently the christmas party of the local golf club (is that what you call a club for playing golf? It sounds like an obvious pun). I was a bit self conscious at first because I'm not golfer, but they made us blackberriers feel welcome and noted that since the blackberries we've been eradicating border on the golf course we've been contributing, and everyone was very friendly, so it ended up being enjoyable. I love the community of my little village. (:



   Now in other news, why does the FBI have to be like this? Recall I posted a bit ago about what I had to go through to get fingerprinted here to send them to the FBI to get a background check for my visa. Well the FBI received them and I got this email. Why do they have to make it like a gosh darn exploding message?? And because my computer crashes about once an hour I'm terrified to access it on my computer and have it crash before I can save their secret message. So I actually dusted off and booted up my OLD laptop that I had replaced with this one. It's really slow and half the keys on the keyboard don't work, but I can get around the latter by using an external keyboard. So I managed to try to go to the FBI site on that computer, only to find a message there that my records might not be available for 12 more hours. I am really lucky I used the old computer though because my newer computer did in fact crash in the next minute or two of usage. So anyway tomorrow morning I'll try again, once again with the older more dependable computer. But seriously why do they have to make my life difficult with this dire you-can-only-look-once thing???

   I have finally, after a two year delay, posted the third episode of my podcast about my projects in Africa! The three thus far are all right on about 20 minutes long and are all about Nigeria, though I think I have now concluded the Nigeria arc.

   After a certain amount of time had passed it became harder to update because I felt I had to relearn how to do it, but I'm hoping that now that I've relearned it again and having more time on my hands now I might be able to keep up the originally intended monthly update schedule now.

   Incidentally when I wrote my script and read it to myself for time it was about nine minutes. And I was like oh no, the target is more like twenty minutes, like the others! But then I realized it was actually already longer than the others (in terms of length of written script), and sure enough, when I read it for recording, which apparently I actually do more at ease and conversationally than reading it to myself, it was right on twenty minutes.

   I also submitted to itunes podcasts so when they gets approved it might be available on itunes *like a real podcast!*

   I'm thinking maybe this weekend I'll see if I can wrap my brain around some very simple audio +slideshow = youtube video, to put the podcast on youtube accompanied by pictures pertinent to whats being discussed.



   Nigeria Episode III

   I am already rather thinking of tackling Ethiopia next, which would make sense because it was the second country in Africa I went to anyway, but also there's heaps to say about it. Though I was thinking a little bit to skip around to the ever popular story of Cristina and I on our mad dash around the Caribbean. I'm currently having fun writing a little series for the local newsletter about my travels and for them I started with the two part Caribbean adventure, then did Nigeria, and I think I'll do Kyrgyzstan next just to keep jumping around.


   And the ever continuing covidia case count, recall in last post on the 10th it was "1,293 active cases in Australia." Well today it is 2,448 currently active cases, mostly in Melbourne.

So of course after putting a heap of effort into making that podcast (Nigeria #1 - Arrivals and First Impressions) I'm not sure anyone listened to it except the two or three close friends I guilted into listening to it to give me feedback. So much for going immediately viral hey. BUT hey podcastery is a nearly completely foreign media to me (I only listen to This American Life and that by irregularly going directly to their website at random intervals when I'm doing menial work at work and realize there's probably an update in the weeks since I last checked) so I have yet to figure out how to be properly.. poddy trained? ahaha.

I asked my one friend who does regularly like every day listen to podcasts where she gets them and she said castbox.fm, which immediately became in my head and will henceforth be referred to as catbox (to be used once your cat has been poddy trained??). So I uploaded my podcast there. I have thus far not even been able to get that friend (Billie) to listen to it ::sigh::

I've learned to go back and delete my "umm"s and awkward pauses, and even go back and insert something recorded at a different time into the middle of an audio file, so that was an achievement. On the minus side, both the sites I've uploaded to don't seem to allow me to replace the audio file that's been already uploaded, so I can't do what I do with livejournal which is usually continue to come back to entries and tweak parts that are bothering me. If you actually listen to my episode that is up, I say it's "Episode II" but clearly it is Episode I. I was thinking of the intro as Episode I when I said that but it's not worth fixing. Also I'm not super happy with the part where I repeat myself about Nigerians being proud of being business owners but also it's proved too tedious to replace that bit.

Part of why I'm into this project is learning to dabble in another form of media as well as gain a better understanding of the podcastsphere, so at least I'm achieving those goals if not actually getting listened to myself.

I searched both podcast sites (Catbox and SoundCloud) for other travelogues to you know evaluate the competition / see how they are faring ... and so far have found hardly any at all and those I have found seem dreadfully dull. Hey my first episode has multiple bombs going off, car crashes, a plane crash, inexplicable pirate ships, and a cliffhanger. Hmm actually maybe I should replace my current bland summary of "first impressions of Africa" with that sentence I just wrote. See this is why I like blogging, it helps me sort things out since apparently I have no internal monologue other than this.

Anyway I was going to post the script of the entry here since you are, after all, a bunch of livejournalists who might not be expected to change your habits to listen to a podcast anyway. And I had the script all written and ready to go .... except my computer decided to reset itself to install updates and dumped everything I hadn't saved, which was a lot of things since I pretty much never intentionally shut down my computer unless its for travel and all too often neglect to save things. I do have the first draft of the script and I'll try to make some quick changes of the major things I changed but if you want the "final" version you're a gonna have to listen to the podcast. ;) I know I know its a bother to sit and listen to something for twenty minutes while you're sitting at a computer but the key is to cue it up and listen to it while you're out chopping wood in your flannel and beard or in the kitchen chopping carrots (best trade out the axe), or driving to work with your flannel tie on (with cute little axe shaped tie clip??).

( Episode I - Arriving in Nigeria - Transcript )

   Now pretend for a moment I wasn't going on about my honey label last post and tell me which of these labels is best?


   In related news, normally I host my pictures on flickr but I was forced to actually use livejournal's own hosting because earlier today Flickr was acquired by some entity no one has ever heard of before (hugmug, or smugmug, or mugthug or something?) and very ominiously oh look now Flickr is quite entirely down. ):


   And in other other news, I made a podcast! Sort of. It's only seven minutes, where I think a podcast ought to be more like 20-30 minutes but hey I just wanted to get something up that's not too long and see how it does. I'm annowed because soundcloud automatically named my url "https://soundcloud.com/kris-fricke/," whereas I'd much prefer it to be "/beedev" (as in beedev.org), but even though I can find where I should be able to change it its for some reason not changing. I submitted a help ticket so hopefully it'll get sorted out and then the following link will be broken but for now you can listen to my seven minute introduction to my planned podcast series here!! (and if the url does get changed it would be this). Feedback appreciated! Thanks (: