#patrollingbeyondfusion — Public Fediverse posts

…and no, I didn’t say “Throwaway Thursdays.”

What can you say about the Starlost? It’s infamously awful. It was the brain child of Sci Fi legend Harlan Ellison, but it was abandoned by its creator before the first episode was completed.

Is that Harlan Ellison’s notorious intolerance of any changes to his work? Or perhaps there was something to his ire towards what the show was to become?

From 2010 to 2014 we meticulously — if less than reverently — analyzed each and every episode of science fiction’s most infamnous train wreck.

Each episode has been digitally restored and you can check them out and subscribe here or at Apple Podcasts.

This week, we begin our coverage of the 2012 Swedish sci-fi series, Äkta människor, more commonly known in the English-speaking world as “Real Humans.”

I’ve waxed on in earlier posts how much we enjoyed watching and talking about Real Humans, and I hope you find it interesting, too.

The series was produced in 2012 by SVT, the Swedish national television channel. It’s set an in alternate 2012 timeline where human-like robots, called “hubots,” are commonplace in homes, businesses, and (perhaps slightly less overtly) bedrooms.

It tackles themes of exploitation, prejudice, free will, friendship, sexual attraction, and the ubiquity of the USB-A port.

The program has two series, each ten episodes long. Our coverage of Series One begins this Saturday, July 20th, 2024.

How you can watch the show for yourself will depend on your country and the tech you have available. Swedish Blu-rays are available in places like Amazon but may not play in your player. If you can get around that, I’m not aware of any releases in English or even with English subtitles. Fan-produced subtitle files are available at opensubtitles.com.

Real Humans may also be available on streaming services in your country. Good luck!

https://fusionpatrol.com/2024/07/18/sex-with-robots/

#PatrollingBeyondFusion #RealHumans

This week, we only have one recording session. On Wednesday, John and I will discuss the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century episode Planet of the Amazon Women.

Next Week, Kenneth and I will finish off the last two episodes of Children of the Dog Star, and John and I will pick up the pieces of our failed recording of Buck Roger’s Unchained Woman.

I’ve been deeply engrossed in another writing project and just haven’t had much time to write for PBF. I’m hoping to be done with it soon.

In the meantime, this might amuse you. It certainly did me. For years, I’ve been just a bit salty that Fusion Patrol has never made it to Wikipedia. It has no business being there, but many things there have no business.

We got second place, though, as Simon recently discovered that Fusion Patrol is in IMDB!

Why? There’s clearly no reason for it; it looks like, about 73 weeks ago, IMDB must have crawled the Apple Podcasts feeds and created shows for what it found. Subsequently, it’s been keeping up with the new episodes.

I suppose it’s a hollow victory, but it amuses me nonetheless.

https://fusionpatrol.com/2024/01/29/there-are-only-so-many-words-in-my-head/

#BehindTheScenes #BuckRogersInThe25thCentury #ChildrenOfTheDogStar #PatrollingBeyondFusion

This week, we only have one recording session. On Wednesday, John and I will discuss the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century episode Planet of the Amazon Women.

Next Week, Kenneth and I will finish off the last two episodes of Children of the Dog Star, and John and I will pick up the pieces of our failed recording of Buck Roger’s Unchained Woman.

I’ve been deeply engrossed in another writing project and just haven’t had much time to write for PBF. I’m hoping to be done with it soon.

In the meantime, this might amuse you. It certainly did me. For years, I’ve been just a bit salty that Fusion Patrol has never made it to Wikipedia. It has no business being there, but many things there have no business.

We got second place, though, as Simon recently discovered that Fusion Patrol is in IMDB!

Why? There’s clearly no reason for it; it looks like, about 73 weeks ago, IMDB must have crawled the Apple Podcasts feeds and created shows for what it found. Subsequently, it’s been keeping up with the new episodes.

I suppose it’s a hollow victory, but it amuses me nonetheless.

https://fusionpatrol.com/2024/01/29/there-are-only-so-many-words-in-my-head/

#BehindTheScenes #BuckRogersInThe25thCentury #ChildrenOfTheDogStar #PatrollingBeyondFusion

This week’s recording sessions: Real Humans S01E06 Sly Leo and Children of the Dog Star, Episodes 3 & 4.

I feel like there’s always a little drama behind the scenes. Honestly, I could do without the drama.

To explain this week’s drama, let me give you a little infodump on how we record the podcast. It’s gone through many iterations over the years, and perhaps on a later PBF* I’ll fill in some of the historical gaps, but for now, let’s just talk about the current technology.

One of the tricks to getting better podcast audio is to record the participants separately, each recorded locally on their computer. Those separate files are combined in the edit for the final podcast. We currently use an online tool called RINGR which establishes an audio call between the participants, and, through code running locally in each participant’s browser, records and uploads the audio at the source.

It’s a decent service, and we’ve had pretty good luck with it for over two and a half years, but things can and do go wrong. The most common problems are little glitches in the Internet that result in dropped calls or, sometimes, mysterious “stops” in the recording.

It’s these “stops” that caused this week’s grief.

So here’s what happens: As the host, I initiate a call, which sends out invites to the participants. At the designated time, all participants, including the host, join the call.

As the host, I can see the status of the other participant(s), and waveforms for their and my audio. There is a big “Start Recording” button in the middle of the window, offset against a pleasant blue/green background. When you hit that button, it (rather intuitively) changes to “Stop” and the background changes to orange. It’s very effective and you absolutely know when it’s recording.

Now, when you stop recording the call is still connected, it switches back to blue, and it presents you with two new buttons “End Call” (which makes sense) and “Resume Call” (which doesn’t really make sense, since you’re still in the call.) In the background, the Stop Recording button has caused it to finalize the recording files, and complete the uploads to the server.

If you “resume” the call, the Start Recording comes back, and if you start recording, a new set of files is created, but they are still part of the same overall session. We use this all the time for our trailers because it gives us neat, separate files that can be included in the previous week’s episode edit.

Sometimes, as mentioned, we get the mysterious stops. Mid-recording, it just stops. Essentially it behaves exactly as if I hit Stop. There is one welcome difference: There is a distinct alert tone that plays in my headphones when that happens. Even if I didn’t see the screen turn blue, I hear the tone and we know to stop and regroup.

It’s happened a dozen or more times. The participants briefly decide how far back we’re going to regress the conversation. I resume the call, and start recording. It’s a little more work in the edit, but not much.

This time, it happened like that, with the mysterious stop happening about 6 minutes into the discussion, and while we handled it in the usual way, the outcome was very different.

What I got was the equivalent when you think you’ve pressed “Stop” on a video camera but continue to record your feet as you walk away and then, when you want to actually record something, the recording stops at the point you think you’re starting.

When I downloaded the files, I knew the file sizes were off. The first section looked fine, but when I listened to the end, it went like this:

Eugene: “So, John, what did you think about “Unchained Woman?”
John: “I liked it, it moved along…
Eugene: “Hold, hold, hold!
John: “Hey, it stopped recording. Why did it do that?”
Eugene: “I don’t know, it just beeped at me and stopped. We can resume and restart the recording. Hang on, let me hit the “Resume Call” button…
[end of recording]

There’s another file, but much too small, I listen to that, it goes like this:
Eugene: “Ok, call has resumed… can you hear me?”
John: “Yes.”
Eugene: “Good, well, this will be an easy one. We’ll just start with me asking what you thought about it.”
John: “Ok, sounds good.”
Eugene: “Starting the recording… now.”
[end of recording]

Sometimes when you’re recording a podcast you can just feel when the conversation is lively and fun, and other times, you feel it’s a bit flat, but either way you never want to have to do it again. There’s always this hanging cloud in your mind where the spontaneity is gone, and you try to make sure you say everything you did last time.

Our discussion of Unchained Woman was a good one. How could it not be? Sand squids, Jamie Lee Curtis, styrofoam rock-kicking androids, and stucco-covered spacewalls, the episode had everything you need for a good discussion.

Gone. All gone in a puff of technological smoke.

We’re not pressed for time, so we’re going to wait a couple weeks, and even record a different episode, before we re-record Unchained Woman. It’s a just a royal pain.

*Patrolling Beyond Fusion (Did I really need to explain that?)

https://fusionpatrol.com/2024/01/21/unchained-woman-unrecorded-patrolling-beyond-fusion/

#BehindTheScenes #BuckRogersInThe25thCentury #ChildrenOfTheDogStar #PatrollingBeyondFusion #RealHumans #RINGR

This week’s recording sessions: Real Humans S01E06 Sly Leo and Children of the Dog Star, Episodes 3 & 4.

I feel like there’s always a little drama behind the scenes. Honestly, I could do without the drama.

To explain this week’s drama, let me give you a little infodump on how we record the podcast. It’s gone through many iterations over the years, and perhaps on a later PBF* I’ll fill in some of the historical gaps, but for now, let’s just talk about the current technology.

One of the tricks to getting better podcast audio is to record the participants separately, each recorded locally on their computer. Those separate files are combined in the edit for the final podcast. We currently use an online tool called RINGR which establishes an audio call between the participants, and, through code running locally in each participant’s browser, records and uploads the audio at the source.

It’s a decent service, and we’ve had pretty good luck with it for over two and a half years, but things can and do go wrong. The most common problems are little glitches in the Internet that result in dropped calls or, sometimes, mysterious “stops” in the recording.

It’s these “stops” that caused this week’s grief.

So here’s what happens: As the host, I initiate a call, which sends out invites to the participants. At the designated time, all participants, including the host, join the call.

As the host, I can see the status of the other participant(s), and waveforms for their and my audio. There is a big “Start Recording” button in the middle of the window, offset against a pleasant blue/green background. When you hit that button, it (rather intuitively) changes to “Stop” and the background changes to orange. It’s very effective and you absolutely know when it’s recording.

Now, when you stop recording the call is still connected, it switches back to blue, and it presents you with two new buttons “End Call” (which makes sense) and “Resume Call” (which doesn’t really make sense, since you’re still in the call.) In the background, the Stop Recording button has caused it to finalize the recording files, and complete the uploads to the server.

If you “resume” the call, the Start Recording comes back, and if you start recording, a new set of files is created, but they are still part of the same overall session. We use this all the time for our trailers because it gives us neat, separate files that can be included in the previous week’s episode edit.

Sometimes, as mentioned, we get the mysterious stops. Mid-recording, it just stops. Essentially it behaves exactly as if I hit Stop. There is one welcome difference: There is a distinct alert tone that plays in my headphones when that happens. Even if I didn’t see the screen turn blue, I hear the tone and we know to stop and regroup.

It’s happened a dozen or more times. The participants briefly decide how far back we’re going to regress the conversation. I resume the call, and start recording. It’s a little more work in the edit, but not much.

This time, it happened like that, with the mysterious stop happening about 6 minutes into the discussion, and while we handled it in the usual way, the outcome was very different.

What I got was the equivalent when you think you’ve pressed “Stop” on a video camera but continue to record your feet as you walk away and then, when you want to actually record something, the recording stops at the point you think you’re starting.

When I downloaded the files, I knew the file sizes were off. The first section looked fine, but when I listened to the end, it went like this:

Eugene: “So, John, what did you think about “Unchained Woman?”
John: “I liked it, it moved along…
Eugene: “Hold, hold, hold!
John: “Hey, it stopped recording. Why did it do that?”
Eugene: “I don’t know, it just beeped at me and stopped. We can resume and restart the recording. Hang on, let me hit the “Resume Call” button…
[end of recording]

There’s another file, but much too small, I listen to that, it goes like this:
Eugene: “Ok, call has resumed… can you hear me?”
John: “Yes.”
Eugene: “Good, well, this will be an easy one. We’ll just start with me asking what you thought about it.”
John: “Ok, sounds good.”
Eugene: “Starting the recording… now.”
[end of recording]

Sometimes when you’re recording a podcast you can just feel when the conversation is lively and fun, and other times, you feel it’s a bit flat, but either way you never want to have to do it again. There’s always this hanging cloud in your mind where the spontaneity is gone, and you try to make sure you say everything you did last time.

Our discussion of Unchained Woman was a good one. How could it not be? Sand squids, Jamie Lee Curtis, styrofoam rock-kicking androids, and stucco-covered spacewalls, the episode had everything you need for a good discussion.

Gone. All gone in a puff of technological smoke.

We’re not pressed for time, so we’re going to wait a couple weeks, and even record a different episode, before we re-record Unchained Woman. It’s a just a royal pain.

*Patrolling Beyond Fusion (Did I really need to explain that?)

https://fusionpatrol.com/2024/01/21/unchained-woman-unrecorded-patrolling-beyond-fusion/

#BehindTheScenes #BuckRogersInThe25thCentury #ChildrenOfTheDogStar #PatrollingBeyondFusion #RealHumans #RINGR

This week’s recording sessions: Real Humans S01E06 Sly Leo and Children of the Dog Star, Episodes 3 & 4.

I feel like there’s always a little drama behind the scenes. Honestly, I could do without the drama.

To explain this week’s drama, let me give you a little infodump on how we record the podcast. It’s gone through many iterations over the years, and perhaps on a later PBF* I’ll fill in some of the historical gaps, but for now, let’s just talk about the current technology.

One of the tricks to getting better podcast audio is to record the participants separately, each recorded locally on their computer. Those separate files are combined in the edit for the final podcast. We currently use an online tool called RINGR which establishes an audio call between the participants, and, through code running locally in each participant’s browser, records and uploads the audio at the source.

It’s a decent service, and we’ve had pretty good luck with it for over two and a half years, but things can and do go wrong. The most common problems are little glitches in the Internet that result in dropped calls or, sometimes, mysterious “stops” in the recording.

It’s these “stops” that caused this week’s grief.

So here’s what happens: As the host, I initiate a call, which sends out invites to the participants. At the designated time, all participants, including the host, join the call.

As the host, I can see the status of the other participant(s), and waveforms for their and my audio. There is a big “Start Recording” button in the middle of the window, offset against a pleasant blue/green background. When you hit that button, it (rather intuitively) changes to “Stop” and the background changes to orange. It’s very effective and you absolutely know when it’s recording.

Now, when you stop recording the call is still connected, it switches back to blue, and it presents you with two new buttons “End Call” (which makes sense) and “Resume Call” (which doesn’t really make sense, since you’re still in the call.) In the background, the Stop Recording button has caused it to finalize the recording files, and complete the uploads to the server.

If you “resume” the call, the Start Recording comes back, and if you start recording, a new set of files is created, but they are still part of the same overall session. We use this all the time for our trailers because it gives us neat, separate files that can be included in the previous week’s episode edit.

Sometimes, as mentioned, we get the mysterious stops. Mid-recording, it just stops. Essentially it behaves exactly as if I hit Stop. There is one welcome difference: There is a distinct alert tone that plays in my headphones when that happens. Even if I didn’t see the screen turn blue, I hear the tone and we know to stop and regroup.

It’s happened a dozen or more times. The participants briefly decide how far back we’re going to regress the conversation. I resume the call, and start recording. It’s a little more work in the edit, but not much.

This time, it happened like that, with the mysterious stop happening about 6 minutes into the discussion, and while we handled it in the usual way, the outcome was very different.

What I got was the equivalent when you think you’ve pressed “Stop” on a video camera but continue to record your feet as you walk away and then, when you want to actually record something, the recording stops at the point you think you’re starting.

When I downloaded the files, I knew the file sizes were off. The first section looked fine, but when I listened to the end, it went like this:

Eugene: “So, John, what did you think about “Unchained Woman?”
John: “I liked it, it moved along…
Eugene: “Hold, hold, hold!
John: “Hey, it stopped recording. Why did it do that?”
Eugene: “I don’t know, it just beeped at me and stopped. We can resume and restart the recording. Hang on, let me hit the “Resume Call” button…
[end of recording]

There’s another file, but much too small, I listen to that, it goes like this:
Eugene: “Ok, call has resumed… can you hear me?”
John: “Yes.”
Eugene: “Good, well, this will be an easy one. We’ll just start with me asking what you thought about it.”
John: “Ok, sounds good.”
Eugene: “Starting the recording… now.”
[end of recording]

Sometimes when you’re recording a podcast you can just feel when the conversation is lively and fun, and other times, you feel it’s a bit flat, but either way you never want to have to do it again. There’s always this hanging cloud in your mind where the spontaneity is gone, and you try to make sure you say everything you did last time.

Our discussion of Unchained Woman was a good one. How could it not be? Sand squids, Jamie Lee Curtis, styrofoam rock-kicking androids, and stucco-covered spacewalls, the episode had everything you need for a good discussion.

Gone. All gone in a puff of technological smoke.

We’re not pressed for time, so we’re going to wait a couple weeks, and even record a different episode, before we re-record Unchained Woman. It’s a just a royal pain.

*Patrolling Beyond Fusion (Did I really need to explain that?)

https://fusionpatrol.com/2024/01/21/unchained-woman-unrecorded-patrolling-beyond-fusion/

#BehindTheScenes #BuckRogersInThe25thCentury #ChildrenOfTheDogStar #PatrollingBeyondFusion #RealHumans #RINGR

Get your comments in for this week’s recordings. Monday, 15-Jan-2024: The X-Files Die Hand Die Verletzt, and Wednesday, 17-Jan-2024: Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Unchained Woman.

Next week: Children of the Dog Star, Swamp Light and Alien Summons, and Real Humans, Sly Leo.

I’ve completed my acoustic barrier just in time to record our 666th episode.

Of course, it’s not designed to block out all sound; it’s really about suppressing echoes and dampening outside sounds. Hopefully, it will help. It certainly sounds very different when talking inside the barrier.

See if you can tell a difference. The first episode recorded inside the barrier will drop on Saturday, the 20th of January. It’s our look at The X-Files episode Die Hand, Die Verletzt.

Of course, I’m telling you this on January 14th, less than seven days from release, which means our patrons on Patreon will not get the episode a whole week before the main release. Regrettably, scheduling issues prevented Simon and me from recording before tomorrow.

Which leads me to this week’s apology. You might recall that I had a fiasco during December with the quotas for the releases in December. I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to work around that, and it did prevent me from posting January’s episodes until the January rollover on my quota. It’s still not quite straightened out.

This really threw off my “routine” of posting, and that is a disaster waiting to happen.

Let me tell you a story about my days in Information Technology. One of the many things I did in my career was manage a data center that had, among other things, IBM AS/400s (later IBM iSeries) midrange computers. These computers are multiuser systems rather like very small mainframes for those unfamiliar. They have lots of redundancy and a very high uptime. These systems were typically used for mission-critical business applications, often in finance, insurance, inventory, etc.

As such, any reputable company will have maintenance agreements on their computers, and IBM, to their credit, will treat you very well when you need service.

When I started working with AS/400s, I worked for a company that wasn’t willing to spend on maintenance contracts, and so I learned and did the maintenance myself. I daresay that, by the end of that, I was qualified to diagnose, field strip, fix, and reassemble most problems with an AS/400.

Then I went to work for an organization that paid for maintenance contracts, and so I would sit on the sidelines when IBM would do maintenance and repairs. We had our usual technician, and I had a lot of respect for him. We’d talk about the systems while he’d work and it was clear to me that (duh) he knew more about the systems than I did.

He knew what he was doing backward and forward. Where I had performed dozens of repairs on just a couple of systems, he’d done hundreds, if not thousands, on many different systems.

…and yet, he used to do something that drove me nuts.

No matter how simple the procedure, he cracked open the manual with a checklist of steps and performed every one every time. Many of those steps were unnecessary depending on the particular circumstances, and he knew that, but he did them and checked them off every single time.

One day, I finally asked him about it, and he fully and freely admitted that he was taking unnecessary steps, but he said, “By doing so, I never make a mistake on somebody else’s mission-critical system by forgetting something or making a false assumption. The customer pays for the job to be done right. Problems can still happen, but I’ve done my due diligence.”

It made sense. It wasn’t his system, and he was being very conscientious, but it didn’t necessarily sway me for “my own” systems.

Then, my organization got cheap. They put the maintenance contract out to bid and another company took over. They too were competent, and the guy who did our work was knowledgeable, and I had no qualms that he was capable of the work. He didn’t use the checklist, though.

You can see where this is going, right?

He fluffed one, and the hard drive RAID array was broken, wiping our system and all the data. We had the proper backups and restored and returned to full operations, but it took 36-48 hours to do the full restores. He was chagrined, and I slept on a cot in the data center for two nights.

After that, I also very much adopted the habit of using checklists, and when following printed instructions, I treat them as checklists, too.

…and when I don’t do that is when I screw up.

I have a checklist for posting podcasts, and I was not following it while I was scrambling with the quota problem. As such, I screwed up the posts for our Patreon subscribers. I noticed the problem when I was posting this past week’s bonus Babylon 5 episode, Exogenesis. I unclogged the jam and dropped two additional episodes that should have been released earlier.

Inexcusable, I’m afraid, and I hate making that mistake in the same week when I have to delay this week’s Patreon post until Monday, but there it is. I’ll see if I can’t come up with a bonus something just for patrons as an apology.

With our recordings this week, we will hopefully return to our routine schedule of two weekly sessions.

https://fusionpatrol.com/2024/01/14/another-sunday-another-mea-culpa/

#BehindTheScenes #BuckRogersInThe25thCentury #ChildrenOfTheDogStar #PatrollingBeyondFusion #RealHumans #TheXFiles