h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Someone just kindly sent me a new LibriVox recording available online. These are lovely ways to pass the time - you can hear public domain books and stories.

I recommend this one to our writers, because Twain has some good advice on how to write humour. Also, the narrator is really gifted here. Her delivery adds a lot to Twain's essay.

It won't take you long - it's about 17 minutes - so here's the link:

http://ia700701.us.archive.org/12/items/howtotellstory_1403_librivox/howtotellstory_01_twain_128kb.mp3

Enjoy!



PS And if you find any other good voice recordings, list your favourites here.

I keep thinking I should record some of my short stories, but I know what my voice sounds like

Maybe you should talk to archive.org or Gutenberg - they might find you a narrator.

The narrator in the above piece has a beautiful deadpan delivery which makes the essay even funnier, since she is so earnest! It is really worth a listen.

I just finished listening to 'Francisco Pizarro and the Conquest of Peru'.

It's a grisly story, as you probably can imagine, but enthusiastically read.

https://librivox.org/francisco-pizarro-and-the-conquest-of-peru-by-frederick-a-ober/

Before that, I listened to 'Twelve Years a Slave'. It's another gruesome story, masterfully read.

https://librivox.org/twelve-years-a-slave-by-solomon-northup/

I think I need to listen to something lighthearted now.

Just something I whipped up quickly: http://nopandas.com/le_mort_darthur.mp3

I sound like I have a lisp, but there you go

Here's another one I listened to recently:

'Poison Romance and Poison Mysteries'

https://librivox.org/poison-romance-and-poison-mysteries-by-charles-john-samuel-thompson/

Oh, and Pastey: funny story.

That gives me an idea for . If you folks want, send us the story - text required, mind you - along with the link to your audio. We can put up the story with the link, for an audio-visual experience.

Can I just point people to this excellent guide to voice recording:

http://www.h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/brunel/A35017201

It's a pity if you take the time to record and then the file is too noisy (Pastey's file has an irritating background noise which even noise cleaning could not remove--I guess he used the inbuilt mic for recording).

I've got (and used) a rather nice Sony bi-directional clip on mic, but post production cleaning was ridiculously quick (ie: one pass of a default filter).

The irritating noise is the fan from the desktop, if it wasn't a quick rushed job I'd have turned that off

That's a good article though, and I like the idea of people writing short stories and then recording them for the Post. If we go with this, we can certainly host the audio files on here

Well, that would probably be an incentive for people. I think that the whole aviator scheme never took off properly (although there was some really great stuff produced) because it had to be hosted externally.

We can? That would be great!

Adding more content capabilities, super ...

We've been looking at setting up a branded YouTube channel for content, Edited Entries can have them embedded in it.

The reason to have them there is that their content delivery is really good.

Sounds good.