Final Week/Final Thoughts/The End

Hey all y'all's all -- so this is it! Happy end of term, and I hope you're all surviving.

Final musings/mutterings on the podcast experience: overall, I had a TON of fun with this project. I liked that we could choose our topics -- mine was one that I was already interested in, so the course was really just an excuse (and a kick in the pants) to dig deeper. And the process of recording was fun; I'm an editor at heart, so playing around with the various bits and bytes of sound, piecing together music & sound effects, that was a really fun process for me.

Overall, I'm satisfied with my podcast. I'm completely unashamed to admit how much I love the intro -- I was modelling after CBC Spark's intro, and, considering I wasn't using uber-professional software (GarageBand isn't the best platform for podcasting), I think I did alright. Listening to it in retrospect, I think I could have been fussier with some of the audio levels and balancing track volumes, but it's not the worst. If I could go back and change anything, it would be to actually invest in a good microphone -- though I initially planned on getting one, I just didn't end up having the time or the funds for it, so I used the mic on my computer. The sound quality is actually pretty good, I think, but I noticed some crackling and buzzing that was consistent regardless of how I tried to adjust the levels.

One bit of advice for future students in the course? Keep yourself on track! With the course structured the way it is, I think you could easily fool yourself into thinking you have a lot more time than you do. In reality, you need all the time allotted to each step along the way, if you want to produce something polished and comprehensive. Especially important is taking time in the beginning to REALLY narrow your focus -- 15 minutes isn't a lot of time to talk, and so you really do need to have a focused thesis.

I also think it's important to take the time to play around with your audio editing software in advance. I've used GarageBand extensively in the past, so I took it for granted that I would remember everything -- not so! I ended up spending a lot of time last-minute looking up tutorials and answers to some basic questions, just because I was using an updated version of the program and wasn't used to where the controls are. Not a huge setback, since I still knew my way around the software, but it could have saved me a bit of time.

Cheers, everybody!

"App-Happy": Boredom, creativity, and the cell phone in between

Modelled after CBC's Spark, my podcast, entitled "App Happy: Your Digital Life" explores the links between creativity and boredom, and the effect that mobile technology has had on these experiences. I was inspired to investigate this topic when I asked my boyfriend how he came up with the idea for his Master's thesis, an invention that could potentially and significantly change his industry. His response? "I got bored at work one day." This got me thinking about other such instances when boredom and creativity have been linked in conversation -- and I was curious to find out more. But then, of course, I also had to consider how the experience of boredom has changed with the advent of mobile technology -- aka, the apps that follow us everywhere.

I answer the following questions and more in my podcast: What is boredom? How do boredom and creativity relate to each other? How has the experience of boredom changed? Do all our apps and gadgets aid or hinder the creative process?

I hope you find my podcast as interesting as it was for me to research & create!

Using GarageBand? The audacity of me!

Originally, I thought I would use Audacity for my podcast episode. I researched it, included it in my research plan, had it all planned out -- until I realized I'm awf'ly silly. I own a Mac, and on my Mac I happen to have a useful little byte of software called GarageBand. Not only do I have the program, I also have considerable experience using it: way back in high school, I used GarageBand all the time. I produced my entire final creative writing portfolio using it. I'm still quite familiar and comfortable with its editing features. I've always been really satisfied with the sound quality I get using the program, even just using the built-in microphone on my computer.

The great thing about GarageBand is that it's very visual, and very simple -- it is designed for Mac users, after all. You can select sound samples, click & drag them to different tracks, and within moments you've patched together an entire polished recording. You can find a good overview/introduction to the program here. If you're interested in learning more about GarageBand, the uploader (TheGarageBandGuide) has a whole series of video tutorials for the program.

I found a few useful tutorials directly geared towards recording podcasts using GarageBand as well. Check them out here, here, and here.

The nice thing about GarageBand is that it comes with a huge database of royalty-free loops and sound samples -- which means that instead of having to search around the dusty nooks and crannies of the Internet for sound bytes (or having to make them yourself), you can just browse through the seemingly endless loops built into the program. It saves a lot of time and hair-tearing.

All in all, I'm pretty confident in using GarageBand and excited to get started!

My podcast for some structure!

(c) Bradley Campbell

It was interesting to think about my podcast in terms of the different structures outlined by Bradley Campbell... To be honest, when I write, I rarely think about structure -- at least, not until much later. Since my podcast transcript is still very much in "draft" form, I hadn't really thought much about how I was structuring it, other than that I wanted a catchy opening and a strong conclusion. So, it was interesting to look at it from a different angle and realize that it actually fit in really well with the "Morning Edition" structure Campbell describes in his blog post: I open with three different stories, each highlighting the link between insight and boredom I want to talk about later in the podcast. Then, I dip backwards in time to cover the history of "boredom" -- where the word comes from, how it's been chronicled in the past, and how the experience of being bored has changed over time due to the influence of technology. And then, getting back to the present, I split off into different directions, talking about individual studies done by different researchers and experts regarding the intersections between mobile technology, boredom and creativity.

Of course, every story is different, so my podcast doesn't exactly follow the example set by Campbell for the "Morning Edition" structure. For example, I don't return to the opening stories I began with -- but looking at my podcast from the perspective of particular structures has nudged me to consider whether it would make my podcast stronger if I did return to my opening narratives.

For the 99% Invisible podcast -- I guess around 23 citations?! Then again, I'm also highly sleep deprived (hello March, ye of the many essay deadlines!) so I might have missed or imagined one or two.

An ode to Boolean logic

Buenas dias, amigos! (In other words, I spent reading week in Costa Rica and I'm still in denial over this delightful -30* weather we've been having since I came back.)

I have a confession to make, relevant to the discussions we've had in lecture regarding research strategies. I love Boolean phrases. Love them. They are the single most useful strategy I've used in the last four years. Boolean logic is the key to narrowing down vast and vague fields of inquiry into pointed searches that yield the information I'm trying to find.

The basic idea behind Boolean logic is that, at its most basic, there are three "gates" through which information can be filtered: NOT, AND and OR. There are further combinations -- as many as seven gates -- that can be implemented, but for most research purposes, the basic three are usually sufficient. Boolean phrases allow you to sift through different facets of a field of inquiry, separating out combinations of search terms to be included, and those to be excluded. Boolean phrases can get quite complex, depending on how many search terms you include and in what combination, but once you get the hang of it, it's simple and extremely rewarding.

I've used it with great success -- in particular, I find "OR" useful. Some topics yield different results depending what variation of a particular keyword I use (e.g. creativity vs imagination vs daydreaming vs idea formation, and so on). Instead of having to perform multiple searches, one for each keyword, I can simply embed a phrase ("creativity OR imagination OR daydreaming OR "idea formation"). Likewise, using "NOT" helps cut out results that may not be relevant. My research topic is dealing with the connection between boredom and creativity, and the effects of mobile technology on this connection. However, simply searching for articles on boredom and creativity yields a lot of studies on workplace boredom -- which is not exactly what I'm interested in. I've therefore tended to use the phrase "NOT workplace" or some variation thereof, so that I don't have to sift through all those pesky irrelevant results.

Week 5: A topic, a topic, my kingdom for a topic!

First of all: a big congratulations ought to be passed around to everyone who's gotten through the pitching process! Or cupcakes. They're basically the same. Or at least, they both start with C.

Anyway. The pitching process most certainly helped me pare down the wide and whimsical realm that was my initial podcast topic: "boredom and creativity." Having a specific audience in mind (a professional production team) and knowing I only had four minutes to describe my idea was incredibly useful in helping me realize just how focused I had to be. Without even consciously realizing what I was doing, I was narrowing my topic as I was writing. I went from "links between boredom and creativity" to "ways technology has impacted our ability to be bored -- and, consequently, create." When I dug into the Spark podcast archive for more examples, I happened to stumble across a past episode that actually talked about the intersection between creativity and technology: this helped me refine my topic even more, because I had to distinguish my podcast from the previous. If that podcast already covered kids' creativity, then I should focus on ways adults experience and respond to boredom in light of the digital age.

Was this a useful exercise, then? Most definitely. And I can see the value of the pitch as a prewriting exercise for other assignments -- especially as a journalism student. Freelancing is a huge part of being any kind of writer, and the pitch plays a crucial role in that as well: you have to sell your article to a publication's editor, and writing a pitch sometimes feels like writing an entire article in itself. But the process is invaluable: it's easy to keep an idea upstairs in the vague and wispy world of thoughts -- bringing that idea down into tangible form inherently forces you to define it, to focus it, and to make it communicable.

The future of fiction?

Greetings, salutations, and so on, and so forth. Trending this week in the WRIT2300 blog -- podcast topics!

I spent a lot of time flipping and flopping my brain cells over what I wanted to talk about in my podcast. The trouble with being generally and genuinely interested in generally everything I stumble across is that it makes narrowing down a topic particularly difficult. As luck would have it, however, I was struck by the cleaning bug this weekend and in my mad tidy-up frenzy stumbled across an absurdly large pile of old Metro newspapers. Specifically, twenty of them: one for each installment of the month-long short story published by Canadian author Douglas Coupland, "TEMP."

Coupland prefaced his serial story with an introductory article outlining some pretty lofty claims to fame: that he was, in effect, attempting something entirely new and experimental with this short story, something keyed-in to the particular needs and interests of an increasingly-ADHD audience."No longer sure if fiction is keeping pace with life and how we live it," Coupland claims to be inventing an entirely new literary mode, which he glibly calls "depeche fiction ... written so that it accumulates in your brain over time, and then, just like alien eggs, it suddenly hatches and makes your brain say, 'Hey!'" Intrigued, I started reading the story and ... personally, I just didn't get it. The story didn't strike me as particularly new or experimental, or even particularly interesting, in either form or content -- frankly, I thought Charles Dickens did it better with his own serialized novel Great Expectations. Then again, maybe I'm just missing something -- maybe it would be worth delving deep into the history of serialized fiction, and the evolution of fiction in general, before I boldly state that Coupland's "TEMP" tanked.

In effect, the question I'm asking is: "Is Coupland right when he says that conventional fiction isn't keeping pace with the 'extreme present tense'? And if he is, does his own story "TEMP" really stand a model for the new face of fiction?"

In terms of format, I was really impressed by CBC's Spark podcast -- specifically #236 on daily rituals and creativity. I thought the introduction was particularly inspired, with the catchy music, the sound bytes from what sounded like various interviews or call-ins, the gradual fading of the music -- but without letting it disappear completely, so that it kept the "pulse" of the show going. I liked that they created a narrative hook using sound effects, narration and dialogue to build the scene of counting coffee beans, and the natural segue into the interview with Mason Currey. I also liked the dynamic between the hosts of Lexicon Valley -- I think that having that kind of active dialogue between multiple individuals is what drives a good podcast. A single voice becomes monotonous, unless you really work to break up the monotony with sound effects, music, etc. This is why I thought the Freakonomics podcast was particularly well-produced, because they make good use of sound effects and the like to keep the show from becoming stagnant.

For my podcast, I plan to work in a few quick interviews with some experts in the literary field -- a York professor, perhaps a "second opinion" on Coupland's story from another student. I also have a friend in mind as a co-host for the show. If I can get a handle on the technology, I'd also like to work in music and sound effects throughout the podcast.

To be honest, I've already had a long time to let this topic percolate in my brain, as I initially planned to write an article about it, so I didn't really have to resort to writing sites to narrow it down. I did, however, spend a fair amount of time jumping between podcasts, taking notes on different elements I liked or didn't like, to help form a mental image of how I want to present the information. Thus, the best tip I can give is a little test I often use on myself: if I can't summarize the fundamental thesis in a single, articulate sentence, then it's still too broad.

There's an echo in here... [Sara says hello]

Greetings, salutations, most cordial civilities of the day, and so on, and so forth, etc. As you might guess from the title of this post, my name is Sara. I'm a fourth year transfer student from ye olde University of Toronto, lured to York's greener pastures by the Professional Writing program with an eye to become an editor. Basically, I'd like to spend the rest of my life holed up in a room somewhere with masses of books and a never-ending supply of tea.

As an English major, you don't actually end up doing too much research; most of the time, essays only require you to work with your primary texts, and little else. I got my first taste of real "research" last summer, working as a research assistant to a professor in the writing department. I ended up researching all kinds of obscure things, from genealogies to the price of potatoes in March 1918. It was a really valuable experience: I learned the finer techniques of navigating the immense range of resources out there, from the many different databases to the magic of "SEO." Outside of academics, I suppose I have a fairly inquisitive mind; when I see words and references I don't understand, I like to find out what they are. I'm also a bit of a stickler about sources and credibility, which I mostly credit to two years in a journalism-esque program. If I find a controversial news story, I almost always try to dig up more than one source for the information, and then more information on who's writing the story, who's being quoted, etc -- it's a bit of an obsession, I admit.

In terms of what I'd like to learn about research? I guess I'd just like to gain more confidence with it: despite having come a long way along the research line, I still feel like I have no idea what I'm doing half (...err...most) of the time. Where to start, who to ask, and so on and so forth. If I've learned anything from my various jobs related to journalism, it's that there's no such thing as an article without some kind of research. I admit, I only have the vaguest inkling what RefWorks or Zotero are, but they seem useful. Would I ever use them? Who knows? I tend to be old fashioned and reluctant to change my stubborn ways. But it's always good to know what's out there.

Let's switch gears: podcasting. I admit, I am not a techy person. In fact, most technological devices tend to take one look at me and spontaneously explode. But I'm not one to be intimidated: if anything, I find the prospect of getting some hands-on experience with podcasts rather exciting. I've always loved radio, and podcasts are to radio what Netflix is to TV. Luckily for me, my roommate happens to be all shades of techy and even ran her own podcast for awhile, so I have an in-house resource for when I hit panic mode.

Since I'm such a word nerd, the linguistically-inclined podcasts appeal to me. Grammar Girl (one of my favourite websites, incidentally) and Lexicon Valley both lie close to my heart, as do On the Media and Under the Influence: media and advertising rhetoric are endlessly fascinating, and extremely relevant in surprising ways. Then again, I've also kept my fingers dipped in the music scene, and thought it might be fun to start a podcast highlighting local talents in Toronto. Or maybe I'll just dive in headfirst into something I have no real expertise in -- like, say, astrophysics -- but it have always wanted to learn about. So, in other words... I have too many ideas, as usual, but half the fun is narrowing a topic down.