Unquiet Desperation

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Category : Podiobooks

Loss and Comfort

The news has moved quickly in some circles, but for those who have not yet heard: Natalie Morris, wife of Podiobooks.com founder1 and author Tee Morris, passed away.

In order to help Tee and his daughter through this diffcult period, Pip Ballantine has set up a fund where anyone who wishes to can chip in. Please consider doing so, if you have the means.

To Tee: We’re here for you, pal. You need anything at all, you let us know.




  1. In the words of Evo Terra: “Tee was the first author to make his book into a serialized audiobook delivered by a podcast. And though others soon followed independent of Tee’s actions, his ‘Hey Evo, I have an idea…’ phone call in late 2004 was the genesis of what would become Podiobooks.com.”[back]

Podiobooks Hiatus, Shadowdance Ending

It has been a week of difficult decisions. From it, I have two things to disclose.

First…I’m taking a hiatus from development on Podiobooks.com.

The reason is simple: I lack the time to do the PB 2.0 project justice. It kills me to admit that. When we started PB five years ago, I had two small kids, a simple 40 hour a week job, and my wife was not working. Now, I have a 12, 9, and 4 year old with all the commitments that follow from that, plus my wife is working full time, playing in two bands, teaching violin and fiddle, and I am working full time and filling in as Mr. Mom. It has become impossible to find the time to truly lead the project. Those things, combined with some recent health developments, have put the whammy on many of my personal projects. The PB2 project will go on (we are looking for new leads right now), and Evo and the PB2 team will continue driving it. It will grow and flourish, and I cannot wait to see where it goes next.

Second…Michelle and I will be recording the final Shadowdance podcast tonight. The reasons there are similar: my personal schedule and Michelle’s schedule no longer match up quite as well. She’s writing books, appearing on television and traveling, and I have my family and my career to look after. Also, my opinions on the subject matter of the show have changed, and I feel disingenuous continuing to give advice on a subject that I do not fully embrace. More on this in a future post.

For the record, The Secret Lair is still going strong: Kris and I will continue with our fun until the men in white coats come after us to take us away.1 In fact, we just released Episode 29, chock full of goodness from the likes of Dr. John Cmar, Natalie Metzger, Jay Lynn, and our special guest, Mick Bradley.

So, that’s the news. How’s your day?




  1. If they can get past the giant squid and the rabid zombie poodles.[back]

Podiobooks.com hits 7000 episodes

7000

We just hit 7000 episodes on Podiobooks.com.  If we assume the average episode length is 30 minutes, that would mean that we now have 3500 hours of audiobook goodness for the world to experience.

What are you waiting for? Go listen to something!

PB2 Progress for This Week

Podiobooks.com

So far, everyone is moving things along pretty well.

  • Thomas is making mad progress on the database migration.
  • Tim is working on the new RSS engine, and has a version posted to the repository
  • Jason is delving into developing tools to help authors tag their episodes and upload through the PB site, instead of the current song and dance, which is more complex than we’d like it to be.
  • Evo is coming up with more ideas. Because that’s what Evo does.
  • I’m working on the wireframes and working on getting sample data in for the developers. I’ve commented up the new schema and documented the old schema in the dev wiki.

The next meeting will be Monday night, 9pm EST.  As usual, notes will be published on the wiki.

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Podiobooks 2: Meetings and Dev Wiki

The Podiobooks 2 project is moving forward. Here’s what’s happening:

Our next meeting will be Monday, 8/3 at 9pm EST. To keep up with the latest, check out the meetings archive.

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