After a grueling week of midterms and a nice relaxing weekend away from school, I am finally ready to get back into the groove of ds106. The past week was a bit hectic so I’ve got some catching up to do. First things first, let’s talk about this radio assignment.

After throwing some ideas around last Monday, we somehow ended up deciding to follow a “nature” theme. We spent a lot of time trying to find things that we all had in common, but with five group members, that is easier said than done. So when Liz mentioned that she loved the outdoors, I mentioned that I also enjoyed a good hike. Then Rachel chimed in that she was about to go camping for the first time and aha! our radio show was born.

We then discussed several ideas for breaking up the work and decided to do several short segments with Tim acting as our main DJ (he does have that radio voice after all!) We decided that Rachel would do a Bear Grylls call-in session with questions about camping and hiking in the outdoors. I would do a product review section. Abbie would be in charge of the “this/that” scenario question segment and Liz would do a segment on a “ghost story of sorts.” We charged Tim with the responsibility of commercials and DJ voicing.

We met the next day to do some preliminary recording for the preview. We used the recording studio upstairs in duPont. It was not hard to figure out, however we did have some trouble e-mailing the sound files to our own computers. We tried to send the project and data files but whatever version of audacity that is on the Mac in the studio was not the same version that is on my computer. So, we ended up having to save the audio clips as mp3s. In the end, the mp3s sounded fine and were much easier to e-mail over the world wide web. After writing scripts and recording everything, Liz was great enough to offer to put everything together that night. It came together nicely. Here’s the preview!

Abbie made our first bumper:

And Tim constructed the first commercial:

Wednesday night we delegated tasks to each group member and decided to meet up over spring break since we were all going to be in town. Tim is going to make another commercial. Rachel made a short bumper and is writing her script for the Bear Grylls segment, I am writing my script, reviewing recordings and assembling my segment in audacity, Liz is recording her segment and making the poster and Abbie is writing her script. I’m waiting to receive recordings from everyone right now so that I can assemble my segment. If I don’t receive recordings soon, I’m going to have to employ my family to say everything for me, and who knows how that would go!

In any case, another update is soon to follow after our meeting tomorrow at noon.