Back in November, Oksana and I spent a couple weeks exploring Puerto Rico.  We went mainly for sun and sea —  you can’t go wrong with a Caribbean island — but once we bought our tickets, I knew we’d be checking out the Arecibo Radio Telescope.

You may have already seen the telescope.  It’s been used as a backdrop for all sorts of movies: Contact, GoldenEye, and the X-Files.  If not, well, please allow Oksana and I to give you a tour!

On the technical side, putting this episode together has been a nightmare.  My Dell XPS M1330, which was rock solid for this sort of work up until a few months ago, is suffering from a failing cooling system.  I’ve inspected the inside, there’s not a spec of dust and the fan is working (overtime!) just fine.  I have a hunch it’s a design flaw and a cursory look at “the forums” corroborates that idea.  I’d go to town with tech support (or just fix it myself) if I were not: 1) Leaving for Ecuador, and 2) planning to buy a new laptop next spring.

In any event, the Amazing Crashing Laptop prevented me from posting this episode while we were still on the trip.  And it’s only by the grace of the desk-fan-pointed-at-its-keyboard that I managed to finish it up before my next trip.

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Hoo boy.  This was a tough podcast to edit.  I can remember working on the first cut on the airplane down to Seattle back in early September.  Why so difficult?  Well, I think I underestimated how much “story” I wanted to put in.  As I mention in the video, Oksana and I wanted to tie this episode back to the last, so we tailored our little speeches around that.  Unfortunately, once I started editing, I realized I had absolutely nothing to show while we talked — we’re not in the habit of taking videos of dive shop storefronts. Yet.

I decided to do what I could with what I had, but the real problem was that I lost one crucial little thing:  Motivation.  Eventually I battered my way through the editing process, but I’m not 100% happy with the results.  Oksana really liked it, though.  Maybe you will, too.

We did a total of four dives with Dive Key West and we’ve got a couple more stories to tell.  I don’t know if I’m going to jump right into that now or wait until we get back from our Puerto Rico vacation coming up in November.  That might be the perfect time to practice some “on the road” podcasting… we’ll see.

(Update: Never did get around to editing the rest of that footage, but we did go back and dive with Dive Key West again in 2010.  Check out our Lobster Season video!)

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Last summer, Oksana and I bought a Jeep in Florida and we drove it back to Alaska.  Since we were already down there, we decided to take a quick trip to Key West to check out the diving.

This is a little video about our first two dives (of six) down there.  I had a tough time editing this together — it was definitely more work than play.  (Oksana and I need to get more cover footage when we’re on vacation; sure would have been nice to have more than a couple random pictures of the town when I was editing the first part!)  I was frustrated with this one right up until the end, when I started to play around with the music.  I think the “Aquovisit” score in Soundbooth worked rather well — what do you think?

Our 2-tank dive with Captain’s Corner Dive Center cost about $80 each (with equipment rentals), but I have to say we weren’t terribly impressed.  Next up, a video about our other four dives with Dive Key West — now that’s a company we can recommend!

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There’s no shortage of butterflies in Iguazú National Park.  Here’s proof. We might revisit Iguazú in a later podcast — there’s still a story to tell about how the Devil ate my lens cap — but I think we’ll move on to another destination for next week. (more…)

Continuing where we left off with the Iguazú episode of last week, here’s the first one of those park vignettes I told you about.

While we were contemplating what to do on our second day in the park, a Ukrainian cab driver named Andres recommended a tour called La Gran Aventura.  We’d seen brochures and advertisements all over, translated into English as The Big Adventure, The Great Adventure, or The Grand Adventure (It’s probably the worst actual translation, but I liked “grand” because it sounded the most poetic.)

The cost of the tour was 150 pesos per person, about $50 U.S.  We were worried about spending so much for what was really just a slightly different view of the park, but it became one of the highlights of this part of the trip.  I think the post-trip DVD they sell for 90 pesos ($30 U.S.) was kind of a rip-off, but it turned out to be invaluable when we told sat down to tell our story here… (more…)

Okay, here we go.  Oksana and I have started to explore how we want to do these video podcasts.  Our plan was to do no more than 5 minutes per episode, but in our first go with the waterfalls of Iguazú, we ended up recording over 40 minutes of voiceover material!  Sorting through that and 3 hours of footage made for a slow editing process.  (The good news is that, after this week’s “overview,” I’ve got material for 2 or 3 more “vignettes” from our trip through the park.)

We’re still firmly in the “Oh-no-I-don’t-really-sound-like-that-do-I?!” phase of recording ourselves and it’s very hard for us to be objective.  You could really help us out by giving us a little feedback as we go!  Just answer two questions for me:

1)  What did you like about this video?
2)  What didn’t you like about this video?

We are especially interested in the opinions of people who don’t know us personally!

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As you may know, I took a little trip down to Peru last winter with a group of college students. I carried along my camcorder, shot 14 tapes worth of footage, and brought it all home for editing. Back in Alaska, I sat down with a few of the students and asked them to tell me some stories about their trip. I currently have 17 interview tapes, and I’m holding out hope for more.

Editing this together is a massive project. I started with a 500GB drive, then upgraded to 1TB. With all the videos, photos, audio, and preview files I’m currently working with, it’s already 93% full.

There’s just no easy way to edit the memories and experiences of 20 people on a month-long trip across Peru. I didn’t want to start any editing at all until I’d collected all the interviews, because as tough as it is to puzzle together eight stories about hiking the Inca Trail, it’d be even harder to try to shoehorn in a ninth after the fact. But then I realized I had everything I needed to start editing a certain part of the trip — a five-day jungle expedition – because it involved only Megan, Alison, and me, and I’ve already shot both of their interviews…

So, I dove in. And right now, I’m taking it just one little story at a time.

I shared some of these vignettes with Alison and Megan and seeing their reactions inspired me to keep going. For now, those two work well as my muses, but with a project this daunting, I can use all the motivation I can get. I thought creating a little podcast and sharing the stories with a wider audience as they’re completed would be fun. (With the students’ permission, of course — These video clips are eventually destined for a DVD that will only go out to those that went on the trip.)

It’ll be a bit before I get to the rest of the students. Later, we’ll visit Cusco, the Inca Trail, Lake Titicaca, Machu Picchu, Lima, etc., but for now, these two girls have a lot to say about the Amazon Basin. It’ll probably seem like the “Megan and Alison Show” for a while, but that’s okay; they’re quite entertaining.

So, here you are. A quick little blog – nothing fancy – where I can post the rough edits of my grandisimo Peru DVD. They’ll be quarter-screen video, in an iPod-ready format, and posted once or twice a week. All you need is the free Quicktime player. Definitely subscribe to the podcast (or at least to the email updates) if you want to catch every episode.

Like what you see? Want to give me some feedback on the editing (Not too much criticism on the audio, please — acoustic sweetening will come much later in the process!) or leave a note for the students? Comment away!

And I do hope you enjoy watching these little clips half as much as I enjoyed creating them!

The first video is right this way…