Friday, August 19, 2011

Friday Flashback: August 19

Posted by ANDY aka GHoooSTS
CommanderCast.com approaches with the close of Season 3! Bookmark that bitch now because next season it's going down strictly over there. We'll be jumping ship from this old battered hulk onto our sleek, USABLE, not-so-ugly new site. What does this entail for you, as a reader/listener/viewer? Let me count the benefits you can expect to reap:

  • The new site's design does not make eyes bleed like this one. You will save hundreds on optometrist bills and get to retain a lot of blood.
  • Old content will be transferred in it's entirety (all of it), save the blurbs I preface updates with. It will be categorized and easier to find with our new indexing systems. If there is an old article you want to see, you will be able to locate it quickly and efficiently.
  • We will have an improved comments section, which many people have asked for. You will be able to leave comments with multiple mediums. It's a lot better than this hunk of shit system we have now.
  • There will be new banner graphics. Don't worry, the old one will remain. But we will have new banners as well. They will be awesome.
  • New peeps will be bringing you new content. In addition to guest spots and community submissions, we will have three new writers on board bringing you delicious Commander material multiple times weekly.
It's either going to be awesome or a train wreck. I doubt the train wreck end of things, though. Like I said, make sure CommanderCast.com is on your radar because it's going to be fucking biblical.

AFFILIATE LINKS
CMDRDecks: Argus Kos

This week we're dual-wielding YouTube, as MistveilPlains releases another of his in-depth video primers; this time we're checking out a Big Red-style Urabrask deck.

MISTVIELPLAINS: Urabrask


This is the final non-podcast update that will appear on this website. There is no article this week, but rather a sort of credits roll for people who have helped produce CommanderCast whose involvement you may not have been aware of. None of these people have ever appeared on the actual podcast; it's possible you've never heard of them. But you should because they're awesome and they make this podcast work the way it does.

This is Randy, or at least, the image that represents him:
Randy is an editor. He ensures that articles on CommanderCast retain a certain level of quality that I can not promote. Before Randy showed up, our articles were edited by me. It's kind of like having your food QC checked by a dog. Then Randy showed up and used terms like 'split infinitive', which I previously would have assumed was associated with quantum mechanics, and made our articles snazzy. PROPER-type snazzy.

He has a website, which calls him some kind of 'freelancer'. Initially I assumed this meant he piloted a spacecraft and conducted intergalactic trade, but then realized how unlikely this was. I later figured out that it meant he can be hired. This meant he should probably be paid for the FREE work he does on CommanderCast. So I'm pretty super lucky in this regard. However, if you need somebody to edit your jams or do the other stuff he talks about on his website, you should contact this man: randyjdavenport(at)gmail(dot)com or you can scope him on Twitter, where he represents as (at)randyjdavenport.

To sum it up, Randy is fucking awesome. If this little blurb is full of typos, in an ironic twist, it's because he didn't get to proofread it.

This is Conor, FOR REALZ:

Conor hit me up for prooflistening sometime at the end of season 2, I think. I assumed he was just a super helpful guy who would listen to CommanderCast and email me saying "you left in a really specific death threat at 45 minutes" every now and then. Instead I get things giving me exact times on minor audio glitches, things I can do to improve the quality of the music overlays, AND the death threat stuff. I just thought maybe he was a shaolin monk or some shit (I guess this is still possible) and listened while meditating, so nothing escaped his audio equivalent of the fatal flying guillotine style.

Then one day I found this website.

Oh, so he's a sound guy. Like, professionally. Hm. Well, thanks to his volunteer work, we all benefit; he keeps me from releasing a shoddy podcast full of dead air, racial slurs, and "flush the crack" with the sound of cops banging down the door. He saves me a ton of time and embarrassment by ensuring I no longer have to prooflisten the show, which I hated doing (this is a responsibility him and Donovan both take, but you should all know him). With Conor on board, our show has been improved significantly in a way that unfortunately many people do not know, and he doesn't get enough props for. So that's why I'm writing this.

If you need a sound editor or just a handsome young man with a goatee, you can contact Conor via electronic mail: sound(at)conorpodonnell(dot)com. He also uses this "Twitter" device, where (at)conorpodonnell is his tag. Working on a project with an audio component? Contact this man. He will not disappoint.

We also have Chris Otwell of MTGCast. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to find a photo of him, but Google makes life ridiculously easy and creepy when you can just dial up photos of a guy with his name. Check this shit out:

CARD HALO
This man does pretty much all the work that makes MTGCast functional. I would assume a sizable portion of our listenership came from that website, so thanks are in order. He makes the machine work. There's not a whole lot else I can say about Chris since I don't know much about him. He's always been super helpful and incredibly quick to reply to any inquiry I've ever had for him, and he asks for literally nothing from me in return. It's amazing.

Even when some fucking mouthbreathers managed to get internet access and banged on a keyboard in a way that hacked MTGCast, Chris basically made the Fortitude save most of us never would have bothered with and kept the site together. Pretty much every Magic podcast you listen to owes Chris thanks, and I'd be hugely remiss to leave him out of this article. He's not part of my team but I guess you could say I'm part of his, and he rolls deep.

So, those are the behind-the-scenes grinders that make CommanderCast the functional enterprise it currently exists as. I just wanted to take a moment and thank these three classy gentlemen for their contributions to everything that has gone down since day one.

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