Just found a funky Flash gadget which pulls Tweets on my chosen topics of “LibriVox”, “public domain” and “free audio” together into a nice dooflip. Would be awesome at conferences, where everyone’s got a hashtag in common! Visit http://wiffiti.com/ to make your own!

I’ve been kicking around thoughts on how best to organise the LibriVox catalogue in the future, especially when the new design is implemented. LibriVox is a collection of people who speak many languages, and who record public domain audiobooks in most of them. Currently, we organise by Category (out of Fiction, Poetry, Non-fiction, Dramatic Works… Read more »

I was reading “The Intellectual Life” by P.G. Hamerton the other day, as you do. It’s a book of hypothetical letters to some imaginary friends around the theme of being a proper Victorian intellectual (it was published in 1873.) And in one essay, I was much amused to find an unexpectedly-modern usage of the term… Read more »

Another great video … this one is about the constant undermining of decisive speech by, like, you know, nambypamby fillers. I’d like it more without the audience noise, I confess, but that’s just a picky detail. Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo. Poem by Taylor Mali. Via Tom Elliot (whose website seems to be having… Read more »

Every now and again I search YouTube to see what people are doing with LibriVox files or saying about the site. And found a really lovely video – this is a dance to a remix of Robert Frost’s poem Fire and Ice. You can hear my read along with lots of other LibriVoxers (it was… Read more »

My original idea for this website was to create an Encyclopedia Piratica, hence the domain name. However, I never found the time and energy to do the vast amount of work required; too much time spent proof-reading and recording audiobooks. However, this weekend I’ve sat down and used a few different resources to pull together… Read more »

My New Year Revolutions didn’t really get made this year, but I have some ideas in my head about numbers that I’d like to hit this year, including 100hrs of LibriVox recordings, something about posts, something about podcasts, something about blog posts. I’m signed up to the One-Book-a-Week challenge again, but knowing the pace I… Read more »

I was tagged by LibriVox ductapeguy, Sean McGaughey, and while I’ve done my time as Meme-Servant and moved on … I thought I could spin this one on-theme, so … here goes. * The most common background noise you may hear in my recordings is that of seagulls — their piercing shrieks go straight through… Read more »

As part of the LibriVox London get-together this weekend, we sauntered along to Greenwich, to record in the foot tunnel which runs under the Thames. We hadn’t planned it in advance, and simply took along a giant book of poetry to dip into. My dips were pretty random, but I’m most happy with how one… Read more »

My first recording in weeks … and is it the Gibbon I owe..?  No.  A bit of J.S. Mill..?  Nope.  More Elegaic Sonnets..?  Unfortunately not. It’s the first fifty digits of pi, read in a single breath (for one file) and in the World’s Most Awful Pirate “Accent” (separate file, and you’ll have to look… Read more »