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Business books are a dime a dozen, and to be frank, most of them of are crap.  Methodologies, processes, best-practice - most of it’s frequently stating the obvious at best, condescending at worst.  Of course, the irony is that it’s impossible to get an education in practical business outside of actually working in the field or reading said same books.

The Leaky Funnel is a factually presented (yet fictional) novelisation of the experiences of Sue, the newly appointed CEO of HardBits, a fictional company with various issues.  The book steps through Sue’s journey to business improvement, along with all the personalities she’s forced to work with, persuade, and navigate.  It breaks down some fairly obvious concepts - it flags that the buyer’s journey is different to traditional sales positioning.  It reminds the reader that the well-known sales funnel is actually leaky, and that just because people drop out of the funnel doesn’t mean they’re not worth keeping.  And, it emphasises the importance of results-driven planning, identifying the desired outcomes and calculating backwards to determine the number of leads required to achieve a given outcome.

What is doesn’t do is present a good story.  It may be fine for the Dan Browne crowd, but it’s very clearly written at a sixth grade level.  In other words, for people who don’t normally read books.  There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but when you get quotes like, “It was clear that these Directors read their briefing notes fully as they spent only a few minutes discussing the key indicators that Sue has imagined would consume the entire meeting,” you know you’re deep in moving-your-lips-when-you-read land.

Still, the content’s useful, and while it doesn’t present any groundbreaking ideas (a reality acknowledged by authors themselves), it does present a useful framework for sales management.  As long as you can deal with the at time facile writing, that is.  It isnt’ the worst I’ve read, but it isn’t quite a field-defining book either.  Buy it if you want a decent methodology for sales management, otherwise feel free to skip it.

I’ve got a backlog the length of my arm - still need to write up:

• instructions + photos on building your own baffles
• my newest toys (I have three!)
• four book reviews
• three short stories

I’m currently reading Bag of Bones by Stephen King - slumming it, you might say.  Still, he’s consistent, and his Dark Tower series were excellent.  Call it a guilty pleasure.

Was going to write quite a bit this weekend, but the universe conspired against me:

• I got sent a game to review.  I didn’t actually expect to totally beat it, but I did - it gave new meaning to the word “short”.
• My computer completely and utterly died.  Had to reinstall everything, was up to 1:30am last night trying to rebuild.
• Our daughter overslept and was rather grizzly with the change in routine for most of Sunday - came to around 9:00pm, and she was still completely awake.

Among the variety of nonsensical things I do on the side is record a podcast.  As a host, I’m not that great - we’re into the teens now as far as an episodes setlist is concerned, and we normally sit in the top 20 for our category of podcast on iTunes.  And, while I think I’m getting the hang of the technical side of it all, I’m still working on the performance side - I can do multi-day workshops, I can train, and I can do the whole thought-leadership thing, but being entertaining for 20 minutes is hard.  I have far more respect for comedians now.

But, that’s not what this post is about.  Instead, it’s about some basic pointers to improve your recording quality (with pictures and explanations!).  To be fair, this is seriously basic stuff - it assume negligible technical equipment, and is more focused on getting the source right than anything else.

Recording badly is irritating at best, a downright turnoff at worst.  While I don’t have any numbers to support this, it’s my belief that the quality of recording in a podcast is directly proportional to how professionally it’s perceived.  Sure, you may talk crap, but making it sound good is probably the easiest way of building credibility.  If you ain’t got it, fake it.

The final quality of a podcast is in general, directly related to the quality of the source material.  You can make a crap recording sound OK, but it’s a hell of a lot of work, and it’ll never sound as good as something that was well-recorded in the first place.  In general, getting a good source is pretty easy.  In theory, anyway - you just want to:

• reduce all background noises as much as possible
• maximise the volume captured while avoiding clipping
• maintain a consistent volume level

That’s it!  You can spend a lot of money on expensive equipment, but if you can’t get those three things right, everything else is a waste of time.

Eliminating background noise in your standard computer room is fairly easy - just make sure you do the following:

• shut the door
• keep the microphone (and microphone cable) away from any wireless equipment or other sources of interference
• try and keep the mic as far away as possible from any fan noises (such as from the computer)

Maximising the volume captured while avoiding clipping is a little more complicated.  First, a bit of background.  Every microphone / input has a maximum range of volume it’s able to capture.  Below a certain point, the microphone / input isn’t sensitive enough to pick up the noise.  Above a certain point, the noise is too large for the microphone / input to handle.  With the first, you hear nothing.  With the sound, you end up with massive distortion.

How does clipping happen?  Generally, you’re either talking too loud or, more commonly, you breathe on the microphone.  That wind translates to massive energy, which creates a great deal of clipping.

Why is this important?  Well, clipping generally makes things sound like crap (overdriven guitars being one of the notable exceptions) - you hear lots of pops and distortion.  However, there’s other reasons why clipping is bad when you’re doing a podcast.  Many recording programs (Skype included) will automatically adjust the recording volume for you.  So, when you breathe on the microphone, it thinks you’re being really loud, so it drops the volume on the input to accommodate.  Unfortunately, because you aren’t, the volume’s now too low, so everything you say for the next few seconds are almost inaudible.  A double-whammy, if you will - you’ve make it sound like crap, and to accommodate for the noise, your computer effectively cuts you off.

Fixing all this is actually pretty easy, it just takes some discipline.  First of all, don’t breathe on the microphone.  Ever.  The easiest way to do this is to put the microphone below your chin (making sure it’s pointing at you), roughly one to two hand’s distance away from you.  When you talk, just talk over the microphone, not at it.

Next up, don’t move.  Hold your position, even if it kills you - every time you move, you modify the volume of the input.  A little motion is probably inevitable, but whatever you do, don’t lean back and forward - you’ll completely screw up your recording.

If you want to get the *best* source possible, try recording a test piece and have a look at the waveform.  Like these, that I’ve prepared earlier!

Here’s a good waveform:

You can tell it’s good because of the following:

• the waves are large and have some variation
• they don’t hit the top and bottom of the bar (a representation of clipping)
• the background line is fairly straight, suggesting relatively little background noise (in my case, my fan’s very irritating)

Now, here’s a bad waveform:

It’s bad for the following reasons:

• the speech parts of the wave are really small - they’re quiet compared to everything else, forcing a great deal of additional processing
• there’s a massive amount of clipping on the leftish side of the picture - in this case, it’s because someone breathed on the microphone

If you want to tune your setup (which you most definitely should do), just try recording a test piece.  If it looks like the good waveform, you’re in good shape.  Try talking at the loudest and quietest volumes you think you’re likely to be talking at - if there’s clipping, move your microphone away from you or drop the recording volume.  If it’s all too quiet, move it closer or bump up the recording volume.

Then, when you’re recording proper, just remember these things:

• don’t move
• don’t breathe on the microphone

Easy!

Chuck Palahniuk is a somewhat confrontational writer.  Not in the somewhat grotesque, if occasionally insightful sense of Irvine Welsh, but in the truly jaw-dropped, sphincter clenching, stomach-turning sense of a deadly car wreck involving a vehicle of clowns.  You don’t want to look, but somewhere in between the tragedy and humour, you find you can’t pull away.

Haunted is a series of short stories tied together with an overarching plot.  A collection of writers, known only by their life-determined pseudonyms, decide to attend a writer’s camp under the promise of uninterrupted creativity and soul-searching opportunity.  Of course, they get more than they bargained for in the process.  Any more, and I’ll ruin the major surprises, so I’ll leave it by saying their own personal journey is one more of the self-destructive nature of humanity, punctuated by personal anecdotes, than one of enlightenment and self-discovery.

The stories are highly creative , if frequently graphic and confronting. This isn’t a book for your grandmother, at least not unless she likes up-close and personal descriptions of sexual fetishes, masturbation, cannibalism, statutory rape (with a twist), and other fairly taboo subjects.  One can’t help but feel that Palahniuk’s main intention for the novel was to collate his most nauseating short stories into the shock-jock novel to end all novels.  Despite that, it’s good.  Not as good as some of the other stuff he’s written, but it’s unique.  And, while most of the stories are probably best described as dressed up urban legends with a veneer of gross-out, some of the stories are fairly thought-provoking.  And, all come with a twist.

I enjoyed it.  The graphic nature of the novel is probably not suitable for all (definitely not suitable for kids), but if you can get over that, Palahniuk’s got some serious creativity, and his writing chops are well honed.  Worth reading, but only if you’re interested in this sort of stuff or are looking for something a few miles off centre.

“She slept for five hours straight last night - she’ll probably be up all night tonight”

Tired now.

Even more site updates! I added a Last.FM badge to the left. Seems to be broken at the moment, but that’s not my fault - they’re having issues.

What’s Last.FM, I hear you ask? Actually, more likely, you’re shaking your head at my being late to the party. Last.FM’s YASNS (Yet Another Social Networking Site, patent pending Cafeman Incorporated), this one focused on musical tastes. Where it’s actually useful (unlike the vast number of “gee, look at my emo motif” sites) is that it correlates your musical tastes against other people and generates recommendations based on the overlaps. So, if you’re listening to particular types of music lately, it’ll start suggesting other bands that broadly correlate with the bands that you’ve been listening to.

Sure, there’s a whole social / group thing going on over there as well, but that sort of stuff gives my the shits to no end. I don’t have a Facebook page, I don’t have a MySpace page, and I’m only going to make one if and when I’m eventually forced to. I am on LinkedIn and Plaxo, but that’s for professional reasons - most of the people I know are on there in some form.

Updating your musical tastes would normally be a pain in the ass, but they’ve got a nice little client that apparently monitors what you’ve played in Winamp, Windows Media Player, and iTunes and automatically updates your profile with your latest listening preferences. I say apparently because as of right now, I still can’t get the iPod integration to work. I have it on good authority it does though, so when I get chance, I should start sending my personal information off to the combine for analysis.

I find the idea great because finding new music seems to be difficult. Pop’s easy (if frequently painful), but good music isn’t so easy. This looks like one that may actually be useful for once.

Babies are secretive little things - they fool you into thinking they’re mindless eaters / poopers, and then you notice them watching you out of the corner of your eye, absorbing everything you do. They’re manipulative, too! When you least expect it, they smile and captivate you!

They’re master torturers, too - their ability to keep you awake for nights at a time is probably on par with the best Guantanamo had to offer. After the first few weeks of little to no sleep overnight, we were about ready to crack. The only time she’d sleep is when we’d let her sleep on top of us. Great for her, not so great for those of us who don’t ever get to sleep …

Randomly though, I found this book at just the right time at a discount book warehouse. I picked it up, and believe me, I’m glad I did. It’s another one of these “scheduled day” baby-books, but for us, it worked. Most of it is probably common sense - babies sleep for a few hours at a time and you want them to sleep more at night than during the day, so make the days really interesting and make sure you have a ritual when you put them to bed at night so they know it’s time to get some serious sleep. Simple stuff like that, but when you haven’t slept properly for a week, common sense isn’t so common.

She slept for five hours straight last night - she’ll probably be up all night tonight, but that’s the longest stretch we’ve had since she was born. For us, the book’s worth its weight in gold. Highly recommended if your baby’s getting the upper hand on you, otherwise you’ve probably already stopped reading this.

Every now and then, you come across a novel that’s just so frighteningly real, so frightening possible, that it takes your breath away. We Need to Talk About Kevin, for me, was that novel - I finished all five hundred odd pages in three sessions. One on the night I bought it, one on the flight back, and one last night.

The story follows his mother, Eva Katchadourian’s attempts to understand herself, her mudering son, and their highly complex relationship, as followed through a series of letter written from her to her ex-husband. The novel hit especially close to home, given we’ve just had a daughter - what makes a child decide to start slaughtering their classmates, and, when you get right down to it, is it the fault of the parent or not? And, in the grand scheme of things, does it even matter whether it was?

Some have commented that neither Kevin, his mother, nor his dad are truly believable characters. To a certain extent, this is probably true - there’s a certain degree of caricature to them. However, as the novel is written entirely from Eva’s perspective, there’s an almost tangible requirement for postmoderist interpretation. How much of what is written truly what happened, and how much is due to personal bias and a lack of perspective? There’s depth here, and the story screams for interpretation and consideration, not just a simply reading.

The book’s brilliant. I don’t want to say any more for fear of possibly spoiling the story for anyone who reads it, but suffice to say, it’s right up there as a must-read. As of today, Dymocks has it in their top 101, letting you buy three books for the price of two. To be blunt, you’re a fool if you don’t immediately go out and buy this one.

Seriously.

You may not love it, but if you have kids, you’re thinking about having kids, or even if your kids have left home, it’s enough to make you wonder.

Idoru, a corruption of the Japanese pronunciation of “Idol”, is pretty much what you’d expect from William Gibson - there’s a secret online city, divorced from the network, there’s an aging rock star interested in bridging the gap between the real and the unreal, there’s a man-cum-borderline-machine with the ability to pull patterns out of apparently chaotic information, and a cyborg-like bodyguard.  Based on good ‘ole Toe Cutter himself, Chopper Read, believe it or not - while everyone knows Gibson’s appreciation of Japanese culture, he also seems to have a thing for Australian culture …

The story’s written in the same style as a Dan Brown novel - the chapters fly fast and furious, some only a page or two long. Although, to be fair, Brown ripped off Gibson’s stylings (among others) - Brown hasn’t had an original idea in his entire career. But, I digress …

Idoru follows the experience of Laney and Chia, the two main protagonists of the story, unknowingly linked by their connection to Rez, the (literal) rock star of the novel.  As it’s fairly standard Gibson fare, it’s a little hard to say more without spoiling the plot.  So, instead, here’s my thoughts.

He’s the father of cyberpunk, but that doesn’t mean he’s infallible. While Neuromancer, Count Zero, and the Mona Lisa Overdrive (one of the best names for a novel bar none) were groundbreaking and innovative in their own right, Idoru doesn’t quite hit the spot. It was a fun read, but it was neither gripping enough nor futuristic enough to really “make it”. It may have been written in 1997, but it hasn’t dated well - if Gibson was really prognosticating, he only beat the world to the punch (for the most part) by a few years. His vision of the Walled City (a borderline futuristic MUD) was surprisingly accurate, but that’s about it - otherwise, it seems he was recycling ideas he’d had previously, only in the “near future”.

I enjoyed it, but not enough. Maybe the other two books in the Bridge trilogy are better, but given Gibson’s pedigree, it’s just too pulpy. Not recommended unless you’re a hardcore cyberpunk / Gibson follower.

Got so into the book I was reading on the flight about new journalism (Wolfe, Thompson, and the like), that I unintentionally just about finished it. So, having nothing else to read for the trip back home, I picked up:

• The Life of Pi
• The Handmaid’s Tale
• We Need to Talk about Kevin

Only about 60 pages into We Need to Talk About Kevin, and it’s breathtaking - I’ve already laughed out loud and I’ve been been mortified. It’s scary good.

Speaking of Thompson, I came across the fulltext of his essay, The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved. Classic Thompson, and one of the articles that really put him on the map.

Reviews galore to follow - so far, I’ve finished:

• the book on New Journalism (which I can’t remember the exact name of and can’t find doing an online search - it’s in my suitcase)
• Baby Secrets
• The Reality Dysfunction (which is a bit of a cheat - it’s a carry-across from last year)
• Idoru
• Haunted

Also, my flight up to Sydney got cancelled, delaying me at the airport yesterday for about an hour and a half. Topping it off, I checked this morning and found out my 6:45pm return flight had also been cancelled. Virgin kindly offered me two other options - a 6:15pm flight, or a 10:00pm flight. Which one do you think I took?