Welcome friend to Create Art Podcast where I help you tame your inner critic and create more than we consume. I am Timothy Kimo Brien your thankful head instigator with over 20 years in arts and education. How I accomplish this is by providing you with commentary, interviews, discussions, and projects that will inspire you to create art. This month I will be podcasting daily and writing a novel in 30 days. I am participating in NaPodPoMo and NaNoWriMo again this year as I did last year and you can hear those episodes here. You will be able to listen and read along with what I wrote for the day. I like to practice what I preach when it comes to art so I am challenging myself to write and having you come along for the ride. It is my hope this inspires you to accomplish your goals with your art and if you would like to share what you are doing email me at timothy@createartpodcast.com
History of NaNoWriMo and NaPodPoMo
NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days. Now, each year on November 1, hundreds of thousands of people around the world begin to write, determined to end the month with 50,000 words of a brand new novel. They enter the month as elementary school teachers, mechanics, or stay-at-home parents. They leave novelists.
NaPodPoMo: NaPodPoMo* is a month-long event similar to National Novel Writing Month aka NaNoWriMo. The difference? Well, instead of writing a 50,000-word novel, you post a podcast episode every day for 30 days from November 1st-30th. Use any platform you desire. From full production studio to iPhone app and just about anything in between. The goal is to use the challenge of podcasting daily as a form of podcasting boot camp.
The Writing So Far
3 Nov 2022 words today 1899 words total 5311
When Joel and Mack got back to their home offices in their respective basements, they began processing what they had observed in the group that formed.
Joel, wearing his camera glasses began uploading the video and audio. He knew this was going to take some time although he and Mack had not been outside that long. While waiting he sent a preliminary report to Bruce that included who was in the group, which TV stations showed up, and the last names and badge numbers of the police officers controlling the scene. He also reviewed the postings from the neighborhood social media page and noted the commenters and responses. He was looking for anyone who did not reside in the neighborhood proper and noted the locations of those who were outside of their immediate neighborhood and began searching through those profiles. The upload from the glasses to his video processing computer, he had several setups including his day job set up, took about an hour, and in that time, he had already logged the names and profiles of twenty people outside the neighborhood who had commented on the shooting. When he got the notification that the video was uploaded, he started his facial recognition program on the raw video and loaded the profile pictures of the outsiders who had commented on the social media page. He planned on using their likeness and inserting an animated image of them to discredit any reports.
Across the street, Mack pulled out his digital recorder and began uploading the audio to his Digital Audio Workstation. The microphone on his recorder was sensitive enough to pick up the calls coming through the police officer's radios without him needing to be right next to them. The audio quality was surprisingly good for this being a rush job and him keeping the recorder in his pants pocket with no windscreen. He had time to put a makeshift nylon stocking cover over the microphone grill and he made a mental note of its effectiveness for future jobs. He was able to pick out from the police radio that there was one confirmed gunshot casualty, however, there were no witnesses to the active shooter. He also noted how many units and which units were called into the scene. He began the process on his digital audio workstation to have it synthesize the voices of the police officers and the radio dispatch in order to manipulate them when the time came. He also crossed-referenced the voice profiles with known profiles captured previously to strengthen the vocal match.
Both men were deep into their respective work when they received an instant message on their secured messaging service to deliver their initial impressions. The message was coming from Cody so they immediately used their mini laptops and entered the virtual office.
“We are sanitized, and I know you just started up with your analysis, but I wanted to get those initial first impressions about today’s unauthorized event,” asked Cody.
“I’ll go first if you don’t mind Mack,” asked Joel?
“Go right ahead,” replied Mack.
“So, first impressions, typical police response to an active shooter. I was able to use my video monitoring equipment easily and without raising suspicion. The typical neighborhood response was encountered, all housewives besides Mack and myself met across the street from the school to investigate why the TV vans were out. The usual on-call reporters were dispatched with their cameramen and set up shop on the HOA’s president's lawn that runs parallel to the street. I was able to see clear visuals all the way to the school's front entrance but was unable to see past the front doors into the vestibule. Typical concern was displayed by the residents of the neighborhood and police prevented anyone from crossing over onto school grounds. The typical response for a crime scene and active shooter scenario. There was no one observed outsiders, I did obtain face pattern recordings from all individuals for the visual library. I’ll wait until after Mack talks to let you know the status of my current activities. Mack why don’t you go ahead,” said Joel.
“Thank you, Joel. I was able to mobilize with Joel and approached the group with my digital recorder undetected. I was able to obtain the traffic coming from the police officers' radio and am currently mapping the vocal patterns now for the four officers in physical attendance and the dispatcher. Regarding audio quality, it was near pristine, and the field recording setup proved to be unnoticeable and undetectable and still produced a superior recording. My visual report does not differ from Joel’s report, and I have nothing further to add to it, pending your questions I’ll turn it back to Joel,” said Mack.
“Please continue Joel,” said Cody.
“Next steps will be to finalize the visual mapping process for those in attendance and those who commented on the neighborhood app. At that time, I will be able to manipulate the video and insert those whom we feel will be able to discredit the account and it should be undetectable with the equipment and expertise of or rather lack of expertise of local media. I will just need a script and then I can start on those manipulations. I am also grabbing the social media of the dispatcher in case we need to bring their integrity into question. I will be in contact with our script writers once the mapping is over for an authorized script of events and get to work on creating that and posting it. With that pending your questions I turn it over to Mack,” said Joel.
“No questions, Mack what are your next steps,” replied Cody.
“Complete vocal mapping and wait for the script to be presented. Reach out to our podcast talent and allies and let them know we have the true story behind what happened and will provide exclusive and expedited coverage for their content and assist with social media marketing. Pending any questions,” said Mack.
“Good, Bruce was right to bring you both on board. You seem to have everything well in hand. I find it a stroke of luck that we have the best audio-visual team here teaching in our high school. This was an unauthorized event, and I can’t thank you enough for being able to be ready at a moment's notice and thank you for your loyalty to the cause. I just want to remind you of that loyalty to the cause. We will need to clean this up quickly, so once we get you the script, I am going to need you to make this the priority over all others so we can be on top of it and in charge of the narrative. Can the followers of Zenon count on you,” asked Cody?
“Of course,” they both replied.
“Good. I’ll let you get back to your work. Be ready for the script and then start the operation,” said Cody as he turned off his camera. He did not need to wait for their reply as he was waiting to hear back from Bruce and Wolfgang.
Username 1 was monitoring the WiiRU message boards when they noticed a notification come in on the Alewell town portal. It mentioned a school shooting at the Swan Victor Elementary school. Normally there would be a cyberbullying or racial profiling message coming through, but due to the shooting this required Username1 to alert their colleagues and correlate the incident with police and media reports. They began their work in earnest and began compiling the information located in the police and media networks that they had back-door access to. By the time the rest of the colleagues were able to meet all the related raw data had been made into a dossier for all gather to review. Each colleague of WiiRU kept their avatar displayed and their vocoders on to modulate their voices. Since it was under Username 1’s watch they began the gathering.
“I trust you have all had time to review the dossier I have prepared. I apologize in advance that this is simply raw data right now, but it is a developing incident, and we need to get in front of it before the followers of Zeno start their shenanigans as they did at the high school shooting two years ago. Since they have a presence in Alewell I took the liberty to enhance the monitoring of their network and it appears to be quiet, however, knowing them they will start shoveling their narrative soon. I’d expect sometime this evening since most of them have day jobs and won’t have access to their network until after 5 PM. That gives us about two hours to come up with a preemptive plan to douse their attempt. The floor is open to suggestions,” said Username 1.
“When did we last see activity on their network, we might have silence because they have discovered us eavesdropping,” asked Username 44?
“I am showing the last reported chatter coming in last night with target number 1, seems to be a video conference, unfortunately, the content of the conference was protected by a sanitization sweep so they have partially upgraded their network,” replied Username 1.
“Do we have friendlies in sanitization that could help us open the curtain to future conference calls,” asked Username 44?
“We have warm leads over there, it’s a German/Israeli corporation. We can turn up the heat on them and get some traction in there, no E.T.A. on that, however,” said Username 87.
“Doesn’t that corporation have two operatives here in Alewell? Might be worth a reach,” said Username 1.
“I can reach out and warm up our contacts. Any trade we can offer them to sweeten the deal,” asked Username 87?
“Start with hardware and then go with minimal resources. I assume we don’t have enough of a hold to get them more liquid assets,” replied Username 1?
“Can do I will signal if there needs to be another assembly,” replied Username 87.
“With that, I am moving we go ahead and discuss utilizing our newest tool for a real-world exercise. Are we ready to deploy it currently? I think this would be a great opportunity to test it out on the followers of Zeno and set up sprint iterations running for 12 hours on and 12 hours off and resolve flaws and shortcomings. We have talked about this in the past,” asked Username 1.
“Well, it was not meant for something like this, the tool was meant to be used on a smaller scale and not for the type of sophistication that the followers of Zeno have displayed in the past. I am not sure we can predict the outcome realistically on this incident,” said Username 42.
“I know we had designed it for simple cyberbullying in a classroom setting of about 30 kids, but the Z folks are about 30 individuals and although they are more sophisticated, they aren’t as imaginative as tweens and teenagers. Can we at least have it in our arsenal for this incident and have it ready to deploy if other measures are not effective,” asked Username 1?
“As long as we keep the scale small and well-defined, we should be okay. But we are talking about AI here and we will need to reign it in strenuously if it goes rogue,” replied Username 42.
Reaching Out
To reach out to me, email timothy@createartpodcast.com I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and let's start that conversation.