The Generation X Files

Bonus Track: Enjoy The Silence

1–2 minutes

I just wanted to give a quick update in between posting.

I finally bit the bullet to start making my blog posts available as audio versions.

I spent most of yesterday afternoon reading my first post aloud (it’s the shortest!) recording it on my phone. I won’t go into the many false starts. I will not mention cat interruptions/contributions. I will also spare you the swear words that were uttered during that time.

I got there in the end!

Already a little flustered, I attempted to upload the finished recording to the blog post. An hour later, I’d exhausted all attempts (and the WP personal AI assistant!) to convert the file because it ‘wasn’t recognized’.

After another wasted half hour, I found the right combination of words to force the AI to reveal the truth…..I can’t upload audio files without upgrading my account.

So now, I’m not really sure what to do.

Any suggestions? Is there any way I can share my posts in an audio format for free? Please let me know in the comments below. 👇

Now for the good bits….

Despite my temporary absence, my blog continued getting views and even new subscribers. I’m up to 20 now (yay!) and I’m grateful to each of you for your continued support!

Thank you for reading my posts, hitting ‘like’ and especially for your comments. I’m lucky, my comments section is full of interesting conversation and I love our chats.

A special thanks to (my real world friend) Citizen Smurf for all of your support. You even bought me my first ko-fi! Amazing!

To show my appreciation, my next blog post will be about whatever Citizen Smurf wants me to talk about.

Well, type about…until I can figure out how you can hear me! 📣

Citizen Jane x

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15 responses to “Bonus Track: Enjoy The Silence”

  1. Phil Taylor avatar
    Phil Taylor

    You could set up a YouTube account and do your audio posts there. Then put them in your blog with a link

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    1. Citizen Jane avatar
      Citizen Jane

      Ooh I hadn’t thought of YouTube! 🤦‍♀️ Thank you! ☺💡

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  2. Marcus Chen avatar
    Marcus Chen

    Hey there! I couldn’t wait to listen to your newest bonus track. Your writing style is so engaging and easy to follow along with. The audio recording was a true adventure for me, just like when we talked about your post. I can already hear all your thoughts and ideas in my head as I read through the content.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    1. Citizen Jane avatar
      Citizen Jane

      Thank you, I’m glad you enjoyed ☺
      I’m sorry, I don’t remember talking to you about any of my posts….do you mean the comment you left on my contacts page? 🤔

      Like

      Reply
  3. thisisasongabouttony avatar
    thisisasongabouttony

    Am sure you’ve figured it all out by now, if not, here’s my two cents worth…

    Soundcloud might work. There’s a 2hr limit on free accounts, if the length of each audio file you post is 5mins that’s about 24 recordings, if the length is less then more recordings possible etc. If the total of your recordings exceed 2hrs older recordings cannot be listened to. Cost of upgrading to increase 2hr limit to 3hr limit is about £20 a year, £45 a year for unlimited audio time. It should be possible to embed these tracks into a blog post without a paid plan plugin so that’s a bonus.

    You could also just upload audio files to a google account (on google drive), and link to them in some text from your blog, like… here’s the audio… in this case if you click that you can play a recording of me reading my first blog post (as an example of how it would work). How many recordings? I will spare you the math but my guess is about 3000 (@ free account with 15GB of memory). But you would probably want to check that you are recording audio in mp3 format, or m4a.

    If you record in wav format the file sizes are about 10x larger which will impact how many you can put up on google drive. For more memory on google, you have the option of just creating multiple accounts, each with their own email etc. Or you can double the available amount of space to 30GB on an existing account for £7 a year, push it up to 100GB for £16 a year. You could probably do something similar with other service providers if google isn’t your thing. For £8 a year you can get 50GB on Huawei Cloud, £18 a year will get you 100GB with Microsoft OneDrive etc.

    I see you on ko-fi, so you have another option. You can post audio files there and just link to them from your blog in some text. As far as I know it would be free and no limits applicable, don’t quote me on that though. To embed the audio into a blog post you would need a wordpress paid plan plugin 🤬. I use something similar to ko-fi called Patreon. Similar to linking to an audio file saved on google a new page opens and you can listen to the audio from there. Here’s an example of what that looks like for audio I made of my first blog post (same recording as what I linked to saved on google).

    Personally I would prefer to embed an audio file into the blog post instead of linking it to text, but I gag at the thought of a paid plan on wordpress for access to plugins. I haven’t explored the podcast option yet maybe I will one day and a solution for embedding is there, I’ve noticed a podcast option on Patreon and YouTube but haven’t got round to…

    You know what scratch that, decided to follow through on that eventually, thanks to you! 🤯 I set up / added a podcast on my Patreon account, it doesn’t look like you can do that on ko-fi. Once the podcast was created I could embed the audio from Patreon into wordpress, you can see what that looks like on the blog entry the audio is for linked here, apologies, I couldn’t embed it in this comment.

    The following is applicable to working on a desktop… I haven’t tried to do it on a phone yet.

    Figuring out how to do the embed… is just a question of adding an audio block (as opposed to a text / paragraph block) in your wordpress post, but for that you need a url / link address to the podcast audio file (on Patreon). To get the url… click on the “Listen in app” podcast button of the post in Patreon that you made with the audio file (you will be able to add this post to your Patreon podcast while creating the Patreon post – an important step.

    The “Listen in app” button will bring up a list of podcast players, you select “Other podcast apps”. Now select “Copy RSS link”, and paste that into a browser. You should be looking at a (Patreon) page with an audio file player which you can use to play the audio. In that player on the right hand side are 3 perpendicular dots, click on that. It should give you the option to change the playback speed and also to download the audio. Right click on “Download” and then click on “Copy audio address”, now you can paste that link into the add audio block on wordpress in the URL field…

    There you go…

    Audio embedded.

    It is a little tricky.

    On a phone probably even trickier.

    Let me know if you come right or if you have any questions and I will try my best to help, 🥶

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    1. Citizen Jane avatar
      Citizen Jane

      I erm, haven’t figured it out yet so thank you for this!
      I’m trying to do everything on zero budget but I may have bitten off more than I can chew!
      I’m going to have a proper read through of this and see what might be the best option.
      Glad my question prompted you to set that up for yourself 🙃
      I will probably have questions haha!
      Seriously though, thanks for all the info…..I appreciate it ☺

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
    2. Citizen Jane avatar
      Citizen Jane

      I’ve gone for the simplest option for now which was sharing from the google drive.

      I’ve added it to my first post as an experiment (I’m not sure I’ve done it right so….)

      In the longer term, I’ll look at the other options you’ve mentioned 🙃

      I’m learning all this as I go so will hopefully make improvements along the way!

      Thanks again for all your advice 🙂✋

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
      1. thisisasongabouttony avatar
        thisisasongabouttony

        Just listened to it, job well done! And good on you for taking the plunge, 🙂 PS… You don’t sound like Darth Vader at all ☠️

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Citizen Jane avatar
        Citizen Jane

        Thank you!
        Yay, I’m glad it’s working! Only 29 more posts to go 😂
        Haha, I’ll work on my Vader voice for the next one 🎭 I’ve got a cold so I do think my breathing sounded similar 😆

        Liked by 1 person

  4. Covert Novelist avatar
    Covert Novelist

    I’d love yo know too. I’ve been trying forever and haven’t figured i t out. Sight impaired doesn’t help much. I try to memorize what I know is right. Hope your able to find answers.🤩🥰

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    1. Citizen Jane avatar
      Citizen Jane

      It seems the best option will be to use SoundCloud. I don’t know much about it or even if I can use it with my ancient tech!
      I’m going to spend this weekend doing some research. As soon as I understand more, I’ll let you know what I’ve learned ☺🤞
      If you have a Personal (or above) account, it’s much easier!
      It’s only because I have a free account and need to have more storage space…..otherwise, you can embed audio via the Audio Block.

      Like

      Reply
  5. mattlr avatar
    mattlr

    I look forward to hearing you. One solid option is creating a podcast, and you can link the episodes as a blog post. I’m busy doing the same.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    1. Citizen Jane avatar
      Citizen Jane

      This year, the techno gremlins are trying to keep me silent one way or another! 😂
      Ooh ok, that sounds like something I should look into! Thank you ☺
      I’ve tried leaving comments on your last couple of posts but they disappear as they’re sending. Not sure if it’s a problem my end or if you’re having problems with comments in general…

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
      1. mattlr avatar
        mattlr

        mmm…. It could depend on where the comment originates. If you navigate to the actual website, it works better. The WordPress Wrapper can be sucpect :(

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Citizen Jane avatar
        Citizen Jane

        I’ve tried both ways but they still vanish into the ether…..
        At least we can chat here! 🙃

        Like

Now it’s your turn! Join me here and let’s keep talking…👇🗣📣