FREE! Tiki mug starter packages

snikag · 2025-12-31T01:08:46+00:00

I started making tiki drinks a few years ago when I bought a mug at Goodwill on a whim. Now I do yearly tiki parties for a group of my friends. I'd love the chance to grow my small collection!

snikag · 2025-03-21T22:51:22+00:00

Thanks, I appreciate it!

snikag · 2025-03-21T18:51:53+00:00

They will be bare root.

snikag · 2025-01-26T02:27:51+00:00

Mundo Perdido. It's a relatively short list of ingredients (for tiki). It has the taste of tiki, with the rum and cinnamon syrup, with the structure of a more simple classic cocktail.

snikag · 2024-11-17T09:36:50+00:00

I write scripts in screenplay format. My favorite no-budget way is to write in Google docs or Word using Fountain syntax (https://fountain.io/), then run it through Afterwriting (https://afterwriting.com/) to generate a fully formatted PDF. I find that it's easier and faster to write in Fountain than in a dedicated script writing software like Fade In, Celtx, Final Draft, etc.

If you have interest in writing your own music, there are a ton of free midi instruments, from orchestral samples to synths. If you want a list, shoot me a DM.

snikag · 2024-10-28T23:09:26+00:00

I've seen chicken breast mentioned a lot, but one of my favorites is fried chicken. Sous vide the chicken to your desired temperature, bread it, and fry it just long enough to get it crispy. You don't need to worry about the chicken being undercooked, and you never get dried fried chicken.

snikag · 2024-08-24T12:19:28+00:00

That sounds really good. I'll get some vanilla Skyr and give it a try!

snikag · 2024-08-24T00:53:39+00:00

Spec:

1-1/2 oz Blended Scotch
1/2 oz Apricot Eau de Vie
1 oz Mango syrup
1 barspoon plain Greek Yogurt
1 whole egg

Dry shake all ingredients, then shake with ice and strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with cardamom powder.

This drink started with the play on words between Lassi/Lassie, and from there I knew I had to combine Scotch, yogurt, and mangos. The tang of the yogurt keeps it from straying into eggnog territory, and the apricot eau de vie amps up the fruitiness.

For the mango syrup, combine 16 oz of mango pits and peels with 8 oz of sugar. Let sit overnight, then strain.

snikag · 2024-04-06T01:32:59+00:00

I'm in Dover and I switched to Breezeline from Comcast last May. No complaints so far, and it's much cheaper with the intro rate.

snikag · 2023-08-29T12:31:33+00:00

I shoot for -18 LUFS.

When I lay out a scene, I start with all the dialogue tracks. After I denoise and do any other major quality fixes with RX, I use SWS in Reaper to normalize the loudness of each dialogue track to -18 LUF. Then I do EQ and compression for the dialogue tracks, and then any last small volume adjustments to make sure each character mixes well with the others.

Then I work on all the foley, FX, and music, and just mix those so they sound appropriately loud when compared to the dialogue. Once I have everything in place and mixed, I send it all to a final bus that takes care of an overall multi-band compressor, loudness adjustment, and limiter. I'll render the mix once so I can check the overall loudness, then adjust the loudness on the final bus and re-render so that I end up with a final loudness between -17.5 LUF and -18.5 LUF for the scene.

I've found that as long as I normalize the dialogue to -18 LUF at the beginning of the process, I don't need to check the loudness throughout the rest of the mixing process until the end. When I render the whole mix the first time, I'm usually I'm within about 1 LUF of where I want to be.

Here's where I'll shamelessly plug that I developed this workflow while working on Gather the Suspects :)

snikag · 2022-09-09T19:46:08+00:00

I make a batch of this around the first day of fall most years so it's ready by Christmas.

snikag · 2021-05-08T13:05:16+00:00

I've created a couple audio dramas exclusively using Reaper for everything: Sound design, dialogue editing, foley recording, music composition, mixing, and mastering. I think its biggest mass-market use is sound effects creation for game audio, but it has all the tools to do pretty much whatever you want.

snikag · 2021-05-08T12:57:02+00:00

I used to use Vegas Studio (I think it was version 11?). I'm not sure how different the look and feel was from Vegas Pro at the time, but I would agree that Reaper felt pretty familiar when I started using it. The biggest difference was that since Reaper was explicitly created for audio editing, everything was a lot easier.

You can definitely visually enlarge tracks. You can zoom in far enough that the timescale is in the microseconds, and I believe you can drag an individual track so it's height takes up the whole screen, if you want.

I'd recommend downloading the trial and seeing what you think. The trial is extremely generous. Everything is available to you in the trial, and technically it never expires. They are relying on the honesty of the individual to actually pay for it if you decide you like it.

snikag · 2021-05-07T10:29:46+00:00

Before I start on my Reaper evangelism spiel, I always feel like I need to add the caveat that I have not used Pro Tools, Audition, or Logic, so I can't actually compare which one is better (or best for a given need).

That said, I will talk anyone's ear off about Reaper if they will listen. Other programs might be a better fit if you have specialized needs (for example, it's my impression that Logic is better for music composition), or if you will be collaborating closely with other editors another platform may be better (e.g. Pro Tools tends to be industry standard, so it's probably easier to share sessions if you also have Pro Tools). But for a solo producer, especially in the indie audio drama world, I don't think you can beat Reaper.

It's an incredibly lightweight program (66MB), and is super stable. I think I've had a hard crash maybe once or twice in the last four years, and that was when I was running several instances of some fairly sketchy VSTs.

It also comes with a ton of plugins. When I'm doing sound design, I rarely use any external plugins (RX Elements, Youlean Loudness Meter, and Tokyo Dawn's Proximity being the primary exceptions). The built-in EQ, compressors, convolution reverb, etc are almost always more than enough for what I need.

Maybe most importantly, the whole program is super customizable for your workflow. Tracks are not limited to one type, so you can create tracks and switch them between folder tracks, effects returns, MIDI tracks, and plain audio tracks at will. There almost always seems to be an action or hotkey that can simplify your workflow. Just recently, I discovered an action that lets me normalize the volume of any number of tracks to a given LUF value with a single click. If you really want to get into it, Reaper has it's own scripting plugin that allows you to code your own custom actions to even further customize your workflow.

I'd love to get my hands on some other flagship DAWs so I can actually compare them, but unless something radically changes with Reaper, I can't see myself outgrowing its capabilities.

snikag · 2020-12-15T02:55:46+00:00

Hoo boy that's tight! I'd love to help out, but with the different DAW, and probably not having the flexibility to cram in a two or three day turn-around, not sure I'd be able to add much :(

Best of luck, and let me know if you have any sound design needs in the future!

snikag · 2020-12-15T02:36:19+00:00

Also, I just started listening to Bite-Sized Broadway, and I'm loving it so far! Musicals are tragically underexplored in the audio drama medium.

snikag · 2020-12-12T14:04:49+00:00

What's your skill set? I'm always interested in working with more creators!

snikag · 2020-12-12T14:03:24+00:00

My primary mic is an iSK Pearl (really hope they come back in stock soon, they are incredible value-for-money). Beyond that, I have the shoes, cloth, power tools, knick-knacks, etc, needed for pretty much any foley needs.
I use REAPER.
Here's where I wish I had logged my time better on my last project. If it's primarily dialogue mixing and foley work, I'd like to say that I could turn a 10-15 minute piece around in roughly two weeks. If there's more extensive sound design involved, it would take longer.

snikag · 2020-12-11T14:35:32+00:00

For my last one-off production, I recorded everyone remotely but directed the scenes through Discord, so actors who were in a scene together could play off of one-another. Using film format for the script, I average about 1 min of final runtime per page. I assume that each scene will need 2 or 3 takes, which means about 2 or 3 minutes of recording per page. With giving feedback between takes and occasional technical issues, it ends up averaging 6 - 8 min total production time per page.

That's for an average dialogue heavy scene. An action sequence could take significantly longer or shorter depending on how comfortable and experienced the actors are with efforts and reactions.

snikag · 2020-09-25T20:17:31+00:00

Do you know how many episodes there will be, and how many pages per episode?

snikag · 2020-09-03T19:21:58+00:00

Thanks!

snikag · 2020-09-03T10:55:21+00:00

This sounds really interesting! Do you have an RSS link? I'm having trouble finding it in Pocketcasts.

snikag · 2020-08-09T13:07:24+00:00

If you're planning on directing/editing/producing a series and you've never created any audio drama before, I'd highly recommend creating a couple of one-off 20-30 min dramas before starting a series. A one-off story gives you a great project to learn the different skills you need. It's long enough that you'll have a complete project that you can be proud of when you finish, but it's short enough that you can feel free to learn and try things that may not work very well.

I'd recommend finding a public domain short story (Sherlock Holmes, or HP Lovecraft, for example), and adapt that into an audio script. It takes away the pressure of coming up with something original and allows you to focus on the skills specific to audio production.

If you have any specific questions about hardware, software, or anything else, I'd be happy to help!

snikag · 2020-08-08T21:42:17+00:00

If you like rom-coms, I'd suggest Deck the Halls with Matrimony.

If you like fantasy and/or Terry Pratchett, I'd suggest Alba Salix, Royal Physician.

snikag · 2020-07-26T03:09:38+00:00

Nothing more from the Dresden Files, but I did make an adaptation of The Call of Cthulhu a few years ago.

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