NosillaCast Apple Podcast · Technology with an EVER so slight Apple bias

NC #1076 Night Before Christmas, New Taming the Terminal, Eddie Tonkoi on Producing an Audiobook

December 20, 2025·1 hr 30 min·3 clips

A tech-loving tribute told through a reimagined Night Before Christmas

This episode of NosillaCast features host Allison Sheridan alongside regular contributors Bart Bouchat and Eddie Tonkoi. The show opens with a traditional holiday reading of Steve's geeky "Night Before Christmas" poem dedicated to their late friend Honda Bob. Allison announces a new installment of the educational series "Taming the Terminal," specifically episode 41 titled "Protecting Your Secrets." Eddie Tonkoi then delivers a detailed segment on producing a professional audiobook, drawing from his experience producing his wife Jern's novels. Steve's annual poem reimagines Santa's sleigh as eight Honda models and portrays Honda Bob delivering Apple products and SSDs. Bart Bouchat's new "Taming the Terminal" lesson focuses on securing passwords and API keys in the command line to prevent them from being stored in plain text history files. Eddie Tonkoi explains that his audiobook production goal is to meet Amazon's ACX standards, which specify precise decibel levels for peak volume, noise floor, and overall loudness. He details his multi-software workflow, using Audio Hijack for recording, iZotope RX11 for audio processing, and Logic Pro for assembly and editing. A key insight is Eddie's method of never deleting mistakes in initial recordings, instead reducing their gain to near silence to preserve the original file's length for easier software integration later. He uses Logic Pro's "Trim Silences" function to automatically shorten long pauses and gaps created by this method. For achieving the right audio tone, Eddie used ChatGPT to analyze frequency patterns from professional audiobooks and generate EQ adjustments to match them. He emphasizes that a 10-hour audiobook can require over 40 hours of post-production work, not including the initial learning curve. The episode's tone is educational and warmly conversational, blending technical tutorials with personal community stories. Listeners interested in macOS/Linux terminal security, indie audiobook production, or the supportive Podfeet community will find great value. Those seeking only breaking tech news or a single-topic deep dive might prefer to skip this multi-segment format.

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