Thanks to listener Mikie D for correcting me on this: FMA is on [adult swim]'s broadcast schedule again, currently showing Saturday night / Sunday morning at 1:30 AM Eastern and Pacific. For updates, you can always check out the online [adult swim] schedule.

According to Anime News Network, Funimation has announced that FMA voice actors will appear at the September 20 showings of "Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa" in four cities. Travis Willingham (Mustang) will be at the Century City (LA) showing, Leah Clark (Noah), Caitlin Glass (Winry), and Aaron Dismuke (Alphonse) will be in Arlington, TX. Vic Mignogna (Edward) will attend the Houston showing. And ADR directors / voice actors Colleen Clinkenbeard (Rose, Hawkeye) and Mike McFarland (Havoc) will be at the Atlanta showing, presumably having arrived for the next day's Anime Weekend Atlanta. Check the announcement for specific theaters the actors will be visiting.

The FMA movie, Fullmetal Alchemist The Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa is getting a one-night-only theatrical run, on September 20. 250 theaters (from AMC, Entertainment Group and Georgia Theatre Company) are participating in the four-night Anime Bento Festival, which will also show Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles (9/19), Lupin the III: Castle of Cagliostro (9/26), and Karas the Prophecy (9/27). Locations and advance ticket sales are available from the Fathom Events web pages linked above, and a complete list of participating theaters is also available.

Fullmetal Alchemist returns to [adult swim] Monday, July 2 at 1AM ET, according to the [adult swim] schedule. They're running the whole series all the way through, concluding on September 12, after which it gets replaced by another run of Cowboy Bebop (which is also wonderful, but I figure everyone's seen it by now, right?).

So Fullmetal's back. As for me... not looking so good for a return. I got halfway through the script for a special episode on the movie before life intervened again, and I can't imagine having the time to actually push through that and the back 26 episodes. But I'm renewing the Libsyn and Skype accounts this week just in case I find the time and will to get it back together (you know, for the like five of you out there who haven't unsubscribed yet...)

Oh, and I turned off comments on a lot of the podcast episodes because they were getting link spammed. Sorry about that, but it sucks to have to go through twice a day removing spam.

The [adult swim] Fix now works on Macs as well as Windows. Don't know if Linux or non-PC devices work yet. According to the fix schedule, they're putting up two new FMA episodes each Friday, with episodes 9 and 10 appearing tomorrow (2/2/07).

Anime News Network reports that [adult swim]'s streaming video site, [adult swim] Fix (formerly the "Friday Night Fix") is now streaming episodes 1 and 2 of Fullmetal Alchemist.  The front page of [adult swim] currently has a huge "Fullmetal Alchemist" splash page with the caption "Now playing online.  It's pretty cool."

Unfortunately, the site is now kicking out non-Windows users, even though it used to work just fine on Macs using the Flip4Mac plug-in.  Why they haven't just switched to Flash video -- like, oh I don't know, everyone else in the whole frickin' world -- I do not know.

I had a report of AA20.mp3 causing an iPod to reset when played.  The listener said he had problems with AA19 and AA20, but that they could be played on iTunes and burned to CD just fine.

If anyone has a technical difficulty with the show, please post a comment in this thread so I can follow up.

For what it's worth, AA19 and AA20 play just fine on my 2nd generation iPod.

Also, if anyone's wondering about the show's tech specs... I pull sound bites as AIFFs in Sound Studio, then track and edit the show in Garage Band.  I then export to iTunes where I tag it (including putting the entire script in the lyrics tag), and compress it (60 kbps mono MP3).  I may do AA21 in Soundtrack and start working in an ambient bed under the long runs of narration and commentary to try to sweeten the sound of those segments.

--TAA

I'm trying to get the podcast restarted, and will be posting episode 19 in a few minutes.

The challenge, basically, is finding a work/more-work/family/podcast balance that allows for enough time to do the show.  What I've decided to do is to see if it makes more sense to not worry about keeping up with [adult swim]'s schedule -- especially as they don't run the show weekly anymore -- and just put out episodes when I can.

My initial goal is to do a show once every two weeks, basically spending one week writing and one week tracking and editing.

Due to personal issues, I am no longer able to afford the 5-10 hours a week it takes me to produce new episodes of this podcast.

I'm therefore ending the podcast, effective immediately.

I will leave the site and the episodes up until my libsyn subscription runs out, at which time I'll remove the show from iTunes, Podcast Pickle and other directories, so that people won't be pulled into a dead link.

Thank you to everybody who listened to the podcast, thought about the show, sent in questions or comments, or wrote reviews.  I hope you enjoyed it.  It's been a valuable experience for me.  But other concerns need me more right now.

Goodbye.

--Chris
TAA

As announced in the last few episodes, [adult swim] is pre-empting the Saturday Night run of Fullmetal Alchemist for the next two weeks, on 8/5 for a Have It Your Way contest winner's night, and 8/12 for an Inuyasha movie.

According to an Anime News Network article ( http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/article.php?id=9287 ), the winner of that contest for 8/5 is apparently an anime fan, as he or she has scheduled a full slate of anime for that night, including a complete run of FLCL from 11PM to 2AM (nice), the final two episodes of Cowboy Bebop from 2AM to 3AM (very nice), and episode 3 of Fullmetal Alchemist at 5AM (very nice).