bedeviled mojo slop

I'd been using iPodderX Lite as my program of choice for downloading podcasts (RSS enclosures for you techies). Even though NetNewsWire, my newsreader of choice, supported downloading of enclosures, its enclosures settings were defined on a global basis. This sucked because in iTunes I have specific podcast playlists that get sync'd to my iPod. The latest beta of NetNewsWire supports per-feed enclosure settings. Yummy! This is not to say that I wouldn't recommend iPodderX to anyone. It's a great application. I just don't need all the extra integration support it offers.

If there's ever a celebutant that you know you're going to listen to at least one podcast from, it's Paris Hilton. So says Om, via Matt.

Podcasting is hot. But it just got hotter. Paris Hilton invites you to join her on “The Paris Hilton Podcast — Countdown to House of Wax,” beginning on April 29. Join Paris and friends as she shops, parties, poses and publicizes in the days leading up to the May 6 opening of House of Wax. “The Paris Hilton Podcast — Countdown to House of Wax” may be played back on your iPod or any portable media player.

That's hot.

Attached as an RSS enclosure is a special sound byte for y'all!

How the Mac was born, and other tales, Andy Hertzfeld (co-creator, Apple Macintosh)

Blogging is changing the way people communicate. Are you a blogger?

No. I think people overrate blogging. I think the overall phenomenon to me is Web pages. Blogs are just Web pages, a certain stylized form of Web page. Much of the blogging is driven by egotism.

I'm down on podcasts. I think that's ridiculous. Suddenly you're taking the information and making it completely inaccessible. You can't read it, and besides a podcast is nothing. It's streaming MP3s that's good, but no one can take credit for inventing a new term because streaming MP3s is simple and has been around for a while. Doing it through RSS enclosures is basically bad--to automatically download big files before hearing them. The whole thing about audio is that it has small enough bandwidth that you can stream. You just can't stream from an iPod because it doesn't have a network connection, yet. I'm excited about getting an iPod with 802.11 so I can stream to my AirPort Express without carrying my Mac around.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Listen to the podcast hm'yah.

Ponyshow-Podcast-20041223.mp3 [1.2 MB (:48)]

Production Notes

:00 - Is this the 5 o'clock free crack giveaway?
:10 - Happy Holiday and a Happy New Year
:20 - You can make your own Chappelle show sound compilation too right here

Congratulations to Dawn and Drew on their 50th podcast. Still crazy after all these podcasts Keep 'em coming!

Listen to the podcast hm'yah.

Ponyshow-Podcast-20041215.mp3 [10.2 MB (7:23)]

Production Notes

:04 - DC in the place to be? I can't believe I said it. And yeah, I kicked my own ass for that one!
:21 - Shelter Skatepark videocast footage post
:43 - I have this "tssssss" ... sort of sucking on the tongue here and there ... I'll need to stop that as well
:55 - Revealed: the secret formula for Christmas board game success

1:20 - Trivial Pursuit after Christmas ... what a blast
2:00 - Seriously ... we do have a tournament cup and a rules sheet that needs to be signed ... I think it's also notarized
2:39 - Hoogamajig? What do you call the disc you put the cheese wedges in for Trivial Pursuit?
4:34 - "All hell broke loose" ... that's an understatement. That game of Trivial Pursuit almost ended in blows. It certainly ended with a lot of cursing and people storming off. No one was nodding off at that point!
5:45 - Yes, my dad really did buy a copy of Little Women and stickers to "change" the title to "The Little Women" That's my pops.
7:22 - Stay gold.

Well, I shot some video with the digital camera at the Shelter Skatepark tonight. Movie link hm'yah.

Screwed around with iMovie to add some audio as well as to slow parts of the footage for that extra special touch ... 'cause I rock it like that

Audio: Freedom - Rage Against The Machine

Tricks in order of appearance:

• Heelflip
• Pop Shove-It
• Backside 180
• 50-50 to 180
• Ollie 360

My first podcast can be found hm'yah. You can aggregate my podcasts here. Enjoy!

Things I learned recording my first podcast. YMMV.

1. Don't be afraid to start over. I threw away 8-10 podcasts before I settled in. Mostly I edited "dead air" from the podcast after it was all said and done.
2. Use a recording program that will show you levels. If you're midrange as far as volume is concerned, you're probably OK. Beware the red. Red is bad mmmkay. If you don't have GarageBand, maybe look at Audio Recorder for OS X.
3. Write down a list of things you want to talk about. Open a bunch of interesting sites you want to discuss in tabs in your browser. Highlight passages in the pages you want to mention.
4. After posting your podcast, update the enclosing entry with production notes or a timeline. Allow people to timeshift your ass. The production notes are your chance to throw out links to the sites you're talking about.
5. Use a program to edit the MP3 ID3 tags. Most importantly, be sure to include your name in the artist field.
6. Roundtrip the entire experience. After uploading your podcast to your site, fire up your podcast aggregator, let it grab the podcast, sync your iPod (or other portable music device), and listen to the podcast yourself. Can you hear me now? Levels? Dead air? Dad belching in the background?
7. Commit yourself to doing at least one more podcast. Maybe the first podcast isn't going to be the Led Zeppelin - Good Times, Bad Times (first album, first track) you want it to be, but you gotta start somewhere.
8. Have fun. Laugh at least once. Cry at least once. Chances are someone else out there that's listening to your podcast is doing the same.

Production notes

Recorded 12/14/2004 - 8:56 PM

:10 - GarageBand rocks for recording and editing podcasts
:16 - Only 16 seconds in and you already know I listen to Beck ... I'm a dork
:47 - Dawn and Drew - check it y'all ... they're good
1:49 - Good lord ... my second time check ... I need to be podslapped
2:52 - Big ass snowblower post
3:22 - PONYshow - Podcaster of NY
3:50 - NetNewsWire started up and caused a hiccup in the recording
4:37 - Rock and Roll Confidential - Daily Douchebag Archives
5:35 - 2 years down the road I'm going to hate this podcast
6:45 - It's the iTalk not the iVoice
8:52 - Just call me PONYboy

A blog entry on Geek News Central, Podcasting Catcher Software a work in progress, brings up a good point that podcasting clients need to be smarter about downloading podcasts and when to not download podcasts. I don't have any real numbers, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that in comparison to their enclosing RSS feeds, podcasts are hugeish Let's say I put a 1 MB podcast on my blog. That's going to be roughly 222 times bigger than the enclosing RSS feed which is typically around 4.5 K.

Do podcasting clients have a checkbox where you can say, "Do not download deleted/missing podcasts"? If not, they need one. I believe in iPodderX, the podcasting client I've used, there's an option to download only the most recent X number of podcasts. I believe I set ths option to 1. That at least helps with the initial sucking down of the podcasts from a particular feed.

Do podcasting clients have an option to automatically wipe out podcasts older than say a week, a month, some configurable amount of time? That'd be a great option. That way I wouldn't have to delete old podcasts myself. And maybe you prompt me just in case ... pretty please, with sugar on top.

The blog entry ends on the wrong "note" however:

Podcasters are most to blame because their RSS feeds still have these old shows. Someone fix this please!

What?! That's sort of like saying, "Bloggers are most to blame because their RSS feeds still have these old entries."

Podcasters shouldn't need to track who has downloaded their podcasts. That information is best stored with the podcasting client. Maybe it's a checkbox that gets set next to the individual podcasts your client has retrieved to mark an item as downloaded. As long as this bit is set, even if the podcast is deleted from your music program and your hard drive, it won't ever be downloaded again.

And hey, your RSS feed is showing items from Sunday, December 5th 2004. Somone fix this please!