A talk show guest explains it.
I was listening to NPR’s “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!” on a podcast today and heard guest Henry Rollins say something that really expressed what I’m feeling these days:
I’m a conscientious American, therefore I have to be angry.
If you need me to explain that, you’re not thinking.
An article and podcast from a former blogger.
I listened to the podcast first. It was in my iPod after updating yesterday, among the other Slate Magazine Podcasts. Its title sent a chill down my spine, “Stop Blogging, Start Writing.”
But the interview with the author left me with the sneaking suspicion that her “last entry” was just an attempt to get some publicity. She sounded like a giggly airhead. She admitted that she had trouble “following up” with potential assignments. Hell, she claims she’d been contacted by “several” New York publishers interested in books, yet she’d managed to come away without a single contract. Not much of a professional writer, if you ask me. Any unknown who sits around waiting for a publisher to play the ball for her doesn’t deserve to succeed as a writer.
Good things may come to those who wait, but book contracts don’t.
Still, the idea of blogging taking up too much creative juice, leaving nothing for other writing, remains with me. I looked up the article that led to the podcast interview:
“Why I shut down my blog” by Sarah Hepola. She seems to echo many of my sentiments, but spoils the piece with her last sentence:
Now, if I could just turn off the TV, I think I could finally get started.
Blogging and television? No wonder she doesn’t have any time to write! Or maybe that was some kind of joke? Ha-ha?
I don’t think that author will stay away from blogging for long. It’s rather addictive — at least I think so. Something interesting happens to you and you want to write it up in your blog, partially to remember it and partially to share it with others. You learn something new, something that could help others and you want to share it in your blog. You have a deep thought or a revelation of major importance and you want to shout it out in your blog pages to see if anyone else agrees or wants to argue with you about it.
But I do agree that blogging sucks something out of a person. That something isn’t lost, though. It’s just stored away for the future.
Stats can tell you a lot of interesting things.
I spent most of this morning updating the daily podcasts for KBSZ-AM, the local radio station.
KBSZ‘s Around the Town broadcast was my first foray into the world of podcasting. I wanted to experiment with the new technology but didn’t have any content available to experiment with. KBSZ was already doing a daily radio show. Why not podcast that?
Well, what started out as a fun and education project has become a bit of a chore. It isn’t difficult to turn their broadcasts into podcasts — especially since I also do streaming audio for them and my computer automatically records each show for me — but it is time consuming. You see, I can be a bit of a perfectionist at times. KBSZ’s show never starts exactly on time and never ends exactly on time. So there’s stuff at the beginning and end that needs to be edited out. Then I need to upload the podcasts files, create the podcast entries on their Blogger account, link the podcasts files, and publish. It takes about 15 minutes per episode. If I were smart, I’d just do it every day. But I’m not smart. I wait until there’s about 2 weeks worth and knock them all of at once. It took two hours this morning. Two hours that I should have been working on my WordPress book.
I do plan, however, to get very smart. I’ll skip the editing and fully automate the process. More on that when I find time to do it. Hopefully soon.
While I’m messing around with the podcasts, I often check the download stats for all podcasts and other files on my server. I serve all files from a GoDaddy.com hosting space. They give you a good amount of disk space and bandwidth for only $3.95/month — and even cheaper if you pay a year up front. So all podcasts and book support files live there. No need to bog down my limited bandwidth with visitor downloads.
Due to a server glitch, all stats prior to November 18, 2005 were lost. No big deal. I just started using that server seriously in August 2005. But it’s good to know the start date for the stats.
By looking at the stats, KBSZ can see who their most popular guests are. For a while, I was number 2 (behind the high school football coach — hey, sports are important here in Wickenburg). Now the top slots are held by the folks who make sure all their friends know about the podcasts. Some of the really smart ones link to the podcast from their own Web sites, further increasing the number of downloads.
While I was checking stats, I checked the stats for my own podcasts. I found that my video podcasts are among the most popular I do. That doens’t make me terribly happy, mostly because they’re a royal pain in the butt to create. Recording my voice reading a script is one thing, but inserting a bunch of screen shots at key points is another. Still, I’ll try to make folks happy by delivering a few more audio podcasts.
The excerpt from my Mac OS X Tiger book is by far the most downloaded file on my server. The Panther excerpt isn’t far behind. You can find both of those in the Mac OS QuickStart support area.
All this, of course, reminds me that I haven’t done a podcast in about two weeks. I’m behind already. Maybe I’ll throw something together on the plane to Austin on Wednesday.
I catch up on one of my favorite NPR shows via podcast.
I’m a huge fan of National Public Radio (NPR), but some of my very favorite radio shows are on the air on Saturdays, when I’m not likely to be parked in front of a radio.
Enter NPR Podcasts. NPR started releasing podcasts of many of its shows about a year ago. My favorites are Business Story of the Day, Story of the Day, and Satire from the Unger Report. All are short — usually around 5 minutes — and are good bite-sized hunks of listening material good for listening to in the car.
Not long ago, NPR evidently decided to jump onto the podcasting bandwagon with both feet. The NPR podcast directory is full of downloadable episodes of shows. There are currently 293 shows to choose from and if you can’t find something there that interests you, you’d better go back to watching American Idol reruns.
Recently, I was quite pleased to see that they’d added Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! to their list of podcasts. This show, which is broadcast here on Saturday mornings, is “NPR’s weekly news quiz show.” It takes quotes and stories from the news and turns them into questions, fill in the blank limericks, and other fun tests of the contestant’s knowledge. Some of the stories are downright weird and the panel of celebrities is very funny. Each episode is full of spontaneous wit — the kind of comedy you don’t get on television these days.
Wait Wait is a 45-minute podcast, which is pushing the limits of my time availability. That’s one of the reasons I bought the i-Fusion speakers. I can set up my iPod and speakers in my kitchen or my hangar and listen in while I’m doing something else. I listened to three episodes yesterday while preparing for dinner guests. It put me in a good mood and helped me remember all the news stories from last month.
If you’re a podcast listener, I highly recommend checking out the NPR Podcasts. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
I buy a new iPod accessory.
It isn’t the iPod that’s costly. It’s the accessories.
Anyway, one of the things I like to do with my iPod is listen to podcasts. The only problem is that I don’t listen to my iPod often enough to keep up with all the podcasts I like to follow.
I decided that a good time to listen to podcasts was in the afternoon, when I got home from work and was doing things around the kitchen. You know: emptying the dishwasher, making dinner, cleaning up after Alex the Bird.
I used to plug the iPod into my Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, which has a great sound system. But the other day the darn thing just stopped working. (My third Mac hardware problem in 6 months. They say bad things come in threes.) I have to decide whether I want to find someone to fix it or just leave it in the living room as a nonfunctioning conversation piece.
I tried plugging the iPod into my 12″ PowerBook, which spends a lot of time in the kitchen. The PowerBook’s hard drive is too full to keep the podcasts on it. But I couldn’t get the volume up loud enough to hear over Alex the Bird or the water running in the sink.
What I needed, I decided, was a set of portable speaker that I could use in the kitchen or take up to Howard Mesa or bring along on road trips. Something that had decent sound and was very portable.
I did some research. I found i-Fusion.
I read the reviews on the Apple Store Web site. Everyone absolutely raved about the sound quality. I was a little skeptical. These speakers were small. I don’t care what the case is made of. They can only be so good. Fortunately, I didn’t need Bose quality sound. I just needed something that would sound okay and not distort if I turned up the volume a bit.
One reviewer whined that there wasn’t a place to store the power adapter. There is, however, a place to store the iPod and the earbuds. (I normally keep both in my purse when I travel.)
The price was a bit higher than I was willing to spend. My budget was about $100. This was $149. But I found it on the Tiger Direct Web site for $129 plus shipping for a total of about $135. And I felt as if I needed a treat, so I bought it.
It came today.
I must be spoiled when it comes to sound quality. Maybe it’s because Mike used to sell stereo systems and he buys good stuff for the house. Not expensive stuff, but good stuff. Stuff that sounds good. Really good.
i-Fusion does not sound really good. It sounds fine, but not really good. Those reviewers at the Apple Store Web site really need to spend some time in a stereo shop’s sound booth. Heck, I have a Sony boom box in my hangar that sounds better than this. But I’m not complaining. It’s certainly listenable and it can be turned up quite loud.
The case seems sturdy, the storage spaces are a bit silly but functional. I agree about the power adapter. It seems that they could have built the DC converter into the box (perhaps where the earbuds are supposed to go?) and made a retractable cord. That would have been a better design decision. But I can certainly imagine taking this little bugger on the road. With its built-in, rechargable litium-ion battery, it’ll be great for Howard Mesa, which doesn’t have electricity (yet).
Happy with my purchase? I think so.
I’ll let you know when I catch up on all those podcasts.