Category: Internet

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Being brave on Wikipedia

I can’t be the only one who hesitates to make their first edits on Wikipedia, can I? Because after pouring over the ins, outs, dos, and don’t-even-think-about-its, there is a lot to consider.

I have to say, it’s not that much different than doing IRC back in those glory days of 1996. You join the community, interact, edit, create stuff, and if you do something wrong, you could have all of your contributions deleted, banned, or even get yourself kicked off the system. Sure, the whole thing about Wikipedia is to encourage you to join in on the fun, but you have to get into taking the first steps. Intimidating, but there’s truth in not knowing until you try, right?

I actually made three, completely new entries, all for the radio stations that I used to meddle with; KRUI, WSUI, and KSUI. I was pretty amazed that there wasn’t something there sooner. Hopefully more people will come along to contribute, but I’ll try to add more as I have the time. There’s also that whole memory thing. I have to try to do this when something creeps up on me and get the facts down before I forget… again.

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Kings of Convenience – failure

There are certain songs that take you back to certain moments. This has to be one of them for me. It constantly reminds me that no matter what treks your life has forced you through, it’s going to be alright. You just have to keep your chin up and keep your feet moving. That and I really, really like this song.

Feel free to check out more Kings of Convenience. They have my seal of approval.

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Locked and loaded for NorthernVoice 2007

After some careful planning and budgeting, Rebecca and I have both signed ourselves up for NorthernVoice 2007. It should be a whirlwind of a weekend since the following Sunday is our one year anniversary. If that seems to be a geeky way to spend the first part of the weekend after being married for a year, then you’re probably right, and we like it that way.


Northern Voice is a two-day, non-profit personal blogging conference that’s being held at the UBC main campus on February 23-24, 2007.

This is the 3rd annual incarnation of this event, see the 2006 and 2005 websites for previous information.

Blogging, podcasting, social media, new media, web 2.0, and so on. Yes, there will be lots of ideas about all those things being tossed around, not to mention plenty of laptops on laps action.

We had a snafu in our planning, not realizing that Friday held quite the goings-on with the whole Moose Camp deal. In our heads, we thought that was taking place in the evening on Friday, so we opted to have Rebecca take the following Monday off in anticipation of our celebratory weekend. Looks like I’ll be checking things out for that Friday on my own, but she’ll make her way down for any activities later on that night. We’ll both be sneaking around on Saturday.

Looking forward to meeting more new people in the sphere of all things new media, plus catch a few neat sessions(view the schedule). Even Dave is leading a session on podcasting, so I’ve got to go heckle him check that out.

I’ll probably check in here during the event, and the recording gear always travels with me. It’s just a matter of not getting too into soaking up information to remember to grab some audio cuts. Have to see how things go. For me this is really good timing because the wonderful (I’m throwing that in there in case anyone at CIC is watching) Canadian government recently approved my PR application. I’ll be able to work in a matter of weeks now. 🙂

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Podcasting reaching its limits

When I first caught word of this post at Digital Podcast, it made me stop to think. Has podcasting reached its limit? I have to agree with Scott Bourne at Podcasting Tricks. No way, Jose.

I’ve been a proponent of the medium since I first heard of it. The potential hit me at that same moment, but I think it’s fair to say that the concept hasn’t been taken to the height of where it can deemed successful or impactual.

Then, I read this over at BoingBoing. It appears that Odeo is up for sale. Instead of just pulling the plug, they thought they would see if someone would want to buy the site. My use and knowledge of their service is limited, but it’s essentially an online podcatcher. If you don’t have an iPod or the ability to download gigs of podcasts onto your computer, you can use their service to keep track of all of your favorites and listen to them from the web, no eating up of your hard drive space required.

This makes me think a little bit more about this idea of podcasting reaching its limits. Remember the dot-com bubble[wiki] of the 90’s? I see podcasting to be a lot like that. There is the surge that is still going on, but a true grasp of the potential hasn’t been seen yet. The whole thing might have to completely tank before it gets better.

For those of us who bask in glowing warm glow of new media and Web 2.0, we get it. For some of us, this is old news. However, I always think back to my friends and family who don’t drink this stuff like water as I do. Are they listening? Are they watching? Are they downloading? How accessible is this stuff, regardless if they know what podcasting is or isn’t?

In the early 20th century, TV went through many trials before it was settled on how everything would work on the technical side. From there, the growth of broadcast signals trickled out across the world, and even the broadcast day went from a few hours to the around the clock monotony that we have today. There was no switch and suddenly we had the Honeymooners[wiki]. It took time to grow, and podcasting faces the same task.

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The issue of quality

Allow me to rant some more about podcasting, but it’s something I haven’t done very much of. Regardless, I feel like I should get some more thoughts about this medium out there. I can be such an armchair warrior, telling Rebecca all sorts of different feelings and thoughts about the things I see and hear.

When it comes to the quality of your podcast, there is a correlation to the content that you are producing, or at least there should be.

For instance, if you are a major company providing audio podcasts for the world to hear, then make it sound good. This should be the number one thing on your list of priorities. The actual quality of the content should matter just as much, but if I can produce something that is audibly better, then you have a problem.

I have a nephew back in the states that fired up Garageband, all by himself, and recorded his own podcast, trying to be like his uncle. Sure, an eleven year old kid yakking about going to school and playing soccer isn’t the most entertaining thing for the rest of the world to hear, but the crisp audio quality of him using the built-in mic on their iMac worked amazingly well. What he recorded never reach the ends of the earth, but it amazed me so much that I ran some bits of it on an episode of RadioZoom[rz#71].

On the other side of this argument, give me brilliant content with questionable audio quality over the reverse, no questions asked. I’ll always be wanting something to improve, that’s a given. If you have something really important or worthwhile to share with the world, then crank it out there.

You should always strive to make things better, but if you are hunkered down in the middle of nowhere with a mic, laptop, and some form of internet connection, podcast away. Tell the world what it’s like to be alone and starving to death, but surviving on the heat of your laptop battery. That might be a tad bit extreme, and you should be able to at least IM some one for help in that situation. Stiil, if you have your laptop and a mic in your office at work, get what you can when the situation calls for some ghetto engineering, or in this case, ghetto podcasting.

I only mention this because I listened to some big company’s podcast today. It irked me because of the reasons I just mentioned. I won’t mention who it was for or done by, but it sounded painful. The content itself wasn’t up my ally, but even an objective view of it still makes me think that there is room for improvement. I wasn’t buying into their product when I went to the site in the first place, and you can bet that there is no way that I will in the future.

On another, related note, Matthew Mullenweg has started podcasting. The brainchild behind WordPress has a mic, a computer, and probably a lot to say. Only two episodes[#1, #2] and not the best sound quality, but I’m more curious as to what a major player in the world of blogging has to say versus how well it sounds when he says it.

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Swearing At Motorists

There’s some days where you find inspiration hard to come by. For that, I turn to music and try to tune out the rest of the world. Going through the library, I settled on Swearing At Motorists[wiki]. I met these guys a few times and seen a handful of their shows. Another sample of my affinity for bands with just two guys.

At every single show I’ve been to, Dave Doughman always has problems with his guitar. I’m not sure if it’s all the thrashing around that he does or the amount of self-servicing he does to that thing. My favorite time was at SXSW in 2002(which is where the clip above was filmed as well). There was a short somewhere in his guitar, and he had to hold it at a perfect angle, damn near completely still. To know S@M, you know that Dave is everywhere on stage. So there he was, in the middle of a set, right in the middle of a song, standing on stage like a mannequin, and screams, “I’m trying so hard not to flip out!”

I got the idea to check out their website to see what’s the latest on them. Dave’s going to be a husband and father, if not already. However, living in Berlin now, making it back to the states is going to be tricky for them to tour. Aside from that news, I was also excited to hear about an album they put out last October on Secretly Canadian, “Exile On Gipsstrasse”. The making of the album has a fascinating story, and knowing what I do of the guy, I can’t say that it surprises me.

I started taking my guitar to the Ubahnhof – an underground train station – at the end of my street to busk. The first night I didn’t make much money, but was floored by the huge sound created in the tube by my unamplified acoustic guitar and voice. So the next night I returned with my tape machine and 2 microphones, set them up, got good levels, and just let the tape roll as I busked. I made a little more money that night, but upon returning home and giving the tape a listen, realized that the trains and passengers were too distracting from the overall recording. [secretlycanadian]

You can read the rest for yourself, but the story goes on to tell how he kept going to the station later and later to record, eventually trading all the studio tracks for that of the underground station. If you’re curious to hear what it sounds like, the whole album is currently available for free here.

Listening to it right now, there’s not much for percussion like previous stuff, but I’ve always been a fan of Dave’s vocal styling. You can even hear the sounds of train passengers passing by in some tracks. I have to say that this is the type of recording that I really respect, more so because he broke into station at one point for the sake of getting this record done.

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Bruce Campbell

Around the age of 17, I got to know who Bruce Campbell[wiki] was. Prior to Evil Dead 2[imdb], I never gave a second thought to horror movies. Then, I understood what brilliance really was, not to mention how much the human face could really contort. Even in the spirit of the Super Bowl, in which this has been airing prior to, I could care less if this is a commercial. Bruce Campbell is just one of those guys, and I’m a big fan.

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I am all not for Snap previews

If there is anything more annoying to me when it comes to website browsing, it’s Snap previews. It’s completely a matter of preference, but I cannot help but express my disregard for something that is supposed to be helpful.

When I’m looking at a site, I don’t want to see a tiny preview in a pop-up bubble of the link that I think I might like to click on, from said site that I am already looking at, especially when it has a bunch of links on it. Maybe it comes from the fact that I get a lot of content from RSS feeds, not bothering with loading websites unless I find it necessary. However, if I want to view a web page, I want to see the whole thing. I don’t want to peek through the keyhole. I’d rather just kick the door down and go in to see what I can find.

Thankfully, BoingBoing has pointed to a great post about what you can do to stop this helpful service from functioning on your browser. Rock!