Dealing with long term effects of change

Snippet of code from the RadioZoom RSS feedAs of today at noon, I have made a change to my podcast feed that could have some hefty impact. Allow me to further explain.

When I first started out with my adventures into podcasting, I did my RSS feed[wiki] by hand. Well, not literally, but I wrote the code myself in the way that I have learned to do things most of my life. I surfed all over the web to find tutorials and hints, looked at the code of what other people were doing, and then applied that to my stuff until it worked. Doing all the audio was a piece of cake. This part, on the other hand, took some learning.

In the history of RadioZoom, there have been three different feed addresses, the one that I currently run through FeedBurner being the last[http://feeds.feedburner.com/radiozoom]. The first version was rough, to say the least. But was it Feed Validator compliant? Not at all. That brought on the second version, which brought it up to standards and changed the address slightly, but was still hand coded. FeedBurner was the end solution that took the blog feed for the podcast and turned it into something podcatchers could fully understand, all being done automatically.

I stopped doing all manual updates around sometime in early 2005. I sent out alerts to subscribers to those feeds around that time, feeling pretty good about the switch working out in the end. About the time that I moved to Vancouver, I noticed that I was still getting errors from some one or some thing trying to get to those feeds. I decided to try redirects, but heard from fellow podcasters that this solution was working for about half of the services people were using to subscribe to podcasts.

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Let’s just remember, Ubercaster is still in beta

I love the idea of using this program to do podcasts. The moment I launched the beta version of Ubercaster, I got it. It didn’t take me too long to start figuring out the ins and outs of the program. However, the major downside to being in beta, there are no help files yet. If anything, I just wanted a quick tutorial on the keyboard shortcuts, if there are many to speak of, but the maiden voyage went along pretty well.

My only, major complaint right now is quality. In the experiments that I did before actually producing a regular episode of the podcast, I found the MP3s that Ubercaster would encode itself to not be on par with the results I got from using GarageBand in conjunction with iTunes. The 96kbps/44.1kHz MP3 sounded more like a 64kbps/22.050kHz encoding, at least to my ears.

In episode #429 of the Daily Source Code, Adam Curry mentioned the development of Ubercaster in relation to the recently released Podshow+ and how no one had sent in any feedback to him about the program as of that time. So I took the opportunity to record a two minute audio feedback to send to him, using the built-in setting of Ubercaster of creating an 128kbps/44.1kHz MP3. Sadly, the quality was on par with the previous encoding that I described. We’ll see if Curry puts it into a future podcast, but this just kinda bummed me a little more.

Another issue that I found was with playing long sound clips, such as songs or bed music. When the clip would end, there would be a slight gap in the recording, causing my vocals to cut out. In my broadcast engineer mind, I’d compare it to hitting the dump button on a seven second delay. You might not notice it while listening to the episode itself, but it would sound like I would stop talking in the middle of a word or sentence, almost comparable to a vocal stutter.

I have been on the Ubercaster forums to post feedback on some of these observations. Like I said, this is a beta. I’m just trying to offer some more observations on those wondering more about the program at this time.

On the positive side, I love this program. There’s too much to list, but I’ll try to cover some of my favorite aspects that I discovered with this initial use. And don’t leave me a comment saying, “yeah, yeah, CastBlaster already has all that.” I’ll be honest to say that I’ve been long jealous of that program and crossing my fingers for a Mac version for quite sometime.
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Oh boy, I can’t wait to go to camp

Via Kris Krug[post], I’ve signed myself up for BarCampVancouver.

Who?
Tech creatives: Local technologists, geeks, innovators, enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, tech writers, tech managers, bloggers, podcasters, video bloggers and hangers-on. We can only accept ninety people, so register early.

What?
A 24-hour ad-hoc, all-play unconference where everyone who attends participates by presenting or helping out.

Where?
Bryght Offices, 1 Alexander St. (suite TBD); Gastown, Vancouver: Map

When?
Friday, August 25, 6:00pm to Saturday, August 26, 6:00pm

Why?
Because it’ll be a fun party and totally informative, all at the same time. Here’s the full rundown: https://barcamp.org/BarCampVancouver

[barcamp]

I think this takes me into a whole, new classification of geek, but that might not be the most horrible thing. There are a lot of really interesting people in the Vancouver that are going to be at this event. I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to contribute, but once you get me talking about podcasting, it can get difficult to make me stop. Just ask Rebecca, who will be in attendance as well.

I’ll have to think about doing something with making a recording while I’m there. maybe even a few. With hope, Ubercaster will improve to make it more efficient to do it on the spot. That would be sweet, but more on that program another time.

RadioZoom Episode #104 – Celebration of Light; Podcast News; Metroblogging Vancouver; Feedback; Ubercaster

Episode #104 is ready for download, but be gentle. I’m testing a beta version of a new program called Ubercaster, and the quality didn’t turn out so hot. The rest of the program is outstanding. Hope to use it more in the future, but only if the quality gets better.

Tackling the podcast again after the last few mobile episodes, we’re back in the studio in this much more relaxed edition. Lots of news about what’s been happening with the podcast, and you can see some of that in the links here in the show notes. I also take a moment to mention feedback that seemed to have been accumulating, but I feel like I missed some of your comments. This is also my maiden voyage of using Ubercaster to do a podcast. Please give me feedback about how it turned out, especially the quality. The program is in beta testing, so your feedback will go to the guy’s making the program in order to make it better.

41:59 minutes
radiozoom.net

Getting bit by not managing my data

So...  much...  audio...The last few days, I’ve found my mind swimming through the issue of managing the data that rests on my laptop and external hard drive. This goes beyond the basic backing up gigs of junk in the event of catastrophe. I’m pretty good about staying on top of such things.

What I’m talking about is the simplicity of keeping track of everything, where it is, and how much space it’s taking up. I have so much audio sitting around, it’s getting nuts. It doesn’t help that I come from the radio mentality of not wanting to delete anything.

Back at WSUI, we archived so much onto CDs, it’s not funny. Stacks and stacks of blank CDRs would turn into piles of archived programs and interviews. You do it for the sake of history and yourself, creating evidence that you were once on the radio and hopefully good at it. Of course, those piles, no matter if it was your stuff or not, would be disowned when it came storing them. There’s probably still boxes and boxes of stuff waiting for some part-time, student employee to spend hours doing something along the lines of catergorizing everything into some sort of library.

With all of my podcast audio floating around, I’m starting to have flashbacks. Raw audio that I saved as a back up to go back to in case something went wrong during editing. Then the polished audio, edited and spliced up to my liking. Finally, exported clips of uncompressed audio. All of this eating up storage space.

You start a new project with the thought in your mind of keeping everything in check, only to work so hard on getting this new episode out that you forget about simple house cleaning. Yeah yeah, I’ll just be sure to take care of it next time… right? Wrong.

So here lies my pain of being a sucker and not managing my data better. Going through and finding the various pieces of audio, compressing them for storage, deleting the uncompressed stuff along with any program data that might have resulted from the numerous editing applications that I use, and repeat. It’s a slow, tedious process, but I put it off for far too long. Once it’s done, I’ll have gigs of storage space back and a DVD or two of archived audio.

This is a lesson to be learned for anyone that is podcasting, but can be applied to many situations. You never want to just delete a bunch of stuff to simply make some space. Archive it. You don’t know when it might become handy at some point in the future. At the same time, that’s history on your hard drive.

RadioZoom #103 – Metroblogging Vancouver Meetup

After going through an hour and fifteen minutes of audio and two days to edit it all together, episode #103 is up and ready for listening.

The podcast digs deeper into the make up of this city as I go mobile to the Metroblogging Vancouver Meetup in Stanley Park on July 18, 2006. Typically a monthly event, fellow bloggers for the local edition of the site gather up to hang out face to face in order to know thy fellow contributers. Rebecca joined the group of authors earlier this month. As her guest, I brought along the recording equipment to kind of document the occasion, but more so to meet more people that call Vancouver home and like to blog about it as much as we do.

This is a long episode, but there was a lot of interesting stories and comments that I just didn’t feel like editing out. Only one piece of music featured in this one, but I used a variety of music from Vate, Troubled Hubble, Sebadoh, and John Vanderslice to bridge between some of the segments. This is the first time I have done anything like this, and I had a lot of fun. Feedback is more than welcome!

67:40 minutes
radiozoom.net

Metroblogging Vancouver Meetup

Talking with Dane during the Metroblogging Vancouver MeetupRebecca recently joined up with Metroblogging Vancouver in the last few weeks, and we attended our first meetup last night in Stanley Park. For those unaware, Metblogs has been a site that I’ve been reading for many months now in order to learn more about Vancouver and all the interesting things that come with it. A variety of contributers that write about a city they live in and seem to know fairly well. You can see Rebecca’s profile and latest posts for Metblogs here.

With that being said, I can say that I had a really good time meeting some incredible people. I’m not a writer for the site, but that didn’t matter as I was tagging along with Rebecca. I did take the opportunity to get my podcasting foot into the meetup. This is the other project that I have to do this week, so watch for this episode to come out by Friday at the latest.

This will be the first time taking RadioZoom down this avenue of wandering around with the minidisc, talking to (annoying, badgering, threatening) people, and rolling it into a podcast. I have about an hour and fifteen minutes of audio to parse through and edit. It’s another experiment, and I have to say I’m excited because this is the first time since my college radio days of doing any sort of interviewing. But this is podcasting. I probably have more listeners now than I did back then.

RadioZoom Episode #102 – Soundseeing at the Very Berry Fair in Fort Langley, B.C.

The lastest edition of my podcast has been published. Episode #102 is ready for downloading.

The 5th annual Very Berry Fair drew Rebecca and I out to Fort Langley along with her mother, niece, and nephew over the weekend. The event happen on the grounds of The Fort Wine Co. where there was plenty to do for the kids and lots of arts and crafts for sale. I took along the minidisc with the stereo lapel mic and give you some sounds of the event as well as some commentary about what you are hearing.

54:02 minutes
radiozoom.net

Übercaster beta testing to start soon

Ubercaster.comI read on MacNN the other day that beta testing for Übercaster is to begin on July 24, 2006.  I’m all signed up and anxious to try it out.

I recall hearing about the product when it was in its conceptual stages, and their blog shows that it’s been quite the process in developing the application.  I’m unsure how this compares to GarageBand 3, but from what I know about CastBlaster (a PC only application at this time), Übercaster is somewhat similar.

Übercaster is a complete production suite for podcasting. All you need is Übercaster, a Macintosh and something to tell…

Producing a show on your Mac can be as easy as everything else. Say goodbye to the laborious combination of programs. Übercaster lets you prepare, record, cut and release your shows the way you’d expect it. With its podcasting specific features and its über appealing design you’ll love working with Übercaster.  [ubercaster]

I have a few projects that I’m working on for this week, but this will be my experiment for the next.