The Crazy Canucks #58 – Cardiac Kids on the Corner

This was recorded last Friday night and posted today. Been a tough last few weeks as Canucks fans. But what can I say? I just like hockey, not to mention good drink and talking hockey. Plus it’s a super short one, so listen up!

What would you expect while our team is currently sitting outside a playoff spot? A drunken, raw and rant-filled episode of course!

Record as of this episode: 26-21-6
Northwest Division: 4th
Western Conference: 9th

We go mobile for this quickie episode while our team is on a downward spiral. Dave and John take to the streets and record their thoughts on our recent loses while tossing in some speculation, rumours, and flat out wake up calls to the team and some fans. Just for kicks, Dave even throws in a shout out to the Agridome… and something to do with horses.

11:05 minutes
The Crazy Canucks

The Crazy Canucks #55 – The battle against the New Yorks

Episode #55 was released yesterday.

Surprising enough, we are all together for this episode, but just for a brief time. Dave chimes in by phone from downtown Vancouver as we gather all of our thoughts on the games against the Rangers and Islanders. We also cover a variety of topics regarding the team in terms of new players, Superskills, ownership of the team, the coming All-Star Game, and other news topics about the NHL.

55:34 minutes
The Crazy Canucks

What does it take to podcast The Crazy Canucks?

A first, sneak peak at how The Crazy Canucks is made

I’ve been thinking of doing a more, detailed post about how a typical episode of The Crazy Canucks comes together, but I’m going to make a simple list of all the gear we use to make it work.

  • Skype – Without this, we have no podcast. With Alanah doing her thing on the island, Dave on the north shore, and the rest of us in Vancouver, this is the crucial piece of software that ties us together. This also allows us to bring on any other guests that also use Skype on their PC.
  • Ubercaster – This is the recording software that I prefer to use. I’ve watched Ubercaster go through the ropes of development and been impressed with every step of the way. It also has a built-in function to record Skype conversations, making it even easier to record our conference call. It is worth the time to setup templates for your podcast because it makes it very easy to fire up the program, open a template, conference call on Skype, and you’re rolling.
  • Levelator – Due to the various setups that everyone has and the fact that Skype is really difficult to control audio input levels on, I always export the vocals first to run them through Levelator. You might not get the best audio quality from our “Voice Over IP Hot Stove”, but at least you’ll be able to hear all of us.
  • Apple iMac – This is the work horse that ties together our recording hardware and software. Speaking of…
  • Behringer Eurorack UB1204FX-PRO 8-channel Mixer – With anything you do in the world of recording and/or broadcasting, you can never have enough inputs. Most podcasters don’t need this much, but I’m a geek. You never know what you’ll wanna try to do, and this mixer has a slew of other nice features as well.
  • Shure SM7 and Behringer XM2000S microphones – I have one of each of these, and perhaps a bit more of overkill for the average podcaster. However, I’ve been doing the radio thing for ten years now. I have accumulated a collection of toys.
  • iPod nano (2nd gen) + Belkin TuneTalk Stereo – This is what I’m using to do mobile recordings these days. The quality is really surprising, and for podcasting, you can’t ask for more than something that sounds good as well as being small and very portable. Records stereo WAV’s at 44.1Khz as well as mono. I also put a standard microphone wind screen over the Belkin add. Additionally, I taped down the small switch on it because it had enough movement on it that it caused a slight rattle in the recordings.
  • FeedBurner – We push our RSS feed through their service simply because they are really good at what they do.
  • WordPress + PodPress – This is the CMS/blogging platform that we use to publish TCC episodes. PodPress is a plugin for WP that we use on the site that allows people to listen to our podcasts from the website as well as download them or make them available in our RSS feed.

Making it all come together has taken me about a year and a half to get efficient at. Every episode has something different to it, and I’m very much a fly by the seat of your pants editor. As the recording is happening, I can envision how I’ll go back and edit something, make a mental note as to where it was in terms of time of the epsiode, and get the podcast encoded and uploaded in about 20-30 minutes after we are finished recording. After that, it’s just a matter of making the blog post and publishing it to the world.

The Crazy Canucks #53 – Happy Hockey-days

Recorded and posted today.

So it’s been a while since the last episode. Big deal, wanna fight about it? And truth be told, the end of the year got really hectic for us to all link up and get a new one recorded. We tried a few times, but the real world kept getting in the way, not to mention a string of Canucks games. We love our podcast, but recording during the games? Not unless you’re buying the beer.

Anyhow, the crew is back in form, but Alanah is a healthy scratch. The rest of the crazies gather together to reflect on the past few weeks and talk a little hockey. Of course we’ve got the Canucks, but we also get into the Spangler Cup, World Juniors Championship, and the very impressive Winter Classic in Buffalo.

Nearing the half way point in the season, there is much about the Canucks to discuss, and we do our best to sum up the action since our last episode. As always, we look ahead to the coming games, anxious to see both New York teams come to town for the first time in five years, and there is even some Surrey love.

50:33 minutes
The Crazy Canucks

The Crazy Canucks #53 – Pittsburgh night in Vancouver

Late to post it here, but we recorded and posted this one on Monday night.

There are only four of us in this episode, but Alanah shall return again soon. In the meantime, we all gathered together before the game tonight against the L.A. Kings to get you some of our thoughts on the last few games that have been.

Record as of this episode: 16-10-2
Northwest Division: 1st
Western Conference: 2nd

We hit the last few games to give our thoughts on how they went, but a lot focus comes back to the recent game in Vancouver against the Penguins. There was a lot of build up to the game, and we all feel like it lived up to be quite the event. We also look ahead to the coming games while looking even further at the new schedule that will take affect next year. We also hear from a listener in Seattle about his thoughts on the NHL expanding more into the Pacific Northwest.

40:48 minutes
The Crazy Canucks

The Crazy Canucks #52 – We’re not complaining

Recorded and posted yesterday evening.

We haven’t been ignoring you. Life has been moving too fast for all of us to link up and get an episode recorded. We’re still without Rebecca on this one, and Alanah had to leave the rest of us half way through. Dave, J.J., and John stick it through to the end to round out the episode.

Record as of this episode: 13-9-2
Northwest Division: 1st
Western Conference: 3rd

A few episodes ago, we were down in the dumps. Even with all the players cycling through with injuries, we are not complaining about how well the Canucks have pulled together and surprised all of us. From the bench to the guys in goal, it’s been a nice few weeks, no matter how much Pronger sucks. Oh yeah, and Bertuzzi made his Vancouver homecoming.

53:11 minutes
The Crazy Canucks

The Crazy Canucks #51 – At least we can beat Colorado

Recorded and posted last night.

Even though it’s only been one game since our last episode, we’re back to give you another dose of our punditry because it’s tough to keep hockey fans, much like ourselves, down. Dave is a healthy scratch on this one, but the rest of the crew gathers together for this session that aimed to be short but wound up running about forty minutes.

Record as of this episode: 6-8-0
Northwest Division: 4th
Western Conference: 14th

The win against Colorado looked good, but we need to keep pushing to make sure that things keep looking up. We also try to figure out why there are these long breaks in the season without games, J.J. takes a first look at the All-Star ballots and presents some ideas for a new system, Rebecca finds an interesting new nickname for Vingualt, Alanah presents some interesting insights to the state of the league, and John has been watching some Finnish hockey.

40:59 minutes
The Crazy Canucks

The Crazy Canucks #50 – Like a puck to the face

Recorded tonight, posted tonight, and we are all tipsy Canucks fans.

Good day, and welcome to episode fifty. This is a long overdue one, and there were some technical difficulties that occurred before this episode saw the light of day. Regardless, we push forward, sadly without our good pal Dave, but he shall return. Alanah actually joins us about twenty minutes in, and hilarity ensues.

Record as of this episode: 5-8-0
Northwest Division: 4th
Western Conference: 14th

The basic lowdown to this recording is that we are just as baffled as you are about our beloved team. There is no easy answers other than trying to pick ourselves up and work hard at being a better team on the ice. The recent 3-0 loss to Nashville is fresh on our mind, and it hasn’t been that much better before that.

66:29 minutes
The Crazy Canucks

The Crazy Canucks #49 – It’s still early in the season

Recorded last Thursday and posted on Friday. Get your Crazy Canucks while it’s still the latest episode… because we’ll probably record a new one this week yet.

We were without Alanah for this episode, and John was under the weather during the recording. Rebecca was in the driver’s seat and held down the podcast with JJ and Dave to discuss the season thus far. It’s still early, but every game gives us a feel for the team.

Record as of this episode: 3-3-0

There is still plenty to talk about, including the fallout from the Kesler/Boulerice hit, trade murmurs, and a variety of other topics that the crew finds interesting.

31:33 minutes
The Crazy Canucks

The Crazy Canucks #47 – Philly cheese stink

Recorded last Thursday and posted on Saturday, TCC#47 is ready for you to listen.

We recorded this a few days prior to its actual release, but scheduling prevented the editing to get done before it could get out to you. Regardless, we hope you enjoy this episode as we go over the gross, 8-2 loss to the Flyers and dissect the hi-jinks that happened in the game. We also go over players that are sticking out to us (good and bad) and look at some other topics that we find notable.

Record as of this episode: 1-2-0

This was the first episode of the season that we’ve been able to gather together in the round table format, so we hope you enjoy this one as much as we did getting it recorded.

43:17 minutes
The Crazy Canucks