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SQPN, Daily Breakfast Under Pressure to Cease Podcasts

Update: (April 1, 2006)  I’m a sucker. This was an April Fool’s joke.

Father RoderickI’ve been a long time listener of Father Roderick since his early days of podcasting. At that time, he did a lot of live recordings from the Vatican during the last days of Pope John Paul II. They were fascinating, new, and revolutionary in the new medium of podcasting.

Since those days, the Catholic Insider subsided and turned into the Daily Breakfast (check out this Wikipedia entry for some more info), a program created, produced, and hosted by Father Roderick, with new episodes coming out nearly every weekday. He’s continued the same passion for the new medium of podcasting with all of his endevours. The quality is great, the material is interesting and entertaining, and he promotes the Catholic faith through subtle ways, making this a program that can cross over many religious boundries.

The people in charge of his diocese in the Netherlands have asked him to cease his podcasting projects. They do not see what Father Roderick is doing as being beneficial to the projects that are going on in the diocese, even though he is able to reach many people around the world. He is currently looking to appeal this decision on this Saturday to his Bishop. Listen to episode #99 of the Daily Breakfast to get the full story, the last fifteen minutes detailing the current situation.

Father Roderick is also asking for testimonial emails from people to give to the Bishop when he meets with him. These messages are meant for the Bishop and the diocese to understand the effect his podcasts have around the world and that they should not be regarded as insignificant.

To provide your support: dailybreakfast@sqpn.com

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Can You Predict the Weather In Vancouver?

For the past few days, the forecast has been bleak and drab. The reality has been the exact opposite. Lots of sunshine and fairly warm temperatures. I’m not going to be wearing shorts and flip flops anytime soon. I’m not going to complain either.

I’ve basically come to not trust the forecasts anymore. Things can change in an instant, but that change usually sticks around for the period of a day. At least that’s what I’m starting to understand.

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Setting the Max Volume On iPods

Apple released an update for iPods this week that offers support to users to set the maximum listening volume. This comes on the heels on warnings and reports regarding a potential connection to hearing loss attributed to people listening to their iPods at high volumes. MacNewsWorld has an interesting article about it.

People have been blasting their ears with loud music for years, starting with the Princess Leia headphones of the 70’s. I’ve been an advocate for taking ear plugs to rock shows for this specific reason. I want to be rocking out to music until the day I die, doing my best to not blow my ear drums out until that time.

Download the update here.

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PodPress 4.2 Update

A great WordPress plugin for podcasting, PodPress has been updated to version 4.2. I have yet to make the upgrade, but this was the major reason I made the jump to WordPress with RadioZoom. Publishing is that much easier with this plugin.

This update is a matter of days old and has gone from version 4.0 to 4.2 within a matter of days, updates fixing minor issues and bugs. Other details to the release:

– Full featured and automatic feed generation (RSS2, iTunes and ATOM)
– Auto Generation of enclosure tag
– Preview of what your Podcast will look like on iTunes
– Podcast Download stats
– Support for Premium Content (Pay Only)
– Makes adding a Podcast to a Post very simple
– View MP3 Files ID3 tags when your Posting
– Control over where the player will display within your post.
– Support for various formats, including Video Podcasting
– Supports unlimited number of media files.
– Automatic Media player for MP3, MP4, MOV, FLV, ASF, WMV, AVI, and more, with inline and Popup Window support.
– Preview image for videos
– Easy way to link to your podcast within iTunes

I hope to make the upgrade soon, but might hold off to make sure that there are not any major issues requiring a new update.

Update: As of March 31, 2006, PodPress is now up to version 4.3.

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I’m Signed Up For the Sun Run

Rebecca got us all hooked up for the Sun Run coming up on April 23. We’ve been doing our best to get her on a good running schedule, but her years of doing sports in high school seem to be getting her back on track pretty quickly. I am about ready to fall asleep as I write this because we were up at six this morning for a near 4km route.

For myself, it shouldn’t be too horrible, but I’m still going to train. I run about four to six days a week, alternating between long and short routes. On average, I’d say I run about 8km every day that I head out. That takes me about 30-40 minutes to complete. 10km for the Sun Run should be a nice challange, and I’ve never been in anything like this before.

I’ve found that people don’t like running with me because I either have too fast of pace or enjoy hills a little too much. I blame my brother Mike for this. He ran me into the ground when I was about to start football my sophomore year of high school, but I learned how to handle hills that way. And for those canucks out there reading this, that would be grade 10.

I’m looking forward to the Sun Run. Shortly after that, on May 26, we are looking to do the Run For Light. That’s a 4.3km course, but at night. And with glow sticks!

Time for bed now though. I’m beat. Also doing a long route tomorrow morning to keep with the training. Would like to do the Seawall as that is just over a 10km route, but we saw that they are doing construction on the side just down from Coal Harbor, from now till May. Might have to come up with a better route to train with.

Might have to try some of that music Don Deeley was talking about and see if it’s any good for keeping the pace.

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Spending Sunday in Fort Langley

Planet Java's ceilingThere isn’t a whole lot in Fort Langley, but sometimes that’s just what you need. A place where there isn’t a lot of hustle and bustle to get away from the city for a while. We were able to check it out a little more than just the drive through that I have experienced before. And if you are driving through, that doesn’t take too long.

Needless to say, it’s a small town with some character. Reminds me a lot of the small towns from where I grew up, but I think it’s a lot harder to get soy in your lattes back home than it is in Fort Langley. Even though there isn’t a Starbucks or Blenz in sight of downtown, there certainly is no shortage of coffee related establishments. You’ll have to wander past the numerous antique shops to get to them.

Autographed Tori Spelling photo at Planet JavaYou can tell that the town gets more traffic in the summer. People head out from the city to do the exact same thing that we did on Sunday. And if you do get the chance to get there, check out the little 50’s diner for a bite to eat, Planet Java 50’s Soda Fountain Café. They don’t do fries as a side to your sandwich of choice. The potato salad is just as good though, perhaps even better than the fried alternative. And it still tastes good for at least two to three hours after. How can you beat that?

And there have been movies film in this little downtown area as well. What kind of B.C. town would this be if it wasn’t used as a film set? It’s getting to the point where the game is spotting the place that has yet to be in a movie.

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Apple GUI Over the Past 30 Years

Wired.com is running this page of screen shots from various Apple systems from over the years.  This is all for the 30th anniversary of Apple Computer coming up the 1st of April.  Some of this will snap you back in your memories.  I know it did for me.

My family was one of the first to have a personal computer at home.  Apples were always apart of that.  In fact, it was about the mid-90’s that I can first recall dealing with Windows, and I was frustrated to no end.  DOS what?  Colon, back slash, who?

Boot disks.  RAM disks.  The sound of floppy drives.  Now I want to watch WarGames.

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Working the Podcasting Madness

I’ve been shoulder deep in my ongoing podcasting adventures. So much of it is behind the scenes and not very exciting, but they are details that all add up in the end. In all actuality, listeners probably don’t even notice. The fact of the matter is that I am learning with every little experiment that I do. You also have to keep in mind that not everything I do makes the final cut. If I don’t like it, I don’t do it.

There are so many varibles that keep popping into my mind. They come and go at all times of the day, and it’s important to keep them in mind or get them into material form before they’re gone.

This is what I get for leaving my roots in producing material and becoming a guy behind the scenes making it all work. I’m relearning everything. Producer, talent, and engineer. Nutty, eh?

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Congratulations, Japan

I don’t think anyone could have imagined that the World Baseball Classic would have been as successful as it was.  There was that small part of me that wanted Cuba to win it all, but I found myself cheering for Japan a lot more.

If it weren’t for the Yokohama Bay Stars game that I went to while in Japan, I probably would have never rediscovered a passion for baseball.  And the classic was some really good stuff.  Now I’m ready for opening day.