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RadioZoom Episode #100 – The One Hundred Mark; RZ History; Beach Times

Episode #100 was, finally, edited and released today.

A long episode to mark this milestone, Rebecca and I talk about the history of this podcast, thoughts on the medium in general, and hang out without any plan in mind. Every method of recording that I have the capability for was used in this episode. We start out at in English Bay, head back home to the “studio”, and toss in a recording we did while sunning ourselves on the beach during Canada Day weekend.

I want to say thanks to everyone who has had played a role in the history of this podcast, from the beginning to now. You know who you are, and I will refrain from listing everyone out in the fear of omitting some one. It’s been fun, and I’ll keep on keeping on with the podcast.

71:58 minutes
radiozoom.net

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Restructuring the RSS feed of my site

I’ve been reading various sites lately where there has been a sudden revelation about RSS[wiki], or Really Simple Syndication, by several bloggers. As far as explaining this to those who still don’t know what RSS is, I really don’t want to get into too much explanation. For that, I’ll link to this post and that post. Those two gals have a pretty good grasp of what’s going on.

When I was using Blogger, I setup a RSS feed through FeedBurner, which is a great, free service that seems to syndicate damn near anything you direct at it. In fact, it’s what I still use to publish my podcasts. Making the switch WordPress, I let all my RSS needs be served through it and forgot about FeedBurner. I knew a few people were subscribed through it, so it has stayed afloat. That’s really about it.

Today, I dove back into FeedBurner and discovered lots of benefits in pushing my RSS feeds through their service. It makes total sense, and I think I might have screwed some people up when I changed the permalinks on my blog a few weeks ago. Hopefully you’re all still with me and will forgive the error of my oversight there.

I encourage you to subscribe to the (beefed up) feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/audihertzrss

I also emplore you to learn more about RSS and how to use it. I use it to swarm through sites and pages of information every single day. It saves a lot of time and keeps the latest news coming in as soon as I want it to. (Insert annoying voice over guy here) And you can too!

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Say it with authority

It’s official now. Google is in the dictionary, and it’s a verb.

The next time one of your fancy-talkin’ friends tries to correct you for using Google as a verb–as in “Let’s google for pics of Scarlett Johansson”–point out that the hoity-toity Oxford English Dictionary now backs you up.

According to a Motley Fool news story the dictionary added the word during its latest round of updates. Over at the SearchEngineWatch they posted the dictionary’s definition of the word:

intr. To use the Google search engine to find information on the Internet. trans. To search for information about (a person or thing) using the Google search engine. [techweb]

Does this also mean that it’s fair game in Scrabble as well?

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iTunes revises their podcast categories

I got an email from Apple last week about some changes they applied to the way podcasts are categorized in the iTunes music store.

Today we launched a revised set of categories for podcasts listed in the iTunes Music Store. We’re sending you this email to let you know how to change your podcast feed to accommodate these changes. The revised categories and subcategories are listed at the bottom of this message. Please take the time to change your podcast feed as soon as possible. Please note that we will support the use of the old category names for the next few months, so there is no immediate deadline for making these changes. We will send another message before discontinuing support for the old category names.

When we read your RSS feed, we capture and store up to 3 category+subcategory pairs, and we use all of them to populate the browse lists that you see when you click the “Browse” link in the Music Store. However, the first category+subcategory pair listed in your feed is the most important, since it is the one listed as the Category field on your podcast page, and it is the only one used to map your podcast into the category feature pages.

Most of the old categories and subcategories are now automatically mapped to corresponding ones within the new system. For example, if your podcast was listed under “Arts & Entertainment > Photography”, it will now appear under “Arts > Visual Arts.” However, 3 categories have been removed and do not have a similar replacement: “International”, “Talk Radio”, and “Public Radio”. Those categories overlapped with others in the old system, making some podcasts difficult to find. If one of these categories is listed as the first subject in your podcast feed, that category information will be ignored and the second category will be used to determine eligibility and placement in that feature page.

It goes on to explain that these changes will take time to show up on their podcast directory, and any changes that I make will take 1-2 weeks before they show up in their system. No big deal, but you would think that making changes would be a bit more instananeous. It could be that they are hand checking every podcast as they come in. How would you like to have that job?

I’ll throw in the list of the new categories that they’ve added to the store, but you’ll have to click to the rest of the post to see them. I should add that even though the new categories are there, there might not be any podcasts that fit all of them yet. Continue reading “iTunes revises their podcast categories”

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Million dollar closets

Maybe it’s rehashed news or nothing new to those of us living in the downtown area, but I always thought that condos, and apartments for that matter, were correlationally getting smaller as they are getting more expensive.

Size doesn’t seem to matter for people looking for a condo these days.  Units on Howe Street in downtown Vancouver range from 478 to 600 square feet for a one bedroom.  And even though they are getting smaller, the prices for the apartments haven’t shrunk.  [news1130]

They fail to mention the price tag going for something so quaint.  Taking a quick look at Vancouver Craigslist, I found a condo coming in at just under 600 square feet in Gastown, going for $299,000.  An 836 square foot, 2 bedroom, 2 bath condo near BC Place going for $558,000.  Something simliar to that in Coal Harbor?  $700,000+ is what you’re looking at.

It does seem outrageous, but the amenities are supposedly what you are paying for.  Security, workout facilities, pools, hottubs, saunas, and so on.  A huge chunk of change to shell out for a sweet downtown address, but it depends on what you want.

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Happy Fourth of July!

Fourth of July, 2005That always seemed strange to say. Wishing someone a “Happy Halloween” or “Happy Holidays” seems more logical than wishing good tides of American independence, but that’s what you do.

This is my first Independence Day in Canada, but not my first out of the country. That honor goes to my time spent in Japan, but even that day was spent on an American naval air base. Never did I feel like I was celebrating a true American holiday than that summer. The U.S. military is excellent at those types of events.

Life has gone back to normal after the Canada Day long weekend. I will miss the parade and times with my family, but the weekend I had with Rebecca was a pretty awesome one. Lots of beach and lots of discovering more about Vancouver. We also consumed our share of alcohol, so that detail was well covered, even if it wasn’t margaritas.

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So much international flare in one city

Market in ChinatownMy feet and legs are sore, but the adventure that we took today was well worth any pain that might come out of the nearly fifteen miles that we walked today. From the west end to Commercial Drive via Chinatown, I saw more sights of the city that I’ve been wanting to explore some more since the day I got here.

When I was in the check-in line at O’Hare on the day I was leaving for Vancouver(the last time I was in the U.S. actually), an older, Chinese couple struck up a conversation with me. They told me that I had to visit Chinatown[wiki] because they loved the one in Vancouver. They were on their way to visit family near Hong Kong and said I really needed to visit there because I would absolutely love it. We couldn’t exactly walk there today, so Chinatown will suffice for now.

I had so many flashbacks to walking around Japan today. I know that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Chinatown? Japan? Well, there is a Chinatown in Yokohama that I made a few visits to during my summer there, but that’s another story for another time.

E. Pender St. in ChinatownI guess it was the smells and sounds that take me back. The abundance of the language, combined with that smell. It’s hard to explain it, but if you’ve experienced it, you know what I mean. Baked goods, fish, squid, seaweed, prawns, steamed buns, and what not, all in the open air on a hot, sunny day. It had me craving yakisoba from a corner stand much like you can grab a hot dog or gyro on a Manhattan street corner.

More pictures on my flickr, tagged “chinatown“.

One thing I never did while in Japan was to try a steamed bun. They always scared me, all the while making me incredibly curious as to what they tasted like, not to mention that stuff that was inside them. It was usually brown, and I could never be sure if it was meat as I passed people gnawing away. I already loved sushi and had a knack for trying new things at that point in my life, but I was always too chicken to go for it. Today, Rebecca showed me how stupid I was to pass so many of those up, so many times during those days in the Kanto. Spicy pork is oh so tasty!

Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese GardenThere’s more to be explored, found, and exploited in the future. In fact, our venture up to Commercial Drive[wiki] only found some slurpees and shade while we passed so many places that caused us to to point out at least five places on every block that we needed to come back to.

I should also add that the Chinese Garden in Chinatown is well worth the visit. The area that is free to the public is all that we saw, but it was a very peaceful, secluded spot. The whole area was crawling with people, but that entire, city atmosphere went away while we explored the garden. Well worth the visit.

By the way, anyone know a good place to get mexican bread up on Commercial? I was thinking that if there was somewhere to find a mexican bakery, that would be it.

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Burke is building an army

Anaheim is going to be a team to watch out for come this fall.

Chris Pronger, the biggest name on the summer trade block is going to California.

The Anaheim Ducks have traded Joffrey Lupul, one non-roster player and several conditional high-end draft picks to the Oilers in exchange for Pronger. [tsn]

You knew things were going to change around the league, but this is starting to get a little nuts.

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The next Apple OS to be previewed this August

Is anyone else anxious to see what the next Apple operating system is going to feature? I know I am, but that makes me a geek. And I’m okay with that.

Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) on Monday announced that it will kick off its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote preview of Mac OS X “Leopard” in August.

A team headed by Apple chief Steve Jobs — including Philip Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide product marketing; Bertrand Serlet, senior vice president of software engineering; and Scott Forstall, vice president of platform experience — will demo version 10.5 of the Macintosh operating system on August 7. [macnewsworld]

I’m sure we’ll hear how the transition to the Intel processor is going, but this leaves the door faily open to lots of new features and tweaks that were only waiting for faster CPU speeds. The other thing this means is that the rumor mill will crank up within the next few weeks with specualtions of what’s to come, not to mention what users, like me, really want, such as better correlation between the address book and iCal. How hard can that be?

And in other Apple news, a handful of other updates were released last week. I have yet to install the Mac OS 10.4.7 update[macnewsworld], but iTunes 6.0.5[apple] and Quicktime 7.1.2[apple] are installed and working fine.

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100th podcast to be released this week

I’ve mentioned it in the last few episodes, but the 100th episode of RadioZoom will be released this week. It is a faily large milestone in the history of the podcast, but I’m still a little confused as to how I should mark the occasion.

One thing I’d like to do is play some clips of the first few shows that I released. At that point, my intensions with the podcast was music. That has been the underlying focus on a lot of the things that I have done in my life. Beginning with high school and continuing to today, it’s a passion that constantly floats in the background of my everyday life.

The focus has shifted to being more about my life here in Vancouver now, not to mention the part time co-host, aka my wife, that joins me from time to time. With my current immigration status to this country preventing me from having the ability obtain employment here, she is more instrumental at making this podcast possible than you probably know. A lot of my discoveries about the amazing city that Vancouver is comes through a lot of experiences she introduces me to and we share. All the mistakes in terms of me calling people, places, and things by the wrong name are completely my fault. I’m still learning.

Coming up to the century mark, it makes me reflect on what I am doing and everything that has led up to now. I guess it’s something that I go through every so often, but the time and effort that I have put into this says something.  I like making things using the abilities that I have.  Taking an idea from conception to reality is an amazing reward we have as human beings.  And even if I fail or do it poorly, my synapses fire and make new connections for the next time.

I’m not planning on marking the 100th with too much hoopla.  My listeners might not notice the milestone pass by for the most part, but that might result in my own fault in maintaining a better base of contact with all of you out there that do check in(and this excludes my family).  There are plenty of ways to contact me if you wish to, and I try to do my best to reply directly to those who do send in comments, if not through mentions on the podcast.

I do the podcast for the same reason that this blog exists.  I like doing these things.  There are elements where this is work, but the reward one gets from it, albeit not for profit at this stage in my life, is what keeps me going.  And until the government of Canada allows me to do otherwise, this is about as full time as it gets.