Monthly Archives: October 2004

Content vs Publishing Mediums

This is a sneak warning for all you Webfrooters who read my personal blog. Webfroot’s gonna have it’s own podcast. A podcast is basically a radioshow recorded and made available online as an MP3. Technology is so cheap and easy to use that now anyone can publish stuff like this.

People can listen to the MP3 by downloading it themselves, or automatically. An RSS feed is then made available, and using enclosures, special RSS feedreaders can download the MP3 over http or BitTorrent. The feed reader then inserts the MP3 into your iTunes and when you update your iPod in the morning, you have radio to listen to!

But after listening to some podcasts, it seems people are concerned about podcasters talking about podcasting on their podcasts, claiming “it’s all they ever talk about”. David Slusher says “fuck off, too bad, it’s only been around for about 6 weeks!” on his Evil Genius Chronicles audioblog/podcast.

Which brings me to my point (and I’m borrowing some of this from Slusher): People judge new mediums like blogging and podcasting by the content. “Blogs suck because they’re either geeks talking tech or goths whining about their life”. “Podcasts suck because they’re unprofessional and it’s just geeks in their basements”. I could say back at the birth of TV “Television sucks — it mostly has test-patterns on it”.

While yes, the majority of blogs are by geeks and people whining about their life, and the current majority of podcasts have podcasters raving about the new medium, this doesn’t mean that the medium sucks! It’s just you think the people podcasting suck! Which is fine, it’s your opinion — Judge the content, not the medium. These people who have picked up the podcasting stick and are running with it are pushing the medium.

Yes, current podcast content appeals to geeks, but that’s because it’s a new medium invented by geeks! Who invented the TV? Who invented the Internet? Damn right… it was geeks. But just like there are now more non-geek sites on the internet, and there are more non-geek blogs springing up, there will be more non-geek podcasts in the near future.

Blogging Rant 1 comment

Meeting Andrew Kepple

UPDATE: Andrew Kepple’s website is now at http://tmst.twu.net/sluggy/

I made my way out to Wellington Airport this evening to meet one Andrew Kepple, also known as TmsT, one of the more well known animutationeers. He’s known best for the “Jesus H. Christ vs Colin Mochrie” Animutation series (‘French Erotic Film’ and the rest of the series).

So yeah, I waited at Gate 13 for him holding my sign:

C. MOCHRIE
A. KEPPLE
N. CICIEREGA

which he liked 🙂 We exchanged gifts (yay! I got rare TmsT vids!) talked for a moment or two, took some photos and parted ways. It was quick and succinct, but you can blame Air New Zealand for demanding check-in times. He said will be posting on his site tonight, so be sure to watch it for more hilarity 🙂

I hope to see more of this elusive guy around meatspace in the future… as Strong Bad would say “Man — so cool!” but without the creepy-combover.

Update: Oh, so after meeting TmsT, I took a walk and took some more pictures. My faves are on my Flickr.

Outside 4 comments

Why being a righty rules.

If you’ve got more than one tab open in Firefox, and you’re closing the entire window: You move the mouse over the icon in the top left corner of the screen and double click it. Firefox says “Lotsa tabs… really close window?”, so then you move your thumb over to press the Enter key on the numpad. Window Closed. When this technique is perfected, you don’t even see the dialog box 😀

Software Comments are closed

Mr Scruff Returns!

I was in Cybernomad tonight saying Hi to my good friend Benji. He was talking to customers, so I’m browsing the many handouts they have on the desk. I pick up the October schedule for Sandwiches and lo, Mr Scruff is coming to Wellington sometime during November! w00t W0000T!

Audio Outside Comments are closed

XSLT is Sexy

XSLT is cool. Thanks to Matthew Cruickshank for giving me the courage to take the triple-salchow into XSLT. It’s really quite simple when you get the tools set up.

I’m learning it so I can produce and consume RSS for project at my job. It’s quite fun.

Also, check out Making RSS Pretty for some good examples on how to allow browsers like IE6.0 and Mozilla to make your feeds look more human-consumable.

Now to learn how to use the DOM to construct XML in PHP… I think I’ll steer clear of DTDs for just a while longer… they’re still scary 🙂

Oh, and by the way, Ctrl-W is the worst key combo ever for a Dvorak typist… That’s what happened last night, and what happened just now… Gah!

Coding Comments are closed