The week in review

What a week... our daughter (who's the oldest), started Kindergarten on Wednesday morning. Talk about stresses! She's gone to preschool the past few years, but this is all day. So far, after two days, we're not impressed with the substitute teacher (her regular teacher is out on maternity leave until January), as she's pretty much just babysitting them so far, shows up after most of the kids are already there, and isn't organized at all. Not a confidence booster in the whole "teach our kids" department. Our daughter's played with a lot of Play-Doh, which she likes, but she's been playing with it for three years and is already bored.

Also, recorded the fifth episode of Eagles FanCast last night. Another decent show, and the Eagles' first game is Sunday against Green Bay. All three of us are just jonesin' for the season to start... can't wait!! After five shows, most of the technical issues are out of the way, and I'm thinking about how to start spicing it up a little bit. We have a repeat audience now, too, so that's nice... just have to keep them around. lol

Sure glad I drafted Joseph Addai as my top running back in my fantasy league Wednesday night... a few points out of him, and he stomped my opponent's Marvin Harrison, which is nice.

A kids party on Saturday, a podcasting expo in Philly (PodCamp Philly), also on Saturday, and the game on Sunday... it's going to be busy yet again.

EaglesFanCast Podcast is LIVE!

Well last night started the brand new podcast, EaglesFanCast.
For the past couple months, I've been learning things in an area that I know very little... audio.
People that know me know that I have absolutely no musical talent. Other than being forced in grade school by the music teacher, Mrs. Spisak, to sing in every "production" that was put on, I'm musically inept.
I've never played an instrument, have no idea how to read sheet music and you have to ask Maureen about my very interesting rhythmic dancing when we go out.
So in the past couple months, I've taught myself things like the audio waveform, compression, limiting, normalizing, the mixdown and who knew that "gain" is actually "volume"?
With that brand new knowledge, and learning RSS feeds, online syndication, etc. the thing finally came together. Eric, Todd and myself sat down and talked about the Eagles for almost an hour... it was casual and smooth, like we were doing it for 50 shows already. Great fun. Eric and Todd definitely know more of the ins and outs of the team and sports in general, so they were able to carry the conversation throughout, and I was thrilled.
We ended it, and that's where the rest of the show came in for me. I saved the file, then edited out a lot of the dead space (long pauses between topics, etc.), then did some of those things I learned about (compression, normalizing). Then I had to record and mix in the music for the intro and outro. Then I had to put it all into one file. Then I had to convert it to the MP3 format (like any songs you download through iTunes and such). Then I had to update the file's "tags" which are things inside the file like Title, Artist, Year, Comments, Track, etc. etc.
Then I uploaded the final file to the file server online, updated the show's settings, updated the show notes, and made it available for the various sites that list podcasts.
Once that was done, I updated our website / blog with the info on the new podcast, and listed the show notes in a post.

Then I went to bed.

Well the good thing is, half of those things ONLY have to happen on the first episode, and can just be mixed in for the rest of the shows, and a few settings updated with the new info. In theory, I won't have to go to bed at 2:00am on the night of a show anymore. :)

So the website is http://www.eaglesfancast.net
And if you know what RSS feeds are and want to subscribe to the shows, the feed is
http://eaglesfancast.libsyn.com/rss

It was fun, and I learned a lot... and there is a LOT of polishing to be done on my end for the post-production work. Plus I have a bunch of things to do on the website as well. I'm tired.

New project coming...

I'm working on something new, and will reveal it officially in the next week. It's just something that's been an interest of mine for a couple years, and now I'm jumping onto the other side of it after much "observation". A few buddies of mine will be helping me out as well, so that will make it work the way it's supposed to.
In the meantime, I just have to do some more learning, practicing and tweaking to make it come to fruition.

Me, Simpsonized!

Peggle Grand Master

That's right.... Grand Master. Love that game!!

iPhone iN iHand

Geekin' out with the iPhone. That's me, holding an iPhone in an Apple store unaware that Eric was taking this pic with another display iPhone. Pretty decent pic, I didn't alter the colors or contrast prior to uploading it. Actually I didn't realize he took the shot until I checked my gmail and saw a message from "John Appleseed." All gushing aside, how cool is it that they let you use every aspect of it to take pics, send them via email, make calls and send text messages, all with demo units. Apple just does so many things right these days.
Now, anyone that knows me knows that I've been a DOS/Windows guy for all of my life... I just have simply never been exposed to any Apples at all, either in schools or in my professional life. And being a WinGuy, I have jumped on that wagon of giggling at the Mac fanboys of the world.

A few years ago (sometime in the latter half of 2004), Eric snagged an iPod Mini, when the clickwheel was introduced. Up until that point, I was curious about a media player (I had tons of CD's scattered throughout my car), but couldn't get interested in carrying one of these things around. But when I tried out his, and realized how damn easy it was to navigate with that clickwheel, I was VERY interested. I think at this point I was already using iTunes anyway, because, in my opinion, was the best, intuitive media organizer/player on Windows.
A couple of weeks after I tried his out, Apple announced the 4th Gen iPod, with the clickwheel, and a 20GB (or 40GB) hard drive capacity! I talked myself into getting one a few months later.

Honestly, the thing has changed the way I listen to music, and media in general. I would never have thought that a gadget could do that. But I moved almost all of my CD's to it, created a handful of playlists, downloaded audio books (I have an hour commute each way), and was introduced to podcasts. Now, I literally only listen to terrestrial radio MAYBE less than a half hour a week. When I hear any commercial, I change the station or find something on the iPod now.
So, getting back to the iPhone, from a geek point of view, I was psyched in January when Steve Jobs announced the smartphone/iPod/web browser hybrid device. How could I NOT be? This new gadget even had a completely new way of interfacing with it... after all, it's ALL screen, and you don't use a stylus, but your fingertips.
Granted the cost is so high, and I have a phone (that I made smart, but that's for another blog entry), and my 4G iPod which is only 55% full, and I can't fit all my stuff on the iPhone anyway. So I won't be buying it anytime soon. But I wanted to geek out and see this thing in person, I wanted to try out the interface. Let me say, it really is awesome. I loved it.

Spice Girls Reunion Tour!

This is big news, folks! Those dancing (if that's what it was), singing (yeah, not so much), hot (never a fan) Brits announced that they're going on a staggering 11-city world tour.

Realizing just re-hashing their awful '90s music wasn't enough, they also updated their spice with new names. The new power group will consist of Decrepit Spice, Plastic Spice, Metamucil Spice, Cadaver Spice and Old Spice (props to Eric for that last one).
Other news about the tour has revealed that some of their old roadies will also be joining them, still having the superb ability and skillz to constantly tell them "Yes, you're very talented. Yes, you're soooo beautiful. Noooo, you don't look fat." and "Yes, the other girls in the group like you."

The all-girl group finished collapsing in 2001 after realizing that no one wanted to put up with them any longer. Recent news-worthy stories announced that Victoria Beckham (the former Posh Spice) is moving to Los Angeles, and Melanie Brown's (the former Scary Spice) new claim to fame is having Eddie Murphy as her baby daddy. The desperate-for-attention quinary saw that some are still interested, so they jumped at the chance to be scoffed or ignored by a new generation of listeners. Their original listeners have been quoted as saying, "What was I thinking?" and "I thought they died in a blimp accident."

Get in line now, as those 11 shows might sell out in a few months!

The Little Mother That Could

Can't tell you how much I'm rooting for this woman... again! She's a single Mom that was sued by the RIAA, and after fighting with them in court, was able to have the suit against her thrown out. Two years of her life lost because of these bullies. Well now she's turning the tables with her own lawyers, and they've put together quite a laundry list of accusations... awesome.
If her lawyers did their homework, then this might be a nice precedent. Can't wait to see what happens here folks!

Looked for a soda...

... found an iPod

Judge sues for lost pants?

In the You've Got to be Kidding Me category...

A Washington DC judge is suing a dry cleaner for losing a pair of pants... for $54M dollars. Yes, that's correct. Yes I know, I know, I'm being unfair here, he had lowered that amount from the ridiculous amount of $65M he had originally started the suit at. It's much more reasonable now.

I read this story, twice, and could not at all fathom how this man is allowed to continue to sit on a bench and be considered reasonable in any remote way. How scary is this that he is enforcing the legalities of our country. None of his colleagues have tried to talk sense into this guy? One of his claims has to do with a sign the dry cleaners had hanging that said, "Satisfaction Guaranteed". Yup, must be law, and any blunder should be seized upon with great vengeance and furious anger.

Why would any reasonable person sue for that much money for. losing. a. pair. of. pants?

How special were these pants? Oh, it must be about the principle, right? Must be. Who knows, maybe they were jerks, too. So, if they were bad business persons, wouldn't it be the consumer's (-cough- Judge) responsibility to not patronize said business? But if that wasn't the case, and this business DOES have a good reputation, and has treated this consumer well during past business exchanges (-cough- Hawaiian shirts and capris), then their first mistake is so unforgivable that you have to drive them out of business and destroy their reputation entirely? Who ARE you?

Hey "Judge", send me your home address, and I'll pack you up not one, but TWO pairs of chinos, so you can drop this lawsuit and get back to what's really important... like resigning. Ass.

You know, come to think of it, last week I ordered a small drink and was delivered a medium. Because of the stress of being forced to drink the entire thing rather than be wasteful, I believe I may now sue them for a very reasonable $97M. It's not about the money, it's about the principle... they should NOT have made a mistake!!