Comments

According to my logs I have had almost 2000 visits to my site this month. That is not a huge number, but it does mean that someone more than me is hitting the page. That is exciting news.

I am able to see that most of my visitors come to me from Steve Runner’s website and forums. Steve has mentioned my site a few times on his podcast Phedippidations which is about running and trying to make coherent sentences in the process. My mom thinks it is cool that I have been mentioned on Steve’s podcast. She does not even care that he only has 12 listeners. Adam has also mentioned me, but not my site yet, on his podcast Burning 20. I am afraid of what Dr. Monte might say about me once he reads my site. Being a Dr. and all, I am chickening out telling him what I think about his podcast. Maybe he will just come here and read it for himself.

But, if I get all these hits, where are the comments? I am wondering if anyone is actually reading the site. Terry posts comments on occasion. I try to return the favor over at his blog too. Thanks Terry. Of course Mom is there with her comments. You gotta love moms for giving you a boost on occasion. I have two brothers who say they have been to the blog. Never heard a comment from them on the phone or seen one on the site. My wife just gives her comments verbally. I know she reads the posts because I tell her when it is updated and she reads it for typos. Sometimes a post will change drastically from its original posting because there was something in there she deemed inappropriate. So you have to read my posts before she gets to them to see the real me.

To be fair, most of my readers don’t know me. I have not started promoting my blog to my friends. The people I communicate with daily, or at least somewhat regularly, don’t even know I have a blog. I am planning on letting them know soon. I think there is enough content here now to get someone interested.

As Leo at Ask Leo! podcast says: “Leave a comment. I read them all.” I will read them and probably reply just out of sheer excitement for the comment. You do not have to “register” anymore to leave a comment. Just put in your name and email address (email address is not public). I do have to approve the comments before they go on the site and sometimes I will change wording for family friendliness. My 8 year old sometimes reads the blog too. I have to keep it appropriate.

Thanks readers!

New podcasts

I am moving from one computer to another with my iTunes library. I had been wanting to make the move for some time, but have been pushed into it recently. The index file for my library got corrupted. The computer I was using wanted to erase my iPod and start over. I figured if this was going to happen, it was time to move to the new computer. It will be easy to import my mp3s. I just need to start collecting my podcasts again and setting up my playlists. Though I had many playlists, I really only use two.

In the process, I noticed that the two Spanish podcasts that I was listening to have died. When you are subscribed to as many as I am, it takes a while to realize that a podcast is not being updated. Sometimes a podcast will come back from a long break and make a comment about being gone and I will not have realized they had been away.

I picked up a new Spanish one to replace my others. This one is Spanish from Spain called Notes in Spanish. I listen to their advanced podcast. As I live in México, the Spanish sounds funny to my ears. We make fun of Spaniards and the way they talk. I am sure they do the same about the Mexican Spanish.

When all is settled in the next week or so, I will try to give a list of those podcasts that made the cut. Of course I already have gotten all the running podcasts re-subscribed that I was listening to. If you have suggestions of your favorite podcasts, leave a comment and I will see what new might interest me. I am mostly into technology and endurance sports podcasts, but have various and sundry other interests.

What I like about podcasts

I had to follow up the last post with this one because there are several cool things about podcasts. Particularly the podcasts that involve technology.

Back years ago there were these things called books that you would read to get technical information. Then we moved to magazines. Magazines were good. They got updated every month or so. If you were talking bleeding edge tech, then they would be horribly outdated by the time you read them. Whatever you read in a magazine was several weeks, if not months, old. This time is getting shorter I am sure, but it is still old news.

Enter the Internet. What a great medium. You can have the most up to date info on a product or technology at the touch of the keyboard. But podcasts can get you the same news and information delivered each day in audio content.

I would be hard pressed to remember to go to Earth & Sky’s website each day to find out what kind of interesting things you can see that night. But with the podcast, I know which planets are easiest to see that evening and I am up to date on any big events like eclipses.

The TWiT family of podcasts are all pretty good.

Amber MacArthur and Inside the Net is my favorite out of group. In it Amber and Leo interview people from new and emerging websites and web technologies.

There is Security Now! with Steve Gibson. I learned of Steve back in the 90’s when I was dealing with a Zip Drive Click of Death problem. This podcast is about all things security. The later episodes have gotten pretty deep, but the early ones will get you hooked if you go back to the beginning. Everyone should listen to the ones about passwords.

At TWiT there is also FLOSS Weekly with Chris DiBona. That is about Free/Libre Open Source Software. Stuff like Linux and other OSS offerings. Chris works for Google and has access to interviewing some of the big names in OSS development.

There are other shows at TWiT that I listen to. They also have some shows that have not interested me. Leo seems to have done a good job in building a network and monetizing it. There are also The Daily Giz Wiz, This Week in Media, Futures in Biotech and a couple of Mac related podcasts.

Buzz out Loud, Extreme Tech and the PGA Podcast are other news related podcasts that keep me up to date.

I listen to several health and exercise podcasts as well. The best produced is Scott Smith’s Motivation to Move. It is professional and does not suffer from podcast creep. He also has one minute shows.

My favorite in the category is Phedippidations with Steve Runner. Passion. That is the word that draws me to podcasts and that is what you get with Steve. I feel like I know him. When he ran the Boston Marathon this year I told everyone that I had a friend running in the marathon. It is the only 1 hour show that I wished would be longer. Because I am interested in listening to Steve while running my long runs each week, 1 hour is way too short. Steve does not give a myriad of links nor any actually useful information, so I do not feel like I have to listen as intently nor is 1 hour too long. I said Steve was passionate, not really informative. Entertainment factor is pretty good. His best episodes are when he does a bio of a runner.

There are Adam, Matt and Stu (who is wound a bit too tight) that I enjoy listening to. If you are an endurance athlete check out Endurance Planet. They have 15 minute interviews three times a week. I enjoy hearing stories of other athletes who, many of whom, are normal people. Though they also interview professionals.

Someday I may tell about the chess, ham radio and religious podcasts that I listen to as well.

Podcasting delivers content in a nice audio format that would either be boring to read, or too much to keep up on otherwise. Podcasting is a great new medium.

What I hate about podcasts

You do listen to podcasts don’t you? Well, you at least know what they are, right? Briefly they are audio files on the web that you can have a podcatcher download automatically. Back in the old days (circa 2 years ago) you would have to go to the site and manually download the file. What makes it a podcast is that it can be automatically downloaded by a podcatcher using an RSS or Atom feed. Podcasts derive their name, as I understand it, from “Personal On Demand (broad)Cast.” I don’t think that is used much any more. And, you don’t need an iPod to download and listen to them.

Well, of course, most of you know that.

One of the things that I have come to dislike about podcasts is what my friend Matt at the Dump Runners Club calls “Podcast Creep.” No, not the person behind the mic, but the fact that the show starts out at a reasonable 20 minutes and quickly balloons to be an hour or more long.

Let me give some examples.

Fitness Rocks with Dr. Monte. The good Doc started at 25 (or so) minutes per show. Then he has had a couple of shows at 43+ minutes. While I have thoroughly enjoyed the information in the shows, I do subscribe to close to 40 podcasts. If all of them doubled in length (which many of them have) then that makes it difficult to listen to the shows that are downloaded.

Lullabot podcast is another show that has gotten horribly long. If I remember right they started out at about 30 minutes per show. This is a show about the Drupal Content Management System (CMS). I don’t use Drupal, but I thought it would be good to listen to some of the ideas that maybe I could adapt to one of my sites that uses phpWebSite. When the hosts of the show started trying to find material to make the show stretch to an hour, they turned me off. They are not overly organized to begin with. Then there are long pauses waiting for someone to say something interesting just to fill time. They could at least try editing that out. I have not listened to their podcast of late. I have noticed that their show times have gotten back to 40 minutes or so. They could probably get by with 20 minutes if they were a bit organized. But, I am not the one to be telling people how to organize.

Everyone loves TWiT. While they have interesting hosts, sometimes they just drone on and on. If I remember right they started at 30 minute shows too and now are regularly over an hour. Occasionally way over an hour. Leo has done a good job in keeping the other shows on the TWiT network reigned in so they don’t get out of hand, but the original TWiT show can drone at times.

The Genealogy Guys. Sorry, I have just lost interest. It is hard to stay focused on research material and links for any length of time, especially when I don’t listen while sitting at the computer. That kinda defeats the purpose for having a portable audio player. I have not listened to an episode in quite some time, though I am still subscribed. It is great material that George and Drew put together, but there is only so much a brain can process. One hour is much too long. Though, it is great information if you are doing genealogical work.

And please, podcasters, put the episode number in your podcast title. When I am looking at the, sometimes hundreds, of podcasts in my iPod, it would be nice to know that I am listening to the podcasts in order. I don’t know how other podcatchers and players work, but with iTunes and the iPod, it plays in the order downloaded. And it always downloads the most recent show first. So if you have your podcatcher set to download every night, that is not a problem. But if you are out of town for 2 weeks, then all the episodes get messed up. That is also when you get 200+ back episodes to listen catch up on. Episode numbers would be wonderful. This does not apply to all podcasts like Ask Leo. Each podcast is a topic to itself. But those who build on each other need numbers.

Finally, I listen to podcasts for information and content. I really do not care what kind of music you like. It seems to me that is a throw back to the days of terrestrial radio. Those days are over. I know what the excuse is. “I want to get the music of these indie artists out there for the public to discover them.” If the public wants to discover them, then there are plenty of music podcasts.

Let me pick on Dr. Monte again. I feel comfortable doing this because it is currently one of my favorite shows. The information he gives is incredible. If you listen to no other of his episodes, you should hear episode 3 and episode 4. Great stuff, though sobering. The name of the podcast is Fitness Rocks. So he has built in the whole idea that you are going to listen to, in my not so humble opinion, music that is not worth having on this wonderful planet. Why? What is the point? The material he presents is good enough for its own show. What if I said we were going to go to a museum and learn all kinds of cool stuff (to me museums are insanely cool), but in the process we will walk around and have a rock band play interludes for us. Doesn’t that seem a bit dis-connected? Yet, that is what Dr. Monte’s podcast is to me. I will still listen until I get tired of fast forwarding through every song.

I have made personal suggestions to The Dump Runners Club, Phedippidations and Burning 20 that I don’t like their music. They don’t have to change anything for me. But, I am escalating the challenge to all podcasters to think about the way you put your show together.

Is it too long? Could a bit of organization tighten up the content and make it a joy to listen to? We are not looking for perfection, we are looking for passion. Passion keeps listeners. Disorganization and 1 hour shows that could be 30 minutes or less, drives listeners away.

Episode numbers!

I am not at all against a good intro, outro and some background music. But I don’t listen to podcasts for music. I have thousands of songs that I love on my iPod if I am interested.

I won a book!

I have been listening to Matt at Dump Runners Club for a few months. It is a running podcast. Matt has some great times and is inspiring to hear him tell about his running. I know he works hard to get his time down, but I am amazed that he can run as fast as he does. We are the same age, so I know that I can at least get down a little. On the other hand, Matt has been a runner for many years and I have never liked the sport until recently.

He offered to give away the book Ultramarathon Man by Dean Karnazes. This was to be given away as part of a drawing. One only needed to send an email to Matt. Since I missed out on winning Coast to Coast a couple of months ago, I thought about writing Matt every day just to bug him into letting me win. But I did not.

I was very thrilled to hear that I was the winner of the book when he announced it on the podcast today. He said that only 2 people wrote him. I don’t care if I was the only one, or that there were 5,000, it is a book I was interested in reading and am glad to have a copy coming my way.

Thanks Matt!