Jamie Diamond's blog

QotD: All My Computers

How many computers do you have in your house? 
Submitted by Foomper.

Simple answer...I have a 500 MHz iMac G3 from grandma off to my side with a broken installation of Ubuntu on it. My main system though, is my G4 1.5GHz Powerbook in front of me now. 3-4 years old and it still works like a beauty.

QotD: On Podcasts

Do you listen to podcasts?  Are there any you'd recommend? 
Inspired by Alex.

Yes, of course I listen to podcasts! I prefer Netcasts of course (no kidding; 3-4 people a month tell me they can't listen to my show since they don't have an iPod or a mac). Ones on my list:

-Writers Almanac
-Daily Giz Wiz
-Diggnation
-DL.TV
-FLOSS Weekly
-Fly With Me
-Futures in Biotech (when I get a chance)
-GeekBrief TV
-iLifeZone
-Inside The Net
-Inside The Magic
-KFI Tech Guy
-KenRadio
-LTS Podcast
-Mac OS Ken
-MacBreak Weekly
-Macworld Podcast
-Mr. Mac Geek
-David Pogue
-Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me
-Political Inversion
-Security Now (for which I composed the opening theme)
-The Ploy
-The Laporte Report
-Gigavox's Podcast Academy
-Barack Obama
-This Week in Tech
-Windows Weekly

...and of course, I must recommend my own show "TechNight" (at http://www.differentdistrict.com/technight)! I should also say I don't listen to all of these. I simply don't have time. Fortunately, not all of them update at once and in the end I pick and choose episodes on the fly anyway. Enjoy.

My Baby's 1st Birthday (Metaphorically)

  

TechNight

  For the past year, I've been podcasting on various shows, and producing even more. I'm even the director of marketing at a podcast network. But my work of love has been the show I started a year ago today: The Different District Podcast.
    John Tylko of DifferentDistrict.com was getting ready to relaunch the site and had promised a podcast to go along with it. So far, though, he had only posted one episode and the feed had been dormant for four months. I found the site around the same time and was looking to get into the whole podcasting thing myself. I sent off an email and was extremely happy to be invited onto the staff to start a weekly Mac news program. John was my co-host for the first four months of production. He was a great boss (of sorts) and allowed me amazing flexibility in producing the show from content to site management. In those first four months, we pulled off twelve fantastic shows, one event coverage program, and one interview with tech giant John C. Dvorak.
    After a while, John stopped being available as often, and we shifted the show to a panel format with multiple guests on each show. I thought it was a great format and we carried on with it for a number of months. I was forced to reconsider the entire show after a somewhat devastating and scathing email from a man who will remain nameless. Show production stopped at a critical point and planned coverage of WWDC 2006 was never recorded and never aired.
    I took a break for a month or so and looked at everything I was doing. I had a number of other projects clouding me and I had lost sight of how to run a show and what works and what doesn't. I started to rebuild the show I loved and I'm happy to finally announce today that the show that started it all is back.
    The Different District Podcast is now TechNight! Same egotistical host, but with a new co-host, look, and feel. We're not just about Macs anymore. We're doing all tech. Thanks for the support of everyone who's helped me throughout the past year with TechNight/DD including John Tylko, Dominic Serio (ummm), Tristan Mace, Chris Lee, Alex D, Paul Tevis, Ben May, Mike Beckam, Graham, Brad Mattison, and of course all of our listeners for the past of year. It has meant a lot and we hope you all stay subscribed for another great year of podcasting.

Check it out at http://www.differentdistrict.com/technight

QotD: Right Before I Doze Off

-What's the last thing you usually do or think about before you fall asleep?

It really takes you away. I just dream of a world. It varies. Sometimes it's clear. Other times, the world is abstract. Sometimes I just fall right to sleep. How do you fall asleep?

Happy Birthday Late Show!

If you've seen my last post, you know my love of "big shows", especially Dave Letterman and the crew over at CBS. Yesterday they had their 13th birthday on CBS. It's worth noting that the show (in essance) has actually been on for more like 23 years if you count its incarnation at NBC as "Late Night". Anyway, cheers Dave and hope to see you on for a long time to come!

The Big Show!

I'm always a fan of big shows. Big enough ones anyway. Not the circus but the ones you see on TV. "The Daily Show", Colbert, Leno, Letterman, "The Screen Savers". All of these programs have a place in my heart (especially Stewart and Letterman). On all of these shows, you get variety, you never know what may happen next, and you know whatever it is, it's been prepared by people who want to keep you informed or make you laugh, usually without cold marketing as an ulterior motive. But in addition, and partly as a result of the former, the show is a family, and you ,as the viewer, are part of the action each episode. Even when the hosts are mediocre, give the show time, and you'll find yourself longing for it when you haven't seen it for a while. Of recent, the big show has fallen victim to the attention spans of America. Shows are chopped up into segments and clips, given to the viewer completely separately, in the hopes of changing things quick enough as to not leave the viewer bored enough to change the channel. The internet encourages this even more as bandwidth costs money and shorter is cheaper online, and often times, easer to consume in a daily routine. But you loose the sense of family. You loose the power and warmth of the big show. You loose the sense of family. So the next time you're watching Letterman, or a you-tube rerun of TSS, take in the theme song, take in the hosts walking onstage, take in the chit-chat, take in the interaction, and always remember that it is something to be cherished, and something special.

WTC: It's Not Half Bad (well...maybe it is)

I had the fortune of attending the southeast premiere of Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center", the movie about the true story of how two of New York's finest got trapped in the whole WTC tragedy and lived to tell the tale. The film was actually written by one of the key protagonists. Though it wasn't the best film ever written, it wasn't that bad. Oliver Stone's direction was great, and the time wasn't really long either. Sure, some plot or character development could have been...actually written, but it's still a heartwarming story about events and emotions that changed the lives of everyone. Go see it. If you don't like it, say the projection was bad and get your money back.

WTC

Podcasting Time

I've finally posted the audio and slides from a presentation I gave a few weeks ago on podcasting basics to the NYLF in California. You can find it in all of its compressed and edited goodness at http://www.mediaright.org/podcasting.

Uberiffic

Uber...

I'm really liking this Ubercaster thing (made in Germany). It's an all-in-one podcasting suite for the mac. Its interface is beautiful and it does almost everything you'd expect from a podcast app. You can set up a soundboard before-hand, mixing in effects live during the show with the clips. It even has a module for recording Skype, iChat, and Gizmo panels and interviews.

    It has an editing layer that is like a mini GarageBand. You can also add in ID3 tags right in the app. And yes...it does FTP too. It really looks cool. It's still beta so I'll put it through its paces these next few weeks, but I like what I see. It does not do RSS feeds but I already have another favorite app that does that for me. Anyway, check out Ubercaster. I'll do a full review later.

Robert Applied The Patch

I think it was episode 14 of TWiT where Robert Heron just randomly dropped in that he applied the recent patch for Battlefield 2. An event so insignificant, yet Leo still asked whether to put it in the show notes. I love it. Laughs for all...

All comedy aside, small website updates for my site: mediaright.org today. Nothing big. I still have it on my to-do list to redesign the thing, but I doubt that will happen for a little bit now. Anyway, I just wanted to make sure my portfolio and list of running projects was up-to-date. I had to change about a billion things because I haven't updated the site since about a year ago. Heck, I didn't even have a link (let alone any mention of) TechNight on there.