Podcasting has taken over my brain. I’m currently working on three major projects, all podcast-related. The first is an update to my ebook, Take Control of Podcasting on the Mac. I’m updating the book for new versions of the software covered in the book while adding a few new ones and dropping Audacity, which I can no longer in good conscience recommend to beginners or even intermediate podcasters. We’re aiming for an August release to coincide with my second major project.

I am preparing my talk at the New Media Expo in Las Vegas for mid-August. I’ll be sharing the podium with Ed Vawter and we’ll be covering GarageBand ’08 and podcasting and the use of audio filters/plug-ins in podcasting. I have my hotel reservation and plane tickets and even got a ticket to Coverville500 so I can see Doctor Floyd live (Jack’s favorite show) and Jonathan Coulton. I’m very excited. Originally, we were all going to go but we decided to save our pennies to take Jack to Disney World so it’ll be just me attending. Still, I’ve never been to Vegas so I’m excited about this trip.

Finally, I am preparing a new podcast called Our Stories. The premise is that everyone has a good story in them (at least one) and I want to capture and present these stories. This is hardly a new idea. There are shades of This American Life in here but the intent is to simply let people present their stories with only limited prompting from me. This is both fun and very scary as going up to strangers to chat them up for something like this is well outside my comfort zone. And, I must admit, that’s part of my motivation for doing this: to challenge and stretch myself.

Tags: Podcasting, writing, keynote

Bob Geldof wrote a fantastic opinion piece in the Telegraph which is worth a read by everyone in the United States. That awful telecom immunity thing has been passed and already signed into law and I find myself incredibly disappointed with Obama for voting for it. But Geldof’s words resonate:

Let us be grand for once, for we talk of great subjects. Ask "what is the point of Britain?" if we so casually give up the liberty which defines this country, its greatest gift to the world.

Still today, 800 years later, Magna Carta resonates: "To no man will we deny, To no man will we delay, Justice and Right." Is that not grand, worthy of your vote? Is habeas corpus to be traduced in one sad moment of political expediency? Do we not clearly deny and delay Justice and Right when we imprison a person for 42 days without charge?.

What existential threat do we face greater than those of the past 800 years? What great terror exists today that not civil war, not world war, nor recent other terrorisms could make our forefathers change the fundamental basis of this state? What is so dangerous that our oldest statutes could be upended for such a ha'p'orth of momentary panic?.

What terrorises the terrorists is our civilisation. What those unthinking fools of fundamentalism fear most are the freedoms our representatives now strip away. This "war on terror" is against Islamist forces that reject the Enlightenment..

How can we ever succeed, if we side with our opponents in rejecting those ideals? Every moment we are spied on by the invisible watchers, every time we are monitored, every time we are logged on databanks, they win. And every time we accept it, we lose.

Stirring words. Every day our “War on Terror” makes us more like them and less like us. Yet the supporters of these acts claim that this is the only way to protect our liberties and our way of life. They must have no sense of irony. You protect liberty by taking it away? Isn’t that exactly the opposite of what “protect” means?

Tags: Politics, liberty, history

This post over on Wired’s GeekDad blog was very well timed. I am currently reading Half Magic by Edward Eager, a childhood favorite of mine, to Jack. He’s loving it. I wasn’t sure how a book set over 80 years on the past would go over but he gets very upset ever night when it is time to close the book and turn out the light.

I was casting about for what to read him next. We’d just finished Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling. We’re on a schedule with Harry Potter: he gets one book every six months. This is mainly because the later books are too old for him now and we wanted to pace them so he would be old enough by the time he reached them. Sure, we could have just waited to start them altogether, but we couldn’t help ourselves. And it was hard to keep him away from them when Ann and I were both re-reading books 1 through 6 to get ready for book 7 last summer. I couldn’t think of anything to read him and then I rememberd Eager’s books on magic. The problem: where on Earth were they? I told Jack that I’d be right back and to get into bed to wait and then tore downstairs. I checked the collection of paperbacks in the front hallway (moving a pile of catalogs out of the way to get into the cabinet). No dice. I checked the armoire in the living room. Nope. Went into my mother-in-law’s room and pulled out ever box Ann stuffed books into on the shelves (Books in boxes on shelves. Go figure.) No luck. Dejected, I went back up to Jack’s room resigned to reading him one of the many other books there. I told him I was sorry, I couldn’t find the book I wanted to read him and proceeded to look at his shelf and wouldn’t you know it? There they were. On his shelf. In his room. Right in front of my face.

Prior to Azkaban, I read him the complete Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander. More than any other books, these were my all time favorite books. My sister sent Jack a complete collection of hardcover editions (with the old-style covers) and we read through them over the next five or so months (a little at a time).

Meanwhile, my wife has been reading her favorites to him including Watership Down by Richard Adams, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, and is planning on seeing if he’ll like Ann of Green Gables or the Little House on the Prairie books.

Anyone out there have their own favorites we should consider?

Tags: Childhood, books, reading

Men and women communicate differently. We all know that. Not to overgeneralize (but I’m going to anyway) men tend to ask direct questions based on what we want or need at a specific moment. Women tend to ask questions which seem to be needing honest answers but actually have subtext which, if you are paying attention, you can pick up and realize that it wasn’t actually a question that was being asked in the first place but a request politely phrased.

As an example, let’s use what just happened here a few moments ago. My wife works part-time in retail which means that after she gets home, her feet are killing her. So, I give her foot rubs on those nights. As I started rubbing her feet she asked me, “Do you want to use lotion?” and I answered without thinking, “No, I’d rather not get my hands slimey.” As the words left my mouth I saw that look of immediate disappointment cross her face and realized that I just gave the wrong answer.

And then it struck me. My wife just proved God’s existence.

I’ll explain.

I have often railed at the seeming strangeness of the supposed grand plan. The idea that if you do not subscribe to a particular sect of a particular religion (and woe unto you if you choose the wrong one) then you are doomed forever. The idea that Jesus (or whoever) is sitting in Heaven (or wherever) checking a clipboard and seeing if you filled out every form correctly like some divine DMV seemed absurd to me. I always subscribed to the idea that if you do right by your fellow man, followed the Golden Rule, and were generally fair, kind, and truthful, it didn’t matter at all what you actually believed. It’s a spirit of the law vs. the letter of the law situation. So, the idea that God created people with free will and then got upset if they exercised their free will in a way that displeased God made no sense to me. Why not just create people to always be good and follow a specific path? Why give free will if you’re just setting us up to fail?

And tonight my wife proved God exists. She did exactly the same thing. She could have said, “Please use lotion,” and that would have been all that was needed. I would have said, “Sure thing,” and used lotion. But she asked if I wanted to use lotion which is an entirely different question. She gave me free will and then was upset when I exercised it in the wrong direction.

Now religion makes sense to me. And God is, of course, a woman. And now I know I am truly doomed.

Tags: religion, god, lotion

It's been some time since I've written anything (here, lots of writing elsewhere) and my friend Carla suggested I review some recent music purchases (which may be her way of getting me to stop IMming her these reviews as I listen...) So, without further ado, I'll start working through the last few months of new music.

Death Cab for Cutie: Narrow Stairs This album came out just this week and I’ve listened to it maybe 3 or 4 times (not including the songs stuck in my head on infinite repeat!) and I am enjoying it a lot.

They start out their first track, “Bixby Canyon Bridge” with a much harder sound than I’ve heard from them before, lots of cacaphony and noise but offset by the lead singer’s high and comparatively thin voice, which gives it an overall interesting effect.

The track getting all the airplay is “I will Possess Your Heart” and is either an insightful song about how hard relationships are to start or a song about a really creepy stalker. My take was the former. The latter was my wife’s take (Jack’s too, actually). Either way, the song is an interesting one (and the bonus video is really intriguing - a woman traveling the world looking pensive). We have mixed reviews on the slow, long buildup of the instrumentation at the start of the song. I rather like it but then I’ve always been a fan of minimalism (which this is not, but it’s analogous) whereas my wife felt they should get on with it already.

“No Sunlight” is stuck in my head more than the others even though it is a somewhat dark song talking about how as a child the skies were all clear and there was always sunlight (warmth, protection, safety) and as one ages, the sunlight goes away. Pessimistic to say the least but, like all of their songs with darker content, still excellent and catchy.

The rest of the album is similarly excellent though I am not as familiar with it enough to comment on each and every track (nor did I really intend to, it just so happens that the three I liked the best start off the album). (Buy: Amazon.com | Amazon MP3 Download | iTunes)

The Weepies: Hideaway. Somehow The Weepies have eluded me until recently. I just happened to find this one via Amie St and fell in love with the sample clips (1:30 vs. iTunes :30). Every single track on this album has, at one time or another, grabbed me and pulled me in. Their sound is both simple and yet, at the same time, lush and I just love every ounce of it. Of all the tracks, “Wish I Could Forget” is by far my favorite.

There is not a single track on this album I would skip and there are many standouts. What I like the most is how diverse their sound is. They take turns leading in vocals so some songs are lead by Steve Tannen and some are lead by Deb Talan which varies their sound wonderfully. Together they harmonize beautifully and I just love listening to them sing. (Buy: Amazon.com | Amazon MP3 Download | iTunes)

Tags: music

Last monday (nearly two weeks ago now), our new Cedarworks playset arrived in 18 large boxes, 1 slide, 1 pole, and 1 large bucket of bolts and other hardware. I had just cleaned the garage out so we could fit the delivery. The weather had been iffy and it wasn't clear when we'd be able to start building. The following Sunday looked promising so I put out the call for help and Ann and I paced around the yard trying to figure out where the best spot would be. The problem is that our yard slopes down towards the house and you need these things to be level so they don't... well... fall over.

Sunday came and only one person was available to help. Thankfully, Jay is, among other things, a contractor. With his help (who am I kidding -- with Jay doing much of the work) we got the basic structure of the gazebo standing along with the first level floor done by Sunday evening. This included digging under the uphill side so that the structure stands level on the hill that is our yard.

Monday, Ann and I hurt and took the day off.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Ann and I worked solo and managed to get the second level deck up, the chin bar and rope and pole up, the side walls, and the trap door and inside ladder together. We also added the long structure support on the gazebo on the swing side (to keep it from tipping when swinging is happening). This also involved digging to make sure the support lies flat.

On Thursday, I got the slide up and discovered that in order for it to sit flat on the upper deck, the end has to be about 4 feet in the air. While Jack loved the idea of launching off the end of the slide, I did not like the thought of broken legs and angry neighbor parents. Luckily, Jay was able to come by to lend his expertise and he figured out that if we remove the large block under the top of the slide and move it to the bottom of the slide, it won't be unreasonably high yet still be secure. Ann and I will also be putting in a nice pile of wood chips at the base to provide a softer landing spot (in fact, we'll be putting wood chips all around the structure when we do our landscaping work, the next big yard project). Jay also helped us get the swing side up and attached.

Friday, Ann and I finished it -- adding all the remaining structure supports (more digging!), the front booster step, handles, the crow's nest, steering wheel, bucket and rope, telescope, roof, and flag (yes! it has a flag!).

Needless to say, Jack is over the moon about this. He has been having so much fun with this set that he has been falling asleep during the nightly bedtime story which, at the moment, is Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander, a book he is deeply into.

You can see more pictures during and after construction here.

Got kids? Come on over and have some margaritas and let the kids play!

Tags: construction, handyman, home improvement, DIY, playtime, yardwork, Cedarworks