Another Podcast, In Case You Missed It

In case you missed it and you just happen to be looking for another Playlist Mix podcast, I released show 19 earlier this week on PlaylistMix.com and MySpace.

I’m calling it “the good mood” podcast as listening back to it I was in a ridiculously good mood.

It’s the last of the PlaylistMix series that I’ll be recording via studio B’s PC setup (utilising the PC, Audition 2, a handy Xenyx 502 mixer and the Creative Audigy 2 ZS) as it’s been switched out to a new ProTools setup with ProTools 7.4, a few handy plugins and a Digidesign Mbox 2.

I gave the setup a lash last night, trying to get to grips with recording and editing in ProTools in a short time frame (had a recording booked for 8pm for the Sound System Podcast with KilkennyMusic.com - more chat, less music) but firing through it last night it appears, at least initially, that the transition should be relatively ok.

In bouncing the KKM podcast to disk last night I did miss the speedy mixdown that Audition offers (a 30 minute podcast could be mixed down and saved in 2-3 minutes whereby ProTools was bouncing in real time) but if I need to factor more time into the production process then so be it.

I’ve time booked at the weekend to explore the ins and outs of ProTools and the new Mbox, the result being Playlist Mix 20 when it’s published next Tuesday night. I’ll hold off in buying Audition 3 for the moment though I’ve got no plans to use the ProTools setup on the PC at all.

For your listening pleasure, grab some music from Jettie, Amy B, Bows and Arrows and more all wrapped up in a neat sub 30-minute bundle.

Playlist Mix Podcast Show #19 (Download @ 30mb)

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Focusing On Fitness Makes It Easy To Focus

Personal blah alert. For the last few weeks I’ve been on a healthy eating kick and it’s doing me wonders.

Plain and simple, the focus on fitness (getting fit and getting some way healthy through some cycling, weights and kayaking), has made it easy to focus elsewhere. By that I mean I’m more alert, more energy in the afternoons, able to work quicker, juggle a few more pins. Positive eating, positive thinking, clear focus. Of course, it’s not something that I decided to do on a whim, I’ve planned for a while to do it and now that I have there’s no turning back.

As much the recent change has allowed me to focus on my work, I’m finding more focus on hobbies - my photoblog for example has been given a new lease on life and my love of photography completely rekindled (after a dry spell), also resulting in Practical Photography reappearing through my door. Plans for other online and offline developments are taking shape

Working for yourself and working until all hours (I also run up to 30 gigs a year and I’m directly involved in running a theatre company) both in an out of the office meant some woeful eating habits over the years but even in the few short weeks a few changes have reaped benefits.

Nice how putting a direction on one small part of your life has an immediate (and positive) impact on other parts of your life.

Maybe I’m just going mad…

Or happy to know that it’s working…

A Helpful Bunch At Turnkey

If your first shopping experience with a new company is a good one, in my case, it’s enough to bring me back for more.

Such was the case yesterday with Turnkey, one of the leading European music technology suppliers. With a Digidesign Mbox 2 sitting in my cart on Thomann (Germany) since Thursday, yesterday was the time to buy. A quick scout around told me I could get the Mbox 2 that I wanted for 444 Euro. Not bad I thought, and their factory bundle (with additional plugins) was shipping at 577 Euro. I figured I could go without the factory bundle and spend the extra cash as needed on the plugins for ProTools.

So, I load up the cart, decide on the Mbox and a set of monitors, some cables I’ve been meaning to pick up and before checking out, give KKM’s sound engineer extraordinaire a ring to see if he’s any tips, having suggested one or two Focusrite units to me yesterday, pointing me in the direction of Turnkey.

So, I check them out at Turnkey and after humming and hawing for a while, decide to proceed with the Mbox 2. A quick scout on Turnkey (based in the UK) showed a discount on the Mbox 2 factory bundle - 577 Euro down to 466 Euro.

Sold.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Thomann and over the past few years have spent more money on that site than I care to think of but I was operating on a strict budget here and the more I could squeeze out of the budget, the better. So, I price-check the monitors - cheaper again on Turnkey. In go the credit card details, I press submit, and my payment is rejected “due to insufficient authentication”.

Rather than try and continue the payment again - just in case - I finally get to make a call from my Freetalk Office Dual Phone and get chatting to Colin at Turnkey, explaining what’s just happened online and that I would like to complete my order on the phone (knowing that all my details online are correct and my credit card is perfectly valid).

No problem he says, I read out my Turnkey shopping cart (Mbox 2 and monitors) but the monitors are out of stock and won’t be in until February 4th at the earliest. Knowing I’m still making a saving, I agree to the upsell of the next model up, in return for free shipping (at a saving of 30 euro). He explains a number of monitors, choices, and “what’s selling” to me, the transaction is completed and I go away happy, the phone order as smooth as the online order.

Ten minutes later I get a phone call from Turnkey saying they spotted I had a transaction declined due to a fault on their side, wanting to know if I was ok, did I want to proceed with the purchase, and explaining that they had recently changed their payment methods online (looked like a few teething problems) and apologised for the inconvenience.

“No worries” I said, “you gave a contact number for web sales on the site, I phoned them up and was sorted out in a few minutes”.

To the two lads at Turnkey, thanks very much, you’ve made a new customer for yourself, no doubt about that.

Playlist Mix 18 Lands Online

My weekly calendar (at least in the evenings) is gradually returning to some sense of order, more to do with a new fitness kick routine I put myself in just over a week ago (which is fantastic, by the way) and as such I managed to get the 18th Playlist Mix podcast out on a Tuesday night, as preferred.

There’s another 30 minutes of music, really varied up between downtempo, reggae, rock, metal and industrial with music coming from well known world fusion musician Christophe Goze (France), Inner Surge (Canada), Mighty Mystic (Jamaica) and more.

You can subscribe to the podcast here, see the all new website, or listen / download below.

Playlist Mix 18 (Download @ 29mb)

Irish Blog Week? It’s A Busy One

The first week of March is being considered “Irish Blog Week”. Though unofficial by nature, the scheduling of some of the country’s biggest web and technology events for bloggers and podcasters alike have created one very busy week for the start of March.

Kicking things off on the first of March is the third annual Irish Blog Awards. Damien Mulley is in the driving seat again on this year’s awards show to be held in the Alexander Hotel in Dublin. The Alexander was a great venue for the awards last year and whether you’re nominated for a category or not, it makes for a great social and networking occasion. Let the hair down, have a few drinks and mark a date in the calendar that recognises the quality of bloggers of all genres in the country.

Also on the day there’s a “Ladies Tea Party” being organised by Sabrina Dent and Ina O’Murchu. This takes place in The Market Bar, about a 12 minute walk from the Alexander and is an open invite to all female bloggers in Ireland to have a gathering pre-awards show. Drop in for a few hours from 4:30pm on March 1st.

Not only is there a tea party on the day, but Red Mum is organising a meetup for photo bloggers as well, something I might try and get along to, depending on how early I can get out of Kilkenny.

On Sunday March 2nd you’ve got the third WebCamp event, to be held in Cork at the Kingsley Hotel. With talks in the morning and breakout sessions in the afternoon, the topic for the day is social network portability. Workshop fee is €50 for early bird registrations and €60 at regular cost. Full details can be found here.

If you’re hanging around Dublin after the Blog Awards then you might be interested in a gourmet brunch being organised by Deborah a.k.a. The Humble Housewife. Starting from 1pm in the Ely Wine Bar on Custom House Quay, the event is for food bloggers, fans and readers of food blogs and friends. RSVP by February 1st to lay claim to a place at the brunch.

The week continues over Monday and Tuesday as BlogTalk 2008 hits Cork, the fifth international conference on social software. Speakers include John Breslin, Gabriela Avram, Anna Rogozinska, David Cushman, Salim Ismail, Rashmi Sinha and many more.

Forward to the end of the week (Saturday March 8th) and CreativeCamp takes place in Kilkenny. Following the success of PodCamp in Kilkenny last September, it’s nice to see another event on my home soil, and another event I’m directly involved in organising alongside Keith Bohanna and Tom Corcoran. Two of the talks on the day have been confirmed so far and registration is open. You can sign up to attend here (free) and sign up to talk here (we’d love to hear you).

There’s also rumour of a bloggers’ dinner taking place in Kilkenny on Friday 7th, more on this as and when it is revealed.

Track it on Jaiku or keep up with all the links above!

First Post To Seesmic (Embedded)

I’m still in the office, here’s the first post I’ve placed on Seesmic after picking up my invitation code (along with many others today). Within a few minutes of posting there were direct video responses from both Cathy Brooks and Loic Le Meur (who seem to like Ireland). Nice to see the video conversation (or responses) in action first hand.

Watching some of Deek Deekster’s videos from earlier today highlighted some issues with people spamming the timeline with random clips from YouTube, something which would certainly take from the more intimate nature of Seesmic. Outside of the spam in the timeline, there are offerings to be found from other Irish users like Brian Greene, James Corbett, Bernie Goldbach, Joe Garde, Conor O’Neill and many more.

Not one to jump in front of a video camera without hesitation but I’ve always had an interest in video blogging, particularly something I’d like to do if I was travelling the world.

While it’s only in pre-alpha (if you can go back that far), there is talk of a bridge between Qik and Seesmic for mobile streaming. I would like to see a search option (as would many others I imagine), along with an option to post (and tag) directly to your blog. But that’s just for starters.

Would You Pay For RTE’s Podcasts?

Niamh Doohan had a small piece in yesterday’s Sunday Independant (which I actually found time to read) with the heading ‘RTE may cash in on podcast success‘. This news comes in the same breath that RTE are ditching their medium wave service, at a reasonable annual saving too to the national broadcaster (around a million euro a year).

However, yesterday’s article suggests that

…RTE’s own website may be outstripping traffic on Apples’s online store iTunes, the creators of podcasting. The leaked statistics from Montrose show its top 10 podcasts broke the three million mark in just nine months last year…

While I would argue the idea of Apple being the creators of podcasting, it’s worth noting that this is only considering traffic from RTE’s website, nothing at all to with traffic from iTunes where RTE’s ‘Nob Nation’ is one of the top downloaded podcasts in the country.

With RTE saving money in one area they’re obviously on the look out for money elsewhere. There’s been enough rows and debates over increases in TV license fees in recent times and with reported dips in TV advertising revenue in recent years as well, can we expect in 2008 to see RTE turning their podcasts into “pod-cash”? Podcast-only advertising deals? Podcast sponsors?

Would you

• Pay an annual fee to subscribe to RTE’s podcasts via RTE?
• Continue to download RTE’s podcasts if the advertising in shows increased?
• Pay-per-podcast for specific shows? Perhaps free highlights and a nominal fee for a full download?

Personally, no. The only way I could imagine myself paying for podcasting material is if it was in an educational environment. i.e. part of an online course. I can accept people sponsoring podcasts (e.g. a sponsor’s plug at the beginning of the show / end of show or a subtle drop during the show) but I’m not overly keen on dropping full length commercial adverts into podcasts. If I wanted that sure I’d just listen to the radio…

Do you even listen to any of RTE’s podcasts? Did you even know that RTE offer over 70 different podcasts direct from their website? There was I thinking I was ok with doing 2 (Sound System / Playlist Mix)…

Or will we see the TV license system in Ireland revamped to a ‘Media License’ and see podcasting bundled in? New taxes on iPods and Zunes? Who knows…

228, 332, 440 - Anyone Else Getting This?

I mentioned earlier in the week that I’d seen my RSS subscriber figures for kenmc.com shoot a little abnormally on from Tuesday (228) into Wednesday (332).

But now, looking at the FeedBurner chicklet this morning they’ve risen again to 440? That’s almost double the amount of subscribers in 3 days. Is anyone else experiencing strange shifts in their subscriber numbers?

It just seems a little odd given that I was extremely quiet during December and into January (between work, Christmas, holidays etc.). Or can I still blame Jaiku for this spike? Am I even looking in the right direction?

By the way, if you would like to subscribe to kenmc.com then please feel free to do so by adding http://feeds.feedburner.com/creativeimagination to your preferred feed reader. That also reminds me to add a bucket of feeds to Net News Wire (on the mac). If it works the way Vienna does then I’ll have a nice few blog posts to read over the weekend (off to Sligo later for a river run and a gig).

Casting My Vote

Having been away all over Christmas, then scooting off to Germany last week I’d almost forgotten to cast my votes for the 3rd annual Irish Blog Awards - almost.

Sure who could forget to do that?

2007 was another great year for Irish blogging, although some of my regular reads dropped off or finished writing, there was plenty on offer in the world of technology, sport, music, business, the arts and so much more - all from Irish bloggers.

I’m currently in the process of filling out my nomination form, if you haven’t done so yet then get yourself along to awards.ie/nominations and cast your vote. You’ve got until 9pm Friday.

In a change to proceedings this year there will be no public vote, the nominees instead being judged on quality amongst other traits. Damien is asking nicely for judges for the blog awards, something I would do if I honestly felt I could commit more time in the week but I’ll have to pass on this twist with everything else going on. If you would like to volunteer your services as a judge then drop by awards.ie for the low-down.

Of course, if you fancy nominating any of my own blogs (kenmc.com, playlistmix.com kilkennymusic.com, liverpoolaccess.com to name four out of a dozen or so) then be my guest. I was at the blog awards last year where I got to put so many faces to names for the first time. If you’re not nominated, or not voting, it’s still a great night out with a terrific bunch of people.

Do I owe Paul a pint? I owe somebody a pint!

Jaiku Robins And RSS

Just as the going was good with Jaiku back to it’s speedy self, the robin appears this afternoon.

I get curious every time I see the little Juhu figure at the top of my screen go from green to red, usually an indication that something is wrong somewhere, this time it’s a corrupt main database - sounds serious enough wouldn’t you think?

One question I thought I’d ask though, with Jaiku coming back on stream yesterday, did anyone notice a spike in their RSS subscriber numbers via FeedBurner? Looking at my own, they had jumped from 220-odd Tuesday to 330-odd Wednesday, something I’m guessing has to do with Jaiku re-activating feed fetching?

Anyone have a few porridge oats for the Robin?

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