BBC Radio4's “In Our Time“: An hour. Interviews with physicists about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Sounds boring or at least pedogogical, right? Really facscinating stuff, actually, but had to pay attention, or at least rewind a bit. The presenter, Melvyn Bragg, did a great job of pretending like he didn't understand in order to get the physicists to explain a point (I fully believe the guy's a smarty). On the superficial side, British accents talking about physics - what could be better. Not the expected “podcast“ but a very welcome one, indeed. Rating: 7/10
Rip & Read Blogger Podcast: I liked this one; the producer read a lot of blogs, distilled them, made commentary. Precisely what one wants in a review/summary: enough of the real stuff plus enough of what the producer thought was interesting. Subtle and nicely done. Three of them, about 13 minutes each. Rating: 8/10
Tracks Up the Tree: This one was great. Some neat music (Metric, I already love, so that made my ears happy) and some personal commentary about the music so you got to know a bit about who was talking. “Funtime Ben,“ the host, comes across as knowledgable, engaged, interested in spreading indie, and not haughty or snooty as some of my friends or myself, er, um, some of the other indie music whores, er, people can sometimes be. This is one I'll listen to a second time, just to hear some of the songs. I have a bunch of Blonde Redhead, but I haven't really gotten into them so much. Same with Stephen Malkmus Listening to TUTT, I'm definately going to give them a listen again, too. On top of that, some suggestions for other podcasts, other than Podcast Alley. At the time, the Podcast Alley site was down, but this podcast is worthy of me deliberately going out and touching someone (via a rating, guttermind). (oh yeah, and it makes me miss nyc.) An hour, fully worth it. Rating: 8/10
Two Rights: Conservative Political Discourse: Some good dissection of the stories of the news cycle, too much focus on Dave Winer. When I subscribed to this podcast, their feed coughed up some “promos“ for their upcoming show. Now, I was eager to get an ear on the real show, so the garish 30 second or so teasers turned me off. It annoyed me that I'd have to find and delete the files. Yeah, it's a small thing. The odd commercialism of it all was, I guess, commendable? They've got friends who're podcast PR people, which seems like an odd curveball play to get into the adworld. Didn't appeal to me as much as I thought it would. The whining (pun intended) was too much and (w/o the pun) not the grating conservative whine, although there was some screedy tones. Speaking of tones, their mics were a bit hot. Overall not subtle, and I didn't expect it to be, but not really provocative, either. 30 minutes (not including seperate promo teasers) Rating: 5/10
Also, a Dawn & Drew today. Cute, lewd, yay.
Two things strike me about the podcasts I've listened to so far: The first, it seems like the indie one's I've heard have only been produced for a very short time (under 6 months), which is simply amazing. Even The Geek News, which didn't impress me impresses me simply for the balls to actually do the thing and have caught on so much. The dedication of the people that speak into a mic and rss their voices all over is commendable. The second is summed up in this line, from the TUTT site: “You snub one of us, you snub us all.” This second “thing” or comment or random though or whatever is a very fertile one for me, since it sprouts up a lot of thoughs about virtual communities, possessiveness, companionship, and self-referrential postmodern cliqueishness. Also, the reference to blogcons reminds me of anime/d+dcons and a good chunk of Chasing Amy. More as it ferments. For now, I'm going to browse the inkernet podosphere and not worry so much about what it signifies.
Geek News Central. It's Sesame Street meets A+ certification. The guy is reading release notes from software, slashdot, other peoples' blogs, and even more self-referrential, other peoples' podcasts. Honestly. I can read faster than I listen, so what's the point. Poor guy, though. Seems like he's trying, I've known people like him (from what I can tell, in 20 minutes) and I guess there's a market for it. The information isn't useful to me. Rating: 0/10
Dawn & Drew Show: their 50th show. They must be doing something good, because they're basically #1 podcasters and they just started in September. Three months. Not so interested in their lives, though they basically talk like anyone else does, but in this way that's in between what's said in private and what's said to be extroverted. There's just a hint of an act. It's sort of sweet, their interaction - and their personalities definately come through. I'm not an ex-punk, they are. They also live in Wisconsin. It's audio lookylooism. About 40 minutes. Rating: 4/10
Reel Reviews: This is nice. The guy reviewed the Scorcese film “The King of Comedy” and had a good contexual background to it. Easy to listen to and informative. May even watch the movie reviewed. 20 minutes. Rating: 7/10
Dot Net Rocks: I've listened to this hour long show before, but never “podcasted” which isn't any different. This one was a chat with a Microsoft insider. A bit screedy, but I guess that's sort of to be expected. Rating: 6/10.
So far, I'm a bit disappointed with the content that's out there, but I've got a few more sources queued up, so I'll keep giving the genre of home radio a listen.
When I was growing up, there were random encounters with Dr. Demento, a crazy show with satire and pre-Wierd Al like music, mostly in the back of a van or in hotel room with the seniors of the Math team. (yeah, yeah, suck it up. i'll factorialize you, beeotch.) It was, for me, sort of like a three-way crash between a clown car culture of the '60's, my parents' Ambassador culture, and whatever smoke-filled senior's car high school culture I grew up with. Luckily, my exposure was short, just long enough to retain some smell molecules so that when similar things pop up, a sense memory is triggered. When I started looking through
Podcast Alley for this podcast phenomena (what's a podcast? it's an audio blog posting, essentially, but really any downloadable mp3), I got a shudder and a chill. What is it about car crashes that makes one stare? I dunno, but the soma and schadenfreude of listening to - not just reading, a la blogs - other peoples thoughts is a meta-layer of creep above the insanity that's out there. The time people "waste," geez.
Podcat is a 50 minute podcast of excerpts of other podcast in a icky audio montage that somehow appeals to people. It's painful to listen to the intro, the transitions, etc. but this is the contextually appropriate way to get an overview of what's out there (reading about podcasts seems like cheating). It's character building, I keep telling myself, the cat screech segues and the psychedelic hyperdramatic "host." I don't really want to listen to
Adam Curry (yes,
that Adam Curry, of MTV - who already seems to wax nostalgic about podcasts) or Dave Winer (no link, on ethical grounds; i'm a little ill even typing the name) or the highly talked about
Dawn & Drew Show (which I've subsequently downloaded via the
iPodder rss software). If only it wasn't so painful to listen to the summaries and the transitions of Podcat.
Here are some of the podcasts I've downloaded:
- Podcat - gross. Like, I'm sure I'm supposed to say that I appreciated the exposure to other podcasts and not snip at the production quality, but that's literally what triggered my Dr. Demento memories. It's grating. I hate that I haven't found an appealing way to be exposed to podcasts, it's simply hackneyed and offputting. Podcat, stop it.
- Dawn & Drew Show - The snippet I heard on Podcat (again, why I do it to myself, I have no idea) plus the reviews I've read made me think it might be fun to listen to.
- Two Rights: Conservative Political Discourse - searching on Podcast Alley came up with this and I want to check it out because I'm starting with the assumption that people that're out there are whiney liberals. Maybe these guys'll be whiney conservatives. Reading about their latest podcast, they're commenting on Dave Winer (I just threw up a little in my mouth) ... sad to see these podcasters eating their own poop (and yes, i can smell it on me).
- Reel Reviews - some guy's film reviews. Not bad; informational, some opinion, doesn't piss me off, doesn't piss me off about the genre.
... here are the
Top 50 Podcasts from Podcast Alley.
Can't wait for the commercialization of the indie which always happens with this (an under-the-table podcast sponsored by McD's or Sony or whatever PR firm for whatever new teen movie blitz; not to mention an "updated" version of
Pump Up The Volume).
Oh, yeah: "why?" Well, because I thought "hey, i have a bunch of free space on my iPod" and this seemed like a good idea. Right, why a good idea. A while back, I thought it would be the hottnoos if Dan, Jack, Ian and I got a radio segment on the
local liberal station and basically sat around for half an hour or an hour and jabbered about politics. Maybe even some call ins and it'd be hillarious. Sounds like commercial radio, nay traditional radio, is dying dead in the street smack dab in the middle of a triple-car crash. Sorry AirAmerica. Even
BBC piddles on you guys.
[edit: just like that:
Heineken podcast, 12/07]
More attacks, on Shi'a and on Iraqi Guards. Attacks on Americans appear to be secondary, at least in the recent attacks' context. Seems like the Sunni retroactives are a bit put out. At some point the IIG or some of the parties vying for government positions will have to convey that there'll be some sort of equitable representation of Sunni desires (and, no, i don't mean hedcut and bomfase) in the upcoming constitutional revision (the schedule to have a newly written Iraqi constitution is for Oct 2005 - ie post-election).
Apart from the American media headlining how Americans have no stomach for Iraq, I don't read a lot about bombings intimidating the average Iraqi. Granted, mortar shellings and bombings isn't going to make for safer polling places, so stomach or not, voting in the Iraqi elections still seems like a one day tour of duty outside the Green Zone.
![Iraqi players]()
A venn I made for Jack that shows some of the players in Iraq and their affiliations, while capturing some of their motivations. It's a snapshot in time.
Some of the things I'm not sure are represented accurately in the venn are: the proportion of Sunnis that would want an Islamically oriented regieme in place, which I think is significant, but there's no overlap represented - the designation of the Islamic factions is a secondary venn and the circles don't do any of them justice; the fluidity or tragectories of the players; the US military vs. the US people as players, if they matter at all (considering that this is essentially a US/analyst view); the actual affiliation of the Kurds, of whom I have rather little understanding. Some fairly obvious caveats are that the labels "pro-islamist," "pro-nationalist," and "pro-American" have different interpretations depending on the player that's using them.
I'm still looking at it and it'll definitely evolve, but I welcome any feedback, including any conclusions one might draw from a diagram like this. I've got opinions and I'll post those and my motivations soon.
(post title reference)
Here's an e-mail I wrote to AirAmerica today. I get the trend for news reporters to blandify their pronunciation of ethnicly sounding words into American vernacular, but AirAmerica dials up their european-huggy leaning a notch by Eurofying even the most Arabic of words. That's some hard core keepin it real.
Hi, News team,
I listen to Air America driving to work every day here in Colorado more for the entertainment content than the news content, so when I heard the top of the hour "news" segment before Morning Sedition, I got my entertainment.
Your news reader said that there was an explosion in front of a mosque in "carabella," which sounded like a beautiful idyllic place somewhere in Italy.
I've been to Karbala (cahr buh LAH) and, while the city (and particularly the mosques) possess a unique sort of beauty, it's a bit hectic these days and definately not in Italy.
With that, the light turned green and my gaiety quota for the day was met, with my faith renewed in your station's urgent but misguided empathy.
Hopefully, you guys'll work out your kinks and get back to humor that's based more in ideals (a la Gola Wolf Richards) rather than in mispronunciation.
Keep on "now more than ever"-ing!
H
Like Sadr's occupation of Najaf and the killing of Margaret Hassan, assaults on a very prominant Shi'i sites and pro-Iraqis have the sloppy fingerprints of anti-Iraqi national unification sympathizers (Zarqawi, Ba'athist & their allies, etc.) trying to shake up stability in Iraq via the “civil war” route. It's something that the Cooalition can't handle and is the political hot potato for Allawi. It really is more fun to snipe AirAmerica than reflect upon how human nature eats itself.
Spent the better part of a day looking into how to include Eclipse's .classpath file into an Ant build.xml classpath w/o having to retype, copy it, or whatever; in other words, trying to keep Eclipse's build in synch with Ant's build. Ends up, the easiest way is to simply define properties to the paths, then include those in the path definition. Silly, really. There appear to be ant task add-ins [
1,
2] for Eclipse, but for what I was doing, they were overkill. I'll have to look into them later.
In order to get Eclipse's Ant build to work, I did have to do two things:
- <property name="build.compiler" value="org.eclipse.jdt.core.JDTCompilerAdapter"/>
- Have Eclipse's Run->Ant Build..., JRE run the same JRE as the workspace