thinglets: How Do I Do This Shit I Do?

A question by Cheryl following the Why Do I Do This Shit I Do? podcast inspired the following post on methodology and gear.

"I am astounded at the number of podcasts you put together in a week -- how long does each one take? Do you script any of them? What about production, is it just record and go? What software/hardware are you using?"

My long-winded answer... because I don't do anything short-winded.

Nothing is scripted anymore. If you were to hear some of the lovehate podcasts from a year and a half ago, you'd find they were all readings of the blog posts - which used to be LONG. I used to keep the "scripted" and impromptu podcasts numbered separately, but as my time for writing became scarce I went completely extempore and merged the two streams at Podcast #42 of each and call the next podcast Episode 85. Most of the time, other than a basic premise to kick off the festivities, I have no idea where the LHT podcasts will end up.

The current lovehatethings podcasts are generally recorded in real time (10m) and then I drop some mildly meaningful music in the background, save it to mp3 and post it - total time about 25m.

For my other podcasts, DyscultureD and TV, Eh are just riffing off of whatever links we've collected. Best Episode Ever is riffing off of the show's Wikipedia page and personal recollections.

LHT is recorded directly into Cool Edit Pro 2.1 which is an old program that is absolutely brilliant and uses a ridiculously small footprint of the processor. The program is also used to edit all of the other podcasts. DYS and TV, Eh are recorded over Skype using a program called Call Graph.

The time investment for Best Episode Ever is very similar to lovehatethings unless I'm recording an episode with someone else over Skype.

TV, Eh editing is generally not too demanding unless I have to post-process an interview. I generally just add opening theme and closing theme and mixdown to mp3.

DyscultureD takes the longest just because we do segments and break between them. The breaks necessitate some editing and insertion of stingers. Since the new theme song, I've also taken a couple of minutes to record the intro as well. A no-nonsense quick edit of the podcast is usually 30m, but the process takes quite a bit longer as my upload speeds often add 20 minutes to everything.

As for hardware, I've got a REALLY fast Dell PC box with 9GB of RAM that helps speed the process. My newest toy is the Australian Rode Procaster microphone with shockmount and boom that I've had for about half a year now. (see top of post)

I also use a Behringer Eurorack UB802 mixer as I really prefer the sound of a mic going directly into the analog port instead of USB. (Maybe it's just the old musician in me, though I do still have a USB Blue Snowball and a USB headset mic for trips with my laptop. The Eurorack also facilitates anything else I want to plug in if I'm going to record music and add a keyboard or other instrument.

Posterous has really made everything else easy. I'd rather spend time on content creation instead of webpage coding, so I'm relieved that the advent of Posterous and my relaunch into blogging and subsequently podcasting had a serendipitous synchronicity. 

Probably more than anyone wanted to know. While it may sound a complex, I have also recorded about ten podcasts from Las Vegas casinos with my iPhone and nothing else. Engaging content and style will trump gear any day of the week.

lovehate: 10 Things I've Learned Since Starting Lovehatethings One Year Ago


Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of Lovehatethings and I figured Anniversary Eve would be a good time to reflect on the past year's most valuable lessons in my latest round of blogging. Lovehatethings is not my "side" blog or my picture/clip repository; it is my only solo blog.

  1. Subject be damned - I thought, when I first started lovehatethings, that I would try to stay on things tech and web culture with a dash of ephemera thrown in for good measure. I soon came to grips with the fact that no matter how I tried to craft a theme or topic for the blog, ultimately I was the theme. While I never wanted or considered lovehatethings to be a lifestream (and it's not) I was hoping I would have time to write longer sweeping pieces about pop culture on a more regular basis. In lieu of essays and longer reflections, the ephemera fleshed out the opinion and what resulted was a clearer scope of my views on culture instead of the culture itself.
  2. Staying current is currency - Having more time in the summer to keep up posting made the first couple of months easy to satisfy at least a post per day, and even when I have had little time to "construct" a written post, I have always tried to maintain some output on a daily basis (this is post number 483 in 364 days).
  3. Podcast or Perish - Lovehatethings is/was my first foray into podcasting (I know I arrived on the scene late). 98 podcasts later I've gone through scripted, unscripted, rants, recoils and rambles with the only expectation being that I would have a blast doing them and learning by them... mission accomplished.
  4. The medium is the message - In so much as anyone can put up content and hope that people consume, I really have to thank the Posterous team for giving me tools that allowed me to gain greater distribution control of content over the past year. Posting and podcasting by email, notifications, analytics, custom domains - anything I could've wanted in this first year was not only provided but made simple. My career isn't coding, but it does entail some heavy duty communication. I loved that I could handle the words while someone else handled the code.
  5. Buying into the community - My work with lovehatethings prompted a greater interest in the subcultures that are blogging and podcasting and social media in general. I attended Podcamps, tweetups, and become an advocate among friends and peers for social media growth and involvement.
  6. Words are not dead - As much as many web consumers seem transfixed with keyboard cats and memes-a-plenty, I have found more value in words over the past year than I have in a long time - and this comes from an English teacher. I do not, nor will I ever buy into the fact that a blog idea should be said in as few words as possible. The artistic sensibility in blogging should be found in words. While brevity is certainly economical, I don't read a blog or listen to a podcast to get headlines as quickly as possible. I want to be entertained and a well-crafted story, sentence, or turn of phrase can make the topic more enjoyable no matter how bland it should be.
  7. Fueled by stupidity - While I could easily accept others accusing me of this, I really mean to say that the stupidity of the world around me has really inspired some of the better posts on the blog. Whether it's a celebrity or a person who cut me off in a parking lot, disgust, disbelief and sometimes outright rage inject prose with a certain maliciousness that is therapeutic. It is also this stupidity, especially by people around the city, that inspired the Impromptu Podcasts that started up as a way to relieve the podcasting bug when longer written pieces were too far between.
  8. Readers and listeners are irrelevant - Not to insult you if you're reading this now, but if I was doing all this work for someone else, without getting paid, and agonizing over results, it all wouldn't be much fun. And it has been fun. I've always enjoyed watching band that were having fun on stage. I don't care how sloppy the arrangements or how many missed notes, but show me a band that smiles at each other and the crowd and I'll show you a crowd who smiles back.
  9. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose - As much as many Social Media people like to trumpet the vast differences between "new" and "old" media, the basic construct remains the same: sender to message to receiver. That the feedback loop has been shortened, when required, is an improvement, but has always been available even by Pony Express. The basic tenets of any media studies still apply: know your audience, know your medium, know yourself.
  10. The new web realities - Authority is awkward. Recommendations are required. Networking is knowledge. Parsing is premium. Cognition is key. And while some of you will recognize the acronym PWEI from a band called Pop Will Eat Itself, I've become half convinced that such is the fate of the web as bloggers write about other bloggers who write about other bloggers and somewhere in there is a fact or two. Facts are like Waldo.

Tomorrow - the Anniversary Post!