Not Soup

    I began working in Radio in February 2005; it was a glorious time. I worked at an FM hot talk station and the elections and the inauguration had come and gone, meaning the people at this particular station couldn’t care less about anything political. Sure there was the 2006 election, but that was local issues and just seemed to come and go with nary a whimper. (Interesting aside: 2006 was the same time Mitt Romney joined NRA.)

    Jump to 2008; It’s a whole new ball game. This spin around the sun I’m working on two AM talk stations. Which means everyone and I mean every single person I come in contact with during my work day wants to know what I think on the issues and most importantly to whom do I intend to give my vote. Until now, I’ve tried to stay largely apolitical, but now people with actual informed opinions are asking my opinion and instead expecting me to be flippant want my actual opinion. And worse yet, expect me to reinforce it with facts.

    As Sam Beckett would put it, “Oh boy.” Time to actually do some research. I layed out every candidate. I read news articles, read all of the respective websites and some third party websites. (including wikipedia, which is always dangerous.) And over the course of a couple evenings, I came to find my favorite candidate out there, was Mitt Romney. Quite a shock to my generally liberal mind. (I also liked Obama, just not quite as much.) But look at Romney’s voting record: He supported states rights when deciding gay marriage, he supported gun control laws like the Brady Bill, and he wanted to rein in political spending. All things I believe in. (No, I don’t want to discuss the issues. Save it for later.) He was a conservative, but he was a moderate conservative in the style I like.

    Then I noticed the change. Noticed he joined the NRA in 2006. In his debates, he spoke out against allowing same sex “unions.” He changed from a moderate conservative to one of the worst kind of hard court right-wingers, which I equate with nut bags like Rush Limbaugh. Of course, he was “appealing to his base.”

    Where did my candidate go? Why did our politicians have to be hard left or hard right? Who is out there for the middle of the roaders?
    I realized… Nobody.

    Society has stopped caring about moderatism. It only wanted the extremes. I think I blame MTV’s “Real World,” but this was the thing that really woke me up. Life has been categorized, simplified, and subdivided.

    It’s not just in politics either.

    One of my other great loves is comic books, and it used to be fine to just be a comic fan. But no more. Now you’re either a Marvel Zombie, a DC Decagenarian, or an Independent comic snob. (Which seems to be the label even if you read Dark Horse, BOOM! Studios, IDW, or any other smaller, but not actually indie comics.) And if you happen to read multiple publishers. Well you still fit into one category, though you may toy with others. As if your comic reading is “less serious” than someone else’s.

     Or if you get past that stigma, are you one of the dreaded “completists?”

Of course, I’ve seen this behaviour before, Microsoft vs. Apple vs. Unix and Nintendo vs. Sony vs. Microsoft (again). But I thought these were distinct, unique “nerd fights.”

    it seems they’ve permeated every part of our culture. Everybody has chosen a side. Have you? You can no longer stand in the middle. You can’t like Pepsi and Coke; iPods and iRivers; or Blu Ray and HD-DVD. It’s time to choose a side and take a stand. And you have to be unfaltering about that side, no matter what you decide. It’s not even important if you have an informed opinion, as long as you have a single pointed, absolute opinin. 

    This is no time to be wish washy. We’re at war! A cultural war. A war it took Mitt Romney to show me was right in front of me all along.

    Now, it’s your turn.

    Have you decided? Are you ready to stand up and scream your opinion, no matter what or how misinformed it may be, from the rooftops? No? Then get out of the way because culturally, you don’t matter any more.

Now, I am a podcaster myself. And I’m extremely opinionated, so instantly you could look at this as advice from a podcaster to a podcaster, but I’m really not viewing it this way. I don’t even follow all these tips myself, (I’m working on it) so I’m looking at it solely from my habits as a listener. But I am a podcaster, so I apply as many grains of salt as you feel appropriate. And I apologize for not identifying any examples, but I don’t wish to accidentally upset anyone by doing so.

1. Vary Sounds and Chunk Your Podcast

I have a touch of ADD. It’s very hard for me to focus on one task. That’s one reason I love podcasts, because I can listen while working on another task, and by splitting my attention two ways I can focus better on both.

But at the same time I need your sound to change at times so it doesn’t feel monotonous. Most podcasts I can only listen to for about 40 minutes MAX and by that point I’m struggling. Two ways to do this are to vary the sounds or chunk your podcast.

Varying the sound is fairly obvious; have different sounds in your podcast. I’m much more forgiving of a podcast that has multiple people or plays music than I am of a solo podcaster. (Oddly enough, most of the podcasts I listen to have a solo host.) But these have their own problems, like I don’t like too much music in podcasts I’m not listening to for the music and multiple voices can get confusing if it’s not easy to differentiate and everyone talks over each other.

If you can’t vary sounds, or simply don’t want to, the other thing I would suggest is chunking your podcast. Chop it up into more digestible pieces. My preferred method to do this is to cut into multiple podcasts, especially if they’re unrelated topics. If you want to talk about a CD, a DVD, and a novel, why do it in one hour long episode instead of three 20 minute episodes? This allows me to more easily skip something I have no interest in. Also I can intercut other podcasts so I can vary my sounds to my liking. (John’s Business side: If you have advertisers, triple the episodes gives three times as many ad impressions as one episode three times as long). On the other hand, don’t cut up 1 idea. I don’t want part 1, 2 and 3 of an interview on one topic. But you could do interview part 1 talking about subject A, part 2 talking about subject B etc.

But say you don’t want to do multiple episodes, there are still ways to chunk the podcast. Promos being my favorite. If I’m looking for something new to listen to, I pay attention if not, it’s aural excelsior. maybe a short music clip. Anything that you can intersperse to give me a chance to mentally rest for a second. It can also be used to build tension (damn you, JC Hutchins) or tell me that there’s going to be a change in topic. I would recommend staying away from doing a “commercial break” per se, because that reeks of old media, but it wouldn’t hurt to put in some kind of trigger that tells me to turn my ears back on, here comes more juicy content.

I heard one podcaster saying “if you want it shorter, just don’t listen to the whole thing, same as a radio show.” Please don’t use this mindset. If I care enough to listen to you at all, I want to listen to the whole thing, and on my own terms. Chunking lets me do that.

2. Identify Yourself and Your Topic

This on one level ties to the first one but also needs to stand by itself.

When you chunk your podcast (which you’re all going to do now that you’ve read my wonderful advice right? ) remember to reidentify your podcast, yourself, and your topic. The biggest offender I have here is reviews.  So often people will introduce what they’re reviewing and then through out the review refer to it as “this.”

“This was a great book..” “One of my favorite things about this…” “You should definitely check this out.”

A few podcasts I’ve heard have some kind of sound problem when they identify the object. Or what if something happened and I had to pause mid review and come back to it later. Sure I could rewind, but on some MP3 players (like both of mine. Want to buy me an iPod?) and some software rewinding and then fastforwarding back to a specific spot is such a pain in the ass. And if there was some kind of audio glitch (one speaker stepped on the other one, or just didn’t say it clear enough) it wouldn’t help anyways.

So take a moment to reidentify what you’re talking about, in case something interests me about it part way through.

I have more thoughts and some different perspectives, but I’m almost at 1000 words now, and if anything this has been about portioning your info and I think that’s a tasty chunk for now. And to sum up these 2 points I think it comes down to letting me listen on my terms and in the simplest fashion available. In other words, help your podcast do what podcasting does best.

For those of you that don’t know me, my main two passions are New Technology and Comic Books.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about New Technology, New Media, and how people react when it is implemented. I’ve worked in a few different jobs that have gone far afield of each other, but there always seemed to be four different types that react to new tech. I tie New media in with New Tech, because one seems to lead to the other and vice versa.

 The first and that one that I think probably most average employees align with is the Invisible Woman. Since being created, the Invisible Woman has come a long way in being redefined as a character and a powerful female character at that, but in essence her power is really to avoid a problem. (as can be seen in this horrible trailer for Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four) Trouble comes at her, she becomes invisible and gets out of the way. I think this is where most workers are at, they simply do not want to rock the boat. They show up when work starts do just enough to not get in trouble and head out when the evening bell whistles. Try, to the best of their ability, to go unnoticed. And how do these people react to New Tech? In short, they don’t. They wait for it to come to them.

At a school I recently worked at, they implemented a classroom PA system, so teachers could save their voice but still be heard through the entire room. The microphone for this device was attached to a strap and hung around your neck. The first day I arrived to work at, they showed it to me and there directions were “wear this, we’re supposed to be using these things.” And the majority of the teachers in the hall did just that. They wore the dongle, but didn’t bother to even try to adapt this technology. Same with the computer systems, the projectors, other “toys” they had in the room. All their, all available, all ignored. They didn’t want to rock the boat. But things like the grading software that they were forced to use, they learned to work as minimally as needed, and were able to get by with it.

The second personality type is The Thing. The Thing is an Orange Rocky brute. He is as a hammer. Every problem is a nail. To defeat the bad guy, he punches them. If that doesn’t work, he punches them again. and again. and again. and again. And he wants everything back the way it used to be. He’s lived in the same building forever hangs out in his old community, Yancy Street, and more than anything wants to be back like he was before becoming The Thing.

Hopefully at your workplace, nobody is walking around punching people, but there are many people that see every problem as a nailed that needs to be hammered. These are the people that will actively petition against any kind of new Tech. These people I find the most frightening, but if they have too much control, they will crash a business.

A local comic shop is ran by a “Thing,” he has no interest in trying to develop a business, which is fine for him, because he’s the only comic shop within an hour 45 minute drive. He sees no reason for a website. Does not do ebay. Does not advertise his business, nothing. The only way to find his store is to drive past it or find it in the yellow pages. He opens his store in the morning, closes in the evening and has no expectation of doing anything else. And his store is slowly going downhill and he just doesn’t see it.

The third type is The Human Torch, Johnny Storm. Now Johnny has been played a few different ways, but he’s always had a sort of youthful exhuberance. He’s always had a sense of fun and always been the celebrity of the group. He’s also most likely to “borrow” one of Mr. Fantastics gadgets. These are the people that jump at the new technology and are excited to use it, but may not always use it for the intended purpose. These can be some of the most useful people in introducing a new technology because hey make it look easy and show the fun side of the new tech. They can also be some of the worst if they use it too much for the fun factor and don’t implement it correctly.

To go back to when I was teaching with the PA system. One teacher loved using the projector system… to put youtube videos on the front board. (I frequently used the system to watch DVDs during my “planning” period.) and used the PA as intended, but at the same time loved to bring it close to his face so the sound would distort and he could say things like “Clean up in aisle 4. We need a clean up in aisle four,” to a classroom of confused students who obviously had not yet worked a single day in their life.

Finally we have the leader of are Fantastic Four, Mr. Fantastic, and aside from the humongous ego he has to call himself Mr. Fantastic, He has a body and mind ready to stretch in all different directions. Mr. Fantastic is the inventor. This is the guy that actively seeks out new media and is the one introducing it to others. Need to find a new way to do something? This is the guy that has the solution. But they can send you down the wrong path as well. Just ask Sony about betamax and UMDs.

These are the people that I find at the radio station. I work for a Clear Channel station, the behemoth of Old Media, but everyday I talk with someone that’s thinking about a new way to reach out to listeners, to involve them, to evolve the medium. These are people that realize it’s the content, not the medium that matters. Yes, most of them had one idea that just did not work, but they weren’t afraid to try.

So, who are you in the workplace? Are you ready to implement new technology? Are you ready to find new ways to communicate with your audience? Are you sedentary? Or are you just trying to stay invisible?

Podcasting is, honestly, one of my favorite things.

It’s an amazing techology, and it gives a voice to anyone that wants one, but every once in a while (especially nights like tonight when I would rather be podcasting than working) I wonder if maybe those diverse voices are a little too spread out. For those of you that may not be familiar, I do a comics podcast called Comics Radar and a quick search on Podcast Alley shows 200 results for “Comic Books” (I think it maxes out at 200 results) and on iTunes you get a similar 200+ results. All manner of shows all manner of voices. Great, right?

Well, let’s take a closer look. Out of these 200, how many have podfaded? (podfade: v. to no longer be publishing episodes without announcing you’re no longer doing episodes) How many put out only 1 episode a month? I’ll admit, I’m guilty on occasion. A quick look through the top 25 (I’m ranked 33 for full disclosure) I see one duplicate feed, about 5 that haven’t updated in a month, a few that haven’t updated in 2007. one that hasn’t updated in 2 years. Well, there’s not really much you can do about a duplicate feed, or really those that haven’t updated in a year or so, so I’m not really talking about them. I want to look at the other portion.

The portion that puts out one or two episodes a month, maybe less. Again, I’m sometimes guilty myself.

And even for ones that are consistently putting out content, what are their subscriber numbers? I know from being in Farpoint that my numbers are fairly good, at least in my mind, and from talking to other podcasters numbers around 100 listeners per show or less aren’t uncommon. 

So, we have 2 groups, one with a great number of listeners that doesn’t consistently put out content and one group that is putting out content, but doesn’t have the numbers.

Why don’t these two groups merge? work together? and I don’t mean doing some large group podcast, there are already a handful of group podcasts, with a varying degree of quality and popularity. I mean almost like an audio magazine of sorts. Pick up any magazine, you’ll see a series of stories and articles each contributing there own portion of one whole. Why aren’t there more podcasters doing this? contributing their variety of talents to create one great comics podcast group rather than a bunch of good ones? And we can even go outside of the podcast itself?

For example, say I team up with somebody in California, and someone in New York, and someone in Detroit. And we all come together under the COMICSrCOOL banner. Well, maybe Mr. California is really good at doing graphics and Mr. Detroit is a web programmer, meanwhile, I love working with audio and making it sound as good as possible, and maybe Mr. Detroit has a bunch of contacts, or maybe he just has a really strong interview style. Each of them can contribute their own strength. Outside of that, when there’s a convention or tech gathering in California, COMICSrCOOL has a prescence there. Con in NY? COMICSrCOOL has a prescence there. Suddenly, COMICSrCOOL.com is growing in traffic, has a strong national audience and, if they want, can bring in more ad revenue and sponsorships than any of them could have individually.

We also have a third group, people that would be interested in podcasting, but don’t want to put the work into it. Don’t want to go through the hosting, the feed setup, submitting to iTunes, yada, yada, yada. Would this cut down that stepping stone? Make podcast creation even easier if I knew somebody would be readily available to help me create it. Podcasters are already an extremely friendly group, but having someone that has a direct interest in you succeeding is even better, no?

But surely there would have to be something they would sacrifice, right? granted they would be dividing revenue, but because of increased prescence, revenue is probably higher than it would be otherwise. The only thing I can see that people would really have to give in on would be ego. I know for me, I’d love to team up with other podcasters and help us all improve, but I would be hesitant to give up my Comics Radar site and podcast, but ultimately I would if I thought it would be for the best.

Granted, I’m talking about Comics Podcasts, because that’s where I see the majority of glut. But I’m sure there are other areas where people working together, would be stronger than the parts. What if Dragonpage, The Survival Guide to Writing Fantasy, and The Secrets teamed up? Then you have one podcast about writing and marketing novels and interviewing people that have already done it. I’m willing to bet that these three podcasts have quite a bit of overlap in their audiences anyways.

Is there something I’m missing? Why does every podcast seem happy to operate out of its own little whole instead of trying to work together?

And here’s the picture I said I would put up. Aren’t they a couple of cuties?

How do I make this template wider?

It’s hard to believe that Serenity will be four weeks old tomorrow.

I have to say, it’s been one hell of a learning curve. There is nothing I can think of that changes your life as much as having a child. Possibly, becoming crippled or losing a limb would be an equivalent life change, but in a good way.

What I mean by that is there are some things you have to relearn, some things you have to learn in new ways, and some things you learn that you never knew about about.

For me, I’ve learnt a lot, in that month. Like 1. When your baby cries, it is nowhere near as annoying as when someone else’s child does, but it IS a hundred times more frustrating. Every time she lets out a cry, you’re mind starts reeling and you are put on a clock. The first couple nights when she started crying, I could barely handle it. Not because it was annoying, but because I needed her to be happy for some kind of validation that Raven and I weren’t doing something wrong. But I was able to hold on, I just took a deep breath, smiled, and started joking about it, because that’s one thing I know I can do when all else fails, throw a joke.

Luckily, I quickly learned that a lot of the time, when a baby cries, it’s not a big deal, and even then you just start going down the checklist. diaper? gas? hunger? If it’s not immediately evident as one of those three, you just hold her and rock and usually she calms down.

I also realized that dirty diapers and being puked on don’t bother me as much as I thought it would. It’s weird, those first couple nights, we were actively hoping she would give us a dirty diaper. It’s one of those signs of a healthy baby. you have to keep track of before she can go home. And she seems to have some issues, so it’s become daily conversation. “Hi, nice day, isn’t it? Did Serenity have a dirty diaper today? what color?” and I think the hospital kind of lies to you. “She NEEDS to have these dirty diapers,” Then when you get home, you’re ready so when she does have a dirty diaper, you just do what needs to be done and move past it.

The last real big thing I learned in the first month is, Holy Crap kids grow fast. We had to go to LOTS of doctors appointments, after Serenity was born, and I went to a number of them as my schedule allowed, and of course, everywhere we went, we would encounter other parents with kids and holding my week old, and looking at somebody else’s one year old, they seem so different, worlds apart, but I know it’s really not that far away. That’s pretty frightening. Guess I still have things to learn.

Serenity was born 7 pounds even 18.5 inches. she is (as of last doctors appointment) 7lbs. 1oz. 21inches. And I’ll put a picture here as soon as I can.

No, it’s not the answer to a really lame Jeopardy question. It’s this blog, obviously. But that doesn’t really tell us anything. “A blog” doesn’t really mean anything anymore, it’s about as useful as saying “A piece of paper”  or “A book” it tells us only of existence, not of content.

Once upon a time, Blog meant content. It was where those at the leading edge of technology stood on their pulpit and made proclamations to the masses and usually spoke in arcane words and symbols that had no meaning to the mere mortal behind the “tv part,” as my mother was fond of calling it. You needed specialized knowledge. What’s a baud? What’s a RAM? What are the internets? of course, these questions existed before the blogs, but I think the blogs are what really started to transform those arcane ramblings. The normal people, the slack jawed, unwashed masses saw that this one group, was finally giving itself a voice. and in turn each of them saw that and said “I want that.” They wanted their pulpits, their platform, their milk cartons to stand up and raise there voice over the crowd.

We’ve entered a new age of Snake Oil Salesman, but they’re giving it away, just as long as they’re heard. First there was Geocities. Geocities allowed anyone to have their 10acres and a mule in digital format. You could set up in whatever neighborhood you liked as long as you didn’t mind being /aliens/mothership/zebulon/8675309. But geocities had a hurdle, and it was a huge hurdle at that. It required work. Sure they had basic templates, but they were basic and templates. And they were coming out with all new toys to play with, embedded music, animated gifs, scrolling text, variable fonts. With all those options who could settle for a plain old template? But there was still a lot of work to be done. and that work had to be done every time you wanted to add or change content on your site.

Over the years, new toys came and went, but I think the next major step was LiveJournal. LJ was in my mind, the dawning of the social internet consciousness. Anyone could come in and pull up anchor. Ok, maybe you needed an invite, but those weren’t very hard to come by at all. And this one let you be a bit more personal. You could actually be /~you. And you could connect. You could have friends, you could have people that were your friends, but you weren’t really their friend and you could go off and form your own little groups and cliques and talk and be heard, by as many or as few people as you liked. Plus you could personalize it. Give it your own style and your own flair. But LJ still lacked something. Anyone could say anything and everyone could hear it, but it was still a bit like reading someone’s diary, peering into some side that they’re hiding away; it lacked authority.

Finally, came WordPress. now for the mere cost of a domain name ($6.95 for the one you’re looking at now) and possibly a few dollars a month, though there are free options, you can have your own website, that shows some level of authority.

Now, to get to the point, unless you’ve been enjoying the stroll down the digital memory lane. What is Not Soup? I originally planned it to be my platform, my place of authority, where I would rant from on high and everyone would listen. Then I had my baby girl. Suddenly I don’t matter. I want to tell the world about her and just goof off so I don’t become an old man too quickly. That’s what Not Soup is, a place for people who care about me and about my family to pay attention to what’s going on. It is not for everybody. Honestly, it’s not really for anybody but myself. If you don’t like it, go screw. For the rest of you, welcome, rest your feet, enjoy the tea.