My first podcast.

Introducing the AudioRANTS podcast.

Just a tip: When you make an 11MB podcast, do not upload it to the server using dial-up. Trust me.

I had flashbacks to when I was editor of Countryside Post in Grass Valley, and we experimented with uploading our files to the printer. This was back in 1999, when DSL wasn’t anywhere yet, much less in Grass Valley. So this was all done through dial-up. Try to imagine sending between 100MB and 150MB of data (even after it was compressed) over a telephone line. Took hours. And if anything happened to stop the upload, we had to start over. In the end, we decided it was less time-consuming to drive to the print shop in Sacramento (about 65 minutes away) and back.

Anyway, enough ranting about uploading the podcast; let me tell you about the podcast itself.

Podcasting, for those of you who don’t know, is making a “show” and converting it to MP3 so that you can easily listen to it on your iPod—or for those of you who don’t have an iPod, your computer. There are lots of podcasts on the internet already; if you have Apple’s iTunes (which is free) it includes a directory of podcasts for your listening pleasure. Podcasts, by the way, are also free to download, though some take a while, especially if you have dial-up.

Out of the pure novelty of it all, I decided to rant into my computer for about 20 minutes, then turn that into a podcast. And then, because for some stupid reason I went all anal about it, I decided to write scripts for the show, edit in some background and bumper music, and create a website to host the stuff on.

Why? Because it’s summer and I have too much free time on my hands. Of course, this is stupid; if I’m going to make a weekly show it had better become easy to do or I’ll frustrate myself with the obligation. But I figure the first one is the hardest, so here it is.

And the first one is probably the most boring. I realized this after listening to it later. I sound a little canned. Likely it’s because of the scripts. So, in future podcasts, I’ll rant off the top of my head; I’ll probably get into more trouble because of it, but it’ll sound more natural.

Anyway, give it a listen; enjoy it; feel free to tell me how much you think it sucks and that you’ve farted more interesting things than that.

Update, 11/20/2024. Of course, I stopped making this podcast as soon as the novelty wore off. The website doesn’t exist anymore either. But the shows are still on Internet Archive, and I linked to all of them here.