Changing The Intro - The Pod Of Alan - S1:E2
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# Topics Include
- The history of the intro and changing it up - Working in public - A brief mention of Digital Gardens - The Workshop and The Woodshed - Cleaning the blog - Considering an audio bumper intro (which retroactively ended up being music queues) - Considering a podcast episode that's only sign language - We're gonna get into some tech, but this ain't no tech show - The possibility of popularity - Ejecting
# Post show idea:
- See if there's software that would could use to make sign language versions of the podcast. At first blush id doesn't look like this has been solved though there is this dataset to look at.
# Transcript
_NOTE: This is an auto-generated transcript that has not been edited. Things may be a little off from the actual show._
00;00;04;22 - 00;00;24;15
All right, so... No. We're gonna to that a little bit differently. Hang on. We're gonna start it like this. So I've come to a decision. And the decision is, we're going to change the way potentially that we're opening these. Not potentially, we're changing the way we're opening these. In all of the ones of these episodes that I've recorded prior to this,
00;00;24;15 - 00;00;38;17
which is kind of like the before times. They were done in my car and in my car with the way that I would do it, that I kind of like landed on after a while was I would be parked somewhere because I would only start from a parts place, get the camera set up in the mike set up, etc...
00;00;38;17 - 00;00;53;29
Get everything setup, pause for a second, put the car in gear and then say, Hello world, welcome to this edition of whatever the name of the thing is that we came up with that time. And that's how I started the first one of these. It's like, Hey, Hello, world. Like, we're going keep doing the same thing and I'm thinking about that.
00;00;53;29 - 00;01;05;26
I was like, Hey, let's go through this, but like, it didn't feel right to do that. This is now a new thing, and it's like a new thing in two different ways to like, way number one is, this is a brand new thing.
00;01;05;26 - 00;01;16;24
I'm doing the it in a different location, and I'm also pushing this out. Like I actually posted the first one of these. The thing has happened, but I also just didn't feel... like the vibe didn't feel right for doing a hello world thing all the time with this.
00;01;16;24 - 00;01;29;06
Like, the trick is... so I need to find a opening and I've kinda been thinking about a little bit about that back and forth in my head. I don't necessarily... like it would be great if you could do music.
00;01;29;20 - 00;01;37;15
The other thing that I did a long time ago with the car is when I first started doing this and I would track playing and often it was whatever was on the radio, and I just had the radio kind of cranked.
00;01;37;16 - 00;01;47;20
So you could hear the you could hear the music in the background kind of just foreground at that point. And I turn the music down like a hello world. I'm going and this is we're doing the thing, etc. that's going to get copyright struck and taken down.
00;01;47;21 - 00;02;03;29
I don't want have to deal with that. So I stopped doing that. Got to the hello world thing that are I need to figure out what I want to do for the beginning of these. And this is in line with another thing that we will get to talking about a bunch here, which is this idea of learning and practice
00;02;03;29 - 00;02;20;19
the idea of a digital garden, the idea of doing things in public and working on them in public. I'm just running this stuff like I've been doing it for a while. I haven't posted it. Now I'm posting it, but as I'm posting it, actually, it's almost like I've been doing a play
00;02;20;19 - 00;02;32;13
where I've been rehearsing and rehearsing and rehearsing and then now I'm ready to actually do the performance. And I guess it's a little bit more like, I don't know, jazz and improvization. I've practiced a whole bunch with all this stuff that's never been seen.
00;02;32;21 - 00;02;45;02
And now we're going to get up and we'll do the gig. But while we do the gig, like as soon as the gig becomes its own thing, it's going to have its own maturation process. Maturation? maturation... I don't know how to say that word.
00;02;45;20 - 00;02;55;22
It's going to mature in and of itself. It's going to become its own thing. Part of that also is going to be like this could be a very produced thing, like I could go through and I could keep refining this little bit.
00;02;55;22 - 00;03;04;04
I could record a couple episodes and then not actually post them and then go, OK, what do I learn from that one? Let me go through and record these. Oh, I want to have an intro. OK, I want to do the intro.
00;03;04;04 - 00;03;14;19
Well, I want to say hello, world. No, we already tried that, it didn't work. Let's try this and like we could workshop it and workshop it and workshop it or woodshed it, depending on which way you want to call that. Woodshed being an old school term.
00;03;14;24 - 00;03;25;18
In band, at least, the way that I always heard woodshed was like, if you had a piece of music that you're working on and you weren't quite there, you, you took it to the woodshed, or you got taken to the woodshed to go figure out how to do it.
00;03;25;23 - 00;03;39;09
And I like the idea of woodshed and workshop both, but generally like woodshed kind of have a connotation of kind of getting your tail kicked. I prefer to think about stuff more as a workshop of taking something back to shopping it and workshopping it.
00;03;39;24 - 00;03;56;02
That's going to be this process, too. And like scissors could be open to that as we go through this and like, welcome to the early episodes where we figure this stuff out. Over time, we'll hit the rhythm of the things and we will solve the problems for as long as they see fit to see themselves be solved.
00;03;56;09 - 00;04;09;03
You know, what I mean by that is I've kind of been going back and been working on my my website for the past little while, changing the software underneath it that hosts it from something called Gadsby to something called next jazz.
00;04;09;20 - 00;04;17;27
If you don't know it either this hour, don't worry about it. We can talk about it later or not. It's fine. It is completely irrelevant. But for those of you under such things, those are the pieces of software that I'm messing with.
00;04;19;03 - 00;04;33;20
But as I'm doing this move, I'm also going through and cleaning up from the prior five moves that I've done over the website. Because next, just now before next there was Gadsby. For now, Gadsby there is Hugo. Before Hugo, there was Jekyll, before Jekyll, there was WordPress.
00;04;34;00 - 00;04;51;07
For WordPress, it was hardcoded. Then there was blogger in there somewhere I don't remember. But there's all this cruft that's built up over time with all of these posts, like the pages of the pages, but they're not formatted the same because, like some of them got written three pieces of software ago and some of them I've just
00;04;51;07 - 00;05;11;09
written today. They're all just words and text in a file, but the format of them is different. And what I mean by format is if you think about a table of of rows and columns. And so like the one column would be like title and then the title would be on the first row for the first page
00;05;11;09 - 00;05;29;25
would be This is my site. Helloworld second row would be welcome to the podcast and then another column on the table would be the text. Another column would be the date. Well, like with the date, I have four different columns that all are associated with the date.
00;05;31;00 - 00;05;40;24
Some files have one of those filled out and not the other three. Some have a different one filled out and not the other three. Some of them have don't have any filled out and won't have all of them filled out.
00;05;40;25 - 00;05;56;13
It's kind of a mess. So what have been going through the past little while in the past kind of major push that I've done on the project on the site is to push all that stuff down so that I take a look at those four dates and say, OK, let's look at these four dates.
00;05;56;21 - 00;06;16;12
Let's pick the one that we like the best and let's get everything under that column and delete the other three. So it's that type of clean up and that type of process. But as part of that, too, what I've been looking at is the transition of both that type of metadata, the dates, et cetera, as well as
00;06;16;12 - 00;06;29;02
the content itself. For 15 years, like I've got 15 years of blog here and. Stuff has changed a lot in terms of my thinking in terms of the way I write, in terms of the way that I post stuff, just the actual structure, right?
00;06;29;02 - 00;06;41;28
Those dates, those titles, those timestamps of whether or not I identify something if it's updated or not, all of those things have changed. And I wouldn't have gotten to here if I hadn't gotten through all of that stuff.
00;06;42;22 - 00;06;55;20
I could have just started now and everything would have been cool, and I would have been everything lined up and clean looking exactly the same. Or I could have like kept going a little bit and stopping and copying all that, stopping and trying to mess with it.
00;06;55;20 - 00;07;12;29
Or I could have not changed anything at all. That's not how stuff tends to work with practice and procedures, I guess, I don't know. It's moved into migrated. What does that mean for this? I don't know what I'm going to do in episode 50 for an intro.
00;07;13;19 - 00;07;23;09
I knew the episode one. I did Helloworld not really digging it to the point. Not not really digging up to the point. We're like not going to do that. This being episode two and by the way, maybe not to.
00;07;23;12 - 00;07;35;29
We'll find out. Like I may. I may put another episode in front of this. Like, This is all like fungible at this point. This is the primary primordial ooze of podcast. The the pottery is used now that's not.
00;07;37;29 - 00;07;53;04
We're going to go through and look at this, this is affirming itself out a little bit over time. I won't have to think too much about those things, but while we're here, we're doing this thing. I'm not a huge fan of a certain type of navel gazing that happens.
00;07;54;16 - 00;08;09;12
Sometimes with these projects that. And I can't tell you what the distinction is between it and between what I'm doing, and maybe there is no distinction and I'm just, you know, giving myself leeway because it's my thing. But.
00;08;10;25 - 00;08;18;06
I don't know. Listen to another podcast, and they were talking about a little bit about like, Hey, we're going to do this in like, we're not really sure about this and like all this stuff. It's like, I kind of don't want to hear that.
00;08;18;06 - 00;08;26;08
But at the same time, it's good to hear that. I actually have no idea where this is going, so like this one will back this all the way up to the start, right where to start at the start.
00;08;26;22 - 00;08;44;20
Probably what I think I'm going to do is add in some type of little like bleep bleep sound at the start of this so that there's some indication, some signature on the podcast that it is one of my things could just be me starting and being my voice because my voice is my voice.
00;08;44;20 - 00;09;01;19
People's voices are independent like we can hear things and know what's happening. I kind of like this idea of just like this little like delete something and cue Big Hero six. So I'm skipping around more than I generally would do about this type of thing and hemming and hawing right now, that's going to happen sometime.
00;09;01;19 - 00;09;15;14
So hooray. Stubborn. It's one of the things I said in the last one was if you're not digging this first one of the second one, go listen to like five from now. And it's funny to be able to say that because I know that there's going to be five or ten from now, like they're going to exist
00;09;15;23 - 00;09;27;01
. I've done this long enough that I know that this thing's going to happen. I'm going to make him out of the post, especially because I've already been posting them. But it's kind of this weird time travel thing. The other thing I've been thinking about is like, I'm going to post some of these other episodes that I've done
00;09;27;01 - 00;09;46;15
in the car. two years ago, but they will go in the timeline in front of this one or behind, depending on whatever direction you're looking at. I just I've started to see this thing as much less constrained than I was originally thinking about doing it, and that's one of the keys of actually getting in and doing it
00;09;46;23 - 00;09;56;06
. I had all these kind of ideas in my head about the structure and the way that would work. Even after having done it for a couple of years and just rolling in, I thought it would basically be the same thing.
00;09;56;13 - 00;10;08;25
But just changing this position, just changing the scene, just doing it on this mike instead of in the car and actually having hardware that's probably going to fail on me quite as much. You'll get to that later because Tara failed ones me on the car and I was kind of frustrating, but celery.
00;10;09;20 - 00;10;24;17
But just doing that change like this is this is already a very different thing for me, even though it's mostly the same. Those independent minor things add up to pretty profound differences and like, it's super cool and super fun to play with.
00;10;24;26 - 00;10;32;28
And that's the other thing is I get to play with us now. So like, I have this other thing and it's like, I thought I knew more about what this was going to be 48 hours ago, and now I don't.
00;10;33;19 - 00;10;49;09
And like, it's cool. It's got a pretty good idea, right? It's could be me talking into a microphone about things. OK. That attack that's going to happen, if not, who knows, maybe we'll do that. What would a podcast episode be like that was just sign language?
00;10;51;26 - 00;11;10;05
Kind of ridiculous question, but like, what would that be? There is a video component of these podcasts. And again, I'm having to expand my definition or have I have expanded it, took some effort or I took some re examination and expansion.
00;11;11;06 - 00;11;24;07
To update my bill, my thinking what a podcast is. And what I mean by that specifically is, to me, a podcast is empathy is delivered over an RSS feed. So as soon as you add video into the mix, it's not a podcast.
00;11;24;07 - 00;11;39;25
To me, that's a vlog. But I don't think that's the case anymore, and like language is shifty and moves and the like is really fun to watch and play with like that. So for me, I've actually clicked into this idea that the video is as much the podcast as the empathy is, as is the RSS feed that's
00;11;39;25 - 00;11;54;25
underneath it, which is actually what tells your phone to like, go get a specific episode. That's the tech underneath there. Another thing I guess I should do is now's a good time to bring this up is. I'm going to talk at several different levels about technology.
00;11;55;22 - 00;12;08;03
I am pretty technically adept. I do computer programing professionally and personally, probably. I don't know for myself and for an organization that pays me money to do it. That's my primary role. But it is something that I do.
00;12;08;15 - 00;12;23;00
I work on architecture of systems, et cetera. So like, I can get pretty far down on the technical stuff. There there are layers below that I can understand if somebody guides me, but I do not know, I can at least figure out what's going on because I have enough of the.
00;12;23;26 - 00;12;38;19
I've descended far enough down the staircase that if somebody hold my hand and has a flashlight, they can show me around and show me these other things that I don't yet know. At the same time, I don't want this to be like a tech podcast like this isn't going to be a development podcast.
00;12;38;19 - 00;12;56;14
This isn't going to be a developer podcast. This isn't going to be me talking about next year that I'm using to do my site with the tailwinds, the US system and rust and cool XML. Example is probably not really cool these days, but, you know, like if some of the tech stuff and it's weird because like, who
00;12;56;14 - 00;13;17;19
like how what is my audience? Who is my audience, right? Know your audience? Big old thing and like communication in the world in general is know your audience, so my audience is going to be the people who are into this at the same time, if you were into whatever this is or if you're into this thing, if
00;13;17;19 - 00;13;29;00
you're into the part of Alan, which is apparently what I'm calling it now, they're not. They're not. Apparently that's like that is the new name of the thing. It has been rechristened as the part of Alan because I've got the devil on the side of Alan, the bat of Alan.
00;13;29;06 - 00;13;43;28
It's just like, that's that is turned into my. I don't use the word brand because that sounds super corporate. It's my nomenclature for things. If you're in two parts of this, but other parts of it, you're not just ignore them, especially the tacky stuff.
00;13;44;16 - 00;13;59;19
I'm going to crack wise on tech stuff sometimes because that is like I live in that world, so that's the thing. If I start cracking jokes about XML and like, you don't get it like it is not. If I could if I could talk to each one of you individually, I would know whether or not to gauge
00;13;59;19 - 00;14;12;00
that or to throw that Joe again. I don't have that capability yet. Maybe through AI and machine learning, we can figure that stuff out and make some determinations. But for now, I just have to kind of do this to the audience.
00;14;12;12 - 00;14;22;19
That is the people who are into the thing, but like it, they're not all going to hit. Also, some of them are going to be just bad jokes and not funny anyways. Discounting that if it's a thing you do understand, don't worry about it.
00;14;23;00 - 00;14;40;23
Tweet at me if you don't understand a thing or Google it because you also probably find it out. Amusingly, I would be happy to explain small jokes. That said, I also have to recognize that there is the billionth percentile chance that non-trivial lots of people listen to this.
00;14;40;23 - 00;14;56;03
So maybe don't don't tweet me. I kind of hope that's the problem, I kind of hope that's not a problem, right? You're going to get both of those things. If this if I do this for another two years and any number of people get it and collect over time like that could be a decent number of people
00;14;57;21 - 00;15;13;12
. And so this is this is one of the things that's weird to think about too, right? And tonight, not just for me, but just for any of us if we do a thing that puts us in public. There are very direct lines of communications to us in public now, like how how does one deal with that?
00;15;13;24 - 00;15;27;21
Because like right now? Hey, no problem. No big thing. But like any moving into and up to the celebrity and not talking about like pop culture celebrities, we're talking about a celebrity in your field, no matter what you do.
00;15;27;22 - 00;15;39;03
I expect that there is some person out there who if they're speaking at a conference, you're like, 00, I would like to go to that conference. You're that person. Talk about the thing that they're doing. And I'm talking now more of a professional thing.
00;15;39;03 - 00;15;52;08
I recognize that I'm kind of making a judgment jump here or not jump a something jump. I don't know. Because like. But you're OK. So here's the question I don't know enough about him. I'm going to step and stuff, by the way, all the time.
00;15;53;07 - 00;16;04;13
But my guess is there are people out there that would like to go see there are some amount of celebrity that are outside of the top level of celebrity. Also, I need an object button for when I kind of start wrapping myself down a wormhole that I can't figure out how to get out of.
00;16;04;13 - 00;16;19;27
Also like. But I don't have a cheesy eject sound, but like, I'm just say I'm going to eject. I don't know. Here's the interesting thing about. Permanent media and I'm using permanent with, you know, an asterix on it that nothing is.
00;16;21;11 - 00;16;35;00
I'm in this headspace because I'm looking back at blog post from 15 years ago. So if I had said 15 years ago, Hey, I've written this post that's telling you how to do this particular thing in this particular programing language if you don't understand it.
00;16;35;11 - 00;16;54;13
Reach out to me. Cool. That's 15 years plus, however, much longer I'm alive and the site stays alive, that that offer is open. That's kind of staggering. So maybe don't tweet at me. But maybe do I don't know.
00;16;55;24 - 00;17;08;19
I'm thinking about this in my perspective, right, because we tend to think about the world through our own filters, just a staggering ness of like leaving a message, doing a thing out in public and making a statement and then having that statement.
00;17;09;25 - 00;17;31;23
Not. Dissipate with the echoes of time. That's not a thing that was in the power of all but the fewest of human beings. For all that, the briefest time period of history, and now we all have it. So easily.
00;17;33;07 - 00;17;51;02
I don't know if we still have. And I'm not saying yay or nay, I'm saying I don't know if we have fully. Not comprehended, but adopted or like rolled into the world where that's our internal knowledge of the thing is how that stuff works.
00;17;51;21 - 00;18;05;15
At some level we can't have right because my generation did not have foreign hands and purposes the internet or phones. three generations from now will actually be able to look at people and say, OK. Can you see the difference?
00;18;05;24 - 00;18;25;00
Or how does it feel to live in this world? You will know it because you've already you are. You've always already all lived in it. The people and some of us of this particular being aliveness, like right now, regardless of your age, to a degree, if you're eight, probably can't really do this comparison yet because you're you've
00;18;25;00 - 00;18;36;27
seen phones and I've had since you were born. The generational stuff being able to watch to be able to see both sides of it, then this is not a get off my lawn kind of thing. This is just like, Oh, that's interesting, it was this announce that.
00;18;37;19 - 00;18;50;02
And also recognizing that like the some of these things are new in a way, particularly that we may not have really thought about them being new yet. We may not get the newness of the idea for another generation to.
00;18;51;06 - 00;19;02;04
I have no idea I got on that out of starting out with a podcast. I'll tell you what, that'll do it for now. I'm trying to figure out how long to make these things run. There's I can't actually see a timer right now, so it's fine.
00;19;02;11 - 00;19;13;23
But that's a little bit of what's going to happen. I will settle down on these a little bit more to get through them. This still feels new to me, even though it's a thing that I've been doing a version of for a while, but it still has the newness of it.
00;19;14;17 - 00;19;28;21
Also, I do get that hyped up a lot. So like, that's kind of how this stuff is going to roll. Sometimes, yeah, sometimes nay, but often just slightly less. Tempered, I guess, paced. What's Allegro, what's the name of?
00;19;29;28 - 00;19;46;11
It's the name of the music allegro, I think. There's an award for music that means going fast. They might be like or whatever. I can remember Forte Piano Allegro and then I can't remember the slow tempo as whatever music works that'll run for now.
00;19;47;02 - 00;19;54;10
You'll have a good one. Take it easy. Be kind. We will see you next time. Until then. Cheers.