Getting My Dork On...

My brother sent me a post from a website called dorkon.com, dedicated to getting one's dork on. This post has nothing to do with the website; ie I'm doing the old bait and switch.

And now for the switch...

As you may have noticed my blogging has slowed a little. Why? Because I've been spending some of my "blog" time to look into Podcasting.

I actually prepared a brief trial podcast to see what was possible with out spending any additional money. I already have a "comes with the computer" mic, a few MP3s, and a half an hour of free time. Audacity and its mp3 encoder are free. I had the tools and a very minimal amount of talent. So Podcast ahoy!

Now that I've created PC1 (Podcast 1 for you non-dorks), I'm excited about PC2. I have a few problems to overcome.

1) Bandwidth and storage. I have been researching places to store the podcasts without spending much money. If I ever get a big audience... then I'll shell out some cash. Until then, cheapskates the word. I have two leads.

2) Copyright law. To play music over the internet you need to make sure it is either in the public domain, which no sound recordings are, yet, or to get a license from ASCAP. Brian Ibbot at Coverville has gone through this process, but it is expensive. So the alternative I've chosen is to work with www.garageband.com. Bands are allowed to post info about themselves and post songs available for download. The cool part of it is that if you get a podcast license from them, you are able to use any of their downloadable songs for a podcast of your own. So this will allow me to post my shows on the internet w/o breaking any laws.

And so now for the part where I get my full dork on...

I've been to half of the computer stores in Denver, looking for some equipment that would boost my podcast to a slightly better level. Having an iPod, a little better mic, a mixer, a compressor, an external sound card that ports to USB, headphones, would improve the quality of my podcast significantly. I talked to two separate sales boys at CompUSA and I was astonished about how much they know.

The funny thing was they both said "the [insert piece of equipment] I bought for myself was ...", and after they said it I thought, maybe I need to work at CompUSA part time so I can buy all the cool toys. It took a couple seconds before my dork meter came on. In the matter of days I had gone from normal businessman joe back to the uberdork I was in high school.

So there it is.... I got my dork on and damnit, I'm proud.

(BTW, if anyone wants a copy of PC1, let me know. It is a 10MB file so you need to be able to handle that big of a download.)