Podcast 001 - Introduction

In this episode I introduce myself and more importantly the ideas that I have for the Effective Minimalist podcast.

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Music: Close Tracking from Learning Kurve.

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The Effective Minimalist isn't yet in iTunes or any of the podcast directories, so if you want to subscribe to it, you can right-click and copy URL for the show's RSS feed and paste it into the subscribe function of your favorite podcasting app.

If you have any feedback or questions, you can leave a comment under the show notes for this episode below or or send me an email at edward.bilodeau@gmail.com.

Podcasting startup: Web site

As I mentioned before, I’ve decided to use Blogger for my podcasts’ web site, and after a fair amount of fiddling around, I think the site is good enough that I can move on.

Over the past year, I’ve been listening to and reading a lot of advice on how to start a podcast, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone mention using Blogger to host their podcast. Most will recommend WordPress, and for good reason. It is a better platform and is seeing far more active development than Blogger. WordPress also has a number of podcasting plugins that you can add that will presumably make it easier to publish and manage your podcasts. If you are willing to spend the money to set up a WordPress site, then I would agree that it is probably the best way to go.

My self-imposed budget for my podcast hosting is exactly zero, so I needed to find an alternative. You can get a free WordPress blog, but you are limited to how much you can customize it and add plugins, etc. What’s worse is that you are forced to display third-party advertising on your site that you have no control over. Just horrible, and certainly not something I wanted to have anything to do with!

So Blogger it is. I’ve been using Blogger since the beginning, since Pyra Labs first rolled out this tool that we could use to manage our blog posts and have the pages uploaded as static HTML via FTP to whatever web hosting we had. Good times!

I used to be far more proficient customizing Blogger templates, but they lost me when they switched to their new tempting system (somewhere around 10 years ago). But that isn’t really a problem, since the built in designer allows you to include your own CSS to over-ride the template’s. Although I’m forced to live  with the HTML and structure of their templates (probably a good thing, since that could have been a major time-sink), I’m still good enough with CSS that I can get the site looking more or less the way I want.

So that’s what I did. I chose the “Simple” template and used the designer tools to customize the look and feel of the site as much as I could, which in this case meant stopping it down to the basics and then writing a handful of CSS rules to nudge things into place so it looked exactly the way I wanted.

I should also not that earlier versions of this site were for busier than the current site. I’d looked over dozens of podcast sites and made notes about all the different things I could include. The resulting layout had a lot going on, and I couldn’t help but think, given the focus of my podcast, that I was on the wrong track. So I stopped and made myself a list of what I need the site to do and then figure out how I could accomplish this with as little content or functionality. The result effort of that is what you see here.

I could spend more time adjusting and tweaking different aspects of the site, but I know I would just be procrastinating and not adding much value. I need to move forward, so I’m calling the web site done!

Next up: Audio production and publishing workflows

Podcasting startup: Hardware and software

I thought it might be a good idea if I summarized my plans for how I’ll be creating, producing, and hosting my podcast. Not only should this help me move the project forward, but it should help me to avoid talking about these kinds of “meta” issues during the podcast itself.

I’ll start with the technical details.

Before I do, however, I should mention that I decided early on that I wasn’t going to invest financially in this new podcasting effort, that I would make due with hardware and software that I already had or could use for free. Having already podcasted before this wasn’t as limiting as it might sound, but it did limit my choices somewhat, often resulting in having to spend more time and effort than if I was just able to purchase recommended solutions to the problems I encounter.

Anyway, now for the details…

Recording equipment: After doing some testing, I’ve decided to stick with my Zoom H4 recorder, recording the audio to an SD card and then manually transferring that card to my laptop.

I tried using the line-out on the Z4 to go directly to my laptop and into Audacity, but the quality wasn’t very good, and at this point it isn’t worth trying to debug the problem. Besides I’ve heard that recording directly to software is not the best idea, since if the application or computer locks up you could loose part or all of your file.

Workstation: I’ll be using my MacBook Pro (older, entry-level, non-retina model) as my workstation for all aspects of this production.

Audio editing: I’ll be sticking with Audacity for the audio production work, even though I have the presumably slicker Garage Band on my Macbook. I have a fair amount of experience using Audacity and I don’t think there is much benefit to investing time in learning a new application.

ID3 tag editing: Part of my post-production workflow involves adding metadata to the MP3 files, and this is accomplished using ID3 tags. I looked at a number of options (Audacity, VideoLAN, iTunes) before settling on a new utility called Kid3. It’s easy to use, allowing me to edit the MP3 file in place, adding both the basic metadata as well as the cover art to the MP3 file.

File hosting: Free file hosting was the hardest thing to figure out, but in the end I decided to settle on hosting my MP3 files on the Internet Archive. Although the uploading and management of files is a bit clunky, it has the extra benefit of providing an HTML5 audio player that I’ll be able to embed in each of my posts as well.

I’ve seen a few mentions of the download speed not being all that great, so there is a risk that subscribers might have to wait a bit longer for whatever podcasting app they are using to pull down each episode. If the upside is free media hosting forever and an embeddable audio player, this is a risk that I can live with.

Web site hosting: I’ve decided to use Blogger for the blog web site. It’s free, ad-free, and supports enclosures (essential for podcasting).

RSS feed: I’ll be using FeedBurner to generate the RSS feed for my podcast. While Blogger generates an RSS feed, by running the feed through feed burner allows me to specify the cover art and have other iTunes and podcasting relating tags added to the feed. Yes, there’s a risk that one day Google with shutdown the service, but the chance of that is low and if it ever did happen and my podcast was something that people valued, I should have no problem getting them to switch to a new feed.

Miscellaneous: There are a two other applications that I’ll be using to help plan and produce the podcast: Photoshop (cover art) and iA Writer (planning, show notes, etc). These are image and text editing software that I happen to use, but you can of course use whatever works for you.

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Putting together this list has in fact helped me to think through the entire podcasting process and forced me to finally decide on my toolset! Now I can move on to the next step which is to publish a few beta audio clips so that I can sort through the next level of details and make sure that everything works the way I want it to.

Welcome!

Welcome to what will eventually be my new podcast, The Effective Minimalist!

I decided sometime last year that I wanted to get back into podcasting, and started to brainstorm and plan what that would like like. The result is this site and, hopefully, the podcast audio that I will soon start sharing.

Initially, I had planned to avoid all 'meta' talk about the making and behind the scenes aspects of this podcast, but I've since changed my mind. After all, my experiences might be useful to other podcasters or potential podcasters, and publicly talking about my plans and progress might help me to gauge and build interest in the podcast. Most importantly, though, I'm counting on starting a public record of my efforts to give me the motivation to move this podcast from an idea to a reality as soon as possible!

Questions, comments, etc are always welcome in the comments or via email at edward.bilodeau@gmail.com.