Jun 29 2005
Podcasting
Finally I get around to talking about podcasting, and it took the latest version of iTunes (4.9) to make me do it. Previously you had to use a separate client (I use PodcastTuner) to download files and import them to iTunes, but now iTunes does a reasonable job of doing everything itself.
So, what is a podcast? Basically it’s just an audio/video file that you download to your machine to view/listen to at your leisure. They use RSS feeds with enclosures, and your client simply checks the RSS every so often and downloads the files automatically if you’ve told it to do so. Then, when you plug your iPod in, all the files are synchronised to it automatically, ready to listen to on the way to work.
Some of the podcasts I’ve been listening to lately are:
- DVD Talk Radio - DVD reviews and interviews with directors. Also discusses cheesy B-grade flicks, which is a bonus
- LUGRadio - a hilarious UK bi-weekly discussion of Linux and free software
- Reel Reviews - more DVD reviews
- This Week in Tech - a pretty decent weekly tech discussion
- The Animation Podcast - this is pretty new, but has interviews with oldschool Disney animators who worked on the good Disney films
- Slack Astronomy - if you can ignore the shithouse jokes, there’s some good space info here
- Digital Flotsam - entertaining stories mixed with music. The last one was about the podcaster surviving a tornado in a 16-foot yacht
I listen to a lot more, but go check it out for yourself. I just found out that Harry Shearer has a radio show that’s being podcast (it’s called ‘Le Show’), and I’ll be all over it like a fat kid on a cupcake. 
The only thing that iTunes doesn’t do that I wished it did is converting downloaded MP3 files to bookmarkable AAC format automatically. When AAC files are bookmarkable, you can stop playing them, play another song, then start playing the original track and it’ll continue from where it left off, even if you stopped it on your computer and restarted it on your iPod. It’s very sweet.
8 Responses to “Podcasting”
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erm… surely that’s “an hilarious”
erm… no?
an hilarious
Do you say ‘an house’? What are you, a fucking Cockney?
…yes
a house is an hilarious place to be.
there is actually a subtle difference between the aitches in those two words. hilarious is actually a little softer, leaning towards a vowel, and thusly gets the ‘an’, whereas a house has a harder start.
yr argument is only a short throw from the though/cough malarky. hooray for crap standards, like english. lets go esperanto!
In writing, the form a is used before a word beginning with a consonant sound, regardless of its spelling (a frog, a university). The form an is used before a word beginning with a vowel sound (an orange, an hour). ·An was once a common variant before words beginning with h in which the first syllable was unstressed; thus 18th-century authors wrote either a historical or an historical but a history, not an history. This usage made sense in that people often did not pronounce the initial h in words such as historical and heroic, but by the late 19th century educated speakers usually pronounced initial h, and the practice of writing an before such words began to die out. Nowadays it survives primarily before the word historical. One may also come across it in the phrases an hysterectomy or an hereditary trait. These usages are acceptable in formal writing.
So, basically you’re saying that you pronounce “hilarious” as “‘ilarious”. That’s up to you, but I am in the right here.
no. i am saying that i say an hilarious