TWiT Livelier
May 12, 2008
TWiT Live inches closer and closer to reality. The lights are in (thanks to Pat Grosswendt of Litepanels.com). A new Tricaster should arrive tomorrow. We’ll be setting cameras this week and working on the network that will allow us to show screens and callers.
We’ve already started broadcasting live on the Internet from 11a-4p Pacific, 2-7p Eastern, 1800-2300 UTC every day except Monday and Friday. You’ll see the live video on the Leoville front page, on the Tech Guy site, and TWiTLive.tv. For now, it’s mostly me recording the week’s podcasts, but we’ll add more content bit by bit, including call-ins, interviews, and new shows. Patrick and Dvorak are skeptical, but I think I’ll be able to do 25 hours of fresh, interesting, programming each week. Or die trying!
For those of you who saw the hour long chat with Scott Bourne about his bird photography last Wednesday, that’s exactly what I hope to do with TWiT Live. It’s just a matter of getting people into my studio in Petaluma, or via Skype video. I’m confident that between viewer calls and the interesting people I can lure up, we’ll have a lot of great stuff. For example, Justine is coming in this Wednesday for MacBreak Weekly and I hope to spend more time with her afterward.
Don’t worry if you can’t see all the live stuff. I plan to offer recordings of the best of these impromptu sessions on Stickam as Flash plus create a high-quality H.264 “Best of TWiT Live” podcast which you can subscribe to in iTunes or Apple TV. The Scott session is a perfect example of that. I hope I can do several like that a week. We may also run them during non-live hours. Eventually I want to go 24-hours with TWiT Live, between me, re-runs, and with any luck, a few additional live on camera hosts. I see TWiT Live as a homegrown CNBC for Geeks within three years.
KGO Live
April 22, 2008
I’ll be speaking at a free event in San Francisco: Saturday, May 3 at 3p, at the Concourse Exhibition Center, 8th & Brannan.
My San Francisco radio affiliate, KGO Newstalk 810, does this every year. KGO Live is an all day event, 11a-4p, featuring Dr. Dean Edell, Ronn Owens, Gil Gross, Len Tillem, Joanie Greggains, Gene Burns, Michael Finney, Rosie Allen, Ed Baxter, Lynn Jimenez, Karel, Bill Wattenburg, and me.
They tell me they’ve set out 400 chairs for Dean Edell and around 40 for me. I’d really love to show them that there are more than 40 geeks in San Francisco, so please come out and say hi.
There are more details, including information about the wine tasting that will also be going on, at KGO’s web site.
Back In The US, Back in the US, Back in the USA!
April 14, 2008
I left Sydney at 2:30p on Monday and arrived in San Francisco at 10:30a Monday. Ah the magic of the International Date Line! Thanks to Qantas I slept most of the way and feel pretty normal. That’s a good thing because there’s lots to do. Besides filing income taxes tomorrow, I have a studio to set up. The new desk arrived when I was gone. Covad installs the T-1 Friday. I’ll start moving gear into the downstairs studio this week and should be able to start using it for the radio show this weekend, assuming I can get the ISDN line moved. I still need to get lighting and switching software, and I’m sure there will be lots of bugs to work out, but TWiT Live is on the way.
Speak Softly And Carry A Big Camera Bag
March 30, 2008
I’m leaving tonight for Australia on the Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop Adventure 2008: Tasmania!
My good friend Mikkel Aaland, author of O’Reilly’s Lightroom Adventure is leading another photo expedition; this time it’s to Tasmania with a bunch of the world’s top photographers for the next edition of his book and he invited me to come. I couldn’t resist even though I’m no photo pro. (They’re billing me as a “special media guest.”)
I do apologize to my friends on the mainland - the itinerary is limited to Tassie: A week in Hobart and a week in the wild. Our Qantas flight does stopover for seven hours in Sydney, so thanks to Aussie Mike, we’ll do an impromptu meetup at the Starbucks at Terminal 3, Sydney Airport, 11a-1p on Tuesday. (It’s a 12-hour flight and we cross the International Date Line so even though I’m leaving Sunday night I won’t arrive in Sydney until Tuesday morning!) If there are any fans in Hobart who want to set up a meet up on Thursday or Friday let me know.
I’ll be doing my radio show from Sea FM/Heart 107.3 Hobart Sunday and Monday morning 4-7a local time (Tasmania is UTC +11 but it’ll be live in the States). The following week I won’t have access to a studio so we’ll air two shows I’ve recorded ahead of time with all new material.
I’m bringing enough gear to equip a multimedia army.
- Canon 5D digital SLR with 24-105mm, 50mm f1.2, 70-200 f4, 180mm Macro, and Lensbaby 3G lenses
- Pentax K20D DSLR (my backup camera, on loan from Pentax) with 50mm Macro and16-200 Zoom lenses
- The new Canon HV30 Vixia Hi-Def Video Camera with wide angle converter and Canon shotgun mic
- HHB FlashMic flash audio recorder
- Marantz PMD-660 flash audio recorder with Shure SM-58 mic (as backup)
- Apple MacBook with 250GB internal and a 160GB external backup drive, equipped with Final Cut Express 4, Amadeus Pro, Adobe Photoshop CS3, and Lightroom
All this fits into my Lowepro CompuTrekker Plus AW backpack (it’s huge) but I’m also bringing a Lowepro Slingshot 200 AW to carry into the field.
And a change of underwear.
Thank goodness I’m not going by ship. I think I’d sink it.
There’s a reason for all this gear. I’ll be blogging the whole time I’m Down Under, including photos (on Smugmug and Flickr), audio (here), and video (on Smugmug and Viddler) so watch this space. Many of the other photographers will be blogging as well on the O’Reilly blog site.
(21 votes, average: 4.62 out of 5)
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Ten Years After
March 20, 2008
I have a plane ticket to Vancouver for this Monday. I was scheduled to fly there to tape Week 44 of The Lab with Leo. Except I’m not. After 645 Canadian episodes of Call for Help and The Lab, Rogers has decided to cancel the show.
It’s a decision I can’t help but agree with.
Our Australian affiliate, the How-To Network, had stopped running the show due to poor ratings. The Canadian ratings haven’t been so hot, either. The slide began a year ago when Amber left the show. The entire staff left in January and I was left the last man standing. I’m not good with slow fades. It’s time to move on.
Rogers is planning to replace it with a daily, live show which is, ironically, what Call for Help used to be, but unless I pack up and move to Canada there’s no way I could host it, so we’ve parted ways amicably. I will always be grateful to them for keeping Call for Help alive these past four years. I have worked with many wonderful Canadians both in front of and behind the camera, many of whom will continue to be friends and partners as I segue into new ventures.
TV, like all performing arts, is full of transitions. It’s graduation day over and over again. You know you’ll see some people again, and you also know that others, many of whom have been close friends, will drift away never to been seen again. It’s sad, but it’s inevitable. Every new beginning is also the beginning of the end. I guess that’s life.
There will be new shows through May; we were producing several months ahead. Repeats of both Call for Help and The Lab will continue indefinitely. Everything comes to an end except re-runs.
Call for Help launched on May 11, 1998. It was cancelled April 2004 and revived by Rogers two months later. Ten years after its birth, four years after its resurrection, and after nearly 2,000 shows, Call for Help is finally over.
Except, it’s not. I’ll talk about the next chapter tomorrow.
Andy Walker, Leo, and Amber MacArthur in better days
Some more memories….
Thanks to Tackie for this!
This is Call for Help the way it was meant to be - with a handsome young host (hey it was eight years ago!) and guests Martin Sargent and Andy Ihnatko.
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Speaking at Radio Ink
March 4, 2008
I’m delivering the keynote at Radio Ink’s Convergence ‘08 conference, Tuesday March 11, at the Dolce Hayes Mansion in San Jose, CA. Steve Wozniak is giving the opening speech the day before so I’m in good company. Radio Ink is a newsletter for radio station management and they’ve asked me to talk about how technology is changing radio. I’ve been encouraged to shake things up, and that’s exactly what I plan to do!
Unfortunately, that means I’m missing SXSW. Again! Amber and I are committing to making it next year and doing as many shows as we can during the interactive conference, including TWiT, net@night, and my radio show.
Funny and Cranky Geeks
February 19, 2008
I’ll be a guest on Dvorak’s Cranky Geeks Wednesday. Watch it live at 12:30p Pacific at crankygeeks.com or download it later.
Thursday I’m going to be on the syndicated Bob and Tom radio show from 9a until they toss me off. I’ll post notes, if there are any, here.
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Now With Video Comments
February 12, 2008
Thanks to Colin Devroe and Viddler now you can post your blog comments here as video. You’ll need a free Viddler account, and you can either record right at the comment box, or pre-record something on Viddler and add it later. Either way, I hope you’ll try this feature out. I think it’s a great way for us to get to know you!
Two For One Netcasts
February 7, 2008
No net@nite this week - Amber and I couldn’t work out a time to do it. You’d think for two self-employed people like us that would be easier! There are new FLOSS and FIB episodes, however, to help you make it through the night. And I promised my mom I’d blog more, so look for more posts from me soon!
Home Again
January 8, 2008
I’m back home again from Egypt. What a fantastic trip it was, I am going through a little withdrawal. We did so much, saw so much, met such great people, it’s a little hard to go back to real life.
However, I am going to get back to work. I am suffering from a hideous cold right now so things are ramping up a little slowly but by the end of the week all podcasts should be back to normal, and I’ll be back live on the radio Saturday and Sunday. I also have a ton of pictures and video to go through. I’ll post them a bit at a time - and I hope to find some time to blog a little about my experiences, too.
It truly was the “trip of a lifetime!”
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Radio Leo (press play)- Daily Giz Wiz 572: Dash Express
- Leo Laporte - The Tech Guy 457
- TWiT 143: Raspberry Crazy Ants
- Daily Giz Wiz 571: Macally PowerTune
- Munchcast 31: Cheeseburgers
- Jumping Monkeys 46: The Weekend Starts Here
- Leo Laporte - The Tech Guy 456
- Windows Weekly 59: That Thing Out There
- Leo Laporte - The Tech Guy 455
- Daily Giz Wiz 570: IBM Microdrive
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