Leo's Post Road

Testing Testing

We just ran a short test on Talkshoe in preparation for the launch of our new TWiTcast: net@nite with Amber MacArthur. I was very impressed by the sound quality and interactivity. This is going to be fun!

Talkshoe


This is the user interface. You can listen to the show and chat with other listeners live from the Talkshoe site, or call in (a long distance call unless you live in Pittsburgh) to participate. The stream and resulting recording on the Talkshoe site will be telephone quality.

I am also recording locally and that high-quality recording will be available on the net@nite podcast feed (http://leo.am/podcasts/itn) the following Tuesday.

Talkshoe Test

Just so you can hear the difference, you can hear the local Talkshoe recording (identical to the stream) on the net@nite talkshoe page.

The local version that will go onto the podcast is here:

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So Long Suckah

My last reason for using Windows might just have been eliminated.

I use Adobe Audition for all my netcast recording and editing. It's a Windows program but there's no Mac version. Paul Figgiani just tipped me that Adobe has announced a new audio editing program for Windows and... ta da OS X. (Intel Macs only, though - that's the first Intel only program for OS X I've seen and that doesn't bode well for PowerPC owners.)

Adobe Soundbooth

The free beta of Soundbooth is available now. Soundbooth has the familiar Audition interface, but it looks like they're positioning it as the "easy to use" Audition. One key feature missing from the beta is multitrack recording and mixing. I really need that, but there are many folks who don't.

The "remove a sound" feature pictured above is a simple interface to Audition's powerful spectral analysis tool. You'll find simplified versions of other sound tools like reverb and compression, too. I'd guess this is really "Audition Elements" by another name, but it will probably be a good choice for quick editing and single track recording. The kind of thing most podcasters need. If Adobe can price it under $100 it will do very well indeed.

Of course I knew this would happen because I just spent $1000 on Bias Peak Pro a couple of weeks ago.

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My horoscope

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Set down ground rules and proceed to make the necessary reforms. Not everyone will understand what you are trying to do but that shouldn`t concern you. Friendships will not be the same once you make the transition you are working toward.

Hmmmmm.


Sent via BlackBerry from Cingular Wireless

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Email is down

I'm still suffering some server issues. In particular none of the Leoville email addresses are working. I can see mail in the queue (over 3000 messages) but they're not getting directed to my inbox.

So if you've sent me mail in the past three days chances are good I didn't get it yet. I'm working on the problem and hope to have it solved soon.

UPDATE: After considerable hair tearing, and experimentation, I've figured out (by reviewing the Qmail logs) that Fastmail.fm, my IMAP host, and one I've long recommended, has been greylisting the Leoville.com server. Just in case something like this happens to you, here's what to look for. 

My mail follows a somewhat tortuous route. When you send a message to leoville.com it's first forwarded to Mailroute for sanitization. This kills well over 1 million spam messages to me a month. The remaining 30,000 messages a month are sent to my server at leoville.com which immediately redirects it to Fastmail, my IMAP host, where it's stored until I access it. Fastmail has its own anti-spam stuff, including the bit that bit me, greylisting.

Greylisting is a clever antispam technique that tells an SMTP server to come back later. The delay can be anything from 15 minutes (typical) to several days. The theory being that a spammer will move on, but legitmate emailers will try again. Unfortunately Fastmail has set my greymail interval to something like four million seconds, so my mail piles up for several days before it's delivered to me. Fastmail does this if your reverse DNS looks like a home IP address instead of a legit SMTP server. (They discuss what they're doing on their blog.) Makes sense since many home computers are used to forward spam, but it's flummoxed me. I couldn't figure out what was happening.

The fix was to complain to Fastmail and change my reverse DNS to actually say leoville.com. Not sure which worked, but all of a sudden I'm getting a LOT of mail. If you sent me something in the past couple of days I'll get back to you ASAP. Sorry for the delay. Now I've got to go turn off that damn new mail sound.

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Podcast Kommen Auch Ohne iPod Aus

One of the things I like best about netcasting is its global reach. Thanks to Markus Gruetter for this clip from today's edition of the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger. I can't read German but I think the gist of it is netcasting doesn't require an iPod! (Update: Kyle Goetz has posted a translation on his blog.)

Tages-Anzeiger

And thanks to Cedric Ingrand, the French TV journalist and host of Plein Ecran on LCI-TV for his story on podcasting featuring both Kevin Rose and me. There's an English version on his blog. You can also subscribe to the French version on iTunes.

Plein Ecran
I've posted a copy on the English version on Cachefly. It's a 116MB WMV file but well worth the download. I think it's the best story I've ever seen about TWiT and this new medium. (There's some good stuff about Revision3, too, including footage from the Rev3 party.)

And I'll be appearing on Mexican radio at 8:20 Central tonight with Ricardo Zamora López on DOMMO, his technology radio show on W Radio 96.9 F.M. Mexico City. (If you speak Spanish the audio is here.)

And you know what everyone wants to talk about? Netcast vs Podcast!

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Are You Being Served?

Serve This!

The bumpy server ride over the weekend seems to have smoothed out.

Here's an update. I've set up hosting (with RAID 5 mirroring and NAS backups, thank you) at Softlayer and am in the process of moving all the servers over. I'll keep the current status updated here and at Leoville.com.

As of now here's what's happening:

  • Leoville.com - moved but down due to hardware issues all day Wednesday. Now up and reliable (crossing fingers)
  • Leoville.tv - move completed
  • Leo.am - up and working fine, all netcast feeds are now good
  • Leoville Town Square - back up, a few things are missing like PHP thumbnail resizing, and the old UBB board archive. I’ll get these back online as soon as I can
  • TWiT.tv - move completed, there were some issues this morning, but moving .htaccess and fixing a MySQL naming error corrected them. Everything seems to be working fine. If you notice any lingering problems email me. Thanks for your patience during this move.

Since the server moves require IP address changes some sites may not work until your particular DNS server registers the change. This will go more smoothly with the TWiT and Leoville.com moves since the old sites will remain up until all all DNS records have changed over. With any luck you won't notice the move at all.

The .am registrar has updated the address for leo.am but as of this morning it hasn't propagated to the rest of the world. Since the netcast feeds go through leo.am they’re also down until the change propagates. That shouldn't be too long now. Meanwhile all new netcasts are available at TWiT.tv - I've posted at least eight new shows since the feeds failed including a new TWiT. Once the feed goes back up you'll see a lot of downloading - you might want to check to make sure you get all the back shows, however. iTunes and other netcast clients may only download the most recent show.

You may be wondering why I do all this myself instead of using a managed host, or paying a sysop. Because it's so much fun, of course!

My friend, Dane Golden, has started a behind the scenes blog here at http://twit.vox.com, including audio of me tearing my hair out - nice that he's had something to write about this weekend!

Thanks to the dozens of people who offered moral support, hosting, and technical advice. It's nice to have so many friends.

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Friday the 13th Sever Woes

I'm no triskaidekaphobe but I'm starting to be a believer. A hard drive on one of my servers died this morning. As a result leo.am, leoville.tv, and Leoville Town Square are down. So are all the podcast feeds (they live on leoville.tv but I'm moving them to cachefly as soon as I can).

The good news is that I have complete and up-to-date backups, so no data has been lost. The bad news is that my hosting company, The Planet, (nudge, nudge) is taking its own sweet time fixing the problem. (So far it's been six hours without a response. I will be looking for a new hosting company.)

TWiT.tv, the TWiT forums, and leoville.com are unaffected. I'm hoping all the other sites will be up and running soon.

The podcast feeds are also locked - you can read them but the filesystem is read-only so I can't add to them. There are new episodes of the Daily Giz Wiz, Windows Weekly, FLOSS Weekly, and The Laporte Report in the queue. I'll post them on TWiT.tv and update the feeds as soon as I am able.

Thanks for your patience.

UPDATE: The Planet finally got a new drive in and the OS loaded a mere 12 hours after the initial failure. I'm out of town (fortunately the TravelLodge has good Internet access) so it's a little tricky getting everything restored, especially since WHM won't let me in. Once they fix this CPanel license problem I'll get things back up. Everything should be back sometime today. I hope.

I've received some good recommendations for hosting, but I'm still shopping around. I'm looking for three dedicated servers - we currently spend $1000/month for three dual Xeon boxes with 2TB/month each and 100Mbps pipes. If some high reliability, service oriented hosting company would like to be the new home of TWiT please email me. Thanks!

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Don't Buy My Book

The Last of Its Kind

I love this time of year. The leaves are starting to change into their fall motley, there's a chill in the air, and the smell of wood smoke lingers like childhood memories. It's also the time when Leo Laporte's Technology Almanac typically tumbles from the presses to land with a thud on your bookstore shelves. Well, not this year, Jimbo.

My contract with Que has expired and it doesn't look like either of us has much interest in resuscitating it. Que has been very patient with me. When we signed the deal I had two national US TV shows, a regular gig on Live with Regis and Kelly, and ample opportunity to flog my books. By the end of the contract we were lucky to get a plug on Good Morning Muncie. Needless to say, sales suffered. On the bright side, you should be able to find any one of my dozen titles in the remainder bin of your nearby five and dime, and at a very affordable price, too.

I’ve enjoyed my stint as an author -- the sherry hours, the tweed coat with patched elbows, the bowlful of Borkum Riff, the love starved groupies, the 1.5% royalties -- but all good things must come to an end. There won’t be a Technology Almanac in this year’s remainder bin. Your collection will have to end with the 2006 edition, the fifth and final installment in my magnum opus. Hey, that’s almost as many as Harry Potter.

If I do return to the publishing world it will be as a self-published author. I wouldn’t want anyone else to assume the burden that Que has suffered these past couple of years. Amber and I have talked about writing a book on podcasting. We even got as far as an outline and subversion repository, but then Citytv came up with a better offer and, to be honest, that book is now so far back on the burner that it’s getting chillblains.

It’s OK. This is all part of my transition from mainstream media maven to obscure Wikipedia entry. Writing books is hard work and, love starved groupies aside, the compensations are scant. I’ll put my energies into something I love to do, talking for a living, and leave the writing to my literary heroes, Bill O’Reilly and Ed McMahon.

So thanks to all of you who bought my books. Perhaps we can gather someday at a local Denny's and reminisce. An even bigger thanks to the many, many more who put up with my endless plugging and still managed to resist the urge to buy. Never again will you have to hear, "buy my book," unless you happening to be watching the O'Reilly Factor. And if you are, you're getting what you deserve.


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Radio Today and TV Last Night

KGO Newstalk 810

I'll be a guest on the Ronn Owens show on KGO 810 AM in San Francisco today from 11a-Noon Pacific. You can listen to the stream live (there are buttons for MP3, AAC Plus, Real, WMV, and Quicktime streams buried in there amongst all the ads - wish KFI offered that kind of variety). If I can get my Radio Your Way recorder charged up by then I'll post the interview on the TLR netcast later today.

Speaking of online viewing, you can watch Amber's excellent debut on Citytv's City News International yesterday on the CNI site. Looks like they'll be posting her segments there every day and previous segments are available in the archives (her segment is called World Wide Web).

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