Dan and I recorded episode 37 of the show yesterday — and then discovered that we had lost Dan’s side of the recording. Stupid me also forgot to get the analog backup going as well, so we lost it all. This is especially a shame since it seemed to be a really funny recording and I was pretty happy with how the episode turned out. Ah well… Back to the drawing board, I guess. We’ll have a second try at this later in the afternoon.

I mean it is pretty amazing that we made it as far as episode 37 of the show at all. As I am sure I have mentioned before, we never expected to get this far when we started doing the show (not with more than maybe twenty people listening anyway, that is). We may be a bit slow as far as lead time is concerned — our gap between recording and releasing seemed to have become a bit hefty lately (entirely my fault) — but I hope you can forgive us that since I’m rather a bit late and have good content and audio quality than releasing crap. This show shouldn’t be your premiere source of Linux news anyway; it’s conceived as more of an in-depth roundup of the week’s stories with a few interesting opinions (ie. rants) thrown in to spice things up. As far as I see it, as long as we don’t burn out and the show stays interesting for you, I’m fine.

Anyhow, we’ll try another recording later today — maybe we can pretend to be all informed and prepared for once, having read all the stuff already. Well, don’t get your hopes up. But I’m sure it’ll be funny nonetheless. Expect lots of in-jokes at the failed first recording attempt… I guess this stuff just happens. One just has to move on, try to learn from the mistakes made and don’t look back too much. Beer usually helps with this…

I just wanted to drop you all a quick line and appologise for the late releases lately. It was entirely my fault since I was madly busy at work, and also at home to some extend, lately. Things should be back to normal from now on though and I really hope to get back into a more speedily release schedule from episode 30 on. To be fair, I had alluded to stuff like this happening when we started out. I am of the opinion that it’s more important to keep the show going in general than to kill myself trying to release every single episode exactly on time. Here we are, over half a year after we started out and I think it’s pretty amazing that we are still going strong, to be honest. I would never have thought it possible to get more than a thousand people listening, but we have far exceeded my expectations. We don’t intend to stop now, but I’m very conscious of trying not to burn myself or Dan out. We could’ve never gotten this far without you, the listeners, though and we are very, very thankful for your continued support and the fact that you keep listening. Please forgive us for minor inconsistencies in our release schedule, though. We try to keep the show as you’ve come to love it and we are doing our best to stay on schedule. Thanks again for all your support. Keep listening!

P.S.: As you might have noticed, we have recently changed how we handle listener feedback in the show. Since this has proven slightly controversial, I have started a poll in the forums to help us decide what to do with the feedback from now on. You can make your voice heard during the whole next seven days — after that Dan and I will decide how we’ll handle it in future shows. Please head over there and cast your vote.

As I have mentioned before, I was in dire need for a new production machine since my current laptop was getting very unreliable. This week, my shiny new Dell XPS m1330 arrived at my doorstep. The thing has 4 GB of RAM, a 320 GB hard drive and generally kicks ass all around. I am currently in the process of setting up the new machine and moving all my production assets over. I have already installed Mint 4.0 on it after I couldn’t get Ubuntu Studio (which I wanted to use originally) to even recognize the soundcard properly. So much for audio/video editing on that thing. Go figure…

Anyway, Mint runs great and supports all the features of the laptop out of the box. Even the media remote and build-in camera work. The fingerprint reader and build-in microphone are the only two things that need additional packages (which I am not going to bother with right now).

I expect to have everything moved over and set up by tomorrow. This means that we will have another little delay with the podcast this week but I am determined not to drop this week’s show. Please bear with us. This upgrade was a necessary step and I think a reliable recording and production machine will benefit the podcast in general a lot. I will give a detailed review on my experience with this laptop (along with photos of the unboxing) soon.

Just a short notice to wish you all happy festive days and a good start to 2008! I just posted the last episode for this year and will be on my way into the holidays tomorrow. I’ll be completely out of touch with the world until New Year, so don’t worry if you don’t hear for me for a while. I’ll be enjoying a quiet time with lots of books and good beer in the Netherlands.

I hope you enjoy our, slightly longer, holiday episode and I’m looking forward to many, many more podcasts in 2008! We’ll just skip a week so look forward to a new episode in the first week of the new year. See you then; enjoy the holidays!

Due to the fact that my system crashed several times during the editing of episode 13, the release of that show will be delayed for at least a day. I am really sorry to keep you waiting, but I have to redo several significant portions of the master edit because of the crashes. I really need a new computer, I think…

Please excuse the inconvenience, I do expect to have this thing out the door by sunday night if my system isn’t dying again. I am not superstitious at all, but it seems 13 really is an unlucky number after all.

As I have hinted at before, Dan and I have decided that we will move the actual podcast files away from this server. Since we started the show, our bandwith usage has been steadily growing, including a quite dramatic jump around the time we released episode 7. To give you a feel for the numbers, here’s the raw bandwith we pushed since I set up the site:

• August (starting on the 25th): 17.2 MB
• September: 4.27 GB
• October: 65.63 GB
• November (at the time of writing): 21.28 GB

While we can comfortably support the current bandwith on this server, it isn’t hard to forsee that we will outgrow it quite quickly at this pace. I have therefore set up an account with Libsyn to host the media files for the podcast, starting with the next episode which I am in the process of editing right now. We are currently on the “Podcast Standard” plan, which will give us 250 MB of hosting per month with unlimited bandwith for $10 a month. This change will not affect the way you get the show at all. The show notes will still be here on the site along with a Flash player to stream the show directly. The address for the RSS feed will also not change. This stuff happens purely behind the scenes and shouldn’t concern you, the listeners, at all.

Since Dan is already donating time and his hosting space to produce this show and I am paying for Libsyn and also off-site backup for the production files, I will set up a PayPal account especially for Linux Outlaws and put a donation button on the site. I do not expect anyone to donate, but if you do enjoy the show and have one or two bucks to spare, Dan and I would appreciate it very much. I am being purposefully open with our expenses here and I do guarantee that the money we receive from donations will only be spend on the Libsyn fees and further down the road maybe on some hardware that is immediately used to produce the show (like a USB harddisk to back up the audio files in addition to the off-site solution). I hope you will agree that this is a fair arrangement since I really don’t want to put any advertising on the site or the show itself if I don’t absolutely have to.

I am really happy that the number of listeners seem to grow steadily and I think that this step is a very good sign. Outgrowing our cradle like this proves that there is definitely a lot of interest in this kind of show and as long as that holds true, Dan and I are more than happy to continue doing what we do. Please tell your friends and co-workers about the podcast (now that we have the Libsyn setup it’s gotta pay off, after all) and keep writing us encouraging feedback like we are getting on an almost daily basis now.

Over the last few weeks, we have received several emails requesting an Ogg version of the podcast. I knew this would eventually crop up and while I initially did not produce such a version of the show to minimise production time, I am not oblivious to the fact that many people place a lot of importance in making your podcast available in Ogg, especially if it is a show that primarily deals with Free Software. I personally consume 95% of my podcasts on portable players, however, and I’ve yet to meet one person who actually owns a player that supports the Ogg format. I am not saying that such a player doesn’t exist or that I don’t get the ideological reasons behind using Ogg, I am just saying that it is still a very much impractical format for a large majority of people.

Nonetheless, I am willing to consider the publishing the show in that format, even if it means about an hour of additional production time since I not only have to re-encode every episode but I also have to tag that version on its own and create a special Ogg feed for it that I have to publish seperately. I am very much suspecting all this effort won’t warrant the actual number of downloads we will be getting for this version, but I am willing to try. The reason why I am posting this here instead of just doing it, is the fact that I want everyone to understand the work involved in this and also to make sure that it is understood that this will be the only two versions of the show I will be doing — don’t even try to talk me into different bitrates or somesuch.

I don’t know exactly when we will be releasing the first Ogg version of an episode since I am currently looking for dedicated hosting and bandwidth for the podcast files; our listenership has grown so much, that we will soon be forced to move them off this server. I will decide where to host the Ogg files and how to produce them after I know how much the new delivery method will be costing me. You may see a donation button appear on this website soon after. I definitely don’t want to consider any advertising neither on the site nor in the show itself at this point, so if you want to help us along with the fees (I will definitely write a post on the blog telling you exactly how much those amount to once I know myself), just use that button once we put it up.

I really appreciate the fact that so many people seem to enjoy this show and I am happy about every piece of listener email we receive. So far, all of them have been really positive. I hope the people who requested the Ogg version can live with this arrangement. If not, or if you have any other ideas, let me know, OK? Thanks again for listening, I’m having the time of my life doing this!

Dan and I recorded episode 3 yesterday. While Dan was in his usual place at his home in Merseyside, things were a bit more complicated on my end. Here's a little glimpse behind the scenes of the chaos that I call "producing a podcast": I am currently staying at my parent's place in Duisburg and I had brought my recording setup with me to hastily assemble it in my old bedroom for the recording of the show. In absence of suitable furniture to put all the stuff onto, I spend over an hour sitting on the floor amidst a great chaos of cables, having the microphone propped up on a chair to talk into — it wasn't comfortable at all, I tell you. If you click on the image to the left you can see the whole mess in all its glory. The things I do for this project...

On top of all that I also had trouble with Skype. I couldn't for the life of me get the damn thing to accept the microphone input from the mixer. Since I could record fine but Dan wouldn't be able to hear me, I had to use an USB headset with a second mic to get Skype to send my voice signal to Dan. That's why I'm wearing headphones and a headset around my neck on the picture. What a mess! I have no idea why I had this problem now all of a sudden since everything used to work fine for weeks beforehand but maybe I made a mistake connecting it all back together this time. Anyhow, we recorded a great show and as soon as I've got it edited (probably by Monday evening) I'm putting it up.