Digital Meanderings
Meanderings of a coder

It has been a long ride but here we are smack dab in the middle of “iPhone Week” and I couldn’t be happier. No, I’m not happy because the iPhone will finally be available for purchase, I’m happy because it means an end to all the annoying stories.

At first I was very intrigued with the iPhone. I would eat up all of the hype and all of the rumors. After over six months of this I am ready for an end. It seems that all of the Apple related blogs I read cover the iPhone more than anything else. On the front page of Mac Rumors there are eight different iPhone stories. On Arstechnica’s Infinite Loop there are thirteen different posts. Technorati is reporting over 300k iPhone posts! Even my favorite podcasts are filled with iPhone news. The utterance of the word “iPhone” makes me want to puke blood.

Thankfully I’m not the only one who feels this way. Do a search for “Sick of the iPhone” and look at the number of results that are displayed.

There’s a great articled titled “Anyone else sick of the iPhone?” on Shallow Thoughts that discusses how Apple seems to be losing focus. Even the Fake Steve Jobs hates all of the iPhone news!

Sure, the iPhone is going to be a huge hit. Yes, it looks like a wonderful phone. Yes, I would purchase one if ATT has service in Sioux Falls. But all of the hype is getting to me.

In the end, I’d love to have an iPhone or even just drool over one for awhile. But for now, I wish every one would just shut the hell up.

After a week long hiatus from the Internet, read: I went on a real vacation, I am now back. Today, for the first time, I checked my blog and its stats. What’s this? A ton of hits on June 15th? Where did they come from? Why Mobuzz TV.

While I’m happy for the traffic, I’m sorry to see Karina leave. It seems that a post I wrote awhile back on my favorite podcasts made it onto the episode’s web page.

Karina, you will be sorely missed. Your banter and wonderful personality is one of the reasons why I love Mobuzz. Good luck in all your future endeavors.

I’ve just received word that Leafyhost is ceasing operations. I doubt this will come as a shock to many people considering the trouble they’ve had in the past.

Although they are offering partial refunds, I wonder how long it will take for them to arrive. This may be prove to be chapter 3 of the saga.

Below is a copy of the email sent to their subscribers.

Hello,

Due to rising costs and a number of recent crises, we regret to inform you
that we have decided to cease offering web hosting and domain management
services effective June 30, 2007. We ask that all users move their data to
another location by this date, and we will be available to assist any users
in the process between now and the end of the month.

Due to recent mail issues, please use the following email address for any
and all questions or concerns from now on: leafyhostsupport@gmail.com

- Domains: Modifying DNS/Whois contact information
Email us at leafyhostsupport@gmail.com with the subject “Domain Ownership -
*your domain*” and include your username in and zip code in the email body.
Upon receiving your information, we will send you a password and details
with which you can access and modify your domain’s Whois and DNS
information.

- Domains: Transferring to a new registrar
All domains under our ownership are currently unlocked, but to transfer a
domain you will need an EPP Key. First, follow the steps listed above to
change the Whois contact email address to one that you are currently
receiving mail at. Then, email us at leafyhostsupport@gmail.com with the
subject “Domain Transfer - *your domain*” and your username and zip code in
the body. Upon receiving this information, we will have an EPP Key generated
and emailed to the Whois contact address for the domain you requested.

- Domains: Renewal
We will not be renewing any domain names, so you will need to transfer your
domain to a new owner using the instructions listed above. We suggest that
you do this as soon as possible, but you do have until your domain’s
expiration date. The expiration date can be found with your DNS and Whois
information. (See above.)

- Lifetime/Yearly accounts
Partial refunds will be offered for all Lifetime and yearly accounts. Yearly
accounts will have the remainder of their unused hosting refunded, and
Lifetime account refunds will be calculated as if the accounts were Yearly
accounts costing $150/year. To receive a refund, please email us at
leafyhostsupport@gmail.com with the subject “Account Refund - *your
username*” and include your hosting plan, the last 4 digits of the credit
card that was billed OR your PayPal email address that was billed, and a
name and address that we can send the refund check to.

Again, if you have any other questions or concerns, please contact us at
leafyhostsupport@gmail.com as soon as possible. We sincerely thank you for
your support over the past 4 years, and wish you all the best in the future.

Thank you,
Samuel Fine
Christopher Budnick
leafyhostsupport@gmail.com

My friend Colin and I often spend our Sunday nights video chatting using iChat. More often than not we get into discussions about programming, or Apple, or life in general. Although these conversations seem inane, I had the brilliant idea (or not so brilliant idea) that other people may be interested in hearing these chats. So Colin and I are turning our weekly conversations into “No One Will Listen Anyway” a weekly podcast.

Anyway, the purpose of this post is not to advertise NWLA but to discuss some of the things we are going through in order to get our podcast off the ground. I imagine that this post is just the beginning of a series describing the trials of two geeks turned podcasters.

Technical Genesis
Although the first step to creating a podcast is the idea, the real beginning, especially for geeks, starts when things get technical.

Recording
Since both Colin and I are Mac users, we started with Garage Band an audio recording suite including in Apple’s iLife suite.

Unfortunately GarageBand got us into trouble when we tried to record our second podcast.

For our second podcast, we recorded it after we prepared for it. Topics of conversation, links, ideas, even a mini rehearsal! All of this culminated in a longer (and hopefully more interesting) podcast. This longer podcast crashed GarageBand after almost 30minutes of recording so we had to re-record the show over again.

I’m running an Intel Core 2 Duo Macbook with 1GB of RAM and GarageBand records its data into RAM and, at certain points, seems to write what has been recorded to hard drive.

In order to get around this issue, we interrupted the podcast, saved the recording, and continued on. This proves to be a huge pain and ruins the continuity of the show. So now I am in search of a different program. If you have any suggestions, please post a comment!

Distribution
Although there are many places to post a podcast, we decided to first post our show to iTunes.

In order to post to iTunes, you must provide an RSS. This allows your listeners to keep track of new episodes. Apple provides lots of information on their Podcaster Tech Specs page. This page provides information on submission to special iTunes-specific fields to include in your RSS feed.

To help make RSS feed generation easier Mightyseek has created Podpress, a wonderful plug-in for Wordpress.

Well, that is all for now. As NWLA grows I will be sure to write more articles. For now, feel free to send post your comments and questions.