Yes, this feature is supposed to be up on Fridays, but the Apple TV review took up too much time.. Sorry about that. Back to the questions now.

Josh has a computer purchasing question:

I have been flirting with buying a Mac as a second computer to tinker around with. What is your recommendation for a first time Mac buyer (other than the Mac Mini)?

The MacBook. Especially if your primary computer today is a laptop, I think you’ll be impressed with the speed and power of the MacBook for the price. (About $1200.) If you’re more of a power user, then you could go with the current Mac Pro set-ups, but they tend to start at $2000. They’re very powerful and expandable (four drive bays!), but I imagine you won’t want to start your Mac life on such a large investment. (I did, but I was nuts in those days. Thankfully, it paid off handsomely and I’m still using that computer daily, 3 years later.)

On the other hand, you’re stuck using a non-Mac monitor at that Mac Pro point, so an iMac would be a worthy investment if you prefer a desktop. It’s obviously not as expandable as a Mac Pro nor as portable as the MacBook, but it’s a pretty standard Mac computer that has a stunning monitor that won’t cost you an extra grand. Really, those screens are HUGE on the current generation iMacs. (Sadly, you’ll be paying for the screen AGAIN the next time you buy an iMac.)

Is that too mushy? What kind of computer set-up do you have today? What do you use your computer for? Is lots of storage a key point for you? Are you just using your computer for e-mail and web surfing? Do you just want a multimedia system that’s easy to use? These are all things that could swing my vote one way or the other.

Hope that helps.

Paul C. wants podcasting answers:

Did the idea of doing the Pipeline Podcast come up out of the blue or had you tinkered with the idea a couple of times before getting around to it? Are you surprised it caught on and that you have lasted this long in doing it in, more or less consecutive weeks? Have you ever thought about adding in any new features to it like a top 10 worst sounding books of the week or reader’s mail/questions?

I had toyed with the idea of doing Pipeline Radio a year or more before the podcast began. The idea was to record a minute long thing once a week that we could post on Fridays with some short review/thought/something or other. It didn’t go very far because I didn’t have the time to pursue it past writing up a couple of scripts, one of which I turned into an early Pipeline Podcast. That was more along the lines of an Andy Rooney style editorial piece. I was also worried about bandwidth consumption at the time. Broadband wasn’t so pervasive, and even a minute of audio would be a slow download in those dial-up days.

When I read about podcasting in December of 2004, I knew I had to jump in. I did college radio. I did local radio up until about a year and a half ago, as a matter of fact. I wanted to use that training to do a podcast, and so I started the Various and Sundry DVD podcast and The Pipeline Podcast at the same time - Christmas Break, 2004. I had the time that week to set up a system to produce two weekly podcast shows. Once I started, I was hooked.

Eventually, the DVD podcast faded away. That was due to a lack of time and, honestly, a decrease in DVD and movie viewing habits. While I still enjoy the weekly discussions here on the blog for new DVD days, I didn’t feel comfortable TALKING about a bunch of movies I wasn’t familiar with for ten minutes a week in a podcast.

I’m not surprised the comics podcast has lasted this long. I’ve never been able to give up on comic things. Pipeline is coming up on its eleventh anniversary now and I have never ever once missed a week. Never taken a week off. I’ve been late a couple of times, I’ve pre-written things a few times, but I’ve never missed a week. I don’t think there’s another comics columnist on-line who can claim that.  I doubt there’s a print columnist who could say that, either.  This next Pipeline is the 563rd or 564th edition. I ain’t giving up on it. The podcast comes secondarily to that, and I’ve never hesitated to just skip a week when I had to. I missed a couple of weeks due to illness and one or two weeks due to scheduling and technical troubles.

The main problem with the podcast is that it’s a timing thing. The new comics release list comes out late on Monday after my chance to record a podcast. I have to record it on Wednesday, or else it’s dated by the time Wednesday night comes around. If I miss that window, I’m sure lots of people just skip over it.

I would like to do more with the podcast. Honestly, I would. I even get requests about that all the time. Oddly enough, most of those requests thank me for doing a show that’s so relatively short to the rest of the comics podcast world, but then ask me to add more stuff into it.

The simple fact of the matter is that I don’t have the time to do more than I am doing right now with the podcast. I do it because it’s not a huge hassle to spend a half hour on Tuesday nights recording and publishing the thing. Sometimes, I can even pare that down to less than 20 minutes. Even the monthly PREVIEWS podcast can be tricky to schedule out with Jamie (as it is turning out to be this month - sorry, Jamie) and finding a solid hour to an hour and a half of our lives to record.

Finally, Ezekiel asks:

What do you think of the new Hulk trailer?

Haven’t seen it. If it doesn’t show up on the Apple TV in HD, I’m not watching it. I imagine it’ll show up in there eventually, though. I hope. I do want to see what this thing looks like.

That’s it for this week.  Post more questions below, please!  I’d love to answer them in upcoming Q&As.

Paul C is the first questioner this week:

Which of the summer comic book related movie are you looking forward to the most?

It’s between Batman and Iron Man. Probably Batman, by a nose. As big a Marvel guy as I am, there’s something about that last Batman movie that makes me anticipate the next one.

Are plans for summer holidays this year or any places you would like to visit?

No plans made yet. Doesn’t look like I’ll be going to San Diego again. Places I’d like to visit? Too numerous, but I’d start with Belgium and Paris — the latter just so I can blow all my money at a comic shop and bring home a suitcase filled with BD albums I’d have to learn French to read.

I also want to bring my camera to the Grand Canyon.

Do you ever wake up one morning and decide you can’t be bothered to do a V&S post, or is it drummed into your head by now after going at it for so long?

Mostly the latter. Plus, I have a certain schedule going now: DVDs on Tuesday, Twitters on Monday, Questions and Answers on Friday, American Idol Wednesday and Thursday. . . I blow those dates sometimes, but I usually have something in mind for most days of the week. Given how many blogs I flip through each week, it’s easy enough to come up with a link dump or another topic of interest worth writing a sole post about.

Not that there aren’t times I’d rather step away from the computer and play Guitar Hero or read a comic or watch a DVD or something. I just tend to feel more productive this way. I’m building something here, you know?

Would also you rank the season 5 finale of The Shield as one of the best, most unexpected/shocking/brilliant scenes ever on TV?

Yes. I know I should expand on that answer, but I’m not sure how I could. Although for pure shock, nothing beats that ALIAS season finale where the car gets hit out of nowhere. I jumped in my chair at that one.

And for the obligatory nonsense question: You are stuck on a desert island, what kind of cereal do you take with you?

I’m not much of a cereal person. Being diabetic, I’m limited on the ones I can eat, anyway. About all I’ll do is eat puffed rice (think sugar free Rice Crispies) with some raisins. But if I were on that island, I’m going with Chex Mix. Does that count?

And Soon asks:

Do you think your podcast voice has changed over the life of the Pipeline Podcast thus far?

I go back and listen to bits of the older Pipeline Podcasts every now and again to hear if I’ve changed at all. So I kinda know the answer to this one already. My voice has changed, but not as much as I would have thought. Part of that has to do with the fact that, before podcasting, I had done college radio and local radio for a number of years. My voice was already pretty well honed at that point. Podcasting allows me to be freer and sloppier, is all. There have been two changes I hear from the beginning:

1. I talk faster. I worried too much about enunciating in the early days, and it slowed me down. I got some e-mail complaints about that, so I sped things up and that got to be very comfortable very quickly.

2. I’ve added better equipment, like a condensor mic and a compressor. Both of those help even out my voice, eliminate some of the hollow sounds that a “regular” mic produces. I’m still not happy with the final sound. I play with it every single week, but the change is never great enough. I’m constantly annoyed by something happening on the bassline. I can’t quite figure it out and I’m probably the only person who hears it, but I can’t get rid of it. I’ll keep trying.

Nowadays, I’m working on speaking at a lower volume into the mic.  I found myself shouting into the mic a little too much, so I’m trying to be more conversational and less over-the-top, as it were.

Thanks for the questions, Soon and Paul!

Please, post your questions in the comments thread below and I’ll try to get to them on Friday this week, which is the normally scheduled time for this “feature.”

And GO GIANTS!

Back in November, I discussed some photography-related podcasts I was listening to at the time. (Part 1, Part 2)

Today, let’s look at a couple more I’ve enjoyed since then, plus one that I’ve come around to.

Radiant Vista’s The Daily Critique is a video podcast worth its weight in gold. Hosting by Craig Tanner, each show (not really daily these days, but frequently updated, nonetheless) takes a picture submitted by a listener and is analyzed by the host. He works through the image, first looking at the metadata to see how it was shot and with what gear. He analyzes the layout, the composition, the color, the thematic elements, and more about each picture.

If you learn by seeing, this is the show to watch. Along the way, he talks about “perfect world improvements,” and uses his own Photoshop-fu to show you how to spruce up an image, whether it’s by cloning parts of it, highlighting certain colors, cropping an image, or something else. It is NOT a Photoshop course by any stretch, but it gives you an idea of what can be done in there.

The shows are relatively short, averaging about eight or ten minutes, but sometimes stretching out to 15. He talks fast with a slightly southern accent, so you’re never lost. He puts you very much at ease.

Craig Tanner’s audio podcast, Radiant Vista, is a more general photography podcast. This one tends to take one topic on at a time, whether it’s something technical like depth of field or something more general like the importance of “play” in your photographic sessions. Each show is about a half hour. I’ve only listened to a few selected ones, but I’ve learned a lot, even on those shows not devoted to technical things. Or maybe I’m just an outside observer who enjoys hearing stories of photographic workshops I’ll never attend.

The podcast hasn’t updated since September, but the archives are not very timely. It’s a good general photography podcast, even if it does occasionally veer off a tad into “creativity” exercises and theories. Just follow the show titles and you’ll be able to figure out which episodes are best suited to you.

The Candid Frame, hosted by Ibarionex Parillo, is a (mostly) weekly half hour interview show with a new photographer every outing. The goal on this podcast is not to talk gear and tips and tricks, but rather to get to the heart of what the photographer is doing or trying to do with his or her artwork. Obviously, this is one in which your mileage will vary wildly from week to week, depending on the person being interviewed. I’ve heard interviews with gothic landscape painters, a fellow podcaster, portrait photographers, documentarians, and more. It runs the whole gamut. Honestly, most of it bores me. The most interesting show so far was a recent one in which Parillo talks about his personal career move to more straight-up photography. He’s trying to move away from the teaching and writing thing, and move back into making his career more as a straight-up photographer.

Parillo also appears on The Focus Ring podcast, which I discussed previously, and which updated with its 11th and also show for 2007.

I’ve also become addicted to Lightsource recently. I mentioned it in my last Photography Podcast writeup as one that wasn’t really in my ballpark. The two hosts focus mostly on lights and lighting strategies, which is beyond me at this point. It’s not as bad as that, though. The more shows I listen to, the more I learn about photography, in general. A recent interview (episode 52) with Roy Cox was particularly interesting, as the Baltimore-based portrait/editorial photographer told the story of how he clawed and scratched his way up in the world, renting a small room in a warehouse without lights to taking most of the warehouse over and shooting for everyone from Hollywood to models. Check out episode 49 for an interview with Jock McDonald, a portrait photography with some funny stories. Other episodes were dedicated to architecture photographers, food photographers, and fashion photographers. It’s interesting to learn all the different angles and the high end technical stuff just breezes right by me without annoying me.

They do, however, sound EXACTLY like those NPR-like hosts on Saturday Night Live in the Alec Baldwin Christmas sketch. It’s scary. But it’s still ten times better than the obnoxiously wacky zany morning show host of Photo Talk Radio.

Related Various and Sundry Posts:

• The Benefits of a Tripod (25 Nov 2007)
• Christmas Tree Angel (24 Nov 2007)
• Waterfall (11 Nov 2007)
• Choosing the Right Camera (for me) (25 Oct 2007)

• Your Flash game du jour: Meltdown. Similar premise to a million other chain reaction type games, but different enough to become addicting. My high score: 155.
• Feel like watching some Muppets on YouTube? Here’s a great list of musical Muppet acts. Includes Elton John, Blondie, Steve Martin, and more.
• If you’re wondering why all the webcomic artists are suddenly pushing you to buy their print collections, I have a guess; The New Cintiq Tablets. They now have a $1000 model. it’s a small screen, but if I were an up-and-coming cartoonist, I’d be all over this. I imagine it has the power to transform some workflows of comic creators, too. I expect a lot of comic colorists might jump on this, too. Mark my words.
• You Park Like A Very Bad Person. Dot Com. (URL is NSFW)
• The Japanese launch of Wii Fit was very successful.

And now for the geekery:

• Regexes are the coolest things in the known universe, but difficult to grok for many. I’m not sure this page makes it any easier, but different strokes for different folks, and all that.
• I love the fact that if you search on my name in Google Books, there’s an actual result! Oddly enough, there’s two — the second one is in Japanese. It’s for Podcasting Hacks, an early podcasting book from O’Reilly that I was interviewed for. I’m still tickled that I made an O’Reilly book!
• In 1897, the Indiana State Legislature attempted to simplify the lives of millions of math students overnight by setting pi equal to 3. It failed. All together now: 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971. . . .
• Here’s some help memorizing the digits of pi.

If you missed it, go download the latest episode of This Week In Tech right this very minute. Run, don’t walk.

Fast forward to the 42:32 mark, where host Leo Laporte attempts to do an Audible commercial. Problem is, Audible heavily DRMs all the books you download from them. And TWiT panelist Cory Doctorow is a die-hard anti-DRM kind of guy, and not ashamed to talk about it. As an author, his dealings with Audible have been disappointing.

So every time Leo tries to defend Audible, Cory smacks him down.

By the time everything is said and done, Leo’s bailed on the commercial and you’re listened to five minutes of wonderfully awkward podcasting.

Comic fans be warned:

I appeared on the most recent edition of the iFanboy Video Podcast.  (That’s me on the right.)  It’s a 35 minute tribute to Mike Wieringo, including interviews with Tom Brevoort and Todd Dezago.  I’m in studio to discuss the various titles Ringo worked on, show off some original art, and generally join in the discussion.

It was an honor to be asked on the show, and I had a great time recording it.  Watching it back now doesn’t make me cringe at the sight of myself in action all that much.  I must be growing as a person.

Listen to a random episode of The Pro Photography Show.

Take a sip every time host Gavin Seim:

* …says “and stuff like that.”

* …gets so excited to start a sentence that he stutters.

* …mentions TWiT by name.

* …copies a bit from TWiT without directly referencing it.

* …says “Competition is good.”

* …plugs SeimEffects.com.

* …says the aforementioned site is not part of the show — after plugging it for a solid two minutes.

* …uses “anyway” as a transition.

* …pans Adobe for poor customer service.

* …blames the MacroMedia buyout for the poor customer service.

* …uses one of the following phrases: “Slash Blog,” “An Alex,” or “rathole.”

Normally, this is the point in a “drinking game” contest where two sips or chugs would be used. I can’t imagine a single episode of the podcast in which you wouldn’t already be passed out drunk inside of 15 minutes just based on the above rules alone.

So nevermind.

Continuing a rundown of photography podcast reviews and links. . .

* The Pro Photography Show is hosted by Gavin Seim, a slightly hyperactive and very young (22ish) accomplished wedding photographer from the Pacific Northwest. He’s a little overeager at times, but I find a lot of interesting stuff in his weekly hour-long podcasts. The youth shows through in some of his verbal tics, as well. Since it’s not constant “upspeak,” though, I can deal with it. “And stuff like that” gets pretty repetitive, though. I listened to one show over the weekend where he used it a half dozen times. It didn’t even make sense in context a couple of those times. . .

Also, someone needs to stop all podcasters from addressing their audiences as “you guys.” Even forgetting the inherent sexism that some people might see in it, it comes off patronizing after a while.

His occasional round table discussions don’t even attempt to hide their TWiT influence, and sometimes even directly mention it. Sometimes, I wish he’d stop worrying about others and talk more about what he knows and does, rather than doing research to tell Windows users what they might need to know. They should likely tune into another podcast for that. There probably isn’t one, mind you, but they might as well. . .

A new round table went up this weekend. I’m only about 15 minutes into it, but it’s about the least organized mess of a round table I’ve ever heard. The one podcaster involved with any sort of experience is attempting to bail Gavin out by guiding conversation, but then things just fall apart. It’s all rather frustrating.

* The L7 Photogaphy Review podcast is one you should strive to avoid at all costs. It’s a computer voice synthesizer reading written reviews out loud. They’re mercifully short podcasts, but I couldn’t make it through one of them. Painful. Computers can’t talk like humans yet. This one is fairly convincing, but it’s off just enough to really grate on my nerves. The blog isn’t bad, though.

* The Digital Photography Show is the first one I found and, in many ways, is still my favorite. Hosted by two Friends-In-Photography (Scott Sherman and Michael Stein), they feature interviews with software companies, hardware companies, photographers, and Photoshop experts. There are giveaways, photo contests, listener e-mail, and everything you could ask for. They’ve been around for awhile, producing a weekly hour-long podcast every week for 70-some-odd weeks. If you listen to too many too quickly, it might start to grate on your nerves when the main host interjects his one-liners too often and starts sounding like a bad impersonation of Mario Cantone. Take special care to download any episode with Scott Kelby or Rick Sammons. After that, follow the topics you’re interested in and enjoy.

The show comes from the point of view of two enthusiasts looking to learn about photography, so you’re never lost as a listener and you never feel talked down to. Both are important, particularly to the new SLR user. And the two have a great rapport that sucks you in. You can’t help liking them, though Scott does occasionally come across a little shrill. Those are isolated incidents, thankfully.

* The Digital Photography Podcast is hosted by Allen Rockwell, a California man who recently made photography his business, specializing in sports and event photography. The podcasts are short, his tone is a little dry, and you might occasionally find yourself drifting to sleep. It doesn’t help that it took a while for him to upgrade his sound set-up. That said, there’s some good parts here and there, but a lot of it is repetitive if you’ve listened to the other podcasts I’ve already mentioned.

It is a bit odd that Rockwell, a fan of The Digital Photography Show and even a one time guest on it, would so closely name his podcast to theirs. You’d think he’d have avoided it completely to save from confusion.

* LightSource Studio Photography Podcast is one I’ve only listened to once or twice. They talk to photographers about their lighting techniques, it seems. It’s a bit more advanced than I need, and it often loses me.

* Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Podcast is hosted by Adobe’s George Jardine, and usually features an interview with a photographer talking about a series of his or her pictures, which are sometimes displayed on screen as part of an enhanced podcast. It’s an interesting and friendly chat every time out. Pay special attention to the series earlier in this year from the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Adventure: Iceland series. It convinced me to buy the book. Beautiful pictures, friendly stories.

And that’s about it for my regular photo podcasting listening. If you have a favorite, please let me know.

I’ve been listening to a large number of photography-related podcasts in the last few weeks. Thought I’d share some links and thoughts about them, on the off chance you’re looking for a Photography podcast, as well. Plus, it’s NaBloWriMo!

* The Martin Bailey Photography Podcast is an interesting one, and a great use of the format. The podcast is available as an enhanced AAC file. The host can sneak in images along with the podcast file that will automatically pop up on your iPod as you’re listening. For a photo podcast, this is a brilliant idea, and once I’m surprised more don’t use. If you’re not using an iPod or iTunes, you’ll only hear the audio and you’ll have to visit a web site to see the photos being discussed. You might be better off that way, as the iPod screens are still relatively small. Maybe this would look better on an iPhone or iPod Touch? I dunno.

Bailey is a Briton living in Japan. He’s an avid photographer and devotes about half of his shows showing off pictures from his trips around the country (and the world) in a nice calm manner. As interesting as the photos are — I always want more — his stories add great context to what you’re looking at on the screen. He talks gear as much as composition, and devotes episodes to answering listener questions or to discuss various aspects of photography, e.g. How To Choose a dSLR, How To Choose a Lens, Using Deep Focus Photography, etc.

The show has been updated weekly for about a year and a half now and shows no signs of slowing down. Particularly recommended: Episodes dedicated to waterfall pictures (40 and 41), the recent autumn colors podcasts, and his day in Bangkok.

* Focus Ring is a roundtable discussion podcast created at the beginning of the year, including hosts from different shows along the Photocast Network. Scheduling it is a tricky thing, particularly as participants in the show come from as diverse locations as Germany, Australia, Japan (the aforementioned Bailey), the U.K., and the States. As such, there’ve only been ten episodes, but they’ve been entertaining. Each host brings a topic to discuss and there’s a general conviviality shared amongst the hosts that’s infectious.

Each show is about an hour and ends with the mandatory end-of-show picks of the week that any and all roundtable discussion podcasts today must have, by law.

* Photo Talk Radio is the polar opposite of The Martin Bailey Photography podcast in one major way — the hosts are obnoxious FM radio zoo crew wannabes whose enthusiasm takes the form of cliched radio voices shouting at you and telling you how great they are. It’s borderline repulsive, particularly in a corner of the podcasting world so filled with calm hosts. I only listen to it for the guests, such as Rick Sammons and Scott Kelby. If you can get past the hosts and enjoy the guests, you’ll be safe.

If not, I couldn’t blame you.

* Jeff Curto’s Camera Position is an enhanced podcast from the Photocast Network. It’s about the “creative side of photography,” and so it gets a little high-falutin’ at times. It’s not hard core “Here’s How To Use Your Gear.” Heck, he devoted two whole shows to Ansel Adams’ Zone system of photography. If you’re just learning what burst mode means and how to manually adjust your exposure, then this is not what you need just yet.

More to come Wednesday, including my first and favorite photography podcast. . .

Quote of the week from a photography podcast:

“I know people who only shoot children.”

Sounds like a W.C. Fields quote, doesn’t it?

Yahoo! to Close Its Podcasting Site

Two years to the month after launching its large podcast search and listening site, Yahoo! has announced that Yahoo! Podcasts will cease operation on Halloween, October 31st. The site never came out of Beta before the plug was pulled. There’s not much information available beyond an underlined non-link now at the top of the site reading “Yahoo! apologizes deeply, but we will be closing down the Podcasts site on Oct. 31, 2007.”

This will break a bunch of links on the show notes to old Various and Sundry DVD podcasts. I used to carry the “Rate This Podcast” graphic there for Yahoo. No more.

And if Digg doesn’t do something more with their Podcast Beta, then I imagine it might cease to be eventually, too. That’s just wild speculation. They might just let it sit there and rot over time, though. We’ll see.

Podcasting ain’t always as easy as it sounds. All you have to do is open up a microphone, record something, upload it, and update an associated RSS feed. But wouldn’t you rather do it well?

I’ve heard a lot of monotone in podcasts lately — that problem when a speaker’s voice contains no inflection and lays flat on the floor throughout the entire podcast. It most often comes from someone who’s afraid of the microphone, or is reading off a script by themselves.

Having a co-host or two has its advantages. It gives you someone to work off of. It makes it easier to make your show sound conversational and more natural. It fills those awkward gaps. It gives you the opportunity to record a longer show without one person having to say everything. Trust me, I know that problem — after fifteen minutes of talking straight and you need to cough, drink, or take a deep, cleansing breath. It’s not something that comes naturally. You have to work at it. You develop defenses and mechanisms to make it work, but it’s not an entirely natural thing to do. It must be learned.

So what can you, as a podcaster (solo or otherwise), do to relieve the monotony of your sound? I have ten tips.

1. Pretend like you’re the obnoxious local morning radio DJ host guy. You know him. He’s the guy who screams a lot, who does silly voices, who drives you up a wall. Say what you will about him, but he doesn’t have any troubles with monotony.

Do this seriously. Don’t just try to do a wacky parody of a wacky human being. The funny thing is that it’s human nature not to go to extremes. So you likely won’t be as obnoxious as That Guy, but trying to be will pull you out of the monotone that you might be stuck in.

2. Know your material before you open the microphone. If you know what you’re saying, you can concentrate more on your voice. If you have to keep referring to your notes, or if you’re unsure of where the podcast is going, that will show up in your voice as well. You’ll play it safe. You won’t modulate your tones.

Also, don’t read off a script. If you’re concentrating on only saying the next word, you’ll never bother listening to yourself to hear how each word sounds. You’re too distracted by the script.

3. Listen back to your shows to hear how you did. Don’t pay attention to the content. Pay attention to how it sounds. Don’t worry if you said something awkward or if you flat out got something wrong. For the purposes of this exercise, you just want to listen to your voice, what it does and where it goes. Do you ever hear yourself whispering or screaming? If not, you might just be monotone.

4. Does it sound like you’re singing? This one might be harder to explain, but it’s some thing I’ve heard on my own shows. It’s when everything I say — even though I never read from a script — has the same rhythm, the same cadence. The voice goes up and down and up and down. It’s almost sing-song. You have to break yourself of that in podcasting, just as you’d try to break yourself of repeating rhythms in writing. Writers are sure to vary their sentence structure and presentation. It might be natural for them, but take a close look at any good piece of writing and you’ll see this. You won’t read “Jane climbed up the stairs. She opened the door. She walked into the room. She looked around. She called for help. She was killed by the monster in the dark.”

Forget for a moment the passive tense of the verb in the climactic sentence. Notice how all the sentences are the same structure. They all start with the subject. They’re all no more than five words — subject, verb, object, more or less. You can see the rhythm and the pattern there. In a way, it works because the final sentence — the climactic shocker — breaks the rhythm. But unless you’re aiming to create such a pattern to jostle the reader — or the listener — out of complacency later on, you’re in a bad monotone.

5. Believe what you’re saying. The nice part about an opinion show instead of a straight-up news show is that you’re trying to convince someone of something. That kind of emotion and energy is easiest to transfer to your own voice. Passion rules. If this is a straight-laced newsy type of show, then see my second point above.

6. Don’t be afraid to go on a tangent. The very act of breaking out of the main trunk of a show will lead you to vary your tone. As the subject changes, so will your voice. Probably. This one isn’t 100%, but it’s a neat little trick.

7. It’s more than volume that needs to change. Tone doesn’t refer to volume. It refers to pitch. Deepening your voice has one effect. Speaking higher has another. Think of the way Jerry Seinfeld acts when his voice gets all squeaky. That’s usually where the jokes are, right?

8. Edit your podcast. If you need to take a break, cough, get a drink, or what-have-you, there’s no reason you can’t. Stop the recording, handle your business, and come back. The problem with this, though, is that you’ll often find a noticeable change in your voice when you come back. I can’t explain it. It’s just the way things work out, and your audience will hear it.

You can, however, repeat something you just said if you want to say it better. Going back afterwards and deleting the first take is easy enough. I used to do this all the time when I first started podcasting. Now that I don’t have the patience for all that editing and I find myself more comfortable with the format of my show and its contents, I don’t have to do it. But repeating something in the same session is a whole lot easier and more reliable than stopping the show and coming back to it later, whether as a patch or as a continuation of the same session.

9. Do little things. Take a slightly exaggerated pause. Raise or lower the volume or speed of your voice here and there. Even if neither of those things is exactly a change in tone, the brief difference in your speaking might imitate one. And when your voice returns to “normal,” perhaps it’ll be a little different to the listener’s ears. It’s fakery, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Nothing’s worse than listening to one person drone on and on. It’s the easiest way to lose an audience member.

10. I’m not a trained professional voice guy. I’m talking out of my butt. But if you’ve read this far, perhaps you’ve picked up on some things that I’ve learned from doing college radio, local radio, and podcasting for the last 12 years.

Yes, this is more a disclaimer than a point, but people tend to like lists of ten things, not nine. If you need a serious tenth, then go back to the top of this entry and go with “Have a co-host.”

Don’t forget to check up on The Pipeline Podcast for the latest in new comic releases. Thanks.

Related Various and Sundry Entries:

• Augie’s Podcasting How-To (15 Jan 2007)
  
• My first post on podcasting (06 Dec 2004)
• The first rule of podcasting: Everyone will hate your music. (14 Oct 2006)
• An early history of podcasting (15 May 2006)
• Podfading(09 Feb 2006)
• Podcasting Star Wars (22 June 2005)

Here’s a good way to start the week:

Podcasting News » Podcasting Audience Up 18% Since Last Year

• The audience for podcasts is up by 18% from a year ago. In 2006, 11% of those surveyed listened to audio podcasts; in 2007, the number was 13%, about 18% growth. This figure looks like it may be the most controversial info in the report. At Marketwatch, for example, Frank Barnako is calling this anemic growth. While faster growth would be great for podcasters, a lot of industries would kill for 18% growth.
• Podcast awareness has exploded in the last year, growing from 22% to 37%.

TV:

• A rumor on The Muppet Show Season Two on DVD - this summer?
• Another attempt at a new Muppet TV series is filmed like The Office.
• The MacGyver toy? Or just a Photoshop job?
• Boston Legal: Comedy or Drama? I think it’s time for an Emmys/Golden Globe/Etc. Dramedy category.

Podcasting:

• The Casgle.com Podcast Charger is a standalone appliance to charge and load podcasts onto your iPod. It’s a pretty neat idea for some people, I think. You can read about it here.

Apple:

• WWDC is being held in June this year, instead of August. Being your Stevenote countdown widgets today!
• Using Apple’s QuickTime movie trailers to show you the difference between 480p and 720p. Give the site some time to load, though.
• Will Apple start mounting the CD/DVD drive on the bottom of their laptops?

Here’s a quick tour through my podcasting gear to show you what’s hooked up to what, what I’m using, and how it all works together.

If you have any questions, ask away in the comments below.

It all begins with the microphone. I use a condenser mic called the MXL XL 90. It’s pretty standard podcaster fare. It’s a relatively cheap condenser mic at under $100 and gives you a pretty good sound. It doesn’t have a power supply, so you need to add something else into your chain to give it the juice. As pictured, it’s safely surrounded by a shockmount, and is fronted by a windscreen that I don’t have a link or a picture for right now. Everything is standing on a desktop pole, basically, which supports it all with a heavy enough base that nothing tips over.

The power supply for the mic comes from the sound mixer. I use the Behringer Eurorack 802b. Yes, it’s overkill in that it supports four mics, but the 2 mic mixer doesn’t have the Phantom Power which I need to power the microphone. As it happens, they don’t make the mixer anymore. It’s been replaced with a new line of very similar devices called “Xenyx.” You can get one of those for less than $60 at Amazon today with free shipping.

That hooks into the compressor, which helps to even out the sound. It’s the magic box that brings low noises up and high noises down. (I wish I could get it to ignore my breathing sounds. ::sigh:: ) I picked up a well-respected and easy-to-use one off eBay that’s made by FMR Audio: the Really Nice Compressor 1773. The RNC1773 runs $199, but I got it for a little less than that. It’s always tempting to overcompress the sound with it, but I’m learning to have a feather touch.

The thing has room for three mic inputs. If you only have one, though, you can run it through all three compressors. The problem with that is that it eats up the sound, leaving very little volume. You have to up the gain and that risks screwing up the sound, so I skip that. But I’m also a completely untrained sound engineer. I might fiddle with that again soon.

All of that is plugged into my Power Mac via a Griffin iMic (pictured right).

I use GarageBand to record and edit the podcast, with iTunes to help pack the MP3 full of metadata. Sometime, I even play with the handiest single purpose sound app around: The Levelator. That evens out the volume levels across your program to take out any spikes or low spots. It’s not quite a condenser, but it’s close. It works best for panel discussions and interviews.

Just to MacGeek out for a second: I use Panic’s Transmit FTP program to upload the files to the server.

The RSS feed file is edited manually in Microsoft Word, but I’m thinking of bringing that over to TextMate, a wonderful word processor that is amazing with all sorts of program coding.

And that’s that. If you’re curious about the settings on any of the above, just ask. Otherwise, I won’t bore you all with the details.

Related:

• The Pipeline Podcast
• My first post on podcasting (06 Dec 2004)
  
• The first rule of podcasting: Everyone will hate your music. (14 Oct 2006)
• An early history of podcasting (15 May 2006)
• Podfading(09 Feb 2006)
• Podcasting Star Wars (22 June 2005)