This morning marked the completion of my first 100 miles. I talk about advertising and public relations. Go figger.
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I came all the way over to your Blog in a browser to say — Congratulations on that first 100 miles!!!
Congratulations on your first 100 mile mark you have been an inspiration to me to get out and walk as well I try to get to 4 mile mark every day.
On your sleep problem It sounds like you need to ask the Doc again for a sleep aid your stuck in in a vicious cycle not enough sleep = more stress and more stress less sleep the next night and cycle repeats been there Know enough that it sucks take action to resolve it.
I wouldn’t recommend the alcohol instead try one of variety of herbal teas Traditional Medicinals ie Nighty Night, Sleepy Time, Yogi : Kava Stress Relief Tea
Congratulations on 100 Miles! Next thing you know, this time next year, you’ll decide to save air fare and just jog to BaltiCon – won’t take you but a few hours!
Wish I could help on the no-sleep thing; my drug of choice for the occasional bout of insomnia is benadryl, but I can imagine that could easily be contra-indicated in your case. Maybe a nice short, quiet stroll for a few minutes before you’re ready to go to bed? Look up at the stars and visualize yourself coming off of the mid-watch, ready to hit the rack and chill out…
Listening to this again – you say that without a RSS feed, it’s by definition *not* a podcast. And you made me feel kinda reactionary that no, I don’t get this via RSS – I do in fact visit the website each day.
But what advantages does this RSS feed have over just a simple e-mail sent to my mailbox, containing a link to where I can download the file – that would be *MORE* than simple enough to filter out, and either toss in a folder, or automatically download somewhere handy. Or, for that matter, e-mail me the episode in the first place.
I’m just not sure about all these extra-specialized versions of e-mail. First was IRC – and that was kinda cool, kind of a real-time mailing list thing where you didn’t have to type out the e-mail address each time. Then came the Instant Messengers, with their presence indicators (which I can’t see why couldn’t have been added to IRC easily enough, and then the messages themselves sent via CTCP).
Then arose the podcasts – and like most, I thought the term podcast was a term someone came up with to describe something they could load on their iPods – and I never bothered with them, because hey, they were on the iPod, so they were most likely DRM’d. Then somewhere along the line, I ran across one that had straight MP3s available for download – and I thought it was cool that they supplied the rest of us with MP3s of the same material they were uploading to Apple to get DRM’d. Then I heard that Apple was abandoning the whole DRM thing – YAY Victory For Freedom! – and all of a sudden it seems like virtually *ALL* podcasts now have a blog/archive for downloading! And I’m wondering why someone doesn’t have an e-mail list I can sign up for where the stuff just gets *sent* to me, so I don’t have to figure out some magical new interface. I mean, really – I’ve got e-mail for delivery, my media player to play the stuff, what’s these “podcatchers” and “feed readers” doing for me?
I mean, sure, they’re the latest, and therefore I’m supposed to know they’ve got to be the greatest thing – but they just don’t seem great to me. What am I missing?
The beauty and value of RSS is that you get to pick the content you want delivered (like signing up for a mailing list) and you collect those subscriptions in single place that allows you to filter and select the newest content as it comes available. For example I used to follow over 400 blogs and assorted news feeds — altho I’m down to 150 now. With that much content, just moving around becomes time consuming. I have my content arranged and foldered so that if I’m in a hurry, I can just skip the stuff that’s lowest priority to me and focus on the important/most interesting.
With content delivery like podcasts, the value is that you sign up once, and as each new episode is released, it’s delivered to you on a schedule of your own choosing. I like to have my high bandwidth content delivered at 1am when nobody else in the house is using the net. For people on low capacity connections, this is an important issue. The podcatcher also sorts my podcasts nicely and keeps the freshest episodes handy for my listening without having to wade thru the email notices and manually download–or worse, requiring me to visit each site periodically to see if there is new content.
The podcast definition is just that — a definition. The RSS delivery is what separates a “podcast” from a “digital archive” like the Internet Archive at http://www.archive.org. We’ve had file repositories for decades now – places where you can go, search, and download content of various types. Most people maintain such access for their digital content even today, but RSS provides a machine-readable content format meta-data that gives program-level control to the users who want it.
You’re right that it’s all just messaging. The issues are levels of synchronicity (whether or not you need to be online at the same time that the message is sent in order to receive it) and control (who gets to say what shows up in your inbound queue). Most forms of messaging are “push” — that is, anybody who knows your address can drop an email in your box. RSS is “pull.” Nobody can put a message in that queue that you didn’t ask for.
Thank you for these transmissions Sar, it’s fun hearing what’s going on in the life of my favorite podiobooks author. I have a suggestion for getting more sleep that involves ingesting nothing, but instead listening. I’ve never been a good sleeper, running on too few hours became a fact of life – until I started listening to ocean sounds. My wife and I received an alarm clock with nature sounds as a wedding gift, and when we played that thing with the ocean selected – I fell asleep fast and slept well. It used to take me at least half an hour to fall asleep and now it takes minutes. Our alarm clock shorted out, so I bought an alarm clock that plugs into mp3 players with a headphone jack and I found a free recording of ocean waves online. We play that on repeat and sleep like babes. You should give it a try, it’s done wonders for me. Ocean waves seem to work best for my wife and I, but you might like the sound of rain, or a rushing river. I sincerely hope this helps if you end up giving it a try. Nice work on cranking out the Full Share edits in less than 24 hours by the way!
It’s been an honor following your first 100 miles. May there be plenty more. 😉
Actually, I use Firefox’s Live Bookmarks to subscribe to #tommw specifically because it brings me to your webpage so I can see the picture 🙂 Usually I only subscribe to blogs this way, preferring iTunes for podcasts, but there are the occasional exceptions. I like Live Bookmarks because I feel I have more control over them than when I was subscribed to blogs with Google reader. I suppose, in many ways, I’m a Google Luddite, because I also don’t use Google docs, et al.