A Second Podcast!

NEWSFLASH!!! The highly anticipated, wildly acclaimed, second podcast for the Front Porch is now "in the can" as 'they' say.

We didn't say it would be quick, or pretty, but just that we'd get it done. Please take a listen, by clicking the link on the Battle of Sullivan's Island under the "In the Neighborhood" sidebar. It's about 48 minutes long. Though most of it is about John's topic, Carl and I add a little 'color' to keep it interesting. I have to admit, before I met John, I was not really very interested in the details of the American Revolutionary War. But his enthusiasm, energy, and genuine fascination with it has made a fan of me!

So you want to dip your toe in the wide podcasting ocean? I'd like to tell the story of our journey in to the podcasting seas. The concept of podcasting is pretty simple, as things go. However, concepts and details often are not the same. The devil, as they say, is in the details!

'What is a podcast', you ask?. Let me tell you. A podcast is basically a recording of a person or people talking about something important to them. This recording is saved in a specific format that can be put on an internet site. Once it is 'published' on an internet site, anyone who knows the address, or has a link to the webpage where it is published, can go there and listen. For example, our second podcast is hosted on a site called archive.org. See I told you it was easy!

OK, not so easy, those pesky details. Unlike the first podcast, where I sat up all night (literally) with a headset plugged into my computer, and talked. We wanted to have three microphones attached, so we could all be in the same room and talk, you know, have a conversation...on The Front Porch. This is where the world started spinning on a different axis. Plugging three mics into one computer, is not a simple chore. What kind of sound card do you have? Is it high quality to handle all that input? Poor quality card? You can bypass your sound card with a USB mic, but USB can only handle one mic at a time! There are separate boxes (mixers) that you can use to plug multiple mics into, then combine or 'mix' them with music, drums, airplane sounds, etc then feed it all into your computer. But, oh wait, most of these are designed to go into the computer through the sound card!

Yes, they do make mixers that plug into the USB ports of the computer, bypassing the sound card. However, these are out of our budget, for now. Somewhere in this fog of confusion, we decided to purchase a higher quality USB mic, and take our chances sitting around and all talking into it. I hope you'll agree, it turned out pretty well.

By the way, recording was the easy part, and that took about 3 hours. After recording, someone (me this time) goes through the entire recording editing out the long pauses, dropped stuff, loud laughter, snorts, chortles, flushing toilets in the attached bath, and each of our favorite pauses such as 'and um', 'and', 'uhhh', etc. Oh, you want to spice it up with some background music? Editing. The software we use to do this is very easy to use, it's just a tedious task. I am pleased with the finished product. It is not perfect, but we had fun, learned something about a great battle, and learned to put together and record a podcast.

I don't want to forget. After the edits and being saved, it has to get onto the internet--somehow. Easy! Just upload it to our blog webpage, right? Uh, not so much. For many reasons, most blogging websites, don't allow podcast files on their site. The files are big and take up storage space. These large files can also slow down access to the website, especially if thousands of people want to listen to the podcast. (hint, hint). We finally found an inexpensive (read: free) site, that allows us to upload our podcast file and "host" our file. The only thing left, is linking to that site, and presto change-o, podcasting to the masses!

If you are interested in doing your own podcast; DON'T DO IT! Actually, it is quite fun, and we would be glad to help you if you want to try. We're just rank amateurs, but would love to help. Just like that friendly neighbor who always loans you the weed eater!