Rambles | 1808

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Rambles

There are three holes in the ground, each named Well, Well, and Well.

Welcome back, and thanks for listening to the supposedly weekly podcast Permanently Moved Online.

Isn’t it ironic that the last episode I put out was on procrastination, and then the following week, I didn’t release an episode? Maybe it’s not ironic—it’s probably just that I was busy.

I had all these grand plans to record a podcast on the go. I had all these grand plans to interview people and stuff like that. But when I plugged my microphone into my phone, all I got was a huge clicking and buzzing noise. I think it’s got something to do with the fact that my phone kind of broke, got a bit melty, and I had to replace the power and audio PCB unit.

It works fine—audio works fine—but it seems like it doesn’t like the mono microphone I’ve got. Which is fine, I suppose.

So today, I had another plan: to resurrect my old iPod Touch, because I know the microphone works with that. But when I checked it, I realized it hadn’t been synced since 2015. That meant going through all the strange Apple incantations required to reboot and reset an old device without a password, etc. I ended up crawling through my emails, remembering that my password was related to a company I worked at two jobs ago. Eventually, I found it.

Oh man, this morning has been an absolute nightmare.

Right now, as I look over to the other side of my desk, I can see the iPod rebooting. My plan is to find an app and see if I can record an entire episode next week on the go using the touchscreen—see how that goes. I might have to sync it to Google Drive and then use a different app on my phone. But I think it’s going to be a real adventure.

Why would I want to do that, you ask?

For a couple of reasons. Firstly, a lot of the YouTube vloggers I follow are switching over to audio and diversifying their platforms—they’ve got their own podcasts now. But one thing I haven’t really seen, with the exception of Mills’ JFDI podcast, is someone doing a daily podcast—a daily vlog, but obviously not as a vlog. An a-log. Audio log.

When Twitter first came out, there were all these apps where you could record and post straight to Twitter. I followed a few people who were doing that. They’d do interesting things—reading poems, describing what they were seeing in unusual places, conducting short interviews. It was really cool. I liked the diversity of what they were doing. There wasn’t a set length or any particular audio style—it was just diverse and interesting.

While traveling on planes recently, I went back and listened to quite a few old episodes of HowlSound, the podcast from the Transom Audio Workshop. It’s basically about how to make good radio. Now that I’ve actually got an outlet of my own, I found some of the advice really inspiring. It was interesting.

The more I think about it, the more I feel like there’s something here—within the confines of 301 seconds, or 5 minutes and 1 second. I’m not entirely sure what it is. I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing. But now that this is the eighth episode, things are starting to come along.

I mean, this episode is just me rambling into a microphone, as usual.

That said, the only way I’m going to figure out what this is—what the point of it is—is by making more of them. I keep thinking about doing two a week, but honestly, I might have to make more than that. I’m not sure if one episode a week is enough.

I’m also nervous to be saying this out loud because it kind of feels like I’m signing myself up for a lot of work. But honestly, smashing out one of these a day for, say, 30 days or so seems like a good idea. It would force me to think within the confines of the audio format and experiment.

I’m not committing to anything yet—because I already committed to doing this once a week, and I didn’t even manage that. I skipped last week.

But next week, I’m away. I’m going to Dubrovnik, Croatia. I’m going on a Game of Thrones tour. I’m going to drink cocktails at the swim-up bar.

While I’m there, I’m going to try making an episode on my phone and work out the workflow for it—which seems like a big enough challenge in itself.

Speaking of challenges, I’m sure this whole episode was a challenge to listen to, because it’s a bit rambling.

Big shout-out to the guys at Trust in Berlin—I know you listen to this.

Thanks for listening to episode 1808 of Permanently Moved Online—a podcast in 301 seconds.