My friend Dave Atkinson mused that an oral history of how I learned the things I learned the other day came to be learned.
So I recorded one.
My friend Dave Atkinson mused that an oral history of how I learned the things I learned the other day came to be learned.
So I recorded one.
I’ve been experimenting with Amazon’s S3 web service, something that’s a sort of cross between a “remote hard drive” and a “remote database.” I’m testing it as a possible repository for a client’s nightly backup of about 40GB of data and scripts, and so far Christopher Shepherd’s PHP scripts (which use Geoff Gaudreault’s PHP S3 class to talk to S3) are the leading contender for a useful S3 toolkit.
I also did a lot of experimenting with s3sync, an rsync-like S3 backup solution in Ruby, but ran into some crashing problems seemingly related to some HTTP timeout problems in Ruby itself, so I left it aside for now.
I’ve enjoyed my thrash through S3 so much that I created an episode of The 3LA Podcast about it. If all of the above is Greek to your eyes, try giving it a listen — I attempted to sum it all up in rather less buzzwordy language in the podcast.
And, yes, I know that S3 isn’t a “3LA”. But it’s awfully close!
Only because no one else has said it yet… did you really run out of three letter acronyms already? It’s a branding disaster!
Daniel, I had the same thought, but the S3 actually stands for “Simple Storage Service” - so it’s kind of 3LA…
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I’ve been experimenting with Amazon’s S3 web service, something that’s a sort of cross between a “remote hard drive” and a “remote database.” I’m testing it as a possible repository for a client’s nightly backup of about 40GB of data and scripts, and so far Christopher Shepherd’s PHP scripts (which use Geoff Gaudreault’s PHP S3 class to talk to S3) are the leading contender for a useful S3 toolkit.
I also did a lot of experimenting with s3sync, an rsync-like S3 backup solution in Ruby, but ran into some crashing problems seemingly related to some HTTP timeout problems in Ruby itself, so I left it aside for now.
I’ve enjoyed my thrash through S3 so much that I created an episode of The 3LA Podcast about it. If all of the above is Greek to your eyes, try giving it a listen — I attempted to sum it all up in rather less buzzwordy language in the podcast.
And, yes, I know that S3 isn’t a “3LA”. But it’s awfully close!
Ever since it became possible — because of high-speed Internet and good audio tools — to “do radio on the web,” I've been itching to dust off my interest in radio and start recording. Today the dream was realized, with the recording of the first episode of Live From the Formosa Tea House.
Using Adam Curry's Daily Source Code, Dave Winer's Morning Coffee Notes and The Gillmor Gang as inspirations, Dan, Steven and I gathered, as we do two or three times a week anyway, at the Formosa Tea House here in Charlottetown. Except this time we brought audio gear.
The AAC version will be especially useful if you have an iPod or use iTunes, as, at least in theory, these should “remember where you left off” if you take a break.
This isn't a polished radio program — it's sort of a combination of sticking a microphone on our lunch table, with the extra self-conciousness of the microphone making us each a little stiff. I don't think we knew who we were talking to really — each other, “the Internet,” or the invisible folks at home.
I certainly learned a lot (or at least remembered a lot) about why radio is so hard to do well, why it's so hard to achieve that balance of the formal and the informal and “sound natural.”
We'll go back again next week, though, and give it another go. I'm sure Steven and Dan will comment on their blogs about how things went from their perspective.
Update: Steven has posted some photos (one, two, three) of our recording rig. We used a boundary mic, which because it was phantom powered, needed to run into a Shure mixing board, the output of which ran into a iMic that ran into my iBook. I used Sound Studio to record the programme to a 350MB AIFF file, and iTunes to generate the MP3 and the AAC.
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Ever since it became possible — because of high-speed Internet and good audio tools — to “do radio on the web,” I've been itching to dust off my interest in radio and start recording. Today the dream was realized, with the recording of the first episode of Live From the Formosa Tea House.
Using Adam Curry's Daily Source Code, Dave Winer's Morning Coffee Notes and The Gillmor Gang as inspirations, Dan, Steven and I gathered, as we do two or three times a week anyway, at the Formosa Tea House here in Charlottetown. Except this time we brought audio gear.
The AAC version will be especially useful if you have an iPod or use iTunes, as, at least in theory, these should “remember where you left off” if you take a break.
This isn't a polished radio program — it's sort of a combination of sticking a microphone on our lunch table, with the extra self-conciousness of the microphone making us each a little stiff. I don't think we knew who we were talking to really — each other, “the Internet,” or the invisible folks at home.
I certainly learned a lot (or at least remembered a lot) about why radio is so hard to do well, why it's so hard to achieve that balance of the formal and the informal and “sound natural.”
We'll go back again next week, though, and give it another go. I'm sure Steven and Dan will comment on their blogs about how things went from their perspective.
Update: Steven has posted some photos (one, two, three) of our recording rig. We used a boundary mic, which because it was phantom powered, needed to run into a Shure mixing board, the output of which ran into a iMic that ran into my iBook. I used Sound Studio to record the programme to a 350MB AIFF file, and iTunes to generate the MP3 and the AAC.
You can listen to a piece I taped with Jim Carroll on doing business with a New Hampshire company from Prince Edward Island.
(I recovered only a portion of the MP3 from Internet Archive).
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You can listen to a piece I taped with Jim Carroll on doing business with a New Hampshire company from Prince Edward Island.
(I recovered only a portion of the MP3 from Internet Archive).
This was beautiful!
This was beautiful!
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