Rubénerd :)

Photo is of the RMS Olympic and the RMS Mauretania after their last voyages in 1935, from MaritimeQuest.com.

It’s official folks, after pioneering the concept of a downloadable radio show before the term podcast even existed and producing shows for longer than anybody else I can see, Frank Edward Nora’s The Overnightscape and The Rampler* programmes have been indefinitely suspended.

I want to do a proper tribute show on the Rubenerd Show to Frank and his incredible efforts spanning most of this decade, but I’m still having severe troubles with feedback with my crappy audio setup here since I came back to Adelaide and I want to do it right, so it’ll have to wait.

In the meantime I want to wish Frank all the best in his *new Rampler endeavours at the WFMU radio station and The Overnightscape Underground. Frank is the most engaging and intensely fascinating individual I’ve ever heard speak, and I’m looking forward to hearing him on his new projects.

I guess I’ve always been the type of person who likes collecting things, perhaps a bit too much for his own good.

Case in point I reinstalled Leopard on my MacBook Pro this evening so I could reformat the drive as case sensitive. As I was about to copy over my iTunes music library from one of my backup drives I noticed big the folder was, and how huge the Podcast folder had become!

I guess I’ve been downloading and listening to podcasts since early 2005, and they do build up! The question is though, what do I do with all of them? Some of the shows in this folder are no longer being produced or are even available anymore I think, and it’d be a shame to delete this collection after downloading for so long. In a nostalgic way it’s fun to listen back to old shows to see what people thought was exciting a few years ago. Look, it’s an iPod that plays video! Google will never buy YouTube! Ants on Mars! Irn-Bru in New York!

It also raises another question: if I don’t delete this folder, how large will it be in 2009? 2010? 2020? Will I need to contemplate buying even more terabyte hard drives or invest in a Blu-Ray burner and stacks of double sided discs just for this stuff?

So much for podcasts being free right? :-).

Afterword: After posting this entry thinking nobody would really read it, I received comments from five fantastic people who have all made me rethink this issue from the ground up… not to mention make me wish I had spent more time on this post in the first place!

You can read my gigantic reponse along with these comments (surprisingly!) in the comments section. Thank everyone for your help and feedback, you’ve all really helped a lot.

Isn’t the internet an amazing place? All this open dialogue with people from around the world, I’m loving it!

It seems there’s a growing number of people who aren’t impressed with the term podcast for one reason or another. From what I’ve been able to gather, these are the most common reasons why (feel free to post a comment below to add to the list):

Techy reasons

• It implies you need an Apple iPod to listen to them
• They’re not "casting" because XML is a client pull system, not a server push system!
• You can’t immedietly figure out what it is when hearing the term the first time
• It’s a techy, short sighted term with no longevity

The "don’t want to be associated with these" reasons

• It describes horrible shows like Dawn and Drew
• Podcasts have become too commercial
• Antonym to above: podcasts are amateur and silly, nobody takes them seriously and therefore they have no business potential
• The whole field is dominated by a few large egos

For what it’s worth, I really don’t agree with some of these points, and I’m honestly apathetic with regards to most of the others, I’m just playing devil’s advocate here.

Someone looks jealous!

In response to this, a veratable splattering of adhoc words combined to create podcast-free alternative names have been created:

• Frank Edward Nora coined the term New Time Radio even before podcasting took off and he continues to use it as an alternative
• Jimbob Kloss from Whole Wheat Radio refers to them as audio magazines, very catchy!
• Leo Laporte infamously decided to refer to them as netcasts, which other than the iPod mixup really doen’t solve any of the tech issues at all!

I’m sure a quick Google search would reveal even more such terms.

Which brings me to the Rubenerd Show. I’ve decided I’m going to distance myself from this issue once and for all by calling these shows exactly what they are:

That said, I’ll probably keep using the term podcast interchangably with it though, it’s the accepted term that everyone seems to have settled on and agreed to, and I’m fed up with explaining other new terms to people. Perhaps with time the accepted term will change, in which case I’ll change too. After all, language is an evolving beast that changes as we do, right?

If you haven’t noticed by now, the visual sorcerer Frank Edward Nora has changed a critical graphical element on two of his online endeavours:

The Overnightscape

The original and best New Time Radio show has got a makeover in the form of a very swish new logo with a crescent moon:

ONS on Twitter

Frank’s profile picture is of his former self from several years ago. We have the same hair!

Frank Edward Nora of The Overnightscape and ons on Twitter turns 40 today, and I wanted to write something here that would do this monuments occasion justice.

In the midst of considering how I would somehow use lasers to etch a greeting onto an obscure astronomical formation that he would be able to see on the other side of the planet, a cool person referred me on Twitter to a randomised font generator page!

Many a happy return Frank, you haven’t aged a day ^_^

It’s the end of an era folks; Mad Mike Masters and Frank Nora have suspended the Anything but Monday podcast / audio magazine / new time radio programme. From what I can tell their blog is still currently online, but the main page has had it’s colourful orange screen replaced with this as of 11:00am Singapore:

I also received an email from the ABM management:

Dear ABM Subscriber,

I wanted to let you know we are shutting down the Anything But Monday Show. Mike and I would both like to thank you for taking the time to check out the show with the free coupon. The site will shut down soon, but you will be able to access the premium content a little while longer.

We wish we would have been able to continue doing the show, but it was a project that became much bigger than we had originally projected, and ultimately we did not have enough time in our lives to keep it going.

Thanks,
Frank Edward Nora

This really is a sad day. I admit the first couple of episodes I didn’t like as much as the Overnightscape (Frank Nora’s other radio programme) but I just felt like I’d got into the rhythm of it and had started enjoying it.

Given what Frank has said on his latest Overnightscape episode it seems he’s under a lot of pressure and the time, effort and planning you need to create two weekly podcasts when you have a full time job just didn’t seem as feasible. Anyone who has listened to the Rubenerd Show knows how much of a difficult time I’ve been having myself with all my current commitments, but arguably Frank has far more on his plate than I, and it’s to his and Mad Mike’s credit they were able to pump out such polished programmes.

So to Mad Mike and Frank: thanks for the fun and good luck with your future adventures. Who knows, another 20 years of self imposed exile may pass and we can hear you again :D.

Goodbye from Singapore, Anything but Monday.

UPDATE: Just so everybody knows, this was an April fools joke :D. I know I know it was a really bad one!

April Fools! :D :D :D

Well ladies and gentleman, the decision has been made. The Rubenerd Show is no more. It was fun while it lasted, but these days I simply have too much work and study work to be doing a podcast. It’s very disappointing and I’m a bit upset, but I still think inevitably the decision made itself. I will now be refocusing all my energy on my blog and my university work.

Oh behalf of the whole Rubenerd Show team (aka: me) thank you for your support and listenership over the last two years. I had a great time, and I hope you did too.

All the existing shows will still be available for at least several months, email me if you have any problems.

Cheers
Ruben

If you listened to Rubenerd Show 221 you would know that while I think the Anything but Monday radio programme is good Mad Mike’s comments on Kuala Lumpur were no good lah! Anyway since then on Anything but Monday number 5 Mad Mike explained his position, we had a good laugh and everything is just peachy :).

Now I must take aim at my good buddy Frank Edward Nora, the other host of the Anything but Monday show. On the same aforementioned episode he commented that New York is the greatest city in the world. Only one problem with Frank’s logic: New York isn’t the greatest city in the world! It’s actually a tie between Singapore and Tokyo! Remember, you read it here first!

Think about it, Singapore is the fourth biggest centre for currency trading in the world, and it has only 4.5 million people… per capita it would be the biggest! It’s also been rated number one place in the world to do business according to The Economist according to Wikipedia. Plus it’s one of the few places in the world that will allow the import of locally-untested medicines at the recommendation of qualified doctors, meaning my mum is getting some of the best cancer treatments in the world! YEAH!

And Tokyo of course rocks because… well, because the Japanese girls I met in KL thought I was cute and Tokyo would be full of them… ahem. No further explanation necessary ;).

An added bonus as well, people in Tokyo and Singapore also drive on the correct side of the road like us Aussies and like the Brits: on the left, they both use the SI/decimal/metric system along with their decimal currencies and they’re both much cheaper to access from Australia too. Plus the Japanese send more tourists (and tourism dollars!) to Australia than anyone else, and the Singaporeans are amongst the biggest investors in Australian real estate and financial services, so they must be on to something! :D

So Frank, I agree that New York is awesome, I’d love to go there one day, and it’s certainly one of the greatest cities in the world, but it’s not the greatest city in the world! :D

Now who wants to go get some prata or bento?

As of today I’ve been offered a part in the next Anything but Monday show, the podcast by Frank Edward Nora and Mad Mike Masters through one of their Skypecasts. Booh yah!

I reviewed the Anything but Monday programme on Rubenerd Show 221 on Monday (I thought it an appropriate day of the week), and I posted regarding the dilemma I faced with paying for it back on the 21st of February.

As a sign of thanks Frank even gave me an Anything but Monday present as well! Here’s hoping I won’t be verbally torn to shreds by Mad Mike for my Kuala Lumpur comment retaliation :D.

Space this watch, um, watch this space.

It’s with a heavy conscience (does that make sense?) that I announce I’ve decided to make the Rubenerd Show a weekly programme again instead of weeknightly; mostly due to the numerous delays regarding previous shows but also because of my ever increasing workload at university, my two jobs and the responsibility of looking after my mum which I could not have forseen back in 2005.

Each show will now be 45 minutes long and will be released each week, probably on Monday mornings Singapore/KL time so I have most of Sunday to record it. One long programme is far easier to produce than many small programmes, and it will give me the opportunity to reintroduce my pointless but very fun segments from the Episode 70+ era such as Will it Sink, The Top 5, Something Stupid, A Little More Serious, Now for Something Completely Different, Frank Edward Nora What? as well as free song reviews and so forth.

I will also aim each week to have a special guest to talk about crap and stuff (pun intended). I have five people so far interested which should keep me going until April; but I’ll be on the lookout for more.

Given the fact I’m moving myself over to open source software I understand how difficult it is to play MP3s in Linux, FreeBSD and so forth so doing one episode a week (aka: less overhead) will also allow me to export the shows as OGG Vorbis files as well. I may even consider exporting a higher quality 192Kb/s version as well given the fact I’ll be playing music; plus also it’s obviously clearer and easier to understand than the current 64Kb/s format which quite frankly to me sounds like I’m talking through water ;).

It’s in the planning stages at the moment so feel free to post on this entry or over on the Rubenerd Forum if you have any comments.

Thanks again everyone, will be in touch soon
- Ruben