Kennedy-Spaien, Dot Com

I’m really pleased with the current batch of projects I’m working on, and thought you might be interested in some of these yourself.

First, as always, I’m neck-deep in producing The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show With Jimmy Moore. This has gained a lot of prestige in the last few years. The show airs on Mondays and Thursdays and is currently featuring interviews with various low-carb celebrities and physicians. [I also did the theme customization for this site.]

Also, I’m producing the Twin Peas Blog and Podcast for host Kelly Damron. Kelly shares knowledge and experience dealing with issues of infertility, premature birth and parenting twins. I’m very proud of this one- it has tons of original music (by me) and the overall effect is similar to “This American Life”. [Another customized theme, here.]

Recently I completed a blog setup for the amazing Phoenix Gilman, author of Diet Failure: The Naked Truth.

Hmm, a common theme - everyone I’ve worked with lately is a published author!

Anyway, please check these out and, as always, please consider giving the shows a review in the iTunes store!

Links:

Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show Site and iTunes
The Twin Peas Pod site and iTunes
Diet Failure: The Naked Truth Blog
My company, Disc of Light Media and Consulting

Whaddaya think of them apples? Let me know in the comment section below!

I just got in from a drive. I was listening to NPR (which I always do unless listening to a Librivox Audiobook), and I tuned in to a truly ridiculous statement by John Ridley.

Ridley said –and I paraphrase– “In the future TV networks will earn money online, not from the content, but from owning web sites.” (around 4:23 of this clip)

I could not believe my ears! I wanted to rush home to blog this right away, but kept listening in hopes of gleaning some context for this really daft assertion. In actuality I had no idea who Ridley is, or why he would hold such a position.

As it turns out he has formerly been a screenwriter and director, but is currently a contributor of Morning Edition. He was guesting as a commentator on Talk of the Nation during this interview, where he came out against the Writers Guild’s leadership.

I’m glad I listened through to the end because a caller (Chuck) near the segment’s end (11:30) did challenge him on the statement. Ridley’s response was very muddle-headed, but seemed to be essentially:

“Yes, ads pay money. Yes advertisers are paying because people come to the site. Yes people come to the site because of the content. Still no money can be said to be made from the content because people are not paying dollars to view it. Therefore the striking writers are making a mountain out of a molehill.”

Hmm. And I thought NPR really grokked online content delivery.

About 2 1/2 months ago, I was in a car accident. I’m largely alright at this point, but my right hand and foot, as well as my back were fairly messed up.

2 weeks ago I started getting “back in the game” so to speak, but I had to completely re-invent my ‘to do’ structure. For whatever reason, the system I had been using was now alien and obtuse to me.

So I started scouring Lifehacker, Lifehack.org and the holy testaments of Merlin Mann, Steve Pavlina, David Allen and Steven Covey. As a result, I quickly became overwhelmed by “process”. Particularly bad were the software based solutions which became a large time sink and source of “analysis paralysis.”

Finally, one day I realized that my productivity had actually sunk to ZERO! I was actually spending 100% of my non-family time trying to find a productivity system I could live with. That way, of course, lies madness.

I had become Ahab, and my white whale was named “To Do“.

Ultimately, the pressure of time slipping away got to me and I simply grabbed a blank sheet of printer paper. I made 7 columns corresponding to the days of the week, and filled in my recurring tasks. I left non-recurring tasks in my mind for the short-term, and quickly became productive again! Yay!

Now this clearly won’t do for the long-term, but I’ve developed a taste of pen and ink, and I’ve been eyeing that fugly, oversized calendar we got free from the local Chinese delivery restaurant…

This ain’t a how-to. I wish I had this skill down to a set of easily reproducible steps, but sadly every time it comes up, the solution is different.

One of my clients, Jimmy Moore of The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show, scored an interview with Dr. Dean Ornish. The interview was a year ago, so I hadn’t yet drilled “best practices” into his head, plus he intended the interview to be for his blog, as the show hadn’t started yet.

Suffice it to say, the interview sounds like it was recorded via tin cans and twine to a wax cylinder (actually a microphone on a telephone). And it is over seventy minutes of raw audio. My job: distill it down to two 25-minute episodes and clean it up.

The stakes are high: a low-carb personality interviewing the king of low-fat diets is bound to be a ratings topper, but OUCH! what a job.

If you find yourself in this kind of situation (and you’ve already decided not to retain my services to fix this for you) here’s one tip:

Use a 30 band graphic EQ plugin in your editor (I use Audacity for editing and Garage Band for final production in these cases). If you start completely dropping frequencies from the low end, you may find that you can subtract out the lowest five or so sliders without changing the sound, while making the signal less “hot”. This will likely allow you to boost your gain without worsening the distortion already present.

After this, you will still have your work cut out for you, but it may be just what you need to start the salvage operation! Just remember, you can’t magically perfect a bad recording after the fact, but this tip might just get you started!

Check it out at: The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore.

As of October first, 2007, I am no longer an employee and am making the Disc of Light Media Group, run by myself and my wife Eve, my full time focus.

Wow, that was a scary sentence to write, but an exciting one as well! It is auspicious that PodCamp Boston II is happening so soon, as lots of my friends will be there for support (and networking - hint, hint!).

What does Disc of Light Media Group do? Well, several things. First, it is a music label dedicated to personal growth and meditation materials. We currently have a wholesale trade with certain New England area hospitals, but our retail program has become moribund, and I will focus some energies there.

Also, I am carrying on executive producing the podcast “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show With Jimmy Moore” and the video program “Healthy Helpings TV” that originated with Grasshopper New Media. I am glad to take on more clients of this type on a consulting basis. [In the previous sentence, "consulting" should be construed as "fee-based".]

I create custom music and provide audio pre- and post-production for audio and video projects. Need your audio of that important interview cleaned up? I’m the guy!

In addition to hundreds of podcast episodes of original music and theme songs, I am an alumni of the film-scoring department of the Berklee College of Music.

Lastly, Disc of Light performs consulting services for bloggers and podcasters. We are particularly interested in adding clients in the area of Food-related projects and cooking shows.

I am planning on developing the www.Disc-of-Light.com website to reflect these changes. Currently that site is exclusively for our music label.

For the curious, a “Disc of Light” is either a chakra or a reference to optical media (CD, DVD). Take your pick!

Please keep Disc of Light in mind for any opportunities you may have or hear about!

I podcast, therefore I must have a professional sounding voice, yes?

Well, let’s see:

Ah, good for radio and TV. Well, that’s close enough for me!
Found via Banannie on Twitter.

This week, we’ve lifted the curtain on our newest show, Yoga: It’s a Gas! with a sneak preview of a rough edit of episode one posted at the Health Hacks Podcast site.

We are having an embarrassing issue with screen geometry that we can’t seem to lick, though. If any kind soul has any advice for us on how to fix this issue in Final Cut Pro, please contact me!

See the issue: YiaG

Please, please drop me a line via the contact page at that site.

Oh my! This came in at the Health Hacks Podcast site via email today:

Thank you for your fine work. Today I discovered your URL and I enjoyed the program, except for one thing: the immature “music” and screaming. I will not be returning because of all that jarring, unp;easant noise on your Web site, and I suspect that many others will not return, too. Please do not take my criticism amiss, because it was meant to be constructive. I can tell that you are very decent and likeable folks, and I only wish you had been exposed to the joy of Baroque music. (I believe that the last two generations in our nation have been cheated out of a good music education. Latin and Greek, too, have been shown the door by a severely misguided educational establishment, but I digress.)… [Name Redacted]

For the record, I went to the Berklee College of Music and I write much of the music for that show (not the theme, though), so I must take the blame not only for choosing the offending “music”, but for creating it as well! I believe Mr. X is referring to the interstitial music — a few bars of hand percussion with a sample of a guy rapping “get up… get up” ending with a perky “Yow!”. While I probably do overuse that bit, it does match the overall tone of that show.

I can’t imagine this particular show would be improved by a fugue or canon performed on a harpsichord or pipe organ. I did once excerpt Toccata and Fuge in D Minor by J.S. Bach on LLVLC, but did I get kudos for that?

In conclusion, “Amo, Amas, Amat.”

Grasshopper New Media is an unfunded startup. Mostly we’re “doing it for love”, and by that I mean because we really enjoy it AND we hope to pay the bills from it as well - someday. There is at least one Grasshopper at GNMHealth who has been able to quit his day job, and that is certainly encouraging.

That Grasshopper is not me, however.

As chief cook and bottle washer at GNMHealth, I have had to learn to do things on the cheap, and there has never been a better time to do that. The internet is chock full of “free as in beer” goods and services, but there is still a lot that has to be done by a living breathing human (thank god!).

The money that has gone into GNM infrastructure has largely come from Chris and Ben. The primary investments I have been making at GNMHealth are in terms of time and effort. On show nights, I am lucky to get over three hours of sleep (currently three nights per week, soon to be four). Over time, that can spur all kinds of bad juju. And yet, I feel like I can’t really complain because I get to work with amazing people whom I really respect. Also, there are people in this space whom I admire very much who can’t afford a cup of coffee.

This morning on my way in to my day gig, I threw my packed lunch into the garbage by mistake. Earlier I was crabby with my wife and even raised my voice at my kid. Oy vey. Sleep dep is no longer amusing!

The thing that made me take start to doubt the wisdom of using my time as a proxy for money, was the fact that no matter how late I stay up, staying up won’t give me the magical ability to pay for one of my rockstars to fly to VON in California this month.

Justin asked if depression begets financial troubles or vice versa. I am wondering if lack of sleep is the cause or the result of having more to do in a day than I can pull off.

So yes, my head is swimming, but on the other hand this isn’t really a complaint, merely an observation.

Sometimes, I must confess I feel out of step with the listenership at some of the projects that I produce. A case in point is the Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show.

The host of that show, Jimmy Moore, is a great guy who I get along well with. He started his blog around the time I started my first blog, and because our interests overlap, we’ve been good friends ever since.

Now Jimmy comes from a fairly conservative perspective and I, well I guess you could call me a “Massachusetts Liberal” whatever that means. I have a long history of friendships and working relationships with people whose views differ from mine, and I have long since learned not to let let differences of opinion get in the way of a great working relationship.

Since Jimmy has been working with me on the podcast, several times I have had to bite my lip when he says things with which I don’t necessarily agree. And that’s OK, because it’s Jimmy’s show, and no matter where he goes, you can bet it will be entertaining.

Last week Jimmy did an episode that has been very controversial, to say the least. The topic was Veganism/PETA and Jimmy came down rather hard on them and invoked a lot of religious overtones. Getting into religion in what seems — on the surface — to be a religion-free context strikes me as an odd choice, but whatever… that’s his prerogative.

When I first heard the raw audio, I was quite certain there would be an outcry, and I was not wrong. The people Jimmy was criticizing (some have said “demonizing”) were not pleased to say the least, and at last I was compelled to issue an editorial refusing to fire Jimmy.

Now via comments and email, I have received wave upon wave of Kudos from Jimmy’s listers, but this has unsettled me even more. While many were kind and merely thanked me for sticking by their favorite podcaster, some were more dark and even trollish. A recent comment from a listener: “Vgeanism [sic] is a mental disorder, just like liberalism.”

I am flabbergasted at how much people have emotionally invested in their dietary choices. When they start getting politics and religion tied into these issues, it can get downright scary. The commonality between diet, politics and religion is that they all seem to relate on some level to a person’s sense of self-identity and therefore self-esteem.

One person said that Jimmy’s comment about eating animals being OK because they “would never have an everlasting life in Christ” could be interpreted as suggesting that eating Jews is OK, too. I hope that was tongue in cheek!

The gist of this is - am I too out of touch with Jimmy’s listeners to be an effective producer? On the one hand, I feel that I’m a fine editor and my skills are up to snuff, but on the other hand, is that enough? Can I really be effective in serving these people’s needs if my head is in such a different place from theirs?

Ultimately, though, I want to believe that a show on dietary choices can be produced appropriately even by a simple Unitarian-raised, secular humanist, left-of-center geek like me.

Can’t we all just get along, people?