Fr. Matthew Cashmore

Priest in the Church of England. Father, husband, son. Keen biker.

Page 19 of 45

So I’m leaving the BBC….

August 14, 2008 /

Melbourne City Scape by Andrew Hux …. I never thought I’d say those words again, after one brief stint (18 months) a couple of years ago, I found I missed the rather amazing atmosphere and creative people.

There’s lots that can get on your nerves about the BBC (generally it’s finance), but none of that stops it being one of the most amazing places to work in the world, it’s easily the best place to work in the UK – and therein is the problem.

There was frankly no-one in the UK that could have got me out of the beeb, not with buckets of cash and technology that would have made me cry… but then along came Lonely Planet and devised a role that I simply had to go for, and thankfully have got!

So from the start of October I’ll be the new Innovation Ecosystem Manager for Lonely Planet based out of Melbourne in Australia – it’s all rather cool 🙂

How to podcast using your mobile phone

July 28, 2008 /

Sound simple doesn’t it. Just find a way of leaving a message on something like skype, then get it to encode your audio, upload it to the server and generate the XML. 

However, the whole skype thing is a bit of a red herring – I’ve been trying to make this work on and off for a few months, and as soon as I realised Skype wasn’t the way to go, it took me two days. In this post I’m hoping to demonstrate how you can podcast straight to your blog and iTunes from anywhere in the world using your mobile phone. Just like this – http://journeytorussia.co.uk/category/podcast

There are a couple of services that I’ve found that can make this work – unfortunately whilst both of them offer a free service to get the best you’ll need to pay a little cash.

The first is called Evoka – http://www.evoca.com/ – it’s a simple service that is essentially a bit like YouTube for audio. When you create an account you get a home page evoca.com/username and helpfully an RSS feed. Unfortunately there doesn’t appear to be a way to edit the MP3 tags, or to pull the content and RSS easily to your own domain – there’s certainly no way to edit what gets posted in the RSS feed.

The second service, and the one I’ve finally decided to use (and pay for) is called PhoneBlogz – http://www.phoneblogz.com/ – it offers a simple way to edit your MP3 tags, you can even (using the wordpress plugin) totally customise the posts that hit your blog, as well as pretty much everything in-between.

What I like most about PhoneBlogz though is that you can pretty much build everything using the free service then only pay if you want to create more than one, two minute audio recording each day. There are various levels of service – I’ve gone for the four, 15 minute messages each day package – costing a princely sum of $12.99 per month, the great thing of course is that for Russia we only need to pay this one and then drop to the free package again.

How to set up PhoneBlogz

It can be a little confusing, there’s no guide on the site and hopefully this will help. Whilst PhoneBlogz supports Drupal, WordPress, Serendipity, Blogger,Livejournal, Typepad as well as FTP uploads, this guide concentrates on WordPress.

Before you start on the below steps go to PhoneBlogz and register for a free account.

1. Download the plugins

You’ll need both the PhoneBlogz  and the Audio-Player plugins.

2. Upload and install the plugins

Upload to your plugins directory – normally found at www.yoursite.com/wp-content/plugins

3. Set up the plugins in your wordpress admin backend.

Click ‘Plugins’ and activate both of them.

Note… you’ll note find the PhoneBlogz plugin options in the normal ‘setting’s section – it lives in the ‘plugins’ tab after you’ve activated it.

  • PhoneBlogz settings – insert your access code and your WEBSITE password (not your account pin).
  • Tick the ‘use Audio-Player’ box if you want the flash player to appear in your posts.
  • Edit the posting text – this is the text that appears on your site every-time you send a recording.

I left the Audio-Player settings alone.

4. Edit the settings for posting on the PhoneBlogz configuration pages.

5. Set the category you want the audio to be posted to.

You’re supposed to be able to set this in the plugin – however it doesn’t work. There’s an easy way around this.

  • Click on ‘settings’ in your wordpress backend
  • Click on ‘writing’
  • Scroll down to ‘Post via email’
  • Set the Default Mail Category to your choice.

I’ve discovered that the plugin uses this setting – if all works well you’ll have all your audio recordings posted in this category

For example

http://www.journeytorussia.co.uk/category/podcast/

this then of course provides you with an RSS feed of all your audio recordings

http://www.journeytorussia.co.uk/category/podcast/feed

You can find out how to work out your RSS settings / feeds over at WordPress Codex.
That’s pretty much it. All I have to do now is create a new wordpress template page that will allow me to create a simple page at /podcast and includes all the posts in the category ‘Podcast’ beneath the text that currently appears there. Not being the biggest PHP head, I’m struggling with this bit at the moment – any helpful tips most appreciated!

Finalising the kit

July 28, 2008 /

TravelDri-Plus

It’s fair to say we may have been a little obsessed with our kit. The problem was of course, that we were delayed by a year – and there’s only so much time you can take up obsessing over visas and injections – so kit seemed a harmless hobby.

I’ve lost count of the tents we’ve tested, taken on the road and now finally, regretfully in some cases, rejected. This weekend we headed down to see Les from Traveldri-Plus – the mecca for anyone kitting themselves out with kit that will last more than one festival (Blacks – sorry guys you don’t hold a torch to this guy).

This is our second trip to Devon, and once again, for a chap who is running a business, we were blown away by our welcome (thanks for the sandwiches and tea!) and by his amazing depth of knowledge about this stuff.

I’ll take some more time tomorrow to write up what kit we actually bought and what the final tent arrangements are, but this photo may give you an idea until then 😉

Three in a row

Good news from Everyman

July 22, 2008 /

As many of you know, on this trip we’re raising money for Everyman – the male cancer charity – look up in the top right hand corner and you can do your bit too 😉

Anyway, great news from them today – they think they’ve found a new drug that will combat prostate cancer – this is your money and your support that’s making this possible – BBC News Story about new Prostate Cancer drug.

As we get closer to the off, and as we’re getting the party together – I just wanted to say that if you are coming to the party and are thinking about bringing a bottle… consider giving that money to Everyman instead… we’re very close to the £1000 mark and it would be great to tip it over the edge before we go.

Finally I’d like to leave you with a short video.

Be honest, I look good don’t I.

July 20, 2008 /

Thing is, I can’t help spending money in camping shops. It’s a problem, and it leads me to buy things I think I really need.

In this case I’m certain I need this. It’s a bivi bag, or you could call it a waterproof sleeping bag cover. Whatever your syntax of choice – it’s lovely and warm, and importantly waterproof. No good for full on storms, or even a light shower – but combined with the Basha – it may well mean I get the swag off the bike less than I initially planned.

New Bivi Bag

Some people shouldn’t be allowed to watch TV

July 3, 2008 /

willy warmerThe people who wrote in to the BBC Trust to complain about Top Gear showing an image of a frost bitten willy, and showing Jeremy Clarkson and James May enjoying a glass of rather nice booze as they drove to the North Pole (get that – they were driving to the North Pole – in a car – showing how comfortable it was to do so and that you didn’t in fact need to do it with a dog sled – which is hard) should be banned from watching TV.

We should be able to revoke peoples Sky Subscriptions, remove their freeview boxes and ask politely for the return of their TV License.

Seriously folks. It was funny, it wasn’t dangerous, and it was editorially justified. Get over yourselves.

Asus – a couple of months of ownership

June 30, 2008 /

I’ve had the Eee PC (701) now for a few months and have been using it as my primary machine whilst away and my secondary machine at home.

I must admit I’ve had a few issues with it. I’ve had to return it to factory defaults (keep hitting F9 at start up) about 5 times, all down to the fact that I got irritated by the basic set up and tried to install new and wonderful applications and advanced user interfaces. Fortunately all my files and documents are kept on the 8gb SD card slapped in the side, so I didn’t lose anything, but the re-install and then update of the system takes an hour or two – it can quite happily be done on the road – but if you want the updates you need a pretty hefty Internet Connection. I did manage to do it in Starbucks whilst away but it cost me about 20 GBP in coffee to sit there for two hours!

This has actually given me confidence in the kit, unlike most other laptop software setups, if it dies, you can just hammer F9 until it takes it back to the simple set up it came with out of the box – and to be frank – that’s enough to email, blog, skype, sort out my photos etc.

However, there is no way this machine can be used as your primary set up, I’ve had no luck sourcing a decent / simple video editor that has worked consistently, at least, no editor that can pull the DV files off my camcorder as they’re downloaded and then allow me to edit them (using MiniDV). You can combine about three bits of software to do this, but none of them are very good and you will end up getting very frustrated. The simple solution to this is to install Ubuntu and run a better application – combine this with buying a new SD based camcorder and you’d be laughing – of course – you’d need a little bigger internal memory too – the 4gb is quite limiting – even if you are just using it for the system and no actual file storage.

I’ve now had a good play with the new 900 units with a 20gb internal drive – much easier to install new apps and OS – the screen is much better, and it’s just more flexible all round. But at over 350gbp it’s into the territory of other probably better ultra light laptops, and frankly, whilst I can almost afford to lose 200gbp if the asus doesn’t stand up to the journey – 350gbp is somehow, more difficult.

If you accept it’s limitations in order to have a fantastically small, light, bomb proof machine; it’s worth it’s weight in gold. If you desperately need video editing, or advanced photo editing, it’s probably not for you, and perhaps you should have a look at the myriad of new ultra portables (for a little more cash) coming out of everyone from Apple to Dell.

There’s a good round up of the products available over at CNET

it’s a little out of date now and there are many more on the market – but it’s a good place to start.

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