Journal 60

Wow my last journal entry. I never thought this day would come. As with most other journals, I have no idea what to write. As much as I sometimes despised writing these things I have to say that I am going to miss them. I enjoy just writing about my day or what I am planning on doing. Because of this, I recently installed Movable Type on my website kellehan.com. I will start writing in the blog every few days once you are done grading the portfolio portion. So really I thank you for making this assignment and I can say in all honesty that I will miss your class. Maybe someday I can be in a class of yours again, or I can come for a recommendation or something. Anywho, I think you should check out my podcast and tell me what you think about it being a fellow techie, I am always looking for more feedback even if it’s “this sucks,” because we can always keep improving. Otherwise, nice knowing ya.

Journal 59

So in my last journal entry I talked about my podcast and how I had finally finished it. Now with history out of the way, I think I should talk about the future. With the episodes of Season 1 finished and up, I got together with my friends involved in the show over Thanksgiving break and threw out the idea of a Christmas special. They were all for it and we are planning one now. It’s not really the start of a new season so we are dubbing it season 1.5. Also we might possibly be making a one-year anniversary show in February, but we are trying to focus on the Christmas special so we can make it really good, unlike most of the episodes in the first season. During all of this I also have to finish putting together the website, especially since we finally bought a legitimate domain name, Techspresso.net. The next few months should be exciting for Techspresso and I am looking forward to the second season starting this summer.

Journal 58

Well I am feeling pretty good right now. I say this because I recently accomplished a goal I have been working on for a little over half a year now. See I started a Podcast last February called Techspresso. From the name you can probably decipher that it’s a bout technology and coffee, my two loves. Anyway we cranked out two episodes to start off on a schedule of about one every month. I absolutely dreaded editing them though. I was using a program on my PC because at the time my PowerBook wasn’t good enough to run Final Cut at a decent speed. So needless to say I eventually stopped editing them. We shot 3 more episodes and I would always promise that I would edit them, but I never did. Now my MacBook Pro comes in, with a copy of FinalCut Express 4.0. I got on a little editing stint after the Open Source movie so after that I decided to take a weekend and edit them all and upload them to Vimeo (screw youtube). Now all 5 episodes are up on Vimeo for the world to see, you should check them out at either Techspresso.net (not finished, that’s my next task) or Vimeo.com/techspresso.

Journal 57

I remember you saying that you bought an iPod and/or iPhone earlier this year as a present for yourself. Because of that, I assume that you use iTunes. Well I am here to tell you to stop! I know surprising for me, probably the biggest apple fanboy you know telling you to stop using an apple product, but there is something better. And it’s Open Source! It’s called Songbird, you may have heard of it before. The reason I finally put some confidence in it is because it finally reached version 1.0. This is a big step and it means that many of the previous problems have been fixed. The program is actually based on Firefox of all things. This means that much like Firefox, it has a huge list of extensions to make it better. I personally enjoy the lyrics extension so I can actually sing “Revved up like a douce” instead of “Wraped up like a (feminine hygiene product)” lol. Best of all it now not only supports iPod management, but it also is finally able to play back iTunes DRM’d songs. There are a few flaws though, for one I can’t map the previous/play/next buttons on my MacBook Pro keyboard and it includes “The” when sorting so The Beatles and Beatles are completely different things. I can get past that because of all the extensions though. You should check it out, it’s available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Journal 56

4. Is there more freedom for such commentary on cable news?

I believe that there is more freedom for commentary like this on cable news, if not only for the reason that they have more time to fill. In the 24 hour news cycle that cable news stations go though every day, you can only report on a story so many times until it is beat to death and people will stop watching. So to fill that time, news networks like MSNBC, etc use commentary, because lets be honest, almost anyone in the world could go on for hours about how they feel on certain issues, throw someone in there that feels differently and you've got yourself a program.

Journal 55

3. Would this make his news show more -- or less -- appealing to you?

I am not going to doubt the need for some commentary in the media, but if Olbermann made a segment like this for everyone of his show, I would not enjoy it as much. I think that there would then be too much commentary and not enough actual news, which I believe is more beneficial to the viewer. Some people might disagree with me on this point, and for those people I say go watch Fox News if you want to see excessive biased commentary, with little or no factual news.

Journal 54

2. Do you think Olbermann's comments are sincere or is this a TV performance?

When I first started watching Olbermann's segment it seemed as if he was being sincere with everything he said. But as time went on it seemed more like a scripted performance. I am not doubting that he supports gay marriage, but it seems like he was I guess you would say "milking it." One example that first tipped me off was when he paused right after the beginning of his segment, took a deep breath as to seem deeply uncomfortable with Proposition 8. He repeated this many times throughout the segment, each time then switching to a different camera, which made it seem more like a performance to me.