Archive for November, 2010

So, I’ve been a bit of a social butterfly in the last ten years, gaining lists of friends from all walks of life that just love to chat.  I love the community and the socialness of it all.  When there’s something to converse about.

And you’ve all had this conversation…

Them: Hey man

Me: Sup

Them: Not much

And that’s it.

I mean, I think I know what’s happening here.  This is someone’s attempt to reach out.  But lets put this in a group setting.

Fellow walks up to me at, say, the Podcamp Pittsburgh meet n greet as I’m obviously engaged in gathering some delicious free snacks.

Them: Hey man

Me: Sup

Them: Not much

Awkward moment.  I go back to my snacks.

So this is a PSA to all of you Facebook and IM chatters out there.  Don’t be a Hey Man.  Have a followup.  Have a reason for being (online).  Give me a reason to put the free snacks down…

What a week!  We shoehorned all the work in, and dropped a show to celebrate Turkey day!  Woo!

Wrestling Mayhem Show 246: Justin Roberts: Internet Predator

This week, we have another instance of some big shot wrestler not respecting the show, getting “sick” and blowing us off.  Which is actually our friend, new ICWA graduate, and WMS Alumni, Doc Remedy AKA David Demirra, who got sick.  So we’ll let him have this one.  But it worked out! The fans pulled out with the emails and voicemails, and we had ThePrinceMagus back with a tremendous story that truly slandered a WWE ring announcer.  Pure.  Gold.

AwesomeCast 27: State of the Art Traffic Reporting

The Podcasting Tuesday opener got off to a rocky start, with the tech problems detailed below, but once we got rolling, we had a great time with Jim Lokay of KDKA TV here in Pittsburgh.  He had a great angle on how they’re using Twitter an social media at the TV station and he had some great feedback on all of the stories we had lined up from his own personal “Den of Apple products”.  Don’t think we haven’t considered a “Christmas in February” special with Lokay and his spinning tree a la Snowmageddon 2009…

Chachi Says 12: Fan Request 3

As we continued for the episode after this, I’m a fan of Chachi doing these on location episodes.  If nothing else, it mixes things up from just being Chachi.  Alone.  In his bedroom.  With an audience.  The fan interaction is growing.  And I’m liking how his show looks with some of the other equipment we have around the studio.  Looking forward to the potential show upgrade in the coming month.

And speaking of that technical glitch before AwesomeCast, we had one little missing piece. Something like a keystone to the whole operation. We’re talking a simple firewire 400 to 800 adapter that allowed the cameras that patched the Skype video to our BoinxTV setup. I’d had WireCast waiting in the wings to work with for weeks, but hadn’t had the chance to test it. Lets go crash course! We were a bit late starting thanks to me learning and verifying that the show was indeed recording to the hard drive, but here we are! We still need to get some titles worked out and some appropriate formats so I’m not up until 3 AM on a school night converting everything to edit, but it’s gold otherwise!

Mommas.  Don’t let your babies grow up to be IT Professionals.

That is all…

One of the great things about being introduced to so many people in my blogs are some of the great ideas and projects that I wouldn’t have heard of, or thought of.  Chris Maverick is a renaissance man of art as a photographer, artist, and pro wrestler.  Thanks to this, I had the chance to have him on in the past for the Wrestling Mayhem Show for his comic Cosmic Hellcats, and for a photography conversation on the AwesomeCast.

One big concept he introduced me to was this 365 concept that has been bouncing around the back of my head for months now.  With the recent uprising of apps like instagram or Path (the latter I gave up on after a week when I was the only one posting) I was thinking of ways to use them like a pic a day concept, and went back to this one.  You can think of it as the bloggers’ NABLOPOMO concept.  I don’t fancy myself a photographer, but I’m interested in the challenge of using devices like my iPhone to do projects like this and how to results might compare to the more avid amateurs and professionals in the group.

All that, and I realize I didn’t have enough pictures of myself for self promotion graphics like my about.me page…

If you’re interested, hit up the 365 Flickr Group.  There are some basic rules, but you can really do anything that’s self-portrait based.

What are you doing with apps like instagram?

Chachi Says 11: Fan Request 2

Chachi returns to his fan request concept, and continues with the next week’s.  He’s really building a real interactive community.  We’re going to have some fun working with that here in the near future.

AwesomeCast 26: The Slaughterhouse

From all of the crazy reorganized scheduling from this week’s Baristas shoot, we managed to find time Tuesday to film AwesomeCast on location at Rob’s place.  I’m really enjoying the experiments we’ve had with this show’s setup.  A laptop running my trusty BoinxTV, and my Panasonic patching in firewire and the shotgun mic.  An easy 2 camera setup.

I’m looking forward to our next few lined up guests, and some fun in studio stuff.

Wrestling Mayhem Show 245: Deeeeelicious Chesty

And speaking of in studio, you can’t have a bad show with our favorite local indy guest Jimmy Demarco.  We were supposed to do this Sunday, but had to back this up to Thursday due to some unavoidable issues.  But we had a great hour and a half with Jimmy and Chest Flexor.  The fans were alive in the chat, despite the recording date move, and the questions pored in throughout the week leading up.  Jimmy lost his career ending match Saturday night, but I hope that doesn’t keep him from stopping by to have some fun on the show.

Music Funtime Show 26: Paul Hammond

Dr. Espling really stepped up our show quality this week.  He moved his segment from an audio setup to video to suite our expansion to YouTube and Blip.tv and stepped things up.  No I have to work on the rest of the show to keep up with what he’s submitting.  Only leads to great things.  Also part two of my interviews at TrackAddict Records with my old friend Paul Hammond.

With the whole crazy schedule, I didn’t get a chance to do our wrap up video, so I decided to throw something together when Chachi was over tonight doing this week’s Chachi Says.  Look for that late Monday.

Several weeks ago, I was let onto a site called about.me.  Aparently some industrious folks obtained that domain and decided to do something ridiculously simple that works.

Just a look through their gallery of current users give a great indication of a first impression page you could easily put on your email signature or business card to easily connect your colleagues with everything you do.  Yesterday, I finally received my invitation after maybe a month or two of waiting.  You can reserve your name (mine is about.me/mikesorg, btw) now and have it handy when they are ready to open up to more people.  It’s a mad rush to be the first to get your name.  I know Veronica Belmont is pretty good at being THE Veronica on services, and was one of the first stand outs of what a nice picture* and some text could do on here.  Some people with more unusual ethnic names may have a good chance right now, but several million strong “Michaels” have a harder time.

The interesting thing is, just as I was climbing on board the about.me bandwagon, another player jumped on my radar in the form of Flavors.me thanks to yesterday’s episode of Net@Night.  While the domain doesn’t seem as effective as about.me’s I think there’s still something here.  This site offers a quick and easy way to build almost the same thing as the former service, as proven by my quick build that looks almost like the above page.  Both offer some great ways to integrate your social media sites.  Flavors.me seems to have far more ability to integrate services like Gowalla and ever expanding options.  The major difference is a little more robustness in creating more of a web site than just a simple splash page, but most of those robust features come along with a $20 a year fee, which definitely doesn’t hurt the pocketbook by any means.

Websites are getting easier and easier.  Part of the reason I feel my Photoshop skills slipping day by day as I relie more on WordPress, Squarespace, and Blogger accounts to create pages to get things done.  This just made it that much simpler for everyone.  It’s to the extent that I’m considering abandoning my long overdue for an overhaul mikesorg.com portfolio page to just point to the about.met/mikesorg.  Or perhaps to replace all of the .coms and Twitter in my email signature with this url instead, since it can prove as an access point for anyone to touch base with me using the service most comfortable to them.

Either way, I think it’s a good idea for anyone looking to put themselves out there and be discoverable to jump on these sorts of services, if found.  For me, I’m on a personal mission to become the Alpha Michael Sorg on Google, and this could be another tool in redundancy to that effect.

*A big thanks to Mulango for helping me hash out a photo concept for this page and aiding with his better equipped iphone 4 for taking the pics.

Chachi Says 10: Nintendo Power
Chachi get’s the most geeked up since starting this show.  Power Glove, NES cartridges out, who whole bit.  Think it was a good show to touch on some of his favorite old school games.  You know, for the young kids that need to know this stuff.
AwesomeCast 25: Not As Cool As iCarly
A fine example of what happens in a perfect storm of experimenting with a new Skype Beta, a slow news week, and nothing real worthwhile planned for a show, guest or new topic wise.  Well, it happens.
Wrestling Mayhem Show 244: Nasty Feauxgina
Thanks to Missy on this one.  I didn’t know what to expect going into it after seeing how boisterous they were on a shoot interview in recent months.  We ended up getting only Jerry Sags of the Nasty Boys due to a miscommunication in the number for his partner Brian Knobbs.  It was a hefty 50 minute interview, but for those that love hearing some of the old classic guys talking about the wrestling biz, this interview is for you.
Music Funtime Show 25: TrackAddicts Records
I was fortunate enough to go out and check out TrackAddict Records first hand and chat with Ron and even my old friend Paul.  Have one more coming up where we talk to Paul, who really puts over this group as a whole.

And a side note: I have finally become Mayor of Mayhem Studio once again…

A review I wrote for Music Funtime Show’s web site.

I enter this review as a long time fan of hed pe.  I recall the thrill of seeing them live on the Jaegermeister tour (alongside the rather disappointing-live Saliva).  I was broken in on Broke, which was responsible for a lot of mainstream explosion for the group.

This album marks half of the band’s album career on the independent Suburban Noize Records.  I’ve talked from the start about the difference in style from this newfound freedom since they made that move from the major label situation for their first four albums.  Truth Rising feels like a perfection of the styles expanded on in the three previous independent albums.  My first feel of this album was how listenable and solid it was the whole way through.  Partly harkening back to the days of Broke that I still spin to this day.  On the bonus CD included with my copy, Skull & Bones, Jered actually discusses about how they didn’t limit their song styles and let the intros happen.  Some may not like the expanded intros, like my colleague on Music Funtime, but I enjoy the narrative that hed pe is attempting to put out there.  This bonus CD adds to that even more to clarify the message that Jered’s put out there for four albums now, on the internet, and in interviews.

Some of that throwback sound tat surprised me was Lajon Witherspoon of Sevendust on the track “Stand Up”.  The elements of punk rock and hip hop are present, almost as if by sections on the album, and not quite as jarring as in past releases to go from track to track.

Altogether, one of the best, solid releases from hed pe since their earlier major label days.  This band is further proving the Suburban Noize move was a good one for their longevity.

You can find more on this album in our first “head to head” review between Chachi and myself on Music Funtime Show 25.

This morning, I was commuting a bit early so Missy could get drilled at the dentist, and came across a crew of turkeys.  I never recalled coming across such a spectacle A) so close to Thanksgiving, and B) even out in the middle of no where that I hail from.  I think it’s a pre-Turkey Day uprising by our feathered population.

Hide your kids. Hide your basters.  Hide your cranberry sauce….

Chachi Says 9: Fan Contributions
I’m really happy with how Chachi has taken on the interactivity possibilities of his show.
AwesomeCast 24: The Show of Two Fires
Another week we called on our past guests, and step up they did!

Wrestling Mayhem Show 243: Mayhem Playhouse
Another fun show on an election night.

Music Funtime Show 24: Contest Time!
This was something of a light show.  I have a concept that gets tested out on episode 25 for a face off review of the new hed pe CD, but we did officially launch our first Twitter contest at Sorgatron Media!  And so far, I’ve been enjoying the response!

I’ve had issues with some of the older hardware in the studio.  I’m also a big fan of LogMeIn.com’s free service (and plan to buy the iPad version in the future).  Here’s a little bit on how I’m using it to turn some of those older machines into dummy terminals.