Chit Chat Across the Pond Lite and Programming By Stealth are both searchable now in iTunes, the Apple Podcasts app, along with Downcast, Pocketcasts and Overcast. I put out a call for help – I need recorded reviews some time next week for the following week’s show because we’re going on yet another vacation. Videos are now a button on the podfeet.com home page so you can get to them more easily and I explain how Helma helped me make that happen. In Dumb Question Corner I’ll answer Rod Simmons’s boss’s question about how to mark up emails on an iPad Pro. We’ve got two more NAB 2017 interviews: we’ll talk to B&H about their mobile microphones, and GoPro about their new Karma Drone. I’ll walk you through all of the intricacies of tech goodness in how I think I’ve finally rid podfeet.com of the Black Bars of Doom (trademark Donald Burr).
Hi this is Allison Sheridan of the NosillaCast Mac Podcast, hosted at Podfeet.com, a technology geek podcast with an EVER so slight Apple bias. Today is Sunday May 21, 2017 and this is show number 628.
As I hoped, our new podcast feeds for Chit Chat Across the Pond Lite and Programming By Stealth are now live in iTunes and so propagating across to your podcatchers of choice. It’s funny, even though most people don’t use iTunes any more, most of the podcatcher apps just scrape the listings there to make their lists. Makes it easy on the podcasters of course because we don’t have to run around submitting our feeds everywhere. So far I’ve confirmed that they both show up in search on Downcast, Pocketcasts, Overcast, and of course the Apple Podcasts app. I’m really happy to hear from people how well received this new option was, especially since I heard from both the people who like the lighter versions and those who really like the propeller beanie episodes.
Chit Chat Across the Pond
This week’s Chit Chat Across the Pond is a Programming By Stealth episode, number 35 of x. In this installment, Bart explains his solution strategy for last week’s homework, which was writing tests to check the code in his Bartificer Link toolkit. I enjoyed his explanation because in the discussion he explains how using the very Test Driven Development he was trying to teach us, he found two pretty major bugs in his own code! How’s that for eating your own dogfood?
After finishing our homework (at least HE finished it), we move onto some fun HTML stuff with formatted text boxes. Finally, we make a start on what will be an on-going project. The idea is to combine our understanding of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, and QUnit to implement a zero-player with a really cool computer science back-story.
And as always Bart’s full written tutorial is available over at bartbusschots.ie/…. And you can subscribe to our shiny new Programming By Stealth feed in your podcatcher of choice.
Call for Help
I just looked at the calendar and realized that I’m going to need your help in the next week or so. Steve and I are going on a vacation to Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Tetons with our friends Bill and Diane. We’ve been talking about doing this trip together for about 20 years. They go there all the time but somehow we’ve never gotten around to it. Now here’s where you come in.
We leave on Thursday June 1st, which means if we’re not going to break our 12 year streak, I have to produce a show on Wednesday May 31st. That means I’ve got about 3 days to put it together. No way can I do that on my own. Please look around in your gadget bag, scan through your Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android apps and find something you love and do an audio review of it. You can even use the mic on your phone if it’s good enough (the iPhone’s mic is extraordinarily good). Of course some notes to go along with it would be swell but they don’t have to be as thorough as mine.
I you can get these reviews to me this week, say by Sunday the 28th of May, I won’t panic. I sure appreciate your help. By the way that means there will be no live show on Sunday the 4th of June. I’ll try to remember to remind you but I have already updated the NosillaCastaways calendar to reflect that. (Copy this URL and subscribe to it in your calendar:
http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/p4eqmsjrta23puioq768nuko0k%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
Videos Now Accessible from Home Page
When I redesigned podfeet.com, I had two main objectives. One was to simplify it to make it clean and peaceful. The old site was all cruded up with every crazy idea I’d ever thought of to add. There were rows and rows of confusing menus across the top and sidebars all over the place. I think I achieved goal number one. Goal number two was to expose those things you do want to have at your fingertips. That’s why we have nice big red buttons to take you to the big stuff, like blog posts, and podcasts. Goal number two was achieved.
But when I did all this I knew there was a danger that I would start thinking of things to add. How do I resist the temptation to add cool stuff? Well, if I can achieve the addition while keeping goals one and two still achieved, then maybe it’s ok.
It occurred to me this week that there’s no easy way to get to Steve’s videos on podfeet.com. Sure you can find them by going through the blog button but you’ll be scrolling past text blog posts to get there. He does a ton of work on them and I can imagine that a lot of times you’ve heard about something on the podcast and you’d like to go see it. You should be able to get to those videos more easily.
Steve and I talked about adding a video button alongside podcasts and blog posts. The problem is that my theme would make the buttons wrap around into two rows. That’s not a big problem, because we have lots of vertical space in that big image of my laptop, but the way they wrapped there wasn’t a gap between the two rows. The second row was sort of stuck to the bottom of the first row.
Enter Helma, the queen of CSS. She and I got on a Skype screenshare today and we hunted for about an hour until we found the exact spot where we could add a little bit to my style sheet and make it look beautiful, even with an extra button. This was a great thing to do anyway, because if you’re on a smaller screen the buttons already wrap and they looked dumb. Now from a phone to a tablet to a 27″ display the home page looks awesome, AND it’s more functional with the addition of the Video button. I kept the videos also accessible from the blog post button just because I like to see it that way.
Since I had Helma stuck on Skype with me, we did some messing around with the CSS that controls the menu buttons at the top, like “Find Bart”. Now they’re cleaner and fit on one line if you’ve got a big enough screen.
This week Helma is traveling to Ireland and she’s going to meet up with Bart. I’m SO jealous, I’d love to be there with them.
Blog Posts
Dumb Question Corner – Can I Mark Up Emails with Apple Pencil on iPad Pro?
Now let’s hear another interview from NAB, with B&H, one of my favorite gadget suppliers:
NAB 2017: B&H Mobile Microphones
Patreon and Amazon
When you hear me say that the podcast is supported by the Amazon Affiliate Links on podfeet.com, you might think that it only counts if you buy gadgets like hard drives and cameras. But you can actually buy movies, and shoes, and pants and watercolor markers and foam ear plugs and coffee and glue and chili and diaper bags and stove pip hats and blood oxygen monitors and pet water bowls and blankets and food for your African Grey bird? Yup, all of those things were bought by NosillaCastaways in the last few months using the Amazon Affiliate Link under Support the Show over at podfeet.com. A lot of people have told me they made life easy by making a bookmark they call Amazon but goes to podfeet.com/amazon. I can’t thank you enough for your support.
NAB 2017: GoPro Karma Drone and Grip
Hunting Down the Black Bars of Doom
That’s going to wind this up for this week. Don’t forget to send in your Dumb Questions, comments and suggestions by emailing me at [email protected], follow me on twitter @podfeet. Remember, everything good starts with podfeet.com/. podfeet.com/patreon, podfeet.com/facebook, podfeet.com/googleplus, podfeet.com/amazon! And if you want to join in the fun of the live show, head on over to podfeet.com/live on Sunday nights at 5pm Pacific Time and join the friendly and enthusiastic NosillaCastaways. Thanks for listening, and stay subscribed.
Try checking out GOURCE, run it on your website maybe, upload it to youtube