Hi, this is Allison Sheridan of the NosillaCast Apple Podcast, hosted at Podfeet.com, a technology geek podcast with an EVER so slight Apple bias. Today is Sunday, July 2, 2023, and this is show number 947.
Hindenburg Hiccups
Last week you may have noticed one of two different failures in the podcast. Shortly after I first published the show, Jill from the Northwoods alerted me to the fact that there were no chapter marks.
I rushed back upstairs and verified what she said. I checked my original M4A export using Rogue Amoeba’s Fission software, and determined there were definitely no chapter marks. That was an important diagnostic step because it eliminated Auphonic as a possible suspect in the stripping out of the chapters.
My first test in Hindenburg was to export it again without changing anything. I opened it in Fission and now my carefully handcrafted chapter marks were there. With no further testing, I reran the Auphonic process. The last thing Auphonic does is securely FTP the file to Libsyn where the audio files live out the rest of their natural days waiting for you to download them to listen.
This step failed as I expected because it was trying to push the same file name again to the same place. That meant a step to the dreaded Libsyn interface to manually replace the file. Since I’d done battle with Libsyn just a few weeks ago, I was able to find version 4 of the interface more quickly and remembered how to replace the file.
Whew! It was fixed, at least for any podcatchers which hadn’t too quickly downloaded the file.
And then listener and friend in real life Lynn posted in our Slack that the show simply stopped right after Security Bits. No outro by me and no outro music. Now it’s very funny to me that Lynn was literally the only person who pointed this out to me – does that mean that all of the rest of you never hear the outro? The only sad part was that I made a bunch of jokes in this ending, but you didn’t get to hear them if you got the chaptered version of the show.
I didn’t fix the truncation problem, because I couldn’t reproduce it. I went back to Hindenburg and exported again, and it had gone back to exporting the full length but without the chapter marks. I figured truncated with chapter marks was better than no chapter marks at all.
After many tests, I gave in and sent a desperate plea to the Hindenburg support email. It took a bit of going back and forth but they eventually figured out that it was a bug in the latest build, and Preben explained they’d fixed it in a new build.
I’ve done some testing and you should get a full show this week (including the outro) and you should get chapter marks. Fingers crossed everyone!
Stitcher is Closing Down
If you’re listening to this podcast using Stitcher, you’re going to need to find a new podcatcher. This week Stitcher announced that they’re shutting down their service as of August 29 of this year. I don’t want you to be left adrift without the NosillaCast and Chit Chat Across the Pond, so be sure to find the shows in your new podcatcher. If you’re on the iPhone, a fan favorite is the app Overcast by Marco Arment.
Correction about Regenerative Braking
Last week I talked about the Chevy EV Bolt that Steve and I rented on our recent trip to Houston. Alert reader and known scientist, Bruce, aka @UseTheData let me know that I’d made a technical error in my explanation of regenerative braking on electric vehicles. He did it privately and politely as is his style.
I said I checked the manual to see “if” the Bolt had regenerative braking, but Bruce explained to me that all EVs have regenerative braking. What I should have said was that I was checking to see if the Bolt had the one-pedal drive method of using regenerative braking. I’d like to say I didn’t know all EVs had regenerative braking, but back in the dusty cobwebs of my memory, I think Bruce has corrected me on this before.
It took me a little bit to understand the differences between one-pedal driving and regenerative braking. I am going to oversimplify this for the sake of brevity and clarity.
In an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle, when the brake pedal is applied, the car slows using the friction of the brake pads against metal disks or drums. This generates heat, which is wasted energy.
All electric vehicles have regenerative braking. Regenerative braking means putting energy back into the battery by allowing the electric motors to slow the vehicle. This puts energy back into the batteries, rather than wasting energy to heat. There are two different ways for regenerative braking to be applied in an EV.
Some, but not all EVs have a feature called one-pedal driving. One-pedal driving allows the driver to use just the accelerator pedal alone to accelerate and decelerate. When the driver eases off of the accelerator, regenerative braking is engaged. In emergency situations where a rapid stop is required, the driver can use the brake pedal to engage the friction brakes.
If a car doesn’t have one-pedal driving (or the driver has chosen not to use it), the vehicle is slowed by the application of the brake pedal just like an ICE vehicle. This will engage regenerative braking but will also blend in friction braking as required. This is less efficient than using only regenerative braking.
I always thought that one-pedal driving was synonymous with regenerative braking so I want to thank Bruce for correcting me. Bruce sent along a link to www.engineering.com/… that goes into a lot more depth on the subject. It starts by explaining how an AC induction motor/generator works and builds on that knowledge to explain how regenerative braking works. Thanks again Bruce for the new understanding.
CCATP #772 — Dr. Jason Briner on Studying the Greenland Polar Ice Sheet
Articles
Tiny Tip – Use Numbers to Print Multipage PNGs
Create a Test Volume to Diagnose Your Mac with APFS
Canon EOS M50 Camera – by Steven Goetz
Thanks for that great review, Steven. I put links in Steven’s article to the Canon EOS M50 on DPReview so people can learn more about it. You may be thinking, “But Allison, DPReview is being shut down by Amazon, why did you link to it?” Well, the good news is that this week we learned that Gear Patrol had purchased DPReview from Amazon so this wonderful resource to learn all about cameras is going to be sticking around.
Belkin iPhone Mount with MagSafe for Continuity Camera
Support the Show
This week, Stephen Ewell joins the ranks of Patrons of the Podfeet Podcasts. You may remember me mentioning Stephen. He works for the CTA Foundation, which is a national foundation affiliated with the folks who bring us CES. The foundation works to improve the lives of seniors and people with disabilities. When I go to CES, you’ll notice I often have interviews with people making cool assistive tech – that’s because Stephen helps me find these gems amongst the vast number of booths at CES. The fact that Stephen has committed his own hard-earned money to help support the work we do here warms my heart. If you’d like to warm my heart too, go to podfeet.com/patreon and pledge your support.
Tiny Mac Tips Part 7
Transcript of NC_2023_07_02
That’s going to wind this up for this week. Did you know you can email me at [email protected] any time you like? If you have a question or a suggestion just send it on over. You can follow me on Mastodon at @[email protected]. Remember, everything good starts with podfeet.com. If you want to join the conversation, you can join our Slack community at podfeet.com/slack where you can talk to me and all of the other lovely NosillaCastaways. You can support the show at podfeet.com/patreon or with a one-time donation at podfeet.com/paypal. And if you want to join in the fun of the live show, head on over to podfeet.com/live on Sunday nights at 5 PM Pacific Time and join the friendly and enthusiastic NosillaCastaways. Thanks for listening, and stay subscribed.