Archive Mode on Podcast Addict

I recently started using a feature on Podcast Addict and immediately wished I had learned about it years ago. That is archive mode. The immediate impetus was the posting schedule for the podcast version of Cartoonist Kayfabe. I believe they space out the posting of YouTube videos to one or two a day but they drop the audio podcasts in batches. I love them, but I don’t want to listen to 15 episodes of their show in a row (true story.) Thus, I learned how to use this mode out of self-defense of my own ear sanity.

I would imagine that all mature podcatchers on Android and iOS have something like this. Podcast Addict is the only one I use, so the only one I know how to work like this.

First, for the podcast you want to configure you need to open it up from the main list of podcasts. If there are no unplayed episodes, you will need to click the eye icon to make it show. Click the gear in the upper right to go into the settings menu.

Once in this menu, scroll down. There are two different sets of options you will need to override (unless you want to do this at the global level for literally everything you listen to.)

The first is “Download”. Toggle on the option to override global settings, then click the line under that to set options. You will want to have Automatic Download and Archive Mode enabled. You probably want “Download older first” enabled unless for some reason you want to listen to this front to back. I set “Batch download limit” to the same as the number of episodes I will want to keep. In most cases that is 1.

Back out of that menu and look down a few options to “Automatic cleanup”. Again, override and click into the set of options. This is what makes the heart of this work. Paired with the options above, this will keep one and only one (or whatever you choose) available in your playlist. Set “Keep at most” to one or the number you like. If you are starting this up at a time the number is greater than this, you will see no immediate effect. Once you get below this number, you will then see the behavior of downloading another episode once one is finished.

In practice for me, I will finish an episode of Cartoonist Kayfabe and then the playlist will jump to the next available podcast. This will be immediate. Even with the fastest internet, it will take a few seconds to download another episode. Unless a new show comes down with a higher priority (such as I set timely news shows and a few favorite programs) effectively ever other episode played will be one of these. It does work out pretty nice. I don’t want to listen to a whole bunch in a row, but I don’t mind a strict alternation with the rest of my playlist.

I do have a few shows where N is more than 1. For the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast I have it set to 2 episodes. That’s a bit moot because I have never gotten that low since I set this up. I went from automatically downloading episodes that I seldom listen to (mostly when I’m reading) to putting it in to archive mode to only have a few episodes at a time. It keeps the playlist from getting so redonkulously large while having the same net effect.

That’s how I do this. Let me know if this helps for you or if you have some other tips and tricks I don’t know about. Happy listening!

Jackie and Laurie on the Trinity

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From the Jackie and Laurie show this week:

Discussing church, God and the trinity:

Laurie Kilmartin: “They lose me when they try to explain the holy trinity to me. It’s God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. It’s three different things but they are the same thing. What? That just doesn’t make sense to me. If you can explain to me how three and one are the same number, by all means but no one ever has.”
Jackie Kashian: “You’ve never watched The Transformers? You take three different action figures …”

Attempting Normal on Sale

For those of you who are fans of Marc Maron’s podcast, his book Attempting Normal has been out for a few years but the Kindle version has been over $10 for all that time. Right now it is on sale for $1.99 and there is never any way of telling for how long so if you have an interest in the book I’d suggest getting it sooner than later.

No time like the present, friends. I just bought mine because my experience in these offers is there are two primary time periods for them: now and never.

Me on the Kindle Chronicles

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I am struggling to get the show out this week. I really owe everyone a show right now, but I am so tired I am going to bed in about 10 minutes. I’ll get the show out soon, but for now I wanted both point to and put in the feed the recent interview I did with Len Edgerly for the Kindle Chronicles.

I was extremely honored to be invited to be on the show. I’ve been listening for at least 5 years, probably significantly longer, and it was great to be a guest on a show of which I am a fan. We talked about writing, reading on Kindles, how I am one of the few book lovers who doesn’t exempt their books from the rules of hoarding and stuff like that. Len is a very good interviewer and the time just flew by. I would love to fill the role for him that Tony Randall once did for the David Letterman show. When you are short a guest, let me know. I’ll jump on anytime.

The show is downloadable from Len’s site, or if you are a subscriber to this podcast it will come down automatically. Let me know what you think about it!

Whadda You Want From Me?

Ever since playing this song on Mad at Dad the other day, I’ve had Billy Squier’s “Whadda You Want From Me” in my head. It’s been 48 hours with no sign of slowing down, so why not share it with everyone? I hadn’t heard this song in easily 15 years, maybe more like 25. I had forgotten 1) how good it is and 2) it is totally an Aerosmith song that Joe Perry didn’t write.

First Episode of Mad at Dad is in the Can

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Just for this first episode, both Butler and I are adding it to our regular show feeds. If you are an Evil Genius Chronicles listener or a Rock and Roll Geek listener and you want to hear more, you’ll need to go to the Mad at Dad website and subscribe. RSS links are up now, iTunes will be coming soon whenever they do whatever black magic voodoo it is that they do over there.

Other than me screwing up the original Blab and making us get a new link 3 minutes before the show, it went OK. There was a little weirdness that you always have from a new thing on a new system but it was fun. We plan on doing it again next week. If you want to get notified when we go live, you can go to Blab.IM and subscribe to our channel or whatever it is. It seems to work pretty well.

The audio player is below, it is included in the regular feed, and the video is embedded. What more do you want from me?

New Podcasts

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This week I defy the weather and local flooding to start not one but two new podcasts!

First, I will record tonight, Monday October 5th at 10:15 PM EDT with Michael Butler of the Rock and Roll Geek Show. It is called Mad at Dad, and it is the two of us talking about our lives, David Bowie and other matters of import. It will stream live via Blab.IM and you can come join us.

The second is called Milkfed Crime Blotter. It is a show devoted to comic book writers Matt Fraction and Kelly Sue DeConnick (their company is Milkfed Criminal Masterminds, hence the weird name of the podcast.) I will have different co-hosts from show to show but for my first will be joined by Christiana Ellis. I am lucky for this, as she is a rock solid podcasting partner and I can worry about everything else without having to worry about my co-host. That show will also be streamed live, this one via Google Hangouts, and will record Thursday October 8th at 10 PM EDT.

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Fun stuff, no? This makes two of the three potential projects I mentioned during the Dog Days of Podcasting actually coming to fruition. Just wait on that third, there is time.

Questions for Podcasters

Hey fellow podcasters,

I am setting up two new podcast sites right now. I get to start over clean without all the cruft of my EGC site. If you had to do it all over again, what WordPress podcasting plugin would you use? I have tried a number of them over time and am not sure which one to start over with. Powerpress? Podcasting TSG? Podlove? I am using Podpress on EGC and it is fine but I many not know what I am missing.

Thanks friends.

Dog Days of Podcasting 2015

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The Dog Days of Podcasting challenge for 2015 began yesterday. In this, a group of podcasters (23 this year and climbing) spend the month trying to podcast every day for 31 consecutive days. This will be my third year on the challenge and I did succeed at it both of the previous years in that I had no missed days or even many under-the-wire days.

This year as the previous two, I am subscribed to the master RSS feed for the challenge and am listening to every show published down the feed. Some are shows I am already subscribed to and some are shows I wouldn’t regularly listen to but in solidarity with my co-participants I am listening to everything.

One wrinkle that is new this year is that BeyondPod on Android is my podcast client with a more mature setup. One of my favorite things about it is the “Smart Playlist” feature. This allows you to set up a playlist made of components, and I have it set to put in up to 20 episodes of podcasts from my “Timely” category, followed by up to 50 from the regular categories. I can also define different update schedules per category, so I have it checking “Timely” every two hours. Because the Smart Playlist keeps the currently playing show at the top, when new shows come in they slot right in behind what I’m already listening to and keep going. It is actually pretty sweet and a better listening experience that I had in the previous years. It is enriching my listening experience as I hear all the shows coming down the pipe.

My theme this year is listener questions, and I have gotten a good load of them. I haven’t counted if I have enough to fully cover the month already, but there will be plenty of time to answer more. Ask em if you got em!

As always, thanks to Kreg Steppe for originating the idea and running the website. Rock on.

Antony Johnston and the Incomparable Network

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I am a fan of Antony Johnston’s comic The Fuse and have read some of his work on series like Daredevil. I listened to the episode of Surviving Creativity on which he was a guest, which was how I found out about his podcast Unjustly Maligned on the Incomparable podcast network. I love the high concept, which is that he gets a guest to defend something that is widely considered to be crap. I can’t wait to eventually hear Scott Kurtz defend Garfield.

The other surprise – other than Antony doing this podcast – is that there is an Incomparable network. I was a listener to the show on 5by5 for a relatively brief time. I can identify the episode that caused me to unsubscribe: 191, which featured a draft of old computers. I didn’t like the draft mechanic at all, and it felt at the time like scraping barrels to find things to draft so I unsubscribed. I had no idea that Jason Snell had broken away and used that program as the flagship of his own network. It seems like 5by5 has birthed more spin off podcast networks than any other source other than maybe TWiT (I haven’t checked these stats.)

There is no danger in my resubscribing to the main Incomparable podcast but I am listening to my first episode of Unjustly Maligned and I am enjoying it. My subscription list is like the tide, shows come in and shows go out. I’ll listen to this as long as I enjoy it, long may that be.

Evil Genius Chronicles Patreon Hangout

The first Evil Genius Chronicles Hangout will be this Thursday, July 9th at 12:30 PM EDT. This is the reward for the Patreon campaign reaching $40 an episode. That seems like a phenomenal success and I am super appreciative of every single one of our Patrons.

The Hangout will be broadcast live as a Hangout On Air, also on YouTube and will be available as a video later on. Come watch and see what crazy shenanigans occur! You can go to the event page on Google+ and RSVP there if you like. It will also be streamed via the embed on this post when it actually happens.

Happy Anniversary Skepticality

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I am currently listening to an episode of Skepticality from March and on the show, Derek mentioned that as of that recording, it was almost the 10th anniversary of the show which would be on … May 7th. So congratulations to Derek and Swoopy for ten solid years of putting out the show. They have survived and thrived through some incredible, near-death setbacks (talking literally here, not metaphorically.)

I’m glad the show is still going on, that Swoopy still makes the occasional appearance that always leaves me wanting more. I’m glad they are my friends and that there is a framework that allowed us all to meet each other.

Now to start on the next 10 years!