Security Ripcord

First of all I would like to say that I am very impressed with the responses that I have received from the established podcasters out there.  I've had responses from Martin McKeay , Dan Kuykendall , Michael Santarcangelo , and (another new guy on the podcasting block) Alan Shimel.  I contacted them for a few promos so that I can start practicing leadins and I figured that they will get back to me in a few days.  Well, I was about to log off when the emails from the West Coast started coming in.  They started offering advice and suddenly DDOSed my host's server.  Luckily Martin had a solution, LibSyn and a few hours later I was up and running.  Little did I know that he was going to plug me and Alan the next day.  So, what was suppose to be a leisurely introduction into podcasting has built up a bit of steam.  No stopping now.

Luckily, as I stated, I was given a few words of advice that I was told I could pass onto all of you.  

Advice from Martin McKeay:

Some input:

-> Get your podcast to a hosted environment.  Don't try to host them
yourself.  Libsyn accounts start as low as $5 month.  Your current
bandwidth is too low to host the podcast, a problem which is very
clear when I tried to stream it.
->  Show notes!  It makes it a lot easier when you go to record.
-> If you're going to be doing this a while get a decent mic.  I've
heard a lot of good things about the Blue Snowball mic, which is
around $140.  Or you can get a M-audio MobilePre USB preamp and a
decent mic.  I've got a Audio Technica AT2020.  Check out Dan's
podcast setup at Mighty Seek
-> Something I just found out:  Don't export to mp3 from Audacity.
It's a great program but the LAME encoder introduces sound artifacts
into your audio.  Export to a WAV file and then open the file with
iTunes and use that to export to MP3.  I use Audacity to record, but
when I'm doing my encoding, I'm now using Adobe Audition.  As of
today, that is. I've also used Propaganda, which has a demo, is cheap,
but is fairly limited.  It's encoding is also better than Audacity's.

Relax and have fun.

 I have to say that without Dan's Podpress I would have been completely dead in the water.  Even after I DDOSed myself and updated to LibSyn it let me quickly and easily point to the file located on my LibSyn account.

 So, if you are going to try this, I am here to tell you, there is a lot of support in this community.  I'm sure they will be watching me closely.  Hopefully I can contribute.  

Time to start working.   Thanks to all who have listened already. 

Go forth and do good things,

Cutaway 

Podpress, podcast, StillSecure, LibSyn, The Security Catalyst, Network Security Blog, Mighty Seek

Here is the first addition of the Security Ripcord Podcast.  Basically I decided to delve into the podcast arena by going over my blog entries to practice speaking and editing the podcast soundtracks. In this first podcast I speak about my last blog entry which covered Security Through Teamwork where I gave a list of seven items that I think a security professional needs to consider when working towards becoming a good team member within an organization.

I decided to take Martin McKeay's approach of pulling a song from Garage Band and then using part of the song as an intro and then playing the whole song at the end of the podcast.  I did this because it seemed like the easiest way for me to start out and it gave me the chance to start editing different tracks and using fades.  The song and band I picked was Teamwork by Envision from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.   Unfortunately I did not mention the name of the band or this song in the podcast.  That is because I didn't think about adding the music until after I recorded the podcast.  

Hopefully in the future I will include a few promos from a few of my favorite podcasts.  I have to request those in the next couple of days so, hopefully by the next podcast I'll have a few to include.

The equipment and software I am currently using is very basic and includes a Logitech headset with microphone and the recording software Audacity.  There may have been a lot more effects and editing that I could have done but I am not aware of them at this time.  Additionally, because I am using Wordpress I decided to use Podpress to publish the podcast.  So far this has been easy but I still have to look into how this is going to interact with Itunes and I need to determine if I have to do anything extra to get it included through this service.  I don't think so but I'll have to look into it.  Thank you for Mighty Seek for this incredible plugin.

A few things that I noticed I need to do to help make the next podcast better include:

• Warm up my voice.  Speaking clearly is important.  Doing some basic voice warm up exercise, as they do in theater, will help with using the proper inflection and pronunciation.
• Create a script that includes all my references (such as the music) before the podcast.
• Find the music before recording the podcast.
• Make sure I devote enough time.  Man, it took way longer that I thought it would.  The whole process took between seven and eight hours of writing, recording, and editing.
• Create a logo.
• Come up with an intro specific to the podcast.
• Get promos from other podcasts.

Please let me know what you think and how I can make the podcast better by leaving a comment. 

Thanks to all. Go forth and do good things. 

Cutaway 

Audacity, Logitech, Podpress, Itunes, Podpress, Wordpress, Teamwork, Envision, Martin McKeay, Network Security Blog, Mighty Seek