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GeekNights 20100601 - Zooloretto

edited June 2010 in GeekNights
Tonight on GeekNights we review the 2007 Spiel des Jahres winner Zooloretto. In the news, Mario jumps the flag pole and Super Mario Bros. X.
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Comments

  • That Super Mario Bros X game is pretty hot.
  • GeoGeo
    edited June 2010
    Gonna replace Scott's mic, huh Rym? I should have known...
    Post edited by Geo on
  • RymRym
    edited June 2010
    Gonna replace Scott's mic, huh Rym? I should have known...
    Mic? His microphone is a new top of the line Shure Beta SM-58a. There's nothing wrong with it. I replaced his XLR cable, which had a compromised solder link (and was also a cheap Radio Shack piece of crap from five years ago). Are you telling me there were further audio problems in this episode? I need a timestamp to see what the problem was.
    Post edited by Rym on
  • There were some brief audio hiccups in some places.
  • There were some brief audio hiccups in some places.
    With Scott, or just me? Were they hard cutouts or static interference? I only listen to a statistical sampling of any given episode, so any problems weren't in the areas I checked. I won't have time to run a signals check on the whole rig until the weekend at the earliest, so I have no way to troubleshoot without detailed accounts of any issues.

    If just Scott had audio problems last night, then something is wrong with the mixer most likely, as I've already replaced the problematic cable, and the odds of two cables being identically broken are pretty low.
  • The audio problem was just there. It happened in the meta moment, I think. Same problem as before.

    Got things of the day links?
  • edited June 2010
    More audio glitches on Scott's end. 29:15 ish. Also around 32:00 when talking about fixing T&E.

    EDIT: Much worse at 34:20.
    Post edited by Luke Burrage on
  • Got it. I'll switch Scott to a different channel for Thursday. If that doesn't solve it, it's time for a signal test.
  • Harry: Alright, pop quiz: The airport. Gunman with one hostage, he's using her for cover, he's almost to the plane. You're a hundred feet away.
    Jack: ...
    Harry: Jack?
    Jack: Shoot the hostage.
    Harry: What?
    Jack: Take her out of the equation. Go for the good wound and he can't get to the plane with her. Clear shot.
    Harry: You are deeply nuts, you know that? "Shoot the hostage"... jeez...
    I find it amusing especially since Dennis Hopper was in this movie and Rym mentioned it earlier. :P

    Also in regards to the website, I noticed you changed the feeds. Are the feeds to the specific day of the week shows no longer be available on iTunes?

    I know I can just go into the archives to download them, however having them on iTunes was pretty nice.
  • Also in regards to the website, I noticed you changed the feeds. Are the feeds to the specific day of the week shows no longer be available on iTunes?
    The specific day of the week feeds were removed by iTunes, not by us. We haven't changed a thing. Apparently Apple didn't like us having five separate entries in the podcast directory. The individual feeds for each day have the same feedburner URLs that they have always had. Anyone subscribing to the Feedburner RSS feeds should see no change.
  • Love the new episode. Especially loved that Ke$ha/Black Eyed Peas mashup. Made that song at least somewhat tolerable for me.
  • One other thing. The title of the podcast in iTunes used to be something like this:
    GeekNights 20100601 - Zooloretto

    And now it is this:
    Zooloretto

    I prefer the old way, as at least I can see if the episode you've posted is from last year.
  • I prefer the old way, as at least I can see if the episode you've posted is from last year.
    I think I agree. That might not have been Scott, though. I use a different library for ID3s currently, and it's shitty. I may have inadvertently changed something, causing iTunes to read it in differently.

    We're going to reformat the ID3s with Scott's new system regardless. I just have to spec out the field standard going forward.
  • I prefer the old way, as at least I can see if the episode you've posted is from last year.
    Will fix. I assumed this was controlled by the ID3, and not the RSS, so I had no idea it would change and didn't even check.
  • Nope, iTunes doesn't look at the ID3 tags, or from my podcasting experience it hasn't in the past. That's all RSS side.
  • RymRym
    edited June 2010
    Will fix. I assumed this was controlled by the ID3, and not the RSS, so I had no idea it would change and didn't even check.
    Frankly, iTunes seems to mix and match some of the info it pulls from the RSS and the id3 for different aspects of the files. It's confusing and annoying.

    For example, it grabbed the cover art from the RSS feed, but the individual song art from the id3. Once, we changed the RSS art, and the cover art changed, but the second time we changed it it never did.

    There are several different places in an id3v2 where you can place an image file. iPods use one, but not several similar others. Some other players seem to use all of them in different places...
    Post edited by Rym on
  • edited June 2010
    Rym, you have the most offensive taste in non-classical music. And Scott, I think you need a new mic or something. There have been moments when you've dropped out completely, or your voice turned static-y, in the last handful of shows.
    Post edited by whatever on
  • Excellent mashup, Rym! As I am a fan of mashups myself, here are a few more of my favorites.

    A-Ha vs. Coldplay

    United States of Pop

    and the musical 'essay' that started it all for me...
    Pachelbel Rant
  • Rym, you have the most offensive taste in non-classical music. And Scott, I think you need a new mic or something. There have been moments when you've dropped out completely, or your voice turned static-y, in the last handful of shows.
    This. And Zooloretto sounds really fun
  • I've been stuck on dial-up for several weeks, so I've been forced to download all my podcasts with wget and manually import them into iTunes (because iTunes is shite at downloading). I can assure you that most of the ID3 tags come from the RSS feed. From what I can tell Geeknights episodes typically don't have any tags at all, so they all get added by iTunes. Any tags that don't correspond to an RSS entry get left alone. Here is my guide:

    RSS -> tag added by iTunes
    <guid> -> ITUNESPODCASTID
    <pubDate> -> RELEASETIME
    <itunes:subtitle> -> SUBTITLE
    <itunes:author> -> ARTIST
    <title> -> ALBUM
    <item><title> -> TITLE
    <description> -> ITUNESPODCASTDESC

    Unfortunately, in addition to the issue with episode titles described above (which correspond to the title tags within each item entry), there is also an issue with the guid entries. guid tells iTunes which MP3 file corresponds with an episode listed in the RSS. Since the site change, these tags have changed format from
    http://www.frontrowcrew.com/episodes/2010/05/20/bread/
    to
    http://frontrowcrew.com/geeknights/20100520/bread/
    There should be no problems with future episodes, but this breaks archives of old episodes. Since the MP3 files still contain the old ITUNESPODCASTID ID3 entries, they no longer match up with the RSS guid entries, so iTunes duplicates a bunch of episodes.

    Hopefully this is an easy fix; if not, I can change the tags using regexp in Mp3tag, and post instructions here.
  • Yeah, basically, the way ours feeds work is I set a completely standard RSS feed with enclosures and such. Then I let FeedBurner automatically do the iTunes specific crap.
  • You're right, this is a really good dance song and it's right in that butter zone of dance-able music at 126BPM. This is definitely going into my next mix.
  • I'm sorry, fellows. I think that once someone bookmarks the forums, they almost never go to the front page again. In fact, how often to people go to the front pages of their favorite sites?
  • I'm sorry, fellows. I think that once someone bookmarks the forums, they almost never go to the front page again. In fact, how often to people go to the front pages of their favorite sites?
    Well, you go to the front page of web comics because the comic is there to read.

    I think our problem is that while most people go to a web comics page to see the comic, most people get the podcast in iTunes and don't need to come to our page for the primary content. Thus, we need to put some other stuff there to attract you.

    What would you guys think if instead of putting a new forum thread for comments on each episode I put those comments on the site itself, and the forum was just for other discussions? I guess you guys would still create a thread, and I wouldn't be able to stop you. But maybe it would get other people not in the forum to drop some comments.

    There have to be some things I can put on the site that will make people want to go there.
  • What would you guys think if instead of putting a new forum thread for comments on each episode I put those comments on the site itself, and the forum was just for other discussions? I guess you guys would still create a thread, and I wouldn't be able to stop you. But maybe it would get other people not in the forum to drop some comments.
    Maybe if we had the comments on the "special" episode-threads pulled into the web site automatically and displayed like comments. But then, if you click to try and add a new comment, it takes you to the forum.
  • Maybe if we had the comments on the "special" episode-threads pulled into the web site automatically and displayed like comments. But then, if you click to try and add a new comment, it takes you to the forum.
    This might be easier to do when Vanilla 2 comes out, but it's pretty tricky to do with Vanilla 1. Even then, that gets people away from our web site into the forum. I'm trying to get people to stay at frontrowcrew.com.
  • Even then, that gets people away from our web site into the forum. I'm trying to get people to stay at frontrowcrew.com.
    But it will push them into the community, which is better than nothing.

    For the site, we really need shownotes, an interactive calendar of live events, and a tagging/searching/browsing system that allows people to poke around for random episodes they might like. Maybe an embedded player with a "play a random episode" button.
  • Maybe an embedded player with a "play a random episode" button.
    Embedded player, yes. Random episode... no. We already have tagging/searching. We just have to go through and actually tag things. Browsing I have to work on.
  • Random episode... no.
    If we had shorts, or if the episodes also existed as discrete segments, the random button would get used. Look at the success non-serial webcomics have with them.

    The real killer app would be dynamically assembled audio. If we recorded the show in discrete tagged segments (split for each individual topic), people could listen to individual bits in real time. No one has that executed well.
  • One thing you can do is take pictures whenever you are at an event and post the pictures on the front page. Maybe a slide show and not just a link to flickr
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