…well there you go
Random Things
I’m watching Moonraker
Aug 30th
I’m watching the James Bond film Moonraker, and it’s rubbish. Right from the start this movie makes no sense. Basically it starts out with a very bad model of a space shuttle being transported on the back of a big plane. Two guys nick the space shuttle by flying it off the back of the big plane. This is the first big WHY? moments of the film. Why are they transporting this shuttle when it’s full of fuel? Even if it wasn’t stolen, if it just crashed, surly it would be better if that crash didn’t involve a load of rocket fuel.
So ignoring the fact that the space shuttle doesn’t actually fly like a plane does we move on. Ignore the pre-credit fight bit. It’s pointless and makes no sense. Now we get to the main plot of the film. It turns out that Mi6 don’t know where the space shuttle is and they’d like James Bond to find it. Fair enough. So Bond goes out to California to visit the bloke who made it. They have tea and Bond gets introduced to two ladies who look like they just might be high class hookers. Bond says sorry for losing the space shuttle and says he’ll do his best to find it, then goes for a tour of the space shuttle factory. In a classic bad guy moment Drax, the bad guy, makes a call and gives the order for Bond to be “taken care of”.
Ideas For Shows
Aug 23rd
It’s been a few weeks since I announced that Simply Syndicated was moving to a series based method of production. It’s a little bit longer since the bollocks show came to an end. So what of these series? Exactly what am I working on at the moment? I’ll share it with you now, you see, subscription donations to our network have significantly dropped off. There are literally four or five people who donate to the network. It hasn’t always been like that, there used to be loads of you. It’s easy to blame lots of things in these situations, but I’m settling on lack of output. We aren’t as good value for money as we used to be.
For some reason I don’t understand, the summer is a really bad season for media production. Historically our downloads drop off through late May to late August and then start climbing again. It has been like that for five years. Even television isn’t immune. Why do you think they don’t start big new shows in the summer? A couple of years ago American television experienced it’s lowest rated day in television history, in July.
So without further a do it’s time to tell you about what could be known as our autumn line up.
The following shows are things I’m personally working on and is by no means a complete list.
1. Daily show (liking the title What’s All This Then, but hesitate to do another show with a question for a title)
That’s “a” daily show. Nothing to do with The Daily Show. This will be a daily (duh) podcast comprised mainly of audio, but not exclusively. Broadcast live, I intend to keep the show to the 30-45 minute mark. The show will be “safe for work” and feature a mix of news, music, talk, chat, interviews, comedy stuff and whatever else I feel like.
2. TechSupportRich
The podcast that goes with the blog, kind of. techsupportrich.com has become my own personal space on the net rather than a tech blog. It just so happens that I write about tech stuff. The podcast will be exclusively tech related. The show will be a mix of audio and video, and feature different types of episodes throughout the week. There will be an audio version of any longer blog posts that I do, which will be broken down into product reviews and personal opinion. There will be a weekly tech news roundup, quite short, probably on Fridays. There will also be a screencast portion of the show featuring tutorials and different software. The videos will probably be available on YouTube and for download from our store in HD. Finally an actual tech support show. This will be once a week at the most depending on the response. If you’ve got a tech question then ask me. When I’ve got enough to do a show, I’ll do a show.
Phew.
3. Modelling With Rich (working title, not to be confused with Modelling For Rich, that’s a different thing all together)
Want to know how to build models? Thought so. Now you can learn along with me in my video show about models. I’ll be building them and showing you how to do it. I’ll also be reviewing things and maybe taking the camera to a few model shows. I’ll even talk to some train builders. Need a better camera for that. (http://www.musicalmousemat.com – great entertainment at great prices)
So there’s just a little taster. I’ll announce more as it happens. There are other things in production. Mike is working on a new series of Albums You Should Hear and I hear that Mr Tristram has a few ideas circling around.
See, this is what I’m trying to tell you all about
Aug 12th
I was sat at my desk, working away, when all of a sudden there came a crash from outside. I looked out the attic window and down below me I could see one of Pam’s kids with a couple of friends climbing over a fence in to our neighbour’s garden. Clearly they were using it as a short cut to get to our street. Our street doesn’t go anywhere any, they just hang out here to smoke away from Pam. I don’t know why because it’s illegal to buy cigarettes if you’re under 18 but it’s legal to smoke from 16. That means Pam must be buying his smokes for him.
What bewilders me about all this is how dumb the kids are. That shortcut saves them from having to walk around a house. That’s A house, 1 building, maybe 30 feet. What was even more dumb was the kid looked into our house on his way back down the street and made eye contact with me. He knows I saw him, and yet they still went and climbed over on the way back. Here’s a video of them climbing back home just incase you missed it when I posted it on YouTube. Also it’s helpful if you’re still wondering what a chav looks like.
I bought this off Amazon
Jul 30th
It was only £3 or something. Amazon had it in stock and got it out to me right away.
An End To Podcasting As We Know It At Simply Syndicated?
Jul 20th
I would like to start this post with an apology. I did that thing where you write a question as a head line just to make people panic a bit and then click on a link. I know that you saw “An End To Podcasting As We Know It At Simply Syndicated?” and then came to this story under the impression that we might be stopping podcasting or something. We aren’t, at least not that I know of. That said I’m here to talk to you about an end to podcasting as we know it at Simply Syndicated so I don’t feel too bad about the head line.
Just short of five years ago we started making Movies You Should See. It was a very different set up in those days I can tell you. There were certainly fewer podcasts around. It seems like there are just so many these days. When we started we didn’t really know what was going to happen or what the future would hold. We just knew that we were making this show every week and people were listening to it. It wasn’t long before other shows started. Make It So was next I think, then The Bollocks Show, it’s all a bit of a blur after that. As all of this was going on we still didn’t know what was going to happen in the future so we kept on making all these shows week after week, for what was beginning to feel like forever.
Of all the shows that Simply Syndicated have ever produced only two have had an official last episode. Some have faded away to nothing for various reasons, but very few of them come to an end. We just make them week in week out, FOR EVER. Are you beginning to see a problem here? It’s time to get realistic and start thinking about the future. Are we really going to make Movies You Should See or The Definitive Word for ever? Of course not, that’s a ridiculous thing to suggest. We took a break from doing Make It So for a while, but we came back a bit more ready to do the show. Obviously we could be tighter but hey, if it was a problem you wouldn’t be listening. The point is that the break did us good (as is this break we seem to be in at the moment due to various logistical problems).
It’s not just us that could do with a break sometimes, it’s listeners too. From a listeners point of view I can see two problems: More >
What are we missing?
Jul 12th
There are lots of online stores like MusicalMouseMat.com that I use. Every so often I find myself saying “If they did X, Y and Z or sold A, B or C then I’d buy it right away”.
The trouble is that we assume that the people selling these things know that they should be selling it, they just don’t sell it for whatever reason. That may be the case for movies and tv shows, but that’s pretty much it. The rest of us just go around selling what ever we can when ever we can. That means that we miss things. I’m very sure that there are some of you out there chomping at the bit to get your hands on some stuff that we could have in our store, but dont’.
I’d love to know what those things are. What are they? Let me know and I’ll see if I can make things available.
I think they fixed it!
Jun 28th
We use Magento as the back end system for MusicalMouseMat.com. It’s generally brilliant. However since I first installed it back in March it has been a bit reluctant to provide Google Analytics with any data. I updated the system last week and look what happened! I think they fixed it!
