I’m just gonna leave this one do all the talking.
Props to Paul for finding the best meme image for this.
Category Archives: Websites
Using Trello for editorial calendars
This past week I’ve been working on editorial calendars. The above one is a redacted version of the one for Hex Dimension. We’d already been using Trello to help plan site content, but recently I found out that the project management platform has a calendar feature that aligns your Trello board’s “cards” to to a calendar view if said cards have due dates set on them. Continue reading
Earlier today, I thought I was going to try and attempt some kind of Neuromancer like-feat with SlideShare after the service decided that the latest presentation I had painstakingly crafted for Radix decided not to have any working links. The presentation was meant to be made live by lunchtime and none of our source links or links back to the business were working after uploading it (I made it private to start with). Not exactly helpful for helping to keep us looking honest and to aid us in driving the various kinds of business goals that come with content marketing.
When stuff doesn’t work at critical times
Last week I interviewed the composer for Dredd 3D and Limitless – Paul Leonard-Morgan. But it had been a tough interview to sort out. Beyond wrestling with Paul’s jam packed recording schedule (he’s quite popular at the moment) there were technical issues behind the scenes.
First I found out that the phone setup I was going to use wasn’t going to work. I’d downloadable a call recorder and found out that it wouldn’t work with my non-jail broken phone (nothing in the app’s description had said I had to root the thing). I then tried setting up the H4N with the phone and tested that at home… that gave the worst feedback imaginable and my phone was not putting out the best quality audio once the feedback was sorted.
I was running out of time before I needed to call Paul. And so there was only one more solution. I texted him and asked if we could do the interview over Skype. He said yes, I gave him my Skype handle and he replied to give him a few minutes while he set-up.
An hour of frantic testing and failing at finding solutions was resolved through Skype and one particular software recorder (I didn’t have enough time to set-up with my usual podcast rig involving the H4N and a mixer and an M-Audio box). The software? MP3SkypeRecorder, which I found out last week won’t be working with Skype come December. I’d already used the programme for last week’s Nerds Assemble after the hardware setup failed.
What I’m trying to say is that 1) that interview was hard 2) always have back-up recording options and 3) people need to find alternatives to MP3SkypeRecorder and Pamela asap. (I’m getting myself Total Recorder.)
The interview nightmare
After a certain point, when I’m trying to get something sorted or maintained that I don’t otherwise have the skills to handle, I’ll start thinking about just doing it myself. It’s happened with Hex Dimension today (which has been down for almost six hours at the time of writing and our hosts are looking into it) – I’m starting to think that I’d like to build my own web server for all of my websites. As it is, Hex was “built” by myself after I failed to secure a web designer who’d stick on board.
I know nothing about building web servers, only the names of various web server applications. I’ve never even built a PC before and I’m contemplating building a web server somewhere. But then I hardly knew anything about messing around with the guts of WordPress and managed to cobble Hex together. But I am aware that this all seems a bit drastic – I’m thinking of building a web server rather than changing hosts, which is what people normally do in these circumstances.
It’s just… I have no guarantees that a new host would be much better. They could be even worst. At least if I sorted out the thing myself then I would only have myself to blame.
Sigh.
Drowning In Multimedia 