Warm Up The Radio Uncle Ben - Old Man Radio Is On The Air.

When last we spoke I was a mere blogger, but now, I'm happy to say, I am a genuine, certified, bona fide radio broadcaster. Yep, you heard me right - I'm on the air, er sort of. You see, instead of just listening to podcasts and making an occasional comment about them, I decided to take the plunge myself by joining the podcasting world and making my very own podcast.

Yippee! Hooray! Old Man Radio is on the air!

You like the name? Yeah, me neither but you know I'm an old man and it's a radio show so the name seemed just seemed to fit. Anyways, recording it was a lot of fun in a frustrating, "can someone please tell me what the hell I'm supposed to do" kind of way. I used a program called Propoganda to record it, not because it's such a great program but because it was the only program I could figure out how to use, and I found a little company that was willing to host it for me with 100 megs of storage and unlimited bandwidth for 5 bucks a month.

And that was all there was to that.

You know it's true what they say about podcasting being so easy to do that anyone can do it. Unfortunately what they don't tell you is that it's easy for anyone to do, but even easier for them to do it badly. At least that was true in my case and I'm finding out fast that a good podcast involves a little more work than just recording and posting. Yes, I had more than my share of "technical difficulties", but that's all part of the learning process and I'm too stubborn to quit just because I made a fool of myself.

But like I said it was still lots of fun doing the show and I'm pretty sure I'm going to do some more. I've listened to it a couple of dozen times now and I think it's pretty good for the most part. At least the music is, I'm not so sure about the announcer. I need to put a little more enthusiasm into my voice or something, or at least try not to sound so morose and close to my death bed when I talk. Geez, I've been listening to this thing and I sound like somebody just ran over my dog. "Put a smile in your voice" - isn't that what they always say?

Oh well, I can work on that too - it's all just part of the debugging process, isn't it. In case you're wondering what the show is about it's a music show featuring acoustic songs I've downloaded off the net. I call it "podsafe music from the quiet side of the internet". Kind of catchy, huh? I should explain that "podsafe" is the term used to describe promotional music that bands from around the world have uploaded to the net to be distributed free of charge. It's a good way of getting themselves known and generating buzz, and a lot of it is just as good as anything you'll hear on the radio or purchase in the music store. My show plays the best acoustic stuff I can find, and it's done in a very laidback, relaxing style that I think anyone over the age of 40 would probably enjoy. At least that's what I'm shooting for.

Anyways, I hope you'll give it a listen. I'm trying to get the show added to the all the major podcast directories and for some reason I keep getting this awful feeling that they're going to listen to this podcast and say "What? You want us to add THAT to our directory? Are you out of your mind? I mean, our standards may be low but c'mon, they're still standards." But then again,who knows. Maybe they'll go ahead and add me anyways and soon millions of netizens around the world will be downloading my podcast and saying "Yes! That's just the podcast I've been looking for."

That's my fantasy anyways.

If you want to check it out then just add this link to your aggregator:

http://oldmanradio.libsyn.com/rss

Or, if you want to listen directly go to oldmanradio.com and click on the Direct Download link shown under Podcast 1. There's also a comments section there if you want to let me know what you really think of it.

And that's the show for tonight. Be sure to tune in again next week for another episode of Old Man Radio, podsafe music from the quiet side of the internet. This is Tony Myers signing off and wishing you all a Happy Father's Day.