My Life on the Net

In this episode I talk about two different things faced by photographers in this day and age - the never-ending decision between film and digital and how the law causes confrontation between photographers and civillians.

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With the second episode of the Fused Reality Podcast coming out tomorrow I thought I’d help some people figure out why I want to do it and where I’m going to take it.  So, here’s some questions that were asked during my last live stream…

You’ve failed at keeping a podcast twice, why are you trying a third time?

Well they say that the third time is a charm–but the real fact is that previously the podcast wasn’t exactly fixed or gave me the satisfaction I desired (mainly due to pressure from a third party).  I stared podcasting when I was fifteen and I wasn’t suited back then to properly do it.  Hopefully with almost 4 years extra experience with podcasts and social media I’ll be much better.

What’s it about?

I was interested in one of my topics in my first podcast in which I talked about how smoking had affected me (I think it’s still lying around somewhere on the internet).  Within friends it drew some controversy and discussion and when the urge to podcast came back to me recently I was reminded by a friend of this episode and decided that it would be a good idea to talk about the issues that effect me again.

So is this podcast just going to be another form of self-obsessed ranting?

Nope.  Sure, I’m going to talking about some of the issues that relate to me–but the description entails that I talk about others too.  There’s loads of people with issues that I have no idea about who I’d love to interview and find out more about it  There’s artist, designers, social media evangelists, writers and loads of others  I’d love to interview and will pretty soon.

Wow. Sounds like you’ve got something coming together. Who’s coming on the show?

Well, I haven’t e-mailed anyone regarding being on the show but I will be doing so pretty soon. If it sounds like you want to come on the show and you don’t mind talking about the issues that effect you or your profession (that’s what it’s kind of about) then I’d love to have you on the show.  Just leave a comment here or email me at craig[at]fusedrealitystudios.com.

What do I need to be on your show?

Three things - issues to talk about, Skype and some free time.  It’d also be nice if you had a voice to use and a microphone.

Your Sound Sucks!

Yes, it does.  I’m moving back to Edinburgh on Wednesday and I’m happy to say that my better quality audio equipment is sitting there and waiting to be used.  Right now I’m just using a terrible Phillips Skype phone and can’t wait till I can get back to some real microphones.

I listened to your show and I want to leave some feedback.

Good or bad, I’d love to hear from you.  You can contact me in the blog comments, e-mail or record an audio comment so it will be on the next show.  One thing I really like is regular feedback.

You talked about a live stream earlier. What’s that?

I experimented recording episode two of the podcast with a live audience and found it to be pretty fun but also allowed me to have live correspondence (which is pretty hard to get any other means) and an ability for questions to be answered before the show is released.

I’ll be recording each Monday on BlogTV [http://www.blogtv.com/People/fusedreality] at 5.30PM Eastern (10.30PM BST) and thanks to my technical prowess you’ll be able to see both my webcam and recording processes (people liked that last time).

I don’t want to wait a week!

Well, episode two of the podcast is already recorded and will be available tomorrow afternoon. Each episode will be available on the Tuesday (the day after the live show) as it takes time to edit out mistakes often caused by stutters or long pauses while staring at the chat room.

To say I have read many books would be a very large overstatement. Unfortunately, being aware of my upbringing reminds me of how little I wasfascinated by the printed page. Needless to say, I was a tv junkie at a young age.

The odd thing about this realisation is that, as I’m entering my adulthood, is that I feel bad about abandoning this medium. Sure, I love print and while I would never pick up a newspaper unless there was literally nothing to read and no openwifi connection, I’d at least give it a go. The odd thing about my aversion to the printed page is that I love libraries. Now, while I do consider them a large waste of space and an extremely high fire risk–the knowledge theyposess is somewhat astronomical.

I once talked about how I would love the idea of a cheap eBook reader, and while I have been enjoying reading some of Cory Doctorow’s books on my iTouch, the printed page still holds some sort of essence that has yet to be transferred to the electronic page. Maybe it has, but I can’t afford those expensive readers that Sony and Amazon release.

While I am dyslexic, I was somewhat depressed over my English scores. I did well in practice but a D in the final exam wasn’t good (however, it did get appealed to a B…) and as my time came to an end at high school I really started to enjoy the subject.

I look back at some of the authors I admire and wonder how they do it. Then I start watching vlogbrothers and one of them, John Green, is an award winning teenage author. He’s been writing since a young age and the idea that I want to create books at this old age of eighteen may be a little much for this brain to handle. Sometimes I try my best in every subject. Shouldn’t I just settle for one?

Well, ever since I was young I’ve tried to excel myself in almost every subject. I started with my education, which was somewhat difficult. Sport didn’t work out and I found myself enjoying other more technical things. I guess I’m like the Borg, I always want to become ‘perfect’ and become great at everything. While it provides me with some respect as I can create something good very quickly–it means I’m no master of one particular subject. My bio goes… “Student, amateur photographer, web designer & developer,videographer , blogger, techie, gamer and a few other things” As you can see, I’m rather varied. But unlike the Borg, I don’t have any implants in my body - which is a plus.

I guess that’s one of the reasons why I want to spread my wings yet again into writing and have already enrolled in this years’ National Novel Writing Month in November–where I have to write a 50,000 word short novel during the month. It’ll be hard but at the end I think it will be utterly rewarding. Not only will it make my writing as a novel writer better (I’ve always had ideas but never felt I could keep my attention on one large novel) but also hopefully help make my writing a blogger much more interesting to read.

The novel is a grand method of sharing yourself and sharing your ideas that have been clogged up in your head for years at a time. But this is not the only reason I want to write and read more. There are other reasons, such as the fact I had three whole years in which I didn’t have a stable Englishcurriculum . But none of that matters, I just want to get better at writing and through this make myself better as a whole. So, I hope I won’t be the only one going down thisroller-coaster.

I’ve been thinking recently and discovered that I’ve been traveling the world without leaving my room. Think of it this way…

• My coffee is from Columbia.
• My t-shirt was printed in the USA, but it was probably made in China.
• My paper comes from the amazon rainforest.
• Most of my electronics are from China.
• My Nabaztag was made in France.
• My tea is from India, despite it’s name of ‘Scottish Blend’.
• My Yamaha clarinet was made in Japan.
• My DVDs, despite being filmed in the USA and many European countries–they’re all written onto disk in the Eastern world.
• My fruit is from Spain.
• My sugar is from the African continent.
• My favourite film camera was made in Russia (Well, specifically made in U.S.S.R.).

Kind of wierd when you think of it. Some people never leave their country yet all of their stuff comes from one place or another.

The majority of us all have webcams. Most people’s are built into their laptops, while others remain discarded into the drawer next to the drawing pins and highlighters.

So many years ago I remember people’s desire for video chat in EVERYTHING. We even invented video phones to get our face-to-face chat — 3G phones as well as landline that enabled us to feel more connected to the person we were talking to. The Internet also gave us that fix–iChat, Skype, MSN, Yahoo, all the major chat clients offered the feature and once you went through all of the loops you managed to get a chat through.

In my entire life I have had a total of two video chats. One was in 2002, to relatives in Greece. Secondly, I had a small conversation with my aunt after I moved to Dundee. Any other time was either a massive failure (thank you, internet) or a one-way video conference.

However, I have voice chats all of the time. I talk to friends in Edinburgh weekly as well as using Skype to connect to family and friends across the globe. Why not video?

Well, there’s a few reasons:-

• What’s the point?
• It hogs my bandwidth!
• I don’t have a webcam.

What’s the point? Well, it lets people see who you really are. You might have met your friends on the net, but it doesn’t mean you have to remain as an avatar. You can almost truly connect, as video chat gives a more natural experience as you’re able to relate to people’s body movements and actions. You can even show things off to each other–such as family items or miscellaneous geekery!

It hogs my bandwidth! Well, that makes sense. But it’s not as big as you might thing. Anyone with a 512Mb connection or higher should be ok with having an video conference.

I don’t have a webcam. Well, that didn’t stop me. If you want, you can use an ordinary DV Camcorder–but it doesn’t cost much for a new webcam these days. My webcam, that only cost me £5 ($10), offers high quality images and even night vision.

Ok, rant over.

If you were luckly enough not to see the first two iterations of the fused reality podcast, good for you. Terrible microphones, bad writing and ultimately bad quality.

Hopefully this will change with this show, and I hope to get a few people on once in a while to see what affects them.

What are you going to be talking about?

It’s a fairly general topic.  Before I gave up podcasting 4 years ago, I had the idea that talking about the issues people don’t talk about would be a good idea. There’s those taboo topics, or just things people don’t ever talk about mainly due to ignorance.

When will you be doing it?

It will be released every Tuesday, and I’ll be streaming the recording online before the release. However, don’t expect the stream to be amazing to watch. I stop and start all the time.

Why didn’t you talk about anything closer to your heart–such as web design or photography?

They’ve been done in podcasting too often and I don’t think I could offer anything.

I don’t like your topic.

Then don’t listen. I’m not forcing you. But if you take offense to any topic I talk about–I apologise.

It sounds like a great idea! Where can I hear your first show?

It’ll be up on the iTunes podcast directory soon enough, or you can download it here. However, this is more of an introduction of the podcast and it won’t be starting completely till Tuesday.

Just in case you missed it, here’s the download link.