This is a very important update, so listen up. We've grown far beyond what I had envisioned as far as a user base over at r.Podcaster... In under four months of operation, we have in excess of 7000 subscribers to various r.podcaster users, and over 500 users! We are the no longer the invisible elite here at rizzn.net.

Unfortunately this also means we are close to busting our bandwidth ceiling! Ever since we did our bandwidth test, our listener count has gone dramatically up, and we are transferring close to 30 gigabytes of traffic per day! As a result, we are going to try some ways to reduce the demand on our server by joining the CORAL CDN. I've read the documentation and consulted with other CDN users, so I think the change should be seamless.

Here's where I need you guys: there's a chance that we may be delivering too much content to be a part of the network. In that case, failed requests should default back to the rizzn.net site when we pop the CDN's bandwidth. If the CDN malfunctions, it will give 403 errors when trying to download podcasts. I need you guys to be my early warning system and let me know if that happens (if it does, I can switch us back and we'll be up and running instantaneously).

Thanks for your help guys.

/rizzn

r.Podcaster problem...

Hey folks... just so you know we appear to be experiencing a little slowdown in posts.

Okay, it's a huge slow down in posts.  Someone installed a stats program on the server that's been using 100% of the CPU for two days.  It's finally bogged down the r.podcaster kernel.

I'll have it fixed by mid-morning.

/rizzn

Day Two of Out in Right Field

Thankfully, I mean, it was a close call, but thankfully I recovered the file after my computer crashed in the middle of recording this evening.

You can download a copy of episode 2 of the new "Out in Right Field" here from the riz podcast stream.

Due to popular demand, I'm going to finish compiling a Best of CD of the Mark and Darrell Show. Additionally, I've almost gotten an OK from our favorite program director to get them into random rotation.  Send an email to smokehouse asking for the BoMaD to be added into random rotation on Rant Radio.

That is all.

/rizzn

Complete and Utter Bullcrap

As I was headed down to the last day of shooting the Fashion Week Miami show, I was pulled over for an expired tag on my car.  Yes, I know I’m an idiot, I should keep up with my car, but I don’t, mostly because I’m lazy when it comes to these things.  What makes it more humiliating is that I was pulled over by a bicycle cop.

After about fifteen minutes of waiting, I was informed that I could go to jail, but I was lucky they were in such a good mood (which was a lie – they were acting like jerks). As it turns out Texas revoked my license.  After some sleuthing work today (thank you Leo), we found out that I “ran” a tollbooth in Lauderdale Lakes or something (the official offense was failure to obey a traffic device), and the ticket was sent to Texas, and because I haven’t updated my DL information since I’ve lived here, the DL went into suspension, and then into revokation.

Keep in mind this happenned back in August of last year, and I’m just finding out about it now.

So now, I’m informed, that if I get my junk in order by the time the court date rolls around, all the tickets will be thrown out, but the problem comes in with Texas’s lag time and the need for a license to clear these issues.

In Florida, you are required to have a driver’s license and a fully registered car to get insurance.  Florida won’t let me have a license until my problems in Texas are cleared up. My problem in Texas relies on me paying a fine in Florida (of which I might or might not be guilty in the first place), getting the proof of payment to Texas to clear my license, and then getting all my paperwork in order here.

Sounds relatively simple, doesn’t it?  Here’s where the problems come in:

1) the court date in Florida is in One Month
2) Texas takes three weeks to clear a license of revokation
3) insurance takes One Day to process
4) license takes One Day to process
5) registration can take from Five Days to Six Weeks to process

So ~30 – 21 – 1 – 1 – 5 = 2.  I’m looking at a two day grace period under a best case scenario.

No Bueno.

Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes: “Life is a festering pit of despair.” (cred to Louis Hebb).

/rizzn

Out in Right Field starts Monday!

Smokehouse and I finally finished recording "Out in Right Field" this evening/morning.  I posted it to the riz feed on r.Podcaster.  I'll probably do that for the first week, and then post it to it's own feed thereafter.

Click here to listen!

/rizzn

Quick Weekend Update

Happy Easter, everyone. In other news - this is the last word on Violet.

I am still editing the video on the 2005 Fashion Week, but if you click here, you can see the highlights of Wednesday and Thursday.

I've got to get going.  Bis spater.

/rizzn

Traffic Spike

r.Podcaster handled it's traffic spike quite well, actually!  Over the last 24 hour reporting period, my stats indicated that we transferred in excess of 40 gigabytes of traffic!

Rizzn.net is still running a tad slow, and you may experience timeouts with HTTP upload, but that will likely go away over the next couple days.  Due to my impeccable mathematics (shutup, Smokehouse!), I set the bandwidth limitations on the exact curve of alleviating slowdowns and not popping our bw contract.

However, our little test did tell me that I'm going to need to increase our capacity soon.  We currently are capped off at 1.2 terrabytes per month of traffic.  On average we use about 6 to 7 gigabytes of traffic per day.  In the event we get slashdotted, or a particular user gets slashdotted (or publicity equivelent), we'll run out of bandwidth in one to two weeks.

Hence we need to think about implementing bittorrent feeds or simply pay for more bandwidth.  Fortunately, I have an inside connection at thePlanet, and I might be able to swing that, so that bittorrents won't become a necessity to consider for a month or two.

SlashDot Review uses bittorrents for it's distribution method.  Those of you who are subscribed to bittorented feeds, please give me some feedback here on the board so I can consider my options.

/rizzn

Unfounded Allegations about Rizzn.net

Podcast Alley (www.podcastalley.com) admin theFerf made some allegations about rizzn.net today in an open letter post on his forum:

Dear Rizzn:
People have complained repeatedly about your service to me. I personally have sent you emails inquiring about different problems I have noticed with your site and feeds with no replies trying to help you become better at what you do.

I think your service is a great idea, however, vulnerabilities exist in your site. People have had their podcasts hi-jacked, deleted and I have personally browsed through what should be administrative level directories on your server without any troubles.

My question is this: What are you doing to maintain the integrity of your services and to maintain/grow your customers? Please do not take this post as an attack, but podcasters need to know what they are getting into and I cant seem to contact anyone from your site. At this point, since i cant seem to get a reply from anyone there, I may be forced to make some decisions reguarding reccomending your services to podcasters and allowing anyone hosting with you to be listed on this directory.

Podcasters: Please feel free to chime in here with your thoughts and opinions about the Rizzn service. Good or Bad...we need to hear them. I know many podcasters are hosted with these services so if your is...please tell us about your experiences so far. I actually am hoping that someone will tell me that Im completely wrong about their services.

* Anyone who has visited this site and the forums often enough know that I try to maintain a level of integrity in the podcasting community by providing fair, non-biased reviews about everything podcast related. This is our chance to really take a look at Rizzn and what they are offering.

I had a reply for him:

People have had their podcasts hijacked and deleted? I want to know where you get off making allegations like that!

There is one and only one user who has had their podcast hijacked, and that is VioletBlue - and that is only after being a non-active user for over three months, and only after I learned she moved to LibSyn. Her subscribers were eating up a third of the rizzn.net bandwidth, and the feed was no longer active, so yes, I hijacked it.

As far as other users are concerned? I think you should talk to Radio Free Calamity, or perhaps Clusterflux Anomoly, or maybe PodPoet, just three very popular podcasters on my system who I've been very active in helping. I am but one person, and I have in excess of four hundred users on my system. I get hundreds of emails a week, and it is not my primary job function to run this company (yet).

Security leaks, thanks to a mindful r.Podcaster user named Paul Wright, were pointed out two weeks ago and fixed.

If I recall correctly, I recieved an email from you a couple months ago soliciting your work as a coder. I get ten or twenty of those a week, and I don't have the pocket book to hire that many coders, nor do I need them.

I could say the same thing about you not responding to your emails - I sent you an email back in November or December asking if we could work together on an API so that I could automatically add rizzn.net users into your directory - and you never replied.

I understand you say you don't mean this as an attack, but you make an awful lot of unfounded allegations that you've never made to me in private... and private is where this conversation needs to take place.

As far as growing my customer base - I have a floodgate growth policy. Those that don't like my service can leave and freely do. Those that love my service are welcome to stay, contribute, and contribute to new features that I can develop.. but mostly I grow via word of mouth. The only advertising I do is I sponsor a couple of pages here and there (about $5-10 a month in advertising), and post on a couple forums every week or two reminding the public I'm out there.

Of all the podcast-exclusive hosting ventures, I'd guess I'm the top one as far as market share (excluding companies like FeedBurner or Blogger), and I could post you hundreds of emails from my users that talk about how well the enjoy the service.

I admit it's not perfect, and I admit it's a work in progress. You get what you pay for, I guess. I don't have the star power of Adam Curry, and I can't command hundreds of programmers to work for free, nor would I since I might want to incorporate my idea into a business model at some point. I have a conscience, contrary to what your open letter intimates, and I can't ask people to work for nothing and profit from their labor.

I'm not sure if this letter is what you were looking for. It seems to me you posted these unfounded allegations mostly to stir up some controversy on your bulletin board and increase user participation. I can understand that, as I've been involved with some light-committment communities like podcastalley.com before, and things can get semi-boring without any drama. I don't fault you, therefore, for your posting of allegations.

I will not, however, continue this discussion in public. If you wish to learn more or ask me more questions, and actually get an answer that means something instead of conjecture and allegation, email me at mark@aacsnet.com or rizzn.dourden@gmail.com.

Having said all that, I must admit of all the detractor-type emails I've recieved over the years, I'm happy to say that at least he spelled my name right. The thing I'm most upset about is the idea of him threatening to remove all rizzn.net users from his directory. Where does he get off doing that? I haven't done anything to him. Not yet at least. You guys know me, I'm quick to retort, and you can expect a fun little podcast about this soon. I mean heck, if it's drama he wants, I can certainly deliver in that arena.

And listen guys - I know rizzn.net ain't perfect. I want you to show me someone out there who is doing what I'm doing and it is perfect. I'm a one man team. Good grief. What do you expect?

/rizzn

r.podcaster users ALERT!

Hello everyone!  I apologise for the server running slow – I have throttled down the bandwidth considerably to prevent us from exceeding our bandwidth contract.

This isn’t due to poor planning on my part again – something equivilent to being Slashdotted has occurred.  We’ve had an absolute INFLUX of new users and subscribers.  By my estimations, the slowdown will probably continue for about four to nine days.

To eliminate the issue of slow uploads and timeouts, I suggest you folks use the email upload option – it will prevent ASP timeouts and it will still post at normal speed through the email script.

Bear with me, this is a good test of how much load the server can take and will help us plan for the future (for when we actually do get Slashdotted).

/rizzn

Sweet mother of perl

I need some assistance from the Rizzn-adoring public.

Y'see, I've got a problem with my maintenence men here at my house.  They think it's funny to come wake me up to tell me to move my car at 9:00 AM, and when I say I'll move it at 11:00 AM when I leave, come by every five minutes and knock on my door and run the leaf blower under my window.

Seriously.  I'm thinking homocide here.

Wake me up out of a dead slumber to tell me to move my car five feet, and then get pissy about it for the next three hours... you'll be dealing with an unhappy Rizzn.

I need help.  I rent this place.  Is there some sort of landlord-tenant law I can use to my advantage to prevent this from happening in the future? I vaguely remember one from a similar run-in about 4 years ago, but that was back in Texas - I'm not sure if it applies here in Florida.

As you can see, I value my beauty rest.

/rizzn

Music on the Turntables Currently: - dvsx_tse-512

Howdy frum Miiyamee

Well, I’m just taking a break in the day to give you a quick wrap-up of the evening last night. As you know from the podcasts, pictures, and blog posts, I attended the launch of 2005 Fashion Week down in South Beach.  I took a bunch of photos with my cameraphone, and they turned out quite crappily, as you can see if you scroll down and look to the left.

However, I was with Ricky McGill, celebrity photographer extraordinaire, and he has granted me a few photos from the shoot to put on the site.

As far as the people, there were a few interesting people I had the pleasure to chat with, and a few celebrities from the fashion world that I really didn’t know.

I think I’m going to read up on fashion stuff or something this afternoon so I can maybe do a couple interviews or at least pitch podcasting.

I ran into a couple people that were interested in hearing about podcasting, two who knew what I was talking about, and one who actually has heard of r.Podcaster.  It made me feel important!

I know you aren’t interested in any of this stuff, you just want the pictures of the hottness – here they are without further ado:

http://rizzn.com/img/funkshionTues/

I’m going probably head back out a couple more times this week.  I deserve some relaxation, and the drinks are free!

Next week: look for some podcasts from me on how to get into social functions like this without being an official member of the major media.

Deuce!

/rizzn

Miami Fashion Week

I’m going down to Fashion Week in Miami as a credentialed press member this evening.  Watch the moblog in the lower left corner for exclusive crappy quality photographs of scantily clad supermodels, and stay tuned to the podcasts for intermittent updates from the fashion floor.

/rizzn

Something has happenned!

Traffic on rizzn.net has dramatically spiked!

We’ve got an influx of new and new active users!

Expect an update when I figure out from whence this came.

/rizzn

What is it with all these Usurpers

There are many competitors to r.Podcaster, but only one is a clear cut winner. Here, use this handy dandy chart I’ve made.

	r.Podcaster	LybSyn	podshow.com	podlot.com
Monthly Fee	Free	$5-$30/mon.	N/A	$4-$20/mon.
FTP Upload	No	Yes	No	No
HTTP Upload	Yes	No	No	No
Email Upload	Yes	No	No	No
Public Listings/What's New	Yes	No	No	No
AutoRSS	Yes	Yes	No	No
Unlimited Archiving	Yes	No	No	No
Unlimited Bandwidth	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Run by Adam Curry	No	No	Yes	No
Stolen by Adam Curry	Yes	No	N/A	No

 

So as you can see, as this data compiled by our independent analysis firm shows, r.Podcaster (aka rizzn.net) freakin’ rocks buttocks!

/rizzn

Dungeons and Dragons night

Someone raided my D&D drawer, and I'm missing my players handbook as well as many of my dice. Leo, Ron, Ricky and I are going to try to play tonight anyways. I'm DMing.

To substitute for the dice, I installed WoC's online diceroller.

/rizzn

John the Baptist of Podcasts

Saturday Update: It's posted now.  Here it is.

Here's a quick update to tell you that there's going to be a bigger update by way of podcasts this evening.

This post will serve as show notes (which I never rarely do):

1) Discussion spurred by Cruzette about mean people and the purpose of school.
2) Some new podcasts on r.Podcaster I think are cool.
3) the Men Fix, Women Clean story
4) R.Podcaster News
 a) kernel 2.0 rollout
 b) acquisition of VoIP
 c) software partnership
5) Walks on the Beach
6) Adam Curry is an unoriginal assclown
7) Jon wins the mystery song contest
8) Winner of the 1000th podcast will be announced
9) New Mystery Song (?)

Probably some other stuff too.

/rizzn

 

r.Podcaster kernel upgrade goes live today.

Right off the bat, I’d like to apologise for the delay in podcasting.  I’ve been messing with the upload and email kernels last night and this morning, and so as not to kill anyone’s podcast, I put the queue on hold.  Having said that: I’m upgrading the kernel today for r.Podcaster, which will chiefly accomplish two things (amongst many other):

1) Get rid of that annoying machine gun effect on the rizzn.net sound.
2) Open up the kernel to allow for the comments add on and the server-side pre-production.

Additionally, there have been some security updates on rizzn.net.  Apparently, there was a glaring hole that I won’t even detail that allowed anyone to come in and look at the customer database.  It’s now gone (thanks to Paul Wright for graciously pointing that out – by the way, Paul, your domain rejects my domain as a spam host.  I don’t spam (although the last person to own this IP address did)).

In other news, we’ve signed a partnership deal with a major player in the telecom business, which means we’ve got subsidization for r.Podcaster. I think I may have mentioned r.Podcaster getting purchased previously, but we’ve got a lot of new users, so let me explain what this means to everyone that’s a current and future r.Podcaster user.

First of all, r.Podcaster is now, always was, and will always continue to be your really simple, free podcasting solution. We will not charge to use r.Podcaster – ever.

Second of all, we are committed to keeping it as free of advertisement as possible. I am a partner in the new company that owns r.Podcaster, and I have voting rights. As a result there will not be evil things done in the name of r.Podcaster.

I’m not going to reveal my whole plan for r.Podcaster, but I will say that if commercials in your podcast become an option, it will always remain that – an option.  I will not force that down anyones throat simply because I understand the need to keep certain types of podcasts commercial free and not bound to any one supporter in the interests of remaining above reproach for the purposes of being bias free.  More on this later – there are some ideas I’ll talk about in my podcast and here on the blog to explore the concepts I’m pondering, but to mention them now would be way premature.

If I’m not going to force commercials down your throat and if I’m not going to charge you, how is this new company going to make money? In a word: VoIP.  We have partnered with a very big name in the business to provide our equipment, and we will be rolling out and launching our new site and service on April 16th. What we’ve done is really created a concept for an incredible company to work for.  Every partner in the consortium has two job functions within the company – first you must be in charge of a profitable division, be it a product or service, and second you must be in charge of a content division who’s primary focus is not making money.  For instance, I am in charge of business development and podcasting/audio.  Ricky (you old M&Ders remember Ricky) is in charge of marketing strategy and photography.

Essentially, we are using tried and true business models to support an ideal we think will change the way the world thinks about the media.

Keep your eyes open.. it’s going to be big – and you guys are going to be the bigger part of it.

/rizzn

Stats Tide Over

I'm working on the stats program tonight a bit before bedtime, and I figured I'd give you peeps a run down of the top ten active podcasters.

Rank, Name, Hits/Day

01) canabass - 524
02) podpoet - 394
03) donjim - 279
04) warrenellis - 174
05) garzol - 140
06) podunkeric - 95
07) radiofreecalamity - 91
08) revtim - 89
09) myurbaneyes - 88
10) clusterfluxanomaly - 88

Riz (my podcast) is ranked 16.  I only get 48 hits a day.  Cry cry.

/rizzn

Music on the Turntables Currently: - SoupandShuvi.atoibu.mp3

Proposed r.podcaster upgrade

Alrighty rizzn.net users – I’ve got an idea, so listen up.

How would you like a comments system for your podcast?  I was realizing that I’ve almost got the r.podcaster system to the point where I can start making major upgrades to it again – it’s mostly stable.  I know all of you are clamoring for listener stats, and I know that’s important, but what would you say if I wanted to add a comment system for you? 

Here’s how I propose it would work:

Much the same as a regular podcast, listeners could post their audio comments to you via either a listener line, email address, or an http upload. From there, two options would be available to you, the podcaster:

A) You could log in, and view a moderation menu, and from there listen to and approve comments to be added to the last podcast posted, or

B) Have all comments unmoderated, and they all by default get added to the last posted podcast at the end (with a possible sounder file that announces that these are user comments, and not part of the original podcast).

What do you think?  Worth it?

/rizzn

Hot Bodies and Seascapes

I took a nice walk on the beach this afternoon.  Lots of hot bodies to ogle.  I think I'm going to start taking more walks on the beach -- except next time I'm going to wear more suitable clothes.  I think I need to invest in some beachwear for I am a sweaty sweaty Rizzn right now.

I took a bunch of pictures.  My camera phone is crappy, so they didn't come out all that well. Next time I'm taking my video camera, and I don't care if it makes me look like a tourist.

There was this one chick that was fairly cute that was laying face up topless.  No, I didn't grab a picture of her, unfortunately.  I didn't notice it until I was almost past her, and my camera was too slow to whip it out and snap a photograph.. but it was bizarre.  Pompano is not a newd beach, although from the size of a lot of thongs I see, it ought to be.

There are a fair amount of young people out right about now, but there are even more older folks..  if I was scoping out chicks, it's the right mixture of hot girls to non-existent hot guys to make the odds tip to my favor.

Hrm.  Maybe I should go back out and scope some hot chicks.

Be back in a while, y'all.

/rizzn

I don't normally do this...

But if someone wants to be my best buddy, they can send me these.  I'm in the market for some new sunglasses, and I want to be cool and have some custom jobbers.  They can send me these and I'll be eternally grateful.

Yes, they are the Morpheus glasses from Matrix I.  And yes, it would be a hassle getting them prescriptionized, but I want to do it anyways because I'm a slave for fashion. (haw haw, those of you who know me know that's a joke of a joke).

But still I think it'd be cool.

/rizzn

Oops

Update: r.Podcaster user "thelinesbegintoblur" aka Jon, newsguy from the old Mark and Darrell Show guessed correctly first.  Tune into the next podcast for details.

I did another podcast today.  I just looked at my RSS feed, and apparently there's an error in the way it's generating the description tag.  Oops.  Let me fix that real quick.

There we go.  Fixed.  I had made a change last Friday to ensure that the XML would be compatible with the new Podcast editor I'm building.  The new editor should allow you to edit your ID3 tags and XML tags after the files have been posted.

Nobody guessed the last "Mystery Song" (which was from the Scion xB commercial), so I've upped the stakes and put a different song in the hotseat.

There's some other big news that is coming down the line, but I'm going to hold off a bit before I say anything specific, and announce it when I know for sure that it's going to happen.

/rizzn

r.Podcaster Uptime

Three consecutive error free days with r.Podcaster! Good Times! Also, more than 325 users! W0ot.

In other news, my email from my adoring public seems to have dropped off into nothingness. Either gmail is having delivery problems, or you people have stopped loving me. What is it?

Lastly, did you know that in my last podcast, I promised five dollars or a gmail invite to the first person to identify a mystery song? No one's gotten it yet. See if you can figure it out - download here.

/rizzn

Sweet mother of pearl i'm tired

I'm oh so tired.  I'm going to sleep early tonight.

My podcast picks of the night: check out me, radio free calamity, RevTim, and ClusterFlux Anomaly.

/rizzn

Music on the Turntables Currently: - Fette's Vette - MC Chris

Additions to the Older Entries

I've updated some of the ancient 2000 entries.  It’s a pain in the ass to copy and paste from diaryland to blogger, so I basically only do a month at a time when I have not the energy to do anything constructive, but too much energy to sleep or something.  If you want to read about the breakup of myself and my ex Traci, go back to February and March of 2000.

I’m going to head on back to the house now.  Got some stuff planned to podcast to you peoples tonight.

/rizzn

Rizzn vs. 1209 - the viability of commercial podcasting

I had a very interesting time-shifted conversation with "1209" - the leader of the anti-podcasting movement.  I could type up both of my 20 minute podcasts, but I'll refer you instead to the URLs:

Part 1 (Includes 1209's original message)

Part 2

/rizzn

P.S. Brock Samson?  What is that? Never trust a man with two first names, that's what I always say.

FUN SCROTAL SCIENCE PROJECT

On a hot day, disrobe and slip your body (groin and all) into a cold shower. Notice how your testicles tell your scrotum to contract and thus, bring them closer to the warmth of your body's bulk. Examine the prune like puckering your scrotum produces to accomplish this amazing feat of strength and engineering. Write about your experience in your journal.

http://www.scrotalsafetycommission.com/

Weird Dream this Morning

People that know me know that my dreams tend toward the bizarre.  I know a few of you actually understand dreams, and I put you to the test on this one.

The setting was this fictional corridor in North Texas that my dreams are often set in. I know that it’s North Texas (and I mean North of the DFW Metroplex by this) because in the dream I know that my elder family is from this area.  Instead of traveling the roads in this dream, for whatever reason there’s a train now that goes the distance – and I’m on it.

On the train I’ve been noticing a love triangle forming between myself, a girl and this guy who was a journalist, I think (or maybe I was the journalist). Someone suggested that a menage-a-four was in order, and we all more or less readily agreed, but the problem was we couldn’t find this other dude’s girlfriend. 

We had already hit the end of the line going North on this train, so we were heading back South East, and we stopped off in Denton (or Dennison) and we were looking around.

Then my alarm goes off. I went back to the dream after the snooze button had been properly slammed.

When I awoke back up in the dream, I was passing the time flirting with my girlfriend and working on a math problem (this is where it gets real kooky).  There’s a certain math problem called Pascal’s Triangle.

At the tip of Pascal's Triangle is the number 1, which makes up the zeroth row. The first row (1 & 1) contains two 1's, both formed by adding the two numbers above them to the left and the right, in this case 1 and 0 (all numbers outside the Triangle are 0's). Do the same to create the 2nd row: 0+1=1; 1+1=2; 1+0=1. And the third: 0+1=1; 1+2=3; 2+1=3; 1+0=1. In this way, the rows of the triangle go on infinitly. A number in the triangle can also be found by nCr (n Choose r) where n is the number of the row and r is the element in that row. For example, in row 3, 1 is the zeroth element, 3 is element number 1, the next three is the 2nd element, and the last 1 is the 3rd element. The formula for nCr is: n! -------- r!(n-r)!

! means factorial, or the preceeding number multiplied by all the positive integers that are smaller than the number. 5! = 5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1 = 120. At any rate, in my dream, I was performing this math problem by hand, and substituting the numbers with HTML tags.  I had just realized that I was using HTML tags instead of numbers and was going to figure out what I meant by all of this, when I solved the problem and woke up. I’m a strange cookie, yes I know. /rizzn

I Love the Attention, Don't Get Me Wrong...

Apparently, I'm being paid attention to!  Who would have thunk it, but my users over at Rizzn.Net actually read my words!  Amazing. Nobody pays attention to me, guys, just so you know.  I mean, I appreciate that you do, but no one really pays attention to me.

I've got two question for you r.podcasters who use iPodder to podcatch. Question one: Can you come up with a cogent question with more words with pod in them than the first one in this paragraph? Question two: Do you have problems downloading podcasts from rizzn.net using iPodder?

I've been getting back in the swing of things in listening to my users podcasts, and I was actually going to use a podcatcher to accomplish this, and I subscribed to heygemgem's feed, and iPodder keeps timing out before the download starts (however, it doesn't time out on my feed or feeds from other servers).  Just curious.

In other news, I think that rizzn.net might actually have a higher percentage of female users as compared to the rest of the podcasting world (or maybe I only selectively remember my female users - could be either one).  I haven't done any demographics on this, but I believe I remember MyUrbanEyes mentioning a statistic (or was it Radio Free Calamity?) about a really low number of girls podcasting.

By the numbers, we've probably got average statistics, but by active users, I know it's right around 59% male/39% female/2% undecided (always hafta have 2% undecided in any statistical quote).  We have Violet Blue (open source sex), Radio Free Calamity (which has one female host), My Urban Eyes, HeyGemGem (an interesting podcast from the boonies of Taiwan), and probably many many others that I've missed.

And for you guys out there, all of these ladies are hot hot hot stuff.* Subscribe today.

/rizzn

* This of course does not count the ones that are underage, since that would be sick and twisted of me to promote the sex icon status of underage users. Besides, I was talking about hot hot hot as in going like hotcakes.  Get your mind out of the gutter.

More Deep Thoughts from the Spam Handey

A physician can sometimes parry the scythe of death, but has no power over the sand in the hourglass.

The greatest failure is a person who never admits that he can be a failure.

If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.

The ship of state is the only known vessel that leaks from the top. A line will take us hours maybe Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstinting has been naught.

Thought is born of failure.

The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power. Like a boxer in a title fight, you have to walk in that ring alone.

Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.In every ascetic morality man worships a part of himself as God and for that he needs to diabolize the other part.

'Tis not the dying for a faith that's so hard... 'Tis the living up to it that's difficult. There is no such thing as chance and what seem to us merest accident springs from the deepest source of destiny.

A human being is a single being. Unique and unrepeatable.

'Tis not what man does which exalts him, but what man Would do!

Tell me thy company, and I'll tell thee what thou art.

Men are the sport of circumstances when it seems circumstances are the sport of men.

Without moral and intellectual independence, there is no anchor for national independence.
Give a man health and a course to steer and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not.