The Yo-Yo Wiki Podcast and Feedburner
Up till now I have had iTunes accessing my podcast feed for the Yo-Yo Wiki Podcast directly to the xml file on my server as opposed to running it through feedburner. It’s worked alright except that I don’t have a very good idea of how many people have subscribed to my feed. Then two weeks ago when I posted Episode 15 I discovered that it did not update to the feed! I’m still not sure why, but I’m guessing I had an error in the xml file, but I can’t find it. So I decided to run the feed through feedburner instead, that way feedburner will format the feed the way that iTunes likes it and I can get some stats about the feed.
It turns out that changing what iTunes has listed for your feed is nigh impossible. You can put a tag in the feed header to redirect the feed, but it’s an iTunes specific tag so anyone else trying to access it won’t get the redirect. It turns out the best way to do the redirect is with an http 301 redirect. I still don’t know what it is, but it’s working. In my root folder there is a file called .htaccess and I added the line “Redirect 301 /podcasts/yoyowikipodcastfeed.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/yoyowiki” which causes anyone who is looking at the file located at /podcasts/yoyowikipodcastsfeed.xml to be redirected automaticly to feed burner. I’m sure you don’t really care, but I think it’s pretty darn cool.
I recorded episode 17 of the Yo-Yo Wiki Podcast last night with Dave Poyzer and it was awesome, we talked to Boyd Seth, Steve Brown and co, and a mystery guest. I’ll post the link for that on the Yo-Yo Wiki Podcast Page tomorrow and it should be up on the new-and-improved feedburner feed tomorrow too!
-Josh
I’m not a Twitter
Where the heck did Twitter come from? The amount of Twitter in-my-face today has been overwhelming. Between the last episode of Twit that went on and on about how awesome it is to have gigantic SMS bills, and my empoloyer now securing its brand on Twitter, it’s all a little too much for me. Twitter is a way for you to tell people what you are doing in 140 characters or less, you do this via email, sms, instant message or from Twitter.com. And then anytime one of your friends posts somthing it lets you know, via email, sms, instant message or Twitter.com.
I’m sure that I couldn’t get anyone I know involved with Twitter and I don’t think I would use it much myself, judging by how much I use the “status” option on Facebook. Yup, I am not a Twitter.
-Josh
update: I just signed up for Twitter.
Rule changes for the 2007 National Yo-Yo Contest
For those that missed it, the 2007 United States National Yo-Yo Contest (October 5th and 6th in Chico California) has established pre-qualification rules for entry into the 1A Championship Division. If you want to compete in the 1A Championship Division of the United States Nationals Yo-Yo Contest (Nationals) you will need to place in the top five at a Regional Contest during the 2007 yo-yo season. I think this is a perfect change for the National contest if we ever hope to legitimize yo-yoing as a sport.
And I think the National contest needs to be legitimized if we ever hope to get it on TV and get lots of money into it. One of my friends recently said “If bowling is a sport, then yo-yoing is a sport” and that might be true, but we have to convince people first. Somehow bowling has million dollar cash prizes and tons of air time on weekend TV.
A few yo-yoers are upset about it. Namely Yuuki Spencer who is arguable one of the best players in the country. He was complaining because he thought that you had to place top five at your regional contest and he felt that would exclude great players from regions that have lots of great players (like the Northwest Region whereYuuki lives with at least a dozen of the best players in the country). But the rules do say that you can place in top five at any Regional Contest in the United States and it doesn’t have to be your own region.
Speaking as a judge of many yo-yo contests, I would have hated to judge Nationals due to the sheer number of competitors. This new rule will make the day a lot easier for those judges because they won’t have to sit through the one minute freestyles of people who do not deserve to be on the stage.
I think the Midwest Regional contest could be really hot this year because there are only a couple of people in this region who should be competingnationally in the 1A division. Hopefully we’ll get people from all over the nation this year to try and land a top five spot.
Further reading….
http://www.nationalyoyo.org/contest/2007/pages/qualification.php
http://www.yoyoing.com/news/viewpost.php?post=257568
http://www.dazzlingdave.com/mwr/mwr.html
-Josh
Brick’d again and Yo-Yo Wiki gets a take down notice
There is something seriously up with iTunes 7. What the hell did they do wrong? My iPod is brick’d for the second time in what? 2 days? And all that I am doing is plugging the darn thing in! I’m totally at the point that I don’t even want to plug it in anymore… but that’s how I get my podcast’s! On my last blog someone suggested Anapod, which looks like a neat option, but it doesn’t have an rss reader for podcasting and they want to charge you $25 for the full version. I tell ya what, I’d pay $10 for the full version IF it had an rss reader for podcasting.
The Yo-Yo Wiki podcast is going on as planned this week even though Doctor Popular is on the Mediocre tour. Dave Poyzner will be the very special guest host with me this week, I can’t wait.
And Yo-Yo Wiki got a takedown notice! The article for The Ned Show had some images taken from their website and used without permission. So we complied and took the images down, they were the only images on the whole wiki that were used without permission, so I guess it’s all the better. Quite frankly I’ve got half a mind to remove The Ned Show from the wiki entirely because I’m a jerk like that and I think The Ned Show is pretty lame.
The Ned Show is somehow involved with SuperYo which is owned by Arne Dixon and that reminds me of the time that Arne Dixon came into Air Traffic. I wasn’t working but my friend Dave Johnson was. Arne asked Dave about the yo-yo’s and Dave (not knowing he was talking to Arne Dixon) started talking about the Henry’s and the Yomega’s and what he liked and didn’t like, and when they got to the SuperYo products Dave proceeded to tell Arne that all of SuperYo yo-yo’s sucked and exactly how hard. Of course that was before the days of the SuperYo Renegade. Jim Henry the owner of Air Traffic got a nasty call shortly after talking to Dave.
Good times.
-Josh
The iBrick
I got the newest Apple product this morning, it’s the iBrick. It’s totally awesome! I didn’t even have to pay for it, that’s the coolest part. I just work up this morning and I found out that my iPod had turned into an iBrick. This thing is the new stylish electronic device for the modern businessman. I took it into work with me and all of my coworkers were jealous. It looks exactly like the iPod but it holds paper like the most expensive weight you could imagine.
Ever since Apple released iTunes 7 they have been making iBrick’s our of expensive mp3 players across the nation. They need to get their act together.
In the mean time I think I am going to build a house out of iBrick’s.
-Josh
The Common Place, A follow up
A few days ago I blogged about the band The Common Place. I just found this write up about the band located here. I suggest you read it. Then you can go download the albums Mileage and Every Forgotten Year.
-Josh