Journal Fails

Guess who hasn't touched her media journal?

It might possibly be the same person who hasn't filled in her reading journal. :-(

The Media Journal is easy. I haven't been consuming any podcasts. Mostly. I have listened to a couple of podcasts, but I didn't actually finish any of the episodes, so I couldn't mark them on the tracker.

The reading journal is another problem entirely.

What's the problem here? It's the reading challenges I'm involved in. One of them allows you to count the same book for multiple categories and I'm also trying to use these books to count for the other reading challenge I'm doing. Which leaves me wondering how many copies of the cover do I need to print?

Is it two? Three? More? Because I want a copy of the cover in my normal book section and a copy of the cover for each of the prompts in the reading challenge that it satisfies. And I'm tracking my reading challenges on StoryGraph and the big reading challenge is broken down into so many categories, which means I need to open multiple categories to figure out the cover situation and it just feels like too much.

So, yeah. Fail. 

Media Journal

Patti, what are you doing? Don't you have enough book journals that you're 1) not using or 2) haven't started?

Truth! But I started a media journal anyway. Everything but books will go in here and this will last forever. Or darn close to it. My reasoning was this: I'm getting farther and farther behind on my podcasts. I've been doing too much YouTube and not enough audio-only pods.

This is my plan to get caught up.

The picture to the left is the cover of my media journal. It's an A5 notebook with a really fun theme. I also had matching stickers and I used those on the cover page.

I actually haven't done very much yet. I used alphabet stickers to make a title for the journal and a title for the podcasts section, laid down a few decor stickers around the title, and then I put down the podcast tracker stickers I bought.

I'll put movies and TV shows in here, too, but the podcasts were what was important. I do well when I can check something off--a principle I used in my writing planner--and I'm hoping it helps me here, too.

 

 

This is the cover page of the journal, complete with the stickers that match the cover. I'm hoping that simple works better than shooting for Work of Art, but I might have used too many stars. 

This is the section title page for my list of Podcasts. I'll probably do some decoration around the title at some point, but for now, I'm going to leave it with just the title.

This is one of the podcast tracker stickers I bought. This particular podcast was easy to fill in because they break it down by season and there's usually somewhere between 23-25 episodes per season. I decided to limit this to just the podcasts I have on my phone (yes, there are a lot) because those are the ones I want to listen to and delete.

The pink splotches are from a dot marker. I'd like to claim that the media journal is working already and I powered through all these episodes, but that would be incorrect. I'd previously listened to them, and because I still had part of that season on my phone, I decided to put all the episodes in and check them off.

While I was able to get several podcasts in to track, I have a problem. A few of them do not have episode numbers and only have titles. I'm not sure how I can track those given the layout of the stickers I bought. I don't feel like writing all the episode names out, so I don't know. I'm not going to worry about it right now because I have plenty to get through first.

Note to self: Less YouTube while doing mindless tasks, more podcasts. 

Podcasts Versus YouTube

Back in May, I blogged about subscribing to YouTube on an impulse and how it was working for me. Let me update you on where I am now.

I am watching so many YouTube podcasts, that my podcast player is getting backed up with shows and episodes that aren't available on YouTube. This came as a surprise to me because before I subscribed, I was complaining about all the podcasts that were YouTube first.

As it turns out, paying for an ad-free experience on YouTube made all the difference for me. Instead of being full of frustration and annoyances, it ended up being more convenient because now the audio-only versions of my favorite podcasts are loaded (loaded!) with ads.

Some of these podcasts also have their own ads where they read ad copy. Apparently, YouTube can't cut those out even for subscribers? Which is still annoying, but I try not to watch those podcasts live and then I tap to fast forward through the host hawking whoever is sponsoring them.

At the moment, I have hundreds of audio podcast episodes sitting on my phone, waiting for me to listen to them. I turned off auto downloads for the shows that are on YouTube, but there are still shows that do not have YouTube as an outlet. I also have one podcast I pay to subscribe to and only the free version (with sponsors) is available on YouTube, so that's audio, too. I'm 99 episodes behind on that one.

Just in case this needs to be said, this post is not sponsored. It's just me rambling about a service that I pay for and have appreciated. And how it's upended my usual behavior since I started using it.

Pleasant Surprise

So I kind of did this thing. It was an impulse, but so far, it's been working out really well.

I subscribed to YouTube Premium. (I do not receive any compensation for anything in this post from anyone, anywhere at any time.)

I've blogged recently about how so many of my podcasts are YouTube first before they show up on my podcast feed. That was annoying, especially since some of the podcasts I listen to are sort of time sensitive and the delay means I don't bother to listen to that episode. That was annoying enough, but then something even more irritating started.

The ads for the podcast would drop into the middle of a sentence someone was saying. That's right. Just random ads dropped in at no good point in the show. I started to do a lot of cursing.

It's one thing to have an ad during a break in the speaking--I don't have a problem with that--but it became impossible to follow the discussion when the ads were popping in mid-sentence.

And finally, I had enough. These were all YouTube first podcasts, so I thought, what if I subscribe to Premium and lose the ads on YouTube? Premium even lets me lock the screen and still listen. I checked the price. The monthly fee seemed high, which is why I hadn't subscribed in the past. But there was a yearly option that didn't seem outrageous. I decided to try it.

It's only been a few days and so far I am loving it. I listen to the podcasts that have been making me crazy ad-free on YouTube. Well, almost ad free. The podcast hosts read ads and those are still there, but that's at a natural break in the conversation and it doesn't bother me.

I also discovered that I get Music Premium with YouTube premium and can listen to music ad free. Amazon Prime Music has become a cluster. I put in one song I really want to listen to and I get similar music unless I pay for more plan. I didn't want to do that. Now with YouTube music, if I want to listen to Prince's When Doves Cry, I can listen to When Doves Cry and not Raspberry Beret. This is a pleasant perk to the subscription and I've been making the most of it.

YouTube Music even created a playlist for me based on the Prince song and it was mostly decent. I needed to delete a few Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks songs, but other than that....

Usually my impulse purchases don't turn out this good, but I'm going to enjoy this subscription service a lot. I can tell already.

New Obsession

In my February newsletter I talked about my latest obsession and believe me, it was a shocker.

I've blogged about how annoyed I've been with having to pick up some of my podcasts on YouTube because they're either not audio only at all or the audio is released a long time after the actual show. While I was over on YouTube to find a podcast, the algorithm had a suggestion. It was about a village that had a lot of survivors of the plague in the 17th century.

I don't know why the algorithm suggested this video because I've watched nothing remotely related to it, but I happen to have an interest in the plague. Years ago, when I still lived in Minneapolis, PBS had an hour-long documentary about a gene mutation that helped people survive the plague.

The description for the documentary YouTube was recommending sounded as if it was going to involve this gene as well. (And it did!) It's called Plague Mystery.

Then I got another plague documentary recommendation that led to more history recommendations and somehow I've found myself particularly interested in the Tudors--King Henry VIII, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth I.

I even looked for audio podcasts with more English history. I found one specific to the time of the Tudors, but my favorite is called A History of England hosted by David Beeson. He's got a delightfully sarcastic sense of humor and the episodes are short. He also started Episode 1 with the Tudors.

In school, the only English history I learned was how it impacted American history. I was in AP American History, but there was no European history class at my high school, and I never sought it out in college.

I'm not sure how long my English history obsession will last, but for the moment, I'm enjoying everything that I'm learning.

Podcasting Annoyance

You guys know that I'm a big fan of podcasts. I've reviewed some on the blog in the past. They come and go. One that might be my favorite for months suddenly falls off the list. Or one that I hardly listen to becomes a regular, but I always am listening to something.

There's a new trend, though, in podcasts and I'm not a fan.

Podcasting on YouTube.

Or is it called Vodcasting?

What I've seen happen is the podcast gets posted on YouTube--sometimes via a live--and later gets posted to the podcast feed. I can live with that if the podcast is updated promptly. It isn't.

For example, I listen to Foul Territory, a baseball podcast. It's two hours of YouTube live from 1pm to 3pm Eastern every weekday. Later, they break it up so that each guest (usually a player) is uploaded to the podcast feed as their own segment and then an hour episode with everything else.

This would be really cool except that sometimes it takes them days--DAYS--to post the content to their feed. During the off season when they have a reporter updating us on signings or rumors of signings, waiting two days to listen is pointless. By then, the news is old and who cares?

I find it hugely annoying, but even more annoying are the people who only podcast on YouTube and never have a podcast feed at all.

I get it. It likely costs more money and it takes some technical savvy to make it work.

Here's my problem--I listen to podcasts while I'm driving. I can't watch YouTube while I'm behind the wheel and I'm not paying the ridiculous monthly fee Alphabet wants to turn off the screen and just listen. Then there are the mid-roll ads. I get that, too, but they're not timed for a break in the discussion. Someone can be mid-sentence and boom! There are ads. By the time they finish, I forgot the first half of the sentence the person was saying.

Again, $13.99 a month to get rid of ads. That's too much for the small amount of time I spend on YouTube. Although if this trend in podcasting continues, I might be spending more time on YouTube than I do today.

Podcast Solution. Sorta?

I mentioned a while back about a podcast I was behind on--way behind--and that it was eating up storage on my phone. Storage I couldn't afford to lose because I am very tight on space. Because this podcast only has its episodes available for free for a limited time, I couldn't delete them and download them again later.

And episodes kept piling up. Every Tuesday, a new one would download and I'd be thinking, why can't you guys take a vacation???

Belatedly, it occurred to me that there must be some way to transfer the episodes off my phone to my laptop.That way I could go back and listen to them later, but not have my phone off-loading apps I don't use every day.

In the past, I tried the iTunes thing with Apple Podcasts and that was a PITA. I tried other podcast programs and resubscribing to the podcast, but that was a pain, too. The answer was to save it as a file.

If I could only figure out how.

Online search, right? Well, yeah. I have an iPhone and a Windows PC and I use Downcast as my podcast program, not Apple Podcasts, so let's make it complicated, right? The first result said to plug in the phone and use Windows Explorer. Could it really be that easy?

No. That didn't work at all. My iPhone never showed up as a drive.

Another suggested plugging the phone in and using iTunes like it was Windows Explorer. I almost never log into iTunes and it didn't recognize my Apple password. I reset it. Everything went fine on my phone. My iPad stopped syncing messages and I was trying to reply. Ninety minutes trying to get everything working there again.

Clearly, this wasn't going to work.

There was a lot more PITA stuff before it occurred to me to check out the Downcast site. It took a little digging, but I found out how to do it. Hurrah!

Mostly. Instead of dragging and dropping the nearly 100 episodes of this podcast to my drive, I had to export off my phone one file at a time. Yes, that's correct. I had to send nearly 100 episodes of the podcast from my phone one episode at a time.

Now that I'm caught up, I will keep off-loading the episodes to my hard drive and it won't be such a pain because it will only be one episode at a time going forward.

If I remember. Because I forgot until I was typing this. Got the episode now.

New Podcast Recommendation

 

I found another new podcast!

Not that I was looking for one. I have plenty right now, so many, that I'm only downloading episodes from my favorites and letting the others sit. And sometimes I just delete some of those podcast episodes without listening to them. But I digress.

This one is called One Hit Thunder and it looks at songs labeled as one hit wonders.

I've only listened to two episodes so far, but they were one-hit-wonder songs from two of my favorite groups: The Boomtown Rats and Devo.

I knew they both only hit once, but I have their albums and CDs and love so many of their songs that sometimes I forget that most people can't sing along with Windchill Factor (Minus Zero) or Diamond Smiles. (Both are by the Boomtown Rats.) It also kind of amazed me that the two hosts were surprised by the origins of the song they were discussing--I Don't Like Mondays. It was such a huge controversy, that I figured it was common knowledge to music listeners.

Devo has a lot of albums with a lot of great music! Their song, Girl U Want is the theme song for Ravyn's Flight.

I have a few more episodes on my phone I still need to listen to, and when I'm done with those, I'll queue up some more. I think, though, that this is one of those shows where I'm only going to listen to the episodes that interest me and not every one of them. There are songs they looked at that I've never heard of and I don't have much interest in those.

They also have an interesting choice for one episode--Rick Springfield's Jessie's Girl, which isn't anywhere close to being a one-hit-wonder. Just because most people only remember one of his songs doesn't mean there weren't others. I remember singing along with I've Done Everything For You with some heartfelt oomph in my more dramatic teen years.

Despite a few nitpicks, I really enjoyed the two episodes I listened to and would give a recommendation to anyone interested in music.

The Old Is New Again?

Apologies. Another blog post on podcasts. I'm deep into revisions and choosing the easiest topics for me to blog about.

After I failed to find any new podcasts (I'm not counting the one I used to listen to and forgot about), I looked at the podcasts in my app.

I turned off checking for new podcasts on all of them because when I work from home, I don't usually listen to podcasts. My office is nice and quiet. When I'm forced to go to the office, I listen to podcasts pretty much all day long to attempt to block out the noise and chaos. Open office seating is a bunch of BS.

This was an interesting flashback.

When I turn off the check for updates automation, I frequently go and manually update when I'm looking for something to listen to. Most of these podcasts hadn't been updated since before the pandemic hit.

When I did update them, I discovered some of them have gone defunct. I'm not positive, but I think it's all the podcasts this one new podcast studio produced. They were less than a year old (or barely more than a year old) when the pandemic hit. I don't know. Maybe the new company couldn't survive?

I also ended up deleting a few of these podcasts. If I hadn't listened to them in two plus years, did I really still need to have them on my app?

I should have deleted a lot more, but I knew if I did, I'd forget about them completely (like I did the podcast I mentioned in Tuesday's post) and I didn't want to do that. I am going to make more of an effort to listen to some of them.

Also, I shouldn't have even needed to look for podcasts. I have two on my app that are active downloads that I got super backed up on during the pandemic. One has 60 episodes and the other 80. I definitely have enough to listen to, but I didn't feel like either one of them.

Podcasts That Are Not Organization

With the organization podcasts a complete fail, I did some online searches for entertaining podcasts that had nothing to do with decluttering.

This was a pain in the butt. So many crime and murder podcasts. No thank you.

I finally found about four or so to try out, plus I found a podcast I used to listen to and love.

The one I used to listen and love was You Must Remember This and it's about old Hollywood. The host does a lot of research and she presents a fascinating look into the legends of the silver screen. When I listened, most of the episodes were about the 1930s and 1940s, but I see the newer episodes expand the time she covers.

Now onto the other podcasts. One of them also had a historical bent. The host would look at historical events and decide who was to blame. I made it through the first episode on the Titanic. It was okay, but superficial. The second episode was on the plague. I got halfway through and deleted the podcast. Again, there was no historical insight into anything. The blame board had entries like "rats" and "fleas." No, duh. I didn't need to listen to know this. Maybe the newer episodes got better? I didn't listen to those.

Another podcast was produced by what looked to be public radio in NYC. I think. I'm not familiar with the stations there. This one I'll actually name because I nearly kept it in my podcast list. Almost. So close, but ultimately I decided it would languish and I deleted it. The podcast is Radiolab. The premise is that they ask deep questions and use investigative journalism to answer them.

The episode I listened to was titled: The Worst Year Ever and it looked at the year 536 A.D. There was volcanic eruptions, famine, the sun was blocked by ash in the atmosphere, etc. It was interesting enough, but when I looked at other episodes, I didn't see anything that grabbed me and that's when I decided it wasn't worth hanging on to.

And the other couple podcasts? I can't even remember what they were called. I made it part way through one episode and deleted. I literally have no memory of them, that's how forgettable they were.

Podcast Time Warp

I've mentioned about how behind I am on podcasts. I mostly turned off automatic updating on most of them and have also been ruthless on what I delete. It was necessary since the back up is bad. Really, really bad.

Right now, I have 87 episodes of Mysterious Universe and 49 episodes of Scriptnotes.

Mysterious Universe really needs to be listened to in order because they often make references back to previous episodes and I've made it to March 2021--a year into the pandemic. So I listened to their pandemic episodes a long time ago now.

However, Scriptnotes doesn't need to be listened to in order and I've been hopping around on that one, listening to whatever caught my interest. Frequently, it's been the latest episodes, rather than the earlier ones sitting on my phone.

Then I decided it was time to work through some of those early episodes. I actually was behind on this podcast before March 2020 and the pandemic, so I was listening to episodes that were taped and aired before anything happened. And then the other day, I hit March 2020 and it is extremely strange to travel back in time to when the pandemic was first starting to break in the US.

It was strange. Remembering how much we didn't know at the time. The assumption that it wouldn't last for all that long. It wasn't quite time traveling, but wow, talk about feeling vaguely discombobulated.

And to go off on a tangent, it's like a huge validation to me about not putting any COVID stuff in my books. I didn't want to anyway because who wants to focus on that? But this was a good reminder why it's not a good idea in general. Things have changed a lot in two years.

What behavior is going to stick into the future? Which behaviors will be a blip on the radar? For example, before we knew it was transmitted as an aerosol, we wiped down all our groceries with disinfecting wipes. We haven't done it in a long time and I hope to never have to that again. On the other hand, I've become zealous about washing my hands 1) after every trip outside the house and 2) for the full 20 seconds, which means I sing Happy Birthday every time. This looks as if it's going to stick.

So how dated are books with these abandoned behaviors going to look in a few years? Yeah. And like I said, I don't want to read books with the pandemic in them, let alone write books with it.

Oh, yeah, podcasts. Right. Anyway, so weird to mentally travel back to mid-March 2020 and think about how little we knew then and how scary everything was. I have more episodes (a lot more) from 2020, so I'm going to be doing a lot of time warps.

Audio, Please

You should listen to this podcast episode, my friend said while were messaging.

It sounded cool, but when I went to my phone app to get it, I discovered that this particular podcast didn't turn up in my search. Hmmm, I thought, that's strange.

I followed the link my friend sent and the website had a video. There were all kinds of links on the page, but I couldn't spot an audio feed. Surely, there must be one because audio is much more convenient than video.

But no matter how hard I looked, I didn't spot one.

I messaged my friend again and she says, oh, no, it is video only. She listens to the video while she's doing other things.

This is a real problem for me because most of my podcast time is while I'm working at my day job or while I'm driving in my car. Our public Wi-Fi at work sucks--and that's putting it mildly. I tried anyway. And like I expected, it was a choppy, annoying mess. Listening in the car is completely out of the question because I have a cheap plan without much data because I'm almost always connected to some Wi-Fi network.

Making everything extra fun is the bonus feature that YouTube shuts the video down--picture and sound--when I lock my screen. If I wanted to be able to shut it off and just listen, I would have to subscribe to their premium service.

I needed a work around, so I started doing some online searching. I found a website that will convert video to audio and allow you to download it. Bingo!

This worked perfectly. I downloaded the MP3 file to Dropbox and then imported it to my podcast app. But...

What a PITA.

I don't know why the content creator didn't throw together an audio only feed, but she didn't and video is not convenient for me. I can't be the only person who feels this way. And while I would love to listen to more of this video podcast, I don't have the time to convert every episode to audio, so I'm out unless a particular week catches my interest.

It's really unfortunate because it's good information.

The Backlog Continues

I mentioned previously how backed up I am on podcasts. I turned almost all of them off for automatic download, but I'm still backed up. As I mentioned in that earlier blog post, the problem is that I listened at work to block out all the noise from the horrible open office concept seating and I didn't need to do that at home because it's mostly nice and quiet here.

But those few podcasts that I wanted to listen to and were still downloading and backing up my episodes were still an issue. As I write this, I'm at 68 on one of my favorite podcasts, the one I always listened to on my commutes. At 40 podcasts for one about screenwriting, which I find interesting even if I have no desire at this point to actually write a script. And I have a handful of others with between 4-14 episodes.

I did lower a couple of other podcast feeds down very low that were really, really high numbers by being tough. Was I interested in that episode/topic? If not, it went. And then I powered through the other ones to get sort of caught up.

Why not do it with the other ones I mentioned in paragraph 2? Those are longer podcasts. The one I listened to on my commute is two episodes a week--one at around 90 minutes and the other at about 2.5 hours. Great when I was driving so much, but it's slow going to get caught up on those. Basically all the podcasts left are ones with longer episodes.

But I might have a sort of solution. It's not going to get me caught up, but maybe it can keep me from falling farther behind. I'm listening while I walk. Since I can't go to the gym, this is my exercise. Normally, I listen to fast-paced music, but I've been flipping on the podcasts and trying to keep my pace quick.

We'll see how this goes over the long term, but so far it seems to be keeping things even.

Podcast Backlog

You all know that I love podcasts. Whenever I find one I like, I recommend it here. Something I love, though, might end up getting old for me and I'll drop it, but I'm always finding something new.

My podcast listening habits, though, have been severely impacted by months of working from home.

You see, I mostly listen to podcasts while I'm at work. The open office concept means a heck of a lot of noise all the time, so I'd listen to podcasts to tune it all out. I don't have that level of noise when I work from home. Mostly. (See the post about the Hopeless Family.)

My other go-to time for listening to podcasts was my commute to and from work. Which, of course, I haven't been doing.

So major, major backlog for me on podcasts I need to listen to.

I turned a lot of them off so they no longer auto update with new episodes. The only ones I kept on were my favorites because I wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything. But those are backed up, too. Big time. My very favorite podcast currently sits at 40 episodes, and since most episodes are 90 minutes or more, this is a lot of listening I have to do.

I also found an article online shortly before the pandemic hit that recommended a whole bunch of new podcasts and I'd downloaded one episode from all the shows I thought sounded interesting. I haven't listened to these either.

But you know what? Despite losing podcast time, working from home is so much more productive than working in the office. I'll figure out something else for my podcast habit.

Podcast Recommendation

***I received no compensation for this post. The podcast is free and this is my own opinion.***

I'm going to recommend another podcast here. I'm not sure how many people are interested in them, but I enjoy them immensely, although some go in and out of favor and I'll delete them from my app when I'm tired of it. This one, however, is a limited-run podcast and I find it relaxing to listen to.

The podcast I'm recommending is called: Sound Escapes. You can find out more HERE.

This podcast is recordings made by a man called Gordon Hempton who is a sound ecologist. He goes into wilderness areas and records the natural sounds in those locations. The first location is the rainforest in Hawaii. There was also an episode for a river in Ecuador which I'm going to listen to again and incorporate into one of the scenes I wrote in Wicked Intention...if I don't cut the scene.

What I like about the podcasts is how relaxing it is to listen to nature sounds without cars going by. It's like those relaxation tapes where you listen to rain falling only on a larger scale.

Usually, I delete a podcast episode off my phone as soon as I finish listening to it, but I've saved every single one of the Sound Escapes episodes (except for the first one where it was only an introduction and no nature locations were played). This is something I can go back to over and over when I need calmness.

Anyway, I highly recommend Sound Escapes. You can either listen through the link above or search on whatever podcast app you use.

13 Minutes to the Moon

***I received no compensation of any kind for this post.***

I love podcasts and I'm always looking for interesting ones to listen to. I found a good one recently produced by the BBC World Service called 13 Minutes to the Moon. It's about Apollo 11 and the first moon landing.

They could have focused solely on the first moon landing itself and I would have been riveted because I'm super into space stuff. (Probably why I started off writing Science Fiction Romance stories.) The BBC did more than this, though, giving us all kinds of fascinating episodes into other things that impacted the mission in some way.

The first episode covered the Soviet space program and how that propelled President Kennedy to set the moon as our goal. Other episodes that I've listened to so far include mission control and the fact that most of those guys were in their 20s. The lunar module. Apollo 1 and the fire that killed three astronauts. There was also an episode covering the computer and the software running on the computer that landed the astronauts on the moon. Even topics I didn't think would be that interesting ended up being incredible!

I wish I could listen faster!

One of the really cool things is how many interviews are included. Some of the people were interviewed by NASA before their deaths, but many were interviewed by the BBC. Many of the men and women interviewed mentioned things I'd never thought about or simply took for granted because they've always been part of my life.

If you have any interest in the Apollo program, I highly recommend this podcast. If you search for the title on any podcast app, it should show up.

Five stars (Through episode 5)

Story

In May, I listened to the Chernobyl podcast every week even though I don't have HBO, have no plans to get HBO, and probably won't watch the series even if it becomes available elsewhere because of how depressing the subject matter is. Why did I listen to the podcast? Because I loved hearing the writer--Craig Mazin--talk about his story.

Story is interesting. I like to see how other authors'/writers' minds work, maybe because it drives home that everyone's process is different and that there is no one true way to write.

When I was a teenager and decided I wanted to be a writer, I went to the library and checked out every book I could find about writing. They were all written by plotters. I contorted myself trying to follow their systems because only plotters were True Writers according to every one of these books. Only I was more of a seat-of-the-pants writer and plotting made me hate writing. Hate so much I almost decided to give it up.

Until the day I realized I missed writing and I was going to keep writing, but I'd do it my way and if I never became a real writer, that was just how it would be.

It's been my experience that so many plotters still maintain the plotting is the only true way to write. Hey, I would seriously like to be more of a plotter because it would make my life so much easier, but I'm not. I'm not a pure pantser either for that matter, but hey, it's my process.

But back to the Chernobyl podcast. Craig not only talks about the story, he talks about the choices he made in telling the story. OMG, I love this! And because this is a real event, he talks about what he changed for the sake of story and what is 100% true. (Hint: Most of it!) My only regret is that the podcast only goes as long as the series because I'd love to hear more about how he made his story choices.

Also, as an FYI, Craig Mazin is half the team (with John August) that does the Script Notes podcast which I am totally hooked on. The tag line is something like: Screen writing and things that are interesting to screen writers. They talk a lot about craft. Some of it is helpful for novels, some of it is so tied to how to write a script that it doesn't translate well. I still enjoy listening to it, and when I hear about what happens to a script, I am hugely glad I write novels. :-)

Blue Versus Green

I found a link to a podcast in my Facebook feed and it was about the iPhone and blue versus green message bubbles. (Why'd You Press that Button) I'd heard a story a while back about a guy who changed to the iPhone because he was embarrassed to show up as a green bubble, so I was intrigued enough to download the podcast and find out if this really is a thing.

The hosts interviewed people who talked about actual technological reasons for their dislike of the green bubble. Things like one person who had issues texting Android users and couldn't be sure they got her texts. Security because the iMessage system is more secure (Blue bubbles). And more like this.

They also talked to people who would have a group chat and the one Android user would be excluded because it was a pain for them to deal with.They talked to Android users who'd switched to the iPhone so they'd be able to communicate with their friends.

All of the people interviewed were probably in their twenties. Maybe thirties, but I don't think any of them were that old.

The hosts were 1) surprised because of how many people cited tech reasons for their dislike and 2) maybe color theory played a role--people prefer blue over green--and asked if Apple had done it deliberately.

They then brought on a tech guy to discuss what was going on and he explained texting versus iMessage and why he thought Apple wanted to differentiate between Apple and other users. It all has to do with texting versus iMessage.

I can't see not messaging with someone who has a green bubble--some of my best friends use Android phones--but I do prefer blue bubbles. :-) I get an indication that a message was delivered. I get an indication when my message was read. But the biggest reason is my dad. He had an iPad without cell service and he can only message people who use an iPhone (or another iPad user). It's easier for my dad to text than send emails and that's the biggest reason why I like the blue bubble people--it lets my dad stay connected to the world in a way that works better for him.

Too Many Podcasts

I think I've reached the point where I'm subscribed to too many podcasts. I love them, I enjoy listening to them, but I went from searching for something to listen to because I was finished with everything to OMG I can't believe I have this many podcasts in my app! Gah! (I won't address how many audio books I have to listen to still. That's a blog for another day.)

Part of the problem is that I found a few writing podcasts. I only downloaded a few episodes to check them out, but those few sit in queue.

Some podcasts that I love were on summer hiatus and now they're back, including one of my favorites, You Must Remember This about old Hollywood as well as a few others. There are a couple of more whose hiatus should be ending shortly and I'm trying to get caught up before they come back.

I also haven't had the listening time lately that I usually have and that's one of the biggest issues. I'm used to having more time than I've had the past few months.

The final two factors are: How often some of these podcasts update and how long they are. I'm a Mysterious Universe subscriber so I get two episodes a week instead of only one and the one on Friday has bonus content which will frequently go over 2.5 hours and sometimes close to 3 hours.

As I became more and more stressed about falling behind in my podcast listening, my iPhone started nagging me about being low on memory. This is a company phone and that means I only have 16 GB of space for everything. This has taught me one thing--if I ever have to buy my own smartphone, get one a heck of a lot more memory. In fact, I don't think Apple even makes 16 GB phones any longer.

I reached a decision--turn off auto-update for almost all my podcasts.

Oh, I left a few on: Mysterious Universe, By the Book, Scriptnotes, and a few others (not many) and I still feel stressed every time they update, but these are podcasts I generally listen to right away, too impatient to wait.

This has been working. So far. I'm still behind and still trying to get caught up, but at least the flood has been more or less stemmed. I hope I can get caught up before Christmas. I guess we'll see.

Review: By the Book Podcast

I was listening to a podcast where each of the hosts mentioned three podcasts that they loved. Most of them didn't interest me, but one was intriguing. By the Book.

By the Book has a simple premise. Every episode the two hosts--Jolenta Greenberg and Kristen Meinzer--take a self-help book and follow it for two weeks. They started with The Secret, did a finance book, a past life book, a diet book, and Kon Mari (the art of decluttering). They do a few check-ins to discuss how it's going, and at the end, they give their final verdict.

Kristen and Jolenta rarely agree, and sometimes it's a surprise about who has what opinion. There's also been some drama. Sometimes the books are simply too difficult to live by 100% and sometimes it's more serious than that. For example, Kristen had an eating disorder in the past and the diet book triggered some of her past behavior.

Both hosts are entertaining and it's entertaining to hear them cover their experiences living by the book. In fact, Jolenta is a comedian, but the show isn't a comedy, so don't expect jokes flying fast and furious.

If you're looking for a new podcast to try, and if you think the premise is as interesting as I do, consider checking out the show.

Recommended.