pseudorandom podcast series, episode 1

The combination of my roommate starting a Rust podcast and a long, animated conversation with a (drunk) storyteller last night caused me to become suddenly enamored with the idea of starting my own lil’ podcast. Lately I keep thinking about how many spontaneous, insightful conversations are never remembered, much less entombed in a publicly-accessible server for posterity. So a podcast seemed like an excellent way to share these moments without spending a lot of time writing (I’m a regrettably slow writer). I’d simply bring folks into my warehouse living room, give them a beverage of their choice, and spend a leisurely hour chatting about whatever miscellaneous topics came to mind.

And so, wasting no time, today I asked my ex-ex-colleague Peter Eckersley if he would like to be my first podcast guest. Peter runs the technology projects team at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and, more importantly, lives 3 blocks away from me. Fortuitously, Peter agreed to have me over for a chat later this afternoon.

When I arrived, it turned out that one of Peter’s housemates was having friends over for dinner, so finding a quiet spot became a challenge. We ended up in a tiny room at the back of his house where every flat surface was covered in sewing equipment and sundry household items. As Peter grabbed a hammer to reconstruct the only available chair in the room, I set up my laptop and fancy (borrowed) podcast microphone. We gathered around as close as we could and hit the record button.

Except for one hiccup where Audacity decided to stop recording abruptly, the interview went smoothly and didn’t need much editing. Next time I’ll plan to put myself closer to the mic, do a longer intro, and maybe cut the length down to 15 minutes.

Here is the result.

Overall, I had a fun time recording this podcast and am unduly excited about future episodes. Turns out a podcast takes ~10% of the time to write a blog post with the same content. 🙂

For this and future episodes in the Pseudorandom Podcast Series, here’s an RSS feed. I’m going to reach SoundCloud’s limit of 180 minutes real quick at this rate, so I will probably host these somewhere else in the future or start a microfunding campaign to pay $15/month.