View From The Quad

Here at VFTQ I am well aware that even in this floundering economy, I am much better off then many people in the world.

I have time to be talking to YOU, for instance, instead of fighting for my life on the streets or in a hospital.

This is where Blog Action Day comes in. Today, the 15th of October, blogs all over the world aim to help put a stop to poverty. How can you help? If you have some spare change, donate it to the fund. If not, just blog about this event. Facebook, Bebo, Blogger, Wordpress… I don’t care how you get the word out, just DO!

Thank the lords of Cobalt that you have the chance to be listening to me yabber on ever week, and help us reach our goal.

I’m heading down to Podcamp Ireland on Saturday 27th of September. It’s a free event in Kilkenny city, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble getting there. Shoot me an email if you are coming and we can chat! Cian@viewfromthequad.com

Warning: If you do not wish to read an article which MAY feature in episode 110 of VFTQ, please do not read on.

I sit at my desk, drinking my first cup of good tea in three weeks. And I don’t want to be.

I want to be sitting in an overcrowded canteen at 8 AM, drinking overbrewed orange-twinged rubbish which I got from a huge vat. I want to be sitting at the very same over-crowded canteen eating undercooked chips, sloppy oily pizza and drinking water from a plastic cup. I want to be lying in the grass at ten to ten, holding somebody’s hand and laughing about something silly.

In short, I want to be in CTYI again. But I never shall.

For the past nine years, I have spent a portion of my summer at Dublin City University. Here, I have done college level courses over a short period of time. For the past four years, I have spent three weeks residential in the campus and done what amounts to the entire first year of a college course.

In 2005, I did 21st Century Science. 2006, Game Theory. 2007 brought Speculative Fiction Writing, and this year, I did an intensive course in Journalism.

During this course, I learnt about the many aspects of being a journalist. We watched films, documentaries and a writer for the Irish Independent explain the ins and outs of daily journalistic life. We created a 26 page newspaper entitled The American Pie. For this paper, I interviewed Paul Howard (Ross O’Carroll Kelly), made jelly in a bucket and even went to Dublin Zoo. The course was fantastic, Andrew Payne was an awesome instructor and it broke the really high standards usually set for CTYI courses.

However, it was not all about the course. Imagine this:

You are locked into a bubble with almost everything you need in it, along with around 249 other people. Here, hardly any news of the outside world gets in, and hardly any news of inside the bubble gets out.

The people in the bubble with you are all in the top 95th percentile in literature comprehension and maths. They wander around in bathrobes, argue about the validity of the Large Hadron Collider as a weapon and spend the entire three weeks pretending to be pirates. Crazy people. Fun people.

These are MY people. Geeks, Geniuses, whatever you decide to call them, they are fun to be around.

During Passionfruit, a little spoken of event for people who are too old to return to CTYI the following year, me and about 30 other guys and girls spoke, one at a time, about how CTYI has changed our lives. It was done in confidence, so I can’t share what others said. I can say what I told though.

I would not be this Cian Mac Mahon without CTYI. View From The Quad, Starting WoW, StuffSlasherSaw, my MINE submissions: All of these would not exist was it not for CTYI. 5 years ago, if you were to shove a microphone in my face, I would probably lash out at you. I hated being on camera, never mind editing my mistakes later. CTYI has brought out the loud-mouth in me, given me inspiration for short stories, projects, comedy pieces and articles. You would not be reading this right now were it not for the Computer Programming teacher who introduced me to Q-basic six years ago.

I would not have had the chance to meet all these amazing people were it not for CTYI. You all know who you are, and had I not met you, I would be a very different person. Some of you made me think about the bigger picture, what I want to be in the future years, some of you made me feel amazing and some of you are the best friends I could ever ask for.

This is all done now though. Never again will I be able to call myself a student of the Irish Center for Talented Youth. Never again will I drink the tea, eat the pizza and lie under the sky, next to the four walls we call The Quad, sharing the feeling with a friend. Maybe in three years I will go back and sit, nervous, in front of Colm O’Reilly as he decides if I am good enough to become a Residential Assistant and join the legion of the strange once again.

Are you attending Podcamp Ireland?

“PodCamp Ireland is the very first stand-alone event to promote the use and provide guidance and tips on the subject of social media in Ireland.

Podcamp Ireland is an unconference. In other words it relies on the active engagement and collaboration of participants to make it happen. Everything about an unconference comes from the participants. That includes the topics which will be discussed, the time and place, and even the decision as to whether to hold such an event at all.”

I will be there. It is on Saturday 27th of September, in Kilkenny city. Go to www.podcampireland.com/register to register for the free un-conference. Should be great fun!

Hey there kids! The Starting World of Warcraft (or Starting WoW for slightly shorter) podcast has just been launched at www.StartingWoW.com and you are invited to listen! It is only a short 3-4 min episode, explaining what will be going on, but remember to subscribe in order to get it for free every time an episode is released! If the iTunes button doesn’t work on the site, click the RSS Podcast button next to it and then select iTunes on the page which opens if you are using iTunes.

To who it may concern.
Over the past year and a half, or there abouts, I have been a paying member of Switchpod. Basically, they have pretty much disappointed me at every hurdle, from the stats system, which I have been promised on numerous occasions will “Be updated tomorrow. We Promise!” The strange downtime, the errors with the log-in system and of course, the terribly designed website.

I have decided that I refuse to take any more of this, and want to switch to Libsyn. Imagine my surprise when it is hinted at that not only will I have to give up my feed when I stop paying because of the switch, but switchpod will start inserting advertising into my feed.

Continuing, Switchpod support staff have REPEATEDLY refused to answer two simple questions, related to the above thing which surprised me.

1. Is the redirect feed option available for non-paying members
2. will ads be inserted into the redirected feed.

I feel that if it is not available for non-paying members, or if advertisements are inserted, I deserve to keep my “paying” account without actually having to pay for it, for the sole use of redirecting my switchpod feed to a libsyn feed or maybe my own feed from my own web hosting service. I believe this for the following reasons

1. From the get go, switchpod lied about their service. When I signed up, they were promising “The most advanced stats” and, as we can all see, the stats system is an utter joke. The joke even goes as far as to STILL have the following message printed on the stats page. “Hi, We are experiencing some technical difficulties. We are working to make the new stats page better for the site. We will be moving the stats engine to a new server to improve server performance. We will email when every thing is up. Thanks. - Jan. 28, 2007″. Rob, over there at wizzard.tv personally promised me, in person, at the PNME that switchpod would have a nice stats system running withen a week of the PNME 2007. We shook hands, and he went on to say that if there was not a new stats system, The coder responsible would be fired.
I mean, january 2007, we were being promised new stats. Have they shown up? NO.
2. Check through your support files to see how many problems I have had with switchpod, from files deleting themselves to my account being inaccessible for large amounts of time, remembering that I actually have to give the support staff my username and password, something which I find really… silly. Not forgetting that they tend to dance around questions so that they don’t have to answer them.
3. I was promised by somebody at wizzard.tv that you were working on getting “Switchpod up there with the big boys of podcast hosting”. Has this happened? Clearly not. Switchpod is a system which by rights, should have a warning on the front page saying that any podcaster who takes themselves seriously should not sign up.

In conclusion, I am requesting a transfer to Libsyn, with however much “credit” I have left on switchpod going into the libsyn account. I would also like for switchpod to redirect my feed for free, without inserting advertising into it. I will remove all my files from switchpod, and host them on libsyn instead, because leaving them on switchpod would not only be useless, but unfair to them.

Yours Sincerely,

Cian Mac Mahon
—————————————————————
Cian Mac Mahon
Professional Podcaster
Available for voice work, consulting

www.viewfromthequad.com

EDIT 2 - 11/27/07 Added another prize. Thanks Phill Rossi!

EDIT - 11/26/07 Added another prize to the list. Thanks Flockofdodos.com!

Hi there. Here is all the information about my new competition, the 12 Days of Christmas.

During the 12 days running up to the 25th, I aim to give out at least one *something* such as a book, album or t-shirt. Many of these items are signed. Here is the list of things which i KNOW I can give out so far. (Of course, If the person who is donating the prize does not get the prize sent to me, I can not give it out. But i doubt that anybody would do that.)

Only one of these prizes has a confirmed date attached, and all prizes may come in multiples. When I say “A copy of X” I could mean “3 copies of X”. I’m just not gonna tell you.

1. 25th of December, a copy of a Harry Potter book, signed by some of the cast of the next Harry Potter Film
2. A signed copy of Scott Sigler’s Ancestor - This book is now out of print, this is the only way you can get it.
3. A signed copy of Mur Lafferty’s Playing for Keeps.
4. A signed copy of Tee Morris’s Expert Podcasting Practices for Dummies, Legacy of Morevi and BilliubBaddings and the Case of the Singing Sword (Not all on the same day of course)
5. A signed, Limited Edition, Pre Release copy of Seth Harwood’s Jack Wakes Up.
6. A signed album by George Hrab.M
7. A Playing for Keeps T-shirt from Geeklabel.com
8. A signed DVD of the Flock of Dodos documentary
9. A signed, limited edition copy of Crescent, the podiobook by Phill Rossi. This CD comes with full album artwork, and all the trimmings.

And more to be announced.

So, I hear you ask how you can win some of my great swag. All you have to do it subscribe to my podcast for free, using the little buttons over on the right hand side, (Click the “iTunes” button if you use iTunes and you will be subscribed automatically) or subscribe to my mailing list.

Good Luck, and let me know what you think of this contest!