Category: Podcast Summary

January was a busy month for me – between work, helping direct developments to CCHits.net, organising OggCamp, starting Sociable Tech (more on these later), I’ve now also become a regular co-host on The Admin Admin podcast – a podcast for people who work in IT.

Originally started by Al and Andy, Jerry joined them early in the recording series, and just recently Andy has changed jobs and doesn’t have the time to record at the moment. Ever since Al and Andy approached me at OggCamp ’15, I’ve recorded shows as an occasional guest host and providing feedback on episodes where it was appropriate… so I was happy to receive the message asking if I wanted to become a regular co-host.

As I’ve joined the show, we’ve changed the format slightly, reduced our recording expectations (we’re just aiming for one show a month now) and by our good fortune, my good friend, Dave Lee from The Bugcast, has also been roped in to help with recording and producing… he did a fine job with this show!

So, expect to see more posts from me, talking about the show in here.

In this show (Episode 61) we talk about naming hosts, home labs, routers and firewalls and Jerry and I waffle on about Vagrant…. a LOT :) Oh, and we teach Al what ephemeral means.

Oh, and yes, I explain about my Streisand box in this show and get it *completely and utterly wrong*. It’s rather embarrassing. I’ll explain properly on the next show exactly what happens!!

In two weeks I have appeared in three podcasts, and this is the third!

I was asked to participate in The Ubuntu Podcast – S10E26 – Endurable Wiry Bird because of my organisational involvement in the most recent OggCamp. I also mention a VPN product I think is useful for protecting yourself on public WiFi, and I mention my struggles with “Bash on Ubuntu for Windows” (symlinks of directories and FUSE filesystems). My wonderful and constructive wife said that I wasn’t very good at being interviewed (I kept having to be dragged back to talking to “normal people” level), but that it sounded like a professional radio show.

I really enjoy being on all these podcasts… I just wish I was a better guest on them!

Weird technical note: I have recently taken to recording the feeds from two separate microphones and submitting them both to the podcast for mixing purposes. On this occasion that back-fired… The “better” microphone picked up the other people in the audio from the “more rubbish” communications headset I use at work, that we were using to have the conference call. Fortunately, I’d recorded the audio from that too, as that had removed (or, more likely, never picked up) the audio from the other parties on the call… So next time, I need to either use better in-ear headphones for that, it just stick with the comms headset, and hope for the best!

Less than two weeks after my last “Live” show with the podcast, I’m once again contributing to the show. This time, I’m covering for Jerry as a guest presenter on The Admin Admin Podcast – #58 The Correct Answer to the Microsoft Question? this time being a bit controversial for anyone who knows me… By defending Microsoft. I also mention using Ansible to automate server software deployments, and tried to work out how small IT firms work out when to get support contracts. I briefly mention kanban as a task tracking methodology and a specific implementation for MS Outlook.

The Admin Admin podcast is a really nice and broad ranged podcast by three guys who work in IT support at different levels of the support chain. I think, if you work in IT, it’s probably worth having a listen.