Today, more than ever there is an amazing amount of free, high quality content online. Podcasts and vidcasts are the exemplars of this wealth of widely accessible online content and are the cutting edge of media distribution. Forget your cable or satellite TV,forget OnDemand, forget your EVDO Verizon phone, forget a $1.99 for an episode of Lost; the future is free, high quality content easily available both on the creative side and the consumer side. For anyone who doesn't know what a podcast is - a podcast is audio (or video in the case of vidcasts) content that is distributed online for play on a computer or some sort of portable media player (IE. your ipod, a compact disc, or even your Rio). You can find podcasts that subject matter ranges from ninjas to the BBC news report. Assuming you have iTunes installed you already have access to thousands of free podcasts. Since podcasts and vidcasts are distributed online they are unregulated, unlike radio and television that is regulated by the FCC both in bandwidth and content. You can find a podcast on just about anything that interests you. Here is a list of pod/vidcasts I listen/watch on a regular basis and recommend:

• The Naked Scientists - One of my new favorite podcasts. They address tons of science questions, interview scientists, and take listener questions. I'm loving it!
• This Week In Tech - A weekly podcast on current technology. It is hosted by much of the old Screen Savers crew and offers a great dialogue on current technology news among industry experts.
• diggnation - A weekly podcast that covers some of the top stories from the website digg.com. Its hosted by Kevin Rose and Alex Albrech who together provide a fun and humorous podcast.
• Pottercast - The foremost Harry Potter podcast put on by the staff at the-leaky-cauldron.org. They discuss news, theories, and interview people involved in the world of Harry Potter. No one can make me feel ashamed of my love of the HP!
• Travel with Rick Steves - A travel talk show by the popular travel writer, Rick Steves. I listen to it selectively as locations that interest me pop up.
• Digital Life TV - A biweekly video cast that covers tech news. Gotta love it.
• Hak.5 - A great show on the technology lifestyle/hacks/parody/laughs. Trust your Technolust
• Ctrl+Alt+Chicken - Brand new vidcast with Alex Albrecht of diggnation that I'm trying out. A cooking show...by people who can't cook. First one was fairly entertaining...I'm holding out judgment until future episodes.
• Tiki Bar Tv - An absolutely hilarious vidcast! Its pretty much a few guys and a hot girl (LaLa) making a cocktail per show and getting drunk. Watch em all and you'll be rolling.
• PurePwnage - You have to see it to believe it. If you're a gamer, you should be watching Jeremy and Kyle. If you're not a gamer, you will most likely think its the dumbest thing you have ever watched. An all time favorite.

Pandora calls itself the "music genome project." Pandora.com streams music to your computer with a bit of a twist. Here's how it works: log in and start creating a customized Internet radio station/s by telling pandora what bands and songs you like. It will start playing songs it thinks you may enjoy based on your previous input. By telling pandora which songs you like and dislike it continues to refine the selections it makes. Its a great way to discover music by new artists.While it is a perfectly good service, it would be a pretty innocuous reason to update my website. The real excitement lies in what you can do with the music after it is "streamed" to your computer and you deviate from pandora's terms of service a bit.

If you use the Firefox browser pandora stores the each song locally as an mp3. However, the file name and ID3 tags are not correct. Meaning, you have to figure out which file is which song and rename/correct the id3 tags for each ambiguously named file by hand.

Thankfully, there is a handy little java program that will find the files and scrape the artist and song name from the pandora website title and automatically correct the file name and tag information. It is a command line program. So, once you download the app. Pull up a command prompt, browse to where you have extracted the contents of the zip file and type 'pandora'. (Or just double click the file 'pandora.bat.') Be sure that pandora is running as your active tab in Firefox and start playing your radio station. This application will detect a new song and automatically rename and copy it to the My Music folder for easy access (this folder can be changed at the command prompt). Get the necessary files from the download section.

After you're up and running you can let pandora play and collect new music for your listening enjoyment. Thanks to Lincoln for the initial pandora tip and hak.5 for the application.

+jscoe

I'm enjoying the current template (Zaja-System) and have started customizing it for my needs. My Uncle Joe is generously working on a new banner design for this theme. The current banner is my handy work in MS Paint - I'm aware is pretty terrible, but at least it pertains to my site. I am also currently working on resizing these columns as well and potentially making the whole template flexible. Other new features you will notice around are the "My Moblog" block - flash animation of the most recent images from my phone on textamerica.com, "My Diggs" block - displays my digg.com feed, and "The Quote" block - random quotes that I have put together. Feel free to suggest, comment, flame.

+jscoe

The gallery is fully restored! So thankful I was able to restore the backup. Goes to show you, always back up! Next step is to work on the template. So stay tuned.

Yeah I crashed the site. Luckily I had it backed up. But its gonna take a little bit to get it back up and running. So bear with me. I will have the pictures back up, but it might take a while.

Also, do me a favor and click through the themes to the left and vote on the one you like the best. Keep in mind I will change the art to reflect this site. At the momment I'm liking Kubrick-Flexible Thanks!

-jscoe

So I was getting my weekly dose of Travel with Rick Steves radio show. To my surprise he has an interview with Petra Brunner, the woman who runs Mountain Hostel in Gimmelwald, Switzerland. Its a great interview and made me pretty nostalgic. Here is a link to the show. The interview with Petra is around minute 42. Linkage

Is it too soon to want to go back?

+jscoe

The panoramic photos are up and ready to be downloaded as promised. All of the photos are in a single zip file. I have included both a high resolution (very large files, but in full resolution) as well as a low resolution images (smaller files but less detail). Download them Here. For the most part they came out looking pretty decent. Enjoy.

+jscoe

Yes, I know I have been deplorably negligent recently in keeping up with my website. I am currently rendering the panoramic shots I took in Switzerland. I will try to have those uploaded and ready for downloading tomorrow. I know, its a few months late. Better late than never! However, what actually prompted this update was an email I recently received from Chad. We met Chad at Mountain Hostel in Gimmelwald and in those few days made a new friend. Before leaving Gimmelwald Chad and I exchanged information including the websites we call home. Chad is doing well and back in the states from his travels in Europe and like the rest of us is having a hard time getting back to work after such adventures.

For those that are interested, Chad has a blog over at blogspot.com. http://chadtwhite.blogspot.com . He even gave our crew a shout out in this blog entry: http://chadtwhite.blogspot.com/2005/06/blog-10-closer-to-heaven-swiss-alps.html . So definitely check that out. I have included Chad's email to me on the next page of this entry. If you would like to email him, let me know and I'll be happy to give you his email. However, I do not want to publish it here because I'm sure he already gets enough spam without me having to add to the problem.

Keep it authentic.

+jscoe

Sorry for the delay in getting something on the front page about Europe. The pictures are up and in the gallery. I still have some panoramic spreads that need to be worked on and spliced together. When those are ready, I will have an update that includes a link to the download for those. The organziation of the photos in the gallery pretty much follows our trip through Europe, but for the sake of quantifying the itenerary:

May 31 - Leave the States
June 1 - London
June 2 Amsterdam
June 4 - Den Haag
June 5 - Munich
June 7 - Budapest
June 9 - Vienna
June 11 - Gimmelwald via Zurich
June 14 - Rome
June 16 - Pompeii and arrive in Florence
June 19 - Paris, Londong
June 20 - Back to the States

The trip was incredible! Our adventure took us through Europe on night trains, trails, taxis, subways, buses, and gondolas. It was an unforgettable time with amazing friends. If I tried to outline all the great stories and adventures we had this article would quickly become unweildy. So your best bet is to find one of the people from the group and just sit down for some good old fashioned story telling. But, I do have a treat from the Mountain Hostel at Gimmelwald. This was the song that the owners Petra and Walter played in the mornings to wake up all the hostellers. Enjoy!

+jscoe

Spring break was quite simply put - incredible! It was a perfect vacation for my forth year. We managed to have a blast in spite of some mediocre weather and ludicrously loud announcements early in the morning. Not only did we get to be with old friends, but we also managed to make some new ones along the way. Be sure to check out the pictures in the gallery and send me any pictures you have that should be up for all to see. See everyone back at school. I hope everyone had a safe, uneventful trip back to UVA. -jscoe