Josh Bancroft’s TinyScreenfuls.com

I’ve been alluding to a big suprise that I’ve been playing with the last week or so. New hardware. Exciting. Hype-building. I didn’t let the cat out of the bag because I had photos and video of the “unboxing ceremony” that I wanted to get ready to post before I said anything.

And then I got busy, and those things kept slipping. And people were IMing and emailing me, asking what the new toy was. I told them, because it wasn’t a super-secret NDA thing. I just wasn’t ready with all of the stuff I wanted to share.

Well, I’m a victim of my own hype. I still don’t have the video ready, or the photos posted to Flickr. There’s a fun little side project site I want to “launch” along with those, too. They’re coming, soon. I promise. But I don’t want to drag this out any longer.

The big surprise was that I lost my Mac virginity. I got an Intel-powered Mac mini, to use as a podcast/video production machine at work. Core Duo 1.6GHz, 2 GB of RAM, and an external La Cie 160GB Firewire hard drive that sits under the mini and matches it perfectly. It’s my first Mac, and I’ve spent the last week or so playng with it, learning my way around OSX, and trying out software. It’s been a blast.

Those of you who know me know that I’ve wanted a Mac to play with for a long time, if only for the opportunity to learn a new platform. I’m a Windows guy by trade, but I know enough linux to be dangerous. Mac OSX was the only major OS I’ve never really played around with. Since I like to consider myself “platform agnostic” - that is, no “religious” affiliation with any OS - it only made sense that I’d add a Mac to the stable one day.

So the big question is, am I going to “convert”? Will I be staying in the land of beautiful icons, slick window animations, and cool features like Dashboard and Expose? Sorta. I’m definitely hooked. Not to the point that I’m going to dump Windows - there are still lots of cool things that you can only do in Microsoft-land, for work and for play, but I’ve had a taste of OSX, and I definitely want more.

I’ll more than likely be picking up a Mac laptop, but I’m going to wait and see what gets announced in the next couple of months. The 15″ Mac Book Pro just seems a little bigger than I want. I’ve been spoiled by small laptops like the Dell 700m and the X41 Tablet. But, I may find that the resolution of a smaller 12 or 13 inch screen just isn’t enough (my mini is hooked up to a Dell 2005FPW 20″ widescreen LCD, running at 1680×1050). We’ll see.

Expect lots more Mac posts in the future, along with lots of questions - I know a lot of my readers have been Mac users for a long time. Many thanks to those that have already helped me out - especially my friend Tod at work, long time Mac user who has patiently answered my questions and tolerated my child-like glee at getting a shiny new toy. Can’t wait to keep finding cool new stuff for it!

I’m living the bachelor life for a couple more days, until my wife comes home from her mom’s (her sister had her baby last night - welcome to the world, Kara Renee!). I’ve been busy with work or Cub Scout stuff every night this week so far, so last night, I just wanted to veg out. A perfect opportunity to catch up on the Firefly DVD box set I bought and never got more than three episodes into.

So, I watched about 5 hours of Firefly last night - starting with the fourth episode, “Shindig”, and progressing through “Safe”, “Our Mrs. Reynolds”, “Jaynestown”, “Out of Gas”, and “Ariel”.

I LOVE this show. For those who aren’t familiar, it’s great sci-fi, set about 500 years in the future, but everything is kind of old west-style - outlaws, smuggling, etc. The writing is great - you never know what twists are coming. It’s hilariously funny - lots of smart dialog and laugh out loud moments. And you can’t help but love each one of the characters.

Fox TV had the broadcast rights to the show, but screwed up by airing the episodes out of order, then canceling the show after one season, even though it had a cult-like following. The movie Serenity was made last year, set in the Firefly universe, and was actually my first exposure to the show.

If you haven’t already, check out Firefly and Serenity. I’m doing a lousy job of explaining why it’s great, but you’ll know right away if you’re going to like it, and chances are, if you like, you’ll love it.

Just curious. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about boots, footwear, or western gear in my posts.

So why on earth have the contextual Chitika ads on this site been displaying nothing but ads for cowboy boots for a week? They don’t pay very well, in case you were wondering.

If you’re reading in an aggregator, click through to the site to see what I mean. You don’t have to click the ads, unless you’re in to that sort of thing. I don’t get anything for ad views - only clicks. I just think it’s weird.

If anyone has an answer to this mystery, I’m all ears.

We’re doing a schedule of weekly innovation podcasts at work, and trying to make them available to all Intel employees at a convenient time. That means a 10:00 PM PST (GMT -8) session for folks in Asia and Russia.

Just got off the session, on the topic of Podcasting 101. It was great. I record the audio of the sessions (I don’t always present, but I happened to be doing so for this one), and make it available as a podcast inside of Intel. If you’re at Intel and reading this, check out the Podcasting 101 page on Intelpedia, and subscribe to my podcasts at signal.intel.com.

Those links won’t work from the internet - only on the Intel network. Since a lot of Intel folks read me here, and TinyScreenfuls might end up being the one place where I blog, I thought I’d include them. For everyone else, I’ll see about getting the podcasts available externally, if you’re interested.

Anyway, I had fun, and the audio quality should be great. I recorded/called in from my home office, using my fancy condenser mic, mixer, and SkypeOut into the phone bridge. I spent all evening playing with the recording configuration, but I’m really happy with the way it turned out. You should see my desk when I’m doing it - laptop and desktop computer, mixer, mic in shock mount on stand, mixer, and Microtrack recorder. I took some pictures - I’ll post them soon. Talk about a geek snug and happy in his cocoon.

Rachel, my wife, and our daughter Emma are out of town for a few days, so I’m a bachelor for a while, and I plan to be a podcasting fool to make up for the fact that it’s been so long since I did one here. I’ll try to get Brian involved, but it might end up being just me bubbling about all the awesome geek stuff going on in my life right now. Stay subscribed!

If you arrived here from Steve Woodward’s article on podcasting in the March 10, 2006 Oregonian, looking for the podcast audio of our interview, I’m going to have to ask you to be patient.

I have the audio, but I haven’t had time to edit and publish it yet. I will get to it as soon as I can, but in the mean time, now is the perfect time to try out subscribing to a podcast, and experience the magic of having the audio show up magically on your computer when it’s ready.

To subscribe to my podcast, simply copy my podcast feed URL (http://feeds.feedburner.com/TinyPodcast), and tell your podcatcher application (iTunes, Juice Receiver, etc.) to subscribe to that feed.

That way, as soon as I get the audio of our interview posted, you’ll receive it automatically! You won’t have to remember to come back here again to check if it’s been posted. You can also peruse past shows of mine, but be warned - I’m a gadget geek, and that is very apparent in my podcasts.

Thanks for stopping by, and please feel free to post a comment or contact me if you have any questions about podcasting!