• 1/23/2023 - Sue F has generously donated $200 to further our cause! Thanks so much Sue for supporting our podcast and for being our friend!

  • It has taken a considerable sum of money, upfront, to invest in our podcasting equipment, and podcasting hosting. And that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface on the number of upfront hours co-host Zach has spent on the design and development of our website.

    For us, this is a passion project and maybe, eventually down the line, a side-hustle of sorts. However, it is our ultimate goal to keep the core podcasts absolutely free-of-charge. We don't believe in garden/pay-walling in order to access our content. It is never our expectation to make money off of our art, but rather to let others enjoy it freely. Although, with that being said, if you do enjoy our content and want to help support the continuation of future episodes as well as increase the chances of them being aired more frequently, you are more than welcome to contribute monetarily, design, coding, volunteering, offering your expertise as "expert" on our podcast. We are happy when our random act of kindness is reciprocated in unexpected ways. After all, it's good karma, all-around.

    Regarding the former point, while we could attempt to monetize our podcast by including generic ads, or focusing heavily on making a buck, doing so would be aimless, reckless and would certainly alienate a cross-section of our audience/listening demographic? Why? Because we are a different kind of podcast, with a very different philosophy of what we offer to the aether. It is important, just like the origins of organic food, that it comes from a place of goodness. Therefore, if we do accept donations, it will either be individual donations, either through a donation platform with low percentage cuts, through patreon, or contributed in other ways.

  • We appreciate hearing from and offers from other trades, experts, craftsmen/artists/artisans, or even people like and/or that can relate to us. As experts in your respective realm, you are the master and you could potentially help elevate waht we've created. However, in doing so, it is important that we emphasize this doesn't mean any ownership over the site or the podcast and inviting this sort of help, we are in no way beholden to you monetarily, nor emotionally. However, we will credit you for your work and also consider affliating with you, which if this show ever becomes popular, would be a great way of showcasing your talents and driving business to your livelihood. It can be potentially, win-win.

    If you are passionate and you love what you hear and want to help shape the future of it, to both look and sound better, we are open to hearing from you. I have created online communities before and there is nothing quite like surrounding yourself around people of like mind and like passions. It is an opportunity for magic to happen, as great minds think alike and when we combine our minds together, we can move mountains - or make the impossible, possible!

    Next, you might be wondering: who's help would we automatically consider, even through careful review and ignoring the entirely unnecessary "cold-call" internet marketeers? I'm glad you asked! We can use your help currently on three main fronts:

    • 1. Experts in their field open to interviewing, Q&A-fashion

      Often what makes a show desired and others willing to intently listen (or rather get lost) to a podcast is the result of immersion. It is the result of genuinely interesting and/or engaging content. It can be a left-brained activity, just as much as it can appeal to our right brain - depending on the topic covered. Once more, a many successful podcasts before us, incorporated either in-full, or in-part, the participation of outside individuals - the so called "featured guests" because it enriches the experience, offers both the hosts and the listener to learn something new about art, science, industry, etc. In many cases, the even is eye-opening and has the positive impact of educating the populace on a wide-range of topics, where they would otherwise, remain unaware. Our society, culture and planet is at a sort of crossroads and possibly our last chance to reverse, or chart a course away from the undesired changes affecting our way of life, or even our planet. Or, it could be as benign as learning about something interesting, from the experts themselves about certain trades, skills, crafts, or arts they didn't know about and inspire future interest. Who knows?! The bottom-line is guests are usually called upon, in an interview format, to probe at specific subject-matter, in much greater detail than would be possible, without them. For that reason, we love interviewing professionals that not only work in the field, but live and breathe the stuff in a way that is driven by passion and purpose. This is where there is absolutely no-substitute for pure, raw passion, experience and expertise. We all spend our lives - if we're successful, focusing on our gifts and attempting to manifest our dreams - for some of us, it is a dream of creating a better world. When we can lend a hand in the pursuit of furthering our knowledge and the populace's knowledge of the subject - as a whole - those are the conversations that are mesmerizing, entrancing and memorable. Between that and authentic, kind, and relatable hosts, you know you have made something truly special - in this regard, our goal is no different. But the story and the way we tell it - just may be, different. Whether (or not) everyone "gets it", or finds interest in these conversations, depends on the ability of the the audience to field the depth created by its presenters; it also depends on the ability of the presenters to meet the audience at the level in which they reside. It can be an art to find the widest middle ground and less difficult to satisfy the needs of a niche audience - which already understand the presenters well.

      Therefore, if you are one of these experts, empassioned, or compassioned individuals wanting to spread the word about a cause, revolutionize your field, or our way of life, reach out to suggest a new topic, or introduce yourself as a potential new featured guest of a future podcast. We'd love to have the honor of interviewing you!
    • Conversely, we are currently we are operating in "duo-only mode", given the lack of guests to interview and also to provide us some time to fill in some gaps in our backstory - so hopefully you'll enjoy our show, all the more, as you get to feel, naturally, like you know us. As far as how much of the show will be focused on the interview-format, we envision either a 70:30, 50:50 format (experts:duo-only podcasting). This is of course subject to change and will be affected based on your feedback, our strengths and what content our audience likes the best. It will be impossible to please everyone with this, but we do intend to strike a balance so there is something here for everyone and so many people can consider this podcast, "home". W

    • 2. Musicians and audio engineers

      To help create original/outro music, sound effects, or to help us overall enhance, or increase the overall production quality of our podcasts and the way we sound. This could mean providing us feedback over zoom, to help configure, walk-us-through/teach us what to listen for and how to configure our audio equipment correctly to achieve the best audio-fidelity possible. However, with your trained ear, we may be able to achieve a better, rich and more robust sound. Please note: we have a limited/beginning knowledge on sound production and are currently operating out of untreated room. Having said that though, we did invest heavily upfront in our equipment/sound setup:

      At the core we are utilizing a Rodecaster Pro II production console/mixer and use both Macbook Pro M1 13" along with a 2016/2017 Macbook Pro 15" respectively. We have some additional older/mostly retired Macs, including iMac from 2015, and a mac mini from 2012. Each co-host/seat is equipped with a Shure SM7B (flat-channel setting), Gatorworks Boon Arm w/ integrated XLR cable, along with Focal Professional (French made) Studio Monitoring Headphones (we have been told they provide a very full range, neutral/non-bias boosted to low or high end) for continual monitoring when we podcast. Additionally, we have invested in 12x New Haven moving blankets. They are often referred to in the soundscape and sound industry as one of the best sound-proofing blankets around. Unfortunately, due to Zach's current physical limitations (at least for a little while longer), has prevented us from a more proper setup. Lastly, we utilize https://rss.com for our podcast hosting and our website is kindly hosted by someone that has offered hosting for free to Zach for the past 15-20 years (and has no problem acknowledging if permitted by the party).

    • 3. Programmers, web developers and design engineers/mentors

      Whether you're a full-stack developer, well-versed in OOP-PHP/python/iOS/MacOS development, UX/UI prototypers/modelers/designers and generally speaking: anyone willing to contribute in the aforementioned ways, especially with an emphasis on someone willing to mentor, in exchange for working conjointly on a project together. Ideally, it would be great to have someone help mentor me through a mutual project that would offer opportunities to work on better grasping how to write all production code in object-oriented terms, and some experience with subversion/git commit on a small team. It would be nice to build something useful, a nice open-source co-developed piece for the resume, or something closed-source and functional that could be ported to a variety of our own side-projects, in the form of a custom CMS - comes to mind. These sort of projects can be a lot of work for one person, especially if it's only handled on the side. To state this most simply: I am looking for an opportunity to work alongside someone that has lots of experience working on OOP-PHP in a team subversion/git commit environment, with the possibility to expand such knowledge into OPP-python. I am motivated, been playing around with this stuff for the past 20 years, with a few professional freelance side-gigs, but not enough to make a living off of it. The OPP and resume piece are the two core missing components that would be necessary for me to be reasonably considered for other programming gigs at companies on a full-time basis. In the past, I wave had little/no-success in mentoring my friends and luring them successfully into my projects, or comitting to a new joint-venturep project. So I want to let you know I cannot perform all of the work alone, but would love to work on a small team, receive some mentorship and in return, I would honor my commitment to this joint project and would promise to not waste your investment/time. A lot has changed with the web in the past twenty years. It has literally been seven years since my last major CMS project, which was at best: half-realized, but never fully-realized, nor translated.

  • One proposed project would be to create a fully object-oriented and intuitively designed PHP/DB CMS, that seamlessly connects (whilst cleanly separates) UX/UI elements and modular theming/display elements that are programmatically and linked intuitively. In other words, in past projects, there has always been the need to inject code/lengthy strings into templates, or manually code template elements into echo statements in PHP to sandwich between nested if-logic. And from my research and understanding the OPP-PHP-CMS community as a whole has not produced such clean implementations, often having to rely on a third "controller/viewer" layer to such models. There's got to be a better way. Ideally this design vs. programatic logic-separated CMS would also feature a modular, plug-in-play module/template system, in a dependency-worry-free, fashion. For instance each site module would consist of a folder of files: HTML template file w/ variable placeholders, .js, .css, etc., while the programatic elements would handle all aspects of the logic, including the if/else, or at the very least parse these rules within the temmplates (including loops, etc.) intuitively. Configuration for each plugin can occur between an initial install setup file, working configuration file, and an uninstall. Additionally, in order to administer the backend of these features, it would be helpful if the admin system was similarly modular, however, could intelligently inject aspects of the module into other modules/admin core in ways that are meaningful and add to the robustness of the design. In other words, it would be great to co-create, co-author an open, or closed source (either way), simple/minimalistic and yet universally applicable framework that can be ported to any new micro-site that is created for our clients' and our own needs.

  • A bit about who you'd be working with: I have a strong sense of ideology, right/wrong, justice and very empassioned and opinionated when it comes to my computer code/design/troubleshooting philosophies. As a coder, IT troubleshooter, etc. you must create value in your service. Rough translation: if I am troubleshooting someone's computer problems, I don't apply settings that will fix their issue temporarily, or apply a temporary "hack" cuz either I'm too lazy, too busy, or want to kick the can down the road so I can ensure future work for myself. NO. I have integrity and principles. When I go to fix that problem, I ensure it's addressed fully from the client's view and my own view. In the event that the client asks me to do something that will only mask the issue, or kick the can down the road, I am adamant in letting them know the consequences, in respect to their insistence (which I do respect the clients' wishes; however, it is equally important to educate them). Some technologists don't do this because they don't mind being predatory, especially to the luddites that don't know any better.
  • A bit about my software design philosophies and sensibilities. Now as far as my philosophy on subscription models for software... don't get me started. In the modern day, I am seeing an awful lot of "Software as a Service" (SaaS, is it's referred to in the biz) models being applied to software that has absolutely no business adopting such model. Why? Because, now a days, it is an attempt at a cash-grab for lazy, uninspired developers, that enjoy sitting around and getting paid for it. However, if these developers are adding new and truly useful, full-breadth of features regularly that's game-changing, that's appropriately priced, or it's the type of software that benefits from continual code audit, revision, and exploit patching (say for a password manager, like 1Password) AND it's affordably and appropriately priced - then I'm game and all for it. As far as an example of not what to do, or is truly invasive/unpleasant and something I don't want to see, is in the case of what happened to the wonderful iOS/MacOS app, FantastiCal. You may ask, what is FantastiCal and what went wrong? Well if you haven't already figured out by the play-on-words, portmanteau, alone... it is well, a Fantastical Calendar. Allows you to add items to your calendar as seamless as typing out grammatical/syntactically understandable phrase/sentence. Say for instance you are at a doctor's appointment and you are asking for available times, you could easily review your calendar, at a glance, to look for dots on each respective day, click on the day and see to the hour if you have availability. If you do, then you could literally type into a one-line box: Appointment w/ Doctor at Central Ave Location @2:30PM on 2/5 and it would literally extract (Appointment w/ Doctor) as the title of the calendar item, set the time to 2:30PM in the afternoon and select the date to 2/5. For weekly tasks, you could even tell it weekly, going forward, or between a range of dates. Simply put, this is brilliant software design because the lines between the interface and getting the task complete, completely blur. Secondly, whether they realized it or not, but by choosing their syntax to be the English language, it extends the initial application from writing, into the realm of the spoken speech. Meaning: later on, it would be very easy to integrate this with spoken commands with Siri (don't get me started with Siri, it is sub-standard compared to Google AI's voice API). At any rate, they originally charged, $5.99, or $9.99 one-time payment for the iOS app, and kept the MacOS app free. The two would sync using a configured email calendar between your Apple ecosystem, while it still remaining an option to sync this to a calendar of your choice that supports CalDAV on your PC. Now fast forward to 2018... Just like Adobe, and so software studios they came after, they decided not only to eliminate the possibility of a one-time, or interactive/upgrade purchase where all of the core function remains, but each new major iteration will either support a new iOS/MacOS (several versions later, grandfathering for a period afterward), but failure to upgrade means missing out on new and cool features. That's not at all what happened with FantastiCal. One day, an update was automatically applied over the App Store. Upon relaunching, I had to sign up for an Agile Bits account... ok?! That's weird, I thought. I created an account and provided login credentials. Where the prompts were proceeding, I thought the worst, but up until I made the account, they just said that they would use the Agile Bits account to sync the calendar over what was presumably their free syncing service. WRONG. Once I clicked the email to verify my email and login to the app, the next prompt was to sign up for an obligatory subscription... get this, they think they can charge $39.99 a month, for an identiCal experience to prior to the update. What's worse, is they claimed only the new features would be pay-walled if you didn't sign up for the "PRO-version" , in reality, they paywalled several of the views, including list/weekly view and did a horrible job at separating the pro features, from the free core features. I was so angry by this because not only was I not offered a choice of upgrading, but moreover, I was lied to. And at the time, additionally, there was truly no good reason for them charging such a premium for an application that was already fully built and where one or two updates a year added useless features, I didn't even want (if I had subscribed, which I didn't.) I left an angry review, and configured Google Calendars for CalDAV. It's situations like these, where I don't support software as a service. However, say for instance, we prototype, design, create, and code websites based on the client's need and host these custom-need, proprietary websites, but are also responsible for adding new functionality, troubleshooting them and keeping them online so our clients can focus more on their business... in that instance, I think SaaS is a fine model. Similarly, if I coded/designed a one-off website for a client, with very basic needs and they were charged a one-time lump sum price for the work, but they handled the hosting/domain and paid for it themselves and they only need to contact me occasionally for an update (again, this is merely hypothetical/philosophical examples/reasoning), then I would only charge them for the contract work to fix a bug, add a new feature, etc. Again, if we own the infrastructure, host our proprietary CMS that is custom-built out for each company's needs, then I don't feel bad with the SaaS model. But for the single, just slightly budding artist who can't afford much, maybe their site doesn't change much, they don't have real specific needs, so maybe they could benefit from simple hosting without such extensive/on-call support, and would do much better to pay as they go, when things come up.
  • My thoughts on Wordpress as a CMS: I don't mean to sound SaaS-y, but there is too much bloated Wordpress in the world. Is it considered the single most popular and most successful CMS on the planet? Yes. But it's not without its drawbacks. It attempts to get so much accomplished and place its focus so heavily on ease of use, even for designers that heavily rely on their hosts to troubleshoot the CLI, permissions and coding problems (yes there are designers out there they modify themes, design logos, make websites and know absolutely no idea on how to code; I call these individuals web designers, not web coders/programmers and certainly not web developers - who usually are experts in a few areas, but are strong generalists that understand all aspects of the web server stack). The bottom-line, is if you tightly control the ecosystem, design and coding standards - unlike Wordpress, the CMS can get things done much more efficiently. When you have thousands of people contributing themes and plugins, using their own programming philosophies, that's where things start to get chaotic, bloated, and slow. I don't even want to know how much electricity is wasted on the block-chain, vs. how much is wasted on Wordpress bloat, that powers 70% of all websites on the web. Did Wordpress start a new internet revolution? The answer is yes! Is it one of the best CMSs available and has it earned that title, well, yes! Could it be made better? Again, the answer is yes, but it's more complicated than that when you consider you have to support a bunch of old plugins, etc. Most people who run Wordpress sites are businesses that pay for the initial upfront cost, but then refuse to pay another dollar to someone else to fix it, revamp, or rewrite the site. Furthermore, since the web design industry is so saturated by these so called (or as I refer to them) "designers" (many of whom, don't get me wrong, are gifted, others that just repackage themes, know some HTML/CSS/Photoshop), unfortunately, they lack understanding of the web server and how these WP plugins and themes actually function. When something doesn't work, they resort to updating the permissions to 777, which causes a headache on shared-hosting, like BlueHost, where it negatively effects the function of the other websites hosted on the box. As technology improves, hopefully there will be a mass exodus away from shared hosting, into virtualized hosting, as light-weight versions of Ubuntu not only cap out the resources per site, but moreover sandbox their entire contents.