The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.
Showing posts with label AmeriNZ Podcast. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AmeriNZ Podcast. Show all posts
Friday, June 26, 2026
AmeriNZ Podcast episode 426 is now available
The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.
Monday, June 01, 2026
AmeriNZ Podcast episode 425 is now available
The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.
Monday, April 06, 2026
AmeriNZ Podcast episode 424 is now available
The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.
Saturday, March 28, 2026
AmeriNZ Podcast episode 423 is now available
Today is the nineteenth anniversary of the day I uploaded the first episode of the AmeriNZ Podcast. Naturally, I had to do a new episode to celebrate the day—and to update everything that’s happened since my previous episode.
The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.
Saturday, November 22, 2025
AmeriNZ Podcast episode 422 is now available
The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.
Tuesday, November 04, 2025
AmeriNZ Podcast episode 421 is now available
The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.
Tuesday, September 30, 2025
AmeriNZ Podcast episode 420 is now available
The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.
Friday, May 23, 2025
AmeriNZ Podcast episode 419 is now available
The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.
Friday, March 28, 2025
AmeriNZ Podcast episode 418 is now available
The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.
Podcasting for 18 years
Eighteen years ago today, I posted the first episode of my AmeriNZ Podcast. Today, as is usually the case, Facebook served up a “Memory”, and one of them was a post for my 15th podcast anniversary in 2022, something that I turned into a blog post. Everything from that post is still true. However, what I haven’t made clear enough, I think, is how much Nigel was my muse—and so much more.
Nigel first encouraged me to start a blog in 2004 or 2005 (I finally did in 2006), and then he encouraged me to start a podcast (they were audio-only at the time). He then bought me all kinds of equipment—an XLR microphone, mixer, studio headphones, and gave me very useful feedback after I was on Paul Armstrong’s “ArcherRadio” podcast for the first time a couple days after I posted my first episode.
A little while later, Nigel and I were shopping for audio mixers for him (he tried several…), he got a microphone, headphones, and monitor speakers. At the time, he was interested in recording and mixing music, but the only song he actually seriously worked on was a vocal by our niece.
That, then, led to two different Internet radio shows, the first alternating with Daniel Brewer, and the second was on his own Internet radio channel. Our friend Brian (who I originally met through podcasting) also had a show on Nigel’s station. I still have recordings of some of our shows on Nigel’s channel.
Things changed, Nigel’s job got busier, we shifted to South Auckland—then it all ended when he did.
I’ve struggled with podcasting and blogging ever since, and it’s pretty common for me to think about formally quitting both. Even so, I persist for some reason—mainly because whatever appealed to me about them at the beginning is still there, though more low key than it was.
I have no idea whether I’ll attempt to continue either, let alone both, or if they might evolve. But I know for sure that Nigel would still be encouraging me to do what feels right to me, and probably quietly proud that I’m still doing what he encouraged me to do so long ago, however imperfectly I’m currently doing it.
In keeping with my tradition, I’ll post a new episode this evening my time [the episode is now uploaded].
Nigel first encouraged me to start a blog in 2004 or 2005 (I finally did in 2006), and then he encouraged me to start a podcast (they were audio-only at the time). He then bought me all kinds of equipment—an XLR microphone, mixer, studio headphones, and gave me very useful feedback after I was on Paul Armstrong’s “ArcherRadio” podcast for the first time a couple days after I posted my first episode.
A little while later, Nigel and I were shopping for audio mixers for him (he tried several…), he got a microphone, headphones, and monitor speakers. At the time, he was interested in recording and mixing music, but the only song he actually seriously worked on was a vocal by our niece.
That, then, led to two different Internet radio shows, the first alternating with Daniel Brewer, and the second was on his own Internet radio channel. Our friend Brian (who I originally met through podcasting) also had a show on Nigel’s station. I still have recordings of some of our shows on Nigel’s channel.
Things changed, Nigel’s job got busier, we shifted to South Auckland—then it all ended when he did.
I’ve struggled with podcasting and blogging ever since, and it’s pretty common for me to think about formally quitting both. Even so, I persist for some reason—mainly because whatever appealed to me about them at the beginning is still there, though more low key than it was.
I have no idea whether I’ll attempt to continue either, let alone both, or if they might evolve. But I know for sure that Nigel would still be encouraging me to do what feels right to me, and probably quietly proud that I’m still doing what he encouraged me to do so long ago, however imperfectly I’m currently doing it.
In keeping with my tradition, I’ll post a new episode this evening my time [the episode is now uploaded].
Thursday, January 02, 2025
New year, old problems
This year has barely begun, and already old problems are repeating. Fortunately, none of them are my fault, but that fact doesn’t make them any less annoying. Worse, there’s very little I can do about the problems, and what I can do isn’t a good option. Complicated stuff, and barely into the year.
Yesterday, I posted my first blog post of the year, one that talked, in part, about the “Y2K Bug”. That caused a big problem for me, one that requires a bit of a back story.
There’s a Google-supplied sharing bar at the bottom at the bottom of all my blog posts, making it easy to share a post by email, to “re-blog” it to Blogger, or to share it on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. I’ve used this for a very long time to share my blog posts to Facebook, but they made some changes at some point, adding a “Send Message” button to whatever post I share, and that goes to what appears to be an AI chatbot, for some unknown reason. Even worse, the ENTIRE Facebook post is a link to that Messenger chat thing (sample at right). In other words, it makes sharing posts this way utterly pointless.
I was first alerted to the problem by a subscriber to the AmeriNZ Facebook Page. When I clicked on the link, it worked fine, but it turns out that’s because I was using the page as AmeriNZ, not as myself. I started including a direct link to my blog post in the comments, and that seemed to work well—until last night when the new problem appeared.
Last night I shared my blog post as usual, and then I left the direct link in the comments on Facebook, as usual. Later, I opened Facebook and there was a Notification from Facebook telling me they’d removed my comment because, it said, “This goes against our Community Standards on Spam.” WTF?! As always, my comment had a direct link to the same thing I was sharing to the page.
Naturally, I read what they were referring to:
As usual, there was no way to appeal their decision, and there are no actual humans to contact (apparently if I pay to become “verified”, which would give me a blue checkmark, it might be possible to reach a human). So, there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
My next step was to try to remove the message option from posts, but that doesn’t seem to be possible. After the better part of an hour clicking various settings, including on the Meta for Business part that provides no way to go back to ordinary page administration (I had to close the tab, open a new one and launch the Facebook Page again), I found nothing. Facebook is notorious for putting controls for various settings in weird and illogical places, but it could just be that they don’t permit that.
So, the only option I have is to stop using the share button and copy and paste the link directly in a post on the Facebook Page (that’s also my only option for sharing podcast episodes). I have no idea whether Facebook’s “technology” will allow me to do that, but if it doesn’t the AmeriNZ Facebook Page will be useless to me, and I may as well delete it.
Meanwhile, another problem has resurfaced with my podcast: Folks clicking links are blocked by their web browser due to a supposedly missing or expired “security certificate”. I set that up only a few weeks ago when Roger Green alerted me to the problem. In fact, I was getting it on Chrome, too, but could click a few times to get the part where I could tell Chrome to let me do what I want on the Internet. However, Safari on my iPad wouldn’t let me override it, and it prevented me from accessing the site or use any direct link to a post. When I added the security certificate, all of that stopped—for me, anyway.
The podcast site is currently hosted by Go Daddy, and I’m sick of the constant problems and how difficult it is to navigate their systems to fix them—although, if I used it a lot, like if I was a web developer or something, it might be easier; I need to do something on it maybe once or twice a year. This is an open project at the moment.
Finally, a problem that took me awhile to identify: I wasn’t able to do certain things because I have a VPN (Virtual Private Network). I originally got it last January, just before my trip to Fiji with the family, because I knew Internet access was through wifi, and there’s no way of knowing how secure such things are. The VPN I chose, like most others, allow me to include all my devices, and while I mainly wanted it for my phone and iPad, I realised it could useful for things like watching news videos that are geoblocked. It worked great in Fiji, but then we came home.
I would try to access some websites and be refused access, something that sometimes happened before the VPN, but I assumed it was just a glitch. On a whim, really, I switched off the VPN and I could access the sites. Similarly, I use an FTP program to upload my podcasts to my site, and the one I use is called Cyberduck, something I've used for years, including for work. Earlier this year, I started having trouble connecting to the server to upload my podcast files: It would be very slow to login, then to access the folders on my site so I could upload my file, and then the upload would often fail, sometimes many times. I wasn’t suspicious because there were somewhat similar problems sometimes in the past, so it didn’t surprise me that there were glitches using it—ones that Nigel fixed for me, of course. I eventually started logging in through Go Daddy’s website, because even though it was much slower using a web browser, at least it worked.
When I resumed podcasting in early December, I and ran into the same problem using Cyberduck. Then, on a hunch more than a whim, I paused my VPN, and Cyberduck worked perfectly—fast login, fast access to the folder I needed, and VERY fast upload—all exactly as it should be, and how it was before I installed the VPN.
What all of these problems have in common is that at first I didn’t realise what was wrong, for different reasons. Once I worked out what was going on, I tried solutions for Facebook and for people to access to my podcast site, only to discover find out the solutions weren’t as simple as they seemed. Of all of those, only the problem using Cyberduck was easy to fix, and it’s remained fixed.
In a year in which I had very little room in my head to try and figure out complicated technical things, especially on top of everything else that was going on, it’s not a surprise that the problems took as long to work out as they did, and also why some of them didn’t work. Still this is new year, with, I hope, some new perspectives that can lead to new solutions.
Still, this certainly is not what I wanted to wrestle with on the New Year’s Public Holidays—or any other day, actually. This is one of those times where, “it is what it is.” Onward! I hope…
Yesterday, I posted my first blog post of the year, one that talked, in part, about the “Y2K Bug”. That caused a big problem for me, one that requires a bit of a back story.
I was first alerted to the problem by a subscriber to the AmeriNZ Facebook Page. When I clicked on the link, it worked fine, but it turns out that’s because I was using the page as AmeriNZ, not as myself. I started including a direct link to my blog post in the comments, and that seemed to work well—until last night when the new problem appeared.
Naturally, I read what they were referring to:
We don't allow people to use misleading links or content to trick people to visit, or stay on, a website.Obviously none of that was remotely relevant to me sharing a link to my blog post in a comment. So, I clicked on “read the full policy”, and it was just as irrelevant to this situation:
Examples of things that we don't allow
• Telling people that they must like a Page to access content on another site
• Using irrelevant pop-ups on websites to prevent people from leaving easily
• Disguising a link as something on our platform, such as a poll or video, to get clicks
We do not allow content that is designed to deceive, mislead or overwhelm users in order to artificially increase viewership. This content detracts from people's ability to engage authentically on our platforms and can threaten the security, stability and usability of our services. We also seek to prevent abusive tactics, such as spreading deceptive links to draw unsuspecting users in through misleading functionality or code, or impersonating a trusted domain.Most (I suspect all…) comment moderation on Facebook is done by bots and algorithms, so I had a hunch I was just another victim of technology, and I was right. I clicked on “How we made this decision” and read: “Our technology found that your content doesn't follow our Community Standards,” it said. “As a result, our technology took action.” Their “technology” means no human had anything to do with it, which was obvious, of course.
As usual, there was no way to appeal their decision, and there are no actual humans to contact (apparently if I pay to become “verified”, which would give me a blue checkmark, it might be possible to reach a human). So, there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
My next step was to try to remove the message option from posts, but that doesn’t seem to be possible. After the better part of an hour clicking various settings, including on the Meta for Business part that provides no way to go back to ordinary page administration (I had to close the tab, open a new one and launch the Facebook Page again), I found nothing. Facebook is notorious for putting controls for various settings in weird and illogical places, but it could just be that they don’t permit that.
So, the only option I have is to stop using the share button and copy and paste the link directly in a post on the Facebook Page (that’s also my only option for sharing podcast episodes). I have no idea whether Facebook’s “technology” will allow me to do that, but if it doesn’t the AmeriNZ Facebook Page will be useless to me, and I may as well delete it.
Meanwhile, another problem has resurfaced with my podcast: Folks clicking links are blocked by their web browser due to a supposedly missing or expired “security certificate”. I set that up only a few weeks ago when Roger Green alerted me to the problem. In fact, I was getting it on Chrome, too, but could click a few times to get the part where I could tell Chrome to let me do what I want on the Internet. However, Safari on my iPad wouldn’t let me override it, and it prevented me from accessing the site or use any direct link to a post. When I added the security certificate, all of that stopped—for me, anyway.
The podcast site is currently hosted by Go Daddy, and I’m sick of the constant problems and how difficult it is to navigate their systems to fix them—although, if I used it a lot, like if I was a web developer or something, it might be easier; I need to do something on it maybe once or twice a year. This is an open project at the moment.
Finally, a problem that took me awhile to identify: I wasn’t able to do certain things because I have a VPN (Virtual Private Network). I originally got it last January, just before my trip to Fiji with the family, because I knew Internet access was through wifi, and there’s no way of knowing how secure such things are. The VPN I chose, like most others, allow me to include all my devices, and while I mainly wanted it for my phone and iPad, I realised it could useful for things like watching news videos that are geoblocked. It worked great in Fiji, but then we came home.
I would try to access some websites and be refused access, something that sometimes happened before the VPN, but I assumed it was just a glitch. On a whim, really, I switched off the VPN and I could access the sites. Similarly, I use an FTP program to upload my podcasts to my site, and the one I use is called Cyberduck, something I've used for years, including for work. Earlier this year, I started having trouble connecting to the server to upload my podcast files: It would be very slow to login, then to access the folders on my site so I could upload my file, and then the upload would often fail, sometimes many times. I wasn’t suspicious because there were somewhat similar problems sometimes in the past, so it didn’t surprise me that there were glitches using it—ones that Nigel fixed for me, of course. I eventually started logging in through Go Daddy’s website, because even though it was much slower using a web browser, at least it worked.
When I resumed podcasting in early December, I and ran into the same problem using Cyberduck. Then, on a hunch more than a whim, I paused my VPN, and Cyberduck worked perfectly—fast login, fast access to the folder I needed, and VERY fast upload—all exactly as it should be, and how it was before I installed the VPN.
What all of these problems have in common is that at first I didn’t realise what was wrong, for different reasons. Once I worked out what was going on, I tried solutions for Facebook and for people to access to my podcast site, only to discover find out the solutions weren’t as simple as they seemed. Of all of those, only the problem using Cyberduck was easy to fix, and it’s remained fixed.
In a year in which I had very little room in my head to try and figure out complicated technical things, especially on top of everything else that was going on, it’s not a surprise that the problems took as long to work out as they did, and also why some of them didn’t work. Still this is new year, with, I hope, some new perspectives that can lead to new solutions.
Still, this certainly is not what I wanted to wrestle with on the New Year’s Public Holidays—or any other day, actually. This is one of those times where, “it is what it is.” Onward! I hope…
Wednesday, January 01, 2025
AmeriNZ Podcast episode 417 is now available
The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.
Friday, December 13, 2024
AmeriNZ Podcast episode 416 is now available
The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.
Friday, December 06, 2024
AmeriNZ Podcast episode 415 is now available
The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
AmeriNZ Podcast episode 414 is now available
The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.
Friday, April 26, 2024
AmeriNZ Podcast episode 413 is now available
The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.
Friday, February 02, 2024
AmeriNZ Podcast episode 412 is now available
The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.
Friday, January 26, 2024
AmeriNZ Podcast episode 411 is now available
The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.
Friday, January 12, 2024
AmeriNZ Podcast episode 410 is now available
The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.
Wednesday, January 03, 2024
AmeriNZ Podcast episode 409 is now available
The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.
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