Anja Haman interview about GB Women trip to USA

The other day I heard that GB Women, had beaten Canada women while in a recent tour of North America. I had to find out more.

The original idea was to record a phone call with Anja Haman (GB Women player and coach) and video me on the phone, then edit it down to a sensible size and include it in the next show.

As it turned out, we chatted for a bit too long and syncing it with the video would have been impossible. Plus the sound quality was very average.

However the content is interesting, you can listen to the interview on mp3.

You can find out more about Anja and the other GB women at www.gbwomensultimate.com. Check out those lovely photos.

Adventures in Podcasting

Occasionally the rollercoaster ride that is Blockstack TV, takes a dip. The dip was the realisation that we had made another dud. The first recording of Episode 5 was so bad that even with 10 minutes chopped off the end it was still unwatchable. YAWN.

Problems included:

• Too much self indulgent banality
• Me and Steve fighting to have the last word (Steve usually winning)
• No energy
• We look bored
• Even Clary wasn't very funny

Sometimes it may not seem like it but we do want to be professional in some ways, so we made the tough and time consuming decision to film it again.

That was last night at my house . Here's how it went.

• Tom goes to post office to fetch new adapters to simplify mic cabling
• Steve arrives with the rest of the crew
• Test new mic adapters - thumbs up
• Put camera on charge
• Talk about loads of stuff, none of it related to show (iMac, growing tomatoes, blah blah blah)
• Drink
• New member of crew arrives
• Have nice meal, more drink
• Call Clary
• Mic up and plan show (Do you think we should have done this earlier???)
• 10.45pm start recording show
• 11.20pm Battery goes flat
• Check video to see where it got too, realise there was no sound all night!
  
• Decide that we are going to do this thing if it kills us, more drink
• Some crew goes home, rest of crew concede that staying over is unavoidable and get stuck into more drink
• 12.15am Start recording show take 3
• Nail it
• 1.30am Play Star Wars Lego on XBOX 360
• 2.00am Go to bed

Of course for every dip in the rollercoaster there is a high point too. The episode is good, Clary is brilliant, we had great fun making it.

I'm editing this one so look out for it coming up very soon.

Also you can now subscribe to the show through iTunes.

Making of Episode 4

The making of episode 4 has been a bit of an odd affair. Firstly it's important to note that it was filmed before Paganello, so there are a few mentions of Paga being in the future, obviously it is now in the past. We had to record an intro in a pub after practice to explain the problem, which Steve is going to strap on to the front of the show.

Episode 4 features our new agony Ultimate uncle, Clary. Clary is the oldest living Ultimate player, we manage to call him on the show and ask him about an incident from last years EUCF. Clary has to break off from his bathtime to speak to us, but it's well worth while. Got an Ultimate conundrum? Maybe Clary can help, what he lacks in tact he makes up for in wisdom. Send us an email with your problem and we'll put it to Clary next time we speak to him.

There's also a heap of exciting sofa based chat, photo news, some emails, and my photography section which I hope you find useful. If you have further questions about photography
then feel free to send them in, if we think that answering them in the show will be useful then we'll do just that.

One of the things we've learnt from Paganello is that simple is good. Our one mic, one camera solution didn't give is much scope for messing around with fancy camera angles, but it did mean we were fast. Easy to set up (approx 90 secs), and easy to move around (only one cable).
By contrast our home sofa set up involves two wireless mics, two receivers, a mic mixer, numerous cables and things that need to be plugged in and several batteries that can run out. It take us about 45 minutes to set up and we do a ten minute sound check before every episode, even then we have issues. As you can see from this episode where both my mic and Steve's mic take it in turns to go dead. We may well be trading down to a simple cheaper wired mic solution in the future, probably before Episode 5.