Tag: Podcasts

New look, new promise

Chimpwithcans.com has a new look and a new promise. There is now a home page to welcome you, a blog page, and a podcast page. There will be a podcast episode released each week.

The podcast may not be the most polished production in the world, and it may not be very long, but in the name of taming my inner chimp through creativity I will publish an episode weekly. Please see the new ‘podcast’ page in the menu above for details on how to listen.

If you look up the podcast on your phone, you will find an old episode “On Lemons and Nappies” which I created over a year ago. Listening to this afresh makes me cringe, but it’s a good baseline to work with.

The new, weekly episodes will start this Thursday. This should be fun.

Company

If we wanted to do something worthwhile – and it almost doesn’t matter what it is – we would likely find it easier to do with someone else as a guide, a teacher, or just as company.

There’s always an opportunity for creating a welcoming venue for birds of a feather to come together and practice, discuss, create, define what they want to get good at.

The best websites do this. Podcasts too.

The best restaurants, clubs, churches, offices, parks, homes and companies do this too.

Play Games

Playing games is important to me. In my life, Games come up all over the place.

If I find something difficult then it helps me to think of it as a game. This approach makes things less stressful and lowers my anxiety. Elon Musk says we might all just be living in a simulation. Sometimes it helps to think of life in that way. A few examples of play as it manifests in my life:

  • Playing with the kids at whatever game they have going
  • Treating menial parenting tasks as a game
  • Comedy and conversation with friends
  • Computer games
  • Sport and exercise including data on health
  • Social media accounts
  • Music – listening and playing music is a beautiful game
  • Work
  • Podcasts
  • Blogging 😉
  • More and more I see life as one big bunch of games to play.
  • Some people are not good at playing. Doodling, Riffing, Games, Jokes, Humor are seen as a waste of time. I can’t understand this approach to life.
  • Happy Wednesday, chimps.

    • Podcast ambitions

    Today I am starting to work on a new series of podcasts for the blog.

    This is a misleading statement because as yet I don’t know what it’ll be about, who will be on it or how many I will do.

    Perhaps more accurate would be to say I am starting to think about starting to work on the podcast!

    One idea is to use the blog itself as a resource, looking back over the most popular posts I have written and use them as a guide for podcast topics.

    But like I say – still early days. So watch this space, and prime your ears in the meantime 🙂

    Audio Responsibility

    Who is responsible for the music you listen to? And the interviews you hear? Who decides when your voice gets recorded or not?

    In a post industrial world, we have more choice than ever as to how and when we consume things. Take your music streaming service of choice – it likely has ~50m songs to choose from at the tap of a button. This can be overwhelming, which explains the success of Spotify and its algorithms. These ‘tailored playlists’ take the responsibility away from you and the music you hear.

    The idea of audio responsibility then, asks us to behave in a more engaged way around music and anything else we feed our ears.

    A couple of tips to get started on the road to audio responsibility:

    1. Read about it before you listen to it. This forces you to be an active participant and it makes the experience so much more satisfying. Check out this book to get started: Link
    2. The equipment you use makes a difference. Headphones, amplifiers and speakers are the best places to start investing (responsibly) in your audio experience.
    3. Nobody knows what you want to hear better than you. Not even Spotify.

    Here’s to taking responsibility. 🙂

    Recording yourself

    Do you like the sound of your own voice? The first time I heard my own voice must have been on an old phone message machine we had growing up. It held messages on tiny cassettes which it could play back to you.

    Having a very creative best friend, we then started messing around with dictaphones and video cameras. When I got into music and sang in a band, we’d record on anything just to hear ourselves play.

    And then came smartphones. Nowadays people are trying to get away from being recorded so often. Google Apple or Facebook hears everything we say. There are full fledged studio apps available at the push of a button/ swipe of a screen.

    I seem to hear my own voice a lot these days. Whether it is sending voice notes, or creating podcasts. Hearing yourself forces reflection on what it is you’re saying and how you’re saying it. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s worth a try.

    You should blog or podcast

    Why do you need to write a blog or to create a podcast? First off, it’s really easy to do. You just need a laptop and a mic. Second, because it lets you refine your ideas and thinking on whatever subject is at hand. And what better way to spend time than to clarify life?

    Podcasting in many ways is easier than blogging, because talking is easier than writing. Conversations happen without the need to plan each word or sentence structure.

    Neither of these activities will likely make you rich, so don’t do it for that reason.

    Both of these activities will show you something about yourself and your ability to create and to stick with a discipline. Do it for that.

    Complicated or Complex?

    The two words are often used interchangeably, which is wrong.

    If a system is complex, it means it has many components in the system. The complexity makes it hard to apply any hard and fast rules for problem solving. Think of a large company or organisation.

    If a system is complicated it can be hard to solve, but they are addressable with rules and recipes. Think of a machine.

    My next guest on the podcast, Dan Rogatschnig, did a masters degree specialising in this stuff and he laid it out for us during our chat.

    Come and have a listen on Friday.