Radio DTB

It seems that my upgrade to WordPress 2.0 for Radio DTB caused the podcast feed to re-issue podcasts 11-19 and the extra podcast. For those of you who have already heard those episodes (twice, since this happened when I upgraded to WordPress 1.5, too), I apologize.

Of course, you can just use this opportunity to enjoy those episodes again if you like.

For those of you anxiously awaiting the next podcast, I promise it’s coming. I’ve just been really busy lately and haven’t been able to put it together yet.

If you’re going to be at either the Bethesda, MD or Easton, MD shows, let me know — I’ll be there and it would be great to meet you before or after the show.

I just finished upgrading the blog engine from WordPress 1.5 to the lastest, 2.0. Everything appears to have gone off without a hitch and my readers shouldn’t even notice. If you do notice anything out of sorts, please let me know and I’ll take care of it as soon as I can.

The RadioDTB.com website is currently going through some changes as I upgrade from WordPress 1.2 to 1.5 I’ve been meaning to upgrade for a little while, but kept pushing it off. I finally upgraded over the past few days because on Wednesday, RadioDTB.com became a victim of a hacker attack. Someone hacked into the site and created a fake eBay login page designed to capture private username and password information.

To anyone who received a phoney email, I apologize. When my web host provider became aware of the problem, they disabled RadioDTB.com until I was able to complete the upgrade to WordPress 1.5, which should eliminate the security hole. I have also provided my server logs to eBay in case there is any information in those logs that will help track down the criminal who exploited the security flaw in my website.

As a result of the upgrade, all of the customizations to RadioDTB.com were temporarily lost. Right now, all of the MP3 files are still online, as are all of the blog posts. The Feedburner RSS feed has not yet been re-activiated, but I plan to do that tonight. Pages such as “About” and “Podcasts” will be coming back online in the next several days and I will probably also re-design the layout to look something more like what the website looked like last week instead of the default template that is currently in place.

I am also still trying to work through the legal and licensing issues that were recently raised by BMI about some of the content in the podcasts. Especially based on recent activity related to the Grateful Dead’s music on archive.org, it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to continue the podcasts. I promise that I will produce at least one more podcast before completely pulling the plug, and I will continue to monitor the licensing issues and work to overcome the obstacles currently in place. Perhaps, sometime in the future, RadioDTB.com will be able to legally and in good conscious resume the podcasts in full force. Unfortunately, right now, I’m not able to do so.

Stay tuned, I should have more information in the next couple of weeks. Thanks for your patience.

Radio DTB Extra #001 (5.4 MB, 8 min) is now available.

Radio DTB Extra #001 is a special edition of Radio DTB. It’s short and contains no music. In it, I read a letter that I received from BMI. This letter implies that in order to distribute the Radio DTB podcast, I need to enter into a licensing agreement with BMI (and potentially other organizations). Because all of the music featured on Radio DTB comes from the Live Music Archive (archive.org), I do not believe that such licensing agreements are required. However, until I can sort out the the issues involved, Radio DTB will be on hiatus.

Thanks for your support. I hope to be back “on the air” as soon as possible.

Websites mentioned:

• BMI
• archive.org
• Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org)

Feedback:

• Website: radiodtb.com
• Email: greg@radiodtb.com
• Request and Comment Line (Voice Mail): 206-984-9487
• RSS: Entire Site or Podcast Only

The best way to experience the Derek Trucks Band is to listen to them live, so if they’re ever performing near you, I highly recommend going out to see them. You can also enjoy the hundreds of live shows available for download from the Live Music Archive. In addition, you can purchase Live At Georgia Theatre, a very high quality live recording, multi-tracked and studio mixed, from a variety of digital music providers such as the official Derek Trucks Band website, iTunes, and Hittin’ The Note.

Yesterday, I announced that I was moving the Radio DTB MP3s to ourmedia.org in order to guard against potentially large bandwidth bills should the podcast ever become super-popular. After playing with the ourmedia.org interface for a day, I’ve decided to move back to the way that I’ve been doing it so far and just continue to host the MP3 files myself. I think that what ourmedia.org is doing is great work and I hope that they are able to continue to provide free unlimited storage and bandwidth — if I start bumping up against my bandwidth limit, I’ll probably switch to them. But, for now, I enjoy the greater reporting capabilities I have when I host the files myself.

Again, this change should be completely transparent for users of the site. As always, feel free to send me feedback about any aspect of the site.

Radio DTB got a mention on Episode #25 of the GoRadio podcast when Jeri and Nicole interviewed me in relationship with a contest I won on their podcast. Unfortuanely, they were experiencing some technical issues when they made the podcast and the overall audio is worse than it usually is for their podcast, so this particular episode is sometimes difficult to listen to. Jeri and Nicole were kind enough to let me talk about podcasting in general, where I gave a shout-out to two of my favorite other podcasts: Closet Deadhead and The Roadhouse. I also talked a little bit about what I’m doing here on Radio DTB. I made a notable error when I mentioned that Derek Trucks is in his early 20’s. Of course, he’s 26, which is more accurately categorazied as mid-20’s. If you’d like to hear the interview with me, grab the MP3 and fast-forward to about 48:56.

I’m making a change at Radio DTB that should be completely transparent — I’m moving the MP3s for the podcast to Ourmedia, a site that works in conjunction with The Internet Archive to provide “free storage and free bandwidth for your videos, audio files, photos, text or software. Forever. No catches.” I haven’t had any problems with storage or bandwidth yet, but I sill dream that Radio DTB will become popular enough (maybe if I got listed in iTunes, e.g.) that I will eventually worry about it so I’d like to go ahead and move the existing shows to a permanent location that will be able to handle it.

This change should not be noticable to any users, but if you do notice any problems at all getting the podcasts, let me know.

I know I haven’t been terribly faithful with keeping the weekly schedule of Radio DTB and I really am trying to improve on that. It’s just not going to happen in the next week or so — I’m extremely busy in my home and work life right now and my work with Radio DTB just has to take a seat on the back burner while I get caught up on these other things.

In the mean time, enjoy any of the previous podcasts or some of the shows available from archive.org.

I’ll be back in a week or so with a fresh new episode. I’m always open to suggestions for future episodes, so if you have any ideas, be sure to get in touch with me.

Again, I apologize for the delay in getting this week’s podcast out. It’s late enough in the week to simply admit that there’s not going to be a podcast this week — Radio DTB #010 will be released next week. It will focus on the recent Derek Trucks Band show in Greensboro, NC.

The reason for the delay of this week’s podcast is that I’ve been fighting with some new recording equipment, attempting to get a higher quality sound for the podcast. I’ve detailed my struggles in my personal blog: RFI Rant and More RFI. The second blog entry includes some MP3 samples of different set-ups as well.

If any of my readers have any ideas as to what might be causing my recording troubles or, more to the point, any suggestions on how to eliminate or reduce the background noise (which I assume is RF interference), I’d be extremely grateful. Post your comments here, on the relevant entries of my personal blog, or send me an email if you have any advice.

Thanks for the patience — one way or another, Radio DTB #010 will come out next week even if it means that I need to use my old set-up with my cheap lapel mic instead of my new equipment.

I know things have been quiet here at Radio DTB, but I wanted to let you know that I’m still here and working on a new podcast. I really was hoping to have it up by now — I’ve just been having a hard time getting it together this week. I’ll give you the excuses: 1) I was out of town at a family reunion this weekend, 2) work has been busier than normal, and 3) I got some new recording equipment this weekend and I’m still trying to make it sound good when I record.

I’ve picked out the songs for the next podcast and even have the script already written, but I’m really having a difficult time getting my new microphone and mixer to get a decent recording — the mic is so sensitive that it’s picking up too much background noise on just about every setting I’ve tried, and if I try to do a “noise removal” filter in audacity, it makes my voice sound like a robot. I’ve spent the past 2 hours trying to get a decent voice recording and have come up with about 5 seconds of usable material.

I’m going to try again tomorrow. If I still can’t get it to work, I’ll have to either resort to my cheap lapel mic or skip this week’s podcast while I work out the kinks.

I’ve also got a handful of DTB-related news items to post, but I just haven’t had the time to put them out yet.

Sorry for the delays!

Thanks to the kindness of Justin over at the Live Music Blog, I’ll be doing some guest blogging over there from time to time. I’ve actually had an account over there for a little while now — I just haven’t had time to do much blogging anywhere lately. But with the announcement of Derek’s interview tonight, I thought it would be a good time to introduce myself over at the Live Music Blog.

Obviously, the guest blogging I plan to do over there will primarily focus on Derek Trucks Band items.

Usually, by this time of the week, you’ve got a fresh new episode of Radio DTB to listen to. Unfortunately, this week’s episode is delayed — largely due to the fact that I’ve been out seeing the Derek Trucks Band live. I’ve got the episode scripted, I just need to sit down and record it. Hopefully I do that tonight. Again, I apologize for the delay.

In happier news, I’m excited to announce that Radio DTB was mentioned in the most recent episode (#8) of the GoRadio Podcast, a podcast designed to go hand-in-hand with GoTriad magazine. I think it’s even cooler to have been mentioned in their podcast because GoTriad is the local weekly entertainment magazine for where I live. In addition to the mention of Radio DTB, you should definitely check out the most recent GoRadio Podcast for the discussion of Derek Trucks and how he and Susan balance the demands of a tour-heavy lifestyle with raising a couple of kids.

If there are any Radio DTB fans out there who have an eye for graphic design, I sure could use your help.

I’m trying to design some Radio DTB business cards that I can hand out at shows and the like. The design I’ve come up with so far is pretty boring — Radio DTB needs a logo! As far as graphic arts go, I’m not very talented. If you can help out by designing a logo that would be suitable for business card use, as well as use on the web site, I would really appreciate it. Leave a comment on this post or send me an email if you’re interested in helping.

Thanks in advance!

Radio DTB has been added to the directory of podcasts at Podcast Alley. This is a great step forward for Radio DTB — hopefully it will help introduce the Radio DTB podcast to more new listeners. One of the features of Podcast Alley is that anyone can vote for their favorite podcasts. If you are enjoying the podcasts, I encourage you to vote for Radio DTB and any of your other favorite podcasts. You can vote once a month.

Over the past few days, I’ve been promoting Radio DTB with other podcast-related sites. I’m excited to report that Radio DTB is now listed in the Alternative & Rock category of ipodder.org (yeah, not a perfect genre match, but I really don’t know what genre to use for the Derek Trucks Band) and podcastdirectory.com.

As I find more podcast-related sites and directories, I’ll be submitting Radio DTB to them to be added. If you are enjoying Radio DTB, feel free to promote in forums, websites, and by letting your friends know about it.