Housekeeping, in brief

Apologies for the scant content around these parts the past couple of days, as I've been catching up on the ever-scintillating housework and chores most of today, courtesy of my wife's, er, reminders.

Saturday, I had the very interesting opportunity to attend the Citizen Journalism Academy, offered by the Society of Professional Journalists in Greensboro. A big thanks to the SPJ for hosting this event, one of just three such workshops the Society is offering this year (the others being in Chicago and L.A.)

Philip from nicomachus.net was also there, helping to represent the Durham blogosphere. Tip of the hat to Ginny Skalski, former metro ace for the Herald-Sun and now an NBC 17-affiliated blogger and citizen journalism wrangler herself, for getting the word out about this event. Bonus: A session on learning how to file public records requests with local governments. Huzzah! That's going to be a fun skill to test out in the coming weeks.

Add onto that the Beaver Queen pageant in Duke Park last night and it's been, well, a busier weekend than usual. I'll have some bona fide content back up here tomorrow morning.

I'll be on the air with fellow blogger-in-crime Barry over on WXDU this evening at 7:30pm for this week's edition of Shooting the Bull. Our special guest tonight is City Councilman Farad Ali; we'll talk about the budget process, the city manager hunt, and more with Durham's newest addition to the City Council. As always, we'll have the show posted Monday for streaming audio or download here at BCR.

(For those who've asked abotu getting a real podcast of the show -- we're working on that, though between us we've forgotten more technology than we currently remember. Heck, I managed to crash the Trinity Park web for a couple of weeks this spring. Once we figure out how to get the feed up and running, we'll link to it from here.)

Comments

[Barry]

That last paragraph was a hint, i think. If you've got the skill set to turn an ogg file, or even a plain vanilla mp3, into a podcast, don't be shy. Especially, say, if you can write some code that would place a link in a sidebar that automatically updated whenever a new podcast wa suploaded to a host server.

[Phillip]

Wordpress makes podcasting super easy; maybe typepad (Kevin) and/or blogger (Barry) will soon add similar support.

Kevin, good to see you at the SPJ conference. Let's see what secrets of Durham politics FOI requests can uncover. Muwahahaha...

[Phillip]

Meant to link to Wordpress' support page for podcasting -- http://codex.wordpress.org/Podcasting

[Ellen Ciompi]

I was hoping you'd have something to say about the Beaver Queen pageant. I thought it was a "Beaverrific" evening, and DEFINITELY something that would not be a Cary event. Just one more thing that makes Durham unique and wonderful. You really should post some photos for those who are unacquainted with this particular strain of good-natured madness.

[Bull City Rising]

Hi Ellen,

You raise a good point. I had a great time at the Beaver Queen pageant, though I didn't take more than a couple of photos of the event.

Barry's had the event well-covered over at Dependable Erection, and we did a segment on the event for last week's "Shooting the Bull," so I figured that covered it well. But, point taken! It was a great event, and a very effective fundraiser for the Ellerbe Creek. Kudos to everyone involved!

[Barry]

Hi Ellen - Lenore has a great picture of Kevin and I enjoying the sights at the BQP during one of my few breaks:

http://eronel.blogspot.com/2008/06/4th-annual-beaver-queen-pageant.html

Glad you could make it. Maybe we could talk you into competing next year?

in other news, i figured something out with the podcasting. If you read DE with an RSS feed you should see a "Listen" link in your feed which will take you directly to the mp3 file. A few more lucky stabs in the dark, and maybe you'll be able to find it through the iTunes podcaster.