Ten Years After : LOL: The Life of Leo

Leo LaPorte is finally completely off the TV airwaves. Sad day. But, it is also a happy day because I couldn’t get the show here in these United States, and it has freed him up to think outside of the box and start putting together an online network of video-taped podcasts. I am calling it that because as it stands right now it doesn’t sound like what he will be producing will look anything like what we see on tv.

Right now, he runs the TWiT Netcast Network which produces around 12 different shows per week that are available for download from his site. Now he is looking at how to bring an element of live tv to it. At this point it appears that he will still keep producing the same shows with maybe the addition of a few more, who knows, but he will have multiple cameras aimed at him and his guests so that there will now be a live, interactive element to it.

LaPorte has always said that he likes the idea of interactive which was one of the driving forces behind many of the decisions made at the now defunct network TechTV. His desire was to always find ways for the audience to participate. TechTV lead the charge in using webcams so that the audience could actually be on the shows and asks questions and leave comments. It was an openness that we haven’t seen since.

I believe this openness is what engendered such a tight following in his audience. We have always felt that we are a part of the action, and to be honest, it doesn’t matter where Leo goes, if he is producing content, his audience will find a way to consume it.

I am looking forward to the changes in the upcoming months to TWiT and I am excited that I don’t have to bittorrent his content in order to see it.

If you are looking for interesting, well-produced podcasts that have a bit of a tech angle, check out TWiT.tv.

I just uploaded the backend of my blog to WordPress 2.5. It is a lot cleaner and makes writing posts easier by hiding a lot of the more technical stuff you don’t use often a little deeper in the site. I realize that this is a little inside baseball for most people who read this blog, but hey I can geek out a little every once in a while.

The interface is a lot cleaner and uses different shades of light blue for the different sections of the page. It is actually quite pleasant to look at. Obviously this is the first time I have used it so I can’t give a real review, but on first blush it is nice. I likes it a lot.

On another note, I am always a little scared when I upload a new version of WordPress to my server. You see, I no longer use a hosted blog service like blogger. If you use blogger, it is up to them to keep the backend working. If it screws up, you can relax knowing that there are Google engineers pulling their hair out trying to get everything fixed.

Now that I run my own blog software, if everything blows up, it is on me. To be honest it is kind of exhilarating, but it’s also scary. I have a lot of content that I have uploaded and written over the past 5 years. I would hate to lose it. Maybe I should back up more.

Cool New Features

One of the coolest new features is how this new version automates the updating of plugins.  In WordPress, you can augment the functionality of your blog by installing plugins.  I use one called Twitter Tools to post my tweets right here on my blog.  I have a ton of other plugins that I use to make it easier on me to use WordPress.  In this version of WordPress, updating out of date plugins is as simple as hitting a link on the dashboard.  Awesome.  To make it work, you have to put your FTP settings in a form that pops up the first time you click the update link.  After that it works.  Click the update link under the out of date plugin, then click the ‘Proceed’ button and boom it just works.  ROCK AND ROLL… I love it.

Bug Fixes?

There is one bug that annoys me and it hasn’t been addressed by WordPress. When you embed a video from Youtube or other video site, it works fine the first time you publish the post. If you go back to your post later and then republish, WordPress messes up the html and makes the video malfunction. I am about to test this new version of WordPress to see if it fixes that problem. I know I can’t be the only person to have experienced this problem.

—-Update—-

Hooray. It now works. The video embed bug is now dead! Hooray. Embed videos to your hearts content!!!