Part of the reason why Habitat took so long to emerge is that originally I was not set to edit the thing; and when I agreed to take it on, there was a skills gap. I knew I was going to have to learn stuff and do things I hadn’t done before to get it done. But really, in this area I’m not afraid of that; and I’m very proud of the results even if I know there is some n00b stuff cooked into the final mix that I won’t do again.

I am just as proud with what I did today, which is to make a functioning .xml script for Earbud Theater so it can finally be distributed on iTunes and Stitcher and all the rest. It even earned one of those “Valid” check-mark boxes over here.

So while I’m sure most will just wait until iTunes picks it up, people who like to get all fancy and subscribe in their own unique ways may now do so.

BAM. RSS!

When I woke up this morning I had absolutely zero experience with making .xml scripts. I have, however, done quite a bit of yammering in HTML, and so the whole open/close nested tags principle is one I’ve already internalized. I just needed to know the new vocabulary and the list of information the feed expected to have, in addition to the custom tags iTunes demands because of reasons. This took awhile because a) never done it before, and b) we already have 9 episodes up, so there was a lot of data to plug in. But I went from zero knowledge to validated, tested, and working within about four hours.

Now, there are a lot of services out there now which will take care of this for you for a low, low, monthly fee, so all you have to do is upload your content and get on with business. But it was strangely empowering to brute brain my way through the process; it will really only have to be this annoying once, and future episodes will take only a couple of minutes to paste into the script. And now I can totally be that guy people know who can tell you how to get your podcast onto iTunes.

Sometimes that bear won’t wrestle itself
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