dorena fencer: Editor's desk: Debugged, Ad hoc'ed, and inspired

Monday, November 26, 2012

Editor's desk: Debugged, Ad hoc'ed, and inspired

It's Thanksgiving weekend in the south, below The Wall, and while I'm busy still waiting on my iPad mini + LTE to ship, getting my snow tires on, and writing a bunch of l our 2012 gift guides, I know many of you are still in turkey-fed, Black Friday-fueled fevers, so I'll keep it short-ish and simply pass along an update on our Mobile Nations podcasts, going into the new fall season.

The Wednesday iMore show is still on hiatus. I'm spending a couple of hours every Tuesday talking Apple news with Leo Laporte and the crew on MacBreak Weekly and repeating that on Wednesday nights just doesn't seem fresh and exciting. I really miss the live chatroom community, however, so we'll be doing something interesting to tie that back in, and sooner rather than later.

Meanwhile the Sunday iMore show will continue to be a mix of special guests and iMore regulars, and will continue to vary from product reviews to deep dives on industry-spanning issues. But we've also got some new shows like Debug and Ad hoc, and new series on shows like ZEN and TECH, and I can't wait for you to hear them.

Debug

Debug is a new podcast I'm doing with the inestimable Guy English of Kicking Bear and ?ingleton fame. It focuses on developers, iPhone, iPad, Mac, and gaming in particular, but we'll likely touch on all platforms at some point, as well as the business behind making apps and services.

We'll be recording every two weeks, alternating with Iterate, which focuses on development, and while we'll mostly be doing interviews with developers, we'll also mix it up with round tables and other formats occasionally. The first episode, featuring Loren Brichter of Apple, Tweetie, and Letterpress, is already available and we'll be recording the second episode this week.

If you're a developer, there's lots of great stuff about targeting Game Center API, re-writing UIKit in OpenGL, and the business model for in-app purchases. If you're not a developer, there are some gems in there about the future of Springboard (and backboard) and where iOS might be going in 2013.

Ad Hoc

There's another new podcast I'm a part of that's... different. It has no real name, no fixed schedule, and no set subject. Basically, we get a group of geeks together and we talk about geeky things. Anyone on the show is welcome to record it and release into whatever feed(s) they like. Yes, it's "openy".

Along with the aforementioned Guy English, we've already recorded an episode with Dan Moren, Matt Drance, Dave Wiskus, on the future of Star Wars and what we hope to see -- and not to see -- now that Disney owns Lucasfilm.

You can find it in 5by5's After Dark feed, as an ancillary to Jason Snell's excellent The Incomparable podcast. I've also put it up in a new feed, where I'll also add future episodes, called Ad hoc.

ZEN and TECH

As much as I love doing the iMore show, MacBreak Weekly, Iterate, Debug, Ad hoc, and all the other shows, I'm honored to be a part of ZEN and TECH -- it's absolutely the most important show on our network, and one of the most important shows on any network. Because it's not about coding or coloring, news or events. It's about us as human beings, and how we relate to the world and technology around us. That's never been more true than over the course of the last couple months, where Georgia has been focusing on parenting. If you're a new parent, or you have friends and family new to parenting, please share the links below. And if you're not a parent, we're still mixing it up -- the latest episode is on anger management.

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Tangent: DragonStorm

This isn't about a podcast, but about an old project. 20 years ago I took a summer off and wrote and illustrated a pen-and-paper role-playing game called DragonStorm. I never did much with it, and since then it's been locked on old Amiga floppy disks, but I found a printout and scanned it.

I've been really inspired lately by Dave Wiskus returning to his music, Daniel Pasco, restoring an amp, and Derek Kessler doing a pretty damn impressive project all his own, and because of that inspiration I decided to share the full PDF in the iMore forums.

It's not great, but it's mine, and I've decided I'm going to carve out a little time to do some more side projects in the near future.

If there's anything you used to do, something that inspired you and gave you pleasure, that let you enjoy the exuberance of creation, be it writing, music, art, dance, or anything else, consider getting back into it and sharing it. It's what makes us not only live, but thrive.