Hello.  I’m currently moving the podcast episodes around and redirecting prior feeds. It is necessary to save money which is ideal for our little hobby. If you experience any issues (which I have tried by all means to do in a way that would save you from suffering) just reset your feed. If this gives you difficulty then you will need to unsubscribe and resubscribe. Remember you should see content on Sundays so if you don’t get this Sunday’s episode Ep. 9 Home is Cold Downstairs then something is broken.

Feel free to contact me for support.

Let’s start by saying that Podcasts are super simple and fun and everyone should make one and listen to them.

I believe this to be true, but have had many learning curves with creating my own, and first podcast.  Outside of learning to edit and record audio. One that came up today is that it appears by default Itunes limits your feed to 10 posts…this is all based off some universal principal that feeds don’t work if they exceed 512kbs in size (Yes that is kilobytes not megabytes). Sometimes it feels like podcasting follows that old sci-fi troupe of the technological future expanding but still following old technological rules. Like 5 and half inch floppies running AI machines behind evil governments. Obviously I know too little and spend enough time researching why I’m having issues and how to solve them then researching the history and reasoning behind podcasting. Chances are I’m at fault here but that won’t stop me from complaining. So yeah, if you couldn’t see The first episode we posted for pumpkin spice this week it is because we hit our 11th episode (woo hoo!) which made it impossible to grab our 1st episode from podcatchers such as itunes. Long story short I figured out how to find out the size of our feed…which is super tiny and said screw you itunes, I’ll allow 50 episodes in my feed, don’t threaten me with issues I might encounter for doing so should I get up to the dreaded half a megabyte feed size…really we download at speeds faster than that per second. Not to brag, but to totally brag I download 100 max size podcast feeds in a second. So obviously I don’t understand why things are this way but they are.

Second random podcast experience that is on my mind.  A lot of planning could go into making a podcast, and should. I planned as much as I should but didn’t account for a lot of things like what would become the podcast title in RSS feed readers (podcatchers/itunes/etc).  Also what becomes the image for the file. And what happens if they download the file from my website instead of using the feed?  What about all that work I did with learning how to tag files and putting in all that metadata, will it make any difference in the end, will that difference be evil? Ignore most of that or email me/tweet at me to talk more. What it comes down to is that I’m finding different RSS readers do things different ways, my data associated with my audio file seems to translate differently on Sticher then it does on itunes then it does on my android podcast addict app then it does on websites like podbay.fm. Go figure.

With that thought left incomplete I get to apologize to all of you who are using a feed reader and subscribed at one point because I kept learning about our feed and changing settings which may have required you to reset or resubscribe.  All for the better I swear. When you look at how searching works in Itunes you realize people will never find your podcast who search for Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, 5E D&D etc because a basic search doesn’t actual search your podcast description, just your title, and “The Pathless Podcast” is never going to show up for anyone looking for a podcast about D&D. Just poeple looking for Pathless….which they don’t…and Podcast which they will never find us in. So I learned some SEO and tested and adapted. If you want something, itunes should let you find it, or at least help you find it, they have all my feed information and asked for a bunch of crap when I submitted it to them.

Next conversation we need to have is about Podcatchers, I can tell from our stats and know from experience and listening to others that 50% of people who listen to podcasts don’t use them.  I wonder if they don’t know how or haven’t been introduced to the wonderful tool. Itunes is likely the number one program people use but it really only works well with apple products.  Like you use itunes on your computer and sync with your Ipod classic, or add podcasts directly through your itouch, iphone, or ipad.  Podcatchers let you search podcast listings or click on RSS feeds and suddenly they will update and download your media for you with all the information with the episode so you can just listen to them later at your leisure. Honestly Podcast Addict on my phone saves me so much time and energy that I could have spent on a computer downloading files then transferring to my phone and then trying to use a player. So if you aren’t already doing it, google it, download the app, or get on it in general by contacting me with questions or complaints. Because if I have the time to write this post I could be doing something better for the world like helping others.

Anyway, Podcasts are beautiful puzzles that require a lot of time and patience to learn. Sorry for changing so much if it affected you. Let me know if you have any issues or ideas related to our podcast. Find a way to really enjoy podcasts that requires little work.

This picture explains it all, minus the dog and the new born. If you’ve been wondering where all the magic has been coming from during the betas, wonder no longer.  You can see our current DM Sam sitting on the mat as he narrates.

As for the next betasode, it’s on its way for tomorrow night; I had hoped to publish tonight but, hey, that’s life.  Now’s a good time for an update anyway.

We are trying hard with the holiday season to move on from the betas and start our first season. Ideally December 21st will be the publish date for the first episode of our 5th edition campaign. So there is that to look forward to that week…since nothing else is going on.

Additionally, if you didn’t see on Twitter and Facebook, we are now on iTunes. Praise Pelor! Our link on the website to iTunes actually works now!

This is a short update because I’m missing out on some sweet sleep, but thanks for tuning in.  Talk to you soon!

After months of planning, resource gathering, wife convincing, and dreaming we have begun. With a bulk of the work behind us there is still a lot to do as we launch the site and begin our beta recordings. You can expect initial betas to be posted 11_22_14. We will ideally be releasing three which will not be direct representations of our podcast, but serve as the necessary learning tools that allow us to get together our RSS feed and become accepted as a podcast by iTunes and Soundcloud (a few too many conjunctions in that sentence). Feel free to download them if interested, otherwise await the actual product which will be released by Christmas 2014.  Contact us if you have any feedback, and we’d love to connect with you through our social media links in our sidebar.