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Mark Johnson's occasional & opinionated podcast about family strategy boardgames

Monday, April 20, 2009

Follow BGTG on Twitter

I'm not entirely sure what I want to do with it yet, but went as far as deciding to get a Twitter account for this podcast. My podcasts have tended to be longer and in more depth--Twitter is about the opposite form of communication. That's why it may prove useful--sometimes I have small, even tiny things to say or ask that are appropriate for Twitter.

Boardgamegeek now has some hooks into Twitter, but the one for logging game plays wasn't too meaningful yet. Perhaps it will be improved, or perhaps I'll just write my own tweets to note game sessions of interest. I look upon this is an expansion of the cool widget Aldie made that lets me show the covers of the last several games I played. I don't know if anyone takes notice of those (the RSS feed doesn't update when the games played scroll changes), but with Twitter I can send out a one-liner about some interesting game played. If I hear back about some interest, perhaps that indicates an interesting podcast discussion? It's worth experimenting with. If you're at all interested, go check out http://twitter.com/BoardgamesToGo .

And don't worry--this isn't about to replace the podcast itself!

-Mark

Sunday, April 19, 2009

BGTG archives going ALL the way back...

A podcast listener recently posed this question about easy access to the BGTG archives.

I'm a long time listener but ever since my iPod was decommissioned I've been away. Now that I've got a new one, I'm trying to catch up with previous episodes but I've hit a small snag - iTunes (or rather BGTG's feed on iTunes store) only shows the 10 most recent files [. . .]


Not that this is really a problem, since I can manually download each file, but they show up as regular music files on iTunes and not as Podcasts (alongside the most recent shows). I've looked all over on how to make these downloaded files be grouped together with those available via subscription but there's apparently no way (short of buying a Mac to run a AppleScript hack or creating a fake Feedburner feed with a modified hosts file).


Soooo, I was wondering if you could please make all files available via iTunes (update the XML?). This way, after searching for the show on iTunes Store, I could manually select the podcasts I'd like to download before hitting the "Subscribe" button. It seems all files are already available via Libsyn, so there wouldn't be new costs involved. As an extra benefit, new listeners (as well as old a****-retentive users like myself) could be able to select what to hear, like a special all-about show or a particular theme. How about that?
I know how to do this. A setting in my blog hosting software will allow up to 500 blog entries to be listed on the front page. As I recall, that will reset iTunes into listing them all again. The only trouble is that it might start automated downloading of all those old episodes for ALL of my listeners, not just the ones who are actively seeking them. Some people may be unhappy about the inconvenience of it all.

I'd like to see if anyone knows how to solve this request another way. The listener who wrote me is willing to dig back through the BGTG archives--he just needs a way for them to show up as podcasts on his MP3 player, not just as generic music files.

-Mark

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

BGTG 93 - All About Big City (with Eric Burgess)


It must be just about time for a boring show with just me on the mic, but you're spared once again! This time I have fellow podcaster Eric "Boardgame Babylon" Burgess with me to talk about another of my favorites, Big City. Turns out it's one of his, too, and when I made a half-serious request for someone to do this episode with, Eric responded right away. We live somewhat far from each other, though still both in Southern California. Better still, we commute our opposite directions to both coverge on our workplaces only a few miles apart.

Big City is a game notable for its wonderful plastic pieces--not normally something I'm swayed by--but it's also an outstanding and unique tile-laying game with strong theme. Though out of print by Goldseiber and Rio Grande Games, it is due to be reprinted by Valley Games pretty soon. And there's always the used game market.

-Mark

P.S. Be sure to check out Eric's "Power Grid: In Depth" podcast, as well as the rest of Boardgame Babylon.