To comply with the law

I am temporarily turning on comment moderation on this site. You can still leave a comment, but it won’t be posted until after 7pm Saturday NZDT (1AM Saturday EST). I’m doing this to comply with New Zealand election law, which, apparently, mandates that I turn off comments (even though the law was enacted in 1993…). I will re-enable comments after the New Zealand polls have closed, and will update this post to confirm that as happened.

Update 26/11/11: Now that the polls have closed, comments are once again unmoderated, so they will post immediately (unless you’re a first-time commenter, in which case it will still need to be approved). Thank you for your patience.

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AmeriNZ 270 – Not in service

This is my last chance to post a podcast episode before the New Zealand elections. Because there have been several episodes in which I’ve talked about the election, I’ll turn on full comment moderation at or before midnight on Friday until the polls close at 7pm on Saturday, this to comply with New Zealand election law. You can still leave comments, but I won’t post them until after the polls close.

The title for today’s episode refers to the trouble I recently had with my podcast, as well as my recent jury service.

Next week I’ll finish talking about the election when I go over the results and what happens next. Soon, I’m going to revist old episodes I did on moving to New Zealand. Curious about any aspect of moving to New Zealand? Let me know!

Links for this episode
Final thoughts on the referendum – my blog post summing up my discussion of New Zealand’s referendum on our voting system.
Opinion polling for the New Zealand general election, 2011 – Wikipedia

Please leave a comment, ring my US Comment Line on 206-666-5172, or send an email to arthur{at]amerinzpodcast.com.

Get AmeriNZ Podcast for free on iTunes

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Repairs complete

Yesterday I received an email from a listener asking about access to old episodes, and that reminded me: I never finished my repair project. Last night, I did.

Last year I upgraded WordPress and podPress, which together power my podcast, and in so doing my audio files were all unlinked from the posts they were part of. This meant that they couldn’t be downloaded or listened to through the player in each post.

It happened because a setting had changed, and all I had to do to fix it was to add the complete file path name to each audio and video file. “All” I had to do—there were already a couple hundred to deal with!

Initially, I re-lnked all the files for 2010 episodes, as well as December of 2009. But apart from a few old episodes (and all video files), I just stopped. Then, I became distracted (as I often do) and forgot all about it. That email changed things.

So, last night I took a few hours and finished that project. I think that all files are now linked, but if you find one that’s not playable, just let me know. I also cleaned up a few things left over from moving the posts to this site: I fixed a few typos, added tags, those kinds of things. Someday I should clean up the posts themselves.

One addition some people may find useful is that I added political episodes of AmeriNZ Podcast with Jason to the 2Political category; those episodes eventually led to our 2Political Podcast, so I thought it made sense to make them more easily available. Categories are listed in the upper left of this site.

And that’s it. Thanks to an email, this site is back to full functionality—I hope…

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Indefinite hiatus

The upload problem with this site still hasn’t been resolved. The site’s hosting company says it must be a problem with my firewall, even though there have been no changes to those settings, despite the fact that I was able to upload only a few days earlier, and despite the fact that even now I can upload to my other site hosted by the same company (and yes, I told them all that when I filed the incident report).

So, at the moment, I still can’t upload any new AmeriNZ Podcast episodes. Apparently, WordPress (which is what this site basically is) allows me to upload a file no larger than 8MB, which would be a very short episode. I haven’t tried that to see if it actually works or is similarly affected. I could also probably upload the audio files elsewhere and link to them here, but that kind of defeats the purpose of having this site.

Until this is resolved, or until I can change hosts (whichever comes first), the AmeriNZ Podcast is on an indefinite hiatus. If this continues more than a few days, I may try the methods I mentioned above, and I may put out a few Audioboos in the meantime (if you go to my Audioboo profile, there’s a button you can click on to subscribe to my Audioboos through iTunes; the RSS feed for my Audioboos is http://audioboo.fm/users/46668/boos.rss ).

I suppose there’s some sort of irony in that this all happened in week in which I was finally able to record two episodes. I just find it incredibly frustrating and annoying.

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Episode cancelled

I recorded an episode yesterday, but I couldn’t upload it using my FTP software. So, this morning I tried uploading through the host’s website—five times. It wouldn’t upload. So, until I have time to make an international long distance phone call to try to sort it out, I won’t be posting any audio or video files. Damn. I actually managed a second episode this week! Grr.

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AmeriNZ 265 – Progress report

I begin today by talking about all sorts of things I’ve been up to in the time between podcast episodes. Then I talk about some stuff in the NZ news, mostly revolving around the election, before moving on to comments.

Links for this episode
Auckland View: The Cloud – Where we took our nieces yesterday
Spat after man tries to jump at Parliament

Please leave a comment, ring my US Comment Line on 206-666-5172, or send an email to arthur{at]amerinzpodcast.com.


Get AmeriNZ Podcast for free on iTunes

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Aw, shucks…

Aw, thanks!

Yesterday’s mail had a surprise: A thank-you card signed by folks attending this year’s Pride 48 event in Las Vegas. I’ve been extremely busy since then, and it’s fair to say I’ve had a few rough days because of it, so this was a very welcome lift!

I take part in Pride 48 because I want to help build something positive that we can all participate in and be proud of. The fact that others get value from Pride 48 makes it all worthwhile, but the fact that folks attending the event in Las Vegas took the time to think of me makes me feel like I got a great big hug. Thank you all!

Related: My own Pride 48 show and a blog post from immediately after this year’s event was all over.

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Otherwise engaged

This weekend is the third annual Pride 48 extravaganza of GLBT and GLBT-friendly podcasts. The first two years, we did a 48-hour marathon of live shows streaming out over pride48.com. This year, we have around 20 shows sharing broadcast facilities and a live studio audience at the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

However, there are several of us who were not able to be there, so I’m coordinating about a dozen shows broadcasting like last year, from their respective studios. My own show will be at 5pm on Sunday, September 18 (Eastern time zone in the Americas, which is 9am Monday, September 19 here in New Zealand).

Overnight (Eastern time) this year we’re re-broadcasting the live shows from earlier in the day instead of trying to find folks willing to broadcast in the middle of the night.

So far, the event has gone well, apart from one non-Vegas show that didn’t happen for some reason. That meant I had to take over the broadcasting duties until the show due to follow was able to start, which happened about 15 minutes early.

It’s a pretty big deal for me, and that’s what I’m up to this weekend.

The artwork accompanying this post was created to celebrate the Pride 48 weekend by Lauren. This is a cross-post, with the same post also on my AmeriNZ Blog.

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AmeriNZ 258 – Stormy weather

I recorded this on Thursday and wasn’t going to post it—there were things I wanted to change. But today, Friday, I felt a little under the weather, and recording anything wasn’t going to happen. So, here it is, warts and all.

I begin today with an oddly prescient comment. Then, I talk a little about the stormy weather we’ve been having lately. My longest segment today is about the NZ elections, because I’ve recorded so little lately it’s kind of piled up.

After that, it’s on to voice messages and the topics they raise.

I was part of the panel on the first two episodes of “This Week in Gay” podcast.

I’ll be joining Nigel for his The Third Colony show on Saturday, July 16 at 9pm EDT (Americas; 1pm Sunday, July 17 NZT). Join us!

Links for this episode
Labour: We must own our own future – My blog post on Labour’s tax plan
This Week in Gay podcast – I was on the first two.

Please leave a comment, ring my US Comment Line on 206-666-5172, or send an email to arthur{at]amerinzpodcast.com.


Get AmeriNZ Podcast for free on iTunes

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An important announcement

I’ll continue doing live shows on Pride 48, despite the end of My Honey Wears Plaid, but the shows will now begin at 8pm Eastern (in the Americas).

This week will be something very different (after a suggestion from Wes Stone of the Live It Up! podcast): I’m hosting a Pride 48 Town Meeting on what we as a podcasting community—podcasters and listeners alike—can do to help prevent suicides among GLBT youth. Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” Project is a great idea, and UKThom is putting together a video made by Pride 48 folks.

But what about those of us who primarily do audio? What can we do as podcasters and—especially—what can we do using Pride 48? We have the ability to reach many people, what’s the best way to use that?

So put on your thinking caps, jot down some ideas, and join us on Pride 48 at 8PM EDT this coming Thursday, October 7, 2010 (Friday, October 8 at 1PM New Zealand time).

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