Imperfect

Macallan Colour Tasting

11 December, 2024

I recently returned from a long anticipated family cruise from Sydney to New Zealand, predominantly the South Island. I had hoped for some opportunities to sample some higher end Whiskies however being on Royal Caribbean I had heard that such things were not common.

That said, being a fan of (The) Macallan I had hoped that there might be a Whisky tasting for their Quest line-up, however those had effectively ended their rotation last year. They were in fact offering a Colour Collection tasting at a cost of $50 USD on the fourth day of the cruise. However, it was not a complete line up as they only had the 12 year, 15 year and 18 year available. The 21 year and 30 year were not included and the primary intention of the tasting, for all travel exclusives, is to drive sales in the Port Merchants Duty Free Alcohol Store on board.

As with all Macallan colour collection these are not artificially coloured (that’s rather the point of calling them a ‘colour collection’) though they’re all chill-filtered and whilst the 12 year is 40% ABV, the other two are both 43% ABV. When I was told about the tasting, I was at the Vintages Bar at the rear of Deck 5 on the ship (Ovation of the Seas) and noted that it was only on the printed list, and not the Royal Caribbean app. This meant that unless you noticed it when you went to that bar, you would have no idea it was happening.

It turned out in fact that only three people had said they were coming to the tasting, of which I was one of those three. Despite this, the Vintages Bar had been set up for a lot more than that…

As it turned out, 18 minutes after it was due to begin, I was the only person that showed up. I therefore got the entire tasting as a one on one with the bar staff member that was running the tasting. He poured mine and his (half-nips for him…since he was on duty!) and we watched each of the videos for each of them, talking about each in turn. Nosing…palette…finish and impressions. The tasting was supposed to run for only 45 minutes, but we went 15 minutes longer, beyond the 18 minutes late…we were just enjoying talking Macallan too much!

In the end the host gave me a complimentary Macallan Glencairn glass (not part of the tasting fee) as a special thank you. I had taken my own tasting notes afterward and upon wrapping up I went to the Port Traders to confirm what I already knew: they had NO STOCK of ANY Macallan Whisky for sale.

I returned to Vintages late in the cruise and asked if there were any 18 year unopened bottles on the ship they could sell me…and unfortunately the rules forbid them from selling them through the bar. They could sell wine bottles through the bar, but not spirits bottles. Ultimately though by the end of the cruise, the 12 year was completely gone.

The 12 year resembled my 12 year Sherry Oak at home slightly, however with a far less pronounced Sherry influence and perhaps somewhere between the Double-Cask and Sherry Oak 12 year in palette, but I drank a fair bit of this and rated it a 4 out of 5. The 15 year wasn’t as sweet and had more pronounced oak spices that lingered on the finish nicely and I also rated it a 4 out of 5. The really impressive one was the 18 year.

Admittedly I’ve only tasted maybe 75 whiskies or so in my life, however the Macallan 18 year Colour Collection is the first I’ve given 5 out of 5 to. I was quite literally giggling after every single sip. It has a delicious, coating mouthfeel to it, with a buttery, creamy caramel and vanilla taste that lingers for ages with a delightful finish. That said, it cost $46 USD a shot on board and a bottle would set me back $900 AUD for a bottle off-ship…from a dodgy seller since it’s technically a Travel Exclusive.

The reason I was keen to try and nab one on-board was it was selling for $350USD a bottle, Duty Free, on-board but alas they had no stock they were allowed to sell me.

However it ended, it was an interesting experience and I shall remember it every time I use my Macallan Glencairn glass.

The Engineered Network: Housekeeping

27 October, 2024

Archiving Sleep

In March of 2020 during the start of lockdowns due to COVID19 in Australia, the Sleep podcast was born moreso out of a dare than any actual plan. Having been told “I have a beautiful voice…” and “Listening to your voice makes me relax and helps me get to sleep…” I decided to start recording a show that was just me…talking gently about anything in creative commons.

The show has a significant amount of downloads with the vast majority from talking cylinders where I imagine people just say “play a podcast that helps me sleep” or something similar, and out pops “Sleep”. Irrespective the last time I recorded an episode was September 2022 and I think it’s time to admit the experiment has ended.

Archiving Neutrium

When TEN launched in October 2015, two other Australian Engineers took the plunge with me and launched their own show on the Network called Neutrium. It was a hit almost immediately and was quite popular however both Trevor and Matt were busy engineers and their show, rather like Pragmatic and Causality, took a LOT of their time to produce. Ultimately they decided to refocus and stepped back from podcasting and the show finished with only four episodes.

Even though it’s been 9 years since the last episode, I’ve left it on the homepage as it was quite popular and in keeping with the original intention of the network. Having said that, it’s time to archive Neutrium as well at this point. Both shows have moved to the Archived section of the site and their feed URLs have been updated to reflect this. They will continue to be hosted, just won’t appear on the main landing page of TEN.

Adjusting Focus

With more of an admission of reality than any real change to the shows on TEN, I’ve updated the About Page to better reflect the reality of what TEN has been for the past 7 or 8 years at least: “…a group of shows about my passions in life…”

I will always be an engineer and see the world through that lens but it’s not the only thing that interests me. Many topics I’ve covered on Pragmatic over the past decade are examples including Photography, Renewable Energy, Electric Cars, Whisky amongst other things.

In coming months I’ll be exploring video further and continuing to produce Causality and Whisky Whiskey, with Pragmatic and Analytical as well.

Thanks again so much to everyone for their continued support and thank you as always, for listening and/or watching as well.

The Whisky Whiskey Rating System

21 October, 2024

I’ve been reading and listening to lots and lots of Whisky Reviews in the past few months and I’ve come to the conclusion that, since taste is highly subjective, all ratings scales and Whisky rankings against them are unique to the individual. That said, there are good and bad scales that don’t help and can lead to skewed results.

I’ve decided to have a crack at my own, because, of course I have…

I propose to rank all of the Whiskies that I try against two Axes: the Columns represent a quantitative measure: the current amount (at time of review) a standard 700mL bottle costs. For bottles that aren’t available in this size (eg. many Australian Whiskies are sold in 500mL bottles) then the costs will be linearly re-scaled. Cost will also exclude sale pricing and will be based on recommended retail and will be in Australian Dollars because…well…I’m Australian. Prices overseas will vary based import duties, local taxes and currency conversion factors so you kilometerage may vary.

I understand that prices will vary over time due to supply and demand, manufacturer economies of scale and desirability in the market. As these things change, so too will their position if/when I revisit a review. Price bracketing was guided by the quantity of bottles available that fell into those pricing categories. To be clear you can get a Single Malt Scotch for under $80 but there aren’t many, and those that are, generally aren’t going to set your world on fire. There are passable Blended Whiskies however that can be great everyday sippers.

The second scale is the inevitable Qualitative scale of Taste (which is subjective) about how much I personally would desire drinking the Whisky at some point again in the future. For this I propose a scale of 1 to 5 which is intentionally not too granular but groups together the most common positions I’ve taken when trying different Whiskies. I also decided it’s important to add a ZERO (0) row since there are ones I’ve tried, that I will simply never drink…again.

This leads to a simple table below:

Finally I’m going to simplify the outcome with a colour recommendation. I’ve coloured each box with a slant against people that have loads of disposable income to buy expensive alcohol. Generally speaking, if it’s more than $300 for a bottle, it needs be a truly impressive drink to consider investing in one. Whereas a lower scored 2, a nice drink for some occasional variety, if it’s less than $80 and you’re into Whisky, then it’s Green: Always keep stock of these on hand. Of course your evaluation of how much you’re willing to spend on a nice Whisky will vary but for me, at least for now, is my guide.

I have intentionally NOT split out Legs, Finish, Palette or Nose on their own scales and I’ve intentionally kept the two axes separate since a great nose but a bad finish could end up with a score that matches a bad nose but a great finish. To me the assessment is overall, which includes all of those factors. Like a good Whisky, the qualitative assessment needs to be balanced.

But in the end it’s still all subjective. Hopefully this scoring system will be a good sanity check for myself in the first instance and for others as well that are following along at home when trying to decide which bottle they should or should NOT buy.

Good luck.

Introducing Causality TV

9 October, 2024

With the completion of the Podcasting booth, addition of video equipment for Pragmatic Electric and the recent Whisky Whiskey project, I’ve decided that it’s time to tackle Video releases of Causality for the first time. I’d originally planned to launch with an actual real-world site visit to the location of an actual incident, however given the relatively small number of local incidents to my physical home location…this would prove to be quite expensive.

Whilst that may be an option in future I decided to try my hand at an incident in video form, that had no real physical location: CrowdStrike. I’ve tried to leverage more of the possibilities in video production but, and this will come as no surprise to anyone that’s done both audio and video production, video is a LOT more effort.

So for now this is somewhat of an experiment. It will be posted like Pragmatic Electric and Whisky Whiskey, as a 720p version on my own infrastructure and linked with a truly independent RSS feed but it will also be cross-posted to Patreon as an early release for Premium and above supporters and on YouTube early for Members on YouTube, and publicly for those that aren’t.

Unfortunately there is currently no way to upload a video for early access using Apple Podcasts platform and having been highly disappointed with my Spotify experiment a few years ago, I will not be posting it on Spotify. There are just too many silos at this point to feasibly keep in sync and maintain.

Causality Video and Audio are recorded independently, and presented in both forms but the spoken content is the same. Note that this means I record the episode twice to ensure the best possible audio result. I did initially attempt to strip the audio from the video recording and edit it, but I didn’t want to compromise on the quality of audio in the Causality podcast.

Episode numbering of Causality TV will start from episode 1 and will loosely cross-link to it’s matching Causality Audio episode in the show notes only.

I hope you enjoy this new chapter in the evolution of Causality.

Introducing Whisky Whiskey

28 September, 2024

I’ve been a bourbon drinker for most of my adult life and have dabbled in Scotch from time to time, however in mid-2024 a suggestion to try a Whisky subscription service opened my eyes to a wide-world of Whiskies I’d never understood, which inspired me to create a Video series about my journey and everything I’ve learned.

Whisky Whiskey is intended to be a mixture of individual Whisky reviews as well as comparatives between different Whiskies that are 10 to 15 minutes long each. Some episodes I’ll cover backgrounds behind terminologies and distilleries and try to come to terms with all the history and complexities of Whisky.

Videos will be listed in a Video-Podcast/RSS Feed like all other material on TEN, however the 4K versions will be available via YouTube and embedded on the website on each episode page as well. Episodes on YouTube will have standard advertising on them per YouTube monetisation, however those from the feed directly will always be ad-free.

If you enjoy the videos and would like to see more of them, remember to support the show via normal channels.

The Engineered Network: Apple iOS Patreon App Subscriptions

14 August, 2024

Late last year and again a week ago Patreon warned all of it’s Creators (including myself) that Apple would start enforcing their 30% fee for Commerce purchases through the Patreon iOS app and later in the year, now identified as November 2024, 30% would be applied to all subscriptions made through the Patreon iOS app.

As we don’t sell “Commerce” items through Patreon (we use Spring and Cotton Bureau directly) this had no impact to TEN, however with the impending change over to Apples internal app-subscription method I wanted to quickly state my position and advice for fans of TEN moving forward.

Existing Patrons Have No Impact

These changes ONLY apply to NEW Patrons, and only to those new Patrons that sign up to support WITHIN the Patreon iOS App on an iOS device.

Patreon iOS App Pricing Adjustment

Unlike Apple Podcasts’ when subscribing through Apples own system, there is no mention or call out to say Apple are skimming 30% off the top, nor will there ever be unless there’s government regulation making Apple tell the customer that. Patreon on the other hand are doing this:

This clearly shows the difference (thanks to updated regulations) between subscribing via the Web and subscribing via iOS/Apple. I've therefore made the difficult decision to adjust the Patreon iOS-subscription pricing only, to compensate for the 30% Apple Tax. This will potentially limit new supporters via this mechanism but I'm hopeful that potential supporters will note that support via Patreons website is cheaper for the same end result.

Apple Are Just Being Consistent

Whilst many people are upset about this move the truth is that rightly or wrongly, Apple are just being consistent. There are no real positives I’m aware of where the Patreon iOS app is a huge advantage over the website (especially considering the content TEN produces), so I’ll hold on the anti-Apple tirade. Is it merely the nature of this beast.

Avoid Signing Up via the Patreon iOS App if Possible

How this will work following the change (according to a Discord Q&A Patreon have been hosting for the past few days now) is that people that sign up on the Website will still be able to log into the Patreon iOS app if they want to and get access to all of the Patron benefits. It’s worth noting however that the Private RSS Audio Feed URL is still available from the website and the Web-app for Patreon has most of the features of the native app. My advice is to simply avoid the Patreon iOS App unless you have a compelling reason to use it.

Thank you all!

I’m grateful to each and every person that supports TEN, via whatever means suits them the most. Thank you for your ongoing support and as always, thank you for listening.

The Engineered Network: Subscription via Spotify Changes

26 May, 2024

Last year Patreon announced a partnership with Spotify such that if you are already a listener to podcasts on Spotify, and you also are a Patron via Patreon, it would be possible to listen to Patron-only audio via Spotify rather than the Patreon app, or private RSS feed.

This feature has been requested by several fans of the network and as such I’ve turned that feature on today. Once logged in to Spotify, navigate to The Engineered Network Patreon and then you will have the option to link to your Patreon account. After this the audio files will play through Spotify. All 168 Patron-only audio files are available in a common feed as per the Patreon Podcast feed.

Previously Causality was also offered on Anchor as “Causality Premium” at a discounted rate for those that only wanted to support Causality. After two years and a few months, only one person chose to support via this pathway and they shifted over to Patreon after a few months anyhow. Therefore as of today I have disabled memberships via the Causality Premium on Spotify feed and will be removing that in coming months permanently.

As always, thank you everyone for your continued support and I hope you enjoy the additional flexibility in supporting and listening to Causality.

The Engineered Network: Causality 50th Episode Competition Winner

3 June, 2023

Thank you to everyone that took time to enter the 50th Episode of Causality competition. I was quite surprised at the response for sure. It was a difficult decision but the winner is Hauke Jan Lübbers who wrote an excellent blog post that not only discussed the show, but also Hauke had some good insights into a trend I’ve also noticed in the Softwware Industry at the moment where Fail Fast, Fail Often is a mantra many are distancing themselves from (with good reason).

It’s been a challenging first half of 2023 for myself personally but despite this, we made it to 50 episodes and Causality continues to grow in popularity slowly but surely, despite the somewhat irregular schedule. Many, many more episodes to come.

A massive thank you to everyone that is already a supporter via Patreon, via Apple Podcasts or via Streaming Sats, for all of your support both for this show and for the other shows on TEN.

The Engineered Network: Ad-Free Causality

29 April, 2023

Just over a year ago I wrote and a year before that I wrote about an Ad-Free goal between Patreon, Apple Podcasts TEN Channel and Streaming Satoshis. Supporters of the network have consistently stayed above the Ad-Free threshold for over a year now!

Thank you EVERYONE!!

As of April, 2023 Causality episodes in the back-catalogue have been scrubbed of Ads, both on the website and in the episode audio. Whilst I’ve been in there, I’ve tweaked a few things like noise suppression, normalising levels, transitions and of course, adjusted the timestamps for the transcripts (where they existed).

I will not be extending this to other shows at this time though I may reconsider scrubbing back-catalogues some day in the future as a separate exercise.

What it means for Supporters

If there are no ads, then what does a supporter get now? Well for those supporters already at Premium or above, you will still get the higher-quality audio version, posted before the public version is released. Not only that, Premium and above will still get bonus content I don’t publish publicly.

I’m still both shocked and humbled and so very grateful for all of the support via whichever medium you’re comfortable with. It’s been 7 years since TEN launched and back then, I never thought it would be possible to reach this point.

Another massive thank you to everyone that is already a supporter via Patreon, via Apple Podcasts or via Streaming Sats, for all of your support in making this a reality!

The Engineered Network: Twitter Account Shift to the Fediverse

27 January, 2023

In October 2013 coinciding with the launch of the first episode of Pragmatic, I created a show account @pragmaticshow on Twitter that would publish links to new episodes when they went live. Approximately 2 years later with the creation of The Engineered Network, I changed the name of the Twitter account to @Engineered_Net instead, which has remained ever since. At the time I wanted @EngNet however it was taken.

Last week Twitter continued on its mission to tighten all methods into and out of its website, taking aim now on the third-party API. My app of choice for many years now Tweetbot had it’s API access cut-off without warning by Twitter, followed by my previous favourite Twitterrific.

Whilst I have posted to the TEN Twitter account directly many times, the vast majority were auto-posts delivered via the Twitter API. Whether or not Twitter continues to cut-off use of its API to then retrospectively include auto-posters I’ve decided it doesn’t matter. I will leave on my my terms, not Twitters.

Therefore as of today, there will be no further posting on the @Engineered_Net Twitter account. If there are still those remaining what wish @-mention that account then I will occasionally check it, however due to message spam from the official Twitter account, I will not have notifications on so I may not respond quickly.

All Twitter clients have been removed from my devices and I will be accessing only via the website interface.

But…it’s not all doom and gloom! Quite the contrary! Last week I set up a new Fediverse account that will take the functional place of @Engineered_Net did on Twitter. You can now follow TEN POSTS ONLY here:

@[email protected]

It’s the Twitter account…but on the Fediverse.

It’s a shame that it’s come to this, however as was pointed out in Medieval times and is still true today…all good things must come to an end. Bye Twitter.

The Engineered Network: Guest on Podcasting 2.0

3 September, 2022

Having been a long-time fan and listener of the Podcasting 2.0, as well as an adopter and source code contributor to the project, I was excited to be invited by Dave and Adam to join them on Episode 100 of Podcasting 2.0!

We covered a lot of ground as we talked through the next steps of applying PC2.0 ideas to the Music industry, breaking down what value actually is, a potential future newsletter tag, how I integrated Value 4 Value into my shows and a bunch of other things. Adam and Dave learned that I prefer to use a calculator (I’m an Engineer not an Accountant) and that according to Adam I have great pipes. (Awww, thanks Adam)

Thanks again so much to Adam and Dave for having me on the show. I had an amazing time!

The Engineered Network: Fediverse CYou

3 May, 2022

Whilst TEN still maintains a presence on Twitter the main focus for interaction remains the Fediverse via the Chidgey account.

With recent changes with Twitter and many fans of the show seeking an alternative home, I’ve decided to open up a new Fediverse server that’s separate to the Engineered Space single-user instance.

Introducing the See You on the Fediverse server.

As Mastodon servers are extremely resource hungry, this new Fediverse server runs Pleroma. The server is currently running on a very low-rent VPS. If it proves popular then it may be migrated to something with more resources.

I’m intending to use this new account for more personal posts with the existing account for more TEN-related posts, gradually over coming weeks. Invitations are open to anyone that’s interested. Visit and select Register to sign up. Once your EMail has been verified and I’ve confirmed you’re real, I’ll approve your account.

If you already have an account on the Fediverse you don’t really need another one but if you’re looking to have a try, then feel free to join!

The Engineered Network: Guest on Podcasters RoundTable

20 April, 2022

Having been a long-time fan and listener (predominantly, though occasionally on the video releases on YouTube) of the Podcasters’ RoundTable, I put my virtual hand up to be a guest on their show and after a smallish delay, I was invited by Ray to join on Round 162!

There’s a link here: Podcasters’ RoundTable Round 162: Podcasters Don’t Care About Live Streaming and also on the As a Guest episode list.

We covered a lot of ground and talked about the following:

Checking expectations with Guests for time limits when you’re recording
Whether it’s okay to break an episode into multiple separate episodes (e.g. Pragmatic Tesla Ep 82/83)
Podcast Apps with the most longevity…and why we think that is
When making a podcast, should we be anywhere and everywhere?
Are Twitter spaces really podcasting?
The “art” of Live broadcasting vs heavily post-produced podcasts
Our experiences with live streaming: Is your show the right kind of show for live?
Consolidation of Podcast advertising platforms over the past decade
Difficulty of building a network with professional engineers
Sponsorship vs Advertising vs Patronage
Patreon vs iTunes Subscription experiences
Spotify acquisition of Findaway Voices (Audiobook production)

Thanks again so much to Ray and Dave for having me on the roundtable. I had a blast!

The Engineered Network: Subscribe to Causality via Spotify

18 February, 2022

A few months ago, Spotify/Anchor finally extended their podcast subscription offering to include Australia in a move that followed Apple earlier in 2021. I wrote previously about TENs support of Apple Podcasts, and today I’m launching a similar setup with Spotify. It is however, different by necessity…and I very nearly didn’t offer this. Let me explain…

For many fans of The Engineered Network, support via Patreon, BitCoin/Lightning or Apple isn’t feasible or preferable. Many that already subscribe to Spotify Premium actively avoid Apple Music and Apple Podcasts, and after many months of requests I can now offer a Premium version of TENs most popular show, Causality, as Causality Premium via Spotify. In Spotify, search for “Causality Premium” under Podcasts or use this link.

Only Causality

Unfortunately Spotify’s offering is somewhat simplistic compared to Apple’s. It’s clearly aimed at single-casters, not multi-casters like TEN (i.e. Networks need not apply…yet…) and hence there is no equivalent of a “Network Subscription” or a “Channel Subscription” as you have with Patreon and Apple respectively.

Additionally there is no concept of a merged feed from outside their ecosystem, meaning the existing Spotify Causality feed is a native TEN feed, but it can not support adding exclusive/bonus content from inside Spotify (like Apple can), instead they want people to migrate their RSS feed over to Anchor, then add bonus content to that.

Ahem No thank you.

The only way I was prepared to do this was to keep the two feeds separate. Therefore the existing Causality public feed will remain unchanged, however a new Anchor/Spotify feed has now been created with an introduction/trailer publicly available and all other content available on a subscription.

At time of publishing, there are 44 ad-free, high quality episodes of Causality, plus 6 Causality Explored bonus episodes. In future, early releases (when available) will be released to Spotify Subscribers in step with Patreon Premium and Apple Podcasts subscriber early-releases.

Pricing

As previously mentioned the Spotify offering is quite simplistic and billing is no different. There is no option for annual discounts for subscribers and since it’s not possible to group multiple shows into a single subscription it was necessary to split out Causality in terms of several factors relative to other shows on TEN:

Complexity, time and effort to produce
Number of recent historical downloads
Patron, subscriber, fan feedback on episodes

A final twist is that whilst Apple has set monthly levels for each part of the world, they and Patreon are US-centric with a base-level set in USD, which is why Patreon and Apple Podcasts are set in USD. In Spotify you can only set a subscription level in your local currency. With these details all factored in, Causality Premium on Spotify will launch at $4.99 AUD ($3.49 USD) per Month.

Currently there is no option in Spotify to modify your subscription setting, however it’s extremely likely this will come in time. The problem with AUD vs USD is obviously exchange rate and whilst in February, 2012 the Australia Dollar out-valued the US Dollar, that’s an ever-changing situation. The problem comes more with dramatic shifts in the rate over the long term and the induced discrepancy vs other support pathways. So in summary, there’s a limit to how equivalent Spotify permits this to be and whilst it might be near equivalent today, in the future - who really knows?

Preferences

There are some pros and cons though if you want to support TEN, between Patreon, Spotify, Apple and Lightning:

Patreon Benefits:

A subscriber can support the entire network
Multiple support tiers gives you more flexibility (Premium is there if you want it)
Able to get additional benefits beyond audio (Raw Notes, Named Mentions, Q&A/Interaction)
Bonus audio (whilst in a common/firehose style feed) can be added to ANY podcast client app for listening
Bonus Audio files are DRM-free

Apple Benefits:

A subscriber can support the entire network, but can have a different audio feed for each podcast
Full integration of the podcast bonus audio is seamless with Apples offerings on all platforms (where they’re available)
Full anonymity (may be considered a benefit for some supporters with privacy concerns)

Spotify Benefits:

A fan of only Causality, can support just that specific show rather than the entire network
Full integration of the podcast bonus audio is seamless with Spotifys offerings on all platforms (where they’re available)

In terms of which method delivers the most end value to TEN (least fees) then it’s:

Lightning
Spotify (Causality Only)
Patreon
Apple Podcasts

Either way if you’re an existing Patron, Apple Podcasts or BitCoin/Lightning supporter then there’s no reason to shift to a different platform. Then again, if you’re a big fan of Causality and you’re a long-time Spotify eco-system user and you’ve been on the fence for a while, then perhaps this is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for!

As always, thank you everyone for your continued support and I hope you enjoy the additional flexibility in supporting and listening to Causality.

The Engineered Network: Ad-Free Goal Reached

11 February, 2022

Just over a year ago I wrote about an Ad-Free goal on Patreon of $300/month. What has happened since then however is Apple Podcasts TEN Channel launched and Streaming Satoshis also kicked off. Whilst it’s not all on Patreon, supporters of the network have now collectively crossed the Ad-Free goal, set just over a year ago.

Thank you EVERYONE!!

As of February, 2022 TEN will not seek out any advertising for any of our shows for a trial period of 12 months and if sustainable will be extended indefinitely. Today the last episode of Causality went live with a sponsor, however from this point there will be no further website or episode sponsorships for new episodes for the trial period.

What it means for Ad-Free Episodes

If there are no ads, then what does an ‘Ad-Free’ episode actually mean? (I’m glad you asked) Well for those supporters already at Premium or above, you’ll already know that I don’t just cut out the Ads, I also cut out most of the preamble and postamble (not a word but should be) and the key benefit is I post most new episodes long before the public version is released. Not only that, Premium and above will also get the bonus content I don’t publish publicly.

I’m stunned, humbled and so very grateful for all of the support via whichever medium you’re comfortable with. It’s been 6 years since TEN launched and I never thought it would be possible to reach this point.

Another massive thank you to everyone that is already a supporter via Patreon, via Apple Podcasts or via Streaming Sats, for all of your support in making this become a reality! You’re all amazing! (And you know it…)

Introducing Pragmatic Electric

14 January, 2022

As an Electrical Engineer for 25 years I’ve been watching the renewable energy space including Electric Cars, battery technology, Solar and Wind energy and Hydro-Storage to name a few. Recently I took delivery of my first electric vehicle, a Tesla Model 3 SR+ which has inspired me to venture into the Video space for the first time (properly) for TEN.

Pragmatic (Electric Edition) if you will, is intended to be a mixture of Electric-related video episodes of between 3 to 15 minutes long each, on topics relating to those items I listed above. From time to time I’ll also post some video of areas, roads, trips and such from the surroundings of where I live for something a bit different! Videos will be produced sporadically as time permits and will be supplemental to the Pragmatic podcast.

Videos will be listed in a Video-Podcast/RSS Feed like all other material on TEN, however the 4K versions will be available via YouTube and embedded on the website on each episode page as well. There is no immediate intention to put YouTube advertising on these videos as YouTube monetisation is of no interest at this time.

If you enjoy the videos and would like to see more of them, remember to support the show via normal channels.

The Engineered Network: Lightning Has Struck Update

15 December, 2021

Earlier this year I wrote about how Lightning/Bitcoin is now a support path for listeners and supporters of TEN, in the context of Podcasting 2.0. It’s been 8 months and there are new players on the iOS field I wanted to mention, Fountain and Castamatic client apps. I did discuss them briefly 3 months ago but Castamatic is no longer in TestFlight and meets my minimum Podcast Client app requirements to where I’m happy to recommend it after many tens of hours of use.

John’s Minimum Criteria

The following is a short list of the key criteria for a podcast app. Note that some of the following are iOS-specific things (sorry non-iOS users):

Sync across multiple devices (playback position per episode, listened to episodes in shows)
Built-in access to the audio output switcher from the playback screen
Must keep its playback position downloaded or streamed when interrupted for ANY reason (believe it or not, I’ve tried some apps that don’t)
Skip Silence feature
Playback speed adjustment (per show)
Adjustable Skip Ahead/Back in seconds
Chapter support
CarPlay support
Apple Watch support (independent playback nice to have, not essential)
Background downloading of new episodes
Push notification for new episodes

Some people rave about automatic levelling, voice boost and playlists, but honestly I don’t really use or care much for any of that. That’s just me though.

Finally for a Podcasting 2.0 app there are a few more:

Value Tag (Streaming Sats, Boosts, Boost-A-Grams)
Chapters (2.0 preferred)
People Search

Castamatic

The app is written by Franco Solerio and comes with iCloud sync and works across multiple devices, including iPhones, iPod Touches, iPads and the Apple Watch. The Apple Watch component is sufficient, however does not support playback without the iPhone. (More on that below)

The app itself is Free to download, and whilst the app store shows an IAP called “Unlock Everything” for $5.99 AUD ($3.99 USD) I couldn’t find anything implemented in the App for that, where to buy it or what it might be for. There is a subscription of $14.99 AUD ($9.99 USD) per year that removes ads which seem to be only self-promotional in my experience. That’s it. It’s $3/year cheaper than Overcast’s subscription however it’s a far newer app so I think that given what it can do, it’s a fair price.

On opening you’re greeted with a suggestion to Import a list of podcasts or to Add one via Search. Once you’ve added your favourite shows, they’ll appear in the main list.

Castamatic Podcast List
Castamatic

Select the show you want and then the episode you want and away you go. The first example below is for a show that does not support V4V and the second is one that does.

Castamatic Show with No V4V

Castamatic Playing Screen with V4V

The V4V shows have a “Value Bar” under the Skip Back, Play, Skip Forward buttons and the Timer, Like, Audio etc bar along the bottom. It shows the playback status, the streaming sats rate (per minute), then the Boost (with Boost amount), Boost-A-Gram (message bubble) and V4V settings Cog. Selecting the V4V Boost-A-Gram you can set a detailed message, adjust your Boost value, select who you’re boosting (where supported on that show) and whilst the default is anonymous, you can set your name as well.

Castamatic Boost-A-Gram

Finally the Leveller, Gap Zapper and Playback speed setting are also conveniently accessible from the settings icon in the bottom right corner.

Castamatic Levelling

Apple Watch

Whilst Overcast’s Apple Watch app sets the standard for Podcast watch apps (for me at least) with standalone playback and background sync (mostly works) the truth is I’ve been listening to podcasts with my phone around for so long that I’ve stopped using the standalone playback functionality from my Apple Watch. It’s possible this is a side effect of the pandemic with lots of my listening time at home with my phone adjacent, so that may change as the world returns to some semblance of normality, we’ll wait and see.

In that context, other than that the key functions are available and easy to navigate on the Watch app. Starting with the podcast list on entry where you can navigate to (but not add new) shows on the phone and select any of them to play.

Apple Watch Podcast List

The playing screen offers digital crown integration for volume control however perhaps unsurprisingly there’s currently no visibility or selectability for V4V related settings. It would be useful to see the current streaming rate and an indication you’re streaming sats, and the current Boost value and a Boost button would be really handy in the future. I think the Boost-A-Grams on a watch-sized interface, even with a Series 7 screen, is probably a bridge too far though.

Apple Watch Playing Screen

From the playing screen you get access to the playback settings from what looks like a shirt “button” (literally a button) in the bottom right corner. From there you have access to effects (Fx), can set a stop timer and can skip by chapter if you want to.

Apple Watch Settings

The Leveller, Gap Zapper and playback speed are all accessible under the Fx menu which is really handy and a nice touch.

Apple Watch Setting Leveller

If your iPhone is out of range…you get a strange error message that isn’t helpful: “Touch Left: no episode loaded”

Apple Watch No Phone Connected

Topping up your Sats

When you first open Castamatic on a new device and play an episode of a Podcasting 2.0 Value 4 Value (V4V) show, along the bottom it will point out to you that there is “No Wallet Available” and you can select “Create Wallet”. Once you do this successfully, it will ask if you want to encrypt your wallet with a password - choose whichever you prefer. Your shiny new Lightning Wallet will of course be empty, so you need to fill it as the app now says “Insufficient Funds” and you can select “Add Funds”. In my case, my Wallet has fallen to a disturbing 49 sats…so it was time to top up my sats.

To do this for existing wallets, select the gear/cog icon in the bottom right of the screen, in the “value bar” to bring up the Value 4 Value screen below.

Castamatic Wallet

Select “Add funds” and then enter the amount. In this example, I’m adding 5000 sats (about $3.30 AUD at time of transaction). Castamatic puts this information with the wallet’s address to create a Lightning Invoice.

Castamatic Add Funds

The invoice then shows up on the screen as a QR code, but also can be exported/copied to the clipboard which is what I want to do, since it’s not possible to use the rear camera of the same phone to take a photo of its own screen! I use Zap to manage my own Lightning node, however ANY lightning wallet application (BlueWallet, Breez etc) will accept the Invoice (provided you have funds available!).

Castamatic Funds Code

Opening Zap, then my Node, then “Send” as I’m sending Sats to my Castamatic wallet, then paste into Zap (note up top, “Zap pasted from Castamatic” appears).

Castamatic Zap Paste Code

Zap decodes the Invoice and summarises the details for you including the expected transaction fee…of 1 sat. Tap “Send” and wait a few seconds (it can take up to a minute but it’s generally less than that).

Castamatic Zap Send Request

Everything went through with a big green tick!

Castamatic Zap Success

Jumping back into Castamatic and the Sats have appeared!

Castamatic Wallet Filled

Yay! Now we can return to streaming and boosting to our hearts content…

Conclusion

For the first time in 7 years I’ve started regularly using a podcasting app other than Overcast. The way I’m managing it now: if it’s V4V I use Castamatic; otherwise I’m sticking with Overcast. Overcast is simply more polished and there’s an element of “it’s just what I’m used to” in there as well, but given that Castamatic is a new entrant in this space, it can only get more polished from here.

If you’re looking to support the shows, or any V4V shows out there today, then Castamatic might be a strong contender to consider.

Causality Episode 38 Correction

18 November, 2021

In Episode 38 of Causality regarding Thunder River Rapids, first released on the 24th of January, 2021, originally stated that Ebony Goodchild did not survive, when it was Katie Goodchild whose life was lost. The show notes, episode audio and YouTube video have now all been corrected.

The error was traced to an incorrect source news article, though normally fact cross-checking against the official report would have found this, for reasons unclear it remained incorrect in the final episode script.

We pride ourselves in attention to detail in the production of Causality and would like to apologise for the error.

If there are any factual errors in any of our episodes please let us know via the contact form. We greatly appreciate true fans of the show that have a similar level of attention to detail that we aspire to achieve consistently, with every episode we produce.

Many thanks to listener “American M.H.” for bringing this to our attention.

The Engineered Network: Boost-A-Grams

20 September, 2021

In the past few months I’ve been working in the background to integrate as many of the new Podcasting 2.0 tags into The Engineered Network’s active podcasts as I can. One relatively recent feature is the ability for some podcast client apps to not only send a “Boost” of sats while they’re listening, but now they can customise a message to go along with it.

The PC2.0 team are referring to this as a “Boost-A-Gram” which has a nice ring to it. Hence today I’m now listing a leaderboard of the Top 5 Boost-A-Grams on the main home page as well as for each of the respective Podcast pages as a thank you and recognition for your support. To be eligible all you need to do it to send your Boost with a message!

At this time there are several apps that support them:

Fountain iOS and Android
Castamatic (currently in TestFlight Beta on iOS)
Breez (currently in TestFlight Beta on iOS) and Android
PodFriend (currently in TestFlight Beta on iOS) and Android
Sphinx (requires a Node to be rented or bring your own Node)

Four examples that support Boost-A-Grams at time of writing are Fountain:

…Castamatic:

…Breez:

…and Podfriend:

More apps are supporting these features every few weeks and it’s exciting to watch. Always check here for the most up to date list. Hopefully they’re coming to a podcast client near you soon.

Thank you for your ongoing support and as always, thank you for listening.

The Engineered Network: Recording Setup Mk5

26 July, 2021

Back in April, 2018 I provided an update and history of my recording setup. The update then, was the addition of the SoundDevices Mix Pre3 USB Interface and the Shure BETA 87A. The MixPre3 remains my favourite Mixer/USB Interface and I love every part of it - still in use every time I record.

Initially I was thrilled by the Shure BETA 87A, however over 12 months of use I found that the Shure picked up way too much additional background noise, and struggled with both my plosives and my sibilants. The audio itself was cleaner in the gaps between spoken words but this wasn’t enough to save it.

Hence in early 2020 I took the Heil PR40 out of the drawer and switched back to it. The PR40 was used for my audiobook and all podcasts ever since, relegating the Shure to the drawer instead. The downside of the Heil was the telltale dynamic microphone hiss, that no matter how clean the pre-amp, you just can’t stop. The good news was that the amazing BrusFri noise reduction tool on iOS can strip that out without significantly impacting the overall audio quality, so that was a tradeoff I was willing to make.

What I’ve learned over the years that I didn’t originally appreciate (I’m an electrical engineer, not an audio technician) is that the microphone has to match the vocalist and the environment. I was initially guided by Marco Arments excellent mega review but branched out to many, many reviews by professional audio technicians around the world and decided it was time to try a new microphone.

Once again, after saving up from many months of Patron support, I’ve decided to invest in the legendary Electro-Voice RE20 dynamic microphone. It’s a classic microphone first released in 1968 and its design has remained unchanged over that time. It’s considered to have a very good clarity overall, and of all the microphones I’ve looked at, it has the most genuine sound replication of the actual voice, with a really flat response.

MICROPHONE COMPARISON:

Whilst the PR40 accentuates the mid-range frequencies in my voice the EV RE20 is more honest across my audible spectrum. Beyond this my speech is very sibilant which has always been problematic. The Heil PR40 when placed off-axis really helped but they were still an issue. So far at least, the EV RE20 is much better at handling that both on and off-axis. In the test audio it’s really evident that the loudness of my speech was highly variable, which was intentional as I moved around the microphones. It’s barely noticeable on the RE20, but both the PR-40 and the 87A suffered terribly. Certainly, a good mic technique will level the field a bit; meaning you speak off-axis, hold your sibilances and plosives where you can and keep a steady distance between your mouth and the microphone.

The interesting thing for me in this whole journey has been the sheer variety of differing opinions about each microphone. The problem lays in two things: the place the microphone is used (soundproofing, treatment, external noise); and the vocalists voice-spectrum. Everyone’s voice is different and some microphones have more or less gain at certain frequency ranges which distorts the voice compared to what someone would hear when speaking to them face to face.

With a voice that’s naturally bassy, I don’t need or want a microphone that further accentuates that or creates a boomy-mid-range sound like the Heil PR40. The other disadvantage of that is that bad response also increases the microphones susceptibility to plosives, which you can treat with a pop-filter and windscreen, but these also affect the sound of your voice. For those that have needed to wear a mask during the recent pandemic will understand how different their voice sounds when you speak through a mask. Some filters and screens are better than others, but it’s better to have one built into the microphone if you’re going to have one, since it’s matched to the microphone by design and can be compensated/accounted for by the designer to result in an overall-balanced recorded sound.

As I’ve come to believe, the best camera lens you’ve ever owned is the one you just bought; the best computer much the same, and now that maxim works for microphones too. Perhaps the honeymoon period is a better way to describe it, but however you slice it, so far the RE20 has been a joy to use and edit in post, and one I expect to be using for a very long time.

The Engineered Network: Subscribe via Apple Podcasts

15 June, 2021

Apple have just introduced a huge change to their podcast-position, shifting from being a search and aggregator to being a podcast hosting provider. As a hosting provider they’re offering two ways for listeners to listen to podcasts: Follow them (same way that ‘subscribing’ used to work) or (NEW) “Subscribe” to them for access to paid content.

For many fans of The Engineered Network, support via Patreon and BitCoin/Lightning isn’t feasible or preferable. Now there’s a widely-available, well-supported alternative via Apple.

To use their system, Apple requires that “subscriber audio” must have DRM applied. To ensure the best possible audio quality via Apples offering, I’ve gone back to the original Ad-Free edits and project files and re-exported them as the highest possible quality WAV format. So when Apple’s system re-encodes them, they are as high-quality as possible for your enjoyment (though now with DRM). It took a few weeks of effort to get the back-catalogue in Apples system, but I think the result is well worth it!

All of the existing Bonus Audio that is associated with a specific show that is currently available on Patreon has been added to Apple Subscriber Channel for TEN. Therefore from Day 1 of launch the channel already has ad-free, high-quality episodes for:

40 of Causality, plus 6 Causality Explored bonus episodes
43 of Analytical
13 of Sleep
24 of Pragmatic, plus 13 After-Show bonus episodes
8 TEN Bonus audio segments

In future, early releases (when available) will be released to Apple Subscribers in step with Patreon Premium early-releases.

To align the Apple Podcasts Subscription/Support with Patreon, the subscription rate is equal to the Premium support level as follows:

$4.99 USD Monthly
$49.99 USD Annually

TEN will be offered only as a single channel you can subscribe to in the same way as Patreon. There are some pros and cons though if you want to support TEN, between Patreon and Apple:

Patreon Benefits:

Multiple support tiers give you more flexibility
Able to get additional benefits beyond audio (Raw Notes, Named Mentions, Q&A/Interaction)
Bonus audio (whilst in a common/firehose style feed) can be added to ANY podcast client app for listening
Bonus Audio files are DRM-free

Apple Benefits:

A subscriber can support the network, but can have a different audio feed for each podcast
Full integration of the podcast bonus audio is seamless with Apples offerings on all platforms (where they’re available)
Full anonymity (may be considered a benefit for some supporters with privacy concerns)

In terms of which method delivers the most end value to TEN (least fees) then it’s:

Lightning
Patreon
Apple Podcasts

Either way if you’re an existing Patreon or BitCoin/Lightning supporter then there’s no reason to shift to a different platform. Then again, if you’re a big fan of the shows and you’re a long-time Apple eco-system user and you’ve been on the fence for a while, then perhaps this is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for.

As always, thank you everyone for your continued support and I hope you enjoy the additional flexibility in supporting and listening to our shows.

Editor's Choice Summer 2021

12 June, 2021

Tyler Dickey has kindly awarded Causality with his Editor’s Choice Award for Summer (Northern Hemisphere) 2021! The list of shows in Tyler’s podcast recommendations is very impressive including shows such as 99% Invisible, Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History and Judge John Hodgman, measuring Causality against some highly regarded competition. To quote from Tyler’s page:

As the podcast-sphere grows and grows, with the last two years seeing millions of dollars changing hands in a space that was once reserved for Apple-nerds downloading NPR shows, I think it’s important I dedicate a single page to collecting and curating podcast recommendations. —Tyler Dickey, February 2020

Tyler also joined Patreon and has also given a one-off donation as part of the award, for which I’m very grateful.

Thank you so much for the recognition, for your support and as always thank you so much for listening.

The Engineered Network: Patreon Support Now With Annual Discount

2 May, 2021

The network is continuing along with some wonderful Patrons supporting it and I’m grateful for their on-going support. Today I was informed I was now allowed to offer an Annual Discount via Patreon! I’ve written about it in detail here. I’m able to offer two months free for those wishing to support annually under this arrangement (less transaction fees makes this possible) so if you’re interested in supporting the network or if you’re an existing supporter and wish to switch to annual, now you can!

In the end I’m grateful for any and all support irrespective of whether it’s monthly or annually - it’s about giving as many options as possible for Patrons to pick the option that works best for their circumstances. It’s great that Patreon have finally made this option available. (Thank you Patreon!)

As always, thanks for listening and thank you for all of your support.

Take care,

John Chidgey

The Engineered Network: Lightning Has Struck

2 April, 2021

Recently I wrote about enhancements to TEN shows supporting Podcasting 2.0, and today I’d like to provide an update on the broader eco-system, as it relates to client apps that support these features. I’ve been working hard in the background to add time-synchronised transcripts and updated chapters, but now many more apps are supporting value streaming using Lightning (BitCoin).

Lightning

Podcasters can now add a Lightning Node address to their podcast feed and listeners that listen in supported client apps can stream Satoshis¹ to support their favourite show just by listening. You can adjust the number of Sats/min to whatever the app allows (usually 100/min maximum) down to zero - you don’t have to stream anything if you don’t want to. If there’s a really great moment on the show, you can also “Boost” a one-off support payment any time you like to show your appreciation.

If you don’t like Patreon or PayPal for whatever reason, this is the next best way to support the shows but if you’re not in the BitCoin/Lightning eco-system, how do you get started?

Keep it simple

If you’re in the USA, you have access to Strike but otherwise most countries can access Blue Wallet on iOS or Android, and Breez. Both Blue Wallet and Breez are both non-custodial wallets which means your money stays on your device and not their servers (which is nice) and they both use MoonPay as a service to convert your Fiat into BitCoin/Satoshis.

Once you have Sats in a wallet, you can send them to a Podcasting app and start streaming value to your favourite podcast! If you use Breez, you can even play the podcasts in the same app!

The following is a list of currently available apps that support value streaming, by platform.

ANDROID

Breeze: Value, Chapters (via testing program in Google Play)
PodFriend: Value, Transcript, Chapters (via APK only) [Android 6 and Higher]
Sphinx: Value (via APK only) [Android 8 and Higher]

Podfriend on Android
Podfriend (on Android)

CHROME or WEB

podStation: Value (Chrome Extension)
PodFriend: Transcript, Chapters (Value not available yet via Web)

iOS

Breeze: Value, Chapters (via TestFlight only) [iOS 12.1 and Higher]
PodFriend: Value, Transcript, Chapters (via TestFlight only) [iOS 12 and Higher]
Sphinx: Value [iOS 12.2 and Higher]

Podfriend on iOS
Podfriend (on iOS)

Breez (on iOS)

Sphinx (on iOS)

macOS

Sphinx: Value [macOS 10.13 and Higher]
PodFriend: Transcript, Chapters (Value not available yet on macOS)

Windows

PodFriend: Transcript, Chapters (Value not available yet on Windows)
Sphinx: Value [Windows 10]

Linux

Sphinx: Value

Thoughts on Sphinx

Sphinx have been trail-blazers in the space and their relay-chat server that connects directly into a Lightning Node (I run my own on my personal node) is transformative, their client apps cover the most platforms too, however to participate in podcast playback and streaming within Sphinx requires joining a Tribe first. To join a Tribe you first need your own Lightning Node, either a physical one or to rent one for a monthly fee².

This is appealing to some people, but many would prefer to simply stream Sats from their app of choice rather than joining a chat group just to listen to shows and support them. There are Sphinx tribes for Causality and Pragmatic and these will stay however Sphinx carries an additional learning curve that makes it more challenging for newcomers to the Podcast/Lightning space to overcome. Whilst there are big benefits to Sphinx, I believe that most podcast listeners will find alternatives have less learning-curve friction.

My Recommendation

If you’re new to BitCoin and you just want to stream Sats then Breez is your easiest option - it’s well integrated and you can top-up your Sats and then stream from the same app. It couldn’t be easier!

If you’ve been around the space for a little longer and want something more podcast-listener focused, with transcript and enhanced chapter support then give PodFriend a try! Any Sats you’ve on-boarded into Breez or BlueWallet are easily transferred to your PodFriend wallet and you’re all set.

I’m using PodFriend now on iOS to listen to value-enabled shows and it’s the most complete value-enabled player currently available. Martin Mouritzen continues to add more features to PodFriend and hopefully it will be ready for a full public (non-TestFlight) release in coming months.

DEVELOPERS NOTE

If you want to support the Lightning value system, the team at LN Pay are how PodFriend was able to easily integrate Lightning value streaming into their app. If you’re already a Lightning app and you want to add podcasting support, the Breez team leveraged the Anytime Podcast Player and turned it into an easily embeddable library for other apps to use.

The Future

The Podcast-Lightning value space is looking very bright! In the six months since the value block was made available with only Sphinx supporting it, there are now three more clients available with Lightning onboarding becoming easier every time.

Whilst it’s unlikely that major client apps from Apple or Spotify would support this in the long term, my hope is that developers like Marco Arment, a long-time advocate for independent podcasters and podcast listener experience, will some day integrate streaming value support into their amazing client apps, like Overcast.

Until then I’m splitting my time between PodFriend and Overcast based on whether the show is value streaming or not and I don’t mind - because I know I’m supporting the creators and there’s no intermediaries in-between.

It is a one hundred millionth of a single bitcoin (0.00000001 BTC): WikiPedia ↩︎
Technically Breez, BlueWallet and LNPay-API applications are also Wallets connected to a Lightning node, it’s just hidden below the application layer and that’s the key: most people DON’T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THAT. ↩︎

The Engineered Network: Podcasting 2.0 Enhancements

13 March, 2021

In the past few months I’ve been working in the background to integrate as many of the new Podcasting 2.0 tags into The Engineered Network’s active podcast feeds as I can. Not all of the tags in PC2.0 are user-visible features, however there are some that listeners might find pretty handy. For that reason, and to clearly note episodes and shows that support these end-listener features, I’ve added icons to indicate such on both individual episode pages as well as show pages for your convenience.

Transcript
Chapters
Soundbite
Person
Location
Value

Some of these enhancements are only realisable during podcast search and discovery, however Chapters, Transcript and Value depend entirely on the podcast player. There’s a list of players and the features they support here.

Two examples that support these features at time of writing are PodFriend (version below currently in TestFlight Beta on iOS):

And Podcast Addict on Android:

Currently value is only supported on the interesting podStation Chrome browser extension (requires an LN Pay account for funds if you want to stream value) and the amazing Sphinx (requires a Node to be rented or bring your own Node, to stream value).

More apps are supporting these features every few weeks and it’s exciting to watch. Always check here for the most up to date list. Hopefully they’re coming to a podcast client near you soon.

Thank you for your ongoing support and as always, thank you for listening.

The Engineered Network: Ad-Free Goal

27 January, 2021

It’s been 5 years since TEN launched and in that time we’ve had support from both sponsors (advertising) and supporters (via Patreon). Patreon launched with six support tiers, and in mid-2017 a seventh was added along with an Ad-Free feed as a bonus. Two years ago the Patron tiers were tweaked to accomodate the now-defunct Breaker audio service. Today we’re going back to six tiers and for the first time ever, setting a goal. One that years ago I didn’t think would be possible to even consider.

We now have an Ad-Free goal on Patreon. How is this going to work?

If Patronage meets or exceeds this level ($300/month), sponsorship and advertising will be suspended for a minimum one year trial and if sustainable will be extended indefinitely. This would include no network advertising on the website, no advertising in the audio or in the show notes for all future episodes from that point.

…if sustainable…

The truth is that Patrons come and go, they are always free to do that anytime. Hosting costs and domain expenses go up, not down and good quality audio equipment is periodically required to be upgraded or replaced and every time I’ve checked that’s not getting cheaper either.

That said I’ve chosen the goal carefully with all of that in mind and if I can make it work for 12 months then it should be fine to extend it indefinitely. If this works out down the road, I’m considered re-releasing all episodes as ad-free backwards in time to day one: effectively scrubbing all advertising from TEN retrospectively.

Dual-Benefit

If this works out, then not only will listeners all benefit from ad-free material, but it also means less work when creating the shows themselves. In rough terms, the amount of time spent each year organising sponsorships, writing up ad-reads, recording and editing then following up with sponsors afterward, is about the same as two half-hour long episodes of Causality. There would be a single edit for each episode instead of two (one with Ads, one without) and hence no ads means more time for more content.

Thank you to everyone that is already a Patron for all of your support in making this an actual possibility. You’re all amazing!

Introducing the Imperfect Podcast

22 December, 2020

For a very long time I’ve been told by my friends and colleagues when I get on to a rant about a topic, it can be “epic” to hear. One of the things that makes me a good engineer is being very detail oriented, such that I thought I might put the two together and this podcast is the result.

Short. Sharp. To the point. Nothing is perfect. Let me tell you why.

The Engineered Network: Tweaks and Amazon

20 September, 2020

This week our shows were part of the launch of Amazon Music Podcasts so now our shows can also be found there. Please note that Podcasts during initial testing are only appearing in the Amazon Music US Store and you do require an Amazon account and be logged in to listen to them via this method.

In addition this week we added a new “Thanks” section episodes of Causality that attributes those people that inspired the coverage of that topic. If you have incidents you want covered on Causality then please get in touch via methods listed on our Contact page, via the Fediverse or via Twitter.

Finally we’ve had special thanks to our Patrons for some time on our individual episode pages, however these have also now been added to the Show Notes for all podcatcher apps so these along with the aforementioned “Thanks” attribution will now appear in all of our podcast feeds moving forward.

The Engineered Network: Privacy Policy

17 September, 2020

None of the shows on TEN collect your personal information for use in any way, nor do we wish to. Some of our sponsors have in the past have used Coupon Codes if listeners have chosen to use them, but that is all. The audio files have been served from LibSyn for many years, a well known and trusted Podcast hosting provider since 2004 that do not track your personal information.

LibSyn supports the use of link prepends, which is a system that allows each audio file to be redirected via a third-party service for different purposes, though typically for additional statistics tracking and reporting. Under GDPR and CCPA regulations, the retention and redistribution of some of this data is prohibited. LibSyn only permits a very short list of GDPR and CCPA compliant trackers as follows:

Libsyn’s prepend system whitelists companies with prepends that have already been vetted to be GDPR and CCPA compliant. If the company is not part of Libsyn’s whitelist, they cannot be used unless they are then vetted. Currently, the whitelisted companies providing prepends include:

AdBarker
audi-on
Blubrry
Charisma Media
Chartable
Podcorn
Podcorn2Test
Podtrac
Up.Audio
Voxnest

The full article this was extracted from can be found at LibSyn’s blog.

Recently the excellent Podcast player Overcast (my app of choice) added a new Privacy and Tracking feature that is intended to highlight when shows are potentially tracking your personal data. If you look at the podcasts from the directory they will have a “Privacy & Tracking” information icon, and on that page a warning with a yellow triangle as follows:

The warning states that Tracking “May follow individual-listener behavior across multiple shows or the web, often to track responses to ads.” There are advertising options for some shows within Chartable, however we have never, currently do not and have no intention of ever utilising these.

Some¹ shows on TEN have used Trackable (Chartable’s internal tracking prepend) to provide show and episode statistics beyond those provided by LibSyn. They are not used to track ads or individuals. TEN uses Chartable’s interface to aggregate statistics, reviews and breakdowns from multiple sources that LibSyn statistics alone can not provide.

TEN maintains a Newsletter EMail list and has a Patreon for support from our listeners. Rest assured that any contact details from either service are not shared with any sponsors, advertisers or third-parties. If you have any questions or concerns please get in touch via the Contact form.

Thank you.

Pragmatic and Causality do not use Trackable ↩︎

Introducing Sleep

29 March, 2020

As a long time podcaster I’ve had feedback many, many times that people listening to my voice find it to be relaxing and perhaps even, help them to fall asleep. Having spent so many years now trying to help people through explaining how things work in Pragmatic, the true causes of disasters and how to prevent them in Causality and musings on all things in Analytical, it’s time to try and help people in a different way.

Rather than hold your attention, educate or inform, “Sleep” is a podcast intended to help you fall asleep. That’s it. Nothing more. Nothing less. The show will never have advertising and every episode will be content read from the most unlikely of sources for your enjoyment. Novels, magazines, anything lying around. It’s all fair game, provided it’s free to use. Feel free to request something!

The show will air periodically starting today and will be be targeted at about 10-15 minutes per episode. Many thanks to Patrons of the network for their continued support and for making this show possible.

So now that’s out of the way…let me talk to you. Just for a few minutes…

Causality Premium Giveaway

21 March, 2020

UPDATE: The giveaway is now over. Thank you to all that participated!

For the next few weeks we’re running a giveaway for Causality fans. To be eligible all you need to do is share an episode of Causality you like on Twitter with a few words about why you liked that episode so much. In that tweet you’ll need to link to the URL of the episode, use the Hash-Tag #EngNet and @ Mention @Engineered_Net. You can enter as many times as you like.

There are 10 codes available and the code gives you full access to Causality Premium for free for one month, giving you access to all of the ad-free episodes, bonus episodes only available to Premium subscribers as well as Causality Explored and all the bonus content for Causality through the website. Note: This is NOT a Patreon giveaway as there is currently no way to do that

The best Tweet will be chosen from the previous 48 hours, so if you weren’t successful the first time, a re-tweet of your previous tweets is also acceptable. You might be retweeted by the @Engineered_Net account but this has no bearing on whether you’ve won or not.

We’re giving away one code every second day at Midnight GMT. If you win you’ll get a Direct Message on Twitter with your unique code that needs to be redeemed within one week. If your DMs aren’t open, we will @ Mention you to get in touch another way of your choice.

This is the first time we’ve done a giveaway like this so get in while you can!

Good luck :)

Causality Episode 33 Correction

20 February, 2020

In Episode 33 of Causality regarding the 737 Max, first released on the 31st of January, 2020, originally contained an incorrect number of combined fatalities between the two 737 Max crashes, originally reporting 338 when the correct number is 346. The show notes and episode audio have now all been corrected.

The discrepancy was a result of the accidental exclusion of the flight crew from one of the two flights in the total value.

We pride ourselves in attention to detail in the production of Causality and would like to apologise for the error.

Many thanks to listener Sierra Blazer for bringing this to our attention.

Causality Explored

7 December, 2019

AUDIO VERSION:

Download Audio

VIDEO VERSION:

To celebrate the launch of Causality Premium I’m also launching a new Causality embedded Microcast as an exclusive bonus mini-show I’m calling “Causality Explored”. It will only be available to Premium Patrons (and above) and Causality Premium Subscribers.

One of the challenges in making Causality is getting the technical depth just right. Too high level and I feel like I haven’t done my job well enough. Too deep and I’m concerned that I’ll lose a lot of listeners as they zone-out and wonder: “What on Earth is John talking about?” and “What’s a synchronous motor anyway?” or something similar…

Causality Explored will be a brief (3-8min) ad-free exploration into a specific technical detail relevant to the episode just released. It’s intended for the hard-core fans of the show that are truly interested in the technical depth that I normally wouldn’t go into in the main episode releases. Causality Explored will be best listened to directly following the episode it’s in reference to, but will still stand alone if you’d like to listen independently.

Causality Explored will be released in step with new episodes as they are released starting today, as well as the most recently released three episodes. In time I’ll be adding Causality Explored for key episodes retrospectively with the long term goal of providing it for all past episodes. Causality Explored will not have its own show feed: If you’re already a Premium supporter or above on Patreon, then you’ll get Causality Explored as a bonus in your Premium Audio feed automatically and you don’t have to do a thing! If you’d like some more in-depth Causality then Causality Explored has been made just for you!

I hope you enjoy it.

Thank you for your continued support and as always, thanks for listening.

Causality Premium

7 December, 2019

UPDATE: The App-Login via LibSyn is No Longer Available. The Apps are also no longer updated or maintained. Thanks to those that supported via this pathway.

AUDIO VERSION:

Download Audio

VIDEO VERSION:

As Causality has continued to grow in popularity and with a broader appeal to a very diverse range of listeners, the time felt right to try something new. Since its inception the show has been supported by Patrons and Sponsors, with Premium Patrons and above enjoying benefits such as access to Raw Show notes and Ad-Free, Higher Quality audio of each episode.

Today I’m launching a new way to listen to the show and a way to support just Causality independently of Patreon. I’ve teamed up with LibSyn who is a podcast hosting specialist that have hosted my shows audio since 2013. Through them I’m now able to offer a Causality App in the Apple App Store, the Amazon App Market and the Google Play Store. The subscription also ties into episodes on The Engineered Network website.

Why Do This?

In short, I’ve had many people feed back that they would be supporting me if there was an option other than Patreon. Truth is that Patreons “Private Audio RSS URL” isn’t exactly user friendly if you’re not technically inclined or even if you are so inclined an a Patron it can still be difficult to find. In addition many supporters only want me to make Causality and would like an option to support only Causality. Finally Patreon has an awesome tiered system which is great for a lot of people, however the tiers can seem confusing and there are limited ways to offer deals and there’s no mechanism to provide a discount for loyal, long-time supporters.

Causality Premium

Here’s how it works: the Apps are all free to download and they will show all of freely available episodes, however if you subscribe to support the show you’ll get the full catalogue of Ad-Free, high quality episodes, as well as the raw notes for each episode and bonus Causality episodes that are published from time to time. Essentially the content will mirror that provided for Premium and above Patrons via Patreon, but solely for Causality.

Subscriptions are available month to month at $3.99, 6-monthly at $9.99 and Annually for $15.99 USD. Annual subscribers will receive a named thank you at the end of the episode released the month they signed up, each year, as an extra perk.

When you’re subscribed and signed in you’ll be able to access that extra content via the Apps and the TEN website directly if you like: it’s up to you.

But wait there’s more…

To celebrate the launch of the Causality apps and Premium subscription service, I’m also launching a new Causality embedded Microcast called Causality Explored that deserves its own blog post.

More New Channels

Recently I’ve reopened the Facebook page by popular request, as well as syndicating to a list of new destinations all with the complete list of episodes including Blogger, YouTube, Deezer, LinkedIn, Tumblr and Causality is now listed in the Podcast Source app on the App Store as well.

Patreon RSS Feed Subscribing In Your Favourite App

If you’re a Patron then log in to Patreon (via the Website) and select “Posts from my creators” and select “The Engineered Network” and on the Overview tab you should see a section on the right hand side “Your Patronage” underneath which is “Audio RSS Link” as below:

In the Patreon mobile app it’s found under: John Chidgey, Overview, and you’ll see Audio Link after scrolling to the bottom of the page.

Copy the link and paste it into your podcatcher app of choice and you’re all set! For those most technically minded, that’s the best way to go as you can use your own podcatcher.

There’s also a how to from Patreon here.

Causality Premium Subscribing Via the Web

You can visit the Causality Premium subscription webpage and once subscribed you can login here and when visiting TEN you will go from seeing this:

…to seeing this…

…and you can play the episodes from the embedded webplayer if you wish.

Causality Apps

The apps are all self-contained podcatchers with embedded access to the bonus materials once subscribed via the website. You can find them here:

In Summary

If you’re already a Premium Patron you’ll continue to get all of the same content you always have for ALL of the shows on TEN as well as the new Causality Explored Microcast as bonus material so if you’re already happy with Patreon, then there’s no need to change anything: the App subscription probably isn’t for you. Just to be really clear: Patreon isn’t going anywhere! It’s still a great way to support the shows.

These additional options just mean that Causality will be available to a wider audience than ever before and should make it even easier for everyone to listen to the show just the way they like to.

The Engineered Network: Celebrating Causality

20 July, 2019

When I started Causality in late 2015, I didn’t know what to expect. At first the show had few reviews, little feedback and whilst downloads were okay, I was concerned that perhaps it was too specific a niche in the world of podcasting. With big budget players (NPR, WNYC, BBC and many more) moving into podcasting, I wasn’t sure if the voice of a lone, detail focused engineer, would or could even succeed in this space. I’m up against documentary makers with staffs of researchers, big budgets, people with international popularity fed by television, broadcast radio and cinema (real star power as they say) and people producing that content as their full time job. With Causality everything from research, to script, to recording, editing and publishing is all just one person and I also hold down a full time engineering job on top of that.

So yes, I had my doubts. (At first)

But I wanted to make something different. Something tangible. Something that could actually make a difference.

Within the first six months an acquaintance and Pragmatic semi-regular guest Marco Arment told me he thought that Causality “really works” and encouraged me to keep making it despite my concerns from a somewhat sluggish start. As the years passed with an irregular schedule not helping, the reviews started coming in, downloads gradually increased and listeners became increasingly vocal when episodes were late (a good sign). Some listeners asked me to stop making every other show and just make Causality! After 3 years and 8 months with Episode 30 released Causality reached two milestones.

The first: it out-downloaded Pragmatic that month for the first time ever.

The second: it cracked 100,000 unique downloads (That actually happened at some point following Episode 29). Interestingly, but perhaps not too surprisingly upon reflection, the last 10,000 came following a surge in backlog interest inspired by the recent HBO TV series about Chernobyl. All the episodes related to Nuclear Power Plant incidents had spiked, hence the show isn’t “just past” that milestone, it’s well past it.

Ultimately I’m so grateful that I stuck with it and kept making Causality as it appears that so many people now have been enjoying it and it’s actually making a difference, based on some feedback I’ve received.

Thank you for all of your support, for sharing the show on social media, with your friends and family and as always, thanks so much for listening.

The Engineered Network: Making Space

7 July, 2019

About three years ago I started a solo podcast called Analytical and recently I released its 40th episode. It was intended to be a catch-all for various ideas that didn’t fit into either Pragmatic or Causality. Whilst Patrons of the network have provided the most positive feedback, it hasn’t been as popular in the public space.

Therefore I’ve decided for the time being to put Analytical on hiatus and any new episodes of Analytical will be available for Patrons as they are released. Analytical will not have a regular frequency moving forward.

I’m doing this specifically because I’m making space for a new project that I’ve been working on for several months. I’m not prepared to release details yet, however it’s also to allow me to focus more on Pragmatic, as well as Causality specifically.

With the recent surge in popularity of Causality, I’m trying to focus my time and efforts on the shows that people are enjoying the most.

Thanks so much for listening, and take care.

The Engineered Network: Live Returns

22 April, 2019

For those interested in listening live I’m reintroducing the live stream here. Archives will play the entire backlog of shows at random with handy links back to the full episode if you’re part way through you could can grab a download and listen to the rest later. With nearly eight continuous days of audio content you won’t hear the same episode twice for quite a while.

That said the primary purpose of the TEN Radio Station is to stream live shows - look for the bright red icon on the menu that indicates that we’re streaming live!

As before there is an IRC Channel you can join via the embedded client or via your IRC client of choice on irc.freenode.net which will automatically connect you via the webpage. If you’d like to submit questions in the chat room then simply type !q and they’ll be added to the list live during that session. Alternatively you can pre-submit questions on Twitter by using the HashTag #EngNetQA or the same via the Fediverse.

Live will be reserved primarily for non-solo shows and will also be used for live Q&A sessions. We’ll be kicking off with a series of Q&A sessions over the next few weeks. For Patrons the raw Q&A sessions will be posted as a bonus.

The schedule for upcoming shows is shown at the bottom of the Live page and the time, date and type of show is shown in multiple time zones around the world for your convenience. Announcements for going live will be sent out via the Fediverse @[email protected] and via Twitter @Engineered_Net and there’s a handy count-down timer on the live page too.

Watch for announcements and join in the conversation!

The Engineered Network: Reviews and Tweets

31 March, 2019

A really quick update on my last update that I’ve also been meaning to get to for a while, I’ve now made the reviews cycle through dynamically so they take up less space on the page, and I’ve also added curated Tweets mentioning the shows on the network. Enjoy!

The Engineered Network: Reddit

16 March, 2019

A quick update I’ve created a sub-reddit for anything and everything about the shows on the network and as posted on Patreon you can get extra flair (if that’s your thing) for all Patron levels. So if you’re into Reddit, please share and comment any time.

Enjoy!

The Engineered Network: iTunes Reviews

22 February, 2019

A quick update I’ve been meaning to get to for a while, I’m now putting selected iTunes reviews front and center on the site, on the landing page as well as on each podcast page now with embedded iTunes reviews. These are taken word for word from the iTunes store, from countries around the world, written by fans of the shows and I really appreciate people taking the time to write them. In case you haven’t already written a review or left a rating in iTunes the links for you are:

For any (or ALL) of the above, select View in iTunes, then Click to Rate, or better still also Write a Review! If you’re enjoying any of the shows and you a leave a review then maybe someday it’ll show up on the site :)

As always a huge thank you for everyone that takes time from their day to listen to our shows.

Thank you for your ongoing support. I wouldn’t still be podcasting without it.

The Engineered Network: Tier Tweaks and Breaker

27 January, 2019

With the New Year well underway now, I thought it would be a good time to review Patron rewards, and adding more flexibility for supporters of the network. It’s been 18 months since the last tweak to Patreon Tiers and there have been a few tweaks, though the values for each tier have not been changed in any way and no rewards have disappeared either. The following changes current starting January this year:

Supporter: Unchanged
Named Supporter: In addition to your current rewards, you’ll also get ad-free episodes of Analytical early release!
Enthusiast: In addition to your current rewards, you’ll also get ad-free episodes of Analytical early release as well!
Major Enthusiast is now known as Premium: The benefits to this level have not changed, I just tidied up the description to simplify it a bit
Backer is now known as a Silver Producer: Thinking about it, producers provide funding for music albums, movies and such, so it makes sense to credit the level of support where Producers have their names read out at the end of every episode. In addition, at this tier Patrons will get a named thank-you in the Show Notes of every episode!
Gold Producer: A new tier with all the benefits of Silver, however you’ll be able to choose a specific topic! In the past when I’ve had topic suggestions it was hard to pick a winner since it had to overlap with the sorts of topics that I personally found interesting. Hence here’s how I see this working: Twice a year, a Gold Producer will get to pick a single topic from a list of topics on ANY of the shows I make on TEN and that episode will be produced for you in the next six month period: guaranteed. If there’s no topic in the list of interest then we can discuss options for alternative topics. So if you’ve ever wanted some control of what’s covered - this tier might interest you!
Major Backer is now known as a Platinum Producer: This tier has the same benefits as a Gold Producer, with the choice from a list of topics on ANY of the shows I make on TEN and that WILL be the NEXT topic recorded for that episode. Every month. That’s right: EVERY MONTH. So if you’ve ever wanted control of what topics are covered on one of the shows then this the best way to do it.

I’ll be gradually sifting through the backlog of episodes on Patreon and updating the episodes so they show up in the Named Supporter and Enthusiast Audio Feeds so if they don’t show up immediately, please be patient. In addition during the many tweaks of episodes on Patreon, Episode 25 Nostalgia needed to be deleted and re-created, so now it’s showing up out of sequence (apologies).

I also updated the reward tier artwork to something more colourful because, well, why not? Also a minor point: All ad-free “Premium” episodes will now have the Premium gold seal in the top right corner of the show art.

Breaker

Previously TEN added ad-free, pre-release audio and full back-catalogues of Analytical and Causality, with a recent back-log of Pragmatic. Over the next week this is being extended beyond Patreon thanks to a new partnership between Patreon and Breaker. If you listen to podcasts through Breaker on iOS or their web-player, you’ll now find four more podcasts you can subscribe to:

Pragmatic - Premium is the same content in Patreon’s audio link (although for Pragmatic only) for Premium Patrons and above
Causality - Premium is the same content in Patreon’s audio link (although for Causality only) for Premium Patrons and above
Analytical - Premium is the same content in Patreon’s audio link (although for Analytical only) now available for Named Supporter Patrons and above
TEN - Patron Episodes is the same content in Patreon’s audio link that’s currently available to all Patron levels

If you visit any of those URLs you’ll be given a choice: you can subscribe to the podcast monthly if you’re already a Patron of TEN via Patreon, and for non-Patrons they will be directed to Patreon to the support level for that show to sign-up. The tiers work like this:

Tier / Breaker	Pragmatic	Causality	Analytical	TEN Patron
Supporter	-	-	-	X
Named Supporter	-	-	X	X
Enthusiast	-	-	X	X
Premium	X	X	X	X
Silver Producer	X	X	X	X
Gold Producer	X	X	X	X
Platinum Producer	X	X	X	X

Today this allows for something that Patreon doesn’t currently support: individual feeds for each show. However, there is one thing to be aware of with Breaker. With Patreon it’s possible to grab your personal RSS Audio link and import it into ANY podcast player app you might choose. With Breaker this is not an option. You can’t listen to any audio in any app other than Breaker, or via their Web page audio player. For some people this is a deal breaker (not funny?) and hence I’ll maintain the Patreon common audio feed just as it stands today.

One final note about Breaker: the Patreon integration is currently in Beta and whilst it works most of the time, I’ve been testing it for several weeks now and although it seems more stable this week than previously, if there are issues with the login/tier levels there’s little I can do about it at this time. By all means though, give it a try!

Thank you everyone for your continued support and I hope you enjoy the extra rewards and more flexibility in listening to our shows.

The Engineered Network: Archives

4 November, 2018

(Full version posted here) After a lot of deliberation and consideration it’s time to refine (slightly) where archives are kept on which site. In the past, podcast archives were found on TechDistortion and only current active shows were kept here.

From last week TEN will now be the sole repository for all podcasts, past and present with a new archived section that contains all past episodes of shows long since ended. The hosts and guests list has been extended to include all shows, past and present. With all audio content hopefully more logically grouped by type and audience, anyone visiting will be more likely to find exactly what they’re looking for.

The Engineered Network: TEN is now Fully Static

3 November, 2018

As time passes and server load changes, it’s a good idea to reconsider your strategy for hosting and the type of site you want to maintain. Over several months I’ve been chipping away at a gradual migration from the original Statamic-based site using the Statacast Plug-in that I developed specifically for TEN, to a GoHugo based Static website. The performance improvement in so doing is staggering, with page load times at worst three times faster and at best over ten times faster. I’ve also taken the opportunity to give the site a spit and polish, a nip and tuck if you prefer while I was at it.

Beyond that I’ve also now been able to finally add the previously (briefly) mentioned transcriptions for all episodes. The truth was that when I originally deployed that a few months ago, the load sky-rocketted and was the ultimate trigger for the site migration away from Statamic to a truly Static site. I’ll be back focussing on content again now (there’s only one of me and only so much spare time in my day!).

Thanks as always for your patience and your support of all of the shows.

The Engineered Network: Transcriptions

2 November, 2018

(Originally published 20th June, 2018) As real-time processing power improves and server-side software can search audio for specific words or phrases on demand or build a catalogue in the background for text search of audio files en-masse, like google does now for text and to some extent also for photos, transcriptions of podcast audio will become obsolete. That said, such a reality isn’t within our grasp just yet, with the best audio transcription software not much better than Siri, Alexa or Google Home assistants. Inspired by the ever-creative “underscore” David Smith and his podcast search side project (his words), and seeing the utility in text-driven audio search, I decided it was time to do something similar at TEN.

Like David, I’m happy with approximation. Of course I could spend countless hours manually transcribing hundreds upon hundreds of hours of audio, or I could rely on transcription software to handle this for me and give its best effort. It isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough to pick out keywords and phrases to allow you to hone in on roughly when and in what episodes certain topics were discussed. Unlike David, I didn’t use a series of scripts into a web service backend to do the heavy lifting, instead I relied on a commercial off the shelf tool that I’d forgotten I still have a copy of from a previous life: Dragon Dictate. The interesting thing I found about the software was that the older Windows version (v13) was the only one that was stable and compatible enough with all of the MP3/AAC files and formats I’ve used over the past 5 years. Attempts to use the Mac version of Dragon failed miserably, with it crashing constantly and refusing to transcribe episodes for reasons unexplained. To accomplish this Dragon v13 was run up in a Windows 7 VM and set to auto-transcribe. The entire backcatalogue of TEN shows took nearly a week of constant background processing to complete, but the results are in.

As of today the rough-transcripts can be downloaded as text files if you like, from a link at the bottom of each podcast episode page, and under the Search option for the website it should pick up which episode mentions which words via DuckDuckGo. I’ve only rolled out Pragmatic episodes for the moment but the others will follow in coming weeks. As for motivation, I’ve had several listeners ask for this feature for quite some time, but to be honest this solution is just as much about me. Having recorded and published hundreds of hours of audio it’s become clear to me that my memory is sometimes at variance with the facts of my previous recordings and when I’m covering a topic I want to firstly make sure I haven’t covered it previously, and if I have, to be sure I’m not repeating myself or I can at least refer to it correctly.

Hopefully it’s a useful feature. Enjoy!

The Engineered Network: Recording Setup Mk4

14 April, 2018

Developing as a podcaster, incrementally over the past five years has been marked by different recording setups as I’ve expanded my knowledge and developed a better ear for sound. Whilst I’m never going to achieve the levels of audio proficiency that audio technicians working in broadcast have, I can at least do the best with what I have available. From an audio hardware perspective I’ve essentially had four main setups in the past five years.

Mk1 (January 2012 -> July 2012)

iPhone Headset ($29): Used for recording The Exastential Podcast. It was a good place to start but the audio quality was, quite frankly, terrible.

Mk2 (November 2013 -> September 2014)

Generic Fabric Pop Filter, Generic Shock Mount, ATR-2100 USB Microphone ($79) from Amazon, Generic Boom Arm (About $150 total): Used from the beginning of Pragmatic on Fiatlux, and continued to be used through the indie transition for the show. The audio quality was acceptable but via USB it introduced a reasonable amount of background hiss which was annoying. For a brief period the Onyx Blackjack was used instead via the ATR-2100’s XLR input however the ATR was retired shortly thereafter.

Mk3 (October 2014 -> September 2015)

Stainless Steel Pop Filter, Onyx Blackjack USB Interface ($149) from Amazon, Heil PR-40 ($327) from Amazon, PRSM Shock Mount ($105) from Amazon About ($600 total): With sponsorship funding from Pragmatic I consider this to be my first semi-professional set of equipment. The Heil PR-40 is an impressive microphone and the stainless steel pop filter surpassed the fabric one. I also switched from a boom mount to a desk mount at some time during this period, but was mainly because my boom arm was cheap and kept sagging under the weight of the Heil and its shock mount. In time, I’ve come to prefer a desk mount as it works better for me. The biggest complaint with the PR-40 was that although it had a beautiful sound, the Onyx input gain was fully cranked in order to get a decent volume out of the microphone. The gain hungry microphone was left wanting for more gain and whilst the amount of audible hiss was further reduced compared to the ATR2100 via USB, it was still very noticeable.

Heil PR-40 Desk Mount Stainless Steel Pop Filter

Mk3A (October 2015 -> November 2017)

Added DBX-286 Pre-processor ($199) from Amazon: With launch sponsor funding I added one of Dan Benjamins highly recommended audio pre-processors: the DBX-286. (It’s worthy of note that it was AT THAT TIME, however since he has moved onto a more advanced Apollo interface) It’s an excellent amplifier that finally allowed me to extract the gain I needed from the Heil, however upon tweaking the De-esser, and various other settings endlessly, I could hear enough audio artefacts from the pre-processor that after a year or so, I turned off the pre-processing features and used it for additional gain, but shortly thereafter I stopped using it entirely. Interestingly last year Dan sold all of his. Theory seems to be that if you capture a clean signal, software post-processing gives you the opportunity to tweak the result any time you like, however by modifying the source audio you’ve affected the final recorded audio permanently, leaving you fewer options to tweak it if there was an issue with the settings.

Mk3B (November 2017)

I heard the beginnings of an issue with my Onyx Blackjack. The USB Interface was about four years old and the input potentiometers were becoming very noisy. It’s a common issue with analogue potentiometers, even those that are sealed. With use, the wiper that contacts the resistive strip on the dial inside the potentiometer develops a thin layer of dust, grit and oil that causes pops and hisses in the recorded audio. With sealed pots you can’t spray them with a contact cleaner, so there’s no option but to replace them.

Mackie used unbranded and practically unlabelled pots, and their schematics weren’t very helpful. Podcasting was put on hold for nearly two months whilst I identified workable spare parts and went about attempting to fix the Onyx. I had to re-record several episodes of Analytical in early 2018 as a result, and spent a lot of time disassembling, resoldering the Channel 1 potentiometer and reassembling the Onyx so that I could do that, however the incident stepped up my plans to replace the Onyx with a better USB Interface. A more recent model with the same amplifiers as the USB Pre2 that Marco Arment adores.

Mk4 (Mar 2018–>Present)

SoundDevices Mix Pre3 USB Interface ($850) from Amazon, Shure BETA 87A ($249) from Amazon, Sound dampening material/enclosure, Primeacoustic Audio Shield ($99) from Amazon (About $1,300 total): Saving up from many months of Patron support, I’ve finally taken the plunge on my newest equipment. The Shure BETA 87A is a wonderful microphone, and because it’s designed to be handheld, it doesn’t require a shockmount nor does it require a pop-filter or windshield for my use case. I’ve used it on the repaired Onyx and it sounds much more balanced and is a more honest representation of my voice (more treble content than the Heil). Additionally because it’s a condensor it doesn’t require huge amounts of gain and the audio is considerably cleaner with most of the background hiss that’s typical with Dynamic microphones, has effectively disappeared. The Pre3 is a forward-thinking purchase. It’s the successor to the MixPre-D and shares a lot of the same technology as the USB Pre2 except that it’s more portable, offering local mixing and recording as well as USB Interface recording (simultaneously) from a multitude of power sources. It’s rugged so can be used portably as well as for podcasting in a home studio and can handle 3 XLR inputs.

The Pre3 will allow me to start doing field recording and interviews without an iPad/Mac nearby, self powered and the ability to record three people at once locally. I still have the ATR and the Heil and the Pre3 will drive them very well opening up range of additional recordings I’ve been unable to do until now. I’ll post more on that in the future. Beyond this, paired with a DSLR for video, high quality audio recordings in the field will be possible shortly with an additional shotgun microphone.

Sound treating my house has always been a point of contention. The room I have to use is what (in this house at least) we call a Study, however as the floor plan identifies it as a dining room it was built without a door and one may not be added for reasons that those in long term relationships will probably understand. The walls could not be modified and needed to be sound-treated in such a way that the components could be kept safe from the family pets. (Removable double-sided taped panels are therefore not an option thank to a cat that loves to shred soundproofing material) In addition, making the setup portable would allow additional flexibility in the future. The Auralex Audio Shield wraps behind and to the sides of the microphone eliminating the reflections from the computer monitors and the walls. In addition a series of photography backdrop stands with a blanket material and a thick rug underfoot for sound absorption do a reasonable job of attenuating background nuisance sounds. In effect I’ve built a custom sound booth and the audio quality is surprisingly good.

Episode 85 of Pragmatic was the first to use the new setup in its entirety and having now edited that and a few others I can say that difference this has made is significant. Even with a modest amount of gain the Shure and Pre3 deliver quiet, clear undistorted audio. As a test of just how clean the audio was, I amplified and normalised a Pre3 recording in post-production without any perceptible increase in background hiss. That would have been impossible with the Heil/Blackjack combination as the pops and hiss sound level became very noticeable.

The Future

The new equipment provides a great deal of flexibility, with tested combinations including solo microphone local recording, DSLR connected audio/video, Skype/Facetime/Mumble PC/Mac independent and Integrated recording, and 3-person local recording both PC/Mac independent and Integrated. This will make field recording a breeze and the improved recording quality allows more professional recording opportunities, reduces editing time and ultimately will be better for your ears.

The Engineered Network: Updates

24 February, 2018

In the past few weeks the site has been streamlined with some major speed improvements. In addition with the recently updated Font Awesome v5 all of the sites iconography has been updated and extended. The backend RSS feeds for iTunes have also been updated to add the new Apple iTunes descriptor tags for those podcatchers that support them. In addition we’ve added our shows to Google Play and we’re now also in Stitcher with more to come to make it easier to listen however and wherever you are.

For content upcoming, Pragmatic ended its Elon Musk arc recently and is shaping up to be an interesting year with several guests now lined up. For the increasingly popular Analytical we’ll be covering an even mixture of topics between practical and philosophical topics this year. Finally for Causality this year we’ll be covering Columbia, Bhopal and Deepwater Horizon just to name a few. Causality in particular continues to grow in popularity and is set to overtake Pragmatic in the future if trends continue, so if you’ve haven’t given it a chance, you should definately give it a listen.

All support through Patreon is always very much appreciated and it remains the best way to support the shows and the network. However remember that beyond Patreon there are still other ways you can help if you’re enjoying our work at TEN.

iTunes:

For any (or ALL) of the above, select View in iTunes, then Click to Rate, or better still also Write a Review! The ratings help and the reviews really help!

If you listen in Overcast then “star” the episode as you’re listening to help others find what you’re listening to, or better yet, share the episode on Twitter or Facebook!

Finally, a huge thank you for everyone that takes time from their day to listen to our shows. Time and precious and the fact that you take time to listen means a great deal.

Thank you for your ongoing support and listenership.

The Engineered Network: Format Update

18 July, 2017

The Engineered Network shows are predominantly recorded using AudioShare, post-produced using Ferrite and published using Transmit for iOS on an iPad Pro. On the 10th of July, 2017 now that the final key MP3 patent had expired on the 9th of April, 2017 Ferrite was updated to include MP3 encoding as well as chapter markers in both formats. Following this, all episodes previously post-produced using Ferrite had their original audio pulled from the archives, and re-encoded in an MP3 format.

All episodes of Analytical as well as the most recent 8 episodes of both Pragmatic and Causality have also been upgraded to high bitrate VBR MP3 format. This will improve the overall final quality as well as fix any compatibility issues between different podcast playback devices that don’t support the M4A format.

As of now, all TEN shows are in the MP3 format and will remain that way for the foreseeable future.

The Engineered Network: Ad-Free For Patrons

9 July, 2017

A few months ago I added a new Patron-only feature of offering Ad-Free, pre-released versions of all podcasts I produce. The feedback has been quite positive as many fans of the show want to listen to the shows without advertising and self-promotion so I’m doubling-down with that moving forward.

As of today I’ve now added the entire back-catalogue of Analytical and Causality in Ad-Free format for Major Enthusiasts and above on Patreon. I’m working on doing the same for Pragmatic in the future. In some cases I’ve just clipped out any advertising or promotional content but in quite a few places I’ve also tweaked the audio, closed some gaps and the final exports are often a higher quality bitrate than the publicly released versions.

They will appear on the RSS Audio Feed embedded in Patreon for each person. Due to the nature of Patreons current podcast RSS format, there’s no way to split the episodes by Podcast, nor is there a way to back-date an audio-post entry. Ad-Free back-catalogues are therefore being released in bulk groups so they will appear in sequence in your podcast player of choice. In cases where a recent episode was early-released it will be removed and republished so it shows up in the correct sequence.

If or when Patreon improves their podcast handling I’ll refine it further at that time, but for now this should work and it’s far easier than Authenticated feeds that won’t work with some popular podcast players.

Thank you everyone for your continued support and I hope you enjoy these refined re-releases of past episodes.

The Engineered Network: Patreon Refinements

5 June, 2017

The network is continuing along with some wonderful Patrons supporting it and I’ve been thinking about ways that I can give people that want to support the shows more options to choose from. I haven’t done anything with the segregation of Tiers since the network began in late 2015 so I think it’s time to refine it a bit more.

To address the recognition aspects, there is now a level for those that want a named thank you on the network home page. Beyond the existing audio bonus episodes (available for all Patrons) I’ve added another new option for those that have been asking for it. There is now an option for ad-free episodes and there are two dimensions to this:

new episodes will be ad-free and be released by one to two days before public release; and
in addition I’ll be re-editing fan favourite past episodes and releasing them via the ad-free feed.

Because of the way Patreon audio feeds work with tiering, it’s not sensible to have two sets of episodes, one with ads but pre-released, and one without, show up in the same feed across multiple tiers. For this reason I’ve separated out this ad-free option and will no longer be offering early releases of the public episodes (with ads). Hopefully that makes sense.

The truth is that early-releasing podcast episodes that are identical to their public released audio is somewhat odd given that podcasting is effectively popular because its nature is time-shifted and most people choose to listen at their convenience. I suspect mainly because of this fact, time-shifting alone was not very appealing and based on downloads and feedback, very few patrons found early-release (on its own) to be very compelling. Hence the change to an ad-free option instead.

There have been several episodes recently that were sponsor-advertising free, so when I say ad-free in those cases, I intend to strip out all self-promotion as well. If you’re a Patron listening to the ad-free version, you already know where to find the network Patreon, and what the other shows are, so I don’t need to tell you about all of that! Episodes will just…start…with brief introductions and they’ll end…quickly. Tighter. Focused. More inline with the original intent.

There’s one more thing.

I’ve been asked to cover some very interesting topics over the years, but one thing I’ve also been asked for every now and then is to produce a behind the scenes or a making of the show, video documentary of sorts. Whilst I remain somewhat skeptical that it would be very interesting I put myself in your hands. If you’d like that, let me know. Now you can. The concept is that every month there is at least one person interested in that I’ll release a video segment exclusively for those supporters. If there’s enough interest I’ll cover:

Topic Selection
Preparation and Research
Recording
Post-Production (iPad and Mac)
Audio Equipment

It will be released in 1080p if there’s any interest, and if not, that’s totally fine.

Show Updates

Causality recently had its first 3,000 downloads episode and continues to gain popularity. I’ve just kicked off a multi-episode arc that looks at my own wheelhouse: Control System Engineering root causes for major disasters. At the end of the arc there will be a special episode that brings it all together. And there’s lots more to come with Causality.

Analytical continues to be my place for ideas that don’t fit elsewhere and it’s a quick and fun show to make so I’m going to keep making it. I’ve had some great feedback about certain episodes and it’s good to be able to dig into more philosophical and management of people related issues. Lots more still to come.

Pragmatic remains the most popular show on the network and I’ll be bringing on more guest hosts in coming months. I have plans for some episodes on Tesla, Elon Musk’s ventures and a long-awaited revisit to the battery problem where we’ll dive into the changing landscape of offline storage and ask the question: has the battery problem been solved? So much great stuff in the pipeline for the show. It’s far from done.

Finally I’d like to wrap by once again thanking the supporters of the network, as well as the listeners, for your continued support. I will keep making more episodes as long as I am able and backed by such great people.

Thanks and take care, John Chidgey

Making Causality

21 December, 2016

At 14 episodes over as many months and with 2016 drawing to a close I wanted to take a few moments to walk through why and what I do to make this podcast. Throughout my career I’ve come across so many things that went wrong on different scales, some with lethal consequences but most, thankfully not. For the greater world there is no shortage of mistakes and incidents that I’ve taken a personal interest in during my life. As an engineer when I read about a cruise ship sinking, bridges collapsing, and nuclear reactors surviving a Tsunami (or not) I can’t help but think - what could have been done differently?

I approach every episode of Causality wearing my professional hat as best I can. If there’s anything I’m not convinced by, I’ll dig further until I’m satisfied. I’ve read a lot of inquiry findings and investigation reports and am aware of the biases that often creep in and affect the words on the page, the over-dramatisation of documentaries and the twisting of the facts to get the desired finding. Facts don’t lie if you dig deep enough.

Unsatisfied with the English translated section of the Amagasaki “accident” report I spent hours digging through the Japanese version of the sections relating to mental state of the driver bouncing between different translation tools to try and understand whether the driver had been getting enough sleep. Unable to locate a single definition source of information about Flint Michigan I went over dozens of articles on what lead up to the incident and dug through some textbooks on corrosion control techniques to understand what actually happened to the water supply. Unhappy with the popular documentary on BP Texas, I went through the multi-hundred page report and the Chemical Safety Board depiction of the event and stripped out the details that made the most sense as the root causes. That’s just three examples that come to mind.

This level of research, comprehension and effort takes time and that’s why it can take up to 30 hours of preparation and 5 hours of recording, editing and post-production to create a single episode of Causality. This is why there is typically one a month.

Causality has been a chance for me to connect my online and offline worlds in a positive way. I like to think that engineers listen to the show and can learn something from the conclusions drawn in each one. Even if they don’t, I personally have learned a huge amount from researching and questioning the official stories and in trying to comprehend what went wrong, I’ve ended up picking up some things to be wary of myself in my own career. It’s my hope that this can be a different way for people to learn about fault finding, root cause analysis and understanding that incidents can be prevented and that nothing is truly an “accident”.

I will put whatever spare time I can into making every episode as good as I possibly can and whilst this is far from my full time job I try to treat it as if it were. I couldn’t make this show without the support of listeners and especially Patrons of the show via Patreon. Thank you all for your support, your encouragement and your feedback.

Welcome to Analytical

28 May, 2016

Analytical is a solo podcast where I talk about ideas and concepts I’ve come across over decades of Engineering relating to design, managing people and projects and so on. Essentially anything that doesn’t really fit into my other shows but I still find interesting. I try to be careful, considered and calculated in how I do business in my career. I may not have always succeeded, and I suppose I always felt like if something went well or didn’t go well and I wasn’t sure why, I just hadn’t analysed it enough. Hence the title of the show.

The show will air every fortnight starting next week and will be be targeted at 15 minutes per episode.

Many thanks to Patrons of the network for their continued support and for making this show possible.

Episode 65: Corrections

26 October, 2015

Augusto Hertz noted that during the show I said “electric” field when I meant “magnetic” field. When a current passes through a wire it does generate a magnetic field. Nice catch Augusto.

Episode 64: Corrections

26 October, 2015

Listener Augusto Hertz pointed out that during the episode I swapped the two terms DFT and FFT. For clarity, the FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) is in fact an efficient algorithm for calculating the DFT (Discrete Fourier Transform). Thanks for the feedback Augusto.

Introducing the Neutrium Podcast

10 October, 2015

Neutrium, everyones favourite engineering resource now has a podcast! The podcast will be covering many of the topics presented on the site, adding context to the theory and practices of everyday engineering. Bridging the gap between theory and practice the Neutrium podcast will discuss many of the design challenges faced by engineers in their daily work.

Pragmatic is Back

10 October, 2015

I didn’t choose to end Pragmatic at Episode 63 for trivial reasons. Balancing work and family life is hard and previously I wasn’t doing a good enough job. There are a few other reasons that I decided to end the show the first time that I can’t talk about however suffice it to say, I have a plan to keep making the show in a sustainable way.

Pragmatic will now only air once a fortnight. There will be no live show and guests will only appear every second month or so. I’m time limiting episodes to 90 minutes maximum and preparation time for each episode will be no greater than 10 hours per topic.

Follow-up will still be done either privately, via a show blog post (like this one) or via Twitter where appropriate however if the follow-up is too big it may warrant its own episodes as I have done previously on other occasions to reference just two (there were others).

You should also welcome my new co-host Carmen Parisi who also appears on the excellent podcast The Engineering Commons. He is an Electronics Applications Engineer and will be helping with the shows production as well.

I’m also starting a network and putting Pragmatic front and center along with a few other shows that I know you’ll enjoy.

For the hundreds of fans of the show that wrote in begging me to start making it again, you encouraged me to have another crack at it. Without your encouragement this would not be happening.

This time around though, I’m determined to get the balance right. There’s still a lot more to talk about. So let’s get back to it.

The Engineered Network: Introducing The Engineered Network

10 October, 2015

I love podcasts and my own shows in the past have been mostly independent. I was briefly a part of a network with one of my shows but there hasn’t really been a network that I felt I fitted in to. As I see it, podcast networks suffer from exactly the same problem as traditional radio networks. Unless your show pitch meets with the approval of the lead(s)/head(s) of the network in question, you’re out of luck. If you’re trying to get your show on a network but it doesn’t quite fit with what they’re looking for then you’re independent or you have no show at all.

Once a network that caters to your niche exists your podcast potentially has a home, but if that network niche doesn’t exist, you’re out of luck. I’ve known many podcasters that modify their show pitch to appeal to a specific network, but is that really what podcasting is about? It’s power to the people, to the individual or to the niche-groups of people. Podcasting can give them a voice.

If you’re into a niche topic, know some others that want to make the same sorts of show that you want to, then what do you do? There’s only one thing for it.

Start A Network

There are a very small number of Engineering focused podcasts out there that aren’t primarily about software development. In fact if you listened to the podcasts out there you might be mistaken for thinking that Software Engineers are the only engineers that exist.

Of course that’s not true. I’m an electrical engineer and I work with control systems, process, chemical, mechanical, civil structural and civil infrastructure engineers and I’ve previously worked with aerospace, environmental and biomedical engineers as well.

The Engineered Network now exists to cater for that niche. If you’re an engineer that has something you want say, has an itch to podcast and thought no one else was interested in what you had to say, The Engineered Network (TEN) can give you the platform you’re looking for to get your content out there.

Launch

TEN launches on the 9th of October, 2015 with a short list of three shows:

Neutrium

A podcast about engineering topics, centred mainly around chemical and process engineering design challenges faced by engineers in their daily work. Neutriums goal is to bridge the gap between theory and practice and is hosted by Matthew Kidd and Trevor Walker. More about Neutrium on the show blog

Causality

Causality is my (John Chidgey) solo podcast that dives into the details of the cause and effects of disasters, serious incidents and accidents that could have been prevented. Inspired by the response to Episode 11 of Pragmatic, I’ve been fascinated by Cause and Effect for my whole life and am excited to tackle this show. More about that on the show blog.

Pragmatic

With such a big fallout from ending the show earlier this year, I couldn’t disappoint the fans of the show. However in order to address the time committment required and to balance show production with my work/family time there are conditions: Pragmatic will now be a fortnightly show and will be strictly limited to 90 minute episodes, no matter the topic. You should also welcome my new co-host Carmen Parisi who also appears on an excellent engineering podcast The Engineering Commons and will be helping out with show production. More about that on the show blog.

Big Things Have Small Beginnings…

The launch of TEN is intentionally small. It’s a short show list and yes I know, I’m in two of them. However there are several other shows in the works that just aren’t quite ready and there will be more details released about them as time progresses.

I’d like to say a special thank you to the Networks Launch sponsors:

Thank you also to the fans of Pragmatic that have encouraged me to make the time to keep podcasting. I hope we can collectively deliver content that you’ll enjoy.

If you’d like to support the shows and the network the best way is to support our wonderful sponsors. Let us know what you like via the feedback forms as we all love getting listener feedback :)

Another avenue we’re exploring is Patreon, and you can visit our Patreon page and donate whatever you feel comfortable with. There’s more on the About page.

If you’re interested in making your own podcast, solo, with a friend, or a group of friends and you’re practicing professional engineers, then please get in touch via the contact form.

Thank you all for taking this next step with me. I’m excited to see how this turns out. :)

Best regards, John Chidgey

Welcome to Causality

10 October, 2015

Causality is my (John Chidgey) solo podcast that dives into the details of the cause and effects of disasters, serious incidents and accidents that could have been prevented.

I’ve always been fascinated by cause and effect, fault tree analysis, failure prediction and learning from history, and inspired by the response to Episode 11 of Pragmatic I’m excited to tackle this show.

The show will air every fortnight starting next week and will be limited in length to 45 minutes. For longer topics I will be splitting that over two episodes, but I will try to avoid that when I can.

I hope you enjoy Causality.

Imperfect Blog