Maker Faire Austin is happening October 18-19 at the Travis County Expo Center. Find out all about the crafty activities in this week’s podcast.

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The Crucible is an organization that teaches people to be creative with fire. Watch the video to learn more

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In this video, I do my best to provide a podcasting tutorial. I’ve received a great deal of requests to do this. I found it difficult to do a podcasting tutorial, without actually doing a podcast. Rather than do that, I go into the basic principles to maintain a successful podcast. This tutorial is broken out into 3 parts: Motivation, Equipment, and Production. In terms of motivation, make sure you choose a topic you are passionate about. Ask yourself the following before choosing a topic: “Am I able to talk about this topic for 15 minutes to someone who knows absolutely nothing about it” If you can do this, then you have a decent candidate for a topic. Choosing a topic is key to prevent podfading. As for equipment, start with a cheap microphone (microphone/headsets are fine and fairly cheap at Best Buy), your computer, and cheap software. The software I recommend you start with is Audacity (http://bit.ly/90H9M) which is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. There’s a good chance you’re using one of these OS’s, so Audacity is a good choice. As you get a few episodes under your belt, then it’s time to think about possibly upgrading your setup to a condenser mic/mixer setup. Finally, there’s production. Come up with a schedule that you’ll be able to keep. Don’t commit to a daily podcast right from the start. I recommend starting with a weekly or monthly schedule and see how it works out. There’s also the option of live podcasting vs offline podcasting. I recommend sticking with an offline production at first and as you get more shows done, think about doing a live show. Live shows can be a bit more difficult to setup, so keep that in mind. These are just a few pointers to the wide world of podcasting, but it should be enough to get you started and establish some goals. Remember, motivation is the most important factor in podcasting, if you can’t get past this step, consider doing something else Got a question, concern, or tip? Email me at help@bwana.tv. Enjoy!

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Using recycled materials, kids made cool things at the Maker Faire!

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James Powderly sat down with me and walked me through the process of making throwies. They are easy to make and fun to throw on things. Graffiti Research Labs brought in a bus and they let people make throwies to throw on things. In this video, James explains that throwies are more than little lights to throw around. GRL takes it conceptually deeper by exploring political issues around prison time for graffiti artists and bringing them to communities around New York.

Duration : 0:7:31

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