The time is coming near for TANcast: The PREPisode…the episode that lets any new listeners in on the many inside jokes and references we do every week on TANcast. But, as usual, we need your help…

As we mentioned on episode 97, we’re going to do a “High Five” count down of categories of inside jokes. As we list off each category, we’ll give examples of inside jokes form that category. That’s where you come in. We need your suggestions for inside jokes that fall into one of these 5 categories:

5) The Boys (Tim Andy & Noah)-This would be the place for any characteristics, back story, or habits of the boys that get referenced a lot.

4) Friends & Family- This category will be all about friends we mention on the show.

3) Media- We reference a lot of things from other podcasts, to movies, to TV…this is the place for the ones that stick out the most.

2) Past Segments-We often refer to jokes we’ve done in past episodes. But if the next episode is your first, you would have no idea what we’re talking about. This is the category where we’ll re-cap those bits.

1) Surprise-Not going to tell you what the #1 category is. After all, it would be pretty lame if we made a whole episode that had nothing for our long time listeners to enjoy, wouldn’t it?

Got any suggestions? Don’t worry…you don’t even have to decide what category they fall in (or even if it doesn’t fall into any of them…we’ll make it work). Just leave a comment with something(s) you think people need to know to get the most out of TANcast.

Hurry get your comments in before May 9, 2010!

Some of you may have noticed that the new episode of TANcast is not up yet. You also may have noticed I haven’t blogged yet today. (It is technically after midnight here but not in Hawaii…so I’m counting this blog)

I’ve just been swamped and I’m still getting over my sickness (actually the cough seems worse), so I don’t want to push myself late into another night. I’m gonna go to bed now and hopefully I’ll be feeling better when I awake. Then I’ll finish editing what is turning out to be a truly above average episode…and for TANcast, above average is our “excellent.”

Not to over hype the episode…in fact it’s mediocre at best. You’re better off waiting for it. Maybe you’ll find happiness in the meantime. Ok…off to bed. Night night.

If you don’t follow me on Twitter or Facebook, then you missed this post:

“Wow! We are accidentally recording a really interesting TANcast!”

We were half way through recording this week’s show and I was really enjoying listening to Andy and Noah go back and forth. I truly think it was one of our most interesting shows.

But then after that we fell into our normal crap and Noah sent us a link to this picture:

I wanted to give those of you who read TANcast.com a jump on the folks who only listen to the podcast. Now when we mention this on the show you’ll already know about it.

…and knowing is half the battle!

There were technical problems during the recording process, there was the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, and now I have screwed up several times in the editing process. Episode 83 will be uploaded as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience.

In the meantime, please sTANd by…

Today is the day! Reviews are already going up (because you people are fucking AWESOME). But if some of you forgot, here is your reminder: go write us an iTunes review before midnight tonight!

Here’s the link:

http://www.itunes.com/podcast?id=282610708

So thank you to all of you who’ve told a friend to listen and thank you to all of you who are someone’s friend and decided to listen.

…and also thank you to Disneyland for bringing back Captain EO in February of next year WOOO HOOOO!!!!

So much to be thankful for…where’s Thanksgiving when you need it?

Nominations begin on October 4th at http://www.podcastawards.com/ and go through October 18th.

When filling out the form, remember that our podcast name is: TANcast and our official URL is: http://tancast.com. Also they say that “comments are critical so the reviewing team understand why a show is deserving of being nominated to the category,” so be sure and leave your 2 cents about why you think we should be nominated.

If you don’t listen to any other podcasts besides ours…well first off, I’m sad for you, but here are some suggestions for the other categories:

People’s Choice:
(No Suggestion…we leave this to the people to decide)
Best Produced:
Mousetalgia (http://www.mousetalgia.com)
Video Podcast:
CO-OP (http://revision3.com/coop)
Comedy:
TANcast (http://TANcast.com)
Cultural/Arts:
Left Field Cinema (http://www.leftfieldcinema.com)
Education:
Grammar Girl (http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com)
Entertainment:
SModcast (http://www.quickstopentertainment.com/smodcast)
General:
Stuff You Should Know (http://www.howstuffworks.com/stuff-you-should-know-podcast.htm)
Mature:
Distorted View Daily (http://www.distortedview.com)
Movies/Films
Scene Unseen Movie Reviews (http://www.sceneunseenpodcast.com)
Technology/Science
Tekzilla (http://revision3.com/tekzilla)
Travel
Mousetalgia (http://www.mousetalgia.com)
or
Netcot (http://www.netcot.com)
(too tough for me to pick one)

I know we’ve missed a lot of great podcasts like the Ice Podcast, Comics on Comics, LSAT Logic in Everyday life, etc. So if you have any suggestions for spots we left out or alternates, leave ‘em in the comments and maybe you’ll inspire someone else to give that podcast a listen and win a nominating vote for them

Like the poster up there says, please comply with the rules of the contest. So no automated bots, or nominating TANcast in every category, no nominating more than once etc. But feel free to tel your friends and family to nominate us as well

Let’s see if we can get TANcast nominated 2 years in a row!

First the good news: We DID get Van to guest host on our show for our 1 year anniversary and he was awesome (as you might expect)

Unfortunately, due to audio quality problems, I’m not going to be able to get the episode posted today like I normally do. I’ve been editing for almost 5 hours and so far I still haven’t even begun assembling the show…just trying to ring some intelligibility out of the audio.

I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to do that and get the show up on Tuesday, June 2, 2009 …which would be appropriate since (according to  iTunes) our first show was posted on June 2, 2008.

So sorry for the delay…wish me luck! In the meantime, enjoy this photo of Van’s new action figure:

I’m formulating a theory on this. It involves how much better we sound when you’ve had some hot jazz and room-temperature bourbon…

Record yourself (or your friends and family…or ALL OF THE ABOVE) telling your favorite joke and send it to us in MP3 or WAV format before Sunday, May 17 at 5pm (California time). Then tell all your friends that you’re gonna a be a HUGE STAR*, becasue we’ll put you telling your joke on the 50th official episode of TANcast!!!

So think up some good jokes and send ‘em in! We can’t wait to hear them!

Send your jokes to tim@TANcast.com. Hurry! You only have until 5pm on May 17th!!!

*By “huge star,” we mean: someone who gets heard by a few dozen people on our goofy little podcast.

I’ll come up with something tonight, I promise.

The voting is over! Thanks for all your votes!!! Listen to TANcast 45 to find out which e-mail address won!:

UPDATE: See Andy’s comment below for another poll that lets you vote by ordering your preferences.

The end of TANcast using the PodPress plugin for WordPress is rapidly approaching.

Blubrry has just released version 0.7.1 of their Powerpress plugin with a ton of new features, including PodPress migration.

As we’ve said before, PodPress has essentially stood still for 15 months, breaking features in recent revisions of WordPress. Someone else patched this major issue about a month ago, but it’s too little, too late. Powerpress now has better features and cleaner code, and is actively being maintained and improved, not patched by 3rd parties to fix defects more than 8 months after the signs of breakage are demonstrated.

On top of everything else to date, PodPress is now saving our “include this file in our Podcast RSS feed” settings for each post, but not reading that setting back out of the database when we re-open the same post to update something. As such, the checkboxes in our editor interface that control whether the audio file gets included (i.e. whether this post will register as an episode in iTunes, etc.) load as un-checked. If we forget to re-check them and save (or the editor auto-saves), the post stops publishing an audio file and we look like we lost an episode. Awesome!

The only question now is: When?

The answer: Tick Tock…

I always seem to break TANcast in some unexpected way when I upgrade things (including every WordPress upgrade), so I wanted to toss out this heads-up at least 2 days before I throw the switch. When it happens, this post will be updated again to note that fact. At that point, if you see any breakage, please leave a comment on this post and/or send a message to @Mysterious_Andy on Twitter.

We’ll try to fix any issues before the heat death of the universe.

Anyway, I haven’t had a chance to edit this weeks episode yet so I am starting at this very second. Sorry for the delay. I’ll get it up as soon as I can (tee hee “get it up”)

http://blubrry.com/tancast/

As I mentioned previously, we’ll be swapping our nigh-abandoned podcasting plugin, PodPress, with Blubrry’s Powerpress plugin, just as soon as they release the next update that enables auto-migration of old posts.  We’re also starting to use the BluBrry stats mechanism to track who’s listening (in its defense, PodPress has stats, too), and may eventually include an ad or two in the podcast.  TANcast doesn’t pay for itself, not by a long shot…

Being listed on Blubrry also gets us a new avenue for exposure, so if you reached this site from there please leave us a comment and let us know what you think.  We don’t care how you get the show, as long as you love us!

This post will be updated when the upgrade is complete.

Update: The upgrade is complete and the WordPress Plugins have been reactivated.  The site should look and behave exactly as it used to.  If you see any problems, please either leave a comment on this post or, if you can’t, e-mail Andy (his e-mail address is super easy to guess).

Yup…we’re not in our little TANwindow this week. Personal crises, prior commitments, and poor planning and communication have created a perfect storm that amounts to no TANcast this week

Sorry, TANcastinators and TANcastanets. We’ll be back next week…we hope.

When we recorded the episode Noah’s program crashed, losing his audio…

Then he recovered over 700 temp files that Tim had to reassemble one at a time. Halfway through  completeing that, Tim’s computer crashed and he had to start all over.

After Tim finally recovered and reassembled all of Noah’s audio, he started editing the episode and was about halfway done when his laptop was infected with a virus that has had him spending the whole day getting rid of spyware, adware, trojans etc.

So, botom line: TANcast 30 is coming…eventually. And I hate people who write viruses!!!

Just click here for a printable gift certificate that will fit in any holiday card! (TANcast makes a great Kwanzaa present) Or click on the thumbnail below…

• WordPress 2.7, giving us lots of new features like easy implementation of sticky posts (the latest TANcast will always be the first thing you see on the site), a new admin interface with better comment handling, the ability for you all to reply directly to comments (threading), and more.

Probably coming soonish (almost certainly at the same time as the upgrade):

• Replacement of the existing podcasting solution with a new one that is actually being maintained by the creator.  We’ll get better stats tracking and a slightly nicer audio player that might eventually be replaced again with an even nicer one.  This still needs work on my end, especially since the change in backend means I’ll get to manually update almost 30 existing entries to use the new system and new media player.

Coming a little less soonish (delayed for the same reason TANcast was late this week: Andy lost a weekend):

• The much-promised visual overhaul of the site.  I’ve trying to figure out how to hack in things like keeping the latest Podcast at the top, but the new WP version might do a good enough job by itself.  Yay!  Still working on making images and working out the PHP code and learning CSS and trying not to make it all look like ass.

Possibly coming, but even less soonish:

• A new-hotness comment system leveraging IntenseDebate (recently acquired by Automattic, the company that makes our blogging software and our anti-spam solution, and which previously acquired Gravatar) to add even more comment features beyond jut threading (like optional cross-posting of your comments to Twitter).  The main concern about rolling this out is that it appears (for the moment) that we might not be able to do some clever things, like highlight comments made by Tim, Andy, or Noah (egotists that they are), that are planned in the new theme.

With a lot of luck (upgrading to WordPress 2.5 broke the podcast uploads for a few days) this will go smoothly and you will see posts break, then get fixed one at a time over the course of a Saturday morning.  Due to holiday travel and the slow rate of updates to WordPress plugins we use, we might take this first step in any of the next 3 weekends.

Happy Halloween! Don’t be scared

Combined with shameless self promotion…

While I (Tim) was in Vegas, Noah and Andy (plus a special guest) recorded an episode of the show and it will be up soon! (If the boys will get off their asses and send me their audio)

Plus there’ll be a special announcement on the show…so stay tuned for that!

This means we also have the ability to give you Zune users (Tony and… ?) a nifty direct-subscibe link that will launch the Zune software.  The site’s “All Our Feeds” section on the main page has been updated with this new link, for the benefit of any future listeners who might need it.

If we are missing any other “podcast aggregator” programs or services that you’d like to see TANcast added to, please leave a note in the comments.

PodCastAwards.com is currently accepting nominations in several different categories. We would be so grateful if those of you who checkout this site could nominate us.

You can only put us in one category. So may I suggest “mature” or “comedy.” The Nominations close on September 30th so please click the banner below and nominate us soon.

Thanks in advance for your support!!!

But it does mean that I will be spending the next 5 hours driving back home to LA before I get a chance to edit the show we recorded yesterday. So It will either be posted late tonight or early tomorrow (depending on your time zone)

Sorry for the delay, but I think you’re in for a treat, this was a pretty fun episode.

What do you all think?  Better?  Worse?  How so?

At some point in the (hopefully near) future we’ll start using a custom theme that borrows heavily from both, possibly with some layout and interface touches inspired by (read: stolen from) Gradient Brown Beauty and/or some of the AJAX-y goodness of K2.

The rounded edges will stay, and Ginseng Coffee is closer to a color scheme we could like, but the fixed-width layout will probably be replaced by a layout that scales to your browser and reformats posts to use 2-3 columns on sufficiently wide (like over 1200 pixels) displays for ease of reading.  If that last part didn’t make sense, check out Robert O’Callahan’s blog and resize your browser.  If you use a shitty browser like IE, you won’t see anything change, but Firefox users (and yes, he is a Mozilla employee: read his blog if you want an education) will get some nifty reformatting as the browser goes wider and narrower.

We’ll also be adding links to subscribe to feeds, subscribe to the podcast, and probably a box that always highlights the latest podcast at or near the top of the main page so it won’t get buried by other crap (like this post).

Eventually we will be carrying a few more Google ads, but are strongly favoring going text-only instead of the occasional image- or flash-based ad.  If you have a strong preference for text ads, please drop us a line in the comments on this post.

Because you read all this, have some delicious El Scorcho on us:

We promise you: Shit is going to break!

When it breaks, and depending on how badly it does, you probably won’t see anything, including this message.

If you are reading this it is incredibly likely that you are either Tim, Andy, or Noah and you know who to scream at.

If you aren’t the T, A, or N in TANcast, then if you can see the site but something seems amiss (you can’t click on links, the site looks worse than normal, your RSS feed broke, iTunes lost our podcasts, etc.) please leave a comment on this post noting what went wrong.  If you can’t leave a comment or the site is completely down (presumably you saw this note beforehand) then please send an e-mail to the webmaster (address is just “webmaster” at this domain) with details, such as any errors you see.

We are the web equivalent of a one-horse town, and our one horse is a mildly retarded Shetland pony.  Thanks for bearing with us.

Update: The upgrade is done, and everything seems to be working right now.  You probably won’t notice any positive changes (same crappy layout, same crappy content, same idiots on the podcasts), but our admin interface got faster and we have a bunch of new features that make our lives easier.  Special thanks (again) to the wonderful people at Automattic for making such an easy, extensible, bad-ass blogging tool for us to monkey around with.

Update 2: One of our awesome new features breaks our ability to insert podcasts.  The plugin we use is supposed to be updated within the next week (a complete rewrite is being tested by the hard-working guy who created it) and in the meantime we just disabled the new feature.

Hi All,

Just a quick note about the podcast this week. Tim is out with his wife celebrating a year of wedded bliss. I am not sure where Andy is, possibly on his way back home from California. We should be back in full effect next week.

Be strong true believers.
Noah

**UPDATE**
Looks like we’re gonna record a new episode Wednesday night so we should have a new episode Thursday or maybe Friday. Sorry for the delay.

See you soon
-Tim

Click here to find us on iTunes

You can listen and subscribe to our silly little podcast on iTunes WOO HOO!!!

We don’t know when, and we don’t know how, but soon this crummy little page will be replaced by a WordPress blog and a podcast this WordPress blog will sprout real content and a podcast.  If you are here, you must know this already since you clearly know the idiots intent on polluting the internet with their mindless drivel.

If you are not sufficiently entertained by this page, please drink some gin and wait for the real thing.

If you are not sufficiently entertained once the site launches, I don’t know what to tell you.  Try drinking more gin.  Maybe we’ll get funnier.

Monkeys no longer included…