That is the question, Gentle Reader. I've been doing some research recently about podcasting (as in, the past twelve hours), and it looks like Yours Truly may be supplementing The Roost with a podcast in the near future.

I've actually gone through the steps to do it before, with the exception of using an RSS feed; I used the same technology for a course I taught online.

Okay, I used the same technology to do three podcasts. I wanted to do like six or seven, but it nearly killed me figuring all of the tech stuff out at the time. I never managed to get it nailed down completely.

But all that's changed now! See, the main holdup was that I had nowhere to really store the podcast files, and as you may or may not know, audio files can get a mite large on the memory. My dinky 10 MB of storage on Earthlink won't cut it. Now, though, an increasing number of sites are hosting storage online for free. Places like Gcast.com and Ourdomain.org are all about helping people get the voice out -- for free.

As in, cash money none.

I'm already trying to get Hambone to start one herself. She says she needs time to think it over. I guess I need to do the same: I'm not sure exactly how comfortable I am making that switch to voice. I flatter myself that I manage fairly well with text, but voice is another matter altogether. You can edit and emend text much more easily than you can audio. Okay, so I can do a fair job with audio files too, but even so, it takes a lot more to make an audio recording sound polished.

Hmm. Have you an opinion, Gentle Reader?

In the past few months I've gotten hooked on playing chess. My dad taught me the moves when I was young, and we had a chess set around the house, but TJS and I were untrained and uninterested in really doing much more than goofing off.

A colleague at work was helping me unpack a box I'd had since our office's move, and inside the box he found an old travel chess set I had. He suggested we start an ongoing game, and before I knew it I was hooked. After a few weeks of playing in the office (getting up from my desk to survey the tiny board, making a move, and then watching him do the same a while later), I was kicking around on the internet trying to find ways to improve when I happened upon an amazingly well-designed online chess playing site.

Let's just say that my descent into geekdom underwent a terrifyingly rapid acceleration. Now, my Amazon Xmas list is full of books on chess, I have a bunch of sites bookmarked, and I just today received in the mail a tournament-sized chess set, complete with--wait for it--a carrying bag with a shoulder strap.

Shel nearly laughed me right out of the house.

But who cares about ridicule, Gentle Reader?! Not I! I've now found a hobby that doesn't get outmoded by technological advances (videogames, anyone?) and isn't impeded by my body's inability to withstand injury indefinitely (remember karate?).

For those of you interested and secure in your non-geekitude, I now have a little button on my page here that you can use to take a peek at some of my ongoing chess games online. Currently, I'm in the middle of a trash-talking game with Dorito Icee, otherwise known as TJS.