weekend | Croncast - From Cool to Cul De Sac

Look out South, here we come (Atlanta or bust)

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 08:56:06 -0500

Me, Betsy and the Goodwill Wagon are headed to Atalanta on a road trip next weekend. We're having a meetup on Saturday June 28, from 12 pm - 2 pm at Manuel's Tavern - http://www.manuelstavern.com/.

This joint was picked by friend and local Atlantan, @timshifted.

We're looking forward to a couple of days in A-town and would like to meet you if you have the time. Come on out and get a drink and some bbq with us!

Tags: Manuel's Tavern Atlanta timshifted Croncast road trip

Season 20 Ep 23: Cotton Candy Salad, Keep the Archive Alive

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 12:19:01 -0500

Croncast - 2008-06-13.mp3
Show: #498
Length: 25:41
Size: 17.6mb
Format: mp3

Show us some love and leave us a review at iTunes

Keep the Archive Alive Suport - Send your's today!
Thanks to Jen Stibi for Keeping the Archive Alive
We Jen upheaved and happy at work
Here's a podcast hug for you
You can't miss the banner
It's another Friday the 13th show
I wouldn't get out of this set of shows without it
Many, many things are going wrong today
How can you be freaked out about today?
Yesterday should have done it for you
Glad to be getting to the expert level
I didn't say it like that
Oh, really
Well, I don't know
Let me ask Betsy
That should be my motto
The common sense psychic
He told you it was Father's Day this weekend
Kris is happy in his squirrel nest downstairs
Keeping it as a secret
Having a surprise party
Betsy's Blue Mountain Alerts
I knew we were being invited to a jamboree
Waldorf salad vs. apple salad
Some might say they are the same
Like the hotel?
They wouldn't think hotel
I gotta be nice
You can do that, you know Improv
Not sure you can pull it off
Raised in a hamster cage
Not sure the kids can pull it off
Elliot might not be able to get passed grams smoking in the backyard
Don't get uppity, you're ignorant
It's pronounced "ig-nernt"
You shouldn't talk about that
What is your practice face?
You are a sad, sad human being
Making a new dessert - cotton candy salad
Did you try that new spicy chicken sandwich at Wednesday?
Diet and the correlation between behavior
Doctors can't fully help you
Why?
They have businesses to run
It is the truth
They are just people who need jobs
He'll eat it, it has apples in it

Tags: apple salad common sense cotton candy salad squirrel nest

more flowers

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 20:47:04 -0500

maggie looked for flowers on our entire walk this weekend.

think it had something to do with the dress?

Tags: flowers think dress weekend walk

Late Show Today

Fri, 16 May 2008 13:33:00 -0500

I'm sure many of you have figured this out but today's show is late. We'll get the show out later this evening so that you can have something to keep you occupied over the weekend.

Tags: Croncast iTunes review Kris Smith Betsy Smith

Season 20 Ep 16: Sellers Hate Hoarders, not the Game, Golf Stance

Wed, 14 May 2008 07:20:58 -0500

Croncast - 2008-05-14.mp3
Show: #491
Length: 19.7
Size: 28:40 mb
Format: mp3

Show us some love and leave us a review at iTunes

Special note: Betsy and Jeanie are having a meetup in San Francisco May 21, 2008 at House of Shields 39 New Montgomery St., Time: 6:30 p.m., stop and have a drink or two!

Betsy "Classified Ads" Smith
That is your new name
You're like silly putty
Let me see your palm
I guarantee that their is an ad transfered to it
Did I see a Happy Mother's Day Classified ad?
Nope
Did I sleep on a floor for you?
Mr B I am going to kick your ass
I don't want to hit golf balls
Then I win by default
You are very competitive
My brilliant delightful wife made it rain golf balls
I thought it would be like a coffee machine
I wanted a cute paper basket with a handle
The second of the idiots is now here
They should put up a sign
There was a sign I am sure
Based on how you played it should be bright pink
You are so full of crap
I couldn't put my arms around you
Resting in your schwetty palms
A boy at the disco
You missed the ball completely
Then I got it dialed in
I was the winner no doubt
The driving range isn't on my to do list
If you had one we would have been doing the next
I am a bald man, I don't need to be sleeping on carpet
The divets on my head were too much
I won't make you sleep on the floor
Call you Betsy "Lemon Juice" Smith
This is my super bowl weekend
Where is the sale this weekend?
Bears, 23 consorted sub divisions all at once
They have a consortium of sub divisions?
Yes
Betsy now reads the classifieds
Leaving your boxes on the driveway
Somebody is going to steal them
UPS picked them up
Are you sure?
What are the rules?
You show up first and the item is your's
They might share a bag Gardetto's
You have done this to her
Bird Lady I am going to get you
I am going to walk around with

Tags: silly putty classified ads sub division consortium

in the wind

Mon, 12 May 2008 08:38:34 -0500

maggie keeps it real, real fun over the weekend.

Tags: car seat maggie fun weekend

Season 20 Ep 2: Tijuana Jellies, Rent a Goat, Living Through Kids

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 09:27:16 -0500

Croncast - 2008-04-07.mp3
Show: #477
Length: 33:02
Size: 22.7 mb
Format: mp3

Show us some love and leave us a review at iTunes

Special note: Betsy and Jeanie are having a meetup in San Francisco May 21, 2007 at House of Shields 39 New Montgomery St., Time: TBD. Stop by and buy them a drink or two!

It's like having naked people on web site
Sure, it is nerd porn
If you had a math site
You could put up a really hot formula
Don't open your eyes it will make it real
Big weekend and Betsy alone time
I found out alone time is overrated
I love the kids but I didn't miss them
Normally when I am alone, I am with Vicky
That means you are not alone
You guys spend too much time together
Something like that
Betsy you watch Vicky
Security has your picture up on the wall
Did I ever tell you about Vicky almost being kidnapped?
No, you never have
But it explains a lot about your relationship
Vicky is going to get a goat if she moves to Virginia
That's is like having a girlfriend in Canada
"I have a goat in Virginia"
Rent a goat
Yeah, they call them petting zoos
I just want a goat petting zoo
Tell me about the kidnapping story
Was my mom baby sitting you?
Vicky was in the cart
I was cramped and pushed in underneath
I looked like a giraffe in a VW
She is 2 1/2 and you are 7 1/2
This woman grabs Vicky
But she is stuck
You know how kids get stuck in carts
Sure maneuvering them out
She was panicking and pulling
My mom lost her mind
What are you doing the whole time
I was like whatever
The woman runs out of the store
My mom's first reaction was to yell at me
Not call the cops
I gotta sit down so low to see the cereal
I don't know what it is
Get the hell over it
You are crazy
Your sister must think once a week what my life would have been like
Divorced with two kids
Lifetime movie moments
Jesus Christ, you look like a victim, suck it up
Mom picks up Vicky and says, "Run!"
I lied about my size them
It was expensive in California
I had to wear Jelly shoes 3 sizes to small
I begged my mom at a dollar store
Sure your Tijuana Jelly Sandals
There are times when you can't afford shit
Standing in line at the Louisiana post office
So for Christmas they shipped me chameleons in a box
They arrived not alive

Tags: Jelly Shoes Mexico rent a goat parental reaction pup pup

Art Glass Shade

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 13:56:56 -0600

I like light quite a bit. So much so I took this photo this morning.

Betsy picked up the art glass shade above at Goodwill over the weekend for $.50.

It looks great in the kitchen and it fit the IKEA light fixture perfectly.

I need to ask her if she was talking to the Secret for that to happen. Because I highly doubt the original company was thinking about Swedish designed Chinese manufactured suburban light fixtures.

Tags: art glass light shade art folk art

Interviewed by Podcast Free America

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 09:59:00 -0600

Ryan Irelan of Podcast Free America has started a new series of "interviews with podcasters and new media producers about the stuff they do to make their podcasts great."

Ryan punched my ticket over the weekend and released the interview yesterday, "Inside Look: Kris Smith of Croncast".

We talked a little about the show and its origins, gear and quite a bit about RSS. I can't get enough of the RSS talk.

Look for some more interviews of other long-time podcasters in the future from PFA.

Thanks to Ryan for letting me ramble on!

Tags: PreSonus Sony Sound Forge Ryan Irelan Podcast Free America RSS

Betsy and her husband Kris Dec 10, 2007

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 09:08:08 -0600

Croncast - 2007-12-10.mp3
Show: #444
Length: 30:08
Size: 20.7mb
Format: mp3

Show us some love and leave us a review at iTunes

Betsy laughing during intro
James Brown sang "It's a Man's World"
But that's all wrong
I've seen enough previews from Showtime to know
It's a lipstick lesbians world
No, Kris, I've watched enough Lifetime TV
Betsy has 'dranken' a little much wine
My portion size is off drinking it out of a milk glass
I am not drinking wine because it is grape juice with alcohol
What?
That is like saying that I don't like Boone's Farm Wild Island
So I went to buy some wine at Costco
You can't take kids in there
You can take them in there
No way, Costco is way to shishi
They have to stand outside and scream
Man, when I was a kid my mom took us to Walgreens with her to buy booze
No way!
Yeah, she would go to get prescriptions filled
We would walk into the liquor department buy booze
Then go back to pick up the prescriptions
You need something to wash the pills down with
My grape juice didn't have pulp, Betsy
Listen to me retardo montoban
Wine and grape juice are parallel in my brain
You again agree with me
After last week's shows . . .
I won't apologize for shows anymore
But they didn't have the full funny
Elliot went on a trip with Betsy
What would Grandma want for Christmas Elliot?
Something for her 'Pitties'
What?
Those things that you ladies have that grow out of your armpits
Do you mean breasts Elliot?
Ummmmm . . . I don't know
You guys got those weird undees things that go over your 'Pitties'
Do you mean a bra?
You can't buy your Grandma a bra for Christmas
One day you start itching
Then your Pitties come out
Grandma bras on eBay
Our kids won't be having kids
Sure, Betsy
Can Kris leave the house without returning with a story?
Nope
Did you leave the house this weekend?
Yeah, I left last night
Two nerds sitting in a bar next to one another
Loud music, and communicate through twitter
I saw my friends this morning at the Goodwill opening
My video tape buyer shows up
He is great
He would be in a Thrift Score
I mentioned that I was doing some new stuff
He walked away from me
I wasn't trying to hang
I was trying to over do it
The best time to sell 9 1/2 Weeks
They will raid him and he is creepy
His wife thinks he's crazy
What are you doing wrong?
We are soul mates, Kris
Betsy's jealousy comes out
We had a hard week last week
Interviews are going great
More this week and some follow ups

Audience Survey, please fill this out for us
Look for the graphic on "Audience Survey" on the main page

Tags: Wine Boone's Farm Wild Island Pitties James Brown Thrift Score

Ron Paul - Big in Naperville

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 13:19:35 -0600

I took this last weekend in downtown Naperville.

There are some fervent Ron Paul supporters in Naperville. I would say more so than any other candidate I have seen. It's not just the stickers everywhere but the signs in yards, major and minor intersections and along the busiest roads.

He might not be getting much press right now but he's got an awful lot of mindshare among drivers and pedestrians in the downtown.

Update: Thought I should mention that this wouldn't be so if Rick Klau were still in town. We'd be thinking and seeing Obama everywhere, all the time. That wouldn't be such a bad thing. The Naperville Dems could use him about now.

Tags: Ron Paul Naperville downtown Naperville Ron Paul Stickers

Think differently about RSS and its uses

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 10:39:03 -0600

Over the weekend, as some of you may of you noticed, I live photo blogged my Saturday afternoon date with Betsy and our trip to Goodwill. For me it was a time to watch Betsy as she navigated her adopted habitat and to see her operate in a way that is far from the norm in our everyday lives.

I knew this was going to be an interesting experience. Why not share it in as many ways as possible (distribution to: Flickr, Twitter, blog and RSS) with as many people as possible? One input with multiple outputs across the various Croncast audiences.

Making it happen is a lot easier than you think with email and RSS.

First. it is the camera phone that takes decent photos. Second, is the phones ability to send email with photo attachments. Third, is a place to email the photos that has an RSS feed or other API connectivity to other applications. Tons of sites like Flickr, Seesmic and Tumblr offer these and can even do some of the distribution for you. Get these three things in place and sharing your experiences in near real-time has never been easier.

Currently, it does take a little more skill to distribute the photos to Twitter. However, if you get creative you can breathe life into photos that wouldn't normally have existed after it was consumed/viewed in a photo sharing site or through an RSS reader. It is worth the effort to figure this out, it's the next stage of content distribution online.

How do I know? Google Reader shared feeds are the perfect example. Typically once someone reads a post in their reader it has reached the end of the line. But if someone shares it with Google Reader it then gets added to the individual users shared RSS feed and resyndicated. A new life for that content. The same goes for photos that end up in Flickr or a Flickr RSS feed.

In my case, live photo blogging and my ability to cast a wider net wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for the Flickr RSS feed from my account. It is the magic API that feeds (pun intended) the river of resyndication that allows me to give that new life to our content.

Here's how it goes down:

1. Upload photo from phone to Flickr with subject line used as image title
2. In the body under the photo begin with an asterisk (*) if I want the photo, title and description to be a blog post also
3. In the body under the photo begin with a carat (^) if I want the title and a link to be a tweet
4. Add both asterisk and carat (*^) for blog and twitter
5. A PHP script grabs the Flickr RSS feed and reads it for asterisks and carats every two minutes and sends the photo, title and description where it needs to go
6. If it goes to the blog the title and description will be run through a keyword generations script
7. If it goes to Twitter only the title is sent and a shortened url is created to link to the photo

What all of this does is allow me to create multiple channels of distribution that can reach the different audiences that follow us. There is a bit of overlap with multiple audience members subscribed to the same services but quite a few are not. We have the Twitter audience, the blog audience, the flickr audience and the RSS audience. We also have our podcast audience but they are not really a part of this type of delivery

Summary: Look for ways to utilize sites like Flickr as a content management portal, if even from your mobile phone, to cast a wider net across your network. Work to find that one point of contact that has the lowest threshold for allowing you to get your media and thoughts online with the ability to resyndicate your content without having to lift a finger. Well, too many fingers. And make sure that it has an RSS feed!

Tags: live photo blogging RSS as API flickr twitter seesmic tumblr

Betsy and her husband Kris Oct 24, 2007

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 08:33:26 -0500

Croncast - 2007-10-24.mp3
Show: #424
Length: 26:23
Size: 18.7mb
Format: mp3

Betsy and her husband Kris Oct 24, 2007

Show us some love and leave us a review at iTunes

Here we come for Wednesday
You can check us out at C-R-O-N-C-A-S-T dot com
You are just being a sensitive nerd
Well, since I said I was leaving Room 214
Sure people can read between the lines
People do
Yeah, and that isn't a bad thing in this case
That's your life not mine Mr B
I don't care if you are not happy, because I am
I know your life plan isn't going all that well
Karma and me are on a date called my life plan
I wrote down my goals and passed them to the Secret
Some things . . . My religion is a mix of Universalist Unitarian and the Secret
I'm halfway through my list, step back
I called Empire Carpet
You did that already
That is what I am saying
Further down on my list
I have it on every life goal list
If I didn't know you I would think you live near an abandoned rock quarry in a trailer
Tell the people what it is
I want to be a contestant on The Wheel of Fortune
And they are coming to Chicago this weekend
Oh, baby
People, send me some good vibes!
It works for cocktail party small talk
I don't think so
They'll just remember you from the convenient store scratching tickets
The prizes are good today
In the past they weren't all that good
They ran out of ceramic dogs in 1986
Vanna has it going on
You have something for Vanna?
No
Either way that is disturbing
She looks like a Bratz Doll
Now you went and messed with Karma
You are blushing
Apologies to all who have email, commented
Things have been crazy here
Chicago has millions of people and more than one convention center
On my life list from last year I had wheel of fortune
You can't invite more people
What if they get on and you don't?
At least I will know someone who is on the Wheel
Congratulations to the Browns who welcomed their second child today
So what do you want for Christmas Kris?
iTunes is going to get Led Zeppelin
Pshhhhhhht, I can get you 35 CD's at Goodwill for $35 forget iTunes
The computer wants to capitalize the word internet
It was a special place in the sky like Itasca

Audience Survey, please fill this out for us
Look for the graphic on "Audience Survey" on the main page

Tags: the Secret Led Zeppelin iTunes Wheel of Fortune Chicago Goodwill Bratz Dolls

flafoo, flafoo, flaaaaafooooo

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 17:47:41 -0500

A weekend of work has culminated with the release of flafoo.com. Saying, "flafoo," will make you feel warm and furry.

The site is set up so that you can find stuff fast on eBay. It is that simple.

The goal was to make the site "stupid simple".

Also, we did some formatting for iPhone users to have fast access to all the weird shit that eBay has to offer on the not always so speedy Edge network.

You can follow @flafoo at twitter and get hourly links to distract you from any task that you have at hand.

I'm sure that Mike and I will be tweaking things with the site but please leave any feedback if you test it out. Cheers!

Tags: flafoo flafoo.com Mike Marusin Kristopher Smith @flafoo

Breakfast with the grubs

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 09:42:34 -0500

A little Einstein Brothers Bagel with the kids.

Kind of nice being home on a weekend.

Tags: kids kind home weekend bagel

Show should be up by 3 pm CST

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 10:03:37 -0500

Dearest people, the train that the show was on is going to arrive later than usual at the station.

It should be pulling in around 3 pm CST.

Betsy was sick last night and today she's making money by getting her stuff off to the twins and triplets sale for the weekend. She loves her junk and money.

Tags: late show twins and triplet sale show train 3 pm CST

Betsy and her husband Kris Sep 10, 2007

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 07:40:55 -0500

Croncast - 2007-09-10.mp3
Show: #408
Length: 26:23
Size: 18.1mb
Format: mp3

Betsy and her husband Kris Sep 10, 2007

Show us some love and leave us a review at iTunes

Hey everybody, happy Monday! Hope you had a good weekend. I am heading home this morning.

The lackage of show notes for today's show brought to you by an uncomfortable chair and lack of sleep. Viva le Croncast!

Audience Survey, please fill this out for us
Look for the graphic on "Audience Survey" on the main page

Tags: plush baby sitters the cocaine flu tech skills no echecks please