Open Source Creative

In this week’s episode I get a bit ranty about a few topics. Not only do I expand upon a bit of a fired-up digression I made in last week’s episode (regarding the nature of how people think about the computer graphics industry… especially people who have been in and around it for a while), but I poke at a few other things like clickbaity headlines from the uniform school of web marketing and the meaninglessness of the term “professional”. All in all, I’d say it’s great fun. Hopefully you think so, too.

Also, also! I sprayed some WD-40 on my clutch pedal. No more background squeaks!

Some of the specific things covered in this episode:

And as always, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Post a comment below or where ever you think I’ll read it and let’s talk about this stuff.

Nightmareish, Sept 26, 2014

Yay for WD-40. Agree with you on Andrew Price’s Podcast title being too click-bait-ky. No-rike. Audio length being too long too. Essential substance can be easily summed up to less than 10 minutes of audio. Much soup, less meat.

Guss, 26 Sept, 2014

Oooh! downloading it now. thanx!

Greg, Sept 29, 2014

Another great podcast sir :) I’m really enjoying these. Entertaining as hell, and great speaking+language.

Jason, Sept 29, 2014

Thanks! I was actually a bit worried about this one. But I’m glad to know that you’ve been enjoying them. I’m having a great time putting them together.

Let me know if there’s anything specific you’d like me to talk about.

Thanks again!

Greg, Oct 1, 2014

I suppose I’m at least a little curious about what you think of the Blender Market, and the folks who insist that anything made for blender (add-ons, models, etc) should be free and open-source like blender.

Jason, Oct 2, 2014

Ooh! Good topic. I touch on the Blender Market briefly in the episode I recorded yesterday (I’ll be releasing it later this evening), but it’s definitely worth going into more. I’ll be sure to cover it on episode 6.

This focus on this week’s podcast was more on the business side of things; talking about licenses for creative work and relating that to crowdfunded projects. And I end the episode with a direct question to you because, well… I’m not sure what I think about it. This one went a little long and got a little bit rambly. Sorry about that.

Some of the things covered in this episode:

Also, as you listen to me rambling on and on about licensing in this episode, it’s worth remembering that I’ve released every episode in this podcast under a Creative Commons license. So… yeah.

A pretty short [and kind of late] episode this week as my commute has been a bit different. I was traveling for work to a much different kind of conference than the one I talked about in last episode… though there were still a very high population of artists and designers at this one, so that was refreshing. In any case, I talk in this episode about building, developing, and maintaining creativity by doing something (anything) creative each and every day. And, at the end of the episode, I issue a challenge out to you! Let’s see how many of you take me up on it.

Below are a few of the things I cover in the show:

Incidentally, I recorded this podcast using Urecord (as mentioned above). Generally speaking, I’m quite pleased with it. The only drawbacks that I’ve seen with it is that the highest sample rate it can record at is 44.1 kHz and there’s no way to adjust the input gain on the mic. The former isn’t a huge deal (it’s still CD quality, after all), but the latter has me a bit concerned. It worked pretty well for picking up my voice in an empty hotel room, but I’m worried that if I use it in my car while driving, it’s not going to fully fit the bill. Maybe it will, though. We’ll see on the next episode.

iKlsR, Sept 13, 2014

Was looking for a new podcast to listen while I commute. I applaud you for something fresh and unique in a sense. Urecord also surprisingly has decent quality. Looking forward to future casts.

Jason, Sept 13, 2014

Thanks! I used RecForge for the earlier episodes, and it’s quite nice. I’d just prefer an open source solution. Hopefully Urecord will hold up well in my car.

Guss, Sept 13, 2014

loved the previous episode… with all the slightly geeky talk about version control…. lol!

this one looks interesting too, I’m downloading it now. great podcast. keep posting more! :D

Jason, *Sept 13, 2014

I will! Thanks for listening.

RavetcoFX, Sept 13, 2014

Great podcast, you have a very professional tone to your voice, it reminded me of a radio show.

Keep up the good work :)

Jason, Sept 13, 2014

Wow! That’s very kind of you. Thanks for listening. Let’s hope I can keep up that quality level (or even improve upon it).

frobenius, Sept 13, 2014

Really enjoyed this. I’m glad to find it. The sound quality is nice as well. Going to check out the other episodes when I have a chance.

Jason, Sept 13, 2014

Fantastic! I’m looking forward to seeing what you think.

This is the real first episode of the Open Source Creative Podcast! And it’s a bit of a weird place to start: version control systems. It’s not something that many creative folks think about when producing their work… and that’s a mistake. If you’re doing digital work, your data is your work. So it’s in your best interest (and your clients’ interests, if you’re doing this professionally) to preserve it and track it. In this episode I talk about the open source options available (predominantly Mercurial, Git, and Subversion) and why I tend to use one over the others (hint: its chemical symbol is Hg).

Below are some links to some other things I cover in the show (roughly in the chronological order that I talk about them):

And, of course, I made a special plea to the developers of LibreOffice: Please provide command line access to the Compare Documents utility. It would make me happy.

(BTW, for you more professional web designers out there, I know that Sass has been around for a good long while. This was just the first time that I’d sat down and forced myself to use it.)

This is where it starts. Welcome to the zero-th episode of the Open Source Creative Podcast. This is a weekly show wherein I speak about doing creative work (writing, computer graphics, traditional art, design, etc.)… with a slightly more specific leaning towards doing that work with free and open source software.

Show notes for this one are a bit sparse (hey, I’m just starting out here). The main thrust of this episode, aside from introductions and what-not, is a rational justification for using free and open source software to produce creative works… and why “because it’s free” isn’t the best reason (or really a good reason at all). I also go on a slightly ranty tangent on why artists would do well to learn a bit about coding.

Intro and outro music was produced by Sam Brubaker. Go check out his stuff.

That should about cover it. Let me know what you think and how I can make this show better.

Dave, Aug 29, 2014

Nice pilot podcast effort. I look forward to more episodes. Will you be posting a RSS feed link or some such to place this in my podcast client?

Jason, Aug 30, 2014

Thanks! The feed should be at http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast/feed, but that currently returns a 404 page. There’s something wonky going on with category pages in WordPress. Will investigate.

Thanks!

Jason, Aug 30, 2014

Little update: that link to the feed works now. Wahoo!

I’ll add a more convenient link to it on the main podcast page.

Greg, Aug 30, 2014

Great idea to do it during your commute, it’s always such a waste of time. And a really entertaining podcast actually, looking forward to next weeks one!

Jason, 30 Aug, 2014

Thanks! It was a lot of fun to make, too. I figured that since I was talking to myself on the commute, I may as well record it… then at least I can rationalize that I’m not really a crazy person mumbling in his car. :)

fredric, Aug 30, 2014

Jason, nice to see a podcast on creative free software! That’s really where I live (so to speak). I’m into Gimp, Inkscape and Synfig these days, though I did spend a lot of time learning Blender.

I use free software because it frees me from being dependant to a company for versions, file formats and just the complications of installing software on multiple platforms and such.

I find free software simplifies my work environment. I also edit my svg files with python and javascript too. love it.

I’ve been using free graphics software for ten years now. So I’m looking forward to see where you will take this podcast.

Jason, Aug 30, 2014

Absolutely! Being free from vendor lock-in is huge. I’m actually now a bit disappointed that I didn’t bring that point up and talk about it more. Thanks for mentioning it here.

And thanks for listening. I’m curious to see where I take this podcast, too.

cameralibre, Sept 9, 2014

I’m looking forward to hearing more!

You mentioned you would like to find FLOSS recording solutions on Android – try uRecord, it’s quite simple, but records uncompressed wav files – unfortunately for me there’s no 48 kHz option for use with video, but 44.1 should serve your purposes fine.

Jason, Sept 9, 2014

Oooh! Thanks for the heads up. I’ll be sure to check it out.

Jim van Hazendonk, Dec 21, 2015

Cool…

Found my way here somehow when looking for some support on the blenderartists forum. Guess I found another website with very interesting content to listen to :)

Seems procastinating and random clicking can bear fruits after all huh.

I agree with all you said though. Im also a fervent Open source user. I find it funny when I talk about for example blender… that people that don’t even know it want to compare it to some random non-free “comparable” software… and most of the time say that it can’t be that good… since its free. Its only when I show them what I did so far that they try to fond excuses why they said that :)

thank you for this podcast. I really enjoyed it.