Tag: crowdfunding

Posted on

Coming Soon: The 9pm Urgent Hardware Refresh

Photograph of MacBook Pro showing keyboard damage

The 9pm Edict cover art version 2, 150 pixelsMy computer is dying. It’s dying fast. It’s not going to make it much longer, and certainly not through to when I’ll be able to afford a replacement. I need your help.

Previously I’ve had success with my Pozible crowdfunding campaigns to resurrect The 9pm Edict podcast, and to get me to Breakpoint and Ruxcon. So in a few days from now I’ll be launching The 9pm Urgent Hardware Refresh, a Pozible campaign based around a special podcast episode. The “rewards” for you contributions will help shape the content for that podcast.

Right now, I’m figuring out exactly how those rewards will work. After some discussion on Twitter last night, here’s what I’m thinking. Feedback please.

  • For $50 or whatever, a Two Minutes Hate. You choose the topic, and I’ll rant about it in the podcast for two minutes. The topic can be absolutely anything. Should snakes be equipped with legs? Why does Peter Dutton look like a cabbage? What are the best ways to remove bloodstains from a carpet?
  • For $100 or whatever, a Morning Glory. A wake-up call with a difference. I’ll phone you or your sleepy-headed friend at the appointed time — althogh I’m not sure how that can create podcast content, what with laws and stuff.
  • I had thought of offering to write and perform an erotic poem about a public figure of your choice. That’d cost. Pants-off extra.
  • @PointZeroOne suggested that one reward could allow you to nominate five question that I then put to a group of people in the pub. That one might be more expensive, because there’d be some work to do, and drinks to buy.

People have asked whether Rewards could be combined. An erotic poem as a wake-up call? Sure, why not?

The initial Pozible project goal will be whatever a new mid-high MacBook Pro plus AppleCare would be, plus a backup drive, plus costs. Stretch goals would be to up the specs of that machine, and then add cameras and microphones or whatever to improve my kit.

What I’d like from you right now are your ideas and comments on Pozible rewards and stretch goals.

Just comment below, or tweet at me, email me, or drive out and personally discuss them with me. No, actually, don’t do that last one. Comments close at 1400 AEST this Friday 26 June. I’ll then set up the Pozible project, which should go live early next week in the week commencing 13 June in the week commencing 20 June.

Oh, and if you were wondering what’s wrong the computer, specifically…

Continue reading “Coming Soon: The 9pm Urgent Hardware Refresh”

Posted on

Announcing “The 9pm Intermission”

Recording "Announcing 'The 9pm Intermission'": click to embiggen

Ah yeah, hello. Careful listeners will have noticed that there hasn’t been an episode of The 9pm Edict podcast since early March. And it’s now early April. Sorry about that.

I had most of the pre-production done for an episode on 24 March, and then I got a cold, and then five days later much of what I’d written had become… obsolete as time passed.

So fuck time, basically. In fact, fuck most of physics, because physics does nothing but get in the way of doing anything truly interesting in this world. And fuck science generally.

Continue reading “Announcing “The 9pm Intermission””
Posted on

Weekly Wrap 248: Logic, rants, and a pleasing balance

Downpour at Katoomba station: click to embiggenMy week of Monday 2 to Sunday 8 March 2015 was productive, although not everything happened in the sequence that I’d intended, and not everything has appeared yet.

Articles

I also wrote a feature story and another column for ZDNet Australia, but they’re both still working their way through the production pipeline.

Podcasts

5at5

There were actually six editions of 5at5 this week, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. You should subscribe, you know.

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • I received a copy of the second novel in John Birmingham’s new series, Resistance: A Dave Hooper Novel 2, which is rather lovely. I’ll be reading it soon, because I really liked the first book in this series.

The Week Ahead

Monday will be a day of communication and planning, wrapping up with drinks and, I suspect, dinner with friends in Katoomba. Tuesday is not yet allocated to anything specific.

Wednesday will see a day trip to Sydney for a lunchtime briefing by MuleSoft. Thursday will probably see another long commute for a morning briefing by Deloitte, although I may just dial in instead. Somewhere in there, I’ll write a column for ZDNet Australia.

Friday through Saturday are unplanned at this stage. But since I didn’t visit Albion Park today to watch Qantas land their Boeing 747, I may visit the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society (HARS) for one its open days — which can be any of those three days. I’ll have to figure out which would work best, given the rest of my schedule.

Further Ahead

I’ll be in Melbourne from Tuesday 17 to Sunday 22 March for the Cisco LIVE event and then a couple days of meetings and the like. If you feel the need to catch up, or any other urges, please let me know.

[Photo: Downpour at Katoomba station, photographed on 1 March 2015. Technically that’s outside the timespan covered by this post, but I’m beyond caring any more.]

Posted on

Announcing “The 9pm Operation Budget Repair”

Subscription Hero Image 3: click for further information on the subscriber driveIt’s time to heed the words of the Prime Minister. Clarity of purpose, that’s what we need more generally on this arsehat-ridden island continent. I’ve been trying to bring it to you, through this, the finest goat-oriented political and social commentary podcast in the galaxy. But it’s not enough.

This podcast needs to happen weekly. This podcast needs your help now.

“The 9pm Operation Budget Repair” is a subscriber drive for The 9pm Edict, the same as with community broadcasters — or public broadcasters, as the Americans call them.

The target is to get enough subscribers on board by the end of September to allow this podcast to go weekly — because I think it needs to be weekly to get into the rhythm of things.

The full details are on the Skank Media website at skank.com.au/repair — the targets, the subscriptions on offer, the things you can do to help if you’ve already subscribed — and in coming days I’ll be adding progress reports and further suggestions.

You can listen to the announcement below. But if you want all of the podcast episodes, now and in the future, subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe automatically in iTunes, or go to SoundCloud.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:49 — 3.0MB)

[Credits: Audio of Tony Abbott via ABC Radio’s AM. The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian, Edict fanfare by neonaeon, all from The Freesound Project. Photograph of Stilgherrian taken 29 March 2009 by misswired, used by permission.]

Posted on

“Tip Stilgherrian” page operational, with few glitches

Stripe logoNow that I’ve run two successful crowdfunding campaigns through Pozible, I’m starting to set up systems to accept direct payments for my various projects. The first, a page to accept one-off donations was mostly straightforward.

I chose to use Stripe as the card payment service because I already had a Stripe account for my second Pozible project, The 9pm Resurrection.

While Stripe is still in beta in Australia, Pozible already uses it to handle recurring subscription payments, and I’d already received an invitation into the beta program. I figured it made sense to keep all my payments in one place.

Plus I’ll eventually be using Memberful to process subscriptions, and that also uses Stripe.

To integrate Stripe into this WordPress site, I used the free plugin WP Stripe from Human Made Limited. This provided me with one payment form per website, which is all I needed for this task. I also installed the WP Stripe Email Receipts plugin by Philip Newcomer.

All that went smoothly. I installed the plugins, activated them, entered my Stripe account keys and a template for the email receipts — and they just worked.

The only difficulties came with configuring Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) on the web server, and that was down to a bug I encountered in the WHM/cPanel hosting management software while I was installing the SSL certificate. That’s nothing to do with Stripe or WordPress or the plugins, of course, just my dodgy web server.

I’ll document that bug over the fold. Meanwhile, why not try out the system and give me a tip? Was that too blatant?

Continue reading ““Tip Stilgherrian” page operational, with few glitches”

Posted on

The 9 O’Clock Resurrection hits Target 1

Screenshots from The 9 O'Clock Resurrection progress videos: click for YouTube playlistMy project to resurrect The 9pm Edict reached the initial target on Saturday — thank you — but there’s a few minutes left, so I’m hoping that we might get something up beyond that.

Here’s how things looked as we started the day today.

Chart of progress in The 9 O'Clock Resurrection

The upper line shows the total commitments so far, and where that line ends up at 0847 AEST today will determine what happens in May.

The lower line shows just the cumulative subscriptions, and where that ends up will provide the starting-point for crowdfunding June’s budget.

I’ll run another Pozible campaign around the third week of May, probably ending around 21 May. That will set the production pool for June — that is, the subscriptions continuing from this campaign, plus any new subscriptions, plus any one-off pledges. However I’ll also be investigating other ways to organise the subscriptions and perhaps some commercial sponsorship.

I’ll post a brief update once the Pozible campaign finishes this morning, and a longer explainer tonight.

Meanwhile you can watch my daily progress videos, which ceased on the weekend because I was distracted by a computer rebuild.

[Update 1110 AEST: The final total raised for the May production pool was $1082, so that’s two episodes confirmed for the month. We “only” have $304 in ongoing subscriptions, which isn’t quite enough to fund podcasts in June — yet. There will be further fundraising before then, so stay tuned. I’m currently feeling quite confident that I can build on this base — but I’ll have more on that tonight.]