Yes, they’re back! That’s John Gruber and Dan Benjamin on The Talk Show, now part of the multimedia empire that is 5by5 Studios, discussing Macs, iPhones, coffee and environmentally friendly garbage disposal.

During the period of radio silence I even managed to listen to all 30 episodes of season one again. Was the break really only two weeks… it seemed more like three.

It’s always strange how these things work out.

In one of the recent – in the last month, maybe more – MacBreak Weekly shows Andy Ihnatko (Internationally Beloved Technology Pundit) recommended the Creative Screenwriting Magazine podcast as his pick of the week. Being a fan of podcasts, and films in general, I downloaded 20 or 30 or so from the 100 available on iTunes. I only selected certain shows whose title interested me. Shows that I'd already seen the film for. This week I've listened to a few more.

Thomas McCarthy was interviewed twice by Jeff Goldsmith and talked about his film The Visitor that I'd seen. Throughout they mentioned The Station Agent, again written and directed by Thomas McCarthy, and also The Conversation. I thought that The Station Agent was worth a look at because of it’s high rating on IMDb and the same with The Conversation, that and the fact that they were both really cheap on Amazon.co.uk. I've now found out that Thomas McCarthy was involved with the story for Up and that he played the reporter in the final season of The Wire.

I'm a huge fan of the film Eastern Promises and Steven Knight was another writer who was interviewed. During the conversation Dirty Pretty Things was mentioned – which I like and own – and I found out that Steven wrote that and also Amazing Grace. Looking at the details for that film I find that it has another high rating on IMDb and Albert Finney, Michael Gambon and Toby Jones are in the cast.

So now I own 3 films that I haven’t ever seen based on interviews with writers. It’s strange how all these connections link together.

Just heard that Penn Jillette, the big guy from Penn & Teller, has moved to Revision3 with a new show called Penn Point. He used to have Penn Says on Crackle, you could download about 20 shows via iTunes, but you couldn’t even watch them on the Crackle web-site. This was due to ‘copyright restrictions’, although exactly what restrictions I don’t know. It was just a guy with a goatee and long hair talking into a video camera. Maybe the theme tune was copyrighted just for the US, who knows. For a while the Crackle site looked as if it was just completely broken with great chunks of content missing. Way to go Sony! The shows were even cross posted to YouTube, again Sony Pictures blocked it on copyright grounds.

I love Revision3 and watch three of their shows, HD Nation, Diggnation and Tekzilla each week, so I've subscribed to Penn Point ready for the shows starting on the 24th of May.

Of course it will never replace Penn Radio and Monkey Tuesday, but then again what would.

Huffduffer

Why oh why haven’t I used this web-site before.

Since buying an iPod nano, a few years ago now, I've become an avid listener to podcasts. When I'm walking, cleaning, cooking or washing-up I'm listening to podcasts that I've subscribed to. Some feeds I've stuck with for years and listen to every show. Others I've unsubscribed from mainly due to the fact that there are only so many listening hours in the week and they started to pile up in iTunes.

Recently I've wanted to listen to the odd Boagworld podcast or I've found an interview in an MP3 file on a web-site that looks interesting. Before Huffduffer I would have to download the one show via the podcast section, then remember to delete the feed afterwards, or download the file manually, add it to iTunes, listen to it and then delete it.

Being a Web 2.0 stalker of longstanding I read a tweet from Jeremy Keith saying that he was huffduffing himself, which is considered illegal in some countries and is hardly a spectator sport. He was huffduffing the dConstruct ‘09 podcasts which I'd listened to in previous years.

After mentioning it 3 times and ‘it’ also being the title of this post, I'd better explain what it does.

Huffduffer allows you to create your own podcast stream using MP3’s that you've found on the internet. So, in my case, I'm surfing around web-sites and I find a download link to an MP3 file. All I need to do is use the bookmarklet to huffduff it. I have already subscribed to my feed in iTunes so the next time the feeds are refreshed the MP3 file will get downloaded.

It works in a such a way that anything is a podcast feed. You have your own feed, of items that you've huffduffed, you can subscribe to someones else’s feed, a feed of the most popular additions or a feed particular tags. If only there were more hours in the day to listen to it all.

Jeremy said that it was just a ‘scratch your own itch’ project and that it’s possibly too geeky to go mainstream. It’s certainly inspiring to see a niche site like this created just for the love of it.

No Agenda

Live from Gitmo Nation, Crackpot Adam Curry and The Buzzkill John C. Dvorak, present No Agenda.

The number of times that I've been walking around listening to this podcast and laughed out loud… times too numerous to count.

I started tuning in a few months ago and listened to a few of the new shows. I liked it so much that I downloaded the previous 60. Of course I knew Dvorak (Dvorak dot org slash blog, have a drink) from TWIT and Cranky Geeks but didn’t really know anything about Curry.

What’s so different about this is Adam’s frequent and passionate use of industrial strength expletives. If only Leo would drop the f-bomb just once, god love him.

I have learnt so much over the last few months, about: fine dining in San Fran, wine, sausages, politics, economics and how to smuggle a six foot plus white male into the U.S. using a CostCo card. I shall be eternally grateful for their collective wisdom and insight.

For every 1,000 downloads Adam and John will plant a tree in Gitmo Glade there-by reducing your carbon footprint.

Vegans or Canadians may be offended.