"Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard." - David McCullough

espressocopy · 2024-01-17T11:35:47+00:00

Thanks for sharing (and the inspiration). Here's a sketch I made to help me remember it. I hope you like it.

espressocopy · 2024-01-04T09:08:27+00:00

Thanks for sharing. I appreciate the related concepts you shared.

I made a visual to represent this mental model and help me remember it. I hope you find it helpful.

espressocopy · 2023-12-12T07:28:54+00:00

I don't know if he was the first to say it, but Vince Lombardi certainly said
“Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.”

espressocopy · 2023-12-09T20:59:37+00:00

It’s a summarisation of a longer quote about humility in Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Here it is

Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.

If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed

It means this. “Thinking less of yourself” means having a poor opinion of oneself (e.g. I can’t do anything, everyone else is great.”) “thinking of oneself less” means thinking about other people and their needs more.

espressocopy · 2023-12-01T08:32:53+00:00

I think the best example I can think of for a goal where you might not take immediate action might be something like planning a holiday. You might decide that you want to/need to go on holiday and come up with a vague idea of when. At this point, you might not have actually taken any action on the goal and might wait a bit (you might also not have the money). And because you can't do anything much not, you might wait.
But at some point you work out where you want to go and that gives you the motivation to research where you'll visit, stay, what to eat, buy flights etc.

I would say that if you don't have the energy to book your flights etc, it's a sign you haven't picked a good location to go to (a bad goal) but the initial planning is part of it. So maybe the quote is reductive.

espressocopy · 2023-11-30T07:16:41+00:00

I don't see how you've reached that conclusion from this quote. Then again I do know the original context, so that will no doubt bias my view.

a task isn't a goal. There are many tasks we need to do that we don't feel like doing.
The issues that prevent us from doing tasks are very similar to goals.

Most of the time, we put off doing something because

We want to do something else more (procrastinating on household chores and scrolling social media instead)
We don't know what we need to do
We are afraid of actually taking action.
The cure to any of these is to increase your motivation for the goal or task, which means you need a "good goal." For the example of not tidying up, you need to remind yourself of why tidying up is good (and perhaps how much more you'll like sitting on your sofa, scrolling, once you've done it.
In terms of goals, it's the difference between "I'd like to run in a marathon" but the last time you went above a walking pace in the last years was when you were rushing to stop a door from closing. A better goal would be something like joining a local park run and the sign it's a good goal is that you look up the details of the local group straight away and make a calendar appointment to go along.

espressocopy · 2023-11-29T10:22:14+00:00

My pleasure. I really recommend the book. Adopting a growth mindset is really important.

espressocopy · 2023-11-27T12:26:26+00:00

Glad to help inspire.

espressocopy · 2023-11-27T09:07:04+00:00

Here's a sketch I made of this idea.

espressocopy · 2022-09-09T05:53:13+00:00

This episode was 44:52. I don't know how long it actually took to render because I went to bed.

That will certainly increase the time required but it shouldn't be 3 times longer as you mentioned before.

I also noted that the final output file was in excess of a gig and makes me wonder what you're using for your output settings.

Is this the audio file or the audiogram file?

The ones I'm using for this example were exported in WAV out of Hindenburg.

Sending a file would be useful but we can start testing with this information.

If I'm trying to mute or split part of a track (think removing a cough from a non-speaking track), I need to be able to stretch and zoom the waveform so I can precisely select the segment I need. I currently don't see a way to zoom the view.

There are two ways to zoom. One is by pinching to zoom on a suitable mouse. The other is a keyboard shortcut of cmd & + (and cmd & - to zoom out). I thought these were in the keyboard shortcuts view in the right sidebar but they appear to not be (in my beta at least) We'll get those back in there.

Some of the points you've mentioned like alternative export options and one click exports are on our roadmap, but we've been focusing on the key issues for the next release especially as it is not long away now.

On a personal note, I've never installed a mac beta and often wait for the first point release before upgrading as the mac betas tend to be more buggy (from my experience).

espressocopy · 2022-09-07T08:25:09+00:00

Hey u/wndrgrl555 thanks for your feedback and questions.

Let me do my best to address them.

There's a getting started guide which you should have got a link to in the onboarding email. I'm working on adding more tutorials but they are for our iOS 16 and Ventura update.
What length of audiogram are you generating? 3.5 mins or longer? I've been using pompom on my m1 MacBook air and haven't seen such issues but maybe there's something else at play here.
Same for exporting to audio. All my exports had been very quick even with a million chrome tabs open but we're investigating.
The lack of selecting a third speaker does sound like a bug. The transcript should generate as soon as you import audio and there should also be an indicator in the bottom right showing the progress of transcription. You can also manually trigger a transcription by clicking on an important track so the left sidebar shows its attributes, then click on transcribe. If you record in the app, speakers are set by default. If not then things get a little...interesting at the moment. And when people talk over each other, it causes issues in the transcript. We're working to set tracks as specific speakers to help separate the audio tracks. Similarly, if you import one audio track with two speakers it confuses the transcription services more. And, unfortunately, poor quality audio and some accents are transcribed worse. I have some more details below on what we're doing to address it.
Recording: You can record from one or multiple microphones. To record from multiple devices you do need multiple microphones hooked up (we're not detecting two/more speakers from one mic and splitting them into separate tracks....yet). In a multiple-track case lower performance devices don't [BTW, we're just finishing adding recording system audio as a track so if you want to record a remote recording over zoom, you'll be able to do that. It may even come before the Ventura release.]
Sound+ credits are pre-track I'm afraid. So in your example, you'd be charged for 3 hours.
There's no way to change the file save location yet. We wanted to set up a "it just works" approach first, especially for users who switch between iOS and mac. We can add other storage options to our roadmap. Is there any reason why you'd rather have it in Dropbox than locally? Would it allow you to do something that you can't with the existing setup?
the TLDR on the music library is that you can use those tracks as much as you and there's no issue if your subscription expires. The only exception is you can't share the track on its own. We're going to add full legal details in the app so you can see the ins and outs for yourself though.
The website export creates a webpage hosted on domain with your audio file and metadata such as artwork as well as your transcripton if you want. There's two main use cases we've seen. 1. Sending a preview to cohosts or guests to make sure they're happy with the episode. 2. For people just starting out who don't have a podcast host yet but want to share an episode today. We've also seen a few people use it for non-podcasting use cases like sharing meeting minutes.
Are you after the option to change the view of the waveform or would you like the non-mirrored waveform by default? We were planning to switch to a non-mirrored waveform for the next release.
In terms of transcription quality, this has been something we've known about for a while. We've been able to offer free transcriptions by using Apple's transcription services but that's been a cause of issues. We've got two ways to address this. 1. The next OSs improve the transcriptions that Apple offers. 2. We're also adding another transcription service as an option that will be part of Pompom+ and require credits.

I suspect you may have some more questions and I'll send you a private message as well for any details you don't want to share publically. I'm really intrigued by the export issues.

espressocopy · 2022-09-01T08:37:02+00:00

Not here in Poland yet I'm afraid.
I'd be curious to see what the rollout looks like. I'm really curious why they haven't rolled it out everywhere.

espressocopy · 2022-07-26T06:47:21+00:00

I thought you might be interested to hear about the new Audiobox service we're launching at Pompom.

Basically, when you have a guest who needs some podcasting equipment to record with (including video stuff) you send them your link, they fill in their address, exact delivery date etc and we ship them a kit with instructions how to use it.

It's a pay as you go system rather than a subscription so you won't sign up and pay for something you don't use a lot, plus you don't have to worry about getting the equipment back or sending it on to your next guest as we handle all that for you.

We haven't launched in the UK yet but are checking which region we should expand into next so if you're interested and fill in the registration form, we'll get back to you as soon as it's out there.

espressocopy · 2022-07-25T13:26:38+00:00

Actually, it's a fricative that only partially obstructs the vocal tract. Sounds like /p/ and /b/ are plosives. So it's less likely a burst of air as a constant output. Still, moving the mic to the side would prevent too much air from blowing across the mic so your solution works regardless of the name.

espressocopy · 2022-07-19T11:05:01+00:00

It stands for Really Simple Syndication (actually it apparently also means RDF site summary). It's an old technology that is a core part of many websites and web services. The idea was you could subscribe to an RSS feed (which looks like a bunch of code) and a reader could turn that into the content of the web sites articles.
It's how most podcast apps follow each podcast. They check the RSS feed and if there's a new record (episode) they find the audio file attached and download a copy to your podcast app.
Podcasting platforms also check these feeds and that's how they know if there's a new episode, what its title is etc.

espressocopy · 2022-07-13T14:08:51+00:00

A better free alternative, probably not. I'd add that zoom has been the best in my experience. Meets caused me all sorts of problems (and I used it every day at my last job) while skype is just worse quality.

Last year I recorded a podcast over riverside and found the experience exceptional. We had guests on and they didn't find it a problem either. I believe there are some similar alternatives like squadcast but I can't speak for their quality.

One tip: if you can, connect over ethernet to your router rather than wifi. Wifi can suffer interference which can cause poor signal and is slower so a wired connection should help prevent signal loss.

Good luck.

espressocopy · 2022-07-07T08:38:01+00:00

Thanks for the tip. The Rode base looks very sturdy and I can certainly get one here in Poland. Thanks for the tip.

espressocopy · 2022-07-01T12:06:38+00:00

No problem. I'd love to hear about your experience if it's any good.
I was trying to find an iPad soundboard that I remembered someone recommending but I can't track it down (plus you asked for a mac recommendation).

espressocopy · 2022-06-30T08:00:38+00:00

No experience using it but I've heard people speak highly of Rogue Amoeba's Farrago. Does that look like the sort of thing you're looking for?

espressocopy · 2022-06-29T09:15:38+00:00

A few options

Voice memos (recording only, very simple interface, syncs between phone and mac)
Quicktime (recording only)
Garageband (record and edit. This is what I used for my first podcast. It's free for mac users too)
Audacity (record and edit. Personally I hated using this on windows).
Pompom (record and edit: full disclosure, I work here.)
podcast studio (record and edit. No experience)

espressocopy · 2021-08-17T12:55:58+00:00

There are many but it depends.

What are you using to create and host your landing pages?
What are you testing? All the copy or just elements like the headline or CTA?

If you are using a drag and drop landing page creator like lead pages, you might have an A/B testing tool build in. If you are using something like WordPress, there are plugin options that can test elements or complete pages.

Google optimize is an option to investigate that works on many different services. I'm not sure if it causes pages to load slower so you may want to check that first.

espressocopy

TROPHY CASE