STEAM Powered Kit

Current Kit

Administrative

Obsidian.md

Obsidian.md is one of those second-brain apps that allow you to take notes. This oversimplifies things a bit, but it’s a powerful tool that’s great for Personal Knowledge Management.

I am using Obsidian as part of an integrated workflow for contact management with guests, guest research, copy for episode promotional materials and show notes, and any other aspect of creating this show that needs notes or tracking.

Zoho Mail

I use Zoho Mail (affiliate) for hosting the email and calendar for my steampoweredshow.com domain. It’s simple, reasonably priced, and does exactly what I need as a team of one. They make migration from any other host a doddle as well, which is nice.

Cal.com

For interview and call scheduling, Cal.com allows me guests the flexibility of choosing a time to chat that suits them. The app supports integration with multiple calendars to prevent scheduling conflicts across my personal and work activities.

Recording

Riverside.fm

I use Riverside (affiliate) to make and record conversations. This is a great service, and I’ll be putting together some guides/views soon. You can learn more about the service in my Riverside FAQ.

Rode NT-1 & AI-1 Complete Studio Kit

The Rode NT-1 & AI-1 Complete Studio Kit is an upgrade from the NT-USB because I am also tinkering with other things. If you speak to pros though, they’ll recommend a dynamic microphone, and not a condenser like this one is.

Logitech BRIO webcam

A Logitech BRIO webcam is overkill as I don’t need the 4K for remote interviewing, but it’s future-proofing. The webcam takes up less space than the DSLR setup I had to start, and I also had video and audio sync issues between the audio from Quicktime or Riverside and the video from the Sony A7. Over time, it would fall out of sync, and it added processing time that I just can’t be bothered with despite how much I prefer the video quality (I have a thing about my camera glass).

Lighting

Neewer 18-inch White LED Ring Light

When I relocated my setup from the dining room to the study, I no longer had space for the big-ass softboxes. I use the Neewer 18-inch White LED Ring Light with a lighting C-clamp stand to attach it to my desk.

Post/Editing

Descript

I hesitated to use Descript because I feel it lacks the refined control I have in an application like DaVinci Resolve. But I found a compromise by processing my audio and video files in Izotope and DaVinci Resolve first, and then editing the finals in Descript.

This also allows me to edit the transcripts and generate subtitles which I integrate into the show notes and on YouTube and Captivate.

DaVinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve has a bit of a learning curve, but the documentation, forums, and Google are excellent. I used to this to create the YouTube video, podcast, as well as the clips that get posted throughout the week. It struggles a bit on old hardware, but saw better performance once I upgraded to the paid version so that it would actually make use of my GPU. It was better still once I also upgraded my primary laptop which was very old and struggling to even handle my primary dev work.

I am now using Descript for editing episodes and clips, but still use Resolve for initial processing to merge the processed audio from Izotope with the original video so that I can properly create synced compositions with scene handling in Descript.

Izotope RX Standard

I record from my study, and my guests are wherever they are on a wide range of microphones. Some of them use the onboard speakers ☹️️ so audio cleanup is A Bit of a Thing(TM). A very time-consuming thing.

While I have Izotope RX Standard, RX10 and above are the Bee’s Knees. With the inconsistency of recording environments, it’s much more efficient than faffing about with knobs in Fairlight. It also helped that it was heavily discounted when I picked it up.

audio-technica ATH-M20x monitoring headphones

I originally used my bluetooth earpods for audio editing.¹ Due to sync issues, I switched to my standard iPhone headphones,² but I wasn’t able to get the sound clear enough, and I also kept hearing crackles and things.

Apparently, I’m the only one who can hear them. No, not like that. I tend to pick up higher frequencies (not tinnitus, mainly connected with electricals). I thought I grew out of it, as you’re meant to lose that hearing range as you get older, but apparently not. Decided to just get some decent entry-level circumaural headphones to eliminate other external factors. audio-technica ATH-M20x monitoring headphones are great, and as a bonus, my music sounds so much better. I still hear the higher frequency sound no one else can, but at least I can sort out the other issues. If you too can hear the higher frequency thing in the released audio and video let me know, I’ll find out if there’s something I can do about it.

Promotion

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is great for creating the title cards and all the other static image assets I’ve needed to create for the primary content. I already have a license for my dev work, and it’s what I’m familiar with.

Adobe Express

Adobe Express is great for creating any other static image assets. It lacks the precision that I like for certain tasks, which I’ll use Photoshop for, but for quick things like media squares, it works a treat.

I get some additional features as part of the Adobe license I have for my dev work, but the base product, which is still feature-rich, is free.

Buffer

Buffer is a fabulous little social media scheduler, and you can connect three services for free on the free plan. I’ve hooked this up to Make for social media posting automation.

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube

This deserves a dedicated post. I have many gripes. The primary one is that APIs and automation integrations for the various services do not support all the features of the web or mobile app interfaces. The base integrations are fine for text and link posts, but for video posts, if you want to also upload transcripts, not all the APIs or integrations support that functionality. For instagram, you also cannot set collaboration tags programmatically even though the user still has to approve the connection.

Most of them have scheduling available now though, so I’ve been using the web interfaces, and in Instagram’s case, mobile app (*sigh*) to ensure the transcripts can be uploaded (if supported), and I can tag collaborators (if the guest has Instagram or TikTok).

The only one that I have been able to programmatically upload is YouTube.

I’ve set up my videos to bake in captions anyway, so I may just give up on the transcript as several services offer just-in-time captions now, and only worry about collaborators, which most guests don’t accept anyway, so I’m creating additional work for myself with a low chance of any benefit.

Infrastructure

YouTube

For hosting the video version of the podcast.

Captivate

Captivate is a cost-effective option when you want to host more than one podcast. Their interface is also excellent and I do not have the same usability issues as I did on Podbean.

Backblaze

Backup everything. It’s easy to take for granted how much storage content creation actually creates. Raws, project files and finals, extra assets, etc. It all adds up. I don’t want to lose any of it. Backblaze does the job.

NameCheap

NameCheap (affiliate) is well-priced and reliable domain registration and hosting, with free WhoisGuard to conceal domain contact information. Been using them for years for all my domains.

Cloudflare

Cloudflare is good for DNS (domain) management and has additional features for security, caching, and all that good stuff.

Website

Lovingly coded and administered by hand by me.

Netlify

Netlify is used to host this and the STEAM Powered website.

Astro

Astro is the framework on which the STEAM Powered website is built. Straight-forward to use and ideal for content-driven websites.

Past Kit

Kit I used to use, but don’t anymore.

Administrative

Streak for Gmail

Streak for Gmail provides an integrated CRM for Gmail. I set up a pipeline to track communications with guests with reminders and tasks for arranging scheduling (and re-scheduling). It makes the scheduling process more manageable.

I switched away from using Gmail for mail hosting and Streak don’t have a platform independent version.

Notion

Notion is another one of those second-brain apps that allow you to take notes. It’s full-featured and very powerful. I was experimenting with a modified version of this Simple CRM to manage my guest workflows.

But I switched away when one day I logged in and all my content was gone on the web-client. Fortunately, I still had access to some of the offline content and downloaded what I could.

I don’t need that kind of stress in my life.

Lighting

20”x28”/50x70cm Softbox Lighting Kit

Nothing exxy, just something serviceable off Amazon. The included bulbs were a little too harsh for the small space. so I picked up a couple of

Philips Hue Tuneable White Bluetooth Lightbulb

The Philips Hue Tuneable White Bluetooth Lightbulb is not the brightest at a max of 806lm, but it’s controllable via my phone and adequate for the space I’m in. It also gives me a bit of flexibility with tinkering with the setup and learning about lighting. These are irritatingly hard to come by now. Don’t know why, they seem far more useful than the multi-coloured ones, but what do I know about trends in smart-lighting.

Recording

Sony A7

Full-frame is overkill for this, but I have the original series Sony A7 which was released in 2013. I use it with a Minolta 28mm f2.8 for no other reason than physical distance available for my setup. My favourite lenses can’t focus at the short distance I have available.

The Sony A7 supports recording at 1080 but has a video length limit of just under a half-hour and has a tendency to overheat. Due to its age, it also doesn’t have live view/tethering, which is why I also have an

Atomos Ninja Blade

The Atomos Ninja Blade is an HDMI monitor and recorder (circa 2014) that also records at 1080 which I picked up second-hand. Solves the aforementioned shortfalls of recording video with the camera directly. This older model that I picked up off eBay also supports standard SSDs which are more affordable with barely any budget.

Padcaster Smartphone Teleprompter

While I’d love to have the kind of memory where I can quote whole acts of Shakespeare at the drop of a hat,³ as a brain-fried parent this is not an option for me. The Padcaster Smartphone Teleprompter fits my phone and attaches to my Sony A7. Still need a few takes but allows me to turn around this part of the process much more quickly than having to learn a script by rote.

The companion app is slow to load and the UI needs a little improvement, but it’s serviceable.

I’ve had to stop using this because I’m no longer using the Sony A7 and I don’t have an adapter to use it with the BRIO (yet), but I plan to put this back into the rotation when I get the chance. My memory is improving without this as a crutch, but it still requires far more time to do my intros and outros without it.

QuickTime

I used to use QuickTime to record a separate backup. This became a little too resource-intensive for my hardware, so I had to stop.

Rode NT-USB microphone

I was using my Bluetooth earbuds for recording, but I was not terribly pleased with the sound quality. The Rode NT-USB microphone is (mostly) forgiving of the fact that I’m recording in my fairly open dining area, though I do need to do a bit in post to clean it up. Still figuring that bit out.

Promotion

Later

Later is another social media scheduling service. I found Buffer easier for integration and automation.

Vurbl

Vurbl is a relatively new audio platform with a pretty great feature that allows you to create snippets of longer audio for sharing. As a producer of long-form content with episodes averaging just under an hour, it’s exactly what I need to highlight bits of our conversations.

Also, I happen to be the Vurbl Ambassador for their Science content category. :)

Infrastructure

Anchor.fm

Starting out, Anchor.fm is great because it’s free and just does the job. I had no complaints about the UI, functionality, or service for my purposes. The analytics is okay but by most accounts, not very detailed.

One thing I did like is the support for video podcasts which I do anyway for YouTube, but they don’t support URL prefixes on enclosure tags which are used for tracking services like Chartable that I started using once I joined the OSSA Collective, which offers a Pro account to its members.

Another minor issue is that they offered monetisation options, but for US only. International has been on the cards since I first joined them but haven’t seen any updates about it.

Update 2023-01-15: What I didn’t know about podcast hosting platforms

Chartable

I’m still new to the podcast analytics game, but I gained access to Chartable through the OSSA Collective, which offers a Pro account to its members. Setup is pretty straight forward, but there are a lot of features and functionality that I haven’t learned to drive yet, and I also don’t have enough data yet to get a better picture of what to do with it.

Update 2024-10-02: Chartable is Dead, Long Live… Websites

Podbean

I switched to Podbean from Anchor.fm because I gained access to Podsights through the OSSA Collective, and felt it was about time I started getting a bit more serious about analytics.

Why Podbean? It was the most cost-effective service that supported URL prefixes for enclosure tags that Podsights requires for data collection with a plan that also supports video podcasts. Note that Anchor.fm includes video podcast support, but not URL prefixes.

Parted from Podbean because we have creative differences and there were implementation choices I could not overlook as a dev.

Update 2023-01-15: What I didn’t know about podcast hosting platforms

CentOS

I was using CentOS for a time to take the rendering load off of my Macbook Pro. This was a terrible choice.

Sanity.io

Sanity.io is a headless CMS.

I used to use flatfile MDX, but this makes automating the publishing of show pages a little challenging short of mucking around with programmatically creating and committing new files to the site repository. Using a headless CMS with an API is the first step in preparing to automate the scheduling.

With the introduction of Obsidian.md, I have returned to using flatfile. The local web front-end for Sanity.io was buggy as hell, and despite a clean install, would intermittently not allow me to save and deploy updates to content and parts of the UI would present in a disabled state with no user feedback to indicate what the problem was.

My podcast content is now integrated into my Obsidian personal knowledge-base and exported to my Next.js site as needed.