Julia Sherred's Geeky Pleasures » Interviews

Makeshift Innocence Twitterfest

Jules — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 22:00:00 +0000

I am not a fan of campaigns that consist of “If I get so many followers on Twitter, then I’ll (insert reward here)” but I am a huge supporter of Makeshift Innocence and therefor want to help them with their latest endeavor. I suppose I should start of by telling you who Makeshift Innocence is. Simply put, they are my most favourite Canadian music group EVER. I had the excellent fortune of getting to know this group of fine young people last year. I helped them kick of their Canadian cross-country tour and they were Geeky Pleasure’s first Featured Independent Band of the Month. They are one of the few music groups that cause me to gush and I would do anything to support them because I strongly believe in who they are as people and as artists.

So, now this is where I tell you what it is I would like you to do. It is actually quite simple. They are currently running a promotional campaign. They just started a Twitter account and if they get 2000 followers by October 15, 2010, their management will release their newest single from their much anticipated second album (release date still unknown). There are also some other steps that I would like you to take:

Follow them on Twitter @MInnocence.
Join the Twitterfest Event on Facebook.
Join their Facebook Fan page.
Become their friend on their personal page on Facebook.
Tell your friends.
Check out their MySpace to listen to singles from their debut album Between Heaven and Hell and listen to 3 singles (Your Body ft ILL Knowtice, Saddest Lines, Bring The Rain ft Black Juice) from their upcoming album.
Purchase Between Heaven and Hell on iTunes.

To give you more of an idea of who these wonderful musicians are, I am including an interview I did with them May 7, 2009 after the first show of their Canadian cross-country tour and was aired shortly thereafter. We talked a little bit about their writing process, who and what inspires each of them and a bit about what has shaped who they are today. Some of the band members have changed since this interview but I still think it is worth the listen. The audio is a bit iffy as it was recorded with a handheld recorder while sitting around the table in the green room. I’ve tried my best to clean it up a bit but it is what it is. Notes:

Runtime: 37 minutes 29 seconds
Size: 34.3 MB
Format 128 kbps, 44.1 kHz, Stereo, mp3
Download (right click, save as)

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

You can also check them out on Youtube. I’m including one of their videos below. And don’t forget, you can also listen to more of their songs by checking out their Featured Band of the Month write-up.

Share the Geek:

Star of “Love Simple”, Patrizia Hernandez Interview

Jules — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 22:00:06 +0000

When I was asked to interview Patrizia Hernandez, lead actress in Love Simple, I of course said yes. I was surprised to learn there was a movie that would focus on Lupus and relationships, as many others may be as well. I think my surprise may be for different reasons though. My surprise came from often feeling as if Lupus is ignored by the world. I was extremely happy to learn someone had decided to really focus on Lupus and relationships. And not only does it raise awareness, but starting today until June 21, 2010, 30% of sales will be donated to the SLE Lupus Foundation. After June 21, 2010, 10% of sales will go to the SLE Lupus Foundation (read more about this here).

When people found out I was doing the interview after I blogged about it, I was asked many times if I would be reviewing the movie as well. My first reaction was to say, “No.” The reason for my no was because I like my reviews to be impartial and unbiased, even if I know the person behind the product. There is no way I can be unbiased about this movie as I live it. But then I thought, who is more qualified to review a movie about Lupus than someone who lives the life this movie is suppose to portray? And so, I changed my mind and decided to write a review to go along with the interview.

A lot of my thoughts about this movie are in the interview. There are a couple of things though, that I would like to emphasis or say that I am not quite sure got through in the interview. So please take the time to both listen to the interview below and read the review here.

My interview with Patrizia contains quite a bit of information. Among other things, we discussed technical things such as her acting background, the making of the movie and how she approached the role. And of course we discussed Lupus and the heart of the movie. The interview touches on a lot of personal areas in both of our lives. This has been my most difficult interview to date. It was very emotional and a lot of fun for the both us. I hope you enjoy it.

A few show notes:

This interview was recorded on Friday, June 11, 2010.
There are two Johns mentioned in the interview. Except for the one time where we talk about the actor, John Harlacher, the other John referred to is John Casey. He is the press and public relations contact at Magic Star Enterprises and has been a huge help throughout this process.
We did this interview via Skype with webcam. The reason why I mention this is because there will parts of the interview that may not make a lot of sense as they were said due to visual clues from the other person.
Remember, kids. Always turn off or unplug your phone before recording an interview. I forgot to do this and unfortunately, you get to hear a phone ringing in the background for part of the interview. I do apologize.

I decided to add a song to the end of the interview because the soundtrack for Love Simple reminded me of it. The song is written and performed by Graham Porter aka Emperor Gum. He wrote the song for the World Lupus Day Virtual Art Gallery. You can find the lyrics and download it for free here. Other songs are also available free for download if you are interested.
A question that could not get answered during the interview was, “Why did Mark decide to do this movie?” Here is part of his answer given to me in an email.

As far as the reason for giving the character of Seta Lupus, one of my first jobs out of school was working in the Nursing Administration of a local Brooklyn hospital near where I live. It was mostly clerical work, but I used to overhear the unit managers giving shift reports. One evening, a nurse manager reported that a patient had died earlier in the day from Lupus. This really surprised me because I didn’t think Lupus was that serious, much less something that you could die from – and I actually had a friend who had Lupus, it had never really seemed a big part of her life. Her case was indeed mild but I had assumed that was Lupus – just an ‘autoimmune disease (whatever that is).’ The more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn’t really know a whole lot about the illness – the severity or even much less the symptoms…

When I started working on the script for LOVE SIMPLE, I knew that I wanted it to be a romantic comedy, but also something that really tackled the somber, most complicated element of relationships: sickness & health. I also knew that I wanted the film to be activist in some respect – filmmakers I like and admire strive to make important films. Based on my own experience with Lupus, I thought Seta’s character would be a great vehicle to create awareness for the symptoms of the illness, and educate people on a disease that so many people – including myself at one point – really only know by name, if that.”
You can find Love Simple on Facebook here. You can follow Love Simple on Twitter @lovesimplemovie.
The interview (including music) is 1 hr 13 min 50 sec and is 67.6 MB in size. Format is mp3 at 128 kbps, 44.1 kHz, stereo. You can listen to it by streaming it below or download it here (right click, save as).

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Remember to purchase and watch Love Simple, now available on iTunes here. And very importantly, pass along this information and tell a friend. Together, we can find a cure for Lupus.

Share the Geek:

In Which Julia Sherred Gets Interviewed By Too Much Awesome

Jules — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:44:07 +0000

The Deconstruction of Sammy Kablam

Earlier this week, I was interviewed by the wonderful Joe “Covenant” Lamb and Sammy Kablam for the Too Much Awesome podcast. It is now up and available for download. This podcast is entitled “The Deconstruction of Sammy Kablam” and you will have to listen to find out why. There is a huge NSFW warning on this and do not listen to around small children. We discussed many things including my book, my website, my children, my lupus, Song Fu, things that cause me to have a geekasm and more.

I had a lot of fun doing this. It was nice being on the receiving end of the questions for once instead of the one doing the interview. After it was done, I tweeted that maybe once it would be nice to be part of an interview that did not need a content warning. I had thought that my Runic Games interview didn’t need a warning, until I was reminded by one of my tweeps that I did say shit a few times, so alas.

Anyway, here it it. Runtime is 1hr 28min 46sec. Download here (right click, save as) or listen below.

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

And once you are done, I invite you to head on over to TMA and listen to more of their podcasts. Below you fill find a handy dandy and swell list of podcasts done to date.

Episode 16 02.26.10 – w/ Julia Sherred
Episode 15 02.26.10 – w/ Joe “Covenant” Lamb and Sammy Kablam
Episode 14 12.08.09 – w/ Sara Parsons
Episode 13 11.14.09 – w/ Nick Goldston
Episode 12 11.01.09 – In a large room
Episode 11 10.26.09 – w/ Ian Johnson
Episode 10 10.17.09 – w/ Joe Covenant
Episode 9 10.10.09 – w/ Edric Haleen
Episode 8 10.03.09 – Live!
Episode 7 9.27.09 – w/ Joel Cathey
Episode 6 9.20.09 – Technology Fail
Episode 5 9.11.09 – Community Update
Episode 4 9.04.09 – w/ Molly Lewis
Episode 3 8.29.09 – w/ Russ Rogers
Episode 2 8.22.09 – w/ Paul and Storm
Episode 1 8.15.09 – Mission Statement

Share the Geek:

Mike Lombardo Interview

Jules — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:23:08 +0000

On Friday, November 27, 2009, I had the awesome pleasures of sitting down with the young and talented geeky musician, Mike Lombardo for an interview for my Geeky Pleasures radio show on Party 934 | 102.5 FM in the Hudson Valley NY. If you missed it (or even if you didn’t) you can listen to the interview here and download it for free.

We discussed a wide variety of topics and I really do not know where to begin with a summary. I am going to remind people once more that my interviews are very informal. I like them to have the feel of two friends sitting down to a cup of coffee and just talking and hopefully the conversation is interesting enough that other people will want to eavesdrop. If you are not interested in something like this, then you will not want to download the interview.

I recorded the Ustream version of it as well so that people can listen to what happened in between mic breaks. However (as seems to be a reoccurring happening during all of my interviews) there was some technical difficulties. In this case, it was buffering issues with Ustream. After having watched it myself, I do admit that it is very difficult to watch with these issues. But I will include it here regardless as some may not care about this these things and appreciate the effort regardless.

So here it is for you to listen to and download (right click, save as).

Total runtime: 1hr 04min 42sec

Total size: 59.2 MB

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

You are free to share this file with whomever you choose. All that I ask is you let people know where you got it from. I hope you enjoy!

And here is the Ustream.

Share the Geek:

Runic Games Torchlight Interview

Jules — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:20:58 +0000

On Friday, October 30 2009, the developers of Torchlight (Max Schaefer and Travis Baldree) from Runic Games sat down with me for an interview for my Geeky Pleasures radio show on Party 934 | 102.5 FM Hudson Valley NY. We talked about game play, the development of the game, what free extras players of the game can soon expect, a few of our geeky pleasures and more.

If you missed the live on air interview you can listen to here and download it (right click, save as). Total runtime of the interview is 1hr 19min 03sec. Size = 72.3 MB. You are free share this interview with others. All that I ask is you let people know where you got it.

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

I also remembered to record the Ustream feed as well. If you want to hear what we discussed when the microphone went to stand by for the radio portion of the interview and a funny story about what happened right before the interview, you can watch the video here. The first 10 minutes or so of the video we are setting up so you may want to skip that part. If you are wondering why I am a little freaky looking and what on earth am I wearing, it was the day before Halloween so I decided to wear a costume.

If you have not already, you can read my review of Torchlight here.

Share the Geek:

Jonathan Coulton Interview

Jules — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 06:00:33 +0000

On Tuesday, September 22 2009, I had the pleasure of interviewing geek music sensation Jonathan Coulton for my Geeky Pleasures radio show on Party 934 | 102.5 FM Hudson Valley NY. Since it has now been aired, I will share it with those who could not tune in and listen.

Jonathan is such a talented, gracious, humble, funny and generous man. I had so much fun with this interview. I think one of my personal favourite highlights of this interview is when Joco teased me not only once but twice. We talked about his music, shared geeky pleasures, discussed sources of artistic inspiration, PAX, his current tour with Paul and Storm, his DVD Best.Concert.Ever., family, his fancy pants, put a rumour to rest and a lot more.

Once again, one of my stupid tendencies came out in this interview. I do not know why this happens, but I always get so nervous when I am about to do an interview. I can meet the people I interview in person and am completely cool and not at all nervous. But as soon as it comes time to interview them, a mixture of excitement and nervousness hits. This can be a dangerous combination. I warned Jonathan about this prior to the interview. Thankfully, he understood. When I had the chance to briefly talk with him at PAX, I was good. Sure enough, the crazy insane dork decided to rear its ugly head during the interview. I think part of this issue is that I find it beyond cool that these people, whom I have so much respect for, decide to take a couple hours out of their day to geek out with me and allow my audience to share in it. For me this is a huge honour and is very surreal. Even if I were able to interview people weekly, I doubt these feelings will ever stop and I will continue to get stupid when there is a microphone recording our conversation.

For those who have not listened to or downloaded my past interviews and are not familiar with my style, let me try and explain it. When I do an interview, I want it to have the feel of two friends sitting down for coffee and just chatting. Even so we are just chatting, I try and make the chat interesting enough where people will want to eavesdrop in on the conversation. I do not prepare questions (unless someone sends in a question or I am requested to bring up something specific) and my guests do not receive a list of interview questions prior. I do have a general sense of a few things that I do want to talk about but I leave enough room in my thought-up outline to allow for a natural conversational flow. Also I want to clarify something, one of my comments may sound like I am making fun of geeks when the topic of Hobbits came up. That was not my intent. My intent was to say that I thought it cool and another reason I <3 Geeks and am proud to be one myself.

Technical note:

Yet again technology was not my friend during this interview. For some odd reason, whenever there was a slight pause in the conversation, the audio between the left and right channel would stop syncing. For every couple minutes of talking the channels became, on average, 1/2 second out of sync. By the end of the interview there was over 30 seconds where our conversation was completely out of sync.

What I ended up having to do was break up the interview in 17 sections, split the channels, time-shift the audio in one channel so that the conversation aligned as closely as possible with the other channel, recombine the channels and then paste it all back together. If you listen to the interview with headphones, you will still hear synchronization issues from time to time. However after 10 hours of editing and the fact I am not an audio engineer, what you hear now is the best I could do given time and resources. You will also hear periods where there appears to be dead air. That is a result of the time-shifting. I tried to clean that out but was unable.

I hope that you enjoy this interview even just a small fraction of how much I enjoyed doing it. It is available below in both streaming and download.

EDIT: Thank you to Joe “Covenant” Lamb for cleaning up the audio for me. You are awesome and did a great job! You can follow him on Twitter @JoeCovenant.

Total time: 1 hr 21 min 57 secs

Format: mp3

Size 75 MB

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

To download this interview, right click save as.

Download, share, geek and be merry.

If you do share the interview with someone else, please be nice enough to at least mention where you got it from.

Share the Geek:

Wil, Phil and Shane Available for Download

Jules — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:10:31 +0000

I do have to say my last four days have been pretty awesome. I got to geek out with Shane Nickerson. I got to geek out for hours with a friend. I got to geek out all day with my youngest over the Star Wars Lego game for Nintendo GameCube and listen to hours of sheer excitement when he finally unlocked the secret level, and then Star Wars in general. Being able to geek out with your own children is the coolest thing one could ever do. Way cooler than geeking out with a peer as far as I am concerned.

Then imagine my even greater joy when some of my favourite more well known geeks started to geek out about the exact same things I have been geeking out about for days! I just love when that happens. It is a nice reminder of how extremely cool the geek community is. There are many things that define what it means to be a geek. However, in my experiences (despite our own flavours of geekiness) I can always find at least one common thing with all geeks. There is this stupid, warm, giddy excitement we feel when we grok each other.

I have had the pleasure of interviewing three of my favourite more well known geeks, Wil Wheaton, Dr. Phil Plait and Shane Nickerson. I have respect for these people that reach far beyond the fact they are geeks and are well known for each doing their own thing. I do hope my list of favourite geeks I have interviewed becomes more. If it doesn’t it will not matter as I have had this awesome opportunity that I never in a millions years thought would ever happen. I have uploaded these interviews here to my blog but have not made them available for download (save one) and really, that is a shame.

So I am going to fix that problem to allow people to geek them as often as they want and find them easily without having to search my blog. I am also going to include a new sidebar that will allow for easier finding of these interviews and the stories that may accompany them. I really do not know why I did not do this earlier. But the events of the last four days have made me think if I enjoy these similarities so much, then maybe others will to. And if others will to, then maybe I should make it easier for people to find them, enjoy them and share them with others.
S0:

(Note: Each interview does contain some language. So please bear that in mind before listening.)

To download my Wil Wheaton interview, right click, save as (or whatever the equivalent is for the browser you are using). Read about the interview here.

To download my Dr. Phil Plait interview, right click, save as (or whatever the equivalent is for the browser you are using). Read about the interview here.

To download my Shane Nickerson interview, right click, save as (or whatever the equivalent is for the browser you are using). Read about the interview here.

Please enjoy, share freely, geek and be merry.

p.s. I had to put back together the Wil Wheaton interview as it was cut into 5 parts. I did not listen prior to uploading as I wanted this available as soon as possible. Hopefully I didn’t duplicate anything or miss something. If you notice a problem with it, please let me know. As well, the interview does end rather abruptly. That is not an issue. Since the interview was not live and was pre-recorded, after the final segment I went on to talk about how things were wrapped up and did not include our good-byes in the interview.

Share the Geek:

Shane Nickerson Interview

Jules — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:02:30 +0000

Hawesome Shane Nickerson is Hawesome!

So on Friday night (July 10, 2009) I had the pleasure of Shane Nickerson sitting down with me and co-hosting my Geeky Pleasures show on Party 934. He also co-hosted my Ustream feed which was a double bonus. Needless to say, I had a blast! It was very nice to just geek out about so many different things. I have listened to the interview a few times now and I still have not been able to find words to summarize all that we discussed. Some of the things we talked about were science fiction, gaming, t.v. shows, gadgets, twitter, sexual fantasties and so much more. I am afraid that maybe some parts of the show will not make sense for some listeners as it sounds as if all of a sudden Shane and I start to talk about random things. Some of these random things were as a result of those who decided to log into the Ustream chat, actively participating in our discussion instead of just being voyeurs. Others were because of visual events. An example of something that may not make sense is you will hear me comment on Shane’s t-shirt. (Speaking of Shane and t-shirts, please vote for this t-shirt.) He was wearing this really cool dinosaur t-shirt and unless you were in Ustream, that comment doesn’t make too much sense as it was a result of something visual.

Couple of show notes:

Lately, I do not know what it is with technology everytime I do an interview. Technology failed me yet again for this interview. The audio is very choppy at some points. My computer decided that it was going to slow right down as soon as it was time to go live on air. And I am not even going to get into the preshow tech fails plus postshow tech fails that occured during the editing process.

The day of the interview I was going over my checklist of must remember to do. I went over it again and again and again. I had this nagging feeling that I was forgetting some important aspect of the show that needed to be done. Show time came and I had chalked it up to just being excited that the night was finally here to geek out with Shane live on air instead of on the phone or by other means (which is beyond cool as well but it was great to share the juicy geeky goodness with others). Half way through the show I realize yes indeed, I did forget an important step. That was to record the Ustream feed. Normally I do not record the Ustream feed. The reason why I wanted to record it this time was because there was a lot of dialogue between Shane and myself when the mic was on stand-by for the on air portion that one could only hear if they were tuned into the Ustream as well. Ah well, maybe next time I will not forget.

I had a mental list of things I wanted to bring up during the show. A lot of them flew completely out of my brain when it came down to talk to him live with people eavesdroppoing. This happens quite often in my world. It happens most often when I get to geek out with someone. As I was discussing the show with a friend afterwards, Star Trek came up and I remembered something Shane had told me during one of our conversation prior to the show that had to do with an experience he had with Star Trek. It would have been uber cool to share on air. Hopefully next time, I will not forget to bring that up along with other things I remembered after the fact.

I do not think I could thank Shane enough for his time. Between the busy filming schedule of his latest project for MTV (Rob Dyrdek’s Fantasy Factory, click here if in Canada) and his family, for him to take out 2 hours on a Friday night to geek out with me live is just so HAWESOME. Oh and Shane, maybe my fetish for Optimus Prime is not all that weird after all. It has been brought to my attention that I am not the only one who thinks of having sex with robots.

NSFW

Below you will find the interview. I hope you enjoy it even a fraction of how much I enjoyed doing it.

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Share the Geek:

Dr. Phil Plait Interview

Jules — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 10:50:20 +0000

On June 5, 2009, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Phil Plait aka The Bad Astronomer live for my Geeky Pleasures show on Party934. We discussed a variety of topics from the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA to the antivaxx movement and homeopathy, plus a few other topics of interest to the both of us. A warning: I drop the “s” word a couple of times during the interview. So consider yourself warned. At the very end of the interview, Phil gave me some inside scoop about a couple of projects he is working on. You will only hear it here. The total runtime for the interview is 1hr 38min 23sec.

I want to apologize in advance for the editing of this broadcast. Phil sat down with me live last night and we took a couple of breaks to play some music. I had to edit out the music portion of the interview as it would be in violation of the station’s royalties contracts had I left the music in. After close to 12 hours of editing and technology failing over 20 times during the process, what you are hearing now is the best that is available at the moment. I wanted to make sure the broadcast was available as soon as possible for people to listen to and give feedback. Hopefully I will be able to find the time soon to clean it up a bit.

It was a real pleasure interviewing Phil. I had a lot of fun doing it and my impression was that he did as well. A couple little show notes:

I was very surprised how silent the listeners were as we discussed a couple of topics that have caused Phil to receive some heat on his own blog. We discussed these topics very frankly and openly. Considering the feedback he has received on his own blog regarding these topics, I was expecting some listeners to come out and put him to the fire while he was live on air and accepting questions. This did not happen. This leads me to conclude that people are much braver behind a computer typing out words than when they are given the opportunity to express those opinions live and in person.

You will notice during the interview, that I appear to be tongue tied, at a loss for words or do not complete my thought. There are a couple of reasons for that. The first reason is that when I do an interview, they are not scripted. I like the interview to have the feel of two friends sitting down to a cup of coffee and talking about subjects of mutual interest. Yes I have a general outline of what topics I would like to discuss, however I do not script out the questions and the person being interviewed does not know what questions I am going to ask. This allows for a more natural and organic conversation to occur. The second reason is almost 3 years ago, I suffered from a stroke. So whenever I am excited or passionate about something, my ability to communicate (both verbally and written) is one of the first things to be affected. And let me tell you, Phil gave me many reasons to be excited. Not only is he a very passionate speaker, he is extremely funny.

To listen:

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Share the Geek:

Wil Wheaton Interview

Jules — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 10:21:17 +0000

On November 5, 2008, I had the honour and the pleasure to do a one on one interview with Wil Wheaton for my Friday Night Geeky Pleasures show on Party 934. It has been described as very candid. We discussed a variety of topics from some of our mutual Geeky Pleasures to his many acting roles. I cannot say enough how extremely kind Wil is.

Show note: The interview was suppose to be on a different day, but something came up on Wil’s end where he had to do it sooner. I had a couple hours to prepare for the interview and let me tell you, after wanting to talk to the man since I was 10 (22 years at the point of the interview) I was overly excited. As well, you will notice that I seem to be tongue tied from time to time or do not complete my thoughts. Three years ago I suffered a stroke and unfortunately when I get excited, my ability to communicate effectively is one of the first things to be affected.

The interview is in five parts. There is some colourful language in this interview, so I give it a rating of PG13. I hope you enjoy listening to it a small fraction of the enjoyment I had doing it.

To listen:

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Share the Geek:

Julia Sherred's Geeky Pleasures » Interviews

Makeshift Innocence Twitterfest

Related Posts:

Star of “Love Simple”, Patrizia Hernandez Interview

Related Posts:

In Which Julia Sherred Gets Interviewed By Too Much Awesome

The Deconstruction of Sammy Kablam

Related Posts:

Mike Lombardo Interview

Related Posts:

Runic Games Torchlight Interview

Related Posts:

Jonathan Coulton Interview

Related Posts:

Wil, Phil and Shane Available for Download

Related Posts:

Shane Nickerson Interview

Related Posts:

Dr. Phil Plait Interview

Related Posts:

Wil Wheaton Interview

Related Posts: