Yay! Just a short little post today to say that I finally (you’d be amazed how long this has been on my blog to-do list) got some image-based archives up and running for my Food & Recipe page. It turned out to be easier than I thought it would be, though there are still a few kinks to work out. Right now I’m taking a break from staring in a confused manner at the stylesheet for this plugin trying to figure out how to stop it from changing the image sizes based on how long the title of the post is. I am confident this is an incredibly easy fix but currently it’s totally beyond me how to fix it. But! I had a bit of a weird day so I’m counting this as a serious win.
My recipes are now organized into categories of savoury, sweet and vegan. Considering the fact that this is not really a food blog, those are the only really meaningful categories I could think of to divvy it up. I’m hoping to use the same plugin for other pages, maybe for my city guides or other tutorials on the blog.
If you’re interested in doing the same for a page on your website, I used the Image Archives plugin. It’s old, but it still does the job. Most likely I’ll need to find a better solution in a year or two when it’s defunct but for now it’s working out just fine. If you want to see the page in action, check it out here.
You may remember that a while ago, I announced that I was going to be doing the Busan Half Marathon this fall. I started out that journey feeling really motivated and positively, but unfortunately my body had other plans. After about a week of running high mileage days every day, my knee started complaining and eventually went on strike one morning and I could barely put weight on it, let alone run, without it screaming in pain. I am very stubborn and did not want to give up, especially since I only had 3K more to go to meet my training goal for the day (…) but finally I was forced to listen to what my body was trying to tell me: “too much”. Having started my training a bit late, I wasn’t able to take rest days or chip away at it over a longer stretch – it was all in or nothing, and my body had decided for me. I went to see a specialist at the hospital who didn’t speak much English and told me, in essence, not to run. Ever.
After that, I decided not to be an idiot – a surprisingly difficult thing for me to do. I knew I could run 10K, since I’ve been happily working on my 10K endurance this whole running season, and so I could give myself a break in training and still do the race. Also, considering the fact that I’ve never run a 10K race before it should have been my logical first choice for my birthday list goal in the first place. So I amended my goal to be a 10K race instead of a half-marathon. This sucked for me because I really hate changing goals and because I had just announced I was going to do the half here on the blog so suddenly I was embarrassed as well as disappointed. Thanks to some good friends telling me (in kind words) not to be an idiot (I need constant reminding), I got over it. I took some weeks off and then went back to my normal running schedule of about 2-3 times a week. And then this Sunday morning I woke up bright and early and ran one of the most beautiful runs of my life with a seriously great personal best time.
Busan is home to the Diamond Bridge, a beautiful suspension bridge that stretches across the water connecting two parts of the city. Along one length of the bridge is Gwangalli beach and the mountains, along the other side is ocean as far as you can see. It’s absolutely stunning from the mainland, especially at night, but it turns out it’s just as beautiful of a view when you’re actually on it with thousands of other people on an impossibly beautiful, blue-skied, windy day.
Due to a strange flaw in the registration system for the race, our alien card numbers weren’t accepted and our registration was rejected after the deadline so we couldn’t try to register again. We’d heard from friends that in years past it’s the easiest thing to run it without registering but I was still nervous about not being a registered runner. Up until we were on the bridge I felt sure someone was going to pull me off to the side and tell me no. I needn’t have worried! It was easy to get in (really, no sneaking of any kind was required as there were no barriers or blocks) and nobody was checking.
The race itself was funny, as so many things in Korea are: there was no security at any stage of the race, people walking in totally normal clothes carrying shopping bags, little kids walking along with their mothers, selfie sticks everywhere, and people stopping smack in the middle of the bridge to take photos of each other from every angle. At the water stations they were giving out water and….wait for it….choco pies. Yeah. I also saw a mom and son walking the wrong way up the very narrow shoulder into oncoming running traffic just as the route had narrowed for the final burst to the finish line, presumably to try and cheer the father on from the least ideal spot imaginable. The bridge speakers loudly played some seriously bizarre music, it sounded like the soundtrack to a post-apocalyptic action movie. And so on and so forth.
Walking up to the start and for the first kilometer we were moving slowly, shuffling basically, in an enormous crowd of people of all shapes and sizes. Many people were using the race as an opportunity to just walk across the bridge and I don’t blame them, it was beautiful – I only wish there had been more division of lanes so that the people walking wouldn’t have stretched out so much across the wide bridge that the race, at certain parts, was an endless dodge of people walking or pushing the occasional baby stroller. That being said, there were great volunteers clearly showing people where to turn back for the 5K (it went halfway over the bridge and back) or which lanes to stay in for the 10K.
After the first kilometer, it opened up a lot and I was able to run, albeit sometimes needing to dodge people like I said. Having never done another 10K race I don’t know if this is normal or not! I almost instantly lost my friends after agreeing on a spot to meet up at afterwards, but it was for the better anyways, I prefer to run alone. I turned on my music and my training app and just enjoyed myself, the breeze, the beautiful view and the blue sky. I’m so used to running alone that it was bizarre to be around so many other people. I had to remind myself to just try for my own personal best, to dig deep when I needed to and appreciate myself for trying when I needed to.
I only stopped once for a split second to take a picture, and the rest I ran at a steady pace. Within the last 3K, two of the half marathoners passed me – the half marathon did an 11K loop before running our same 10K route – and I marvelled. They were so beautiful – two African runners with the most effortless gait I’ve ever seen up close. And they flew past me and everyone else, practically catching up with the car that drove slowly ahead showing their time. They had run literally double what I had in the same amount of time and it really fired me up. I dug deeper and ran the last 3K much faster than the previous 7, in the end shaving close to 30s off my average time per kilometer! I had started my tracker about 0.2 km into the start of the race, but I ended up running 9.79 km in 1:03. I trust my app measurements, and that means I ran at a pace of 6’26”, which is a personal best for me.
At the end I felt amazing. It had been like a wind tunnel on the way back, and my ankles were a touch sore, but I sprinted to the finish line and felt totally incredible. I got a little medal saying I did the 10K race and I am still so proud of myself. It would have been foolish to try and run the half marathon, I know now that the 10K was absolutely the perfect goal for this stage in my life. After the race, I found my friends and we were all feeling great. We stepped around picnics spread out everywhere on the pavement with tons of bottles of makgeolli (rice alcohol) and beer and lots of Korean food – all at 10 in the morning! We hopped on the subway and treated ourself to some delicious, well deserved brunch before heading home.
I’m so excited I did this race, and it only inspires me to try to do more scenic races in different beautiful locations in the world. I’m so happy to call this one crossed off my birthday list.
I’m over at Guinea Pigging Green today sharing the recipe for this delicious, cozy soup. Ever since the weather shifted to become cooler, I’ve been trying to soak up every minute of Fall. It’s my favourite season and it’s so short in Canada, but in Busan I’ve heard it stretches out over a few months. I now consistently need a scarf when I go out, and have started to add some layers to my outfits as well. I’ve been drinking hot beverages and gravitating towards warm meals, including soups. At home, my mom makes a soup every week for lunches and dinners and I’ve been trying to follow suit, although less reliably than once a week. This is only my second of the season, but I am hooked on the simplicity of them – both the making and the eating. My mom will laugh because I never wanted to eat much soup at home, but how things change when you’re living on your own!
I’m excited to start making soup more often and eating it in the cool evenings after work. This one is perfect because it has a little bit of a kick to it from the ginger, garlic and black pepper. Plus it’s bright orange! So it’s beautiful to boot.
I’ve started two podcasts now, one about writing and then of course Guinea Pigging Green. For both, I’ve always taken on the role of behind-the-scenes techie to get it up and running and keep it updated. There are plenty of paid services online to take care of the tech stuff for you, but if you don’t have a lot of money to spend yet feel strongly about putting ideas out into the world then I want to give you that power! I really adore the medium of the podcast and am constantly wanting to start new shows myself. The process can seem incredibly intimidating and overwhelming if you’re just starting out, but it’s actually very straightforward once you learn how to do it yourself.
1. Record Your Show
If you’re the only one on the show, you can record using GarageBand which comes built into a Mac or whatever the built-in audio recorder is on your computer. You can get fancy here by adding a microphone, but it’s not necessary. I use the Samson Go Mic which is a great, inexpensive option, but I was making podcast just using my computer’s microphone on and off for 2 years before I made the switch.
If you’re recording long distance, the best way we’ve found (that we just switched to for GPG) is to talk over Skype or Google Hangouts while wearing headphones, and then record your own audio throughout the conversation using your computer’s built in audio recording software (I use Quicktime for this). Then, get the other person to send you their file, and mash them together in Garageband. Each file will have one person’s voice, and pauses while the other person talks, so it should be easy to sync up the audio, especially if you add a clap at the beginning of recording. The result is some seriously sexy audio quality, especially if you’re using a microphone. This method is described more here.
2. Edit Your Audio
I use Garageband exclusively for some simple editing for our show. I usually just add a short jingle at the beginning for our intro and at the end. Ours was written and recorded by my co-host’s brother, but there are tons of options in the program and even more online. In the past we’ve occasionally had a particularly bad connection and had to stop and start a few times so in those cases I go in and cut things out and edit for smoothness of speech if we get any weird mechanical errors in the audio file. We also sometimes slip up and swear on our podcast, so I’ll either cut it out or add in a bleep (free ones here) – that’s always fun. Once you’re finished editing, export the file to iTunes, which will make it into a finished mp3 file.
3. Upload Your Finished File
As I’ve talked about the blog before, my sites are self-hosted – you can learn how to self-host your website right here. That means that I pay about $6 a month to Bluehost which also gives me unlimited storage. Because I have unlimited storage, I choose to upload my podcast files to a subfolder on my domain which can be accessed by anyone at a link. If you don’t have your own website and don’t want to pay for your podcast, I recommend getting a free Dropbox account and uploading your files there in a Public folder. There’s more about the Dropbox method on this blog along with a great, comprehensive article on starting a podcast.
You’ll also need to create a square image or graphic. I made ours in Photoshop Elements, but you could also just crop down a photo. Just make sure it’s the right dimensions and upload it to your preferred location, ie. your website or Dropbox.
4. Create a Podcast Feed
This is the part that can seem the most impossible. I know I struggled quite a lot trying to figure out this step before I came across an easy method. I use the PodcastBlaster Feed Generator which is totally free and very simple. You make a quick account and then just fill-in-the-blanks on your podcast’s main page. Each time you want to add a new episode, you fill in the blanks for that too. After inputting all your information, you can download your “XML file” from the website. This is basically an RSS feed, and it’s what you’ll need to submit your show to iTunes or Stitcher.
One thing I wish we’d done originally is to run our XML file through Feedburner so we’d be able to track statistics. Live and learn, I guess! I actually don’t know how to do this process (though I will be using it if I ever start another podcast) but there’s a great tutorial here. It’s not essential but I would recommend it if you want to get a sense of how many people are listening to you.
5. Submit Your Feed to iTunes
This is actually the easiest step in the whole process. When you want to add a new podcast to iTunes, the only thing they want is the link to your XML file (RSS feed). If you’ve done it properly, all the information the database needs is in that file, so it only requires the one link. Once you’ve entered it, it’ll usually process the application for a couple of days before your show is live. Once it is, people can subscribe! This process is very similar on Stitcher.
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And that’s it!
A quick note: if you don’t want to deal with all these details and would rather pay a small amount of money, Elise has an awesome post about starting a podcast using Libsyn. That method skips many of these steps and streamlines the process a bit. I actually quite like knowing how to do all these processes and I’m learning new things all the time, but the important thing is to make the content, regardless of how you get there.
If you have a podcast, awesome! What process do you use to record and submit? If you don’t – would you ever start one? Are you a fan of the medium? If you are inspired to create a show, leave me a link in the comments, I’d love to check it out.
