Production is going well. I’ve got everything on the timeline ready to go, just adding the out-takes and credits now then I’ll render it all up. While waiting for a render yesterday I put together the episode 4 teaser video. Yeah, I know, mute point to release the teaser on the 4th but I just have to split these hairs. Anyway, the teaser is available here. I’ll have it on the episodes page later.

Cheers

I’m sure I’ll say this again tomorrow; big thanks go to Ashley Witt for our new theme music. I think it really captures the fun feeling of Hak.5, anyway you can give your $0.02 in the forums.

See you all tomorrow!
–Darren

The editing marathon continues. With only a small bit left to shoot and almost everything edited we’re very close to having ep4 in the can. Once it’s all chopped up and ready to go I’ll get to play the fun game of encoding. Joy. I’ll try to get an ipod video version out, which I believe is simply a 320×240 h.264 .mov or mpeg4 .m4v. If you’ve got a tutorial handy send me a link, I’ve got Quicktime 7 pro but wasn’t happy with the quality of the h.264 we released for ep3.

More good news: I’ve got the RSS feeds straightened out. I’ll have links on the left for each video codec/download format feed in the next few days. I’ll be moving our torrent tracker to another server in the coming days which will allow us to enable server side sharing, thus providing faster and more reliable downloads. I’ll keep the existing tracker up for those of you still seeding/downloading but the RSS feeds will point to the new tracker.

Not even cheap American beer can quench the thirst of the leet hacker

Shoutouts go to all the cool kids in #hak5 on irc.techphile.ca and over here in the forums.

–Darren

We just finished our second production weekend. With just one more segment to shoot the cast is ready to wrap up while I begin the editing marathon. I’m very pleased with the quality of each and every segment in this episode and have to give a huge thanks to the cast and crew for pulling off two very long production weekends. We didn’t skip a beat, even when the police stopped by the studio at 5 AM. Quick tip on that note: Be polite to the officers if they ever find your late night circuit board soldering and prop M16s suspicious.

In other news Jon and Harrison were recently interviewed by Frank Linhares on the Techphile podcast. Grab a copy while it’s hot, and if you missed out on the interview with Darren and Wess it’s also available.

It looks like Harrison is feeding me lines via telepathy

Thanks go out to the hacklings for the continued support and patience as we wrap up another great show. We’re all psyched about this Saturday’s release!

–Darren

Filming went great yesterday. We turned on the live webcam in the studio, which we may do again. It’ll be on the top left of this page. Unfortunately we were unable to film both the segments we had scheduled, but I’m sure we’ll make up the lost time on Sunday. What we did get however is in my opinion the best 50 second Hak.5 segment we’ve ever produced. And it only took 5 hours to do so.

Jedi Mind Hacking powers won’t help you here Harrison

Back to the grind. Big shout out to all the cool kids in #Hak5 on irc.techphile.ca

So much has happened in the last two weeks since episode 3 release and we’re very happy with where Hak.5 is going. We’ll have some important announcements later this week but first the fun stuff. Hak.5 has a new IRC home over at irc.techphile.ca in #hak5. Big thanks go to Frank Linhares for setting up the IRC server. While your there do a /list as many podcasts and IPTV shows are making a home there.

We’ve just began our episode 4 production weekend. I know, we must be crazy (at least 40% crazy) seeing that episode #1 took almost two months to produce. More updates soon!

Harrison does his security segment without a computer. Three words: Jedi Mind Hacking.

That’s all for now but expect more updates over the weekend.

–Darren

Just one more day ’till Hak.5 comes at you again with more entertaining hacks cracks and laughs. I’m up late the day before release again rendering up my favorite “segment”; the credits. We put a lot of hard work into this episode, and 7 DV tapes later we ended up with around 70 minutes of edited footage. Don’t worry; we’ll keep the release under 40 minutes. It’s a shame the other 30 minutes will never see the light of day… Or will it?

Ali joins us in what we call “glue”, the short bits between segments. Hilarity ensues

Wess gave up on me during the trivia segment. I eventually got it right… eventually

We’ve had a blast shooting (and re-shooting) this episode of Hak.5; the 10 minutes of out-takes in the bloopers file is a testament to that. We’re really excited about releasing and hearing your feedback on the show. We’ve listened to everything so far and I think the changes we have made will really make this episode shine. It’s by far our best work.

Keep the positive energy hacklings,

–Darren

The teaser for episode 3 has been posted to the episodes page! I’ve added some geek-funny from Ep3 to the end. Let us know what you think.

If you haven’t already, head over to the Techphile podcast and listen to the interview Frank did with Wess and I about Hak.5; it was just released last night. Thanks Mike!

Production is going great! We’re just about done with episode 3 with only one more segment to shoot. Saturday we spent about 16 hours programming and shooting the final segment as well as a homebrew hack, but then the sun came up and the crew started to fall over exhausted. We’ll get that segment done this weekend, stitch it all together, and spend a day or two watching the progress bar on the H.264 encode .

Jon joins me in an awesome homebrew hack.

Wess gets really pissed at me in the middle of an additional mod segment

With 9 more days until Episode 3 release we’re all in full gear getting this thing together. Running time is looking a little longer than the previous two, with I believe 12 segments. There’s a lot to be excited about here at Hak.5. Thanks go to Frank for the interview, the cast for putting up with a 16 hour shooting day, and Mike for mentioning us on Command-N, that was uber-leet. We can’t wait to get this thing out the door, party, and start working on an even better Episode 4!

–Darren

Another batch of great news. First, Wess and I will be on the Techphile podcast on September 25th so be sure to check that out. We recorded the interview last Sunday and it was a blast. Frank is an awesome tech podcaster on the same playing field as Leo Laporte. He is also responsible for the Toronto Tech Meetup a few months back that featured much of the old TechTV crew like Leo Laporte, Kevin Rose, Dan Huard, and most of the other people we give //Mad Props to in our episodes. Pictures of that event can be found at Bamcat’s Flickr. Now we’re excited about the recently announced Toronto Tech Meetup 2.0 Second Edition++, or whatever it’ll be called. No dates are final yet, but it should be this December and most of the Hak.5 crew will be there.

Also big news, we’ve finally updated the cast page so if you’re curious about who Hak.5 is you might want to check that out.

As far as production is concerned we’re about 70% done shooting Ep3. There were two segments that were shot and later re-shot and I’m glad we did as the production quality of the second shoots are so much better than anything we’ve ever released. Now for the pictures:

Alli’s new segment is amazing. I’m really happy with the way it turned out. She has so much more life and energy. What were we ever thinking asking her to do Chicks with Tips?

Harrison and I had a great time shooting the on-location portion of this segment.

What’s Black and Blue and operates at 2.4 GHz?

Setting up our RSS feeds with Broadcast Machine is going well. Soon we’ll have 4 feeds to choose from; an xvid direct download, xvid bit torrent, h.264 direct download, and h.264 bit torrent. Unless I’m doing something completely wrong and there is a way to get all of those into one feed and have podcatching applications understand which to download. I’ll have to play with it a little more.

Thanks for all of the feedback and taking the time to answer the polls, it’s really helping us make this show better. And if you haven’t already seen the forums you should take a peak, so drop by and say hello.

–Darren

We have been working hard on episode 3, but unfortunately I won’t have any behind the scenes images for you tonight. I don’t want to spoil anything for the launch on October 5th. Do I need to keep saying that, you guys do know we release every 5th right?

Ok, big news, I’ve totally re-done the Episodes page. I think it looks a lot better, and no more trying to find a working mirror. That’s right, DNS has synced and Hak5.tv (not Hak5.org) is being hosted on another ISP to handle the direct downloads. Yay! Now that we have a single download server I can start the wonderfully fun adventure of getting us listed on iTunes, among others. I’m sure it will be an absolute breeze, I mean, it’s Apple’s site right? It should be a walk in the park, with our good friend RSS, and happy bunnies will be bouncing all about the screen while cheerfully exclaiming their love for open standards and freedom. Joy!

But first, I’m off to play with Broadcast Machine. Hopefully that Video-CMS will allow us to organize our episodes, teasers, half-week-hacks, etc, all in one spiffy environment while also providing everyone with an RSS feed for their favorite podcatcher. Let’s just hope it’s compatible with everyone’s feed requirements.

Alright, thanks everyone for the continued feedback. We’re really excited about releasing episode 3. Only 2 weeks away! Ooh, I guess that means I should get back to editing.

–Darren

All sorts of goodies to go over tonight hacklings, so lets get right to it.

After an intense brainstorming meeting with the entire crew we’ve finalized segments for episode 3 and started filming. Wess is coming to us with two amazing mods. We’re also introducing two new segments, one with Harrison based on Security, and something special with Alli. She’s ditching the “Chick-Tips” for a longer, more creative and energy filled segment.

Second big announcement, we’re moving to a new web host. We’ve worked out a great deal with an awesome ISP who will be providing us with the terabytes we need to do great new things like 1. Offer a single, reliable, direct download link. 2. Get listed on iTunes, woohoo. And 3. Offer a RSS feed for your podcatching clients that don’t support Bit Torrent. More on that as the move progresses. And while we’re talking about it, I’d like to thank konefku and everyone who provided mirrors while we were getting off the ground. I can whole heartedly say we have the most awesome fans!

Third, we finally have T-Shirts available. We’re currently doing them through cafepress as we don’t have the capital to produce and distribute them ourselves, however we’ve kept the prices as low as possible. With every T-Shirt purchase, Hak.5 gets a dollar profit. That may not sound like much at first, but keep in mind that one dollar can go a long way in the cheap domestic beer department. And you know those beers are a driving factor in the show. Or at very least they power the out-takes . The fronts have the Hak.5 logo, and the backs of two of them have “Trust Your Technolust” across the backs. Spiffy. For the cost of one T-Shirt, you too can sponsor a needy IPTV actor. For less than a cup of coffee, you can provide these starving artists with the alcoholic nourishment they need.

Fourth, we’ve got a hotline. Feel free to call in with your questions, comments, segment ideas, or pranks. The number is (206) 338-HAK5. That’s (206) 338-4255.

Fifth… Well, I’ll let Alli take this one. See the video below:

If you don’t have Macromedia Flash installed or the video above isn’t working, a Quicktime version can be downloaded here

So, now that all that stuff is out of the way, here are some highlights from last nights mod shoot with Wess:

1000 watt work lights, $30. DV tapes, $14. Getting to wear latex gloves for a mod with Wess, priceless.

Alli is now our official production notes photographer. As you can see we’re using a Sony HC-85. Buy 8 thousand T-Shirts and we’ll be able to upgrade to the Canon XL2.

Words cannot express how happy I am to have these for queuing and editing purposes

Lastly, thank you for all of the feedback in the forums, email, blog, and polls. We’re getting better at this all the time and we’re having a blast trying new things. Let us know what you think about “Half-Week-Hacks” between episodes in the poll on the left.

–Darren

Please bear with us as we revamp the site. We’ll be making major updates to the cast and episodes pages shortly. And hopefully the new design will allow us to cover the costs of hosting and equiptment. Shoot us an email if you have questions, comments, or suggestions.

EDIT: Welcome Slashdotters. Good news Hak.5 fans, we’ve worked out a deal with an ISP that will be providing us with the terabytes of bandwidth we need to continue the show. And as many of you have asked, yes, this means we will be doing iTunes shortly. We just finished shooting a mod segment for episode 3 and we’ll have production notes online tomorrow. Many more great announcements coming as well. So again, welcome slashdotters, check out the episodes page, and hopefully the server won’t melt!

EDIT (again): I’ve installed the WP-Cache 2.0 plugin and everything seems smooth now. Maybe we won’t melt after all.

Thanks,

–Darren

First off, thanks go out to everyone who watched the show and provided such awesome feedback. We are thrilled that everyone enjoyed the show, which gives us a ton of energy for the next episode. Thank you so much for everyone who is seeding the bit torrent file, which helps tremendously. And everyone who provided mirrors, you rule!

I know that at least a handful of people are having problems playing the h.264 version, mainly on mac with quicktime. If VLC, Mplayer, etc aren’t working for you please let us know. We’re trying to find the perfect codec for everyone. Until then I’ve added a Quicktime version of episode 2. You can find the links on the episodes page.

–Darren