Weekly Rundown:: Week of February 22nd, 2024
Step into the sonic sphere of the Dailey Blend Show where this week, host Reed Dailey serves up a tantalizing mix of personal musings, tech talk, and community vibes. Reed kicks off with a candid reflection on his podcasting journey, debating the merits of microphone upgrades from the trusty Yeti Blue to the high-end Shure models. He shares his experiences with the latest Shure SM7B and its quirks, seeking listener advice on the best audio tools for crystal-clear podcasting.
Then, Reed takes us on a virtual tour of his local passion for soccer, celebrating the Chicago Fire's vibrant energy and embracing community spirit. He recounts his return to the sport, the electric atmosphere at the games, and his plans to deepen his roots with season tickets.
The episode shifts gears as Reed shares an update on the Negronis with Greg project, teasing a new drink feature from the Chicago staple, The Whistler. He hints at future collaborations and digital recipe books for mixology enthusiasts, ensuring your cocktail game will never lack inspiration.
As if that wasn't enough to stir your curiosity, Reed also gives a nod to the evolving Friday Top Five newsletter, promising thematic content that goes beyond the usual picks. And for the productivity aficionados, he unveils his latest iteration of the Life Optimization Playbook, an end-of-day checklist designed to streamline your week – now available for download.
Join Reed as he wraps up with a preview of upcoming guest features and double doses of content. Whether you're a tech geek, soccer fan, or cocktail connoisseur, this episode is a blend of insights and entertainment you won't want to miss. Tune in on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your preferred platform, and get ready to amplify your week with the Dailey Blend Show. Catch Reed on the next episode, and don't forget to follow, like, and subscribe for your regular fix of the Dailey Blend! 🎙⚽️🍸🎧
Listen and subscribe to the show on the following platforms.
As always, you can get this episode and all previous episodes on such great platforms as Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, Spotify, and Anchor. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button and have all the episodes downloaded automatically to your device. #DaileyBlendShow
Across Dailey Blend
Music Monday
This week, we are featuring our favorite funk fellows who are back with their latest studio album, and we couldn’t be more excited to check it out and share it with all our readers! - Linked Here
Check out all past Music Monday features - Linked Here
Throwback Thursday
This week, we continue to feature Tiesto and his ‘In Search Of Sunrise Series'‘. We have Vol.2 and Vol.03 available now. You can follow along with the full catalog as we release them linked here.
Check out all past Throwback Thursday features - Linked Here
Dailey Blend Mix Series
Check out all past Dailey Blend Mixes - DaileyBlend.com | SoundCloud | Apple Podcasts
Sunday Sessions
Check out the past Sunday Sessions on DaileyBlend.com and SoundCloud.
Drink With Greg & Negronis with Greg
Drink of the Week
We continue focusing on the drinks from the world-famous Chicago institution 'The Whistler. This week we are enjoying the Dopesmoker by Robert Brenner, originally created in 2012 for the bar. If you want to check it out and all the other recipes from the Whistler book we are loving, head over to Drink With Greg.
Get the playbook (recipe) for the drink - Linked Here
Check out past ‘Drinks of the Week’ - Linked Here
Podcast Channels
Check out all things from the Drink With Greg Podcast - Linked Here
Check out all things from the Negronis With Greg Podcast - Linked Here
Connect Online (DWG & NWG)
Connect with Drinks With Greg (DWG) on Instagram @DrinkWithGreg & X @DrinkWithGreg
Connect with Negronis With Greg (NWG) on Instagram @NegronisWithGreg & X @NegronisWithG
Friday’s Top Five (Now a Newsletter)
A Recap From Last Week
Each week in our ‘Friday Top Five’ segment, we feature five things we thought were interesting, notable, or culturally significant. Last week we covered Apps to boost productivity, prompts to enhance wellbeing, books to inspire, coloring books to decompress, and gear for the adventure ahead.
Friday Top Five Archives are Linked Here
Subscribe to the ‘Dailey Blend Newsletter’
Friday Top Five Archives are Linked Here
Tools & Toolkits
At Dailey Blend, we take pride in continually offering new and innovative templates to enhance your social media strategy. One of our latest creations, the "Introduction Social Media Calendaring" template, is designed to provide a comprehensive framework for beginners to dive into the world of social media management. This template offers a one-week social media calendar that simplifies the process of planning and scheduling posts across various platforms. With pre-designed sections for content ideas, engagement strategies, and analytics review, this template ensures a well-rounded approach to captivate your target audience. Whether you are new to social media or looking to streamline your existing strategy, our Introduction Social Media Calendaring template is a valuable tool that will empower you to optimize your online presence and drive meaningful engagement.
Connect Online
And, as always, please give me feedback on X, formerly Twitter @DaileyBlend or Instagram @DaileyBlend. What do you want more or less of? Other suggestions? Which features were your favorite? Please let me know, and don’t forget to put #FridayTop5 at the end so I can find it. Enjoy the week, and catch you next week with the Dailey Blend Show weekly Rundown.
Transcription - Dailey Blend Show Updates Website, Launches Video
Host Reed Dailey (IG & X - @ReedDailey): This is the weekly rundown segment of the Daily Blend Show
Hello, Internet friends. Hey, can you hear me? Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Dailey Blend show with me, Reed Dailey. If you are new around here, this is the weekly rundown where I feature things that I thought were interesting and notable, across the world wide web, basically, tech kind of media, pop culture. Talk about what's going on at Dailey Blend. Special projects I'm personally involved with, and some stuff that I’m doing over with my partner in crime, Greg, for the world-famous Negronis with Greg. And drink with Greg. And, of course, some of the new tools toolkits that we're releasing as part of our life optimization playbook. But before I jump into the show, I want to remind you that we are on Spotify and Apple Podcast. Hate both those platforms. Fear not. We are over at YouTube. And if you're a real social person, because I know I am, you can check us out at Dailey Blend on x and Instagram. And with all that said, let's jump into the show.
For a while now, I've been debating upgrading my mic situation
So, for a while now, I've been debating upgrading my mic situation, and I'm sort of perplexed here because right now, I’m recording on a Yeti blue mic, and it works pretty well. It was $100, plugged into the computer, and guess what? It just kind of works well. Does it sound as great as other things? No. But does it work? Yes. Then I have another set that I've been using for a while that sounds really good, which is the. Sure. Studio microphone. And I think it's called, like, the s nine. Sorry, it's the 58 or 59 b. And this is like the go-to mic for bands from the. Could throw it, drop it. I think the person who sold it to me said you could drink a bottle of whiskey, drop it on the ground, and would still be fine. And so the nice thing with that microphone is, I think they were like, $80. They plug into my sound card so I can have up to four people on a podcast. And, it records nicely, but you got to talk directly into the microphone. And so between this show, the, drink with Greg Negroni with Greg podcast, and the digital deep dive, I do quite a bit of podcasting. I hit a big milestone in terms of number of downloads. We hit over 100,000. And so I was like, all right, let me reward myself with a microphone. And I bought the really expensive, sure, microphone that's been out, but I bought the upgraded version. So the one that everyone knows is that slick one you see all over the Internet. And every blogger podcaster is using the M SM m seven. b and now they have the SM7db, which has a preamp built in, which helps give it a boost. And so I was really excited about it. And then I got it home and I heard all this white noise buzzing. And so I had to go back to the Guitar Center and shout out to the team at the Highland Park guitar center because they're just fantastic at customer service. they're great. Andrew does a great job. His partner in crime, Luke, does a great job, the whole staff. And they were able to troubleshoot that. My sound card, actually, if you only had one channel plugged in and you didn't turn down the other ones, you would get the hissing. And so we figured that out, and I brought it home and I was kind of, like, over it. I've had this happen before with really high-end things. I think the best thing I could compare this to is when you buy a really nice car. Not that I would know, but I've been told you got to baby them and tune them and take them into the shop and all that good stuff. And I'm thinking more and more about this mv m seven. It's half the price. Does it sound as good? No. Every blogger that's like, a mic blogger is like, no, it's not as good, but it sounds pretty good. it's got the XLR, so if you really want to get into it with the sound card, you can. It's, got a nice little stand because it's a little lighter than the SM seven db or the SM seven b. So it's got like a nice little tripod. And I think the fact that it just sort of, I'm guessing, would work very similar to this yeti, where it just plugs in, is a big selling point, too. Also, I was watching Club, says he, Shannon Sharp, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite just voices on the Internet of just brutal honesty and just a little bit of guilty pleasure fun. And he's using it, and I'm like, okay, so he's using this at his home. He sounds fantastic. Do I really need to fuss with all the other things just from like transport and going somewhere or? I don't like a lot of clutter on my desk. And if I had the sm m 70 b, then I've got to have like a mic stand, then I've got all these cords running, then I got to have a sound card. So I don't know, if you are listening to this show and you have a fantastic mic or any insight into mics, or know someone that's like, messed around with the, MV seven, which is the podcast microphone or the more expensive SM seven db, let me know. I'm kind of curious there.
Let's talk about the Chicago fire. Robert Brenner: I grew up playing soccer
All right, m moving from talking about technology as it relates to podcasting on a podcast. Let's talk about the Chicago fire. So one of the big goals for me this year has been to spend more time getting m to know my community, kind of doing things in and around Chicago and my town. And I grew up playing soccer. I played my way through soccer, through undergrad, grad school, and then I actually played on one of the oldest men's league teams in America, which was the Irish rovers out of Woodside in Queens. And it was just a fantastic experience. after that, I moved down to Atlanta. I played, I think, in a men's league and a coed league. And then I took about a ten-year break and said, I'm good. It, wasn't until a couple of years ago that my brother was like, hey, get back into soccer. Check out Man City. I think you're going to really enjoy it. The product's great. And hey, by the way, the MLS is really starting to put a fantastic product on the field. And so I checked out MLS, I don't know, like three years ago. And I went to a fire game, I think two years ago with my family, and I was like blown away. The product was great on the field. The pace was great, and the action was great. I was really fired up. The fact that Messi signed halfway through the season. I bought the second half of the MLS package and was watching all sorts of games online, highlights. It was a great apple purchase. And the rationalization for me was like, I think $40. So basically, the cost of two beers and food, or one trip to a restaurant to watch at a sports bar. And so, I've been in touch with the Chicago fires team, trying to get to know the program and be a part of the community. And I was happy to be invited to the event for the release of going back or bringing back red, or coming back to Red. I can't remember the tagline, but it was a cool event to release the new red jersey for the Chicago Fire. I got to see DeMarcus Beasley speak and got, to see Brian McBride there, who's now part of us soccer federation. I think he's running it, but don't quote me on the exact title. But it was just really cool to be part, of back, being back with a soccer community. So I look forward to getting some season tickets and going to games this year and checking things out. If you are in the Chicago area, go check them out at Soldier Field. Just remember, the food situation is completely atrocious. Like, shame on the owners of that stadium. I mean, there's like hot dogs, beer, and that's it. I was like, there with my kid. I was like, is there any ice cream or anything for a kid? And it's just not. And that stadium. Yes, the in-seat experience is great, and I know they remodeled it, but let's demo. And I've been a big fan of the whole series. Obviously, that's why we're doing the feature. I think what I'm going to do is run through this, and then I'm going to do my own mix of all my favorite tracks and either use the originals or try to find remixes of those. So if you do, like, this mix, series and kind of that idea, dm me sort of message me on what your favorite tracks are because I'm going to start putting together a list of what those tracks are and start working through kind of a mix. I know we're getting closer to Dailey blend 150, so we’ll probably do this for like 155 just based on timing. in terms of going over to drink with Greg Negronis. With Greg. Greg and I finally had our first meeting of 2024. Just schedules have not been great, and so I got to say, he and I just jam through to do lists and action items. Thanks to Google Docs and cloud collaboration, it just makes it super easy. So, we’re continuing to focus on the world-famous Chicago institution, the Whistler. And this week we are featuring dope Smoker by Robert Brenner. It was created in 2023. highly recommend going to drinkwithgreg.com to check out how to make it, the recipe, et cetera. Also, we've linked to where you can buy their book. Greg and I were talking, we're like, okay, so we're going to run through this. And I think where we're headed is we're going to be doing a lot of our own drinks, working with bartenders, highlighting some of our favorite drinks, and putting out a series of, I'll call it, like, recipe books. So be on the look for those. Those will be digital downloads. And obviously, we're going to go find someone to partner with to print some of those things, and really enjoy it and have a bit of fun with it in terms of content and podcast. We're going to get back onto the podcast train next week with the next Negronis with Greg episode. So that should be out on Thursday or Friday next week. And then in terms of the Friday top five newsletter, I think it's pretty well known now. We've had a nice uptick in folks subscribing to it, downloading it, really enjoying the feedback in terms of more like thematic newsletters versus just kind of like five things. Not that I'm not going to just do certain times where it's like, here are just like my five favorites, but there's definitely been more of a theme and that's been intentional. so if you are not signed up for that, head over to DaileyBlend.com newsletter and you will get all the goodness in your inbox every Friday. rounding out the show. What I've done is I'm continuing to build out the life optimization playbook. I need a better name. So if you guys have any better names, that just sounds like very grandiose. I don't want to say it's corporate, but it's too much. So I'm still working on the title, but I was really enjoying this end-of-day checklist, which is a weekly planning tool. I guess I could call it a weekly planning tool versus an end-of-day checklist. So I guess Netnet, I need two new working titles. But I used it for about a month and I realized that it was just a little tight when I was doing it. Kind of like a traditional, 18 x 511 sort of, vertical. So I just sort of flipped the formatting horizontally. And I've got that available on download through canva. So, if you just head over to this week’s episode of the weekly rundown on Dailey Blend, you can get to the link; it's in the post.
You should be able to print it off as black and white
Just let me know what you think. I jazzed it up a little bit with some, branding from Dailey Blend. but for the most part, it's pretty straightforward. You should be able to print it off as black and white. One of the big ask I got was including sort of the date stamp or week stamp, if you will, person's, name. And then I actually stole the idea of a sign-off bucket from this YouTube video I saw with Kobe Bryant where he was talking about his year plan of fitness. And he's like, we made a plan with ourselves. We signed that plan. So we're going to achieve that plan and that's kind of how I think about it. It's like, did you sign it? You could sign it at the beginning, you could sign it at the end to say, like, I'm going to actually do the things that I said. We planned it, let's execute against it. So I included it. It's just something that I thought was really cool or interesting. When he said I signed the contract, I think he was probably making that as a reference or a joke. But I actually took it to heart and I was like, you know what? I put together plans and it's like, okay, I said, I'm going to do something. I'm going to do it. And so this is a prime example of that.
We'll have double dipping on content throughout the week, including Friday’s top five.
all right, so that wraps it up for this week's episode of the weekly rundown. Thanks for tuning in. Be, on the lookout for the Friday top five coming out tomorrow. And we do have some guests already teed up, for the show. So we're going to get back to doing a lot more of the sound-off podcast. Expect more guest features in the coming weeks. So we'll have double dipping on content throughout the week, both the weekly rundown, Friday top fives, and then interviews with folks. As always, you can like, follow, and subscribe to the show on IG and X. You can check us out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. You can find me at, LinkedIn.com/in/reedDailey. I'm on Instagram @ReedDailey and X at @ReedDailey. and, with that said, catch you on the next episode.
Friday Top Five
You can complement the Weekly Rundown with the Friday Top Five newsletter, where the Dailey Blend team shares things we thought were interesting that you need to know about, tips and tricks to tackle life, and of course, some music to get the weekend started right!
