Podstar Runner 2008

From Homestar Runner Wiki

Revision as of 23:53, 20 February 2008

Strong Bad Emails and More!

Crazy Cartoon on an iPod Video!

Podstar Runner is a collection of cartoons transferable to a video capable portable media player (such as a fifth-generation iPod), in .m4v format. It was released simultaneously with the email technology. It was originally a collection of Strong Bad Emails, but on March 6, 2006 they added Teen Girl Squad and called it Teen Girl Squadcast. By March 15, 2007, the first twelve Teen Girl Squad episodes were released. Other non-Strong Bad Email and non-Teen Girl Squad shorts were added, such as Everybody to the Limit on April 12, 2006, and the Peasant's Quest Preview on July 27th, 2006. Also, on March 1, 2007, a "podcast" button was added to the navbar at the bottom of the Homestar Runner site, yet the "sbemail podcast!" button continued to appear at the end of the message cycle every week until July 16, 2007. Podstar Runner usually gets updated on Thursdays, along with the three weeklies buttons.

The service was discontinued in September 2007 with a note saying "Podcasts are gone for now. We'll tell them you were thinking about 'em though."

A Main Page message on January 7th, 2008, indicated that podcasts would return the following Thursday. As promised, the Podstar Runner page had the email looking old available for download.

Page Title: Podstar Runner. One a time, please.

Release Date: January 30, 2006, updated January 10, 2008

Transcript for Currently Downloadable Emails

"Uh-oh! Face print!"

{Shows a collection of record and CD covers being scrolled through, similar to iTunes' Cover Flow, the first being Taranchula's "Shady Missionaries"}

STRONG BAD: No.

{Flips over to a record/CD cover to Peacey P's "deliberance" album}

STRONG BAD: No.

{Flips over to a picture of Strong Bad sitting at the Tandy 400 with the logo for Strong Bad Email above, written in the Tandy's default text}

STRONG BAD: No.

{Flips over to a record/CD cover of Limozeen's "Feed The Childrens"}

STRONG BAD: Wait...

{Flips back to picture of Strong Bad sitting at the Tandy with the logo for Strong Bad Email above, written in the Tandy's default text}

STRONG BAD: Yes.

{Selected email will begin}

{After selected email has finished}

{Strong Bad stands up in front of the record/CD covers and the covers become more shadowed}

STRONG BAD: Uh-oh! Face print!

{Strong Bad presses his face against the screen and leaves a smudge when he pulls his face off. Strong Bad gives a disgusted groan when he looks at it}

STRONG BAD: You're gonna need one of those little... shimmy cloths.

{Strong Bad leaves screen from the right and everything but the smudge fades to black}

Transcript for Previously Downloadable Emails

"What am I doing in this tiny box?"

{The start-up image of the iPod shows, but instead of a silver Apple logo, a silver Homestar head is dead center:}

{The menu scrolls down to the bottom and the selected email plays.}

{After the email has played, the screen cuts back to the "iPod menu". After a second, Strong Bad's head pops into view}

STRONG BAD: Whoa, what am I doing in this tiny box? {starts banging his head and hands on the screen} Let me! Outta the! Tiny! Box!

{The screen appears to shatter, with a shattering sound effect.}

STRONG BAD: Whoops. Hope you got the extended warranty.

{The shattered screen crackles, and goes black. Two shards of the screen fall.}

Transcript for Teen Girl Squad

Teen Girl Squad!

{The Homestar Runner iPod start-up image appears. After a few seconds, a piece of paper is placed over it, with the iPod menu drawn in Strong Bad's handwriting:}

{The menu scrolls down to the bottom.}

STRONG BAD: {TGS voice} Click click click click! {regular voice} Click.

{The selected episode plays.}

Fun Facts

Podstar Runner podcast

Trivia

• The label on the floppy disk from the original Podstar menu was unreadable, but there were several possibilities.
• The podcast "Strong Bad Email" became #1 on February 20, 2006.
• The podcast "Strong Bad Emails & More!" became #1 on April 6, 2006.
• The podcast was featured on the Podcasts main page on iTunes in the "New and Notable" section on February 19, 2006.
• Around March 5, 2006, the name of the podcast changed from "Strong Bad Email" to "Strong Bad Emails and More!" due to the addition of the Teen Girl Squadcast.
• The battery meter in the intro for the Strong Bad Emails is relatively full, while the hand-drawn intro for Teen Girl Squadcast's battery meter is almost empty.
• One of the keywords for the Teen Girl Squadcast episodes is "arrowed", an obvious reference to the Arrow'd Guy.
• The binary number in the summary for technology converts to 3,341,564,587.
• The old page title read "Podstar Runner Come On And Come On, Ya'll", which was a reference to the email intro of rampage.
• The podcast is no longer available on the iTunes Store.

Remarks

The original Podcast website!

• For some reason, the clock at the top of the iPod screen reads 8:04 before and after the toon, even though the toon may last more than 1 minute.
• With the exception of Homsar's appearance in dragon, none of the clickable Easter eggs from the original versions of the emails are present.
  • All the Easter eggs (except for "She Likes Cloth" from issue #12) in the Teen Girl Squad issues are present, and play automatically, as does the Peasant's Quest Preview egg.
• The notice on the main page originally said "sbemail podcast!" but it was later changed to "sbemails on ipod!". This was most likely changed after noting that Podstar Runner was not truly a podcast, due to the videos not being broadcast through a RSS feed syndication. As of February 6, 2006, however, an official RSS feed has been released making Podstar Runner an actual podcast. On March 5, 2006, it was changed to "teen girl squadcast!" in response to the new feature.
• The sound quality in the iPod version of bottom 10 seems to drop to the "Flash file" level after the appearance of Wet The Cheat. There also seems to be a minor sound bug while Strong Bad has the jibblies. Furthermore, on the dry T-shirt flyer, the font Snap ITC has been replaced with what appears to be Arial (same thing for the font for Chocolardiac Arrest).
• The podstar.homestarrunner.com server doesn't have the 404'd page set up; incorrect URLs will get the standard 404 error page instead.
• The filename for dragon is "trogdor," not "dragon."
• Due to the size and resolution of the iPod's screen, virus's Navbar is removed, and its "widescreen" effects removed by pan and scan.
• On February 27, 2006, Podstar Runner ceased downloads of all the previously available Strong Bad Emails and only allowed downloads of the most recent Podcast. A notice on the page read "due to bandwidth doodoo, we're doing one at a time for now." It was fixed on March 3, 2006, and all the emails could be downloaded again.
• Everybody to the Limit, These Peoples Try to Fade Me, and An Important Rap Song are played with the email intro and ending despite the fact that they're all not Strong Bad Emails.
• In the Teen Girl Squad Issue 1 podcast, the "It's Over!" card appears after the Strong Bad Easter Egg to match the endings of the other issues.
• In death metal, the email intro seems to be a little extended. Plus, the "shee-doot" sound is omitted when Strong Bad signs off of Video Thyme.
• Every time an email was added to the website's episode list from 2006-2007, another one that has been released for quite some time was removed because the maximum capacity for the list of emails was 18. This also happened on the podcast on iTunes itself.
• The Peasant's Quest Preview showed up on the Podstar directory before getting added to the iTunes podcast page.
• While the iPod in the background is meant to be a fifth generation model, the headphone port is placed in the top center of the device like a fourth generation's, rather than at the top right. However, as of January 10, 2008, it has been replaced with an iPod Touch.
• The Podstar Runner version of Teen Girl Squad Issue 11 features a glue stick superimposed onto the corner of the screen during the scene with the Shirt Folding Store Manager, whose hair and face are constructed from sections of a magazine photo cut and pasted onto the paper.
• Before the podcast was discontinued in September 2007, each episode came with artwork. However, episodes released since the podcasts returned have not included artwork.
  • However, the preview image used to advertise the 2008 series of podcasts have been exactly as the same as their corresponding page on the Homestar Runner Wiki.
• In the 2008 ending, "shimmy cloth" is a mispronunciation of chamois (pronounced "shamee"), the common name for soft leather used for polishing glass and other reflective surfaces.

Goofs

The glitched preview image

• When the email ends and returns to the animated iPod menu, "Homestarrunner.com" is highlighted. However, the animated menu at the beginning of the email has "Email" selected. The iPod's memory should keep the selection where it was when you left it, not move back to the top.
• Many of the listed file sizes are inaccurate. The table below shows the correct file sizes.
• The preview picture for Teen Girl Squad 9 (in iTunes) has positioning problems; everything inside the panel seems to be shifted up and to the left, overlapping the panel border.
• The sound in crazy cartoon is out of sync between the intro and the ending.
• When you view the podcast in the iTunes Music Store, there are no dates listed for some of the emails, including army, flag day, trevor the vampire, stunt double, caper, isp, and alternate universe. (Dates will appear once you download them, save caper and army.) Dates aren't listed for Peasant's Quest Preview and Malloween Commercial.
• The Title for "Peasant's Quest Game" is incorrect (it's supposed to be Peasant's Quest Preview).
• When An Important Rap Song was added to the list of downloadable toons, a "\" was added at the end of These Peoples Try to Fade Me.
• On certain browsers, the links labeled "main" and "rando" do not work from the Podstar Runner menu.
• Podstar Runner's link for looking old's podcast took you to a non-existent page. The working link to the podcast could only have been found on the RSS feed.

Glitches

Two podcasts

• At the end of trevor the vampire you can see the word back fade in for a split second.
• On the navbar, you cannot click the "p" in podcast.

Fixed Glitches

• In the XML feed, the description of crying was the same as that of kids' book, namely "Strong Bad seriously defaces a children's book." This has since been fixed.
• There used to be two podcasts available through iTunes Music Store: one by "Strong bad" and one by "The Brothers Chaps." Noticeably different between the two was the logo of the two podcasts, as well as the absent "Clean" marker in the second podcast. The podcast by Strong Bad has since been removed.
• When Guitar was released, all the e-mail links became the same, all leading to the guitar e-mail file. Now they have reverted back to the separate names.
• When montage was released, the link to download montage was incorrect in the XML feed, which pointed to "sb_email_motage.m4v" instead of "sb_email_montage.m4v", leaving users temporarily unable to download montage through iTunes. This was fixed the day after.
• The date for theme park in the podcast feed was incorrectly listed as May 6, 2006 instead of June 6, 2006.
• Due to the use of relative linking in the navbar (and depending on the browser), clicking on any of the links on the bottom of the page will sometimes work correctly but will sometimes take you to a nonexistent page beginning with http://podstar.homestarrunner.com/, with the Store being the only exception. This was fixed when "podcast" was added to the navbar.

Inside References

• The description for personal favorites reflects how TBC often get questioned about the existence of the emails.
• The description of isp refers to Matt Chapman's prior job at MindSpring, previously mentioned in a similar manner in the DVD commentary for garage sale.
• On the new Podcasts, the album covers for Strong Bad Sings and Other Type Hits, Homestar's Bread Sing Alongs, DJ Teh Cheat b/w the New KoT and the Limozeen/Sloshy split single are visible in the background, but not selected. The albums that are selected are Shady Missionaries, deliberance and Feed the Childrens, before settling on the Strong Bad Email option. The picture for the Strong Bad Email option is similar to the feature's preview in the TV Time Toons Menu.

Real-World References

• The description for bottom 10 refers to one of the locations television host David Letterman has claimed his daily "Top Ten List" was compiled.

Files Made Available Through Podstar Runner

Previously Downloadable Emails

Previously Downloadable Teen Girl Squad (Teen Girl Squadcast)

Previously Downloadable Toons

External Links

• Podstar Runner
• Podstar Runner RSS feed
• View the old page background
• View the new page background
• forum thread re: Podstar Runner
• Old Podstar Runner files

iTunes 4.9 or later; Quicktime 6.0 or later; or VLC media player can be used to view M4V video files.