JXN Film Club - PODCAST REVIVAL

As a film lover in Jackson, I’ve felt compelled to identify the people in my life who love talking about movies. A few years ago, the thought had crossed my mind to start a film club and try to create some community around this shared love. I asked some friends and started organizing events, and eventually was approached about starting a podcast. That’s the brief history of Jackson Film Club (aka jxnfilmclub or JXN Film Club).

When The Fairview Sound studio was located in Belhaven, I worked with Brennan White to release 2 seasons of podcast content under the banner JXN Film Club The Podcast. My co-host was Sam Graef, a current film student at Belhaven University and co-founder of Escape the Wolf Productions. Both Brennan and Sam have moved on to other phases of life and so I am going to do something new to continue this podcasting project on my own.

If you’ve never listened to the podcast before, here’s the last episode we recorded with Brennan, featuring Brennan! It’s a great introduction to our style.

Are you on Discord?

There is a chat and social app called Discord which was initially created for the gaming community. If you’ve ever used Slack or IRC, you’re going to be familiar with the channel structure of Discord Servers. I have owned and maintained a personal Discord I use for development since 2017. You can join my server using the widget under my bio on this page.

Moving forward starting with Season 3, all episodes will be generated from recorded conversations taking place on Discord. This will enable a regular schedule since guests will be completely remote. This does require that guests are registered Discord users and have access to a camera and microphone. The great part is that the Discord app lets users use the camera and most people who have a smart phone have earbuds or headphones. All the recording logistics are handled seamlessly and the only thing guests will have to do is join a voice channel at an agreed upon time.

Topics

Previously, we collaborated with our guests to come up with general topics we could have some freeform discussion about. I don’t know how well this really worked as far as exploring intellectual takes on films or the film industry, but I had fun doing it.

In addition to topics, we had a throughline of Top 20 episodes. These conversations focused on a guest’s Top 20 favorite movies, a list they compiled ahead of time. I’ve collected all of the lists we turned into episodes on my Letterboxd. I’ll continue to catalogue JXN Film Club podcast content on Letterboxd as is appropriate.

Considering that Seasons 1 and 2 were primarily recorded in the living room studio of The Fairview Sound, the conversational nature of our topics relied a lot on in-person chemistry. I’m not concerned that chemistry won’t be possible using Discord but I do believe it will feel very different. I look forward to exploring the challenges to recording a podcast using this digital platform.

Be Our Guest

So far we’ve had lots of interesting local guests, but I am excited about the potential of opening the podcast to feature guests from anywhere in the world! If you think you’re up for the task and want to learn more about the podcast recording schedule, please respond to the form below!

Wearable Tech and Telehealth

Years ago, I was a contributor for the student newspaper The Reflector at Mississippi State University. I published articles under news, opinion, and life categories. In one particular opinion article (pdf) originally published in September, 2014, I am found invoking the famous “Websters Dictionary defines…” to discuss the innovation of the Apple Watch. My opinion in the article was that the watch was fashion, and that Apple would fail miserably, and here I am now eating crow.

As I write, I’m wearing an Apple Watch. It’s only my second device in 6 years and I can say it has definitely changed my relationship to technology in ways I didn’t anticipate. More on that later.

Telehealth and wearables

In 2021, my colleague Jack Mazza completed an honors thesis in which he surveyed the future of wearable technology in telehealth. His work included building a sample app and generating data using his own wearable and canvassing healthcare professionals at University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. His proof-of-concept app demonstrated to Jack the various data his own wearable offered him, and his survey questions reflected a perspective of telehealth and wearable data that is well-rounded. You can read his findings for yourself by reviewing his thesis (pdf), and here’s a quick quote that will convince you it’s worth 5 minutes of your time:

The results showed overwhelmingly that healthcare professionals believe wearable technology could greatly aid the Tele-Health communications process for both patients and healthcare workers alike. The addition of the data could help many diagnoses be more accurate and give patients better care.

In general, Jack’s main question was about whether wearable data was considered trustworthy by medical professionals. The findings are generally optimistic about wearable tech and its impact on simplifying communications between doctors and patients.

My experience with wearable tech

My first Apple Watch was a Series 3, which I believe was the first time the product was offered with cellular. I managed to keep that device for over 2 years before I upgraded to a Series 6. Not only have the devices withstood my normal traffic, I was able to sell my first watch on the cheap.

One of the first things I realized when I started wearing an Apple Watch was that I received way too many push notifications. Since then, nearly everything is silenced except for text messages and phone calls. The watch had replaced the buzzing in my pocket and made me more concious of how often my phone distracts me.

The health tracking features of the Apple Watch are primarily what Jack’s thesis explored and I can attest to their own usefulness in my life. It has been an infrequent occurrence but I have experienced occasional panic attacks. The meditation feature on the watch helped me practically by giving me an activity I could focus on to calm down during some attacks, as well as giving me biometric feedback by showing my heart rate was lowering over time.

I haven’t needed to share the data with any doctors yet but every now and then I make use of the ECG feature introduced in the Series 6 to graph my heart rate.

Conclusion

Wearable tech and telehealth should be adopted in areas with low access.

michaellamb.dev announcements

I will be hosting a podcast session for jxnfilmclub in my dev Discord server on July 12

Anyone is welcome to join the conversation, just reach out to me on my server or by DM for more details

C Spire Gaming will be hosting Community Game Night on July 20

Zack Sistrunk will be looking for a squad in Planetside 2 on PC Watch on Twitch or join in on Discord

I’m on Threads

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