Podcast 37 Transcript

A transcript for Episode 37: SongSmith comes before the hack (2009-01-26).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.

Summary keywords

people, post, song, favorites, threads, bacon, soundboard, matt, podcast, music, filter, talk, bubble bath, watch, whole bunch, wait, project, star wars, nice, pretty

Transcript

Unknown Speaker 0:00 Some times you want to know what's happening on metal filter, but you're lazy. So you just listen to the podcast

Jessamyn 0:27 so this is a podcast 36 of the 37. Sorry, 36 the last one. This is now the next one. This is 36. And it's the first podcast without Matt.

Unknown Speaker 0:39 Yeah, take that.

Jessamyn 0:41 Because Matt, how he's in Hawaii. Somebody should write a song about that. Actually.

Cortex 0:46 Maybe it's got a it's got a certain ring to it.

Jessamyn 0:50 And we were like, Hey, are you packing your headset? And he was like, Are you nerds kidding me? And so we get to do it. Here on our

Cortex 0:58 fun behind the scenes. Look at how metal works. Matt's constantly verbally abusing us. It's just get up in the morning and he is like, hey, dip face. How was your face and yeah, then we cry and then we get to work.

Jessamyn 1:19 And then he pretends that he's on nice to us on the podcast. Exactly. So unfair. So unfair. Well, yeah, I was looking around. I've been listening to Metafilter music all day and I was trying to find the bubble bath song, which was the one that I really liked. And for some reason, like it's not called that. Where is it?

Cortex 1:38 Did you search for like, bubble?

Jessamyn 1:41 I did. Bubble Bath baby. And Jimbo Jambo and they're both by Shambles is Shambles a name that you recognize? I recognize? Oh, here we go. Yes.

Unknown Speaker 1:52 Love is hard and love is rough. Some folks think that they're so tough, and they make sure everybody knows there's something you can do. If you're feeling sad and blue. Close the door and take off all your clothes and have a bubble bath making big bubble bath making the bubble above the bubble bath. Boop boop boop,

Jessamyn 2:28 working off some sort of horrible, horrible nerd infection that I've added the puzzle hunt. So yeah, I've got that Catherine turned her voice on and it's really not not doing me any good just as the song that I liked. In fact, Shambles did two songs. And I know you're going to be talking about you know, your blah blah songsmith and blah blah, Microsoft and blah blah. But I wanted to suggest some some bumper music that maybe wasn't all all songsmith out. And especially because Shambles isn't somebody have seen a whole bunch of he's he she they're real low profile. They've been members since 2004. And they've made like 30 some odd comments five music posts and asked you questions, so it's a sleeper I know but these two songs that I heard were great their their toe tapping and I enjoyed them so I just I just figured you'd like once once a love song and once a song about bubble baths. Yeah, and he missed his wife it's all about missing his wife.

Unknown Speaker 3:34 mumbo jumbo

Jessamyn 3:53 so tell me what you've been thinking of you said you were going to talk about Tom Smith. What do you do and you're like playing WoW, and the other screen I'm doing to your email.

Cortex 4:01 I've done this with two laptops. And I was trying to play back Shambles music on the laptop. Doing this

Jessamyn 4:05 with two laptops.

Cortex 4:06 I've just that's how I roll. I know, it's I don't know, I seem to do this different every single time but I was trying to listen to the sample song on the laptop that's got the vowel volume off on and it wasn't really getting anywhere and so I was sitting there staring at the screen and and scowling and being unresponsive.

Jessamyn 4:27 See now I wish we had the video. Yeah, Chad. We should have done that. But people will be like why are you sitting there in your hat and you're like scarf doesn't matter how we pay for heat and then we'd have to start the whole he's an evil taskmaster again. Exactly. I promised I'd stay positive

Unknown Speaker 4:45 smile through the pain we can do this. Exactly. Yeah. So so you can

Jessamyn 4:51 just trust me on it and put them on. So yeah, let's talk a little bit about the the music and metal filter spanning thing that happened since the last pod cast, which was whatever on that third, which is songsmith.

Cortex 5:03 Yes. So, so songsmith for those who completely missed it, there was a nice post on the blue.

Jessamyn 5:10 Introducing it, I'll track it down while you're touching. Yeah.

Cortex 5:13 Basically, there was a it's a project that came out of Microsoft, like research labs or whatever. And it's kind of a cool little research project. But they ended up announcing it as like a product at whatever the last tech thing that was going on, where they're making announcements, so it's like Windows seven on also songsmith. And it's, it's really, yeah, it's not really retail caliber stuff in my,

Jessamyn 5:42 what is it? It's like Windows only. So I don't even know what the hell it is. Except not for you. Yeah. So

Cortex 5:48 what it is, the big idea was songsmith is you can take this and say you've got a song in your head, you've got a melody you want to sing. I like buts because they're great. And I don't know how to make chords. So you go to your example. That's your example. Wasn't that a good example there? Thanks. So when another girl might be okay, so you've got some song bursting out? Have you taken? I don't know how to you don't know how to write chords for songs. Because somehow

Jessamyn 6:17 that is like what I do, you know, like little songs in my dreams at night. And you know what I do? I sing them into my camera in the morning and see when I might be done. But then I'm stuck.

Cortex 6:26 You might need to, you might need to find a Windows box and trout songsmith.

Jessamyn 6:31 I have a Windows box. Well,

Cortex 6:34 yeah, that's that's your issue to deal with. But you take that song, and you sing it into song Smith, just against nothing but a drum track. And then songsmith takes that melody, and it throws chords, add it to automatically create this sort of arrangement for whatever you're saying. And boom,

Jessamyn 6:52 and is it like MIDI sounding crap? Or can you say it's, it's how that works? Or

Cortex 6:57 it's pretty much MIDI sounding crap? Yeah, it's actually using a piece of software called band in a box. It's been around forever. And when I first saw songsmith, I was like, huh, they sort of cloned band in a box. But reading further, I found out that they actually licensed it. So that's why it sounded so familiar. But yeah, it's sort of sort of cheesy media arrangements of stuff. You know, it's competent, but none of it sounds good. It sounds like music from a cheesy Nintendo game.

Jessamyn 7:23 Okay, that's alright, though.

Cortex 7:25 But yeah, so then you then you've got your finished product, and it's got a couple different settings, you can, you can pick a genre, so you can do like r&b, or you can do pop or you can do rock. But again, none of them are perfectly great. But you know, you sort of pick the style and you can pick the tempo, and you can adjust to sliders. And this is their whole way that they manage the expressiveness of your song is the happy slider, and the jazzy slider.

Jessamyn 7:50 And I saw somebody with a T shirt. Yeah, I'd like that had the happy slider on it. Yeah, it all let it filter thing or is that just some other person

Cortex 7:58 by God, I'll get there. That's how much Song said there has been going on. So anyway, you you can adjust the happy slider if you turn it up. It makes it happier if you turn it down and makes it sad. Or if you turn to jazzy slider up it's a it's a crazy, full a different weird chords. If you turn that jazzy slider all the way down. It's like super, super simple, like two or three chords. And that's absolutely will bullshit. Yeah. And I personally find it pretty much useless. But I'm probably not the target demographic at all. So you know, take that with a grain of salt, but it really seems like it produces pretty bad stuff

Jessamyn 8:34 for the most because you can play your own instruments.

Cortex 8:37 Yeah, and I can arrange my own chords and, and I like to think I can do both better than what songsmith actually produces. So but

Jessamyn 8:46 this haven't come out, talking about your butts again.

Cortex 8:49 Yeah, buts. But, but so so so people can play with it. There's this terrible, terrible video, just like four minute long demo video that's introducing the product and it's super cheesy. And according to guys in the video, who are the research team, who made the stuff in the first place when it started out? The research team? Yeah, you know, so it's like, all of a sudden you see this sort of, it's ironic, ironic in house cheesy production. Okay, but again, Microsoft put this out there so that excuse kind of goes away.

Jessamyn 9:20 That was ironic. I thought they were just a bunch of goups Well, I think I've never seen anything get two stars on YouTube before.

Cortex 9:27 It's they you know, they're really setting the they're setting some records. They're breaking some news right

Jessamyn 9:32 here that when I listen to that over my headset, I don't hear you didn't you didn't hear me starting to listen to it so I can listen to it while you're talking. Yeah, no, you're good to do doo doo doo doo doo 2100 ratings and two stars on YouTube.

Unknown Speaker 9:46 It's a it's a pretty bad video.

Jessamyn 9:49 So that happened, like, Okay, and

Cortex 9:52 what? I don't want to talk about it for actually half an hour because I'm just gonna keep going if I don't watch it, but it occurred to someone fairly early on and someone in this case is one of those someone's was Misters arquata And he's one who actually jumped on it to take that David Lee Roth isolated vocals from running with the devil that were going around and did you come across that? That David Levy

Jessamyn 10:13 yeah you know, I didn't know what a soundboard was until last week Oh you missed the whole I know right so you know I sent it to not on display or whatever it was like oh look this David Lee Ross soundboard and he's like what are you 14 And I was like what what? I apparently everybody knows about these things but me Yeah, pretty much well, you and my friends so that's how I came across

Cortex 10:35 this Yeah. So so so that was going around is just the actual vocal pre soundboard like months and months ago misters Archon took that and just plugged into songsmith without making any attempt to match the tempo or anything. And then he just that on on music. And everybody crapped their pants and it's got like 5 million favourites at this point. 210 210 That's, that's like 5 million. And the functional equivalent of 5 million. Yeah, exactly. And it started getting picked up elsewhere. You know, he threw it on. He mentioned it on Twitter and other people started mentioning that Twitter and I saw it on Twitter. Yeah. waxy LinkedIn. Kottke LinkedIn. Oh, yeah, a bunch of people picked it up. So it's been running around. And and the happy slider thing was just a t shirt. So amusing that yeah, he decided to go ahead and make a happy Slater t shirt.

Jessamyn 11:23 Now you know, Mr. Saar con because he's like from Portland, OR from Seattle, or Seattle. We came to meetup or something.

Cortex 11:30 Yeah. And actually, he's coming to meet up next weekend to the 30th I guess. So he's gonna He's gonna crash in our basement so well. Probably not the basement. It's cold down there. But you have a guestroom. Yeah, it's a music room too. But we've got an inflatable air mattress so

Jessamyn 11:49 nice. He sent me coffee. I think for like holiday time. So he's like, you know on my on my big big favorites list Yeah, he

Cortex 11:58 brought me and clearly

Jessamyn 12:00 a genius Scotch Scotch Ah, yeah, maybe he's Is this what they call work in the ref?

Cortex 12:07 I think probably he's probably totally the free scotching Get his T shirt mentioned on a podcast or something like that

Jessamyn 12:15 swanky air mattress with his nose munched up against the synthesizer. Exactly classy digs for Portland rocks those days

Cortex 12:38 but yeah, there was so there was that there was a follow up post when people outside of Metafilter sort of really doing the work to make like take isolated vocals and do a really good job of setting them to stuff and there's a there's a version of Roxanne by the police that actually works surprisingly well in this crazy sort of upbeat salsa way. And there's a bunch of stuff that works really, really badly. And a few people on on Metafilter did like original attempts at it to I recorded a few terrible songs with it just to prove it could be done. And

Jessamyn 13:07 are they up on? Are they up on music or Yeah.

Cortex 13:12 But uh, okay, but yeah, so it's that's been sort of that's been eating like all of my, my meme space. For the last couple of weeks. I haven't had time for any other stupid internet jokes, because I've been so goddamn entertained by songsmith. And, to top that out, there was actually a couple of decent research papers from them, like back in 2008 when it was just a research project. That kind of, I feel a little bit bad about slagging as much as I do, because the problem is this thing as a product, you know, as a retail thing, it's stupid. But

Jessamyn 13:41 here's the thing you buy in a box that says you can be a musician.

Cortex 13:43 Yeah, that's it's kind of ridiculous as far as that goes. But as a cute little programming idea. It's kind of cool. And

Jessamyn 13:49 well as a party tool. It seems fine. The idiot ad they have is like, oh, yeah, I've got to make a jingle for my frickin job. I mean, now that I know it's all lol tongue in cheek. That makes a little bit more sense. But

Cortex 14:04 yeah. So I feel bad if those guys have been having a bad couple of weeks because of all this.

Jessamyn 14:10 I think Microsoft research jobs are good jobs to have. I think they get paid pretty well. I don't think they have this sort of, oh my god, we have to get this stuff to market. I don't I don't think I don't think we have to feel too sorry for them. Based on the people that I know that used to work there.

Cortex 14:24 And judging by that video, they're there. They're probably on really good drugs. So

Jessamyn 14:28 yeah, yeah. How about that, huh?

Cortex 14:32 But yeah, that's, that's pretty much what I had going on with music.

Jessamyn 14:36 Good. Well, besides the music that I was listening to today, I enjoy it. I have not interacted with music too much except to be sending little songs to not a display to eventually be made into music stuff. We've been working on this cover song sort of a long distance for six months, maybe so at some point, everyone will get to hear it. But back to projects there. Was there anything in projects that you fell in love with because there was two things things that I really liked and now looking at them in projects, they've both been posted a metal filter. So I guess they're like good things about metal filter, in addition to good things about projects, but one of them was the straightener who's like, you know, local, local, local favorite, local favorite guy who has this. It's another What

Unknown Speaker 15:26 is this is a really compelling setup, that's all

Jessamyn 15:29 what Well, it's, it's a long thing. It's a long thing that he wrote, it's got sort of videos and descriptions. It's a whole bunch of parts. I don't know if that's an actual video, but it's a whole bunch of parts about what you know. Inner City, inner city, Philadelphia. Yeah. Schools schools are like and it was posted to metal filter where a lot of people sort of talked about it and you know, kind of the inevitable comparison is like, oh, yeah, it's just like, what I think the fourth season of The Wire What do you why? What is the funny part of this?

Cortex 16:03 I like how everything comes back to the wire. The content isn't funny. I read I've read a portion of of his stuff, and it's really good. It's really compelling stuff. I just I haven't seen any of the wire yet. And the fact that basically everything on the universe becomes a wire reference makes life difficult for me at times.

Jessamyn 16:22 Oh, I'm sorry, spoiler. kids go to school. Oh, shit. This girl cuts this other girl. Let's see how else I can fuck this up for you. It ends after season five or sorry so band. i What are you gonna do ban me now? People Yeah, I'm podcasting chat thing to be an excuse to chat me. They're like, how are you podcasting? Ah, but yeah. derson Winterson's made a post about it. And it got 41 favorites. And then you know, a whole bunch of 29 people voted for the straighteners project originally. And it's it's great. This trade, there's like a really good writer, he sees a part of the inner city that I think a lot of people kind of think they know but don't really do this day in, day out work with. And I'm just sort of grateful that he continues to contribute. Comparing that to someone else. I'm grateful for every day but in a different way.

Unknown Speaker 17:17 Is he tours. Yeah. Raptor roulette.

Jessamyn 17:21 Last raptor roulette. I don't even understand it. And I don't know where the random request was. Maybe it was at the meetup where plutora like went but not for long enough to actually be photographed. But when I clicked it the first time I got a picture of a girl in a library and I clicked it again and I got a picture of a velociraptor.

Cortex 17:41 That's that's pretty much all you can ask for a website.

Jessamyn 17:45 Exactly. And it was also posted to Metafilter Yes, where only two people marked it as a favorite for some reason it was slightly underwhelming which is funny

Cortex 17:55 because I think a lot of people liked it. And I got more favorites on a comment I left in the projects thread after it got pushed to the front page than the post got. Which is kind of disturbing. But proves that people remember the dialogue from Jurassic Park. So

Jessamyn 18:11 wait, wait, wait, say that again. What

Cortex 18:14 it if you go to the thread the thread on the front page, the one that comes from projects and as you noted Yes. And then the project itself has seven favorites if you go back to that, but

Jessamyn 18:28 But I made a comment I don't have to go back to it man. I have tabs Yeah.

Cortex 18:31 Go over to it moves laterally to it. Change your focus to it.

Jessamyn 18:37 changed my focus. Yes.

Cortex 18:40 But yes, I left a comment in the projects read just saying clever girl because in Jurassic Park right before the like Australian Big Game Hunter Ranger dude gets gutted by the velociraptors. Like late in the film.

Jessamyn 18:53 He you haven't seen The Wire and you're explaining this to me.

Unknown Speaker 18:56 I'm just saying.

Jessamyn 18:59 I'm trying to write and that got six favorites.

Cortex 19:01 Yes. That's ironic. It got most of those favorites. After the post went up it got most of those favorites which means people saw the post declined to favorite the post but clicked through to the project posts read down to my comment and favorited that and as far as callbacks to Jurassic Park lines that I like I I'm okay with that.

Jessamyn 19:21 Can you explain that again?

Cortex 19:23 No. I'm dizzy now and I need to sit down.

Jessamyn 19:27 I am also dizzy. Wait, aren't you sitting down already?

Cortex 19:29 I need to sit down even harder.

Jessamyn 19:33 Are you talking about your budget again? thing is we think we are

Unknown Speaker 19:42 so that's probably projects. What else was going

Jessamyn 19:47 Yeah, I don't really look at jobs that much. Because I figure I'm not looking for work and almost afraid to like see a job that I wanted and oh, I don't know. cognate needs someone to write them a letter.

Cortex 20:02 Oh man, you know, I'm one of the people who didn't write him one in the first place like months ago. He's shut up really? Seriously. I, oh, man, I'm really bad at time management, as it turns

Jessamyn 20:14 out volunteer project and how often are you going? Wait, what, as it turns out,

Unknown Speaker 20:18 yeah, that's a shocker.

Jessamyn 20:22 So this was a project that was up or a job that was up before is that what you're telling me?

Cortex 20:26 I think or maybe it was mentioned in a project posts a few months back, I don't remember exactly what the deal was. I know he's been working on it for a while. And hopefully he'll get benefits for he's, I believe it's part of a novel he's actually writing. It's like putting it together in sort of a pistol Tori format, or at least portions of it via letters. So he's having different people write the letters. Okay, so each letter is in a different person's handwriting for the different characters, I

Jessamyn 20:53 think is the idea. Oh, like, break them? Yeah. So sit

Cortex 20:57 down and handwrite like and that's the thing I just never got around to sitting down and doing a six page longhand letter.

Jessamyn 21:03 Wait, Dude, shut up. Like he's he just sent you text and all you had to do is like write it down.

Unknown Speaker 21:09 Yep. I'm, yeah.

Jessamyn 21:13 Here's the interesting part. All the ladies actually did the work already. And he needs more dudes to help him. Yep. See? That's because unlike metal filters, almost all dudes. I don't understand that. But we're all adults. Really? Can you explain this to me again?

Cortex 21:29 I don't understand it. I like to assume that I'm an outlier. And other people are more organized than me. But I don't know.

Jessamyn 21:35 I don't think that's actually to actually based on as someone who's organized but has many other sorts of horrible qualities. Yeah, no. Other people are probably not more organized than you. Oh, though. I do like this job. Sorry, changing slightly Photoshop wizard who can do this sort of creepy photo retouching. That is a that isn't just because I enjoyed that website when it first came out basically taking a photo of your child and turning them into a scary two dimensional robot doll. Stepford wife. Yeah, essentially.

Cortex 22:09 Let's move here. That was like crappy ceramic dolls.

Jessamyn 22:14 Yeah, yeah. I don't understand why you would want to. IE. I mean, some of these people actually look like people, but a lot of them. Oh, there's a young girl with a school of Hollywood babes. Oh, this is horrible. can't look away. So if you're good at creepy Photoshop retouching, you should contact twee biscuit I believe and give her give her a little bit of a bid per photo. That would be fun. I'd like to see myself redone as a totally creepy Stepford wife.

Unknown Speaker 22:52 That would, wow, we should get a whole I mean, there's no of those.

Jessamyn 22:55 I have no prom, right? I mean, like when else are you actually I'm not going to the I didn't go to the inauguration like these kinds of fancy pants things that people. We don't have excuses for this kind of stuff. There's

Cortex 23:05 kind of between fancy pants and creepy Stepford Photoshop. Is there? Well, we could, you know, we could try and get photos of you and me and Matt and PB APB and, and you know, go at him and turn us into like weird plastic 20 year olds and

Jessamyn 23:24 I wouldn't do it.

Cortex 23:26 We'll have to look into it. We'll check with we've

Jessamyn 23:29 had some read maybe for the maybe for the party. Yeah,

Cortex 23:33 yeah, come up with a good really bad like corporate video, featuring those photos and cheesy overdub from the CEO.

Jessamyn 23:42 And we can have two dimensional cutouts and people can get their pictures taken with them. That'd be pretty sweet. That'd be great. I could wear a fancy outfit, but then I could show up in jeans and a T shirt. Oh, didn't try that. Put it on the to do list. You know, we used to have a to do list on like Google documents like how long ago?

Cortex 23:59 Well, you know I think what happened is PB came on board and has displayed so much capacity to actually be organized and get stuff done that we all kind of stopped paying any attention to to lists because he would do it. I guess that's kind of true. He

Jessamyn 24:11 kind of did everything PB when

Cortex 24:13 you get a chance to listen to the podcast. Make sure you put this on the to do list.

Jessamyn 24:18 Yeah, no joke, right? I was just chatting with him because like I was trying to like delete one of G man's comments and then like I got a ColdFusion error. So I got pb on the chat machine and was like what's going on? And he's like, oh, sorry, I was doing this big search looking for all the incidences of block quote because I'm fixing block quotes sitewide like that's what he's doing on like a Thursday afternoon fixing block quote, Matt's on vacation.

Cortex 24:41 I didn't know that he was gonna go back and fix them like that. And that's so awesome because that's exactly what I always would have wanted to do when we fixed block quote, but was afraid to ask because I thought Matt knee would just make fun of me. So

Jessamyn 24:53 for all we know, Matt may have made fun of possibly also and PB was like, No way man. My code is clean. And Matt was like mood? Or what's that noise he makes

Cortex 25:09 is a combination of sort of like, hey, what do you do and sort of a tone of contempt to it?

Jessamyn 25:15 I think it's just because he's, you got it like a deviated septum or something. But um, you know, I've been trying to find that Calvin and Hobbes cartoon where like, Calvin and Hobbes are making fun of each other. And they're like, oh, yeah, you're like this. And then they make a face and do this funny like zombie walk agal agal agal. But it's really hard to Google even with fulltext Calvin and Hobbes, because you're like, this isn't really that unique and all the other words are nonsense. Exactly. So I'm putting it out to the podcast audience if anybody can find me that comes from

my life is the star living Metafilter AskMe Metafilter. What do you feel like next dude, we're gonna put this down in one hour.

Cortex 26:24 I guess. You know, there was a it was kind of annoying the last week or so. You know, I was like,

Jessamyn 26:32 Obama. Yeah. Like, why don't you just say it right now and then we can just have it out.

Cortex 26:38 I was I was I was pulling for for Mondale.

Jessamyn 26:42 Did I from Massachusetts? Oh, I know what you mean Mondale.

Cortex 26:47 But uh, yeah, no, I mean, it's just sort of the natural thing. But yeah, it's just been so busy. Like the last couple days. I've just been trying to survive mostly. Probably really, ever since Monday is when it really felt like it was getting crazy. So

Jessamyn 27:00 today's because of people fighting, like I've been kind of sick, actually. So tension, but

Cortex 27:07 yeah, with Matt in Hawaii. And you were like asleep for most of the day, like Monday or Tuesday?

Jessamyn 27:12 I slept through the inauguration. Yeah, yeah, that was Tuesday.

Cortex 27:15 And yeah, so it was like, it wasn't completely insane. The site was being reasonably okay. But there was enough like, random stupid things going on that like in one set of hands. It was like, Oh, God, I just, you know,

Jessamyn 27:26 I'd really like to have a sandwich and yet.

Cortex 27:28 Exactly. And I was gonna go for a walk. And then I put it off and then he put it off. And yeah, it was it was so I'm still kind of recovering from that. But But hey, I guess I guess we elected that guy Preston. And he's president now. So

Jessamyn 27:41 that election actually happened in November. Well, yeah, November the election all

Cortex 27:45 came flying back. You know, it's it wasn't a hologram. It turns out. If you want more information about this, see that 27 posts on the front page since noon, Tuesday. Is that really true? It's probably not really true, but it's a lot. We've probably hit like a dozen Obama related posts since since noon, Tuesday. There was that meta talk just today saying hey, and and I think the general consensus to there was, well, it's going to be kind of busy for the next few days, and we're going to deal with it but we'll start calling things as they get more and more weaksauce

Jessamyn 28:18 and why do you think nurses can't just be happy? I don't know. I think I because he lives in Portland. Is it because he lives in Portland?

Cortex 28:25 Yeah, it's probably seasonal affective disorder, which is basically a national season long holiday in in Portland.

Jessamyn 28:33 How are we just put on 15 pounds and turn on the electric sheet

Cortex 28:40 there was a there was a good post from a from language had. Just honestly, it was like yesterday, maybe. And this is one of the things where I see posts like this and I really am glad they happened and I'm glad to make people so happy. And they make me happy. Like by extension, but

Jessamyn 29:01 but you're like blah blah blah ginger.

Cortex 29:03 I don't read enough to really be able to get into you know, I have to wait for

Jessamyn 29:08 Greg nog loves it. I love it. Oh, sorry, going?

Cortex 29:11 God. I'll just just give me that give me the aliens comic book. Thread or the there's a poster today about adventure games. It was a nice round up. Actually. Maybe it was yesterday. Anyway, I like I like video games and comic books still is basically what I have to say today.

Jessamyn 29:31 But so what's this post about language test post You're just saying that other people liked it. So maybe other people should check it out if they like things.

Cortex 29:38 If you like waldhaus people seem to be really, really impressed with

Jessamyn 29:43 I couldn't take Woodhouse out of a lineup.

Cortex 29:46 Well, then you're right there with me. We I mean Wooster, and I'd like

Jessamyn 29:49 to talk about throwing up Star Wars.

Unknown Speaker 29:52 That'd be okay.

Jessamyn 29:53 You can talk about that. Wait Wooster in Chief's why?

Unknown Speaker 29:56 Well, that was that was waldhaus wrote that.

Jessamyn 29:59 Oh, Oh, I did.

Cortex 30:01 And then if you and Lori ended up doing the whole, you know, British television thing, that house guy, yes, that house guy, that house guy and that Twitter guy where Stephen fries totally. Twitter not.

Jessamyn 30:15 Are you talking about that guy on Twitter again, Matt how he totally schooled me on that the last time we talked about him. I'm like Stephen fries, who Matt's like, Ah, he's the dude from the bottom. You know, like, I'm the dumbest person alive, right?

Cortex 30:29 He is a dude from blah, blah, blah. So

Jessamyn 30:33 I had no idea. So now I know who he is. But I'm not friends with him on Twitter.

Cortex 30:37 Yeah. I don't want to follow you on Twitter that much? No. Anybody who talks too much? I I don't follow them.

Jessamyn 30:45 I'm the same way. I follow all the mod team. Do you follow them on team? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I must, is on Twitter.

Cortex 30:55 I haven't checked. That's, that's what's given me pause.

Jessamyn 30:59 I'm gonna check right now while we're talking about this. But I would also like to talk about growing up Star Wars. Because not only was it an awesome post, it's just a Flickr pool, right? Like, whatever Flickr pool, but it's all like young, like people are RH meaning between your age and my age basically, like dressed up like Star Wars goons as like little kids.

Cortex 31:22 Yeah, all the kids who are growing up through the actual initial Star Wars saying when it was like, you know, all the people who were in a stylistic for it now because they're in their 30s or 40s. They remember when they dressed up as Chewbacca for for Halloween,

Jessamyn 31:33 back. And when it was the most amazing thing ever, when Star Wars was the most amazing like IE to ask people like, oh, what's it about? And they're like, Dude, I can't even explain it. You just gotta go see it. Except you're 11 Right. It's not like you're on drugs. It's that it's that incredible. You know,

Cortex 31:50 see, and I missed out on some of that. Because I mean, I was I was born in 79. And so the trilogy was already done. By the time I was starting to really pay coherent attention, watch

Jessamyn 31:59 movies and stuff. But you had older sisters. Right. Were your older sisters into it? Do you remember?

Cortex 32:03 They? I really don't remember? Actually. There were both girls, you know?

Jessamyn 32:10 I think right?

Cortex 32:11 They they decided to stay with their original genders. I don't know. I don't know if either of them were that big into it. I mean, I know I liked it. But I was pretty big into he-man. You know, it was my first sort of big toy franchise. And, and back that future was a pretty cool movie. I remember being in on that. But I kind of missed the the initial wave. I think I was little too young.

Jessamyn 32:34 Yeah, yeah, I could, I could see that. Mostly, I just wanted to talk about this photo of culture again. Because really, if we could pretty much bring this up in every single podcast.

Cortex 32:47 It is just about the greatest fucking picture ever,

Jessamyn 32:49 isn't it? I mean, I actually became like, Flickr friends with a whole bunch of other mefites who were like, no, no, no, here's an even darker picture of me. I don't think I actually had a dorky Star Wars phase, but I like this one, too. What is it asbestos, pinko asbestos. MC Pinto. I'm sorry. But it's one of those adorable you know, like two little kids, one of them dressed up in the whatever. And one of them making a little face under his Chewbacca mask. And it was another one those threads where everyone's just like, ah, yeah, kind of adorable. And it made it made people really happy. I've got to check my own favorites and see if there was anything else. What else do you see? I'm gonna filter that you love besides the fact that you know, the inauguration fuck it's over.

Cortex 33:41 Let me see what was there. I'm trying to page to this stuff I haven't commented in, in a few days in my recent activity or something. But man, I don't know my

Jessamyn 33:51 I can hear the little roller mouse. Yep. Yours makes a funny noise.

Cortex 33:56 It's you know, I think it's I think it's on its way out. I think it may.

Jessamyn 34:01 That's its death rattle? Is that what you're saying? And it's

Cortex 34:03 noisier in the up direction than the down direction. The down direction still sounds kind of smooth. But, you know, like my entire recent activity is filled up with meta talk threads, like meta threads. I apparently I don't think I spent any time on the blue. This this last couple of weeks, except for songsmith and deleting comments from Obama threads.

Jessamyn 34:24 Well, it's nice. It's nice that you can admit it.

Cortex 34:27 Hopefully, and I'm comfortable with it. There was this Sistina thread. It hasn't really exploded or anything, but I do like the idea. We've had haiku threads and limit threads, but someone made a post the other day about Cystinosis. Or maybe it's pronounced differently and I am showing my lack of familiarity again, but sestina

Jessamyn 34:53 Stein AX

Cortex 34:54 is probably Sustainer Yeah. Hey, take a look at my Sustainer

Jessamyn 35:00 Did you know Wikipedia doesn't actually say how to pronounce it the fuckers? Oh, I guess if I look it up in the Free Dictionary, they'll explain it. Harbor bar.

Cortex 35:09 There was actually there was one thing I really did love. And this is also a couple days but there's a post about something constructed in Conway's Life or the game of life as it's

Jessamyn 35:25 also Oh, this is where you're like blardy blar blar diplomacy blurb,

Cortex 35:29 I won't go into detail on this one if you if you're interested in Conway's Life or cellular automata, then it's an awesome post because they someone managed to build a gigantic structure that moves along at a reasonable pace, and it's just a ridiculously complicated machine built in this tiny sort of model universe. And, and it just create that.

Jessamyn 35:49 Yeah. You know, what I like about meta filter is that there's, you know, the poetry posts for the poetry people in the world house posts for the White House people and the Conway life posts for you. Exactly. And the Star Wars posts for me.

Cortex 36:02 Yeah, it's it's a smorgasbord of goodness.

Jessamyn 36:06 And this post, I don't know if this was in the last podcast, it was it was on it was posted on the third. Um, which was also when the podcast was posted. And I remember the last podcast came out incredibly quickly. Yeah, so I'm not totally sure. Let me let me check my, I guess we talked mostly about the I don't think we talked about meta filter at all, actually. So I just enjoyed this, because we're talking about the best post contest. But it was just like little programs for system administrators. And they're like, just kind of like funny joke programs. So they're like, little coding jokes. And it was like, you know, January 3 at five in the morning. And it's just a page of them. And they're adorable. So one of them is like a little script that makes your console keyboard sound like it's a mechanical keyboard. Like it sounds like you're typing on a typewriter. It just plays little sounds including the which sound when you when you hit the end of the of the of the thing. Something replenishes your system zombies. I can't remember if we talked about this last time or not?

Cortex 37:17 I don't think we did. Because I think I would have mentioned how much I loved that they have not only three rot 13 But en route 13. If that's not enough encryption for you.

Jessamyn 37:29 And you can you can customize it. Yeah, yes, exactly. I don't think I would have missed that. Now, and maybe which does user bin maybe which is a companion to user bin true and user bin false. It's just Yeah, it's like a little chuckle thing. And it was an adorable post. Because again, the people who got the joke were all there and they were like her hearts. Very, very funny. And I got like most of the jokes, right. So I'd be like, I get it. It's funny. And, but I didn't get all of them. And then everybody else just didn't even bother. You know, so I don't know. I sort of enjoyed it. And then somebody linked to who somebody linked to what they said was Rick Astley Never Gonna Give You Up, but it was actually Revenge of the Nerds. So yeah, Metafilter I didn't spend that much time there in the last two weeks either because I was sick and I was puzzle hunt.

Cortex 38:21 I think parkmore FARC if they have better news, the weird

Jessamyn 38:29 you know, it's got better news for the weirdo Fox. Seriously. Yeah. What is that noise? What do you call that noise?

Cortex 38:37 I don't really have a name for it. It just comes out of me sometimes unbidden. Caviar cigarettes. extraordinaire, really nice dynamite with a laser beam guaranteed to blow your recommended at the price insatiable appetite

Jessamyn 39:09 well over to AskMe Metafilter. Then my very favorite post while he's gone. Now you please go on.

Cortex 39:17 I was gonna say boy, there was a lot of stuff and AskMe edit filter.

Jessamyn 39:22 I'm sorry, I waited for that. Okay,

Unknown Speaker 39:24 I regret even starting to say it.

Jessamyn 39:27 My favorite posts and AskMe Metafilter. Even though it was a little weird. And I'm not sure if it was my favorite, but it was definitely the one that I remembered the most was the animal eating contest. And it wasn't just about like, it was basically like, Okay, I've got this dumb bet with my friends who can eat the most animals and you're like, oh, yeah, okay, don't forget shrimp. But but the question is all about how do we figure out what constitutes an animal? So then there's a list of like, you know, the first days eating which was 11 animals and it's all like animals you think? or an animal got clams and animal a crab Crab is an animal. But then they're like, Okay, you know, do we count like different kinds of salmon? Do you count different kinds of fish? Do you count different kinds of et cetera, et cetera? And then it became exactly how do you decide? How do you decide what's, what's a different animal? And people talked about taxonomy and a whole bunch of other stuff. And, you know, pork, bacon and ham are all the same. You know, I've noticed my supermarket is moving the bacon closer and closer to the entrance. Have you noticed that,

Cortex 40:34 uh, you know, I'm actually still adjusting to a new supermarket. We ever since we moved out of downtown we've gotten, we've been getting used to a Fred Myers instead of a Safeway. And they have completely different philosophies on on how they organize stuff. And the Fred Myers is a lot bigger too. So it's, it's actually really just been kind of a disorienting couple of months as I try and figure out where stuff is at all. Ah,

Jessamyn 40:55 so I haven't totally the opposite. Like, I've been going to the same supermarket for roughly six years. And it's now like, right up the street from me, so I go all the time. And they had kind of a dramatic reorg. And now there's a big TV and the produce section and a whole bunch of other bullshit. But one of the things that I noticed is that the bacon is like the first thing you see when you walk in the door. Now it used to be in the back corner with the rest of the frickin meat, right? Like right there. Like you just came in. And you want bacon in a six pack. What

Cortex 41:23 I would say probably the main reason I don't buy bacon every time I go to the store is I don't see it every time I go to the store, if they actually if they stocked the bacon, like next to the Wrigley's and People Magazine. I would walk home with bacon whether I needed it or not. I would just be surprised

Jessamyn 41:37 how expensive bacon has gotten. I you know, I eat it out all the time. But I you know, I rarely buy bacon in the store. But now it's right by the entrance. So perhaps I'll buy it some more. But back to animals we could eat that aren't pigs. I just enjoyed this question very much. Because, you know, I think the person asked it sincerely. It had 18 favorites and people were in a lively conversation about it without a little too much kind of her after blar blar kind of stuff. So, yeah, I enjoyed it.

Cortex 42:11 I'm thinking we should we should maybe start calling out unanswered questions that sound like they really deserve an answer. Hey, that's people that the answer unanswered tag is even there

Jessamyn 42:22 would be in fact, we can just do some dramatic, some dramatic readings from them.

Cortex 42:26 We could like like, see, where's this? See? Now this is something that excites me because this is a sort of question I could find myself answer asking. But looking for rubberband one. No, but that's what I'm looking for the compact Chinese character frequency chart with English pronunciation key for Cantonese. Which that just sounds like someone's trying to do some kind of awesome stuff with maybe natural language processing or, like statistical linguistic stuff. And, and so yeah, if you know about compact Chinese character frequency charts with English pronunciation keys for Cantonese, get to the unanswered tab.

Jessamyn 43:04 I don't even understand that. I mean, I guess I sort of get it. That's cool. I don't need to understand it. There's also the stumped tag. One of my favorite things about the unanswered page is that it also pulls in a sidebar of the stumped questions. Ah, yeah. Which includes an image of circular puzzle of a dark ocean illustration from the 80s. And this poor man who wants to build a futon frame out of wood, but doesn't like any of our suggestions. And

Cortex 43:36 others a name that song question that didn't get answered. This is really yeah, this is impressive. I didn't think those ever didn't get answered.

Jessamyn 43:46 Let's see. Video on Hulu. I was talking to my dad about Hulu today. He's like comparing all sorts of wacky ways to watch television online and one my opinion on Hulu and I had to say I didn't know much about it.

Cortex 44:04 It's pretty good. We've actually been using a lot

Jessamyn 44:08 less because it's like watching television on the computer.

Cortex 44:11 Yeah, you know, it's just it's like a legal thing set up by a couple of the media companies I think I think like Fox and CBS or something like that are have actually set it up. So it just shows TV. And it's you know, streaming reasonable, reasonably good resolution. commercial breaks that are like 15 or 32nd stings. Most of the ones we see end up being like Public Service Announcement Ad Council things anyway, so I'm really really

Jessamyn 44:36 find those ads very much except when they tell me not to smoke. Yeah, I'm sick of Smokey the Bear. We've seen the drug hysteria ads, that which ones drink hysteria. Like, oh, you know, kids on drugs, and now he's gonna get it. Well, I haven't watched a lot of TVs. Yeah,

Cortex 44:54 the ones on Hulu are mostly try not to set things on fire. And don't forget Okay. sandwiches because they'll make you burp really loud.

Jessamyn 45:02 Wait, what really cheese?

Cortex 45:04 Cheese sandwiches? It's I don't know, it's hard to explain that the government apparently thought it was a good advertising campaign. And cheese sandwiches are pretty good. So I guess I have to give them that. But yeah, delicious. But ya know, it's just like, it's like short commercial breaks. And then, you know, whatever. And they've got a bunch of stuff up there. They've got movies and TV shows. And I'm liking it for like, there's a bunch of TV shows that I watched when I was bored. And five, and it was the summer that, that my wife really didn't watch because she didn't watch so much TV as a kid. So we get into conversations about like, alpha, or the a team or whatever. And I had that stuff. So I was like, Hey, let's go watch an episode of alpha. And it turns out that alpha isn't really nearly as good as I remember it being. But Uh huh. But at least she knows what alpha looks like now, like in context, and, but we've also been watching there's a show Regenesis that's like a Canadian biomedical drama. That's actually pretty good. I mean, it's not like the best thing ever. But

Jessamyn 46:01 watch, like BBC TV,

Cortex 46:03 that kind of, yeah, they've got it on there. It's really all over the map. But they've got they've got a they've got a ton of stuff now. So it's a decent way to just sort of watch something without having to put out too much effort. Because just go to Hulu, load up and say play and boom, you're good to go.

Jessamyn 46:20 Can I watch Kenny vs Spenny?

Unknown Speaker 46:21 I don't know. You'd have to go check it out.

Jessamyn 46:24 I watch Big Bang Theory.

Cortex 46:25 I maybe. I don't know you'd have to go

Jessamyn 46:30 look yourself. Great. I'll go look, let's back to AskMe Metafilter. Oh, I guess I want to talk about television. We could have you know, a side podcast that was all about media consumption.

Cortex 46:46 Just just just nothing but stuff that you'd need a TV to write.

Jessamyn 46:49 So what have you watched on TV? Right, right, right. No, this is about this was the other asked Metafilter question that I really liked in the last two weeks was the ice falling from tall buildings filter, because this is of course a concern for me, living in rural America, but not so much because our buildings aren't very tall. But like you're in Chicago, right? And ice falls off buildings. And about once a year, according to the poster ponderous some poor bastard gets mushed so where do you stand in order to avoid getting mushed to physics questions?

Cortex 47:21 Yeah. Well, it's pretty good. I can get behind that.

Jessamyn 47:25 But of course, everybody says call Mythbusters and put on a hard hat. Not super helpful. Oh, and then the other one that I really liked only because I enjoyed my personal answer to it. But I think other people's answers were great, too. I want to become a better geek.

Unknown Speaker 47:45 Oh, yeah.

Cortex 47:46 I you know, I I didn't read into that one. I initially saw it as like, I don't know if you

Jessamyn 47:51 were to TLDR TLDR.

Cortex 47:55 Whatever. I'm already good at being a geek. So fuck, y'all.

Jessamyn 48:00 Yes, the pink superhero did mention early on that having a whole bunch of self hatred is really an important part of the whole thing. But I thought lots of people had you know, good, good information about how to become a geek but and decent had a very sweet you know, you have to totally love what you love and not care if other people don't love it and just like, go love it even more.

Cortex 48:26 My Yeah, that seems like kind of the core thing. I mean, that's as far as an actual useful definition has always been that sort of notion of really just being passionately about something especially being passionately about something that doesn't fall into some sort of, like classic cliche notion of passions, you know, I think you can well I know you can be a pottery geek because I know some hardcore pottery geeks and shed but but but you know if you if you if you're watching on a soap opera and you see someone they have a passion for pottery and it's like a scene from from Ghosts you know is what people think of but then you start talking about Yeah, Ghostbusters or cellular automata or something like that. That doesn't have any sort of romantic connotations to it, but then you just get the fuck it's

Jessamyn 49:08 really not cool. Yeah, that's not necessarily cool.

Cortex 49:12 Yeah, until it becomes cool and then you're like fuck you I was here first.

Jessamyn 49:16 Great I've always loved Star Wars. Yeah, and decent quote was the best geeks are so fucking into Ghostbusters or whatever that if someone were to come up to them and say you are a total loser for liking Ghostbusters that much. They won't care that someone is bad mouthing them they will just be glad that someone wants to talk about Ghostbusters. He's been so sweet ever since he had that kid.

Unknown Speaker 49:40 They screw you up. Your will?

Jessamyn 49:44 Little potato face child. What else? Do you see?

Cortex 49:47 What one other thing and this is sort of meta talk and sort of music? I guess sort of both but Miko made a post announcing the return of the RPM challenge which is the February album in a month project where you have to write and record and do everything for an entire album. Library. And a bunch of people have sort of piped up to say they're doing it and and yeah, I think it'll be good time. I'm going to try and do it now that I, you know, have the sweet work from home gig and don't really have an excuse not to. And, again, I'll

Jessamyn 50:16 take some I'll take some extra shifts for you. Because I've been slacking over this last Ignite year at least I can do.

Cortex 50:23 We can figure it out. But yeah, so So if you're thinking I should record 30 minutes or 10 songs of music next month, why am I not doing that? Then you should really

Jessamyn 50:35 you should head on over to metal filter music talk. Is that what it's

Cortex 50:39 called? I just call it music talk. Okay, I don't know it's sort of an informal taxonomy but I think

Jessamyn 50:46 Mefi music talk

Unknown Speaker 50:50 yeah, I just say

Jessamyn 50:56 that's gonna be your noise from now on. We're gonna make a soundboard for all

Cortex 50:59 it's gonna say we need a moderator soundboard. Yeah, I don't know. I think that's I think that's all

Jessamyn 51:06 good. You know, I think so too. And oh, look at the time it's seven. Well, or four or whatever. It's an hour later than when we started talking about this. Yeah. So I'm going to press my stop button.