Comments on: 6: Chatting with the father of the permalink

6: Chatting with the father of the permalink

mathowie — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 20:47:33 -0800

Episode 6 of the MetaFilter Podast: the one where we interview pb

By: mathowie

mathowie — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 20:47:42 -0800

Direct mp3 link
Subscribe to the podcast feed

This one clocks in at 40 minutes, about 2/3 is me and jessamyn talking, the last part is talking to silent fifth beatle mefi coder pb.

Music for this week:

Sgt. Pepper 2.0 by cortex

HI I'M ON METAFILTER AND I COULD OVERTHINK A PLATE OF BEANS by buriednexttoyou (his own music site)

Summer's Ending from ludwig_van (off his upcoming album)

MeFi Threads:

Famous violinist busking in the subway thread and the MetaTalk thread about the multiple posts which has jessamyn's comment about it.

Photos of writing on a fridge thread

Ask MeFi threads discussed:

Cat-calling construction worker thread

Wedding Ring question

jjg's mac power chord experiment and the metatalk post about that

Paul Bausch links:

His profile and his site

His flickr clone project

ORblogs site

Twitter developer on Ruby On Rails

By: puke & cry

puke & cry — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 20:57:57 -0800

sweet

By: Rhomboid

Rhomboid — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 21:25:28 -0800

Whoa... it's, like, people talking about stuff I've read on the site... blows my mind, dood.

Seriously though, these are great to listen to.

By: dobbs

dobbs — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 22:10:25 -0800

I like how Jess's first feature for PB is for banning. Hah.

By: janell

janell — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 22:28:55 -0800

mathowie's fake new yorkish accent made me laugh for about ten minutes. Nice work.

By: girlhacker

girlhacker — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 22:34:03 -0800

"Ten years of my life" felt like it was literally taking 10 years of Matt's life. Too bad!

By: Firas

Firas — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 22:46:08 -0800

The nice thing about comment threads about navel-gazing podcasts about dorky internet sites is that I can comment to say I laughed at Jess' "rural noplace" phrase.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 23:33:54 -0800

I felt a little bit Imus when I was editing the recording, like I would offend nyc italians with my stereotype construction guy accent.

By: jack_mo

jack_mo — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 05:54:23 -0800

These are getting better and better, I think. Though I'll never get used to that bizarro Meee-Fie pronunciation.

Also, I had no idea the 'fifth Beatle' of MetaFilter was the same person doing the Flickr unshackling project - it's a really great series of posts, and, as a PHP dabbler, I've learned tons of stuff following along. Cheers for that pb!

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 07:08:05 -0800

What's a-matter, you? You think-a the Italians are all a buncha construction guys, eh?

By: wheelieman

wheelieman — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 07:23:33 -0800

Pocasts? Does that include the Raven?

By: wheelieman

wheelieman — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 07:24:33 -0800

Or do you mean this podcast is low budget, so its a pocast?

By: wheelieman

wheelieman — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 07:25:25 -0800

Oopsie, I blew a joke. Ban me for a week.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 07:33:04 -0800

This should be interesting. For starters, I can't wait to find out who the hell pb is.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 07:37:17 -0800

And yes, I see the title of the post; I mean who the hell he is in MetaFilter terms, since he's posted, what, three comments in the last year?

*holds out for the quonsar interview*

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 08:09:32 -0800

Eideteker, he helps code stuff around here. He helped me write the Music and Jobs sites, does all the ajax stuff, and fixes a ton of stuff behind the scenes. Next month he goes from once a week helping me out to 30hrs/week so we'll be churning out the features soon.

By: cortex

cortex — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 08:19:51 -0800

"I have a beer with me!"

At last, at last you're understanding how this works.

By: shmegegge

shmegegge — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:33:08 -0800

I personally find this broadcast offensive and you guy should be ashamed of yourselves.

wait wait. I was thinking of that Imus thingy. No, this is great. much better than the Imus thingy.

By: ludwig_van

ludwig_van — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:33:12 -0800

Thanks for the plug, matt. But you'll find that I've only posted two tracks from the album so far. I'm sure Eugene Gilden will give you a copy when the CDs come in.

And as a side note, I think a power chord experiment would be something different altogether.

By: cortex

cortex — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:38:26 -0800

As documented in the first chapter of that classic theoretical-physics documentary, Back to the Future.

By: pb

pb — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 11:10:51 -0800

It was fun chatting with Matt and Jessamyn yesterday, I highly recommend it. I didn't get a chance to qualify my "intimidation" comment in the podcast by saying that I'm just as much a MeFi junkie as anyone. I read MeFi proper religiously, and I tune into Ask MeFi every couple days. I just have a tough time clicking the "Post Comment" button for some reason. It's been great working on the site part time over the past year or so, and I'm looking forward to kicking that up a notch by building various banning tools, each more cruel than the last.

And thanks, jack_mo!

By: euphorb

euphorb — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 11:59:10 -0800

Everyone uses flickr? Really?

By: buriednexttoyou

buriednexttoyou — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 11:59:26 -0800

"That guy's got an adorable website with a whole bunch of little stupid songs like that."

I am so going to use that quote somewhere, I laughed till my sides hurt. Glad you like the tune.

By: brundlefly

brundlefly — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 13:32:36 -0800

Whoa. That's odd, euphorb. Not what I would expect at all!

By: chrismear

chrismear — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 15:20:02 -0800

brundlefly, really? Go on, venture off the nerdcore for five minutes and talk to some everyday people. Nobody has heard of Flickr.

By: anotherpanacea

anotherpanacea — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 16:06:20 -0800

chrismear- take a look at the comment from Flickr's Stewart Butterfield linked in euphorb's post. Those numbers aren't marketshare, they're US-only hits, including page reloads, etc.

Flickr and Photobucket are about neck-and-neck: PB's 16,763 to Flickr's 16,516. Both numbers are global; PB's got more US users by Butterfield says, 2:1 or 3:1.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 16:31:27 -0800

photobucket still feels like it's merely a free image host for other sites (ebay, forums, etc), flickr is something else entirely. I don't even see galleries at photobucket under specific users.

By: smallerdemon

smallerdemon — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 20:52:15 -0800

I am happy to hear I'm not the only person out there that doesn't think flickr is the end-all be-all of online photo repositoring. (ah... I love made up words.)

I like Coppermine still. I have only just recently tried picasaweb at google, but that suffers from exactly the same centralized server issue that pb doesn't care for, so that isn't for everyone. (Plus, they recently upped to 1GB for free storage. Of course, for $8 a month I can have web hosting with 300GB of storage and 3000GB of bandwidth a month, so why not just do that?)

Great podcast this week guys, thanks. This is kind of what I thought podcasting should be about. :)

"Hey, did you see that thing that was posted? "
"Oh, I TOTALLY saw that thing! It rocked."
"Yeah, that thing was great."
"I like things."

It's like listening to me and my friends sit and drink coffee or beer at the end of the week and chat about online crap.

And yes... beer makes it better. :) Make sure you don't drink those old beers from like 2005, btw, since they'll suck-diddly-uck.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 21:08:30 -0800

Glad you like the tune.

You know I meant "stupid" in the nicest way possible, right? I listened to probably ten of your songs while I was writing up the site on the MeFiUserSites blog, so fun.

I'll make sure I have my own beer next time.

By: jouke

jouke — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 01:42:57 -0800

I noticed jessamyn does uptalk but the guys don't. Is that a feminine thing in the US?

(Personally I switched off when you started discussing api's: discussing software design can be interesting, but somehow this "we have this legacy code and we have to refactor it etc." reminded me too much of work. MMV obviously)

By: girlhacker

girlhacker — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 02:59:26 -0800

I noticed jessamyn does uptalk but the guys don't. Is that a feminine thing in the US?

I'll let jessamyn comment on her rising inflection if she wants to :-) but I'll speak to the general trends which is that, yes, women tend to do it more than men because as females we naturally tend to want to bring others into a conversation instead of just dominating it (I'm speaking generally here; don't want to start a long thread about male vs female talk: see Deborah Tannen's book "You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation" for much more). It's prominent with teens (the most severe example being Valley Girl speak) and if you take communication training in the corporate world they'll advise you to get rid of it in order to have an authoritative tone.

One thing to note, I find I use it more when I'm on a voice call/chat and can't see the other person (I'm not sure if Matt & Jessamyn use webcams when they record) because I don't have the extra visual communication helping me out to see if the other person gets what I'm saying.

By: jouke

jouke — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 04:52:19 -0800

Ok, tx girlhacker for the explanation.
It's an interesting phenomenon.
Since uptalking seems to be very infectious I've done some googling to find out wether has transcended language barriers to dutch f.i. But I can't find any trace of it and I don't hang out with adolescents.

By: jouke

jouke — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 05:17:00 -0800

Btw: apparently uptalking can be construed as an aggressive way to force agreement, not just as a socially dependent attitude. Apparently Bush uses uptalk

By: Miko

Miko — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 10:04:27 -0800

as females we naturally tend to want to bring others into a conversation instead of just dominating it

Uptalking was recentlydiscussed here. Though Tannen's interpretation is positive (not surprisingly), it can also be seen as resulting from discomfort with taking an authoritative tone, and compliance with gender roles that reward hesitancy and tentativeness in females. So that offering a question? Instead of a statement? Seems less intimidating somehow? It's as though the uptalker is seeking group approval with each clause before moving along in the speech. I'd say in the working world it generally comes across as a sign of immaturity. Jessamyn is really not using this sort of uptalk.

What she does drop in here and there is sort of that hanging sound, 'wait-there's more - the sentence isn't over' that is a useful application of uptalk, in moderation. When used like that it functions as a way to keep a good's attention. Vocal modulation is a really important public-speaking tool - a monotone or a sentence delivery that drops at the end of each sentence is soporific for an audience. So variety of tonality is a good way to keep people interested and tuned in, a sort of audio 'are you with me here?' signal - and Jessamyn speaks in public a lot, so I think the tonality she employs comes from using that vocal modulation. I've been listening for ten minutes, and she really uses very little uptalk. When she does use it, it sounds appropriate, in that it's mid-sentence and building to a conclusion. This isn't the sound of a person who has that chronic uptalking problem you hear in certain environments.

By: ludwig_van

ludwig_van — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 10:25:17 -0800

Whoa.

By: Miko

Miko — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 10:44:10 -0800

Group's attention -- not good's attention.

I hope I don't sound critical of Jessamyn there. I'm actually trying to say I don't hear her truly uptalking.

By: Miko

Miko — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 11:09:47 -0800

Great song ludwig_van

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 11:45:57 -0800

I don't hear jessamyn doing uptalking per se, but she does do the great interview/radio thing of sounding interested in anything anyone says. I know I need to work on it more, but given that we don't have any visual cues whatsoever, you have to give off the vibes that body language usually does (you'd sit in an "open" body position if you were doing this on TV), but in audio somehow, and jessamyn does it very well and I do not. I wouldn't call it uptalking but more along the lines of being inquisitive, leaving statements open to comment, and always having something helpful to say about whatever thing I'm babbling about.

By: cortex

cortex — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 12:11:40 -0800

she does do the great interview/radio thing of sounding interested in anything anyone says

True. In fact, I'd be entertained as hell if the next podcast could feature a planned bit: Matt, come up with five explicitly, unquestionably dull things to say; Jess, play ball.

M: "I had a cheese sandwich. Yesterday. For lunch."
J: ???

By: buriednexttoyou

buriednexttoyou — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 12:19:37 -0800

"You know I meant 'stupid' in the nicest way possible, right?"

Haha, yes, don't worry. I liked the quote so much, I even put it on my front page. Thanks so much for the link, and for listening to my songs.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 12:48:45 -0800

Closely aligned with flickr? So it's true Matt is angling for a yahoo! buyout. Now I understand the ongoing IMG saga.

*waves hi to pb* Thanks for refraining from asshattery.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 15:47:06 -0800

Uptalking is the podcast ellipsis. "And then she said ...?" It's easy to trade off lines with someone when you can see them, it's a lot harder when you can't [and no, we do not webcam, I do not like to webcam]

Until people mentioned it, I had no idea I even sounded like that, thats really funny. Thanks for the analysis Miko, really interesting.

By: and hosted from Uranus

and hosted from Uranus — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 06:21:25 -0800

I so love the podcasts.

By: yeti

yeti — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 06:27:08 -0800

Thanks for making it 40 minutes! 20 was too short.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 07:39:54 -0800

yeti, I made it super long just for you. Eventually, we'll do an "8 hour workday" version.

By: jonmc

jonmc — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 07:58:19 -0800

you guys let beer rot away for months? Communists.

By: drezdn

drezdn — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 08:28:51 -0800

Again, I loved it. It really adds to the sense that metafilter is a community.

By: cortex

cortex — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 08:34:06 -0800

jonmc, let's not generalize Matt's abhorrent behavior to the rest of this metro area. We generally let beer rot away for the time it takes to get the cap off.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 08:42:22 -0800

By: cortex

cortex — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:41:41 -0800

I don't know when I crossed that threshold, but I'm in a place now where it's a little bit sad if there's no beer in the fridge. The tasting-awful bit goes with time and acclimation, I suppose; I went through a lot of the stuff (and not just cheap college 24-packs) in college, and so covered most of the distance early on. Now I really love the stuff, though I'm still making peace with pale ales and some stouts.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 11:21:00 -0800

you guys let beer rot away for months?

I do not do the same for hard likker, let it be known.

By: smallerdemon

smallerdemon — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 14:11:34 -0800

I like to drink beer with friends in a brew pub, but I rarely sit at home and just drink a beer. It actually tastes awful to me when I'm not in a social situation, I think because I can fully pay attention to the taste at home.

Somebody! QUICK! Get this man some good beer. It should only take like five minutes since he's practically on top of the best brewing city in the US.

By: gleuschk

gleuschk — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 15:16:13 -0800

and not just cheap college 24-packs

I think you mean and not just cheap college half-racks of Henry's which I miss desperately at least three times a week, resulting in massive depression and questioning of the forces in my life that led me away from Portland.

Oh wait, that's what I would have meant to say.

By: cortex

cortex — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 15:18:54 -0800

Heh. Actually, being as how they're currently pretty much fielding legislation to change PDX to PBR, I haven't been starved for macrobrew. My beer consumption brings balance to the force.

By: chuckdarwin

chuckdarwin — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 04:13:58 -0800

The Metafilter Community is so intimidating?