60: Quakes and QWOP

Our 60th podcast starts off with some amazing calls from MeFites in Japan. It ends on a slightly heavy note and we didn't have the calls recorded before we recorded our podcast, so you'll have to excuse the mods for not commenting on the calls (because they were an unknown at the time) and generally being jokey just after some Heavy Shit. Anyhoo, this contains recaps from SXSW and the best parts of the site during the month of March. It runs 1hr 15min long or so

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Helpful Links

Podcast Feed
MeFi Podcast on iTunes
Direct mp3 download

Calls from MeFites in Japan
bugbread
armage
woodblock100
gen
(Skype ate the voicemail from a user named Jeremy, I'm really sorry but I couldn't recover it)

MeFi Jobs
Research job in Austria by Joe in Australia
Web Developer in Victoria, BC

MeFi Projects
Harper WTF
Collaborative Jukebox
Movie about MS
You are Listening to Los Angeles
Make your own Movie Barcodes
Airport Bookstore
RetCon Artists from a SXSW panel (with sketchnotes. Also: Jessamyn's talk)



Winning talk (the fax app store):


MeFi Music mentioned and played
Vampire Deer - Silence by pyramid termite
Intellectual Property by ochenk
Solomon Silkwood by erikgrande
Golden Ratio by goodnewsfortheinsane
Dumpster Dave by reklus
Truth's A Patient Stalker by saulgoodman



IRL posts
Board Games in Portland, OR
Horace Rumple's 40th birthday party (great cakes!)

MeFi Posts
Cthulu ascii post featuring the creator behind it
Civil Rights bus driver history (Ask MeFi helped jessamyn go photos)

GIRP a mountain climbing game

NYT-style obit for a user's cat

Cosmonaut that went into space knowing he wasn't coming back

Single-link Reddit post to the best PDFs

Ask MeFi Questions
Are cover letters important? What were the best you've seen? also Top job candidate wore boots, is that ok?

Who does this Olympic Medal belong to?

Help me figure out why some math students got a very precise wrong number: "And I used bing because, of course, google gave the correct answer."

Potato Salad Vodka

MetaTalk posts
A new metafilter baby is born

The Daily Beast's story about MeFi's Russian Immigrant story

posted by mathowie to MeFi Podcast at 3:30 PM (55 comments total)

Horace Rumple 40th birthday party

Obviously you're not a John Mortimer fan.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:01 PM on March 31, 2011

I got more aggressive with our individual vocal files on this one in terms of compression and limiting, since I keep hearing from folks sometimes that if they're on the road or on a bus or whatever they still can't make out our quieter moments and such.

So it sounds a little bit flat to me compared to normal, but this may be more listenable on the flipside for noisy situations.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:30 PM on March 31, 2011

QWOP...GIRRRRRRP

Nice.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:36 PM on March 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

Oh yeah Josh, I noticed I was kind of fully clipped out for most of it, and I guess I had my speakers turned on or something because there was bleed-over of everyone else talking when I wasn't.

I ended up cutting out my track whenever I wasn't speaking, which required over 700 edits in the track.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:31 PM on March 31, 2011

Ha! I just recorded something for the podcast, and was about to send an mp3 via email! A wee but too late, it would appear!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:31 PM on March 31, 2011

Fantastic podcast! The calls were great. Perhaps that should be a regular feature? (not advocating more disasters)
posted by ColdChef at 6:38 PM on March 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

Wow. Wolfram Alpha never ceases to impress.
posted by MrFTBN at 6:49 PM on March 31, 2011

(Skype ate the voicemail from a user named Jeremy, I'm really sorry but I couldn't recover it)

Crap, Skype ate Ghidorah's voicemail. I was looking forward to that one (and flapjax's belated one, as well).
posted by armage at 6:53 PM on March 31, 2011

Can they be posted to this thread? I'd really like to hear from flapjax and Ghidorah too.
posted by marsha56 at 6:55 PM on March 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

Oops, sorry. I just realized that you're saying that Ghidorah's was lost. Can he call in again? and then can it get posted here?
posted by marsha56 at 6:57 PM on March 31, 2011

Can they be posted to this thread? I'd really like to hear from flapjax and Ghidorah too.

I am currently trying to upload (to Mefi Music) the bit that I just recorded this morning, and was going to send in to the mods via mail, but am having trouble getting it uploaded, for some reason. Just won't work. Weird.

If it'll upload, I'll post a link to it here in this thread. But I've tried about 4 times already...
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:09 PM on March 31, 2011

Ah! Finally elbowed its way in!

post-quake Japan report.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:15 PM on March 31, 2011 [5 favorites]

Perhaps that should be a regular feature?

Yeah, agreed. We used to do call in stuff as a regular feature but without some sort of ... guiding theme they sort of turned rambly. I really liked that part this time, we should find a way to do that more.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:18 PM on March 31, 2011

Jesus, is that your real voice? Here, take my money, sell me a car. Tell me the news and what to think.
posted by boo_radley at 7:19 PM on March 31, 2011 [17 favorites]

to f@m
posted by boo_radley at 7:19 PM on March 31, 2011

I am hearing about a horrific and terrifying thing but because it's flapjax at midnight's voice, I'm hypnotically suspended in a state of calmness and peace. Dear god man, please tell me you have a radio show or at least read stories to scared children every single night.
posted by Tomorrowful at 7:31 PM on March 31, 2011 [2 favorites]

I really liked that part this time, we should find a way to do that more.

It was great because you were able to request on-topic comments by phone in advance, and got some good ones. If you could figure out a theme ahead of time, even if it was just "hey MeFites in New Zealand! Hey, MeFites who knit!" then you could even pick and choose among the responses to feature a couple. It was great hearing from some MeFites in Japan. I particularly liked woodblock13's message and thoughtfulness.
posted by Miko at 7:35 PM on March 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

Matt, I bet you that if you went to Alabama, Alabamian mefites would show you a good time. This Alabamian would come home from New York for the occasion.
posted by ocherdraco at 8:09 PM on March 31, 2011

Thanks for this opportunity- it was nice to get this off my chest.
posted by gen at 9:23 PM on March 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

I ended up cutting out my track whenever I wasn't speaking, which required over 700 edits in the track.

Check out Logic's Strip Silence feature if you can lay hands on a copy. You can set the db level at which to strip out, and I think also set the lead-in and lead-out time of each mute. Takes a couple secs to fine-tune, then you're done in one click.
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:28 PM on March 31, 2011

Also, if you're doing dual-system audio, I strongly recommend Dual-eyes.
posted by gen at 9:32 PM on March 31, 2011

Damn, that's... well, it just kind of sucks. It felt pretty good to get it all out, I guess, but it was pretty rambling and incoherent, I imagine. It was odd, really, in the week and a half I spent at home, not a single person really wanted to hear about how things had been going. I mean, they'd ask, but 30 seconds later, they all seemed to want to point out how something I said was totally just like that thing at work the other day, and I just kind of gave up trying to explain.

The thing is, I'm fine. Every one I know is fine. One picture frame fell off a shelf, and the glass broke. My wife just found out from Tepco that we aren't even in a blackout group, and we'll be unaffected by blackouts taking place a couple streets over. It's just that I still sort of wanted to sit down and talk about it a little.

So, uh, meetup? We can get stinking drunk and tell each other our quake stories. Or bowling. One of the two.
posted by Ghidorah at 9:54 PM on March 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

(A tad hesitant to drop this in here, but it seems that the 'management' thinks it's OK ... (Thanks very much Matt!)

I just got a call a few minutes ago from a producer at NHK World (their overseas service). They are trying to get back to 'normal' schedules as the news cycle calms down, but haven't got regular programming back in sync yet. He let me know that a 30-minute program they previously aired on my work is up for re-broadcast tomorrow; they are going to use it as a kind of 'filler', running it six times during the day, in between the news bulletins. (The program is nothing to do with earthquake stuff - it was produced last September)

It's in their Japanophiles series. It will be viewable on this page of their site:
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/tv/schedule/index.html

Their schedule page gives broadcast times for various locations around the world. First broadcast seems to be 17:30 on the 1st (US west coast time):
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/tv/schedule/index.html
posted by woodblock100 at 10:10 PM on March 31, 2011 [8 favorites]

Borked the link, drat!

The program will be here (viewing window at top right of page).
posted by woodblock100 at 10:13 PM on March 31, 2011

Hey, woodblock, that's great!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 10:14 PM on March 31, 2011

Jesus, is that your real voice?

Yes! Praaaaiiiise Jeeeeezus!

please tell me you have a radio show

As it happens, I've been seriously thinking about starting a regular podcast, patterned after the radio show that Bob Dylan did a few years back, Theme Time Radio Hour. Each episode featured a bunch of songs that shared a certain theme: cars, booze, crying, whatever. I loved that show, and I think it could go on and on, actually. It was a shame it only lasted, what, three years or so? So I think a successor to that show would be a good thing. I've been trying to come up with a good name for it, though. Any suggestions will be welcomed.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 10:23 PM on March 31, 2011 [7 favorites]

It was good hearing everyone's voices, flapjax included. What gen said about Japan changing was spot on. Couldn't have said it better, so thanks.

I keep thinking about that day we got together to say goodbye to gomichild. The weather wasn't super clear, but it wasn't awfully cold for a February so we all had lunch outside... gen brought his little guy and so did gomichild. Flapjax's daughter was there, too. It was fun, kids and babies laughing outside in the clean air, adults sitting around talking about MetaFilter and other innocuous things.

We met out near the beach in Chiba, where there's been a lot of serious quake-related damage along the coastline. The air in Kanto is still irradiated, if not nearly to the extent that it is in Fukushima, but enough for parents to be concerned for babies and little kids. Same goes for tap water. Even after Fukushima is brought under control, whatever the hell that means at this point, things in northeast Japan will never be the same again.

I thought about calling, but didn't because I thought I might end up sounding angry and confused, which I've been feeling generally since March 11.
posted by misozaki at 10:35 PM on March 31, 2011

I've been seriously thinking about starting a regular podcast

If you don't do this, I'll never speak to you again!

a good name for it ...

No brainer. 'Flapjax at Midnight'
posted by woodblock100 at 10:36 PM on March 31, 2011 [4 favorites]

One more vote for the Flapjax at Midnight podcast!

Thanks for your thoughts misozaki. I too think back fondly at that last meetup.
posted by gen at 11:47 PM on March 31, 2011

It was nice to meet more of you, and I'm looking forward to meeting more soon. Maybe, when the weather starts to behave a bit more, I'm more than willing to toss out the bbq meetup idea for consideration. Japan needs more potluck.
posted by Ghidorah at 12:09 AM on April 1, 2011

Damn, flapjax, your voice is like wildflower honey pooling on a buttered biscuit. I endorse this podcast idea.

Matt, I bet you that if you went to Alabama, Alabamian mefites would show you a good time.

Well, we'd damn sure try.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 12:29 AM on April 1, 2011 [5 favorites]

woodblock, kick ass. I'm a big fan of the NHK fluff pieces and have been wondering recently if I just might have seen you on one before in a "wouldn't it be weird if?" kind of way.
posted by zengargoyle at 2:52 AM on April 1, 2011

Flapjax, please, please do a podcast. I want to listen to you forever! You sound like home, especially when you say "gigging"
posted by ukdanae at 5:13 AM on April 1, 2011 [3 favorites]

The music that Josh highlighted in this podcast was fantastic.

I also had a hilarious time imagining Jess IMing Josh and saying, with restrained exasperation, "please look at Music" and Josh shrugging and going "eh, maybe".
posted by Phire at 6:45 AM on April 1, 2011

Yeah flappy, I agree that a podcast from you is in order. Where are you originally from? Your accent almost seems like a North/Central Texas one, but I have a feeling it's not.
posted by item at 6:56 AM on April 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

I also had a hilarious time imagining Jess IMing Josh and saying, with restrained exasperation, "please look at Music" and Josh shrugging and going "eh, maybe".

It's sad because its true. I get distracted pretty easily, and lately I've been lazily poking Pandora (and sharing stuff on narwhal bacon's Mix Party, which is awesome, go spend some time there).

So I mean it's not so much an "ugh, do I have to?" thing as it is a "whoops, I, uh, yeah, how long till we start recording?" mad scramble.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:30 AM on April 1, 2011

woodblock100's Japanophiles piece is great. You all should watch it!

And flapjax, as soon as you get that podcast up and running, I am subscribed.
posted by ocherdraco at 7:52 AM on April 1, 2011

Minus signs, the two-pixel pony! Exclamation of joy, compulsive sigh of relief!
posted by steef at 8:36 AM on April 1, 2011

MrFTBN: Wow. Wolfram Alpha never ceases to impress.

There are also a few handy "shortcuts" built into Google search, including a calculator feature that can do simple and advanced math, unit conversion, and output physical constants. I often use the Google search bar built into Firefox for unit conversion, switching from square feet to acres.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:28 AM on April 1, 2011

I think that an e-MOT-i-con would be an excellent Transformer!
posted by ignignokt at 9:36 AM on April 1, 2011

OMG, that was hilarious and I am so sorry for making everybody self-conscious and crazy.
posted by iamkimiam at 12:56 PM on April 1, 2011

*listens to flapjax at midnight....swoons*
posted by special-k at 3:54 PM on April 1, 2011

Wow, I'm really encouraged by all these kind comments! The podcast will definitely happen! Probably start on it once the radioactivity (no pun intended) dies down a little.

item, to answer your question, I was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, home of the mighty VULCAN!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:11 PM on April 1, 2011

I am so sorry for making everybody self-conscious and crazy.

We were already this way, now we just have someone to blame!
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:57 PM on April 1, 2011

home of the mighty VULCAN! (flapjax at midnite)

And his giant metal ass!
posted by ocherdraco at 9:06 PM on April 1, 2011

*Warning! Pure technical comment ahead!*

FWIW, I listened to the podcast over the radio in my pickup and through in-ear headphones while engaging in such activities as pounding t-posts and running angle grinders and found it legible (audible?) the whole time without needing to occasionally rip my earbuds out or lose the thread due to inaudibility. This is a hugely good thing IMHO.

My vote is that spoken word content is well served by getting the shit compressed out of it. Please do not squeeze music that way though, my corollary is that I'm happy to miss the quiet bits of a musical interlude in noisy situations in order to enjoy it more thoroughly when I've got the time to do so.

More importantly, good to hear from the Japanofites. Y'all rock my world.
posted by stet at 11:47 PM on April 1, 2011

haha, blame away! More data for meeeee!

(good lordy, am I in my own experiment or what?)
posted by iamkimiam at 5:18 AM on April 2, 2011

To those who don't already follow him, can I recommend Flapjax at Midnight's YouTube Channel?
posted by PeterMcDermott at 5:34 AM on April 2, 2011 [3 favorites]

I've been trying to come up with a good name for it, though. Any suggestions will be welcomed.

if you put flapjax on a podcast you can have flapjax anytime
posted by speicus at 12:27 PM on April 3, 2011

flapjax at midnight on the 'cast skillet, yes please.
posted by iamkimiam at 5:03 PM on April 3, 2011

Re: The discussion of buying books from overseas: for UK books I use The Book Depository - each price comes with delivery included, which is usually a very good price, and so far they've been pretty dependable.
posted by Artw at 2:54 PM on April 4, 2011

Is anyone else experiencing issues with iTunes pulling down the podcast? I'm telling it to update podcast but it's just looking at me. All other podcasts seem to be OK, just MeFi affected.
posted by arcticseal at 6:01 AM on April 5, 2011

"And I used bing because, of course, google gave the correct answer."

It's a funny comment, but is it actually true? I can't find a way for Google to give the correct answer and neither could wildcrj.
posted by kmz at 7:36 AM on April 5, 2011

I only just had a chance to listen to the podcast today, but I wanted to mention that sonika's wasn't the only MetaFilter baby born that week.
posted by nickmark at 1:33 PM on April 8, 2011

mathowie: I ended up cutting out my track whenever I wasn't speaking, which required over 700 edits in the track.

You should check out ducking. It's for knocking out stuff like that. It's built in to Garage Band.
posted by Pronoiac at 9:04 PM on April 20, 2011