64: Unsticking a dead mouse

Podcast episode 64 features Josh and Jeremy talking over the last month of things on the site while I've been off on vacation. Enjoy!

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On the subject of Tower Defense (of which genre Desktop Tower Defense is the best)

Kingdom Rush is a good tower defense game

posted by mathowie to MeFi Podcast at 2:58 AM (38 comments total)

Jeremy?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:47 AM on August 13, 2011

You're in Ozstralia. We don't have vacations, we go on holidays.

When in Rome...
posted by malibustacey9999 at 3:58 AM on August 13, 2011

Jeremy.
posted by gleuschk at 3:58 AM on August 13, 2011

Huh.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:17 AM on August 13, 2011

There's a typo in "Tabletop ipad studio"

Also, yay podcast! :)
posted by zarq at 4:35 AM on August 13, 2011

The iTunes link to the iTunes store via my iPhone (wow too many iWords!) still has ep 63 as the latest?
posted by ellieBOA at 4:49 AM on August 13, 2011

Jeremy spoke in class today.

Interestingly enough (to me, at least), Pearl Jam wrote that song about an incident that happened at my high school the year before I attended there. Couldn't have happened to a crappier band. Poor kid.
posted by item at 5:50 AM on August 13, 2011

I'm surprised the Retro Nickelodeon post didn't make it onto the podcast. That was a great FPP
posted by wheelieman at 5:53 AM on August 13, 2011

There's a typo in "Tabletop ipad studio"

Fixed! Also removed Jessamyn's name from the "features..." bit since it's actually literally just me and restless_nomad this time out for wacky logistical reasons.

I'm surprised the Retro Nickelodeon post didn't make it onto the podcast.

Water is wet, sky is blue, Rhaomi makes a killer encyclopedic post. Truth be told I didn't get cable as a kid and so had never really given much of a care for Nickelodeon so it wasn't really on my radar, but, yeah, that was a monster.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:10 AM on August 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

stavrosthewonderchicken?
posted by clavdivs at 7:50 AM on August 13, 2011

Should the "Best tower defense game" be under the jobs category?
posted by Think_Long at 8:11 AM on August 13, 2011

I would like to hire someone to build the best tower defense game.

But yeah, we generally put the links in the order they show up in the podcast, and we just suddenly started talking about it at the end there, so I guess it should be under Jobs but not in. I'll go subtly edit the post text now.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:18 AM on August 13, 2011

for wacky logistical reasons.

I'm catsitting my sister's four cats and dealing with a blizzard of estate paperwork this week and I forgot to bring my headset down to MA. I scooted out to find a headset and after stopping at three different smaller local stores wound up at Walmart where I got a cheapie headset which, when I got it home, turned out to be BROKEN. Rawr! But I did do the HTML for the links do you can blame the typos on me.

This was fun to listen to!
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:18 AM on August 13, 2011

It was fun to do! Even though I haven't been doing the regular podcast thing and had to sort of scramble for links, there were plenty and I think the video game derail, while inevitable, wasn't that excessive. I may actually bring myself to listen to it this afternoon, actually. (I cannot stand the sound of my own voice. *shudder*)
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 9:23 AM on August 13, 2011

Before Matt edited this post, I kept waiting for Jessamyn to jump in and scare Josh and Jeremy but oh well, it was still fun
posted by wheelieman at 9:43 AM on August 13, 2011

Jessamyn Josh And Jeremy, J FORCE THREE
posted by The Whelk at 11:05 AM on August 13, 2011 [2 favorites]

I should probably take down the "games developer" job post. I found a software/hardware engineer and we're already working on the project.
posted by loquacious at 11:18 AM on August 13, 2011

I can't really describe how happy I am that you used my song. Thanks!
posted by koeselitz at 11:35 AM on August 13, 2011

But do you pronounce your name koozlitz?
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:46 AM on August 13, 2011

I pronounce my name "köselitz," like this guy. Mostly because German "ö"s are fun. Kyuuuuuuuuh-selitz.

When people say "koozlitz," though, I still come running.
posted by koeselitz at 11:51 AM on August 13, 2011

I was surprised that the Bill Nye post turned out to be so problematic. It only has 312 YT links, whereas stavrosthewonderchicken's epic I like to watch post has 13,344 unbroken (99 broken) YT links. What gives?
posted by troll at 1:49 PM on August 13, 2011

Stav's epic (a) was also problematic as I recall but (b) predated the YouTube inline player which is what really melted the site initially with the Nye post.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:24 PM on August 13, 2011

Man, that post embarrasses me.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:51 PM on August 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

Hey thanks for the inclusion, guys.
I put the lyrics up, cortex.
posted by chococat at 5:13 PM on August 13, 2011

cortex: "Truth be told I didn't get cable as a kid and so had never really given much of a care for Nickelodeon so it wasn't really on my radar"

Was it really not that interesting (apart from its length) to people who didn't grow up with it? Putting it together, I found what I thought were a lot of fascinating stories in their own right -- the animated doo-wop redesign that took it to first place, the kiddie magazine that was a secret renaissance for underground comix, the controversial gay parenthood special from 2003 -- but then again I did grow up with it so that might just be the personal connection coloring things. A lot of the posts I do are motivated by that, so if they're coming off as more "nostalgiawank for a narrow cohort of users" than something legitimately interesting for everybody, I'll try focusing on other things more.

To be honest, I kind of felt like that about Miko's "Alice's Restaurant" post -- it was clearly objectively a great post, but just had no relevance to me because it was entirely about a socio-pop-cultural phenomenon that was before my time, so I didn't get the references or share the memories. I wouldn't want to do too many of those when there are more generally interesting things to post about.

Also, if you want another site-breaking post, check out filthy light thief's Christmas Lectures one from last year, which cortex had to split into multiple below-the-fold sections.
posted by Rhaomi at 5:20 PM on August 13, 2011

Was it really not that interesting (apart from its length) to people who didn't grow up with it?

It wasn't not-interesting so much as just not leaping to the top of my to-read pile, personally. There's so much posted just on mefi every day that I rarely find myself thinking, man, what am I gonna read? So with the exception of the rare OMG MUST READ THIS LATER thing that I just don't have time for and favorite, if it passes me by it just passes me by like 90% of posts.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:32 PM on August 13, 2011

if they're coming off as more "nostalgiawank for a narrow cohort of users" than something legitimately interesting for everybody

I don't much care about Nickelodeon either but I mostly came to say that narrowcasted nichey esoteric bullshit is totally okay for front page posts so do not at all worry about this. Everything doesn't have to appeal to or interest everyone. I don't see it as wanky at all, just something that a bunch of people will be super psyched about, some people will look into just because they appreciate the efforts and some people will just keep cruising on by which I think is fine.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 5:36 PM on August 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

Jeremy.
posted by gleuschk at 3:58 AM on August 13 [+] [!]

What?? Why did I think restless_nomad was a girl??
posted by Ashley801 at 4:34 AM on August 14, 2011

Oops, nevamind, heh.
posted by Ashley801 at 4:35 AM on August 14, 2011

Jessamyn Josh And Jeremy, J FORCE THREE

It was like when you went and sat down to watch Voltron and it turned out to be one of those episodes with just a couple of the Lions running around trying to beat the big bad guy, and you keep thinking "Only if they could've combined forces, because otherwise this dude would be TOAST!" but of course it turned out all good anyway.
posted by P.o.B. at 5:16 AM on August 14, 2011

What?? Why did I think restless_nomad was a girl??

Apparently one of the failure modes of having Jeremy as a name when I'm pretty obviously female in person is that people decide my name is Jeri (or Jerry, or whatever.) I have a neighbor who has been calling me that for for five years now. It's fine, I'll answer to it, and it works better for the friends who thing "Jer" sounds like a nickname for a frat boy.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 8:32 AM on August 14, 2011

In the future, we should just always refer to you as "Jeremy (who is a GIRL)...", in sort of the same triumphant phrasing as Kermit uses at the end of A Muppet Christmas carol when he says "...and Tiny Tim (who did NOT die)..."
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:15 AM on August 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

FYI, I fed a brief excerpt into a speech-to-text engine - the transcript was, uh, inaccurate. It read like a cross of markovfilter and Zalgo. I'm looking into improving the results.
posted by Pronoiac at 6:52 PM on August 14, 2011

A transcript is in progress on the wiki. (The actual transcript, not word salad.)
posted by Pronoiac at 9:01 PM on August 14, 2011

MY ANUS IS BLEEDING!

Don Hertzfeldt's "Rejected" in full, also available with commentary from Hertzfeldt. He has a Youtube channel now!
posted by Pronoiac at 9:53 PM on August 14, 2011

I was promised a 2 hour long Skyrim podcast...what is this other non-videogame stuff you keep talking about?
posted by juv3nal at 12:02 PM on August 15, 2011

Do yourselves a favor (or favour)! Go to iTunes and download everything by armoured-ant. I just did and it's all amazingly fantastic. I don't normally gush, but...holy wow!
posted by ColdChef at 7:14 PM on August 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

Wow - what ColdChef said.
posted by nickmark at 12:02 PM on August 22, 2011