66: Better Know a taz

Podcast 66 is almost two hours of jabbering, starting with a 30min interview with taz our newest moderator. Then we dilly dally about all things MetaFilter. It was recorded on Friday, October 21st.

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How do you find what you love doing? (from the Steve Jobs thread: a story of a 2 year-old using an iPhone)

Recommend some good comedy movies

An average sized body rolled into a sphere is how big?

Help me rename my Public Radio Show

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Pub Quiz: MetaFilter vs. Reddit

Greasemonkey script for the hedgehog

Happy 4th MeFight Club!

Did digg make reddit dumb?

posted by mathowie to MeFi Podcast at 10:46 PM (58 comments total)

Hey now you did going to the store twice.
posted by The Whelk at 11:20 PM on October 24, 2011

Anyone someone make an FPP on how there are going to the store logs that are super charming.
posted by The Whelk at 11:24 PM on October 24, 2011

*runs, hides*

But also, instead of spamming only one member with my latest favorite book, I'll add another link and spam everyone:

Victor LaValle, and the page on his site for Big Machine, which is good because it doesn't give away a ton of info (if you don't click "more") in case you're like me and don't want to know too much before reading. And here's a WSJ review, for those who do like to know a bit more. (Not a mayfi thing, but hey – book!)
posted by taz (staff) at 11:29 PM on October 24, 2011

Um I can't hear taz at all!?
posted by arse_hat at 12:45 AM on October 25, 2011

Oh, yeah... that was a bad thing. I'm not on a Mac, and Matt and Josh are using some Mac software and app to work the podcasts... so I got my husband to find something that's supposed to do the same thing for Windoze, and he did – but then he had to leave for some unexpected meeting, and I recorded my end on the wrong bit rate (and possibly other problems there) and so I sound even sillier than I just natively sound. Whee!
posted by taz (staff) at 12:53 AM on October 25, 2011

"I sound even sillier than I just natively sound"

No. You are not heard at all. Just some people talking and then long dead silence.
posted by arse_hat at 12:56 AM on October 25, 2011

o weird. I can hear myself (sounding bad) on the podcast from my laptop. i dunno.
posted by taz (staff) at 1:01 AM on October 25, 2011

I can hear taz fine on the MP3. (A bit echoy, but no big deal.)
posted by nangar at 1:03 AM on October 25, 2011

I can't hear you at all (except for your first comments) via Win XP, Win 7, or iOS 5.0.
posted by arse_hat at 1:06 AM on October 25, 2011

arse_hat: I think taz's part is mixed into the stereo left channel only (provided I've got my headphones on the right way round) - could there be a problem with your headset or speakers?
posted by misteraitch at 1:06 AM on October 25, 2011

OK if I pump this into my 60 watt speakers I can hear Taz from one side. But it's too late for that so maybe tomorrow?
posted by arse_hat at 1:15 AM on October 25, 2011

Help me rename my Public Radio Show

does not link to where it should.
posted by onya at 2:39 AM on October 25, 2011

Here: Help me rename my Public Radio Show
posted by nangar at 2:58 AM on October 25, 2011

Good catch; I fixed it in the post.
posted by taz (staff) at 3:14 AM on October 25, 2011

For what it's worth I can hear taz fine. She's entirely left-channel. Win XP, Chrome 14.0.835.202 m, work computer, going to get in trouble with management.
posted by shakespeherian at 6:55 AM on October 25, 2011

Ohhhhhh shit. That's totally my fault, I sync up the various audio tracks as a pre-editing step and Matt does the actual editing, and when I do that I pan the individual tracks hard left and the everybody mix hard right so that when I've got them synced everybody comes through in nice balanced-sounding stereo.

The thing is that after that part I mute the big mix, rebalance everybody out across the central quarter of the stereo field, and bounce down each of those isolated and mostly-centered tracks to source recordings for Matt to do his editing on.

I remembered to reset the stereo position on us three (I'm about 16% left, Jess is middle, Matt is 16% right) but I must have forgotten to plot taz in there so she's panned hard left still.

I'm not sure what the simplest way to fix the mix in place would be, Matt, but if you can create a stereo-inverted copy of taz's edited track that'd get her equally on both sides of the mix and thus be basically center of the stereo field. I bet this unexpected-hard-panning thing will catch a lot of people out one way or the other.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:13 AM on October 25, 2011

PIC-ROSS. It's like a picture crossword!
posted by Eideteker at 7:22 AM on October 25, 2011

Did jessamyn just say snitches get stitches?
posted by villanelles at dawn at 7:35 AM on October 25, 2011

Also I finally made the podcast, so I can retire.
posted by shakespeherian at 7:35 AM on October 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

Yeah, "pic" as in "picture" finally occurred to me right after we recorded that.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:41 AM on October 25, 2011

I can explain the velveteen squares. IAMAMicrobiologist, IAMNYMicrobiologist.

It is for replica plating, a pretty old technique that generally only yeast people do nowadays but is still valuable in specific instances. I was teaching undergrads how to do it just last year.

Essentially, you apply a sterile velveteen square to your replica plating tool, which is a heavy round block the size of a petri dish that comes with a ring that holds the square in place. Then you take a plate that has your microbe grown in spots in a specific pattern that you have written down and then transfer the pattern to the velveteen by putting the plate on it without smushing. You can then transfer the microbes to almost as many plates as you like in the same pattern.

It is useful if you have a ton of strains and you need to see if they grow on a bunch of different media. This way you don't have to spot 50 strains on a plate 200 times.
posted by Blasdelb at 7:48 AM on October 25, 2011

I'm horrified... I finally make it to a podcast after months of trying with four FPPs over a 100 favorites and a sidebar, and it has a typo in the title...
posted by Blasdelb at 7:51 AM on October 25, 2011

Thanks for referring me to the human sphere question.

I knew Samus being 1 meter rolled up sounded fishy.
posted by mccarty.tim at 8:02 AM on October 25, 2011

My presumption has always been that Samus' suit rolled up into a rigid 1-meter shell and that she herself was suspended inside with room to move on a gyro-stabilized inner platform, and that her ability to shift position within the exoskeletal sphere was important for effecting many of the shifts in momentum seen in typical Ball Mode play.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:05 AM on October 25, 2011 [3 favorites]

I hear taz fine but the 15 minutes of dead air at the end caught me out. After the song finished, i thought a hidden track was coming like a Halloween scare but ... nothing
posted by stuartmm at 8:24 AM on October 25, 2011

I like that cortex already had a presumption about that.
posted by shakespeherian at 8:32 AM on October 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

This didn't get mentioned in the Ur Quan Masters thread, but squee.

If you don't have homebrew channel installed on your Wii, I don't know what to say to you.
posted by mccarty.tim at 8:33 AM on October 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

We promise to talk less next time.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:36 AM on October 25, 2011

BE LESS INTERESTING

ENJOY ONE ANOTHER'S COMPANY LESS
posted by shakespeherian at 8:47 AM on October 25, 2011

Wait Matt took an entomology class? I want to hear more about that.
posted by shakespeherian at 8:58 AM on October 25, 2011

This episode of the podcast features bone chilling silence and mic static and runs about two hours long.
posted by The Whelk at 9:01 AM on October 25, 2011

Soundtrack: John Cage ... you know the rest.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:07 AM on October 25, 2011

I do not have 10,000 leather gloves to send, but I am pleased to be only minimally irritating.
posted by garlic at 9:09 AM on October 25, 2011

Can I just reiterate that I love taz's voice? Please re-consider my totally-not-creepy-at-all request to read bedtime stories to me!
posted by Eideteker at 9:27 AM on October 25, 2011

Hah! Taz, damn near every project I've ever been on is defunct now, and the one that's still going strong has a forum that I didn't actually moderate. I have the Incredible Vanishing Resume.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 9:43 AM on October 25, 2011

Taz' voice is just as beautiful as taz!
posted by Miko at 10:44 AM on October 25, 2011

That "hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror" is also how interpreters at Mystic Seaport described the whale hunt.
posted by Miko at 11:27 AM on October 25, 2011

I can hear taz fine. She's entirely left-channel

Another damn lefty!

We promise to talk less next time.

Oh don't do that. I have a not-so-secret girl crush on taz and so I had to listen to that segment last night even tho it was late and I had to keep my eyes open with toothpicks. I really enjoyed the mod chitchat, it was fun. So I came for the girl crush and stayed for the fun little mod "salon." It was a good reminder of why I think taz will fit in so well: you are all pretty smart, great, fun people! Best mods evah! (disclaimer: I don't go anywhere else that there are mods, I don't think. Unless we have a rare mocking alien site mod practices thread, of which I can recall one or two.)
posted by madamjujujive at 11:31 AM on October 25, 2011

I can hear taz fine. She's entirely left-channel

hard-panned taz,
she stays on the left.
the right channel, see,
is just taz bereft.
she's a stereo gal,
her positioning deft.
she's hard-panned taz,
and she stays on the left.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:48 PM on October 25, 2011 [2 favorites]

Have not yet listened just want to chime in -- ty for being early!
(srsly hoping I can hear taz on the itunes dwnld)

BTW-- cortex (Josh) audio levels are always lower
posted by TangerineGurl at 7:37 PM on October 25, 2011

"I can hear taz fine. She's entirely left-channel"
Oh No! Deaf in my left ear. Will have to muddle through ...
posted by TangerineGurl at 7:38 PM on October 25, 2011

So I was going to say that cortex pronounced my name wrong, but then I went to one of those pronunciation sites and it turns out I pronounce it wrong! Or rather, I pronounce it the Spanish way (ess-ka-BEH-chay), but since I learned the word from a Brazilian restaurant, I guess I ought to be pronouncing it the Portuguese way (ess-ka-BESH or at most ess-ka-BESH-schwa) which is more or less what cortex did.
posted by escabeche at 9:42 PM on October 25, 2011

I am profoundly relieved to hear that. I feel like I've been on a real run of mispronunciations lately.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:58 PM on October 25, 2011

Hey, neat -- thanks for mentioning the hedgehog script, jessamyn.

I wish I'd saved my old Unix Talk session transcripts!

(BTW, cortex, I first thought you were asking taz for her opinion on "Pie Crust" and my reaction was, "A puzzle game with pie crusts sounds intriguing!" Then I was a little disappointed that there really wasn't a puzzle game with pie crusts.)

This may be the first time I've commented in a podcast thread, so while here, I'd like to say that I always enjoy listening to the podcasts and hearing the discussions and interviews -- not just about MeFi threads and modding/administrative stuff (which I find really interesting), but also all the wonderful tangents that you take (e.g. garlic bulbs). They're always fun.

Often while listening, I find myself wanting to have some sort of "[+]" button to bookmark something that was said during the podcast. Some examples this time: the part about the contact form emails and hundreds of handbags and pairs of goat kid gloves (!); pronouncing "mefite"; mathowie talking about soil science and how it's changed (not really).
posted by rangefinder 1.4 at 12:55 AM on October 26, 2011

Pie Crust! That's what I thought, too! I have to admit that I find Picross easier than pie crusts, because pie crust is hard! /not a baker
posted by taz (staff) at 1:02 AM on October 26, 2011

Wait why was the Music post for "Gonna Have to Let You Down" deleted by jessamyn?
posted by infinitewindow at 3:09 PM on October 26, 2011

Oh wow, because I am an idiot and when I was adding the little "hey this was on the podcast" URl I accidentally clicked the delete box because ... I don't know, for no reason. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. Now fixed.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 4:44 PM on October 26, 2011

Overloading! The way cortex applied it to verbal language, it means creating another meaning for the same term.
posted by ignignokt at 7:41 AM on October 28, 2011

Yeah, I have a sometimes messy habit of applying computer science jargon to normal discussions without remembering that it might not make sense to non-CS folks. Overloading is at least sort of comprehensible by inference; one time I used "pragma" in a policy discussion and got justifiably blunk at by scody.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:21 AM on October 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

I like how the iTunes cover art calls it the "MetaFilter Weekly Podcast".
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 11:03 AM on October 28, 2011

Every podcast to date has been released during a week.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:07 AM on October 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

My favorite part was at the beginning, intermittently I think I heard a nose whistling. Kind of musical!

(As usual, enjoyable podcast) :-)
posted by artlung at 5:15 PM on October 28, 2011

My first MetaFilter post and it's Matt's first pick for the MetaFilter review!

You can probably see my smile from the other side of the world!

And Jessamyn said my name and Cortex laughed at it!

I am bright yellow with orange today...
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 6:32 PM on October 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

I listened to this while making breakfast so I tried out the garlic-peeling method on shallots and it totally worked!
I am completely amazed. I didn't believe it would work even while I was doing it.
posted by exceptinsects at 11:26 PM on October 30, 2011

Is there somewhere I can read the study on anonymity that was mentioned in the podcast? It would be cool to add a "Metafilter in academia" page to the wiki.
posted by roll truck roll at 8:51 AM on October 31, 2011

I'm not sure what the simplest way to fix the mix in place would be, Matt, but if you can create a stereo-inverted copy of taz's edited track that'd get her equally on both sides of the mix and thus be basically center of the stereo field.

[insert picture of dog with tilted head here]
posted by davejay at 2:46 PM on November 4, 2011

I finally listened to this podcast in its entirety and it's so great! Really nerdy and hilarious. And thanks for the shoutouts, too.
posted by iamkimiam at 7:51 AM on November 14, 2011

Also, when I was preparing for the AoIR presentation mentioned in this podcast, I randomly ran across a comment I wanted to include from a 'May-Fi' sayer, took a screen snapshot, went to anonymize it and saw it was made by taz – on the same day she became a mod. I didn't end up including the comment in the presentation, but I happily tucked that bit of info away in my mind, just thinking how absolutely hilarious that there's even more diversity in mod pronunciation of the M-Set. You can't even script this stuff. Ah, I love it.
posted by iamkimiam at 7:54 AM on November 14, 2011