Comments on: 66: Better Know a taz

66: Better Know a taz

mathowie — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:46:10 -0800

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.

taz interview Picross DS How to peel a garlic bulb MeFi Music Gonna Have to Let You Down by unSane Four by koeselitz MeFi Projects FaveRunner (ended up on MetaTalk) MeFi Tartan (maybe make it at Spoonflower) Occupy Wall Street Peoples Library (other OWS projects: 1, 2, 3) Roguelike Radio Old School Unix Talk on the Web Miss Gender Podcast MeFi Jobs Flower Delivery Create squares for a laboratory MetaFilter posts Three Minute Thesis Going to the Store Wheels within wheels circle packing (example) Haunted House surprise hidden camera photos of people freaking out (example: 1, 2) The search for a more prefect kilogram Classroom blackboards in Porn, deconstructed Hunting wild pigs with technology (photo) The Golden Parking Pass (photo) The Million Song Dataset Ur-Quan Masters (fan remake of Star Control 2) My Stillborn Child's Death Ask MetaFilter questions What to do with shoplifted items Do disclaimers actually protect people from giving legal advice online? 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 MetaTalk posts Pub Quiz: MetaFilter vs. Reddit Greasemonkey script for the hedgehog Happy 4th MeFight Club! Did digg make reddit dumb?

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 23:20:20 -0800

Hey now you did going to the store twice.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 23:24:14 -0800

Anyone someone make an FPP on how there are going to the store logs that are super charming.

By: taz

taz — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 23:29:54 -0800

*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!)

By: arse_hat

arse_hat — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 00:45:07 -0800

Um I can't hear taz at all!?

By: taz

taz — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 00:53:40 -0800

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!

By: arse_hat

arse_hat — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 00:56:37 -0800

"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.

By: taz

taz — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 01:01:48 -0800

o weird. I can hear myself (sounding bad) on the podcast from my laptop. i dunno.

By: nangar

nangar — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 01:03:28 -0800

I can hear taz fine on the MP3. (A bit echoy, but no big deal.)

By: arse_hat

arse_hat — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 01:06:18 -0800

I can't hear you at all (except for your first comments) via Win XP, Win 7, or iOS 5.0.

By: misteraitch

misteraitch — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 01:06:48 -0800

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?

By: arse_hat

arse_hat — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 01:15:58 -0800

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?

By: onya

onya — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 02:39:14 -0800

Help me rename my Public Radio Show

does not link to where it should.

By: nangar

nangar — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 02:58:50 -0800

Here: Help me rename my Public Radio Show

By: taz

taz — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 03:14:50 -0800

Good catch; I fixed it in the post.

By: shakespeherian

shakespeherian — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 06:55:17 -0800

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.

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:13:28 -0800

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.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:22:46 -0800

PIC-ROSS. It's like a picture crossword!

By: villanelles at dawn

villanelles at dawn — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:35:37 -0800

Did jessamyn just say snitches get stitches?

By: shakespeherian

shakespeherian — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:35:50 -0800

Also I finally made the podcast, so I can retire.

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:41:15 -0800

Yeah, "pic" as in "picture" finally occurred to me right after we recorded that.

By: Blasdelb

Blasdelb — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:48:30 -0800

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.

By: Blasdelb

Blasdelb — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:51:49 -0800

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...

By: mccarty.tim

mccarty.tim — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 08:02:21 -0800

Thanks for referring me to the human sphere question.

I knew Samus being 1 meter rolled up sounded fishy.

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 08:05:35 -0800

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.

By: stuartmm

stuartmm — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 08:24:00 -0800

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

By: shakespeherian

shakespeherian — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 08:32:39 -0800

I like that cortex already had a presumption about that.

By: mccarty.tim

mccarty.tim — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 08:33:30 -0800

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.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 08:36:18 -0800

We promise to talk less next time.

By: shakespeherian

shakespeherian — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 08:47:14 -0800

BE LESS INTERESTING

ENJOY ONE ANOTHER'S COMPANY LESS

By: shakespeherian

shakespeherian — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 08:58:19 -0800

Wait Matt took an entomology class? I want to hear more about that.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 09:01:40 -0800

This episode of the podcast features bone chilling silence and mic static and runs about two hours long.

By: filthy light thief

filthy light thief — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 09:07:32 -0800

Soundtrack: John Cage ... you know the rest.

By: garlic

garlic — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 09:09:01 -0800

I do not have 10,000 leather gloves to send, but I am pleased to be only minimally irritating.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 09:27:33 -0800

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!

By: restless_nomad

restless_nomad — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 09:43:27 -0800

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.

By: Miko

Miko — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:44:24 -0800

Taz' voice is just as beautiful as taz!

By: Miko

Miko — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 11:27:48 -0800

That "hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror" is also how interpreters at Mystic Seaport described the whale hunt.

By: madamjujujive

madamjujujive — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 11:31:10 -0800

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.)

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:48:35 -0800

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.

By: TangerineGurl

TangerineGurl — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 19:37:32 -0800

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

By: TangerineGurl

TangerineGurl — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 19:38:42 -0800

"I can hear taz fine. She's entirely left-channel"
Oh No! Deaf in my left ear. Will have to muddle through ...

By: escabeche

escabeche — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 21:42:07 -0800

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.

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 21:58:34 -0800

I am profoundly relieved to hear that. I feel like I've been on a real run of mispronunciations lately.

By: rangefinder 1.4

rangefinder 1.4 — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 00:55:24 -0800

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).

By: taz

taz — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 01:02:45 -0800

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

By: infinitewindow

infinitewindow — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:09:36 -0800

Wait why was the Music post for "Gonna Have to Let You Down" deleted by jessamyn?

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 16:44:55 -0800

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.

By: ignignokt

ignignokt — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 07:41:50 -0800

Overloading! The way cortex applied it to verbal language, it means creating another meaning for the same term.

By: cortex

cortex — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 08:21:16 -0800

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.

By: These Premises Are Alarmed

These Premises Are Alarmed — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:03:15 -0800

I like how the iTunes cover art calls it the "MetaFilter Weekly Podcast".

By: cortex

cortex — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:07:34 -0800

Every podcast to date has been released during a week.

By: artlung

artlung — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:15:27 -0800

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

(As usual, enjoyable podcast) :-)

By: paleyellowwithorange

paleyellowwithorange — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 18:32:21 -0800

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...

By: exceptinsects

exceptinsects — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 23:26:41 -0800

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.

By: roll truck roll

roll truck roll — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 08:51:22 -0800

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.

By: davejay

davejay — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 14:46:23 -0800

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]

By: iamkimiam

iamkimiam — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 07:51:23 -0800

I finally listened to this podcast in its entirety and it's so great! Really nerdy and hilarious. And thanks for the shoutouts, too.

By: iamkimiam

iamkimiam — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 07:54:59 -0800

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.