69: Internet History Whooshing Over My Head

It's episode 69! Matt's in New Zealand this week, so restless_nomad joins us as we catch up on the site goings-on since early December of last year. This episode runs about 80 minutes.

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Helpful Links

Podcast Feed
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Direct mp3 download

Music used in this episode

Fortune's Son by tunewell
Something Real by dunkadunc
Bad Romance & Pisgah by The White Hat
Two Princes by dubold

Mefi Jobs

writing research for Bookhouse
Wikimedia interaction designer

Projects

Commons Image Browser
Mapstalgia - video game maps from memory (mefi post, metatalk post)
Cartophile - maps blog (mefi post)
Letters at Houghton Library
Meme Pool - genetic image tumblr (no, no relation)
MetaQuilter quilting bee (metatalk post)

Metatalk

Metatalk OKCupid sharing and chatter
Mefi Music Torrent updated!
Metafilter vs. Reddit London Trivia (spoilers: crushed them)
Overlooked comments of 2011 (previous Greg Nog thread)
Discussion of comment fables
Things that got favorited more than you expected
pb breaks down font selections by users
litnerd thanks Mefi for pregnancy help
Show us your bookshelves!
And your desks!

Metafilter

A post about Hugh Howey's "WOOL" ebook experience, and Hugh shows up to discuss it!
The Corpus of American Historical English
Morpion Solitaire
The moment you knew the relationship was doomed
D&D nerdery: The Tome of Awesome
The secret language of stamps
YoutubePoop: hyperedited youtube weirdness
The Clock, a 24-hour realtime film supercut art installtion
Let's Break Final Fantasy VI (the Let's Play archive, archive of FFVI post)
Alien, age 11

Ask Metafilter

One minute desserts for lazy cooks
Help me win a Superb Owl snack contest
Nicki Minaj and-a the frickin' Pope
Hidden rooms and dead spaces
Code words (or, "Are You A Friend of Mathowie?")
Celebrities with hidden talents
Dr. Ruth: sniper

We had a little unforeseen technical weirdness with restless_nomad's audio signal, so she sounds a bit like she's coming through over a bad international phone connection. If it makes the podcast more exciting for you, pretend that's what's actually happening! Perhaps she is a secret agent.

posted by cortex to MeFi Podcast at 8:10 PM (39 comments total)

...perhaps?
posted by not_on_display at 8:15 PM on February 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

r_n is the ghost in the machine!
posted by arcticseal at 11:29 PM on February 15, 2012

Is it uncommon for replicants to have problems with their voice box? Aha, the truth is out!
posted by P.o.B. at 11:38 PM on February 15, 2012

Oh hai! Yeah, not_on_display is doing a lot of heavy lifting to keep the torrent rolling along.

I use ratings on iTunes to mark songs that caught my attention. It helps a little. Because 648 songs is a lot. It's nearly 44 hours' worth. Huh. ... Wow.
posted by Pronoiac at 12:49 AM on February 16, 2012

episode 69

tee hee hee
posted by maqsarian at 2:09 AM on February 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Woohoo! "Stuff that's worth smiling at again" is such a good way to put it. Posting this year's overlooked comments made me happy, and I hope somebody continues the tradition next year.

I was idly wondering: How many new favorites for the comments people mentioned were generated by that post?
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:32 AM on February 16, 2012

episode 69

tee hee hee

You know what gets me hot, really hot?

Fire.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:23 AM on February 16, 2012

Help me win a Superb Owl snack contest

I want an update to this immediately.

Also, the Super Bowl party I went to was full of delicious home-made food and I ended up having the worst allergy attack of my life -- my girlfriend described it as "potato-face" -- about 45 minutes into the night and had to go home.
posted by griphus at 6:42 AM on February 16, 2012

I listened to the first chunk of this on my drive to work (the drive is shorter than the pocast) and I thought of a question I wanted to ask you guys but now I don't remember what it was. Dammit.
posted by rtha at 8:14 AM on February 16, 2012

I added this to iTunes and then typed in "69" to listen to it and after the podcast was over it dropped me straight into listening to The Magnetic Fields. Win!
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:22 AM on February 16, 2012 [5 favorites]

"When My Mod Walks Down The Street"
posted by The Whelk at 8:28 AM on February 16, 2012 [2 favorites]

I'm weirded out, because I went to London a few years ago and mathowie was there. Now he's in New Zealand and I am going there on Saturday. hrm.
posted by gaspode at 8:52 AM on February 16, 2012

Up top my brothah!
posted by The Deej at 10:47 AM on February 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

That was fun. I liked cortex's quiche obsession.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 11:09 AM on February 16, 2012

And it's a shame that, apparently, the poor audio with restless_nomad dissuaded her participation because there were a few subjects it seemed like she'd have had more to contribute.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 11:11 AM on February 16, 2012

I'm weirded out, because I went to London a few years ago and mathowie was there. Now he's in New Zealand and I am going there on Saturday. hrm.

Nothing weird about that. Stalkers exist. The good news is that you've now accepted that you have a problem. That's the first step towards rehabilitating you in the society.
posted by vidur at 11:20 AM on February 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

umm...it's 69! not 69.

69! ~= 1.71122452x10^98

It's going to be hell catching up with them all.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 11:49 AM on February 16, 2012

And it's a shame that, apparently, the poor audio with restless_nomad dissuaded her participation because there were a few subjects it seemed like she'd have had more to contribute.

She's actually just a little quieter than cortex and I am and not as used to all the japery. We didn't even know the audio was sounding funky until we got the recordings back. She sounded fine to us while we were talking.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 12:28 PM on February 16, 2012

umm...it's 69! not 69.

69! ~= 1.71122452x10^98

I am thinking that even if I was an understander of higher level numeric things I still would not be an understander of this.

Is the answer a rhombus?
posted by item at 12:32 PM on February 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

! means something special in math. So if you type "what is 69!" into Google, you get a respectable math answer up top and not what you might otherwise expect.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 12:38 PM on February 16, 2012

Factorials.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:38 PM on February 16, 2012

Ahh, I see. Like everything else, it's Google's fault. (this is where I explain that I fully understand that it's not Google's fault, lest I be taken for an even bigger rube than I am. Cancel my Google anyways, though, just to be safe).
posted by item at 12:45 PM on February 16, 2012

Huh that is weird. My copy of the recording does not sound like I'm from spaaaaace. (But I always sound weird to myself so I'm not the best judge.)
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 12:57 PM on February 16, 2012

If it's easier for you, don't worry about all the factorial mumbo-jumbo, just think of it as ∫₀^∞ t⁶⁹ e^-t dt.
posted by Wolfdog at 1:00 PM on February 16, 2012 [2 favorites]

My copy of the recording doesn't sound like you're from space, but it seems to be glitching out and several entire segments have obviously been removed.

Maybe it was in the editing?
posted by item at 1:03 PM on February 16, 2012

Yeah, you don't sound like you're from space on your source recording, there's just a buttload of white noise. I filtered it pretty aggressively to try and reduce that so the whole podcast wouldn't sound like someone going HISSSSSSSSSSS while we talked, but it was a pretty blunt approach that cut a lot of high frequency out of your channel, hence the spacey sound.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:06 PM on February 16, 2012

Oh ok, that must've been it on my end. Still, it seem like it might be missing something.
posted by item at 1:08 PM on February 16, 2012

1.71122452x10^98 Love Songs.
posted by mykescipark at 1:14 PM on February 16, 2012

I'm so glad we made the Alien, age 11 guy so happy with that post, he seemed really excited about it.
posted by Artw at 8:42 PM on February 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Podcast feature request:

(This may be dumb and may also have been attempted in the past but here goes)

I'd love it if we brought back the little dealer that let someone call in and leave a message for the podcast. That used to be a thing, right? Or maybe it was only temporary? Anyway. I kinda love the idea of MeFites leaving random messages about their day throughout the month and then having a few of them featured in the podcast. Perhaps not as its own section, but to use as transitions, intro/outro, etc. Could be a neat addition or alternative to the music.
posted by lholladay at 12:43 PM on February 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

Also I just read the tags and now I want to start a tumblr called "Trampolines Trampolining" which would consist entirely of small trampolines bouncing on other, larger trampolines in various amusing settings.
posted by lholladay at 12:45 PM on February 17, 2012

I'd love it if we brought back the little dealer that let someone call in and leave a message for the podcast. That used to be a thing, right? Or maybe it was only temporary?

I think it maaaay have been temporarily a standing "call any time" thing, but more generally when we've done call-in shows it's been as a series of one-offs where Matt made a metatalk post saying "call in and talk about x". Which, I agree, they're fun and we should totally do another one one way or another.

I want to start a tumblr called "Trampolines Trampolining"

I will follow that tumblr and tell others to do so if you make it, even if it's only ever one animated gif post or whatever.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:11 PM on February 17, 2012

It's episode 69! Matt's in New Zealand this week

He should buy a Svord knife while he's over there.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 1:36 PM on February 17, 2012

I will follow that tumblr and tell others to do so if you make it, even if it's only ever one animated gif post or whatever.

http://trampolinestrampolining.tumblr.com/
posted by lholladay at 2:43 PM on February 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

THE BEST
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:28 PM on February 17, 2012

Just wanted to thank you for the podcast.
I would have missed all of these wonderful posts otherwise, and it made my week much better !
posted by motdiem2 at 10:41 PM on February 18, 2012

Just listened. Are you kidding! Bowie was perfect in The Man Who Fell to Earth [caveat: haven't watched it again in the last 36 years]. 36 years ago! really, I can't believe it.
posted by unliteral at 11:29 PM on February 24, 2012

Well, I just went to see Labyrinth in the theater (...again) last month, so I don't have a ton of ground to stand on, exactly, but other than his singing voice, the bit of Bowie that carried that movie was... well, if you've seen it, I don't have to tell you. (And if you haven't, this is an excellent treatment of the topic.)
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 8:56 AM on February 25, 2012

If anyone's interested in MetaQuilter, our blog hasn't been updated much (we're all busy people, I guess), but we've got a Flickr group now, too, where you can see some works in progress.
posted by ocherdraco at 9:28 PM on March 7, 2012