74: LobsterMitten interview

New month, new podcast, this time we interview LobsterMitten on her new role as mod, then go into our favorites from the month. It runs pretty long, around 1hr 45min.

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posted by mathowie to MeFi Podcast at 4:11 PM (50 comments total)

Ugh, I accidentally cut out the first couple minutes of me talking at around 38min to 41min, and now Garageband is shitting the bed trying to edit the podcast, so I guess just skip over that part.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:35 PM on November 6, 2012

Sweet. I will listen to this! But not tonight.
posted by rtha at 5:18 PM on November 6, 2012

I am downloading this now to listen to on my way to watch election returns.
posted by ocherdraco at 5:26 PM on November 6, 2012

(btw, the link to the 50 best tricks video in the post is borked, as is the example link for the North Dakota project.)
posted by ocherdraco at 5:26 PM on November 6, 2012

How am I supposed to get any work done?
posted by arcticseal at 5:35 PM on November 6, 2012

Beware! Predditors are looking into cortex's awesome bedroom through the Hallowindow.
posted by Nomyte at 6:44 PM on November 6, 2012

ocherdraco, I fixed the links!
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:12 PM on November 6, 2012

Cool! By the way, this was perfect subway listening for tonight. Thank y'all for doing the podcast. I really appreciate it.
posted by ocherdraco at 8:06 PM on November 6, 2012

I would like to thank you for posting this today. I'm avoiding all election coverage tonight (except Daily Show and Colbert Report, which won't be actual election coverage), and this is an excellent way to kill a couple of hours and avoid loading up Google News, which I would typically be looking at during an evening.

Also, whoever has the chat noises popping up during the conversation with LobsterMitten... wow, is that ever a pavlovian response noise for me!

Also.... why don't you ever have those "other people" participate in the general discussion?
posted by hippybear at 9:17 PM on November 6, 2012

Awww, that was a fun podcast and thanks for all the mentions.
posted by iamkimiam at 3:58 AM on November 7, 2012

"When we banned people we just used to change their password to 'banned'."
posted by Artw at 7:51 AM on November 7, 2012 [3 favorites]

Egg rhymes with vague in Virginia's southern piedmont, too. I never knew it was more widespread.
posted by nangar at 8:10 AM on November 7, 2012

Also.... why don't you ever have those "other people" participate in the general discussion?

Pretty sure that was us Skyping links to each other. I know that I can't talk and chat at the same time.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:14 AM on November 7, 2012

Goodnewsfortheinsane may be very friendly and may be very Dutch BUT HAS YET TO COME TO ANY OF THE BENELUX MEETUPS, this is like, part of the job description right?
posted by Blasdelb at 8:53 AM on November 7, 2012

Incidentally, are there skype boops periodically incorperated into the podcast? This is not one of my various electronic devices just fucking with me right?
posted by Blasdelb at 9:10 AM on November 7, 2012

Yeah I think it has to do with how LM's sound was set up, so you got the boops this time.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:17 AM on November 7, 2012

Yeah, it's really easy to forget to turn down your speakers while recording the podcast since we're usually wearing headsets, and so if someone leaves their volume up chat bloops from our mid-conversation linkswapping can end up in the mix. Didn't think to say anything at the time, oops.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:19 AM on November 7, 2012

"When we banned people we just used to change their password to 'banned'."

Ask Andre Torrez about that too. He came to the same solution eons ago.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:19 AM on November 7, 2012

"Plovers?"
posted by steef at 12:35 PM on November 7, 2012

mathowie, is that audio foulup sticking around or is it fixable?
posted by Pronoiac at 12:47 PM on November 7, 2012

Sorry about [BOOP] that!
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 2:26 PM on November 7, 2012

Okay, the transcript page is up! Let me know if you fix the audio - that part has a definite Garfield minus Garfield vibe.
posted by Pronoiac at 3:41 PM on November 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Also.... why don't you ever have those "other people" participate in the general discussion?

Pretty sure that was us Skyping links to each other. I know that I can't talk and chat at the same time.

No, what I meant was... LobsterMitten or taz or whomever... why aren't they part of the roundtable.

Also... I WANT A STICKER!
posted by hippybear at 6:21 PM on November 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

taz is asleep when we are talking usually and other than that ... I don't know. It's just one of those things that evolved the way it does: Matt, Jess and Josh bullshit about MeFi. We should mix it up more.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:30 PM on November 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I think mostly it's a couple of things that just make it easy to do them with the standard troika:

1. All three of us are really used to doing a podcast with the three of us; we know each other's rhythms, we know the drill, we're completely completely anxiety free about the execution, etc.

2. Adding more bodies to any given mix gets complicated because each extra body in the conversation is one more person mostly-not-talking and one more element in the tricky no-visual-input problem of navigating discursive turn-taking and prompting and interruption and so on.

Neither of which are dealbreakers, they're just both things that naturally make it easier to put a standard one in the can. I figure we'll keep finding opportunities to mix it up (Jeremy's subbed in a couple times already), it just takes extra planning and effort and sort of a will to make it happen on all sides, and the likeliest situation historically has been when one of the standard folks is unavailable due to travel and so there's an empty third seat.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:57 PM on November 7, 2012

It's all good. I'm just happy to have a podcast to listen to now and then. I was just curious.
posted by hippybear at 8:38 PM on November 7, 2012

I went looking in the archives. I coulda swore pb was in an ep.
Cannot find it. Was it a figment?
posted by TangerineGurl at 9:01 PM on November 7, 2012

lobstermitten Thank You for transcribing!

When I initially heard your audio I knew it was going to be difficult to figure out the small details of your speech while transcribing due to audio quality. Thanks for stepping in and knocking out a bunch of minutes!
posted by TangerineGurl at 9:04 PM on November 7, 2012

Yes, I figured I would go through and do the transcript of my part of the podcast, since it's a lot easier for me to tell what I was saying!

I'm sorry that I screwed up my mic set-up. I haven't done any recording like that before, and didn't realize how distant and echoey I would sound.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 12:34 AM on November 8, 2012

You're right that the transcribing is fun and easy! What a great thing; thank you guys for organizing and pursuing doing these transcripts.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 12:37 AM on November 8, 2012 [2 favorites]

Cortex, my husband speaks Esperanto. He will totally criticize your language skills.

he speaks it cause it was part of his AI machine-translation doctorate. he doesn't do AI anymore he builds cyborgs now. I married Tony Stark it is amazing
posted by The Whelk at 1:14 AM on November 8, 2012 [2 favorites]

You guys are a Hulk or a Thor away from being The Avengers.
posted by Artw at 6:19 AM on November 8, 2012

TangerineGurl, pb was interviewed in episode 6, back in 2007.
posted by Pronoiac at 9:10 AM on November 8, 2012

While it'd be fun to get more of us in the podcast at once, I think we'd really have to change the format to something a little more rigid to make it flow at all - I think my first one was as the fourth person and it was fine but really felt like the conversational space was pretty cramped. Swapping folks in from time to time seems like the easiest and best solution, really.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 3:28 PM on November 8, 2012

Ok, I have finished transcribing the part that I'm in. If someone who knows the phonetic alphabet can fix up my fake-o phonetic stuff in the sections from 33:30 thru 34:30, that would be great.

And I agree with r_n that it's very tricky to get more people into the podcast simultaneously without explicit structured turn-taking. It's very hard to pick up cues for when you're switching speakers, so either you talk over each other, or you end up with one or more people being basically silent most of the time.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 5:16 PM on November 8, 2012

Heh, or you and I could overlap an hour one weekend and live-mod on Skype. It'd be great!

"Hey did you look at that flag?"
"Yeah, I dunno what that's about, that looks fine."
"Oh god, that guy is doing that thing again."
"What is with that guy anyway?"
"He's just, you know, that guy. Deleting."

..and so on for an hour.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 5:24 PM on November 8, 2012 [3 favorites]

We would need a really dramatic 80s-action-tv-show soundtrack for that.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 5:46 PM on November 8, 2012

I would so read that Skype session.
posted by rtha at 6:02 PM on November 8, 2012

My favorite bit so far: Jessamyn marveling about how wonderful it is not to work in a cubicle farm, and how lucky they are to have such a great job, when I had come to the same conclusion on her behalf, about ten minutes earlier, after she yelled, 'Fuck you, Matt,' and he didn't fire her.

A boss you can say that to? Dream job.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 8:47 PM on November 8, 2012

I added a couple of links to the post, for the math crochet stuff I talked about briefly in there. The mathematical objects were hyperbolic surfaces.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:05 PM on November 8, 2012

I haven't listened to it yet, but JESUS CHRIST DID YOU HAVE TO DO THAT COMIC SANS THING WHYYYY.
Are you trolling us?
posted by Acheman at 6:43 AM on November 9, 2012

My specific quote was "Fuck new Skype, and fuck you too!" which is a little different.

What Comic Sans thing?
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:19 AM on November 9, 2012

The podcast preview image this time was a metafilter-blue square with "Metafilter Monthly Podcast Image" on it in Comic Sans.
posted by ocherdraco at 8:09 AM on November 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

The transcript's almost done!

I know this is ridiculous, but I'm enthusiastic because we're getting back to the comic podcast soon.
posted by Pronoiac at 1:13 PM on November 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

"The podcast preview image this time was a metafilter-blue square with "Metafilter Monthly Podcast Image" on it in Comic Sans."

I noticed, too. But since I laughed I thought MAYBE it was on purpose.
Thanks for following up.
posted by TangerineGurl at 6:11 PM on November 9, 2012

We have started transcribing the comic podcast! If you haven't transcribed before, this is a good place to start, because there's no overlapping speech to puzzle out.
posted by Pronoiac at 12:53 PM on November 10, 2012 [1 favorite]

Oh yeah: I just felt like more attention could be drawn to the people actually doing the transcription. They're listed on the wiki page, but I don't mention them enough on Mefi. This time, beryllium, LobsterMitten, and TangerineGurl did that work, and I picked up a bit here and there.

(and cortex has done a bit of the comic podcast, which, heh.)
posted by Pronoiac at 8:13 PM on November 10, 2012 [2 favorites]

I like how efficiently the podcast-transcribing runs at this point - that now we have a full transcription available so quickly after the podcast is posted. Yay to y'all making that happen! The Fanscribed set-up was totally a game-changer, I feel - it makes the whole thing much more accessible and the task way less overwhelming to contemplate overall, when anyone can jump in anywhere and contribute a little bit at a time so smoothly.

beryllium has particularly been a transcription superstar, I have noticed - I really appreciate the work you're doing, beryllium.
posted by flex at 9:05 AM on November 11, 2012

Yes, beryllium has been a superstar! Since I opened those two podcast transcripts last week, they knocked off a couple of hours worth of audio, which is really pretty amazing.
posted by Pronoiac at 4:10 PM on November 16, 2012

I just listened to this and I just want to say that it is awesome that Jessamyn's phone makes a loon sound. It is also awesome that Cortex suggested it was a howler monkey.
posted by bondcliff at 11:53 AM on November 19, 2012