101: More Elegant Website for a Civilized Web

February 3, 2015 11:54 AM

Podcast 101 clocks in around 90min and covers all our favorite bits from January, and was recorded yesterday, Feb 2.

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Helpful Links

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MeFi Jobs
Astronomy camp


MeFi Projects
Closet, a play by xingcat

Ink and Water music video by tessmartin

& you should by ardgedee

smiling face withface by aparrish

Slavoj Žižek or Dan Harmon by j03

Shut Up and Beer Me by azarbayejani

INTERESTING.JPG: deep-learning AI looking at news photographs by cmyr (examples: 1, 2)

Song Name Haiku by jjwiseman (posted to MeFi)

NoDoNot adds a "no" symbol to any image by wintrymix

Drinking My Way Through the Literary 1930s by Alexandra Michelle (assisted by an earlier Ask MeFi question)

Parsing reports on murdered and missing indigenous women by Lemurrhea


MeFi Posts
GIS proving an old Mitch Hedburg joke is surprisingly true

Witch Windows in Vermont

Boston Public Library's Postcard Collection leads to the Flickr collection of state sets of postcards (how they print colors)

Who owns Los Angeles?

Deathhacks: tech tips for what to do before you're gone (passwords in a box, MetaTalk associated thread about death)

Dave King, drummer for The Bad Plus and his funny drumming videos

Steven Soderberg's cut of 2001 (Interstellar on FanFare)

A big post about names

Chocolates representing Japanese Onomatopoeic words that describe texture

VHS cover art from 1980s horror films

PERPETUAL PIZZA

Twin Peaks synth 1980s sounding remake of the soundtrack

A supercut of Murder She Wrote's Jessica Fletcher having Epiphanies

Poker game solved by computer, one of the authors is a longtime member and comments


Ask MetaFilter Questions
Are There Contingency Plans in the Event of a Catastrophe? (disaster draft)

What's your favorite small town in your state?

Songs like "Fifty Nifty United States" to help you memorize facts?

What are some life-changing experiences absolutely worth saving up for?

What do you do when snowed in? (a great answer)

What was it like for a junior high girl to get a perm in the 1980s?

I want the easiest-reading, most engrossing history books?

What are things said to women who are ambitious in business?


MeFi Music
Those Aren't Poodles by Greg Nog, which spawned a cover by not_on_display

Your Racist Friend (Y Tori Kant Even) by cortex (part of the TMBG cover album)

January Challenge: a song featuring a 10 second sample

not my voice by we are the music makers

10 Seconds of Static by TheNegativeInfluence (featured outro)

Ramen Bowl 4 by donkeymon


MetaTalk posts
Emoji thread

New Diplomacy game about to begin

posted by mathowie (staff) to MeFi Podcast at 11:54 AM (30 comments total)

Aww, jeez. We still have 96 minutes left to transcribe for Episode 100!

(If anybody listening to episode 101 could take a couple of minutes to transcribe 30 seconds of the previous episode, that would be awesome.)
posted by zamboni at 12:05 PM on February 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

Is this the episode that has the worst thing in the world?
posted by Celsius1414 at 1:23 PM on February 3, 2015

No, this is just a tribute.
posted by zamboni at 1:28 PM on February 3, 2015 [4 favorites]

It pleases me a lot that the Summer Science Program came up on Mefi jobs, and it makes me happy that you guys thought it was cool. I was a student there years ago, and it was one of the more positive formative experiences that a nerdy kid from Northern Michigan could have. I still look back fondly on the sleepless nights bonding with other nerds while learning multivariable calculus and hand-measuring film using Edwin Hubble's old measuring engine(they use computers for measuring now, softies). I hope that at least one appropriately qualified mefite found the opportunity intriguing.
posted by rockindata at 1:49 PM on February 3, 2015

Also, I went ahead and made a post about INTERESTING.JPG because seriously it's so great.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:10 PM on February 3, 2015

Sorry, my lame joke was lame. In my defense we've had a measles warning at our office this afternoon, and I need coffee. These are not related items. Please ignore me (!) and carry on. <3
posted by Celsius1414 at 2:47 PM on February 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

What was the URL for that site that was like Interesting.jpg but was porn?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:38 PM on February 3, 2015

DON'T JUDGE ME FOR ASKING THAT
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:38 PM on February 3, 2015 [3 favorites]

See the projects post or my post linked in previous comment about same.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:14 PM on February 3, 2015

i can't let that be the last thing i say in this thread


Is it me, or did "Those Aren't Poodles" have a sort of B-52s thing going on?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:16 PM on February 3, 2015

Is there some serious sound on/off you're doing on your end Matt? Every time you talk there's a hiss sort of thing going on. You should get a cool gamer headset!

Thanks for making that post cortex. Loving NSFW_JPG. I hope you do not get measles Celsius1414.

(and now I am more certain that it was mathowie noisily clicking and typing in the last podcast)
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 6:31 PM on February 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

A hiss?

🐍

(any excuse)

That was a good podcast.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 8:40 PM on February 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

Matt sounded like he had a serious noise gate operating during this one. Like, Industrial-Strength Cone Of Silence clamping when he wasn't speaking. Attentive listeners could, however, hear cortex's beverage slurps. Every single one.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:52 PM on February 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

cortex's comment in the Murder, She Wrote supercut thread is excellent
posted by Quilford at 6:10 AM on February 4, 2015

WHAT HO, MODS. I pumped my fist and yelled "YEAAAH!" when I heard it.

It seems like a bunch of things that you mention as favorites only just appeared on the front page. Or…did I just I overlook them?
posted by wenestvedt at 6:11 AM on February 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Oh man, I loved the shoutout to the beloved but obscure Silver Age Metafilter title, The Metal Mefites.
Thanks!

Joshium!
Jessamynium!
Mathowite!
Lead!


I do love the Bronze Age version too, so no disrespect to LobsterMitanium or RestlessNomadite.
posted by ursus_comiter at 6:17 AM on February 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Ok, after 101 episodes I think Cortex should get his name mentioned in the opening.
posted by bondcliff at 8:41 AM on February 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

I agree. He wrote the song, he can write another song that has his name in it.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 8:47 AM on February 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

I was just kind of thinking an awkwardly inserted "and Cortex too!"
posted by bondcliff at 10:09 AM on February 4, 2015

Lately I've been compensating by introducing myself twice once we start talking.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:34 AM on February 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

(About the Dave King post)
jessamyn: "Is this that naked drummer?"
cortex: "Uh, I don't know if he's naked at any point. I don't...he's not naked in the main video..."
jessamyn: *audible sigh*
posted by billiebee at 11:12 AM on February 4, 2015

cortex: Lately I've been compensating by introducing myself twice once we start talking.

You guys, we should all "crowd-source" this to help make up for past episodes. Here, I'll do one:

"...And I'm Josh Millard, a.k.a. cortex."

posted by wenestvedt at 6:35 AM on February 5, 2015

🎼 "🎸...And I'm 🎵 Josh Millard 📯, a.k.a. 🎶 cortex. 🎹"

followed by 💨 (laugh)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:52 AM on February 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

It seems like a bunch of things that you mention as favorites only just appeared on the front page. Or…did I just I overlook them?

I think they were mentioning them from the projects section - and they all just recently graduated to the front page.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:55 AM on February 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I think I'm averaging like one "hey this is neat, why haven't posted it" post-recording Projects-to-Front-Page graduation per podcast recently with stuff I end up talking about. Probably the real lesson here is I should be more aggressive about just posting stuff I like from Projects before we get around to podcasting.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:28 AM on February 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

Matt sounded like he had a serious noise gate operating during this one

Yeah, I got a new microphone setup and it's very sensitive and highly rated by people into podcast recording equipment, but I found out later one of its few downsides is that it picks up room noise and is a tad too sensitive.

As a result, the recordings of my track when I'm not speaking are LOADED with noise, like really bad, and I was clipping out the silence by hand and when I noticed I'd made over 600 cuts and my wrist was feeling carpel tunnel-y, I turned on the noise gate and jammed it up to try and cut out the noise on my side without having to do more cuts.

I'll go look for a less sensitive mic for recording, this one is nuts.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:27 AM on February 5, 2015

Matt, one thing you could try if you're not doing this already is just really getting right up on that thing, and turning down the recording gain on it. That'd cut down the room noise proportionally a whole bunch right there.

I'm about an inch, maybe two, from my mic for the whole podcast when we record. Takes a certain amount of practice and effort to develop that mic discipline so I may be underestimating the pain-in-the-assness of changing that habit, but for something like this where we're sitting still and looking in one direction the whole time it might be doable.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:44 AM on February 5, 2015

Here's the transcript.
posted by Pronoiac at 11:45 AM on February 5, 2015

I'll go look for a less sensitive mic for recording, this one is nuts.

The Sennheiser headset that you got for me a long time ago works pretty well for this. I think there may be a marked difference between what is good for in-person podcasting and what is good for the sort of Skype longform chatting like we do.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 12:27 PM on February 5, 2015

Static has no right sounding that good.
posted by arcticseal at 7:49 PM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]