192: The week between last week and this week

March 5, 2023 9:20 AM

A nerdy debate about the relative term "this week" and "last week" and that mystery week in between them. We got together on March 4th and tried not to talk about the weather too much. Runs about 105 minutes.

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Jessamyn's Zipper Epiphany

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Could you live without a cellphone? by SituationNormal
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The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts by gwint
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Lightning Crashes by Etrigan
All The Malevolence Of A Grade School Music Class In A Box by NoxAeternum
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Into the rest of the 20st century by gwint
playing a 2x4 through a tacklebox head into a foamcore cabinet by cortex

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a comment by Larry David Syndrome
a comment by BlueHorse
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posted by jessamyn (staff) to MeFi Podcast at 9:20 AM (32 comments total)

Looks like something’s up with downloading the file. Same issue as 188?
posted by zamboni at 9:39 AM on March 5, 2023

Hmm I tried noodling with the URL and I can download the file directly. We've got a ping in to frimble. Can you try it again?
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:43 AM on March 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Refreshed page and it seems to be working now. Thanks! :)
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 9:53 AM on March 5, 2023

Yup- works now. Looks like a transient certificate issue?
posted by zamboni at 9:55 AM on March 5, 2023

Download still fails for me in Overcast.
posted by rodlymight at 9:59 AM on March 5, 2023

Download still fails for me in Overcast.

Podcast clients will probably still have problems because the RSS feed still points at https://podcast.mefi.us--s3v2.s3.amazonaws.com/192-the-week-between-this-week-and-last-week.mp3, while the direct link is now https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/podcast.mefi.us--s3v2/192-the-week-between-this-week-and-last-week.mp3. See my previous comment about why this might be a problem for certificates.
posted by zamboni at 10:07 AM on March 5, 2023

OK, RSS feed has updated with the correct URL. rodlymight, delete the current episode from the Overcast Downloads queue and re-add it, and it should download.
posted by zamboni at 10:36 AM on March 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Awesome, thanks!
posted by rodlymight at 11:44 AM on March 5, 2023

Mentioned in passing: Babel, R.F. Kuang. (StoryGraph, GoodReads)
posted by zamboni at 12:41 PM on March 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

Thanks for everyone helping us debug this and YES that book is so good.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 1:40 PM on March 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Uh, is it mixed such that jessamyn is in the left channel and cortex is in the right channel?
posted by rockindata at 2:20 PM on March 5, 2023

Yes, yes it is.
posted by hippybear at 2:30 PM on March 5, 2023

I think so? I am not very good at Audacity, but the person who offered to help mix the podcasts is also juggling a lot of other things and couldn't help this time. If someone else would like to help and could handle a few-days turnaround, drop me a note.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 3:19 PM on March 5, 2023

The L and R channels: it's like having a devil and an angel on each shoulder. Which is which? That's for me to decide...
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:56 PM on March 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

Despite my instinctual desire to feign Gen X too cool to care indifference about getting a mention in the podcast, my true reaction is closer to Steve Martin in "The Jerk" where he sees his name printed in the phonebook and is running around in circles screaming that he finally is somebody. I'm glad that the desoldering braid idea seems useful and appreciated your advice in that thread, cortex.
I've got a second piece of stained glass which was partially completed by my dad too... it was his magnum opus. Difficulty level- lots of intricate curved pieces, about half of it is missing/uncompleted and the layout drawing is probably lost for good too. I may just try to incorporate some of the completed elements into a new design. Possibly coming to a future MeFi projects post, possibly not....
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 5:04 AM on March 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

Oh, I am so thankful for Metafilter.

Jessamyn, I do feel better, thank you! Out of isolation and back home.

cortex, I agree that BlackLeotardFront is a dang superhero!
posted by quintessence at 5:12 AM on March 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

Ye olde transcript. otter.ai was being weird about identifying cortex & Jessamyn, so ... it's more of a dialogue than presented in parts.

I'm high-fiving myself for my appearance here. Woot!
posted by Pronoiac at 5:30 AM on March 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

is it mixed such that jessamyn is in the left channel and cortex is in the right channel?

It’s harder to listen to with headphones like this as the voices are different pitches, and so volume control is higher for one than the other, just FYI for next month. Also hard for those with hearing loss in one ear.
posted by ellieBOA at 6:56 AM on March 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

the thing with jessamyn in Left and Josh in Right - that doesn't match my mental map of where they are. Since she's on the East coast, she should be coming out of the right hand side, and Josh should be on the left being a West coast person.
posted by jazon at 7:29 AM on March 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

Easy fix- face south while listening to the podcast.
posted by zamboni at 8:27 AM on March 6, 2023 [8 favorites]

Or listen to it in the mirror!
posted by miles per flower at 9:42 AM on March 6, 2023 [7 favorites]

But pay no attention to the backmasked subliminal messages.

RETLIFATEM OT ETANOD
posted by zamboni at 10:23 AM on March 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

This was my first metafilter podcast and the only podcast I've heard with such a hard left-right mix.

I was listening while out walking. An older, gruff-looking male jogger passed on my left and looked at me at the same time jessamyn grumbled about something and it seemed SO much like he was speaking in her voice, I thought he was mad at me.
posted by TangoCharlie at 10:54 AM on March 6, 2023

OK I decided that it was better to have a full-on mono version of this than the super-skewed stereo version for accessibility reasons if not all the other ones. So, I've re-uploaded the file and people should be able to get a mono version at the link above that will be easier to listen to and I'll try to do a slightly-stereo version next month or get someone who knows what they are doing to put it together.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:56 AM on March 6, 2023 [7 favorites]

Thanks; looking forward to listening.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 12:08 PM on March 6, 2023

An older, gruff-looking male jogger passed on my left and looked at me at the same time jessamyn grumbled about something and it seemed SO much like he was speaking in her voice, I thought he was mad at me.

Metafilter: The Summoning
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:53 PM on March 6, 2023

You should put up a Jobs request for a bespoke little program that at least takes the podcast.mp3 and tags it then uploads it and sends it off to the translation service and adds it to other feed apps that only needs a title and maybe a comment and a quick "is this right [Y/n]" check and then takes care of everything. You might even get it tuned to your recording setup to script Audacity to do the level adjustments and all those other things. You could probably make it generate the post itself with a simple template. (Sorry, most of my past work was automation and a lot of that was "tired of getting paged, here, do it yourself. PRESS BUTTON.") It is that xkcd comic about whether it is worth spending X amount of time to automate something that takes a fraction of X time to do by hand depending on how often you have to do it. But once you do, if it works it always works unless something changes, and new things can be added and change APIs or whatnot can be simple.

(/me adds cortex to Amiga kids list) Commodor US borked the Amiga, Commodor Europe did a much better job. It was also the mostly preferred Home PC of people who's work involved sitting in-front of a UNIX workstation. So close, better than a Mac or an IBM PC. But I have lots of stories that involve "we both have Amigas".
posted by zengargoyle at 4:49 AM on March 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

and change APIs or whatnot can be simple

Fighting with Audacity, or getting the files to someone who is better at this sort of thing, are things I can do. Overseeing someone writing a script is either straightforward or a lot more work. Our post-generation is already templated (i.e. drop the chat transcript in and it mostly extracts links and format them) and even that is on the border about whether it would just be simpler to type it by hand than clean the data resulting from the script. frimble has, I believe, fixed the RSS feed issue from earlier.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:27 AM on March 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

(I apologize if you already know this)

The controls on the left of each track in Audacity allow you to both customize the individual track volumes and pan them left or right to varying degrees. Moving the panning sliders a little way to the sides (one left, one right) will give the two voices a bit of spatial separation while still allowing them to sound like you two are side by side "in front" of the listener rather than off to the sides.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:57 PM on March 7, 2023

The authentic shoveling field recording at the end was a nice touch!
posted by ignignokt at 9:42 AM on March 9, 2023 [4 favorites]

Hmm, Could you live without a cellphone?

Exhibit A: Jonathan Richman. But then again, he is the Control Normal in this experiment.

He was scheduled for March 6th at the Tractor Tavern and I had scored tickets. But then the blizzard hit Southern California and he and Tommy Larkins weren't driving that VW microbus nowhere. The Tractor gave us OG ticket holders a four day heads up for June 29th. Which I duly scored. Then, in the process, I discovered that Ramblin' Jack Elliott (!) was coming there this week, and now I am set up for this Tuesday. I have been so beside myself for so many reasons this week.
posted by y2karl at 11:53 AM on March 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Mentioned in passing: Babel, R.F. Kuang.

Thank you! I came here specifically to find that title.
posted by slogger at 4:55 PM on March 14, 2023