80: Your Go-to Salad

The 80th podcast was recorded on Monday, April 29th and runs about 90min in length, covering all the best posts, comments, and questions in April of 2013

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MeFi Jobs
We had ONE JOB: helping someone ship something to Japan!

MeFi Projects
Pilaroid - taking digits of pi, turning them into colors, and making images out of them, by invitapriore

CRAPCHA - pointless frustrating CAPTCHA joke images that are unsolvable, by thomaspark

Badly drawn videogames using MS Paint by thingonaspring

ToDoCat - finally, a cat-based meme ToDo list app, by soma lkzx

Lots of plants, lots and lots of plants - a nice blog of photos of plants, gardens, and gardening, by sciencegeek

Shibegeist - Shibu Inu meme auto-generated memes from keywords in tweets, by mccarty.tim

RogueShell - an ASCII roguelike game, by aychedee

MeFi Posts
Capybaras in hot tubs

MöVI - a new steadycam rig for interesting filmmaking

Thousands of unsecured webcams from around the world (sadly, now offline)


Broken Brass Ensemble covers Thrift Shop

The Hershberger Award - the long amazing story of a fake sports award in 1973 that was only revealed this year

Jason Collins, current NBA star comes out as gay and becomes the first male professional major sports to do it

POWER VOCAB TWEET is a great very nearly believable words (via Projects)

Club Hangover archive: show recordings from a San Francisco Dixieland/New Orleans Jazz show in the 1950s

Unfinished Screenplays - a twitter feed of absurd first pages from unfinished screenplays

The story of what those painted lines on streets and construction sites mean and why "call before you dig" was developed

Hummingbird - a new music notation system

The story of how a Shaker hymn got onto Soul Train

Dinosaur Jr. live at UMass in 1986

How do you move a top-secret spy plane across two US states without anyone noticing?

Patton Oswalt's 8min improvised Star Wars 7 script (book about spam mentioned)

Ask MeFi Questions
What's your go-to salad?

What are today's best avant-garde video games? (great summary comment)

What TV shows/movies have "you screwed with the wrong person" tropes? (TVtropes: oh crap)

Best date ideas ever? A good list of non-standard things to do on a date

What to expect in my first 5k race?

While giving a 9 year-old boy his first wallet, what would go on a laminated card of advice? (good comment)

MeFi Music tracks
Backwards by edlundart

11 Day Tripper by chococat

It's A Cryin' Shame (That I Appear To Be Drunk In Charge Of A Mix, Officer) by Hoops McCann

Hex on Everlys by l2p

Dirty Deeds (Done at Market Rate) by t(h)om(as)

The Artichoke King by jake

Human Factor by Brodyaga (outro music)

MetaTalk posts
Calling out a good answer that made the noob's day

Happy high fives for everyone post

Bonus: Josh's new podcast with griphus about the Hellraiser movie series

posted by mathowie (staff) to MeFi Podcast at 2:42 PM (50 comments total)

I can't believe the podcast is as old as Willie Nelson.
posted by Kabanos at 3:01 PM on April 30, 2013

The transcript is open.
posted by Pronoiac at 3:45 PM on April 30, 2013 [2 favorites]

I've decided to believe capybara and chupacabra are the same thing from now on.
posted by poe at 4:08 PM on April 30, 2013 [3 favorites]

poe: "I've decided to believe capybara and chupacabra are the same thing from now on."

put them together and you have a delicious lollipop.
posted by boo_radley at 4:11 PM on April 30, 2013 [1 favorite]

Man, I need to hijack the podcasts one of these months so *I* can blatantly self-promote.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 4:23 PM on April 30, 2013 [2 favorites]

Seriously, it's the thing to do.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:25 PM on April 30, 2013

Here's how we do it: I'll post an FPP to the Blue shamelessly promoting restless_nomad. cortex - you delete it with a snide but obtuse deletion reason. Then I'll come storming over to MetaTalk and start a 3000 comment thread. Then I'll start a Project promoting a Kickstarter for an Off-Broadway Musical about the MeTa thread. restless_nomad: once the Kickstarter closes, you post my project to the Blue.

...

Profit!
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 4:32 PM on April 30, 2013 [5 favorites]

Heh. I think that scheme amply demonstrates that our anti-spam measures are effective.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 4:34 PM on April 30, 2013 [1 favorite]

ChupaCapybara is what my username *should* have been.
posted by ChuraChura at 5:12 PM on April 30, 2013 [4 favorites]

Pic!
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:54 PM on April 30, 2013 [12 favorites]

He is the best.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:01 PM on April 30, 2013 [1 favorite]

!
posted by interrobang at 7:06 PM on April 30, 2013 [2 favorites]

‽ !
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:34 PM on April 30, 2013 [1 favorite]

ಠ_ಠ abuse of img tag.
posted by Phire at 7:37 PM on April 30, 2013

I just wanted to get in on the punctuation action.
posted by Phire at 7:43 PM on April 30, 2013

I was there for that, yup.
posted by hellojed at 7:48 PM on April 30, 2013 [3 favorites]

Me too!
posted by donnagirl at 8:11 PM on April 30, 2013

Oh hell whoa, my dogs made the podcast. This is totally my favorite podcast in the history of time!
posted by donnagirl at 8:21 PM on April 30, 2013 [2 favorites]

And me! It was fun and the rest of us made a birthday card for cortex, too. Not as awesome as interrobang's, though. How could it have been?
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 8:24 PM on April 30, 2013

That's right, I have to stick that in the mail to him.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:28 PM on April 30, 2013

Just to briefly explain why a lot of people list Fez (myself included!) as an avant-garde game:

The basic game is a perspective-switching platformer where you collect "cubes." Nothing groundbreaking there. Cute, well-designed, etc.

The glory in the game is that there's a secret *other* game embedded in the game, collecting "anti-cubes." It involves secret codes in the blocks you see and other such stuff. Like, you might need to legitimately perform cryptanalysis to get some of these without spoilers. I think the final puzzle was brute-forced by a collective of fans because it was so complex. (If there is any chance you might play Fez ever, do NOT google the secrets. I did and now I am sad. If there is 0% chance that you will ever play Fez, google 'fez secrets', first link is probably a g4tv summary of the basic idea without spoiling individual puzzles.)

And if you wanna talk about games, hop over to MeFightClub.com. I'm a mod there and we're a friendly bunch!
posted by flibbertigibbet at 9:49 PM on April 30, 2013 [4 favorites]

!
posted by interrobang

¡!
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:46 AM on May 1, 2013

Woo-hoo! My little post was Matt's favorite post of the month!

I told my wife I was feeling a little sad that my post got a whole whopping 4 comments, 2 of which weren't even really on topic, until I noticed that a number of people had favorited it, including mathowie and pb.

It was very much as jessamyn said "Here's some random thing I found, it's super interesting, and it's just some random web page, but it's got all this deep content in it."

I think I found it via Ian Whitcomb on Facebook, and I started listening to some of these jazz show broadcasts, and thought "Wow, these sound great. And they are just right here, for free. I should share this with Metafilter."

So thanks!
posted by fings at 2:25 PM on May 1, 2013 [3 favorites]

I recently read The Strange Case of Edward Gorey, which required me to hit the dictionary four or five times in the first half alone.
posted by bq at 5:12 PM on May 1, 2013

I hope the "Toot Your Own Horn" thread becomes a periodical tradition here.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 6:51 PM on May 1, 2013

I think roll truck roll did the last of the transcription, yay!
posted by beryllium at 7:04 PM on May 1, 2013 [2 favorites]

Thanks again for posting it, fings! I've shared it with lots of other people and everyone is loving the sound quality.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:22 AM on May 2, 2013

The wiki server is nonresponsive right this minute, but I will copy the transcript over.

Swearing:
cortex - 6
mathowie - 2
jessamyn - 0!
posted by Pronoiac at 1:16 AM on May 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

Club Hangover archive: show recordings from a San Francisco Dixieland/New Orleans Jazz show in the 1950s

Wow, that's amazing and I totally missed it!
posted by Jahaza at 8:17 AM on May 3, 2013

jessamyn - 0!

I'm pretty sure I swore because there was a swear in the title of a post or page I was talking about... perhaps not!
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:00 AM on May 3, 2013

Six is troublingly low for a podcast where I announced up front an intent to get back in the cussin' game. I am worried now that I have forgotten how.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:07 AM on May 3, 2013

The transcript is on the wiki!

I just added a "swearing" section. It looks like it isn't catching unattributed swearing right now.
posted by Pronoiac at 11:11 AM on May 3, 2013

Ah I see, so when you have a comment that goes over to multiple lines it may not catch the latter part as being by you. I was referring to the "I really like those scenes in films, a scene where I like to call the You Have Chosen the Absolute Wrong Person to Fuck With scene." comment which is me!
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:29 AM on May 3, 2013

Yeah, I added non-attributed swearing to the page on the wiki.

As an artifact of how transcribers are handling split segments, these tools - I'm using grep and wc - generally won't attribute the speaker if you talk across segments.

Swearing because you're quoting seems forgivable anyway, doesn't it?
posted by Pronoiac at 12:10 PM on May 3, 2013

I've started to run and I must say that a 12-15 minute mile seems like an impossible 'we can go to Mars now' dream.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 4:50 PM on May 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

Oh my god I run a 16 minute mile. I am pushing 70 pounds of stroller but still. We are slow and we are out there.
posted by bq at 5:42 PM on May 3, 2013

I suspect Matt is deceived about the average speed of joggers because his legs are half a mile long.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 5:43 PM on May 3, 2013 [3 favorites]

Tonight's run was 17:45 avg pace. So I am getting better.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 6:26 PM on May 3, 2013

If I'm not mistaken, no swearing at all by anyone occurred until 58 minutes into the podcast, which was very impressive! I would thus conclude that cortex took a while to get back up to speed, but the baffling metaphysics of salad got him right back into his swearing game.

Also, I use the Dvorak keyboard layout and was amused by the irony of transcribing this segment using it! Which doesn't in any way negate mathowie's point that QWERTY isn't going away, but it does highlight an imperfection in the analogy: Dvorak (or Colemak) doesn't need to 'win' in order to be useful to people who like it, since they can pretty easily switch the keyboard layouts for their own computers without everyone else having to do the same, while getting everyone to produce their sheet music in both Hummingbird and traditional music notation would, I think, be substantially more difficult?

On the other hand, were people to start using sheet music predominantly on tablet devices rather than on paper, it could in theory be possible for digital sheet music to standardize on a format that would let people use some kind of style sheet to turn the music into any notation form they liked... which would theoretically be very neat, even if it could also cause havoc for musical groups or orchestras if everyone had the music in a different notation.

I think the speed new runners run varies considerably based on all sorts of factors, but yes, 10 mpm is indeed quite fast for many new runners. 92225..., bq and any other runners in this thread: that is awesome that you are getting out there and running, no matter your speed!
posted by beryllium at 6:38 PM on May 3, 2013 [2 favorites]

Oh man I forgot about the salad part. I wholeheartedly agree with cortex, kale + bacon is salad and in fact I am going to make some tomorrow.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:05 PM on May 3, 2013

922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a, if we ever mention you in the podcast, do you have a nickname?

I feel so much better in this thread already. I am newish to running and running a 12 minute mile is very slow for my peer group and has been nearly killing me (and not getting better) for quite some time. I've been doing a lot of 15 minute mile quickwalks and feeling much better and I'm glad to hear this is normallish. Thanks folks!
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:36 PM on May 3, 2013

I've been walking and biking as a form of exercise for years now. The biking has slacked off as I need to get a new bike and that costs money a 40 year old should be saving, so I walk. Last weekend I walked 6.3 miles in 1 hour 58 minutes. I decided 2 weeks ago I gotta get off this weight plateau, and thus the running.

Hmmmm a nickname. let's go old school ( though this may out me on that site we don't talk about) TrashCan Man
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:47 PM on May 3, 2013

Dangit, I meant to break out "hexy-dexy" at some point.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:05 PM on May 3, 2013

If you use hexy-dexy, I demand thisbe the bumper music.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 8:23 PM on May 3, 2013

alternative hexy-dexy music
posted by Pronoiac at 7:25 AM on May 4, 2013

and a Dexy / Public Enemy mashup excerpt
posted by Pronoiac at 7:28 AM on May 4, 2013

Great, yall. I'm really happily bopping to this club hangover - definitely a new top playlist, so thanks!
posted by Buckt at 4:29 PM on May 6, 2013

When you said "sports ages you", I thought about Glen Featherstone who was a professional hockey player (and collected nearly 1000 penalty minutes in 384 games). I met him at a charity hockey game (he's a real sweetheart by the way) and was shocked to find out that he's two years younger than me and looks 10 years older.
posted by plinth at 5:29 AM on May 7, 2013

mathowie, the Center for Land Use Interpretation didn't come up with those "infrastructural graffiti" markings/colors used to mark gas lines etc.; They're artists/scholars/interpreters/docents for the infrastructural museum of our world despite the good.is article somewhat confusingly saying their name "sounds like a particularly fusty governmental bureau."

However, I do love the idea of an actual fusty governmental bureau with that name being tasked with creating official tools for infrastructural interpretation.
posted by jjwiseman at 1:01 PM on May 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

My work gave me an ipod shuffle for my ten years of service award, and I filled it up with podcasts. For some reason the Mefafilter podcast is first in the playlist, so as a result I've been listening to hours and hours of Metafilter while I remodel the interior of my house. Listening to these is like hanging out at a coffee shop with really enjoyable friends, except virtually. Yes, I know that makes me sound pathetic and friendless, but there you go. I'm filled with questions about various segments in older podcasts, but the threads are locked. I did want to point out this:

1. Someone needs to make a supercut of Jessamyn giggling. It is delightful.

2. Matt sounds a lot like Harold Ramis in Ghostbusters.

3. I love when Josh gradually slips from relatively accessible chit chat into some extended explanation of something *truly* geeky or obscure. It's like watching someone slowly turn into a werewolf.

They all have great radio voices too. Jessamyn is like a female Robert Reich.
posted by mecran01 at 12:19 PM on May 24, 2013 [4 favorites]