154: I Learned It By Reading

August 2, 2019 6:59 AM

We're back after a skipped month with an unsurprisingly longer-than-usual podcast episode, as jessamyn and I chatter about all the ususal site stuff (a month's worth is generally too much, two months definitely so) and also talk a little about MeFi history, recent site challenges, the 20th anniversary, and so on. Runs just about two hours total.

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Misc
- the fantastic number 154
- will my cat eat my eyeballs (a children's book)
- Shirley Jackson's Raising Demons
- for some unfathomable reason, James Taylor
- only old people know what the red room was
- pix from Jess's 20th anniversary meetup


Jobs ~ 0:10
- Software Quality Engineer by MasterOfNone
- Jeweler/Crafty Person by holborne
- Be My First-Ever Career Coach, Or Refer Me To One by EmpressCallipygos


Projects ~ 0:14
- PixelPirate by ph00dz
- Metafilter Usage 2010-2019 by Tell Me No Lies
- Apollo 11 (+50 years) Google Calendar by tss
- How to Make a Phonotrope Video with Drawn Animation by tessmartin


MetaFilter ~ 0:50
- Amazon promotion error: we have cameras. by ardgedee
- It's more involved than you might think by clawsoon
- How not to die at a Baseball Game by meech
- Book dorks forever by ArbitraryAndCapricious
- The Long Road to Pride by nikaspark
- Enter Starman by adept256
- Rube Goldberg steps back for a three.... it's good! by not_on_display
- It's not strange by Orange Dinosaur Slide
- Gangsta's Paradise but every other beat is Amish Paradise by bondcliff
- We sell our pizzas for $16.50. Here's how the costs break down. by Etrigan
- Cats the Musical: 2019 ‘Live Action’ Movie trailer [SLYT 2min 41sec] by Faintdreams
- a comment by kyrademon
- What, Me Worry? by chavenet
- "We are writing to express our grave concern..." by frumiousb


Ask MeFi ~1:22
- Is There a Word for this Type of Place? by Sassyfras
- How to unhide a body by drlith
- Town in Hungary by mgrrl
- Why would a man have manicured long nails on only one hand? by Mid
- Pre-purchase: Septic Fixed, Yard is Gone by yes I said yes I will Yes
- 80's students, what films were your film society showing then? by AuroraSky
- What's this mystery squash? by GuyZero
- Weirdly Specific Packing and Possession Lists? by Ms Vegetable
- We were promised jet packs. by pxe2000
- What's your choice for best song intros? by ashbury


MetaTalk ~1:43
- RIP LeLiLo by MtDewd
- Anxiety/depression/ADHD/autism/bipolar & other neurodivergences on MeFi by diss track able
- Another person of color only thread by Brandon Blatcher
- Decommissioning the US politics megathreads by cortex
- Megathread.org? r/megathread? megathread.dreamwidth.com? by biogeo
- State of the Site, July 2019 update by cortex
- Following up on last month’s discussions: immediate actions and planning by cortex
- Following up on last month’s discussions: medium and long-term work by cortex
- Happy 20th Anniversary, MetaFilter by cortex


FanFare
- Book: The Fifth Season by dinty_moore
- The Haunting of Hill House: Season 1 by skycrashesdown
- Book: The Library Book by Homo neanderthalensis


MeFi Music
Featured in this episode:
- Happy Birthday To You From Dan by dagosto
- Natural, I Guess by snofoam
- F9mily (You & Me) by OverlappingElvis
- Know what u want by nikaspark
- Here Come the Warm Jets by Television Name

posted by cortex (staff) to MeFi Podcast at 6:59 AM (32 comments total)

Ironically, since posting that job I did find such a career coach and had my last of two sessions with him two days ago (he takes clients from all over if anyone wants to memail me for info); but may time to time need occasional resume-polishing feedback so I'll leave that jobs up (I'mma skeeerd, y'all, change is hard).
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:40 AM on August 2, 2019 [4 favorites]

Is there any way that timestamps could be included? Even rough ones.

Wow, that's really cool! I am embarking on a career change too. I'm actually a writer at an ad agency that mostly does science writing for agriculture. I guess maybe that makes me a Technical Writer? It's honestly not that hard, the terms are set and communicating it in a coherent way for your particular audience is just... good writing.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 7:52 AM on August 2, 2019

One of the things we talked about on the podcast was making an effort to getting transcriptions into more of a thing. I'm not sure what needs to happen to make that happen, but would help with the timestamp issue.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 7:54 AM on August 2, 2019

Jessamyn, I might be interested in helping with transcription.

OnTheLastCastle: we should talk, I'll memail you after work.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:58 AM on August 2, 2019

Yeah, and timestamps is an interesting question given the newer podcast software we've been using; it might be possible to extract timestamp info from the notes record we get from this in a way that wasn't really so doable the way we'd done it for the previous big pile of years.

In any case I can probably hack in some major category time stamps manually here in a couple minutes.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:01 AM on August 2, 2019

Adding MP3 chapters would also be super cool.
posted by zamboni at 8:49 AM on August 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

EEEEEEEE one of my posts made the podcast *big cheesy grin*
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 9:28 AM on August 2, 2019 [5 favorites]

You could just upload them to youtube? Which can auto-generate captions/transcripts, has a transcript view and has hyperlink timestamps ofc. It also has some things crappy mp3 players often lack like, "keyboard shortcuts", "ability to jump ahead to parts that haven't loaded yet", and "non-microscopic widgets that don't test the limits of your vision and track pad."
posted by fleacircus at 10:13 AM on August 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

I was hoping that GuyZero asked on two consecutive weeks about different mystery squashes, but it looks like a copypasta error in the post.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 10:14 AM on August 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

zamboni: Adding MP3 chapters would also be super cool.

How many programs and systems support chapters? As an alternative, you could create .cue sheets, either with a program, or if you're oldschool, by hand. I don't know how many audio players support it (WinAmp had an addon back in the day, and foobar2000 supports it natively), but a bonus feature is that MP3 Direct Cut can turn a single long MP3 + cue into a series of smaller MP3s. /geeky derail
posted by filthy light thief at 10:14 AM on August 2, 2019

I'd like to thank the Academy and everyone who nominated my septic issue. Today, we're all winners.

OMG YOU GUYS WHEN'S THE VERMONT MEETUP??????
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 10:23 AM on August 2, 2019 [4 favorites]

I get back in town the second week of September so... then sometime?
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 10:25 AM on August 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

Yes!!!!! I'm on it!
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 10:31 AM on August 2, 2019

Yes!!!!! I'm on it!
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes

Eponys... you know what, nevermind.
posted by Dysk at 10:51 AM on August 2, 2019 [7 favorites]

Say more about Quaker spacer fiction! I know about Dazzle of Day, but are there others?
posted by Cash4Lead at 11:04 AM on August 2, 2019 [3 favorites]

I bet that squash duple is when I accidentally pasted a link into the host-only show notes and jessamyn was like "what link?" and then I pasted it into the actual shared notes section like I meant to. Will fix!
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:12 AM on August 2, 2019

So far just Dazzle of the Day, but I found similar sensibilities in parts of other spacers I've read (some of the Expanse series and Ascension) so I've been trying to pick up on those threads where I see them.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 11:18 AM on August 2, 2019 [3 favorites]

How many programs and systems support chapters?

Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, and Castro, for starters.
posted by zamboni at 1:12 PM on August 2, 2019

Rune and Board is a great name for a board games store!

As suggested in this AskMe by Metafilter's Own Kabanos!
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:18 PM on August 2, 2019 [3 favorites]

Vermonters (and new Englanders willing to travel) take note. September 28 tentative meetup date at our farm. Will craft an IRL as soon as this weekend and will link back in this thread.

Nothing fancy. Chillaxin’ potluck likely.

Yes, I said yes I will, Yes: don’t let me step on your toes if you were looking to do a housewarming meetup. Nothing in stone :)
posted by terrapin at 4:39 PM on August 2, 2019 [2 favorites]

Yay podcast! I understand why you needed to take a break last month, and I'm glad it's back. Thank you! Looking forward to listening to the whole episode. I love the timestamps.

I can confirm that AntennaPod also supports chapters, although I haven't seen it in action yet. I literally just installed the app a few days ago, after years of manually checking for new episodes; wanted to make sure I didn't miss the new MeFi Podcast episode when it dropped. (AntennaPod was one of the recs in AskMe, and I like that it's free and open-source.)
posted by rangefinder 1.4 at 6:24 PM on August 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

I made a thing to scrape YouTube/Vimeo things from pages in a geeky Linuxy way many moons ago. Nobody seemed interested or those who were could do it themselves. Now I just have a keyboard macro that I copy the URL and hit a key and they magically show up in my Videos folder. I started to make a YouTube playlist sort of thing but didn't want to go awry of YouTube/MeFi policies and such (or ending up with an account that had a bazillion playlists for each thread that had videos...). Much like that ages ago attempt at the XMPP chat server that was before it's time and was a pain to sign-up for because no backend integration for auth, but at least it had a bot to provide random "Metafilter: ..." quotes.

Anyway, be happy that I'm not cabal or there would be a dynamically created chat room per-post for chatfilter and a page with all of the media posts and the poor mods would have even more to worry about.

If you want all of the videos from a post, there's AskMe... It's not that hard and many a peeps could tell you how to do it. It's just the logistics of making it an official MeFi thing that's probably not going to happen.
posted by zengargoyle at 7:05 PM on August 2, 2019

Say more about Quaker spacer fiction!
Crossfire by Nancy Kress.
Quakers! In! Space!
posted by thatwhichfalls at 6:55 AM on August 3, 2019 [4 favorites]

Here's a non dead link for the book - apologies for the old link, it came from a very old bookmark.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 7:13 AM on August 3, 2019

Yes, I said yes I will, Yes: don’t let me step on your toes if you were looking to do a housewarming meetup. Nothing in stone :)

Do it! With the exception of a lovely septic, my new place isn’t company-ready. I’ll get the 2020 meet-up!
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 8:34 AM on August 3, 2019 [1 favorite]

Vermont, we have meetup.
posted by terrapin at 9:38 AM on August 3, 2019 [1 favorite]

Looks like the link for Violent Penguin never got included
posted by ckape at 6:26 PM on August 3, 2019

I finally started listening, and for the record: Cortex was correct with the pronunciation of my username. :-)

(I am going to add a pronunciation key in my profile now.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:15 AM on August 6, 2019

Say what you will about whether it was coherent as music, I maintain the AD/DC, Wire, Coil, The Magnetic Fields, Tesla, The Motors, Machine, and Rage Against the Machine lineup at Dynamo Open Air was worth seeing.

(Also, figuring out which band names include a "the" lead me down a rabbit hole that has confirmed my uninformed suspicion that fire is a remarkably popular word in band names.)

Enjoyed the podcast, as always.
posted by eotvos at 8:20 PM on August 6, 2019

Saw my name in the post and originally (briefly) thought I was in some sort of Trouble, but instead it was just a lovely shout out to a post I created that generated lots of nice and funny conversation.

Yay
posted by Faintdreams at 2:58 AM on August 7, 2019 [1 favorite]

There's a bit around 1:42 where jessamyn is talking about great song intros and sings the intro to Nobody's Fault But Mine, which is in fact a deep cut by Led Zeppelin, in case anybody was curious.
posted by fomhar at 3:21 AM on August 7, 2019 [2 favorites]

Oh thank you! That was actually bugging me.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 6:46 AM on August 7, 2019