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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With

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Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff Works dot com. Hither everyone.

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Speaker 1: My name is Chris polettam an editor here at How

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works, And as usual I have sitting next to

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Speaker 1: me senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Chris, is just me? Or

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Speaker 1: does this seem like a crazy week to you? Oh?

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Speaker 1: It's a very crazy week, But then again they're all crazy. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: They pretty much all are here at How Stuff Works,

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Speaker 1: and so there are certain things that that all of

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Speaker 1: us do, um that help keep us from going absolutely

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Speaker 1: bunkers while we're here at work. Uh. It's a very

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Speaker 1: intense process writing and editing for How Stuff Works, because

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Speaker 1: we really throw ourselves fully into these topics, and occasionally

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Speaker 1: we need to take little breaks and divert ourselves just

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Speaker 1: so that we don't go nuts and you know, run

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Speaker 1: around the office cackling madly. Sometimes it involves lasers, pointy hats,

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Speaker 1: and cottage cheese, but more likely than not, we're sort

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Speaker 1: of on our own with our own little gimmicks and

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Speaker 1: gadgets and things that kind of help us take the

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Speaker 1: edge off. Yeah, yeah, we there, there's an interesting array

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Speaker 1: of toys and devices and UH and favorite websites here

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Speaker 1: in how Stuff Works, and we thought we'd talk a

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Speaker 1: little bit about some of ours. And this is this

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Speaker 1: is really you know, Chris's favorites, my favorites that we

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Speaker 1: can't really speak for the rest of the office. That's true,

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Speaker 1: that's true. And I know that I've got a couple

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Speaker 1: on here, right Jonathan probably already has listed. I'll just

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Speaker 1: chime in if you've got one that I've got as well,

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Speaker 1: and why do the same. I'm I'd even be willing

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Speaker 1: to bet that you have this at the top of

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Speaker 1: your list has the very first one on my list. UM.

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Speaker 1: Streaming music, you know, it's a it's a really good thing. UM.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes it can be very difficult to listen to things

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Speaker 1: with words in it while you're trying to write or

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Speaker 1: edit an article, right, but it's very useful for things

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Speaker 1: like we we also gather art and edit art and UH,

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Speaker 1: and often I will crank Pandora up while I'm doing

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Speaker 1: that because it's you know, I don't have to formulate

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Speaker 1: sentences while I'm doing while I'm doing artwork, so that helps. UM.

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Speaker 1: And of course Pandora, you know it. It's this great

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Speaker 1: little service where you put in a band name or

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Speaker 1: or a song name, and then it starts grabbing other

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Speaker 1: music that has some sort of similar aspect to the

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Speaker 1: song you originally identified and builds a radio station based

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Speaker 1: off of that, and then you can tell it if

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Speaker 1: you like a song or if you don't like a song,

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Speaker 1: and you kind of build up an entire radio station.

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Speaker 1: It's really really cool. Yeah. As a matter of fact,

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Speaker 1: they have people that listen to different tracks and identify

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Speaker 1: themes or instrumentation or vocal style. Vocal yeah, vocaling, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's great. Vocal styles, yes, And there are all sorts

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Speaker 1: of things, which is which is unlike a lot of

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Speaker 1: the other music services. But I do not use Pandora exclusively. UM.

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Speaker 1: I also like UM. I have a whole list, and

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Speaker 1: we'll run through last FM, which actually uses user tags

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Speaker 1: UM to sort of group different stations together. UM a

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Speaker 1: O L Radio. UM sort of works with CBS to

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Speaker 1: UH to program some different stations and they have some

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Speaker 1: really good stuff. It's one of the nice things about

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Speaker 1: all these different services is that they have all kinds

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Speaker 1: of styles, so you know, you're not listening to simply

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Speaker 1: Top forty radio or you know, have a choice of

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Speaker 1: country or pop or you know classical. You actually have

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Speaker 1: a lot of control over different kind UM fine Tune

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Speaker 1: which actually lets you put together a playlist with specific songs,

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Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. But they let they limit you

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Speaker 1: to the number of songs you can add from a

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Speaker 1: particular artist or a particular album on a playlist, so

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Speaker 1: you might have to create two or three playlists to

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Speaker 1: get it just right. But if you're looking for that

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Speaker 1: particular song you find too may have the answer because

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Speaker 1: not all of them let you do that. UM. Django

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Speaker 1: is also pretty cool. Let you do different genre stations

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Speaker 1: and uh, all of them are are really groovy as

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Speaker 1: far as being able to let you, you know, have

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Speaker 1: that personal touch on there. And of course if you

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Speaker 1: are a longtime listening you probably know that I am

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Speaker 1: a serious XM radio subscriber, UM, and I listened to

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Speaker 1: XM a lot. You mean as a non humorous right, Well,

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Speaker 1: you know since the name change they have that has

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Speaker 1: I'm sure cause some interesting conversations. UM. And then one

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Speaker 1: dark horse in the race, uh Stitcher, which is really cool.

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Speaker 1: I discovered it actually as a UM little program for

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Speaker 1: the iPod, Touch and iPhone. Um, but it is a

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Speaker 1: website too, and it puts together essentially talk radio stations.

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Speaker 1: That's what I've used it for mostly. And I can't

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Speaker 1: do this while I'm actually editing or writing, but you

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Speaker 1: can if you're interested in the tech news of the day.

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Speaker 1: It grabs all the podcasts from places like CNN, Money

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Speaker 1: and Bloomberg and things like that and knits them together

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Speaker 1: into a coherent station, so you go from podcast to

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Speaker 1: podcast without actually having to go pick them up yourself,

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Speaker 1: which is which is pretty cool. Um. I didn't know

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Speaker 1: anybody was was doing that, so that's pretty cool. So

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Speaker 1: the streaming music stations and radio as was my first

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Speaker 1: contrast big one. That's yeah. Um, I've got another one

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Speaker 1: that's that's along the same lines. Hulu. It's just streaming video.

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Speaker 1: Hulu is something that I've you know, take a lunch

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Speaker 1: break set at my desk and uh eat lunch and

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Speaker 1: watch a episode of the Office or The Simpsons, you know,

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Speaker 1: on Hulu. It's a it's a nice little break from

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Speaker 1: the middle of let's say, like I'm writing about the

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Speaker 1: large Hadron collider. It's nice to take a break from

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Speaker 1: particle physics and watch um people be crazy in a

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Speaker 1: goofy sitcom. Well, that's sort of like watching everyone else

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Speaker 1: here at the office. Yeah, no, it really is. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And and my contribution to the particular segment will probably

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Speaker 1: be the slingbox, um, which allows me to basically take

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Speaker 1: over my DVR at home and it's connected to the internet,

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Speaker 1: so I can watch what's on my DVR or my

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Speaker 1: TV tuner from the office. Not that I have ever

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Speaker 1: done that, but when I need that. Prices right, fixed

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Speaker 1: in Chief is listening, right, because we know he does

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Speaker 1: listen occasionally. Probably not this one, right, I hope not.

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Speaker 1: Um so, uh, we will don't know. Yeah, So streaming video,

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Speaker 1: streaming audio, those are those are two pretty pretty obvious ones.

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Speaker 1: Um and and Chris and I haven't really talked about

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Speaker 1: what was going to go on on this podcast, so

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Speaker 1: from this point on, I think it's pretty much going

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Speaker 1: to be a surprise. Um. Well, I guess I could

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Speaker 1: go ahead and throw in my iPod as well. That's

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Speaker 1: also that's one of those tech stuff toys that if

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Speaker 1: I didn't have it, I'd really would go nuts because

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Speaker 1: that's that's got all the podcasts I subscribed to on it.

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Speaker 1: And uh, that's how I keep up to date with

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Speaker 1: tech news. When you know, when you're in the middle

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Speaker 1: of researching a very specific topic, you can't necessarily stay

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Speaker 1: right on top of the latest breaking news unless you're

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Speaker 1: you know, got your eyes peeled on Twitter or something

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Speaker 1: along those lines. So, um, yeah, that's I guess we

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Speaker 1: can move on from the audio and video into other

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Speaker 1: stuff unless you've got something else that fits that category. Well,

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Speaker 1: just my iPod Touch, which allows me to watch the

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Speaker 1: video podcasts, you know, lunchtime too, which I have done

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Speaker 1: and uh, you know, the little games and stuff like

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Speaker 1: that for two minute brain palette cleanser if you will. Yeah, okay,

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Speaker 1: all right, Well I've got another category, web comics. There

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Speaker 1: are two specific web comics that I check on a

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Speaker 1: regular basis, and then there are a lot of other

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Speaker 1: ones that i'll kind of I'll let slide for a

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Speaker 1: while and then I'll just catch up in a batch. Um,

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Speaker 1: but x K C D is one of the ones

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Speaker 1: I love. I actually sent one to Chris this morning. Um,

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Speaker 1: and it's not always you know, it's sort of an

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Speaker 1: s FW. You know, I guess we should have we

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Speaker 1: should preface this by saying some of the stuff we'll

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Speaker 1: talk about here is probably not appropriate for all ages

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Speaker 1: necessarily or all work environments we happen to work in.

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Speaker 1: One that's a little uh, it's it's it's a nice

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Speaker 1: relaxed working environment. From that kind of standpoint, I mean,

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Speaker 1: we're working really hard. At least it was until they

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Speaker 1: heard us and right, yeah, and then yeah, might know

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Speaker 1: if some of these some of my favorite sites are blocked. Well,

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Speaker 1: the other one was p v P Scott kurt Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Scott Kurtz is uh web comic again another one that

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Speaker 1: as questionable content from time to time. Nothing too bad,

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Speaker 1: but there are a lot of you know, kind of

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Speaker 1: sophomoric jokes on there. Um, but those are those are

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Speaker 1: things that you know, again like I'll have a a break,

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Speaker 1: or you know, if if I finish an article, there's

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Speaker 1: a there's a moment of elation, um of relief when

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Speaker 1: I yeah, when the when the light comes down from

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Speaker 1: the heavens and the angelic choir strikes up, or when

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Speaker 1: you finish an article and you're about to hand it

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Speaker 1: over to your editor, Um, I assume I'm not alone

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Speaker 1: in this and during that moment, the last thing you

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Speaker 1: want to think about is, hey, I need to start

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Speaker 1: on my next article, so you need to take a

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Speaker 1: little moment to appreciate that time and take a short

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Speaker 1: break before diving right back into the research. So that's

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Speaker 1: when I'll check up on my web comics. That or

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Speaker 1: if I hit like writer's block in the middle of

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Speaker 1: a page, which does sometimes happen. I have a joke there,

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Speaker 1: but I'm not gonna make it. Okay, Well, do you

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Speaker 1: have another one you can share with us? I was

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Speaker 1: going to suggest for my part Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited Wow,

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Speaker 1: which to which I have a subscription and bought right

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Speaker 1: before I started graduate school and became unable to use.

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Speaker 1: So Wednesdays are big, big days for you. Huh, Well,

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Speaker 1: they actually have. They actually put up several new issues

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Speaker 1: a day. They digitize their comics and it's uh, it's

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Speaker 1: got a pretty cool comics reader, uh that allows you

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Speaker 1: to zoom in on panels or you know, flip from

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Speaker 1: page to page, so you can actually get a pretty

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Speaker 1: good look at what what the art is there. Um,

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Speaker 1: and it's got access to a lot of stuff that's

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Speaker 1: you know, so far out of print that it's ridiculous.

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Speaker 1: So it's um and growing every week. It's very impressive. Um.

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Speaker 1: You know, I don't usually check that out of work,

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Speaker 1: but I have on at lunchtime a couple of times.

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Speaker 1: And you know, we also sometimes have to work at

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Speaker 1: home true, which true occasionally means that we have to

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Speaker 1: take hard at work. When I'm working at home, I'm

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Speaker 1: not taking breaks like that. I even worked through lunch. No,

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Speaker 1: I mean working at home like after work hours. I

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Speaker 1: don't mean like like taking a work day at home.

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Speaker 1: All right, um, which I have done on occasion as well. Um,

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Speaker 1: but okay, well, let's move on to some other ones.

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Speaker 1: I've got a couple of blogs that I like to

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Speaker 1: check out when I've got a couple of minutes. Um. Actually,

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Speaker 1: here are three in particular that I like, and they

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Speaker 1: have a similar theme. See if you can spot it.

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Speaker 1: Skep Chicks, Bad Astronomy and Skeptic Blog. Well, you know

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Speaker 1: it's pretty obvious that, yeah, I guess. So. I find

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Speaker 1: it difficult to believe that you are that skeptical. There

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Speaker 1: are times where you look at the world and you think, Wow,

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Speaker 1: it's really flipping crazy, and it's it's websites like skep

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Speaker 1: Chicks and Skeptic Blog and Bad Astronomy that helped me

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Speaker 1: ground myself and think there are some pretty sane critical

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Speaker 1: thinkers out there who don't just immediately jump on anything

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Speaker 1: and and and validate it. They give it some real thought.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, once in a while I have to touch

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Speaker 1: touch ground there, and that's those are the ones I

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Speaker 1: go to for that, all right. Um. I have every

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Speaker 1: once in a while when I have time, which is

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Speaker 1: not that often these days. UM, I log into a NewsGator,

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Speaker 1: which is an RSS aggregator, and there are just tons

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Speaker 1: and tons of different blogs that I check out, you know,

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Speaker 1: things like um plaid stallions dot com, which is all

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Speaker 1: seventies related pictures from catalogs and things like that. And

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Speaker 1: of course you've got that weird commercial obsession. Yeah yeah,

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Speaker 1: I have been uh known to visit the Internet archive

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Speaker 1: on occasion and check out some old commercials or YouTube

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Speaker 1: and uh you know, I'm just saying that in my

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Speaker 1: end two and a half hour playlist of game show

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Speaker 1: tunes on my iPod, Chris is a real wild man

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Speaker 1: in the office. Yeah, um, all right, hey, fail blog

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Speaker 1: Fail Blog, and it's counterpart I can ask cheeseburger, right,

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Speaker 1: all right, both of which can occasionally be not safe

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Speaker 1: for work. Actually I can ask cheeseburgers usually Okay, Well,

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Speaker 1: I mean, if you're going that way and you really

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Speaker 1: need something safe for work, you can always go to uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, Cute Overload or the Chiba you New Puppies can.

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Speaker 1: Fail blog just gives me so much joy. Uh there's

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Speaker 1: some that are literally painful to watch. Like you just

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Speaker 1: if you're like if you're like me, it is because

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Speaker 1: I empathize occasionally with the poor schleps who who have

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Speaker 1: suffered under fail Blog. There is occasionally a video that

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Speaker 1: will have some really terrible um accident in it, like

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Speaker 1: the guy who was winning the bicycle race and he

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Speaker 1: threw his arms up over his head which caused him

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Speaker 1: to lose his balance and the guy who was right

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Speaker 1: behind him past him because he fell right. Or the

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Speaker 1: soccer game where the guy throws the soccer ball into

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Speaker 1: the field and and it smacks the other soccer players

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Speaker 1: straight in the face and he just crumples like like

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Speaker 1: a lead weight. That made me laugh so hard. I'm

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Speaker 1: a horrible person. Yeah, I bet you don't watch America's

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Speaker 1: Funniest Own venuos No, I can't stand it. Completely different

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Speaker 1: from watching somebody get hit in the face with a soccer. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I can't. I can't explain it all right,

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Speaker 1: but okay, uh, there's a game I like to play

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Speaker 1: it every now and then, Kingdom of Loathing. Have you

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Speaker 1: heard of it? Yes? I have? Have you played it? Okay?

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Speaker 1: Kingdom of Loathing is like a role playing game, except

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Speaker 1: it's very very geek oriented. It's got a lot of

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Speaker 1: pop culture references, geek culture references. There are monsters in

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Speaker 1: there that are modeled after they might be giants songs.

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Speaker 1: There's an entire environment that is that takes its inspiration

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Speaker 1: from John Hodgeman's obsession with hoboes. Um that sounds completely

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Speaker 1: unlike you. I am shocked. Well, the nice thing about

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Speaker 1: Kingdom of Loathing is that they put a cap on

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Speaker 1: how many turns you can spend per day playing the game.

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Speaker 1: So under a single player account, you can only play

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Speaker 1: up to forty turns. All the you can get some

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Speaker 1: items and and other like buffers to boost that number up.

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Speaker 1: I think as high as two, but most people don't.

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Speaker 1: Most people have surround like maybe a hundred or whatever. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: the turns go by very quickly, so it's not like

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Speaker 1: you're going to spend an entire day playing the game

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Speaker 1: unless you've made multiple accounts. But it's definitely one of

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Speaker 1: those things that keeps me saying because it's just so

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Speaker 1: bizarre and uh, it really does appeal to my sense

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Speaker 1: of humor. I'm really surprised that you haven't mentioned Twitter yet. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I kind of put that under Digsby said, the Digsby umbrella,

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Speaker 1: which is all the instant messaging, email and Twitter all

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Speaker 1: put together. Well, you know, it does keep me sane.

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Speaker 1: It's funny because, uh, you know, I don't know if

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Speaker 1: I'm speaking for Jonathan accurately here, but we joined some

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Speaker 1: of the social networking services partially so we could try

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Speaker 1: them out and talk to you about them, but you know,

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Speaker 1: to do a little uh networking, and then ended up

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Speaker 1: sort of checking out of the people and getting caught

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Speaker 1: up in it. Right at least. I follow a few

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Speaker 1: a few celebrities as well, which I swore I would

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Speaker 1: not do when I started on Twitter. Um, and some

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Speaker 1: of them aren't really not necessarily big name celebrities, but

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Speaker 1: people that I admire for their work, like Will Wheaton. Yes,

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Speaker 1: I follow Will Wheaton, who has has given me a

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Speaker 1: shout out and turned on his blog, which was very rewarding.

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Speaker 1: It's kind of crazy though. I was like, hey, I've

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Speaker 1: been on yeah who's homepage? But Will Wheaton look, Will

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Speaker 1: mentioned my large Adrian Collider article. Um Felicia Day from

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Speaker 1: the Guild and Dr Horrible and various other Buffy the

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Speaker 1: Vampire Slayer anyway, follow her as well. And the celebrities.

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Speaker 1: There are a few fake yeah, Stephen Colbert, um, but

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Speaker 1: yeah they're John Hodgman is another one. I follow John Clice. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's a ton. And then also I follow a lot

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Speaker 1: of tech journalists to keep up with that as well,

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Speaker 1: so I have a nice balance. But yeah, it's definitely

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Speaker 1: one of those sand D preservation uh toys that I

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Speaker 1: like to rely on. Interesting. Interesting, And there's you know

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Speaker 1: Gmail Gmail. Uh yeah, Gmail actually keeps me saying just

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Speaker 1: because it it's a very effective filing system for email,

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Speaker 1: so that that's also very helpful. I was gonna say

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Speaker 1: Google Earth. I use Google Earth occasionally just to you know,

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Speaker 1: it's such a neat tool. And just recently they added

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Speaker 1: an ancient Rome you can you can you can explore

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Speaker 1: Ancient Rome. I think it's three twenty BC Rome, and uh,

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Speaker 1: they have the three D model buildings up so you

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Speaker 1: can actually kind of go through and see what the

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Speaker 1: streets were like back in three twenty BC. That's just

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Speaker 1: cool room if you want to, uh rock lobster. Alright, So, um,

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Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about two that are no longer

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Speaker 1: with us, two toys that we can no longer rely

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Speaker 1: upon to keep us sane. I'm sorry, hands go off, Pounds,

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Speaker 1: We'll miss you, Pounces. Pounce has gone under. The people

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Speaker 1: who were working on Pounds, which is one of Kevin

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Speaker 1: Rose's projects, are now working on other projects. So hopefully

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Speaker 1: they're you know, still gainfully employed, but the services no

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Speaker 1: more as they have joined the six apart family, which

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Speaker 1: you may know from such hit projects is Movable Type

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Speaker 1: than Movable Type and the former owners of live journal

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Speaker 1: and well, the other was Valley Wagg. Valleywag was a

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Speaker 1: rumor and gossip site on the tech industry, one of

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Speaker 1: those things that that Chris and I've said, we hope

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Speaker 1: we never make it onto Valley Wag, but we made it.

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Speaker 1: We survived. Yeah, we we we outlived Valley Wag. Now,

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Speaker 1: granted they're the fellow who was in charge of Valley Wag.

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Speaker 1: He's still blow gugging, but it's no longer under the

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Speaker 1: Valley Wag name exclusively, and there aren't as many updates

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Speaker 1: to that blog now, so um yeah too, too fewer

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Speaker 1: things for us to clutch onto and keep us saying

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Speaker 1: yeah and uh. For for my part, I would have

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Speaker 1: to add all the political sites that I had been

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Speaker 1: surfing over the past few months to find out what

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Speaker 1: was going on and who was saying what and fact

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Speaker 1: check yes and yeah. There were a lot of a

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Speaker 1: lot of yeah. I went to a lot of political

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Speaker 1: sites to Actually I don't think that those help me

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Speaker 1: keep me sane though opposite effect. So fortunately that the

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Speaker 1: election season is now over, there's an election site whole

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Speaker 1: in my daily routine. I see, So you have to

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Speaker 1: find something. Might I recommend Kingdom of Loathing? Actually, I

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Speaker 1: was thinking at this point, work, that's true, that's true.

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Speaker 1: There's it is a busy time, all right. Well that's

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Speaker 1: a good I think that's a good wrap up of

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Speaker 1: the toys that keep us saying um. You know. This

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Speaker 1: discussion also reminds me of another podcast that's in our

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Speaker 1: how Stuff Works podcast family. It's called Stuff You Missed

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Speaker 1: in History Class that's hosted by Kendice Gibson and Jane McGrath.

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Speaker 1: They did an episode about presidential salaries, so you want

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Speaker 1: to talk about insane, Yeah, but definitely check that out.

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Speaker 1: If you haven't subscribed to it, you should definitely definitely

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Speaker 1: look at that because it's a great podcast. It's very

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Speaker 1: educational and very entertaining. So if you'd like to learn

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Speaker 1: more about some of the topics we've talked about today,

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00:20:30,760 --> 00:20:34,440
Speaker 1: things like streaming audio and video and Twitter, be sure

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Speaker 1: to check those out at how stuff works dot com,

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00:20:36,480 --> 00:20:39,840
Speaker 1: which is also a great site for you to take

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Speaker 1: a look at while you're looking for ways to keep

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Speaker 1: yourself saying at your day job. So thanks for listening

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Speaker 1: and we'll talk to you against you. For more on

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Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com. Let us know what you think. Send an

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Speaker 1: email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. Brought

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Speaker 1: to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camry. It's ready,

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Speaker 1: are you