Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff Works dot com. Hither everyone.
Speaker 1: My name is Chris polettam an editor here at How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works, And as usual I have sitting next to
Speaker 1: me senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Chris, is just me? Or
Speaker 1: does this seem like a crazy week to you? Oh?
Speaker 1: It's a very crazy week, But then again they're all crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They pretty much all are here at How Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: and so there are certain things that that all of
Speaker 1: us do, um that help keep us from going absolutely
Speaker 1: bunkers while we're here at work. Uh. It's a very
Speaker 1: intense process writing and editing for How Stuff Works, because
Speaker 1: we really throw ourselves fully into these topics, and occasionally
Speaker 1: we need to take little breaks and divert ourselves just
Speaker 1: so that we don't go nuts and you know, run
Speaker 1: around the office cackling madly. Sometimes it involves lasers, pointy hats,
Speaker 1: and cottage cheese, but more likely than not, we're sort
Speaker 1: of on our own with our own little gimmicks and
Speaker 1: gadgets and things that kind of help us take the
Speaker 1: edge off. Yeah, yeah, we there, there's an interesting array
Speaker 1: of toys and devices and UH and favorite websites here
Speaker 1: in how Stuff Works, and we thought we'd talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about some of ours. And this is this
Speaker 1: is really you know, Chris's favorites, my favorites that we
Speaker 1: can't really speak for the rest of the office. That's true,
Speaker 1: that's true. And I know that I've got a couple
Speaker 1: on here, right Jonathan probably already has listed. I'll just
Speaker 1: chime in if you've got one that I've got as well,
Speaker 1: and why do the same. I'm I'd even be willing
Speaker 1: to bet that you have this at the top of
Speaker 1: your list has the very first one on my list. UM.
Speaker 1: Streaming music, you know, it's a it's a really good thing. UM.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it can be very difficult to listen to things
Speaker 1: with words in it while you're trying to write or
Speaker 1: edit an article, right, but it's very useful for things
Speaker 1: like we we also gather art and edit art and UH,
Speaker 1: and often I will crank Pandora up while I'm doing
Speaker 1: that because it's you know, I don't have to formulate
Speaker 1: sentences while I'm doing while I'm doing artwork, so that helps. UM.
Speaker 1: And of course Pandora, you know it. It's this great
Speaker 1: little service where you put in a band name or
Speaker 1: or a song name, and then it starts grabbing other
Speaker 1: music that has some sort of similar aspect to the
Speaker 1: song you originally identified and builds a radio station based
Speaker 1: off of that, and then you can tell it if
Speaker 1: you like a song or if you don't like a song,
Speaker 1: and you kind of build up an entire radio station.
Speaker 1: It's really really cool. Yeah. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: they have people that listen to different tracks and identify
Speaker 1: themes or instrumentation or vocal style. Vocal yeah, vocaling, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great. Vocal styles, yes, And there are all sorts
Speaker 1: of things, which is which is unlike a lot of
Speaker 1: the other music services. But I do not use Pandora exclusively. UM.
Speaker 1: I also like UM. I have a whole list, and
Speaker 1: we'll run through last FM, which actually uses user tags
Speaker 1: UM to sort of group different stations together. UM a
Speaker 1: O L Radio. UM sort of works with CBS to
Speaker 1: UH to program some different stations and they have some
Speaker 1: really good stuff. It's one of the nice things about
Speaker 1: all these different services is that they have all kinds
Speaker 1: of styles, so you know, you're not listening to simply
Speaker 1: Top forty radio or you know, have a choice of
Speaker 1: country or pop or you know classical. You actually have
Speaker 1: a lot of control over different kind UM fine Tune
Speaker 1: which actually lets you put together a playlist with specific songs,
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. But they let they limit you
Speaker 1: to the number of songs you can add from a
Speaker 1: particular artist or a particular album on a playlist, so
Speaker 1: you might have to create two or three playlists to
Speaker 1: get it just right. But if you're looking for that
Speaker 1: particular song you find too may have the answer because
Speaker 1: not all of them let you do that. UM. Django
Speaker 1: is also pretty cool. Let you do different genre stations
Speaker 1: and uh, all of them are are really groovy as
Speaker 1: far as being able to let you, you know, have
Speaker 1: that personal touch on there. And of course if you
Speaker 1: are a longtime listening you probably know that I am
Speaker 1: a serious XM radio subscriber, UM, and I listened to
Speaker 1: XM a lot. You mean as a non humorous right, Well,
Speaker 1: you know since the name change they have that has
Speaker 1: I'm sure cause some interesting conversations. UM. And then one
Speaker 1: dark horse in the race, uh Stitcher, which is really cool.
Speaker 1: I discovered it actually as a UM little program for
Speaker 1: the iPod, Touch and iPhone. Um, but it is a
Speaker 1: website too, and it puts together essentially talk radio stations.
Speaker 1: That's what I've used it for mostly. And I can't
Speaker 1: do this while I'm actually editing or writing, but you
Speaker 1: can if you're interested in the tech news of the day.
Speaker 1: It grabs all the podcasts from places like CNN, Money
Speaker 1: and Bloomberg and things like that and knits them together
Speaker 1: into a coherent station, so you go from podcast to
Speaker 1: podcast without actually having to go pick them up yourself,
Speaker 1: which is which is pretty cool. Um. I didn't know
Speaker 1: anybody was was doing that, so that's pretty cool. So
Speaker 1: the streaming music stations and radio as was my first
Speaker 1: contrast big one. That's yeah. Um, I've got another one
Speaker 1: that's that's along the same lines. Hulu. It's just streaming video.
Speaker 1: Hulu is something that I've you know, take a lunch
Speaker 1: break set at my desk and uh eat lunch and
Speaker 1: watch a episode of the Office or The Simpsons, you know,
Speaker 1: on Hulu. It's a it's a nice little break from
Speaker 1: the middle of let's say, like I'm writing about the
Speaker 1: large Hadron collider. It's nice to take a break from
Speaker 1: particle physics and watch um people be crazy in a
Speaker 1: goofy sitcom. Well, that's sort of like watching everyone else
Speaker 1: here at the office. Yeah, no, it really is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and my contribution to the particular segment will probably
Speaker 1: be the slingbox, um, which allows me to basically take
Speaker 1: over my DVR at home and it's connected to the internet,
Speaker 1: so I can watch what's on my DVR or my
Speaker 1: TV tuner from the office. Not that I have ever
Speaker 1: done that, but when I need that. Prices right, fixed
Speaker 1: in Chief is listening, right, because we know he does
Speaker 1: listen occasionally. Probably not this one, right, I hope not.
Speaker 1: Um so, uh, we will don't know. Yeah, So streaming video,
Speaker 1: streaming audio, those are those are two pretty pretty obvious ones.
Speaker 1: Um and and Chris and I haven't really talked about
Speaker 1: what was going to go on on this podcast, so
Speaker 1: from this point on, I think it's pretty much going
Speaker 1: to be a surprise. Um. Well, I guess I could
Speaker 1: go ahead and throw in my iPod as well. That's
Speaker 1: also that's one of those tech stuff toys that if
Speaker 1: I didn't have it, I'd really would go nuts because
Speaker 1: that's that's got all the podcasts I subscribed to on it.
Speaker 1: And uh, that's how I keep up to date with
Speaker 1: tech news. When you know, when you're in the middle
Speaker 1: of researching a very specific topic, you can't necessarily stay
Speaker 1: right on top of the latest breaking news unless you're
Speaker 1: you know, got your eyes peeled on Twitter or something
Speaker 1: along those lines. So, um, yeah, that's I guess we
Speaker 1: can move on from the audio and video into other
Speaker 1: stuff unless you've got something else that fits that category. Well,
Speaker 1: just my iPod Touch, which allows me to watch the
Speaker 1: video podcasts, you know, lunchtime too, which I have done
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, the little games and stuff like
Speaker 1: that for two minute brain palette cleanser if you will. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, Well I've got another category, web comics. There
Speaker 1: are two specific web comics that I check on a
Speaker 1: regular basis, and then there are a lot of other
Speaker 1: ones that i'll kind of I'll let slide for a
Speaker 1: while and then I'll just catch up in a batch. Um,
Speaker 1: but x K C D is one of the ones
Speaker 1: I love. I actually sent one to Chris this morning. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's not always you know, it's sort of an
Speaker 1: s FW. You know, I guess we should have we
Speaker 1: should preface this by saying some of the stuff we'll
Speaker 1: talk about here is probably not appropriate for all ages
Speaker 1: necessarily or all work environments we happen to work in.
Speaker 1: One that's a little uh, it's it's it's a nice
Speaker 1: relaxed working environment. From that kind of standpoint, I mean,
Speaker 1: we're working really hard. At least it was until they
Speaker 1: heard us and right, yeah, and then yeah, might know
Speaker 1: if some of these some of my favorite sites are blocked. Well,
Speaker 1: the other one was p v P Scott kurt Yeah,
Speaker 1: Scott Kurtz is uh web comic again another one that
Speaker 1: as questionable content from time to time. Nothing too bad,
Speaker 1: but there are a lot of you know, kind of
Speaker 1: sophomoric jokes on there. Um, but those are those are
Speaker 1: things that you know, again like I'll have a a break,
Speaker 1: or you know, if if I finish an article, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a moment of elation, um of relief when
Speaker 1: I yeah, when the when the light comes down from
Speaker 1: the heavens and the angelic choir strikes up, or when
Speaker 1: you finish an article and you're about to hand it
Speaker 1: over to your editor, Um, I assume I'm not alone
Speaker 1: in this and during that moment, the last thing you
Speaker 1: want to think about is, hey, I need to start
Speaker 1: on my next article, so you need to take a
Speaker 1: little moment to appreciate that time and take a short
Speaker 1: break before diving right back into the research. So that's
Speaker 1: when I'll check up on my web comics. That or
Speaker 1: if I hit like writer's block in the middle of
Speaker 1: a page, which does sometimes happen. I have a joke there,
Speaker 1: but I'm not gonna make it. Okay, Well, do you
Speaker 1: have another one you can share with us? I was
Speaker 1: going to suggest for my part Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited Wow,
Speaker 1: which to which I have a subscription and bought right
Speaker 1: before I started graduate school and became unable to use.
Speaker 1: So Wednesdays are big, big days for you. Huh, Well,
Speaker 1: they actually have. They actually put up several new issues
Speaker 1: a day. They digitize their comics and it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: got a pretty cool comics reader, uh that allows you
Speaker 1: to zoom in on panels or you know, flip from
Speaker 1: page to page, so you can actually get a pretty
Speaker 1: good look at what what the art is there. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's got access to a lot of stuff that's
Speaker 1: you know, so far out of print that it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: So it's um and growing every week. It's very impressive. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't usually check that out of work,
Speaker 1: but I have on at lunchtime a couple of times.
Speaker 1: And you know, we also sometimes have to work at
Speaker 1: home true, which true occasionally means that we have to
Speaker 1: take hard at work. When I'm working at home, I'm
Speaker 1: not taking breaks like that. I even worked through lunch. No,
Speaker 1: I mean working at home like after work hours. I
Speaker 1: don't mean like like taking a work day at home.
Speaker 1: All right, um, which I have done on occasion as well. Um,
Speaker 1: but okay, well, let's move on to some other ones.
Speaker 1: I've got a couple of blogs that I like to
Speaker 1: check out when I've got a couple of minutes. Um. Actually,
Speaker 1: here are three in particular that I like, and they
Speaker 1: have a similar theme. See if you can spot it.
Speaker 1: Skep Chicks, Bad Astronomy and Skeptic Blog. Well, you know
Speaker 1: it's pretty obvious that, yeah, I guess. So. I find
Speaker 1: it difficult to believe that you are that skeptical. There
Speaker 1: are times where you look at the world and you think, Wow,
Speaker 1: it's really flipping crazy, and it's it's websites like skep
Speaker 1: Chicks and Skeptic Blog and Bad Astronomy that helped me
Speaker 1: ground myself and think there are some pretty sane critical
Speaker 1: thinkers out there who don't just immediately jump on anything
Speaker 1: and and and validate it. They give it some real thought.
Speaker 1: So yeah, once in a while I have to touch
Speaker 1: touch ground there, and that's those are the ones I
Speaker 1: go to for that, all right. Um. I have every
Speaker 1: once in a while when I have time, which is
Speaker 1: not that often these days. UM, I log into a NewsGator,
Speaker 1: which is an RSS aggregator, and there are just tons
Speaker 1: and tons of different blogs that I check out, you know,
Speaker 1: things like um plaid stallions dot com, which is all
Speaker 1: seventies related pictures from catalogs and things like that. And
Speaker 1: of course you've got that weird commercial obsession. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I have been uh known to visit the Internet archive
Speaker 1: on occasion and check out some old commercials or YouTube
Speaker 1: and uh you know, I'm just saying that in my
Speaker 1: end two and a half hour playlist of game show
Speaker 1: tunes on my iPod, Chris is a real wild man
Speaker 1: in the office. Yeah, um, all right, hey, fail blog
Speaker 1: Fail Blog, and it's counterpart I can ask cheeseburger, right,
Speaker 1: all right, both of which can occasionally be not safe
Speaker 1: for work. Actually I can ask cheeseburgers usually Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're going that way and you really
Speaker 1: need something safe for work, you can always go to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Cute Overload or the Chiba you New Puppies can.
Speaker 1: Fail blog just gives me so much joy. Uh there's
Speaker 1: some that are literally painful to watch. Like you just
Speaker 1: if you're like if you're like me, it is because
Speaker 1: I empathize occasionally with the poor schleps who who have
Speaker 1: suffered under fail Blog. There is occasionally a video that
Speaker 1: will have some really terrible um accident in it, like
Speaker 1: the guy who was winning the bicycle race and he
Speaker 1: threw his arms up over his head which caused him
Speaker 1: to lose his balance and the guy who was right
Speaker 1: behind him past him because he fell right. Or the
Speaker 1: soccer game where the guy throws the soccer ball into
Speaker 1: the field and and it smacks the other soccer players
Speaker 1: straight in the face and he just crumples like like
Speaker 1: a lead weight. That made me laugh so hard. I'm
Speaker 1: a horrible person. Yeah, I bet you don't watch America's
Speaker 1: Funniest Own venuos No, I can't stand it. Completely different
Speaker 1: from watching somebody get hit in the face with a soccer. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I can't. I can't explain it all right,
Speaker 1: but okay, uh, there's a game I like to play
Speaker 1: it every now and then, Kingdom of Loathing. Have you
Speaker 1: heard of it? Yes? I have? Have you played it? Okay?
Speaker 1: Kingdom of Loathing is like a role playing game, except
Speaker 1: it's very very geek oriented. It's got a lot of
Speaker 1: pop culture references, geek culture references. There are monsters in
Speaker 1: there that are modeled after they might be giants songs.
Speaker 1: There's an entire environment that is that takes its inspiration
Speaker 1: from John Hodgeman's obsession with hoboes. Um that sounds completely
Speaker 1: unlike you. I am shocked. Well, the nice thing about
Speaker 1: Kingdom of Loathing is that they put a cap on
Speaker 1: how many turns you can spend per day playing the game.
Speaker 1: So under a single player account, you can only play
Speaker 1: up to forty turns. All the you can get some
Speaker 1: items and and other like buffers to boost that number up.
Speaker 1: I think as high as two, but most people don't.
Speaker 1: Most people have surround like maybe a hundred or whatever. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the turns go by very quickly, so it's not like
Speaker 1: you're going to spend an entire day playing the game
Speaker 1: unless you've made multiple accounts. But it's definitely one of
Speaker 1: those things that keeps me saying because it's just so
Speaker 1: bizarre and uh, it really does appeal to my sense
Speaker 1: of humor. I'm really surprised that you haven't mentioned Twitter yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of put that under Digsby said, the Digsby umbrella,
Speaker 1: which is all the instant messaging, email and Twitter all
Speaker 1: put together. Well, you know, it does keep me sane.
Speaker 1: It's funny because, uh, you know, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I'm speaking for Jonathan accurately here, but we joined some
Speaker 1: of the social networking services partially so we could try
Speaker 1: them out and talk to you about them, but you know,
Speaker 1: to do a little uh networking, and then ended up
Speaker 1: sort of checking out of the people and getting caught
Speaker 1: up in it. Right at least. I follow a few
Speaker 1: a few celebrities as well, which I swore I would
Speaker 1: not do when I started on Twitter. Um, and some
Speaker 1: of them aren't really not necessarily big name celebrities, but
Speaker 1: people that I admire for their work, like Will Wheaton. Yes,
Speaker 1: I follow Will Wheaton, who has has given me a
Speaker 1: shout out and turned on his blog, which was very rewarding.
Speaker 1: It's kind of crazy though. I was like, hey, I've
Speaker 1: been on yeah who's homepage? But Will Wheaton look, Will
Speaker 1: mentioned my large Adrian Collider article. Um Felicia Day from
Speaker 1: the Guild and Dr Horrible and various other Buffy the
Speaker 1: Vampire Slayer anyway, follow her as well. And the celebrities.
Speaker 1: There are a few fake yeah, Stephen Colbert, um, but
Speaker 1: yeah they're John Hodgman is another one. I follow John Clice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a ton. And then also I follow a lot
Speaker 1: of tech journalists to keep up with that as well,
Speaker 1: so I have a nice balance. But yeah, it's definitely
Speaker 1: one of those sand D preservation uh toys that I
Speaker 1: like to rely on. Interesting. Interesting, And there's you know
Speaker 1: Gmail Gmail. Uh yeah, Gmail actually keeps me saying just
Speaker 1: because it it's a very effective filing system for email,
Speaker 1: so that that's also very helpful. I was gonna say
Speaker 1: Google Earth. I use Google Earth occasionally just to you know,
Speaker 1: it's such a neat tool. And just recently they added
Speaker 1: an ancient Rome you can you can you can explore
Speaker 1: Ancient Rome. I think it's three twenty BC Rome, and uh,
Speaker 1: they have the three D model buildings up so you
Speaker 1: can actually kind of go through and see what the
Speaker 1: streets were like back in three twenty BC. That's just
Speaker 1: cool room if you want to, uh rock lobster. Alright, So, um,
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about two that are no longer
Speaker 1: with us, two toys that we can no longer rely
Speaker 1: upon to keep us sane. I'm sorry, hands go off, Pounds,
Speaker 1: We'll miss you, Pounces. Pounce has gone under. The people
Speaker 1: who were working on Pounds, which is one of Kevin
Speaker 1: Rose's projects, are now working on other projects. So hopefully
Speaker 1: they're you know, still gainfully employed, but the services no
Speaker 1: more as they have joined the six apart family, which
Speaker 1: you may know from such hit projects is Movable Type
Speaker 1: than Movable Type and the former owners of live journal
Speaker 1: and well, the other was Valley Wagg. Valleywag was a
Speaker 1: rumor and gossip site on the tech industry, one of
Speaker 1: those things that that Chris and I've said, we hope
Speaker 1: we never make it onto Valley Wag, but we made it.
Speaker 1: We survived. Yeah, we we we outlived Valley Wag. Now,
Speaker 1: granted they're the fellow who was in charge of Valley Wag.
Speaker 1: He's still blow gugging, but it's no longer under the
Speaker 1: Valley Wag name exclusively, and there aren't as many updates
Speaker 1: to that blog now, so um yeah too, too fewer
Speaker 1: things for us to clutch onto and keep us saying
Speaker 1: yeah and uh. For for my part, I would have
Speaker 1: to add all the political sites that I had been
Speaker 1: surfing over the past few months to find out what
Speaker 1: was going on and who was saying what and fact
Speaker 1: check yes and yeah. There were a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of yeah. I went to a lot of political
Speaker 1: sites to Actually I don't think that those help me
Speaker 1: keep me sane though opposite effect. So fortunately that the
Speaker 1: election season is now over, there's an election site whole
Speaker 1: in my daily routine. I see, So you have to
Speaker 1: find something. Might I recommend Kingdom of Loathing? Actually, I
Speaker 1: was thinking at this point, work, that's true, that's true.
Speaker 1: There's it is a busy time, all right. Well that's
Speaker 1: a good I think that's a good wrap up of
Speaker 1: the toys that keep us saying um. You know. This
Speaker 1: discussion also reminds me of another podcast that's in our
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works podcast family. It's called Stuff You Missed
Speaker 1: in History Class that's hosted by Kendice Gibson and Jane McGrath.
Speaker 1: They did an episode about presidential salaries, so you want
Speaker 1: to talk about insane, Yeah, but definitely check that out.
Speaker 1: If you haven't subscribed to it, you should definitely definitely
Speaker 1: look at that because it's a great podcast. It's very
Speaker 1: educational and very entertaining. So if you'd like to learn
Speaker 1: more about some of the topics we've talked about today,
Speaker 1: things like streaming audio and video and Twitter, be sure
Speaker 1: to check those out at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: which is also a great site for you to take
Speaker 1: a look at while you're looking for ways to keep
Speaker 1: yourself saying at your day job. So thanks for listening
Speaker 1: and we'll talk to you against you. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Let us know what you think. Send an
Speaker 1: email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. Brought
Speaker 1: to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camry. It's ready,
Speaker 1: are you