In This Episode: The gang of five is back — prepping for space launch, playing with greenscreens, hankering over new cameras and helping archive the digital world.
This week the TEH Podcast is hosted by Leo Notenboom, the “Chief Question Answerer” at Ask Leo!, and Gary Rosenzweig, the host and producer of MacMost, and mobile game developer at Clever Media.
This week our guests are … Randy Cassingham of thisistrue.com, Kay Savetz of freeprintable.net, Ken Gagne of Gamebits.
(You’ll find longer Bios on the Hosts page.)
Show Notes & Links
- Randy: SpaceX, baby! Launching human beings into space!
- Here’s the freaking awesome photo Musk tweeted this afternoon.
- Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley were assigned to this mission in 2018.
- Here’s a nice Summary of the mission and photos.
- Risk: NASA told Business Insider it estimated there’s a 1-in-276 chance the flight could be fatal and a 1-in-60 chance that some problem would cause the mission to fail (but not kill the crew). (Shuttle risk turned out to be a tad worse than 1 in 68: 2 entire crews lost and vehicles destroyed in 135 missions.)
- Great Musk Quote: “If there’s a test program and nothing happens in that test program, I would say it’s insufficiently rigorous. If there hasn’t been hardware that’s blown up on a test stand, I don’t think you’ve tested it hard enough. You’ve got to push the envelope.”
- Gary: Censorship online is meeting the resiliency of the internet. Here are a few examples:
- The Uncensored Library, a library of censored content.
- And of course… Minecraft – meet the Minecraft Censorship Loophole
- Also, a project of Reporters Without Borders
- Ken: The pandemic may be helping accelerate certain technologies: Robots are helping China/Singapore recover from COVID-19 faster, thanks to autonomous vehicles and patrol robots – but why do they make them so scary looking?
- Maybe let’s not call viral content “viral” anymore
- Leo: Is really liking ChromeOS – purchased two Pixelbooks – one for for wife + one for friend. It meets their needs nicely and even does Zoom.
- Also, Neverware Cloud Ready is Chrome OS to install on an old PC
Ain’t it Cool
- Randy: We’re working on a permanent archive of TEH at the Internet Archive, and should be able to say “where” soon.
- Ken: I’ve been working on several archive projects.
- Seattle record store collection bought by the Internet Archive.
- Gary: It’s easy going green screen… easier than I expected! In 48 hours I went from “No!” to “Always!”
- Kay: Discovered BBC Zoom Backgrounds
- Leo: Last week we were talking about cameras and lenses. Very tempting: Sony has just released the ZV-1 Vlogging Camera (via Tony & Chelsea Northrup ). Available 6/11.
- Review on The Verge
BSP: Blatant Self-Promotion
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- Leo: Five Steps to Repair Windows 10 Without Losing Programs – Refresh your computer without the pain.
- Gary: Creating An Information Notification With Shell Scripts And Automator – quick pieces of content such as time and date on a Mac.
- Randy: This is True is social commentary using weird news. He rearranged a chart put out by the state of Georgia to justify “reopening” the state. The actual data didn’t support it one bit. You’ll probably enjoy his story about it too, at the top of that page.
- Kay: See what is most popular at Free Printable: https://www.freeprintable.net/popular/
- Ken: Documenting my adventures and answering questions on traveling. https://roadbits.net
Congratulations on reaching your 100th episode.
Comments by the team about the robot apocalypse where autonomous vehicles took their passengers into the ocean reminded me of a short horror film I saw back in the 70s. The movie I’m referring to was called “La Cabina”, directed by Antonio Mercero from 1972. You can find more details on Wikipedia, and it’s also on You Tube. Look for the RTVE Archivo for example. I still remember seeing it after all these years including where I watched it, and who with. It was that shocking.
Basically a normal guy enters a newly installed telephone box (La Cabina is Spanish for telephone box) to make a call. The phone doesn’t work and he obviously wants to get out, but now the door won’t open. Many people try to help him, but no one can get the door to budge. Up to this point the film doesn’t appear to be a horror film at all. It’s more like a silent comedy made by Charlie Chaplin, or Buster Keaton. The fire brigade then turn up and are about to bust open the box when the people that installed the phone box arrive, and they persuade everyone that they will deal with the situation. The box is loaded onto the truck with they guy still in it, and they drive off. Everything still seems OK, but then the unfortunate soul in the box sees another phone box on the back of another truck and that has someone inside it too. I won’t spoil the ending, but you can guess that’s when the horror is revealed.
Autonomous vehicles versus phone boxes. Isn’t progress wonderful.
Congratulations on your 100th episode! I started listening on Apple Podcast and then saw you had the video on YouTube so I quickly moved over there. I do have one question. Why can’t I find the podcast on Stitcher? I had gotten tired of Apple and wanted to try another app and tried Stitcher and wasn’t able to find TEHPodcast. Thanks for the great information.
I’m not sure where stitcher gets their data, so I’m not sure exactly what to tell you. I’m not finding it there myself either.
Hi Leo,
I asked Stitcher why TEHPodcast wasn’t listed and they replied and wanted this info. “What is the name of your show, your rss feed url, and the email address your show is registered under?” I think they thought it was my show. I wouldn’t mind passing the information on to them, or I can give you the contact info I have.