Episode: 3149
Title: HPR3149: HPR AudioBook Club 21  - The Terrible Business of Salmon and Dusk
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3149/hpr3149.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 17:55:25

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This is Hacker Public Radio episode 3,149 for Thursday 27 August 2020. Today's show is entitled
HPR Audio Book Club 21, The Terrible Business of Salmon and Dusk,
and is part of the series HPR underscore Audio Book Club. It is the 20th anniversary show of HPR underscore Audio Book Club,
and is about 106 minutes long, and carries an explicit flag. The summary is,
the HPR Audio Book Club reviews the audio book, The Terrible Business of Salmon and Dusk by McKay Bartle.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by an honesthost.com,
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15, that's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at An Honesthost.com.
Hello and welcome again to another episode of Hacker Public Radio, specifically the Hacker Public Radio Audio Book Club.
Tonight we will be reviewing the audio book that's got several names,
but basically how to disappear completely, The Terrible Business of Salmon and Dusk by Mike Bennett, right?
Bartle. Bartle. Damn, I got that wrong at the end of the last show. I thought it was the same guy. It's honest, two different guys.
Anyway, that was X1101, he's a cool guy. Thanks, Pokey, and with us also we have Tosh, who is not a cool guy.
I did not say that. Bologna. What's good, everybody? I think it spoke was good. I liked it.
I liked it too. It was just weird, and it wasn't any less weird the second time around.
Oh, but it was a lot easier to understand the second time around. I'll tell you that.
I had technical difficulties both times that made it equally hard to follow twice.
Me too. Well, the second time I had technical difficulties, but not mine. Tosh, I saw you key up.
I'm glad you fellows enjoyed this book. I'll just start like that. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
I also, I even came prepared with a joke about the technical difficulties I have with this book.
I was going to be like, let me tell you about the Terrible Business of trying to listen to this book.
That's a terrible joke, and I love it. All right, so let me let me hear Tosh.
Why did you have a hard time listening to this book from a technical perspective or from like just listening to the book?
Let's start with technical. I try to play this on everything.
And so usually what I do is I download audiobooks on my phone, and I just download the raw audio files,
usually whatever they're in, and I throw them in VLC for Android, and it usually chugs through anything I throw at it,
speed it up, do whatever I want to do. It choked on about every, it choked on every episode I threw at it.
It just would not work just, just said it wouldn't do it. So I was like, did it choke on it when you tried to speed it up?
Yes. That is exactly the problem that I had.
So I moved on, and I was like, okay, not a big deal. All download the RSS feed, and I'll put it in,
I use antenna pod, which is a pod catcher. And I was like, I can just download the audio files and speed it up in antenna pod.
No, no, fail. So then I was like, why didn't you try and VLC at normal speed?
Oh, because you're running every avenue to run it at high speed.
Yes, I, I don't, I don't think I could have listened to this at regular speed and kept my sanity.
And so moving from that, I went and branched out and tried some new audio players on Android, which we'll talk about later.
And finally, what I had to do, and it worked brilliantly, and I shouldn't wait here at the beginning, is I put it on my Sansa clip,
it's running Rockbox, and Rockbox played it like a champ, didn't even stutter, didn't think about it, just did it.
Oh, good, because I was just, I had, as you were talking, I just turned on my Sansa clip, and I was going to play an episode in my year button,
see if I could speed it up, because I don't listen to stuff sped up.
Well, it sounds like Taj had the same problem, problems with the same thing that I did.
And that was in my audio player of choice for Android, my default settings are, you know, speed up to about two, remove silence, and increase the volume.
And every time I went to play an episode, it just said, ha ha, no, with those settings, and so I had to play it anyway.
But it kept trying to jump out of order, and luckily I enjoyed this book enough that listening to it at 1x speed was not the worst thing in the world.
So now I'm curious what audio player are using to remove silence and increase the volume.
So if you care about your software freedom at all, do not use this because it doesn't.
But at the time that I went to purchase this, I was more interested in it speeds up audio files and does it well.
And that is pocket casts.
This is the first time I have had any problems with this application.
Since I bought it, it was $4, and I do not regret it for a moment.
GPL or it didn't happen.
Well, then it didn't happen.
Actually, just as a shout out for antenna pod, like they recently, it's great open source community.
Their GitHub is wonderful.
I've had like three issues with antenna pod in the entire, I've used it for like a year and a half.
I put an issue on the GitHub and literally that day the developer is contacting me wanting to know what's going on and it's amazing and everything's been fixed.
So it's if you're looking for something, it's a little weird to get into for a pie catcher because it doesn't run the way you want it to.
But if you can wrap your brain around the way it works, it is awesome.
Wow, we could do audio players for a beverage review tonight because I was just thinking how great rock box still is.
I'm still using rock box and I'm still using G Potter to download my podcast.
I have rock G Potter too.
See, I don't want one more device.
See, I don't have one more device.
I have the same two devices I've had for like eight years now.
But I don't want to. I want one.
My phone should be able to do that.
You see, I don't like a phone for audio.
I like having a standalone device.
I don't like using my phone battery for that stuff to each their own.
Yeah, I know. I don't understand it.
I don't understand how you can do that.
It's easy. I just press a button and it works.
Yeah, but also there's a touch screen.
How do you pause and turn the volume up and fast forward and rewind without looking at the thing?
I don't.
Except for the volume because I have physical volume buttons.
Okay, they're seeing a pause play and rewind that stuff I do all the time.
The main reason for pause and play my app mostly throws a widget over top of the lock screen.
So you can do pause play and I think even rewind and fast forward right on the lock screen without actually unlocking the thumb.
So you just have to look at it, but you don't have to punch in whatever secret passphrase.
You've got to unlock your phone to be able to pause, unpause or you know,
speed, uh, move forward or backward in your audio file.
Yeah, all the players.
I've tried to do that too.
It's over the lock screen, but it's the not looking at it thing that's important to me sick.
I carry my sans a clip in a shirt pocket.
So all I have to do is reach up and look like I'm playing with my nipples.
I enjoy that.
Do you say oh baby, oh baby, every time you do sometime.
Well, more often than not, I'm laughing hysterically.
It's something that nobody else understands.
So how I do it with my phone is I have this amazing set of wireless Bluetooth headphones
that my family bought me for like Father's Day two years ago or something.
And they sound terrible.
They're the worst audio quality ever if you want to listen to music.
But for like spoken word stuff, they're great.
And they have play, pause and skip on the headphones and their buttons.
So I can just reach up and do it on my headphones.
And I don't ever have to look at the phone.
It's in my pocket.
So that works great for that.
But if I'm going to do something where I'm afraid, uh,
it's a little rough and tumble and something might happen.
I totally take the sans a clip because if that gets trashed,
I'm not worrying about it as much as my phone.
I see now that's a great solution except for motorcycle helmets.
Yeah, those are kind of important.
Which leads me to the trouble that I had listening to this audio book
and getting it done in time was actually a challenge for me for the first time ever.
So I can really not listen to music when I'm riding my motorcycle.
I can't do it very well, not if I'm riding seriously because every road
kind of has its own rhythm that you sort of have to obey.
And you can tell how well you're doing by how the engine sounds.
You really have to listen to that and hear that.
And as soon as you start hearing another rhythm in your head,
it kind of breaks that for me anyway.
I got a friend who listened to music just fine.
And I can listen to music on my commute, but I typically choose not to.
But I've learned that I can listen to podcasts and audio books just fine.
And I can actually concentrate on them pretty well inside my helmet.
So that's what I've been doing.
And I've really been putting on a lot of miles on my motorcycle lately.
It's brand new and I'm just getting back into it.
And it's the weather's great and it's so much fun that I really can't stop myself.
And this book is unlistenable inside a motorcycle helmet.
No matter what I do, there's just too much dynamic range.
So if I turn it up towards comfortable, there was a lot of times
when he got real quiet or says something real quick or with an affectation
that I just couldn't hear.
And as accessible as my Sans Eclipse is in my shirt pocket,
it's not as accessible and it's buried under a motorcycle jacket.
And I'm wearing thick leather gloves on my hands.
Not super thick, but thick enough you can't feel eclipse buttons.
And if I turned it up enough that I could hear the quiet stuff,
then the loud stuff was just skull shattering.
It was too much, there was too much treble.
And at high volumes that treble seems to artifact as well,
which is really like it just sounds like broken glass in your ears.
And so I could not listen to this one on the motorcycle.
So I had to remind myself to take every opportunity to listen while it was off.
So I almost didn't get this one done in time.
Another technical thing that I noticed was that the audio files were named in different ways,
like halfway through.
And the album are changed randomly in the middle of the book twice.
And I don't know if that goes with like the their act breaks.
And I don't know if he did it like that.
But one of the players that I tried to play it in went insane trying to figure out why
there were different artwork for different things.
And then thought it was different albums and it was a nightmare.
Wow.
See, I'm looking, I'm looking for where I downloaded this now.
I don't see where I downloaded on my computer, but I wanted to,
I was just thinking I should look at it in with a tag editor and see what it was encoded with
and what the album art was and stuff,
because I bet there's some clues there.
I, I don't know how there,
there's only one other thing that I've ever had that didn't,
that just kind of like choked everything I threw at it.
And it funny enough is Linux logcast.
Occasionally, it just doesn't want to work.
And I probably should tell the guys so they could fix it, but I haven't,
because I'm lazy and not a good contributor here here for laziness.
Yeah, here here.
Yeah, and then not being a good contributor.
I'm not been very good lately at all.
And I really need to be two of my very favorite programs are sort of one
just kind of lost a feature that you wouldn't have thought of was a feature
and the other one needs a feature, but like Osmond, I use all the time
and it needs a motorcycle button.
I don't care, I cannot make the car button work like a motorcycle
and the bicycle one refuses to do car type things.
But also G-Pod or man, when I just updated or upgraded
to the latest stable version of Debian,
G-Pod or got an upgrade and there's no progress bar anymore
for when it's copying files to your device.
And I really need that.
I can't tell when it's done.
I was going to, I thought you were going to say the same.
I updated G-Pod and this is for Arch.
It just wouldn't open anymore.
Like I had to literally go in the terminal and open it from user slash bin
and then it opened and now it works fine.
But it took me like a week to figure out what was going on.
It was driving me crazy.
Oh, that's weird.
Did it like not link to the right file?
What happened?
I have no idea and I was like,
it was one of those things that I was mildly irritated about
but didn't have enough time to actually like messing around
with it to figure out what was going on.
I'd just randomly, every time I turned on my computer,
just try to open it and see if it would open and it wouldn't.
It just failed.
So I was like, yeah, I'll look at it later.
And then I finally was like, well, let me just try to start it
from the terminal.
And so I just, you know, it's in user slash bin,
open it up and open it up fine.
I was like, ah, there you are.
And then I closed it and I went and hit the icon and it worked.
I just, I guess it became disassociated with the launcher
or something.
I have no idea.
Okay.
So there are nine,
there were nine different versions of iTunes used to encode
various episodes of this audio book.
And then there was a whole bunch of the beginning.
It didn't say what they were encoded by.
So there's the problem.
iTunes.
It, honestly, it usually is the problem.
If, if, if ever, there's a problem with an audio file,
it usually is iTunes.
If it's not somebody's weird audio card, you know,
doing weird stuff, it's usually iTunes.
Yay, Apple.
That, that's our chasm.
Yeah, I know.
There's like hexadecimal comments.
And the college is a string of hex numbers.
You know, what, what is up with that?
Thanks a lot, iTunes.
I can't believe I used to be an Apple person.
Like I look back at that man.
I'm just like, what were you thinking?
Hey, you're a better man.
Calm down.
We like you a lot.
Well, I left the video and audio industry.
That was my first good step.
I don't see album art for anything except the very last episode.
When I loaded it into something,
I don't want to say it because it's my thing for later.
It had three different album arts, too,
which were actually really nice looking.
And the other one looked like my daughter drew it with a crown.
But it was, it freaked out because I obviously,
I didn't pull down any album art other than what would be embedded in the files.
I'm guessing that that's what broke it then because I'm using easy tag here.
And only the very last episode has an image for album art.
So maybe it's using maybe iTunes embedded album art some other way.
That might be what that hex code is in the comments.
Very, very strange.
Oh, and the frequency is screwed up, too.
That might be why, if the frequency is messy,
that might be why it has a hard time speeding up
and doing all the other fancy processing stuff.
They don't broke my algorithms.
It is. It's screwed up.
Let me see.
Episodes 26 through 30.
And there was one near the beginning, but I can't hit buttons.
26 through 30 and one near the beginning were encoded or recorded anyway at 44.1.
The rest are at 22.050.
So they're like half the frequency that they should be.
There's an audio tip for anybody out there just getting started.
If you're going to be recording and you have access to the frequency at which you record,
you want it to be 44.1.
That is the most universally compatible with every stuff.
It's the rate at which CDs were and are if they still are recorded.
That's the rate that they're recorded at.
So you want that if you want compatibility.
Shout out for easy tag, too.
The program's boss.
It really is.
Holy shit, there's one of these.
Episode two, the bit rate has a tilde in it.
It's till the 86 kilo bits per second.
I don't know what that means.
It's variable bit rate or not.
Well, it's about 86 bit kilobits per second.
And there's some in here that are at till the 39.
I'll be honest, nothing about this is any weirder than the book itself.
This is a very medical conversation.
You're absolutely right.
The book is as strange as the rat hole that we're diving into.
In fact, everything about the book was a rat hole.
Yeah, exactly.
So what do we think of the book?
Well, I really liked the story for a lot of the same reasons as I liked the tincture story.
Is that it's just a weird world that you fall into and can't figure out.
And every time you think you have a handle on something, it takes another drastic left turn.
Man, is it a spoiler to talk about something that happened in the first three or four chapters?
No, it's pretty impossible to do this without spoilers.
I'm trying to think of what I could say pre-spoiler and there's not a whole lot.
I'm just like general impressions and audio quality and how things are broken.
It's kind of where I'm at.
Okay, well, if we're going to get into spoilers that early, then let me do my few things that I can think of that aren't spoilers.
And for you guys too, if you got any.
First of all, I loved the guy's reading.
I thought he did it really well.
He was a fun voice to listen to.
I don't think I could listen to him read the phone book, but I certainly was able to listen to him read this.
And it was good.
I did like that.
His reading was good.
The sound, other than the weird, you know, artifacts that you get from compression and from there being a little too much travel.
The sound was good.
It did not sound bad.
There are certainly worse books on audio books.
And there are certainly worse, you know, books on like lever box.
So I really can't complain other than it was just slightly out of motorcycle listening range.
Yeah, I thought technically his reading and in the subtle variations in accent, which I'm sure people from around the world who are listening to us as Americans are probably like, yes, people have accents.
But because we have accents here, all three of us have a different accent.
But his ability to switch the version of his accent for the different characters worked really well.
Not so much for voices.
A lot of times I wasn't sure if a woman had just spoken or not and I had to do the instant replay in my head to figure it out.
But he read slow enough that I could.
Yeah, he didn't really do many voices.
It was more just like accents and dialect stuff.
But it was enough to where I could generally tell I think I was never really confused about who was talking.
X-1101, how about you, any impressions of this nature?
I mean, I thought the reading quality was good.
I have to pretty much just say me too to almost everything you just said.
Oh, sorry.
Sorry.
I hate anything to steal your thunder.
No, no thunder.
I mean, I just you guys put a pretty fine point on it.
We're cool like that.
So I thought the characters for the most part were pretty awesome and pretty likable.
And I didn't really mind when it switched from one character's story to another because I thought all the characters were super interesting.
Yeah, I liked that.
Though I got to say the only one I could really sympathize with was Neuro.
Yeah, he was awesome.
I'm not sure about with, but definitely for.
Yeah, okay.
Maybe you might be right.
Yeah, maybe not with.
Yeah, I could totally sympathize for him.
Like I didn't really like Theo.
I thought I mean, she was just kind of a basically an alcoholic, just a drunk.
Um, just kind of a loser.
I mean, and that was that was kind of the point of the story she had to be to be in the story.
And then kill me.
I had a hard time figuring out what he was because sometimes he seemed like just a.
A shiftless loser, but then other times he's like the hero figure of the story and doing.
And you know, impressive things.
So he, I don't know, he was kind of weird, almost out of place.
Which again, I'll have to qualify by saying was kind of appropriate in a story that's about being out of place.
Yeah, I, I think the things that really got in my way of enjoying this were.
And I can't get into too much.
I'll get into details of the other after spoilers is when I looked at it, the label said magical realism, which I love.
I love magical realism.
Um, and so I had an expectation going into it that it would be a little different than it is.
Uh, and it wasn't, and so that was interesting for me.
Um, not that it was a bad thing.
I just think it may have been a little mislabeled.
And the other is I, I was piecing together this whole world and the ideas in this world from about.
Well, from definitely two other things that I know of that it was just like, oh, you saw this movie and read this and put it together.
And that's kind of what this would come out of.
And I don't know that it did anything different.
I don't know if the author knows the, the two things that I'm thinking of that it just seems to be kind of ripping off.
I'd like to hear about magical realism a little more about that.
Have you got a definition?
Because I don't know if I've ever heard that before.
I didn't read the description for this.
So magical realism is kind of, uh, it's real popular in like, uh, native cultures and stuff where you'll just have these strange, fantastical things that happen.
And it's completely normal.
Like it's treated as though it just fits into the world is nothing.
And I'm sure literature people are probably screaming like, no, Taj, what are you doing?
You don't know what you're talking about.
And this is just for me reading a bunch of it.
Um, is that it's, it's, it's almost treated like it just exists as a normal place.
And most of the time the people in the story, it's normal.
It's not anything strange.
Um, to where this was more like speculative fiction to me.
Or, uh, there was a couple points where it was kind of magical realism.
Like, uh, there was a scene in a store that we could probably talk about later.
That seemed to verge on magical realism because everybody there was in the moment.
It was, it was treated as normal kind of, even though it was, uh, strange.
It just seemed like, you mean that time where it was with magical and real?
Yeah, right.
But it seemed like that was, that's more of what I was expecting.
And it wasn't that it happened occasionally.
But a lot of it was more, I don't know.
It, it, I can't believe I'm using this adjective for this book.
It seemed more grounded than that.
Like in the things that were weird were pointed out to be weird that it was strange.
And I guess maybe that's because we had, we're looking through the eyes of a character who's not from this sort of world.
Um, that it looks like that.
But it seemed like a lot of times they would just point to something and go, ah, ah, isn't it weird?
Yeah, let's check it out.
Yeah, grounded is not a word I would use to describe very much in this whole story.
I know that's one surprise I did.
It's not, no, it's sort of is just because the stuff was pointed out.
I see what Todd was saying there that, you know, he, he, the author kept pointing it out because Theo was on a custom to it.
Not, you know, like, he'll be just ignored it and kind of pretended like it was normal.
You know, he's just trying to be cool.
I think is more of what he was playing off as than, than it actually being normal or, ah, you know, walk in Theo through or even giving her credit for being able to handle it.
I think he was just trying to play it cool.
I'm not sure he cared enough to be trying to play it cool.
Oh, I think he did.
I think he cared deeply.
He was just trying to play it cool.
He just didn't want it to show that he cared about anything.
Yeah, that 100% with that.
I think he was totally aware of that situation.
Yeah, I mean, in a word, he killed he's a poser.
I mean, through the whole thing, he might be smart.
He might be this that and the other thing.
But the whole time he was a poser and Theo kept saying as much that, you know, oh, he didn't let on that that was what he was thinking.
And he wasn't this about what he was doing that.
So I mean, that's just what it was.
Okay, so Urban Dictionary said nothing at all about magic realism.
But Wiktionary says it's a literary style or genre that combines naturalistic details and narrative with surreal or dreamlike elements.
So I guess I can understand that to look up naturalistic now.
I think my disconnect is there was a point in my life where I kind of searched out magical realism because I read a couple books that were that genre and I just enjoyed them.
So I kind of went down that rabbit hole.
And this to me was like a cognitive dissonance with that experience.
I'm sure there's much more out there that is magical realism that I'm not accounting for.
I'm just saying in my brain.
It didn't seem like it fit there.
I would call it more speculative.
All right.
No, it's speculative fiction.
I've heard that word thrown around a bunch too, but never bothered looking at us.
Hey, I can only make excuses.
Like I've never heard it.
That's blown.
I've never bothered looking it up.
We can look up anything nowadays.
Well, I don't know.
Now that I'm saying it, I'm like, maybe it's not speculative because speculative is more like, oh, this is what it might be like eventually.
It fits in this weird gray area, I think, in between genres.
I mean, like just strange, like the literary version of a David Lynch movie.
I was to put it, which I guess is sort of surrealistic.
I mean, I think if you called this surrealistic, I'd be a little, it makes more sense.
I don't know.
Maybe it's the same thing.
Maybe I'm just totally making stuff up at this point.
You sound like your grumpy old man again, Tush.
Oh, see speculative fiction, according to Wikipedia.
The way they're describing it's kind of like an umbrella that covers science fiction fantasy and horror.
Yes, that sounds about right.
Or at least having elements of the three, maybe doesn't chew on into any one of them super well.
So they made it bigger word.
I don't know.
All right.
I can see all this working as a description for this.
And the only thing that I think I have left to say is that I'm glad the characters were interesting.
And the setting was interesting.
It kind of seemed character driven and setting driven.
It was more about the adventure and what they experienced because there in my opinion was not much of a plot here.
No, that's another issue ahead with it.
I was more, I was much more interested in the setting than even the characters.
And I liked the characters, but I was like, I wonder if you could do this in this world.
Like I kind of wanted to just have like a virtual reality version of the world that they're playing in and just poke around at it.
I was more interested in that than I was what was actually going on.
Yeah, that might be why I liked Neuro because he seemed to do things where the other two were just lazy about it.
You know, like things came to them and happened to them, but they had no motivation.
They had no ambition.
Yeah, it seemed like the other two characters were just kind of haggard drunks floating between experiences.
Any other spoilers?
I mean, non-spoilers?
It's not a spoiler.
So I have this beer.
I'd like to drink.
Spoiler alert.
There's reviews coming.
X-1101 since it was your birthday yesterday.
And since is the first time you've had your beer with you when we started their reviews.
Why don't we start with you?
My sister got me this beer.
And she admitted when she handed it to me that she bought it entirely for the label.
This is a for the laws beer.
This is Monty Python's holy grail.
And then the GR is very badly scratched out.
So it's supposed to say holy ale, but still spelled ai out.
This is blackknights reserve, dark Yorkshire ale, tempered over burning witches.
Yeah, I think they say that on all their beers.
I've had their regular ale.
I don't think I've had the dark that you have.
Smells nice.
Let's see how it pours.
It's dark foamy.
Doesn't let very much light through.
Just good.
It's nice, slightly smoky kind of multi.
Otherwise, it is fairly nondescript.
I mean, it's just a dark, multi smoky tasting really funny beer.
Cool.
Yeah, that's the one I had was high quality a little on the sweet side.
And I don't know, just decent.
It was good.
It wasn't bad for a goat.
It was a little expensive.
You do pay for the comedy.
I was worried it was going to be a little over sweet because I don't do sweet beers.
As regular listeners will know, time usually the guy with the super bitter hoppy beverage,
which this is not at all.
But this is a nice change up from the massive quantities of hops I've had over the last week.
Yeah, you had a funny comment.
You texted me a picture that earlier this week.
And I said, I thought it was a little sweet.
You said something to the effect of well, if I thought it was sweet,
that you were definitely going to need a hoppy chaser.
Yeah, because you seem to have had the tendency or the one you like sweeter beers anyway,
than I do anyway.
Yeah, we're multi.
I would like multi-gears.
The most of them just happen to be sweet.
But yeah, you really like the bitter hoppy beers compared to me for sure.
Oh, I dare say you probably wouldn't call them bitter.
Oh, no.
No, you definitely taste the bitterness.
You just, I've learned to enjoy that bitterness just like I like my coffee nice and dark.
And it's bitter.
It's just not, well, good coffee isn't bitter the same way that bad coffee is,
but it is still it's bitter, but not in the sharp unpleasant way.
If I can't articulate any better than that.
Embrace the bitter.
No, I agree.
There's definitely a good bitter and a bad bitter and they are totally different.
So otherwise, that's all I got.
So how about you, Pogi?
What's your drink in tonight?
I'm drinking long trail double bag.
And I have a sneaky suspicion that I've reviewed this before.
I'm pretty sure you have, but that's okay.
Well, then I think I'm going to, I'm going to let Taj go because I'm going to do what he's doing.
And I, but it was his idea.
So he's going to go first rock and roll.
So basically the last two weeks of my life have been helping teach a marching band camp.
So I've been spending 12 hour days in the sun.
Party.
No, it's not a party.
It's just a lot of sweating and being annoyed.
So I've been really because that sounds exactly like what most parties I've been doing is it's 12 hours sweating and being annoyed.
I forgot to push the chuckle that time.
You made me laugh, Taj.
Okay, so it does sound like a party.
Most parties, but so I literally rolled in here.
I was a little late to the party because I just came in directly from there.
So I'm drinking water to rehydrate myself because I'm a hot sweaty mess.
So I decided that I was going to do a app pick instead, just so I had a review.
So we were talking about all the technical difficulties with playing this.
And I played around with a lot of audio players and stuff.
And one of the things I always like, Poke, I always go to Eftroyd first because GPL or didn't happen.
Or at least that's the way I feel about it.
And I played with a couple of audio players couldn't find anything that worked.
I did stumble across an audio book player.
And I was like, hmm, that's interesting.
What's different between that and a regular audio player.
So I downloaded, I believe it's called material player.
You think I would have looked this up before I started talking about it.
But links are it didn't happen.
Yes, it's called material player.
And it is an audio book player.
And it's real simple.
It does one job.
It plays audio books.
And it can play them at higher speeds than one X, which makes me happy.
It is kind of one of those.
It's occasionally you'll find an app that's like a diamond in the rough.
And because it's open source, you know, it's probably going to get better.
That's how I feel about this.
I've already.
The variable speed only goes up to two X and I went to the get up.
And I was like, yo, peeps, can we check up the speed?
And hopefully we'll hear back about that.
But it's very simple and it does exactly what it says.
And it's nice and clean.
So I kept it just in case I wanted to use it again.
It seems like a nice way to separate out.
If you use an audio player and then an audio book player,
just to kind of keep the audio file separate because you can set up a folder
just for your audio books and dump it in there.
And in my case, I can put the audio book folder on my SD card on my phone.
And just push it all off the SD card and don't have to worry about it.
It's all over there, which is really nice.
So material player.
It's pretty cool.
Check it out.
So I have a couple questions about it.
How does it ring?
How does it organize the books?
How does it know?
Does it go by file name?
Does it have a database?
Does it use tags?
I'm not quite sure because that's part of the commerce.
This was the one player that decided that it was going to lose its mind
because there were three different kinds of album art.
So what it did is it assumed that it was three different books
and it put them together.
And that, so basically when you open it up,
you can, I believe, let me play with it here.
You can set it up to either do...
Let's see.
No, you can't.
It just does it the way it wants to do it.
It puts just the album art up.
And it's kind of like the just row of album art.
And you click on that and it takes you inside the book where you see the end of it.
The book where you see the individual tracks.
And it has a sleep timer.
It remembers your playback position and all that stuff.
So it's really...
It's got a lot of features you want just for reading books.
But I don't know where it's pulling that data from.
I assumed it was probably coming from the tags because it had album art.
But if it's not in the tags, maybe they have a database.
But I don't understand what would still be jacked up.
So that's something to look into.
I'm not sure.
I'm looking at the tags and it would have a really hard time organizing it just by these tags.
Because the title changes several times.
We know the file name changed once.
The format of the file name changed once.
But the format of the titles changes at least twice.
And maybe the album stayed the same and have to widen the window.
And the track number he seemed to have incremented that correctly each time.
But that's about the only consistency in these file tags.
Oh, an artist name.
Well, he got to get that right.
Well, he does.
I got it wrong last time.
Bad Pokey.
Oh, yeah.
He made a classic mistake here too.
In the genre, he's got a podcast every time, which is okay.
But sometimes it's capitalized.
And sometimes it isn't.
That can make a difference.
That can throw your stuff out of whack if it's relying on that.
I'm assuming.
I'm assuming from all the differences that this probably was recorded over a very long period of time.
And perhaps he forgot what he was doing between them and just kind of made it up.
Nope.
The first file has 2006 is the year and the second and the last has 2007.
So at most 24 months.
Well, then I think we're, I think he's trolling us.
I think it's maybe it's like a total meta thing.
I'm just going to do this.
No, you know what?
I'm going to say no.
I, this is a mistake that I find in probably 90%.
Maybe even more, maybe 95% of all the audio books and podcasts that I've ever listened to.
And looked at the tags and file names and stuff.
Is that most people, when they start out, they're just naming it as they go.
They don't think about naming convention and tag convention when they start out.
And they think of it later, but then it's too late.
So now they have to think of something that won't break the old thing,
but we'll work with a standard convention, but then it always breaks.
And then they eventually wind up changing again.
And here's something.
If you're going to start a project, people, any project, but especially one of audio files,
the episodic content, a podcast, an audio book, really pick a good naming convention
for your very first episode and stick with it.
So if it's, for instance, an audio book and you're on chapter one, and you might run a little long,
you're going to want to call that oh one.
If it's a podcast, you're probably going to want to call that oh, oh one, because you really want it to stick.
And we're probably, as we're probably really terrible at this too, since there's,
I don't think I've done anything with tags for any of ours, but that's because HPR messes with it.
So I haven't bothered.
But if you're going to do something like that, yeah, really stick with a convention,
fill out all the fields in a reasonable way, or leave them blank, but then always leave them blank.
Don't fill them in later or go back and fill them in so that when somebody tries to catch up,
they get the same convention from start to finish.
It's really super important.
And for the love of God, don't put spaces in your file names.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely hyphens and underscores people.
Spaces and file names make me want to punch kittens.
Well, that escalated quickly.
I really hate spaces and file names.
I think that's because a kitten stepped on his space bar once and ruined his whole day.
Apparently kittens are responsible for all spaces ever keyboard cat.
Keyboard cat did that.
No, that dude deserves to get punched.
It's okay.
Oh, on his own marina.
Grumpy cats should just walk up and jack him. That would be hilarious.
So that's cool. That's a cool Android pick.
Yes, yes it is.
Okay.
I am going to do the same thing, not with Android.
This is IRL stuff.
So I'm going to review because I reviewed my beer before and it's the only one I have.
I'm going to review the rusty walless formula experience.
And you know what the whole title is, but it's it's a business owned by rusty walless who is a former NASCAR driver.
He drove Winston cup and sprint cup and next tell cup and whatever cups there were.
He drove them all.
He was a fairly successful driver.
I was never a real fan of his, but that's beside the point drove the number two car.
Everybody will know that.
And so now he he among probably many other things in the business where you it travels along.
Sometimes with the like NASCAR circuit, they'll go like a week ahead and they'll rent the race track for a day.
And they bring race cars there and you can purchase from them some time in one of those race cars.
And they have several different ones. They have like a cup car experience where there's a stock car and you can drive a stock car on an oval course and see how that is.
And then there's.
We did a formula experience where we drove open wheel cars on a road course and we did it at the New Hampshire motor speedway used to be the New Hampshire International Speedway, which is an oval course, but has a road configuration as well.
We drove on the road configuration me and a friend of mine.
And they also have a ride along experience where you can get in the passenger seat and a professional driver.
Perhaps he's got some some time behind the wheel in a real racing series, probably has had some time in a real racing series, but he goes around the track very, very fast.
So you can do one of those three things.
The one that we chose to do was to drive these formula cars, these little open wheel cars that are very, very lightweight, super low to the ground, open caulk it.
Picture a formula one car or an indie car or something like that if you're familiar with those terms, but much less powerful.
These are like babies first indie car, which is still super, super fast, super twitchy, like nothing you've ever, ever driven on the street.
No, the super accurate steering, but no power steering, super accurate throttle response, but no traction control.
Should have had good brakes, mine had really shitty brakes, no ABS.
And you're allowed to drive these cars right at their limit.
They don't really tell you anything about how to drive the car.
You're expected to know how to drive a car and how to get out there and do that.
And that's really cool that that kind of you get in the car and the world is yours.
Knowing that going in, I bought the insurance.
I'm glad I did, even though I didn't have to use it, but you know, so my review of the thing is it's definitely something that I would recommend if you're a fan of going fast and you've never raced officially.
This is a great way to experience that is definitely worth it. I would recommend doing it once.
It's not all, you know, peaches and roses, though, you got to understand kind of what it is.
So the cars themselves are like former race cars, which means they've been beat to piss. They are shagged.
They are just barely passable as as machines.
So they're held together with safety wire and tape, which is what a lot of race cars are held together with anyway.
And even still, they are faster than anything you've ever driven. It is an experience.
We purchased five laps each, and I will say that if you've never done this before, if you have done it before, if you have access to a race car, just go do that.
If you've never done it before, five laps is not enough.
It's not enough to learn this car, and it's not enough to learn a racetrack that you've never been on to really go fast.
So you really can't go super, super fast.
And as an example of that, my buddy, and I think this is just by chance, I don't think it's because he's so impressive.
Though he's really impressive as a race car driver. Anytime we've done race car driving, anything like that, he's the fastest one of any group we've ever been in.
But we were in these open wheel cars, and every single one of us, except for him, got passed by the professional driver in a Miata.
Miata has no right to pass one of these cars if they were driven by the same person.
So that just tells you how much time we didn't have behind the wheels of these things.
So if you know that going in, if you know you need more than five laps, like 15 would have probably been enough to get some good lap times out of it.
But they're wicked expensive for lap time, and to get into the thing, it's really expensive, unless everybody says, and I think this is what my wife did.
She bought as a gift, unless you get a group on for the thing, and then it's about a third of the cost, but the extra laps, I don't think you can purchase by a group on.
So it's insane, it's intense, it's mind blowing really fast.
They sound like small cars, a little 2.2 liter, 140 horsepower, it doesn't sound like a lot.
But I spun the car out twice on my first lap under power, not under breaking.
Almost any car will spin under breaking if you do it wrong.
I spun out under power twice, so it's definitely a fast car.
If you can get out on the track behind a professional driver, follow him through a turn or two, that's awesome too.
He passed me going into one of the slower parts of the race course, and I followed him through one of the, actually probably the most fun part of the race course, and that was insane, that was intense.
I mean, just following him through that one turn was worth the price of admission, and I think it's all about all I have to say, unless I go into great detail, it should take all night, so I won't do that.
So I'll just say try it, know that you're getting in a shitty car, wear like a pad or something in your pants for God's sake, there's no padding that you're sitting on a piece of steel.
I bruise my tailbone, it hurts so bad, because you're laying back, like you're on your back, and if you don't know that about a form of the car, your feet are way out in front of you and your head is way behind your ass.
So yeah, these things are awesome, and if anybody is going to try it, get in touch with me, because there's a trick to the shifter.
They take too much time with that.
No, it was cool.
I just kind of want to do it now.
That's the only difference.
Oh, yeah, you definitely should do it.
Definitely, definitely, definitely should do it.
You just need more laps than I had to get used to the car.
I pushed it too hard, trying to get my experience in real quick, and that's how I spun it out.
And then after spinning twice, knowing that the deductible on the insurance for the car was like $1,000, and the track field, when your head is only 18 inches off the ground, your ass is an inch and a half off the ground,
the track feels very, very narrow, even in its widest point.
So you feel like if you spin, you're going to hit the wall.
So I really slowed down after that.
My fastest lap was maybe a second slower than my buddy's slowest lap, and he never spun.
So he never checking out like that.
But also, the brakes on the car had were terrible.
They were really, really vague.
I could not tell.
There was no feedback to him.
Like they needed fresh brake fluid, really, the brake fluid sucked.
The brakes themselves, I'm sure, were fine.
Just they'd needed fresh fluid.
And I could feel the pull to the left when I hit the brakes, which I could deal with.
But when you're using so much traction for every action that you're doing, you're trying to separate those actions.
So you do your braking in a perfectly straight line as you can so that you're not using traction for both braking and steering.
It becomes kind of critical when it pulls to the left.
Now you're steering to the right as you're braking.
So it costs you traction.
It costs you performance.
And the shifter was really awesome in those cars.
Everybody complained about it because they weren't used to it.
It's a super short throw shifter.
You just kind of grab it with your whole hand and just snap your wrist back or forward.
But when it was in gear, when you weren't using it, it would flop freely side to side and really back and forth.
So you just kind of had to give it a snapping motion.
You'd let off the, you'd let off the gas and stop on the clutch and snap your wrist all at the same time and then step on the gas.
And it was, it was great.
It was a really super fast shifted like a motorcycle felt like shifting a motorcycle.
And that I was really happy with because everybody else out in the racetrack,
you heard them missing multiple shifts.
They could not figure it out.
But I had it on the first try and it was awesome.
All right, stop you from talking about this now.
Get back to the book.
Well, color me, jealous.
And let's go move on.
That book doesn't.
Yeah.
Why did he never bring in describe why two sticks of chalk were so important.
And they couldn't just go to the children's section of toys or us and buy two sticks of chalk.
Yeah, that would have been nice.
Well, they're invisible.
They could steal two sticks of chalk from the children's section.
What the f?
Magic chalk.
They didn't say magic chalk.
They said chalk.
Yep.
That was bullshit.
I kept waiting for them to get back to even my second time through.
Because I list the first time I listened to it was so long ago that I didn't remember a lot of it.
And most of it didn't make sense to me at that time.
I wasn't listening as closely maybe.
Yeah, I kept waiting for them to explain what the hell the chalk was about.
And that sucked.
Maybe in the other book they do.
Now I have to listen to the other one.
There's another book.
Yes, I will report back.
Oh, send me a link.
I will have to slog through that as well because it's just weird enough that I have to know.
Yeah.
Well, and it was a fun book.
You know, I can complain that I'd never heard what the chalk was.
And I'll complain right now.
No idea how it ended.
The Deus Ex Machina book over done.
Just like the author got tired of writing as far as I'm concerned.
But yeah, cool story.
It's awesome that you say that because I listened to the ending twice.
And I was still like the fuck.
Wait, there was an ending.
I thought it was just like, yeah, I'm done.
Exactly.
That's exactly how it ended.
It ended by non-ending.
It was a Neil Stevenson ending.
Oh, what?
Well, it's kind of a Neil Stevenson middle too.
Yeah, but Neil Stevenson books are good.
Not the one I read.
Well, which one did you read?
Quick silver?
Yeah, I tried.
I didn't like that one either.
Read Crypto Namakon.
Okay.
I'll give a shot someday.
It's like World War II and crypto and now and crypto and nerds and math and it's fun.
Oh, cool.
Yeah, I'm still trying to get through Sabriel, which I understand is good.
I agree what I've read.
I enjoy, but it's just not super compelling yet.
And I keep waiting for it to get super compelling because everyone says it is.
And then next is the Prince of nothing because I read the first chapter of that.
It was super, super compelling all the way through.
And I would really love to just drop it.
I'm reading and picked that up.
But I don't have it in me.
I've been reading classic sci-fi right now.
Right now I'm almost done with I robot because I have read like these foundational classic stuff.
And I got to do it.
Oh, I robot was great.
I loved that one.
Yeah, I have to.
Not the movie though.
No, the movie was awful.
See, I didn't hate the movie, but what does the movie have to do with the book so far nothing?
Right.
It reminded me of the time that I went and watched the movie the Scarlet Letter.
It was bad.
Nothing to do.
It took a couple of characters and a couple of scenes and combined them with the Crucible.
And yeah, it was really terrible.
Only movie.
Maybe only movie.
First movie I ever walked out on anyway.
But yeah, I robot sucked as a movie.
Great book.
That book though.
So like you drew the comparison between this and the tincture books.
And I would agree they're similar in a couple ways.
But and this may be just like me being mean.
I don't know.
I feel like the tincture books were clever because they were clever.
And there wasn't an effort there.
If there wasn't effort, it was skillfully hidden like it was hidden in the works of the story.
Where this I think it was clever and it was trying too hard to be clever.
I don't believe you.
What do you mean?
Well, when we reviewed the tincture books, you said it reminded you of the Dark Tower series.
And he tried to hide that but didn't do a good job of it.
No, that was me, I think.
Well, then touch agreed.
I'm lumping it to you together.
Yeah, I've never heard the Dark Tower books.
It did irritate me that it was like thrown in there because I'm just like, is this part of that or not?
But I think in general, it's just, it's just better done to me.
I don't know.
That's just my overall impression.
I felt like this one was just trying to be too much of what it was.
I don't know.
All right.
Well, then X 1101.
What you, all right.
So when you said that the tincture book was a lot like the Dark Tower series,
what do you think?
Was it too much like the Dark Tower series?
And this one was better or you like that one better than this because it was more well done?
I mean, can I, can I play you against Taj here somehow?
If I have to pick which one was better done, the tincture books are better.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
This is weird and fun and confusing, but I don't know.
For me, the tincture books were just a little more subtle.
This is, it's almost clubbing you over the head with how weird and out there it is.
Poke, did you read the second tincture book though?
No, no, I didn't listen to that one.
That was me again.
No, I know.
I was just, I didn't know if he had gone back and read it because that because we did read the second book
and that might be coloring because we're seeing more of that more of how that universe is handled.
Yeah, fair point.
Wow.
Okay, because I thought I think I like this one better than the first tincture book.
And maybe, maybe because it was less subtle, maybe it's more obvious than I need that.
I'm not stating that I do need that.
I'm thinking maybe I do.
Maybe I'm not as impressive as I think I am.
No, you're pretty impressive.
It's okay.
We'll just roll with it.
We'll pretend that didn't happen.
I wasn't hunting for that.
I wasn't fishing for that compliment.
I just, yeah, sorry.
Yeah, I liked this one a little better than tincture.
One of the things that struck me, sorry if I'm off an attention.
I'm pulling up my notes here to see that the four lines I wrote of things to think about.
Whoa, show up.
That's you're the first ever.
No, every month I start off.
I create a new evernote.
I have a running evernote note that I just change the delete my old stuff, throw the new book title in.
And every month I start the book off with this intention of taking notes.
And then I listen to it while I'm doing stuff and I don't take notes.
The few things I write down I think are kind of interesting or profound or something,
but I have like two bullet points and one of them we already discussed.
Wow, that is way more prep than I've ever done.
Yeah, you're prepared for this.
You're, hey, you're the new boss.
I'm pretending to try and be prepared is about it.
You've been promoted through empathy.
I do the worst job at not caring.
Exactly.
Sold.
What's your other point?
And the whole talk of the fallen and how people, you know, you kind of just disappear and fall out of life.
To me seemed like a thinly veiled metaphor for going through depression.
Yeah, for sure.
I can buy that.
Oh, I think that might actually if I had thought that that might have made it a little more interesting.
I think I had a similar thought.
I don't think it formed itself as well.
And but if I did it might have formed into depression too.
I thought maybe alcoholism or just, you know, homeless crazy or even just like unwanted this because like her whole thing at the beginning is she's just kind of unwanted.
Yeah, we're describing depression.
I was going to say that's exactly that's depression is feeling like no one wants you around.
And that kind of the whole metaphor of quite literally disappearing out of someone's life.
I don't know.
That seemed like depression to me.
Okay, okay.
I just don't do any show prop guys.
I'm doing this on the fly.
Took me a second to hold my mic open to clap for that point.
That was an excellent point.
X-1101.
Well, it only took me a year and a half.
Let me write this on my calendar.
Next time I have to make a good point is about December of 2016.
No, no, it's annual now.
It's the day after your birthday.
I grant you 2000 Wolfie.
Oh, man, that's an old joke.
2001 because it was extra bitching.
Dang, he just prices righted me.
No, no, 1999 is prices writing you.
Or $1, isn't it?
$1.
Ah, one woofie.
I grant you 2001 woofie and one woofie.
It's so off the rails right now.
I was parallel processing.
Sorry.
So you had two notes and four bullet points?
No, no, there was two bullet points.
And there's a third one waiting for me to write something else down.
And I just never got there.
And the other bullet point was the weirdness
with the file and stuff.
That bullet point represents depression.
It's lonely.
Nobody wants it.
It's apathy.
You just gave up on it and faded.
So yeah, I'd like to talk about some of the weird stuff,
but everything was weird.
So pick something.
No, I got a better thing than talking about the weird stuff.
How about Albion?
Does anybody understand Albion at all?
Not me.
It's a bar where you pay with your pay for beers with IOU is apparently.
Yeah, for sure.
No, there's more to it than that.
I think Albion was at one point
a portion of the land in the United Kingdoms,
but was a country maybe, or at least maybe acted like one?
Like there's some folklore having to do with Albion.
That bar was not randomly named.
And I cannot find it.
This is something I actually have looked for online.
And I really can't find anything about it,
except for just kind of general hints that it does have to do
with the England.
Maybe from Greenland.
But then I've heard other people reference it.
The guys on Geek Knights reference it all the time.
And I have no idea why.
The from Wikipedia, Albion is the oldest known name
for the island of Great Britain.
Today it is still sometimes used periodically to refer to the island.
The name for Scotland in the Celtic language is related to Albion.
I swear I've looked at Wikipedia before and didn't see that.
So I'm really, really not as impressive as I thought.
I've also really, really a smart ass.
But it's helpful at this moment.
And I had right back to the calendar to write that one down too.
So all right.
So it's the oldest known name for the island known as England.
But I swear I think there's more to it than that.
Like there's folklore and connections that just aren't in mainstream culture.
But they're there somewhere.
It has to be.
Also on the same Wikipedia page,
the Albion is a popular pub name.
There were 82 English public houses with this name in 2011.
Oh, bitch.
Another one that might be kind of what you're thinking of.
Albion is referred is used to refer to the land of Britain where magic is welcome back
from the old pagan religions in the arthit are.
Okay.
It's from our three.
It's from Merlin.
Ah, that is starting to make sense.
It's also the name of Robin Hood sword.
What?
I'm reading bullet points here.
Apparently Iron Maiden has a song about it.
See, I knew there were references that I just wasn't understanding.
Robin Hood sword is named Albion.
That's Robin Hood of Sherwood in the TV series, BBC TV series.
Oh, so this is really an in thing with the Brits.
Uh, Led Zeppelin.
How?
It said the popular English rock band Led Zeppelin references Albion in their song.
Presence from the album Achilles last stand.
I heard that album.
I am literally reading from Wikipedia right now.
This makes some sort of very compelling podcasting.
It's creative comments.
We're good.
Keep going.
Good point.
Those are all the ones that seem even remotely, um, remotely relevant.
Cool.
All right.
Well, thank you for that.
I knew there had to be something.
I just never found it because I'm stupid apparently because it's on.
It's all over Wikipedia.
Yeah.
Front page article Albion.
Would you like me to Google that for you?
I really don't not, not right now.
It's I can't take it anymore.
Not, not especially my wife and I went fishing the other day on like a, you know, one of those.
I keep saying chart about it's not.
It's a head boat.
I think it's what my buddy called it.
We're just, you know, 60 people fish next to each other and they call it deep sea fishing.
We did that and guys were just talking bullshit and I just looked at them and said,
every one of us has an internet in our pocket.
We could just look this up and you do to stop bullshitting.
You have an internet in your pocket.
Is it different than the internet in my pocket?
Not much.
I bet we could pick a few differences.
Um, you know, just based on search history, but pretty much it's the same internet.
Cool.
Just checking.
There's so many jokes to be made.
The bookmarks are a little different.
That's about the only difference here.
What about the meat marketers?
What the hell?
Weird for the sake of weird.
Could have used a little more explanation.
There are a lot of things that could have used a little more explanation.
You mean crazy butcher cannibals isn't self explanatory?
Yes, it was not.
Are they really cannibals or are they selling spare parts to people?
Or are they just culinary artists?
I've heard the food in London and England is really, really bad.
Is this why?
Soil in green?
Maybe.
Maybe soil in green.
But maybe spare parts.
I always think in more like spare parts.
But see, like that's my point.
Like going back to the tincture thing.
Um, they have like templates, which are like kind of the same thing, but they explain it.
And it makes sense.
And you're like, oh, this fits inside this world in a way that is predictable.
And I can understand their motivation.
This was just creepy shit walking around for the sake of just having creepy shit walking around.
So you're saying that tincture was understandably weird.
And this is just randomly weird.
Yes.
Yeah, but at the same time, I really think this fit just as well.
Whereas in tincture, everything was explained a little bit better or maybe not everything.
But in retrospect, things seem to have been explained better.
In this book, it was more like you really don't want to know about those guys.
That's fine.
Eason is like is a frightening unknown, but eventually you have to, I mean, like, I don't know.
It just, and it seems like they're just brought up and dropped.
Like at a certain point in the book, it's like overdone with that.
We're just moving on.
Unless you're going to Cthulhu route, the frightening unknown eventually has to become known or it's just not scary anymore.
Yeah, that's true.
If he does too many books that way, you're right.
Well, I mean, or you go the whole Lovecraftian mythos thing where it's the very act of knowing drives you crazy.
And so you just get this whole story that's suddenly kind of skirting around the edges of it.
And then, you know, it happens and everybody just dies and goes crazy or something.
Yeah, I don't quite see anyone going crazy and dying because they find out what the meat marketers really do.
No, I don't either.
That was kind of my point.
The one part that I remember that I was just like, OK, this is well done.
Like this is this is written in a way that I enjoy is the moment when Theo like wakes up and realizes like when she starts to be able to see what he can see.
Like when she knows and she's like, Oh, I'm falling now.
Like I understand what that means because I can see the things that he sees.
I see like the network.
Like everything that's happening underneath the real world and just sort of that moment was well done.
I thought like that was one of the strongest moments in the entire book for me.
Yeah, it definitely was well done.
No, but also happened to be a moment where things were kind of explained, which was nice.
Sort of, but then it got unexplained again when the the Reverend.
Oh, I can't think of his name.
Something love, right?
When he called kill be a fallen angel, like now that kind of confused that point to that whole.
This is one of the things that I feel like was just lifted or something else.
Has anybody ever read the Philip K Dick short story adjustment team?
No, I mean, it's kind of the same thing.
It's like a agency of people who kind of exist outside of reality that go back and kind of fix history and make sure that everything goes the way it's supposed to.
And I mean, it was just like, I kind of feel like that whole story is just happening again in this world, which PKD book was this.
It was a short story.
It was called I think it's adjustment team or something like that.
We did into a movie a couple of years ago called the adjustment bureau, which was not as good as the short story.
That's just starting to sound like a broken record except that you're right.
It seems like we can just insert this conversation a couple of times.
Hey, they tried this new movie and it wasn't as good as the book.
Yeah.
So what were the two things that would have birthed this had they come together?
One is that and the other kind of like stylistically and not some of it was like things that were in this book, but like more stylistically was there's a joderowski movie called the rainbow thief.
And killby reminds me of that guy like in my head, I'm seeing that character run around because it's very similar.
Really who had a bunch and then just kind of let it all go and lived in a sewer and there's so many random things that connect to it and it's it's a joderowski movie.
So it's very surreal.
It's got a lot of crazy stuff going on, even though this is one of the less surreal movies he made.
I just feel like because I was trying to I had that feeling too and I was trying to explain the book to my wife and she's like that sounds like kind of like the rainbow thief.
Exactly.
It reminded me more of I don't know like a like a strange character is alone killby reminded me of a strange cross between like Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who.
He definitely had a little doctor in him like I agree with that.
And a little bit of Sherlock too.
Only the hat though actually the hat maybe the only Sherlock Holmes.
No, some of his mannerisms, but I maybe they're they're Sherlock in that they're the things that Sherlock and the doctor both do.
Right, because the doctor is Sherlock. I mean, that's kind of what it is.
I hate good wizards and stories that always turns out to be him.
He is Merlin.
Wait, he's Merlin too.
I'm so behind.
Yeah, it's one of the things they mentioned in like the old series is that like somebody meets him and they're like, oh, you're Merlin and he's like what?
Because it hasn't happened to him yet.
So nobody's ever seen it, but he's supposedly Merlin.
Okay, that that makes more sense.
It's even more fun when someone tells him something about his future and he's confused.
I would actually love to see the Peter Capaldi than the doctor now be Merlin. That would be hilarious.
I've not seen any of the Capaldi stuff. Is it good?
He is fantastic.
I mean, he is amazing at being the doctor.
I'm just done with Stephen Moffat running the show.
Okay, that's fair.
I was a big David Tennant fan.
It took me a long time to warm up to Matt Smith, but I haven't seen Capaldi yet.
So that's I'm still waiting for that show up on Netflix.
Well, Matt Smith came in with Moffat and I'm just sick of the doctor and pretty girl.
And pretty girl, this important for some amazing crazy reason.
It's just like I I've been dying since doctor who came back.
I want a male companion that is the full time companion or I want an alien companion.
And I don't think it's ever going to happen.
I want to see a female doctor.
Well, you haven't.
Spoilers.
They set up as possible.
How much do you want to know about the Capaldi run?
I want to wait until I see it. That's how much I want to know about it.
Okay, mouth shut.
Just to take off a few of the boxes.
This in absolutely no way made me think of Star Trek or Star Trek.
I could see Batman rolling around in this world though.
That'd be kind of cool.
I may have enjoyed it more Batman was in it.
He just be grumpy and punch people.
It kind of fits with this world.
So it couldn't neuro be Batman because he was just kind of grumpy and punch people.
I thought Neuro was Kato.
Yes, I thought the same thing too.
If you took the stereotype of Kato and actually had an internal dialogue with that character, yes.
Yeah, absolutely.
He was Asian.
He was shorter than Kilbee drove the car.
He did all the punching.
Yeah, sorry, I saw Kato.
But all his dialogue could have been summed up with Dammit, not again.
I know that's why I love him.
Andy had a sweet ride.
In a way, he sort of really did.
Apparently he had the only ride.
Freaking time traveling mini.
The hell wouldn't be sweet about that.
No, it wasn't a mini though.
Oh, no, this was a cab.
It was one of the black, one of the London black cabs.
Yeah, yeah, they're a weird kind of cab.
No, I'm not going to bring this show there.
What?
You're going to pull back now?
Yeah, yeah, when we're not recording, sorry.
Too much.
Wow, that's the first.
This is just infokes.
There is a limit to how far we'll derail.
It's pretty far afield, but there's a limit.
Yeah, if you want in on this, you're going to have to actually participate in the audiobook club and the after show.
Ooh, you've been called out.
So anyway, yeah, the time travel thing was really well done.
I have to say, there's a lot of time travel stories that exist on Earth today.
This one did it really well, just knowing that you can't screw with time.
You can't go back in time and hand yourself a winning lottery ticket
because the footman will find out and they'll bust your ass.
I thought it was really well done.
I thought it was excellent.
I completely disagree.
Well, let me rephrase that.
I agree with the parts you're talking about.
It was the mechanics of how does the time travel work that they just didn't address at all.
You look at this piece of paper, you close your eyes and you drive and it just happens seemed so weird that it didn't even make any sense.
It was a plot bullet. It's not supposed to make sense.
Yeah, it was a plot bullet because it was a really small part of the map.
You can't do anything you want but really they did anything they wanted with it.
No, the only time they did any significant time travel was when Nero didn't have the map and he just kind of guessed.
Well, that was the furthest time that they spanned was what, a couple of months.
But that's not the only significant time.
He did a time travel jump where he might not even jumped in time.
But in space, he jumped into the office of the director.
I guess what I mean by the mechanic is, you know, is it the cab?
Is it the map? Is it the, it's because it sounds like you don't need the cab or the map and it just happens.
But you have to be looking for it but you have to know where to go.
But it doesn't make any sense at all.
It doesn't even try to make sense.
No, it seemed to me like you don't need the cab to do the time traveling.
It's the map that let you do the time traveling time and space really because they would jump from place to place.
The map let you do time and space and he could have done it in any vehicle.
I think the significance of the cab is that it's just as invisible as the balloons.
Okay, but the time he just glances at the map and then wings it.
I think he's just used to doing that.
He's used to the time travel thing.
It's like you're used to driving.
You may not know where you're going or how to get the thing out of the parking lot.
But if you just wing it, you're going to do something.
But I mean, I still have to, you know, turn the key or push the goofy button on the dashboard or something.
There still has to be a go and there was no go button or magic words or it just kind of happened.
What he's trying to say is he didn't have it.
He didn't have like a telephone booth.
And he just can't wrap his head around this if there's no telephone booth.
Not quite. No.
But it's like he didn't have a telephone booth, but he did, but it didn't say if he needed it.
It would be like the doctor time traveling without the TARDIS just like.
But not also not having one of the the wrist things that they would just just like brain power time traveling or something.
It just confused me a lot.
What if it were a delorean and would you get it?
Yes, because the delorean has specific conditions.
You get up to 88 miles an hour.
You get struck by lightning and then you travel through time.
I think we could safely say you could take a drink for that.
Unfortunately, my beer's gone.
It was really, really stupid.
The dark brown never made the delorean electric.
Because I mean, the gas engine, I think was so stupidly weak anyway.
And if we're electric, Mr. Fusion would have handled everything.
Why did they have to be right about Star Wars?
All the off the wall crazy stuff back to the future predicts.
Why is it that Star Wars is the one they get right?
Because it was obvious even then Star Wars was made for children and it really wasn't any good.
And there's no way they're leaving that money on the table.
But Disney?
Yes.
It just hurts me and my soul.
I don't even remember the specific prediction.
I'm going to have to watch it again.
I'm sure you can just look up Star Wars 7.
Well, now that might not work, but back to the future Star Wars 7.
Hold on, I'll see if I can find the image.
I think back to the future Star Wars prediction and probably do it.
So that book though.
Yeah, I was just trying to think of like,
I've got the part of the sentence that goes,
what the hell was up with that, but the the I've been working on it?
I think there's an overwhelming number of does and it's so untangled
that it's hard to even like get your footing is to like,
I don't even know where I want to start.
Yeah, but if you just kind of mellow out with that,
you know, with the interrogation part of the listening and just kind of let it happen,
let it wash over you.
It kind of all sort of worked for me.
See, the first time I listened to it, it was years ago.
And I remember not liking it as much as I liked it this time.
And because I was just kept trying to figure out what's going on,
what's going on, what's going on, what's going on.
This time I listened to it and I pretty much had the notion
that I wasn't going to figure out all of what's going on,
but that if I paid attention,
a little more attention to the specific event and the specific details
that I might kind of get a little more of an idea of maybe not what's going on,
but why they don't care.
And I think I get it.
They really don't care because it's none of their business
and meddling's only going to get them in trouble.
And not that they aren't in trouble all the time anyway,
but the kind of trouble they don't want to be in.
Well, they specifically get in the kind of trouble that keeps them under the radar.
So I mean, that makes sense.
Yeah, but I mean, like,
okay, so the time travel thing that, you know,
why don't they use this time travel for more personal gain?
Well, because they don't want to get involved with the footman.
The footman can do things to them that they don't even want to know about.
You know, why don't we know more about the meat marketers?
Well, because these guys don't want to get close to the meat marketers.
You know, why don't we want to get,
why don't we know more about the gambling scene?
Well, because the guy who runs the gambling scene is a bad character
and you're, you're in serious trouble if you even,
you know, hear his name mentioned,
like that kind of thing.
Yeah, I guess.
I mean, it's just, it's hard as a reader to get any kind of anchor other than the characters.
And like you said,
like you said earlier,
I didn't find the O to be a relatable character at all.
I found her mostly annoying.
And I liked,
I liked, kill me a little bit,
but I was like, I could hang out with this dude for 30 minutes,
and then I probably won a punch him.
And Nero is like the one character that I was like,
all right, I can,
I found that like when he was by himself,
I followed those chapters better.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and I think he kind of drove the plot to like whatever,
whatever plot there was to this.
For me, it was always like,
all right, well,
how's Nero getting out of this?
How's, how's, you know what I mean?
Like at the end of this story,
what's going to happen to Nero?
How will he,
how will things be made right for him?
Because if they're not,
then it's not going to be a satisfying story.
And since there really was no ending,
and that question is unanswered,
I can't say it's unsatisfying.
The fish hallucinations were cool.
Like,
almost red dwarf cool.
And drink.
Yeah.
That was another,
that was like the other scene that really stood out for me.
And it was like,
it was almost like horror
instead of anything else,
just because it was like,
it's going on
and nobody seems to care that it's going on.
And you're just kind of sitting there watching this happen.
But then to realize that it didn't actually happen that
we're dead,
but it didn't happen to everybody.
Like, that was a good scene.
And I think if it was more of that,
I would have been into it.
But I don't know.
It just seemed like
it flashes of brilliance in this.
There was a little more of that.
I mean, the scene on the train was like that.
That was pretty cool,
where something happened,
but then it was kind of a race from history
so that no one knows it happened.
But I mean, it still did happen.
That was the cool thing about
the way they erased history in this.
It still happened.
Just nobody knew it.
Yeah, but that was early enough in the book
that I was still trying to figure out.
I'm like, okay, so this book's about this lady
and her boyfriend,
like the first two chapters
until anything happens.
And I was, I was thoroughly confused.
I remember exactly,
it was chapter nine,
was the first point in the book,
where I felt like I had an anchor
in some kind of inkling
as to what was,
what I was reading,
like what was going on.
And I remember thinking to myself,
like, I'm a third of the way through this book
and I'm just now,
like latched on in some kind of way.
That's a problem.
And what was the event
around which you had that thought?
I don't even remember.
Which is sad.
Like I just, I remember,
and I think it was like literally,
they started explaining something
and I was like,
oh, I can start to piece together
some kind of logic.
It can be screwed up logic.
Nobody loves like weird,
surreal more than me.
Like I will buy into that.
But I think there has to be some sort of anchor
to sort of grab into it.
Some kind of order
to the particular universe
you're expected to suspend your disbelief of.
Yeah, it doesn't have to be real logic,
but it has to be some sort of logic.
Even if that logic is,
the opposite of regular logic,
like just something,
just something to,
to where I can predict
and, you know, make sense of things.
I just, I just felt like,
consistently lost,
not by what the characters were doing
or what they were saying,
but just like,
why?
Why?
Why is this?
Why?
Well, okay.
So that's two good points there.
The first,
it sounds to me like you're saying
you like a story to be true to itself,
which I don't know how many times
I've said that
on this podcast.
And maybe that's not what you're saying.
Maybe it's just me here
and my words out of you.
And the other thing is, you know,
why isn't it true to itself?
And I kind of think it was.
The truth of this universe
is that there is no truth unto itself.
That it's all
a conglomeration of all of us
and we do what we do
because we're doing it.
And you do what you do
because I'm not doing it.
And it is a big mess.
And it does sort of fit together
in a way that's not solid,
not consistent,
just like the guys moving tattoos.
I think if that was like the theme of the book
and the plot had some connection to that theme,
I think we might have a good story on our hands.
I just, the way it is now,
I don't think it's,
either it's too much going on
and they're not related enough
for me to figure it out
or there's just not enough going on.
And I can't,
I can't tell which one it is.
And it's probably a lack of creativity
and understanding on my part that's causing that.
But I just can't figure out
whether it's just information overload
or just too much stuff
that's not connected anyway.
No.
I don't think it's about understanding and imagination.
I think,
I think maybe for me,
it's more about like art,
like this,
the story,
the setting is an art piece
and the, you know,
the block was just a way
to move you through the gallery.
And like,
back when I was in high school
and actually did,
you know, had an art class.
So I did what,
you know, I had to pretend
could be considered art.
A lot of times,
I would just take a piece of paper
and a pen
and kind of make big
swooping scribbles around the paper
and then just color them in
and different colors.
And I kind of liked that.
And this was kind of like that.
What, that's that?
You broke the audio book,
Club Boogie.
Damn it.
I feel like I'm always doing that.
Why else somebody's got to do it?
Man, I'm not the only guy
who broke it tonight.
You guys don't even know
if somebody else broke it yet.
He's thematically consistent
with this book.
He already broke it sometime
in the past.
He broke a part of the club
that hasn't happened yet
sometime in the past.
What, my blown?
Yeah, well, I had a suggestion
for an audio book
because I thought it was a good one
and it was from a genre
that we haven't even touched yet.
And today is the guy's
the author's birthday.
And don't ask me how I know that.
My phone tells me birthdays now
that I don't ever remember
knowing anything about.
And I was going to do that.
But then his audio books,
I think he'll never had one,
but he's got nothing on
the audio books.
He's been pulled down.
It's under slash removed.
Yuck.
Boo.
Yeah, boo indeed.
Public shaming.
Well, I did enjoy the audio book
that he used to have on there.
So I will say happy birthday
to Matthew Wayne Selznick
and your audio book
that was on the audio books.
Brave Men Run was fantastic.
I really, really liked that one a lot.
But now we're not reviewing it
on the audio book club.
Realizing sucks.
I don't know if he
re-licensed it.
He just pulled it down.
I mean, I could,
man, I'm sure I have a copy.
It's probably on the hard drive
that I have that I can't find
that crashed.
And I was going to try to repair it,
but I can't find it.
Yeah, but if anybody
besides the three of us
wanted to talk about it,
they would have to get access
to your hard drive.
Yeah, I know.
I'd have to post it somewhere,
which I'm legally allowed to do
because I can find it.
It was a Creative Commons license
at the time, but still,
I can't find it.
So I was forced to,
if you guys, if neither you
have one,
I was forced to be reminded
of another audio book
from audio books
that was mentioned
in my searching of his stuff.
Go for it.
Well, if either you guys
have one,
I don't think it's my turn.
Well, certainly not my turn.
I have a big nothing.
So go for it.
Oh, okay.
Are we ready for that part?
I think I am.
Yeah, I don't.
An ambiguous ending
for a book that ends ambiguously.
That's much better
than what I was trying to say,
but of the same vein.
Oh, the hand of God
just reached down
and ended the audio book.
The audio book club.
I keep trying to say
a part of the book this time.
And when we say hand of God,
we just mean,
Pokey space.
Pokey.
No, no, no, no.
I meant Deus Ex Mach
because that's how this thing ended.
Meanwhile,
meanwhile,
in a parallel universe,
we're deciding what book
we're going to listen to
for next month.
All right,
let me just verify
that it's still available.
If it's not,
this is, this is awesome.
If it's not,
I do have something here,
but only if that book
is also unavailable,
in which case, first I will laugh.
Oh, it is still available.
Thank goodness.
No, you wouldn't be able
to laugh.
It wouldn't be allowed
if it was not available,
sadly,
the author of this book
died like a year ago,
maybe two years ago,
like suddenly he got news
two weeks to live,
and he lasted
the two weeks,
and maybe not even that much.
Dang.
That's rough.
It was really rough.
It was really sad.
It's okay.
So,
does that mean we're required
to like the book?
No, not because the guy died,
but I believe
the two you guys,
at least,
will enjoy this book.
Maybe you won't.
Maybe you will.
I'm not going to give
anything about this one away,
other than to say
that I really liked it,
and it's one of my favorites.
So, the name of the book,
and I had to search
because I thought we might
have even reviewed it
on one of the earlier shows,
but we didn't.
So, the name of this book
is Murder at Avadon Hill,
and it is by the very,
very, very sadly now deceased
author PG Holyfield.
And is this on party of books?
It is indeed.
I was just pacing the link
as you were asking.
So, this book is
in the realm,
well, it's kind of
two realms.
It's in the realms of fantasy
and mystery.
And you would think
that that would be very poorly done
since usually a fantasy world
is completely open-ended,
so how do you solve a mystery?
But in, I don't know,
maybe this falls into that
or not.
I don't know,
but I thought it was,
I just, I really enjoyed
this one multiple times.
Groovy, Glick School.
So far, your recommendations
have been pretty,
pretty on the mark,
so I'm looking forward to it.
Oh, cool, thanks.
This is an old one, too.
This is, I know there's,
there's some newer books
that other people have said
we have to do,
and I wasn't thinking
of those,
but since,
I don't know,
I just saw this one
when I was looking
for the other guy's books,
and I remember that
I liked it so much.
And since it was
the other guy's birthday
and he pulled his stuff down,
let's do one
from a fellow
who's now deceased.
Well,
try not to be flippin'
there.
I think if somebody
wants to recommend
the audiobook,
they need to be
on the audiobook club,
so come on,
join us.
It shouldn't just be
the three of us.
Join us now
and share the book club.
You'll be free.
Packers.
You'll be free.
Where's Ken Fallon
when we need him?
Send to the
Fallon signal.
Ken Fallon's always
with the Ken Fallon signal.
My guess is he's
over in Europe
and probably a sleep.
He is always
village-illent
with the,
the software
freedom song
if we need him.
I don't know if he
had that version
of it,
a holstered,
but yeah,
he does always have
a version
of it holstered.
I like the one
that John O'Bacon did.
Now, my favorite
still that one,
the Guster one.
I'm OG.
I just rocked the original.
Oh,
with installment
drumming on the table?
Yeah,
it's awesome.
Bitchin'.
Anybody got
anything else to add
to this book
or anything else?
Only that I really like
when I'm here
because I'm able
to say bitchin'
and someone gets it.
No one realizes
I'm referencing
something, bitchin'.
Well, that's really
everyone else's
loss.
It truly, truly is.
20 wolfies
for your correct use
of bitchin'.
I just re-read
another one of his books
that is,
I have to say,
still my absolute
favorite.
Wait, which one?
Makers.
Have you read,
uh,
what's it called?
The Rule of Names,
I think?
True Names?
Is that what you're
talking about?
True Names?
I was weird as hell,
but in a good way.
Oh, it's my absolute
favorite of
Cory Doctrose.
That is so good.
Time is time again.
It's so different than
everything else of his
that, I don't know,
I like it,
but I just don't like
it better than Makers.
I keep hearing about
Makers.
I've got to read that.
They make shit.
It's cool.
I think I have
listened to that one
and it's just,
I'm sure I liked it.
I've liked everything
I've ever read of
Cory Doctrose,
but I don't know
that one's just not
sticking as well
in my brain.
That's the one where
they're like
in a band in
shopping malls and
stuff.
Yup.
Yeah, I just don't
remember anything else
about it.
All right, everyone.
So this has been
the HPR audio
book club with another
fine audio book
review.
So, uh,
join us next month
and talk about
murder at Avidon Hill.
It should be fun.
By the late,
great, duly departed
PG Holyfield.
It's available.
Audiobooks.com.
I love
audio books, but we
got to spread the
love.
I got to keep trying
it.
I have to look for
some more.
What do you call
Liebervox books
for my next
turn, which should
not be for a very
long time.
People should be
joining in and taking
their turn.
I had a Lieber.
I have a Liebervox
for my next pick.
I think I do.
I think it's on there,
but I have to
don't project.
Well, you're next,
Tosh.
So you got to find
something or you're
stuck with whatever I
pick again.
Damn it.
Later, everyone.
Bye.
Tosh.
It's your turn.
What?
I can't turn touch.
Not yet.
Bye.
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So, me and my buddy
last Saturday, we did
they call it a formula
experience.
So, I don't know if
you have any
comments on today's
show.
So, I don't know if
you have any comments
on today's show.
So, I don't know if
you have any comments
on today's show.
I don't know if you
guys have heard
of the NASCAR
experiences or the
Richard
petty school.
That kind of thing.
Do you hear
those things?
I can't
say that I have.
There's no
pretty much two
standard ways of doing
it.
They have a ride
along, and they
have an experience.
The ride along
firm is where you
sit in the passenger seat
and a professional
driver drives a
any kind of racing basically is and it's interesting,
but mostly what you'll see is stock art.
So they have a NASCAR type car
and they'll do exotics, which I think costs
quite a bit of money and then they do formula cars.
And me and my buddy went and did one of the formula cars
and we did it on a road course and that was insane.
So formula car just means an open wheeled race car.
There's like a off-hila that the racing series sticks to
and these particular cars happen to be formula Ford.
So they're like a two- and two-liter Ford Z-Tec motor,
like a 140 horsepower, not a lot of horsepower,
but it's like an 1,100 pound car
and it's, I mean, you're sitting an inch and a half
off the ground and I mean go-cart precision handling
super twitchy race car and at that weight,
even a 140 horsepower can spend the tires
pretty much any time that you're not going
in a perfectly straight line.
That's like fun.
It was intense.
It wasn't, I mean, it was like being on the track,
I can't even say it was fun.
It was so intense, being in the moment.
You know, like I didn't even remember to have fun.
It was super cool.
Everyone should try it once.
What does my audio sound like?
Does it sound like terrible?
No, not at all.
It sounded normal.
Do I normally sound terrible?
No.
Okay, I just had to reset my mixer the other day
and I was hoping I got it close to being right.
Because I was about to say you haven't heard the show,
but then I guess you haven't,
because I haven't posted any on my tank.
Shots fired.
I know I gotta do it and really gotta do it.
Yeah, I tried to, I risked a dist upgrade
on my EPC running devian stable and that didn't go well.
That's basically what happened here.
I did upgrade to get the new own cloud
because own cloud will not leave you alone
if you don't have the new own cloud.
And I did the dist upgrade because it was being held back
and it totally just like fell on its face
and now it's stuck in crazy maintenance mode.
Yeah, I just had to do a reinstall.
I mean, I didn't have to.
Well, I had to, someone could have fixed it.
Not me, it's about my skill level.
A lot of times, even though I have this skill,
it's just more expedient to wipe something
and we're doing it anyways.
It really is.
Oh, I said that once on dev random too
and everybody thought it gets fast all the time.
I was like, what, since 15 minutes on a fast box.
Yeah, every time like grub gets fucked up,
I'm like, I know I can fix this,
but I could totally have this reinstalled in like 20 minutes.
So I'm just going to do that instead.
Right, it's clean.
Oh, see, I'm the server guy, Admin guy
who the stuff on my server is much more important
than the hour of time it will take me to fix grub.
Well, yes, see it back that stuff up
or you have a separate home directory,
like a separate partition for your home directory.
Yeah, I just back stuff up.
That's why I'm like worst case scenario.
I just uninstall own cloud and reinstall it
and just point back to my backup directories
and we're by backup databases and we should be fine.
My wife got a new phone that's sort of Linuxy.
Is it for real Linux because I want one?
No, no, no, God no, it's Android.
It's a, we got our Samsung Galaxy S4 active
and I think I'm gonna have to get one too.
That's a really nice phone.
I've had an S4 for two years and I love it.
It's awesome.
It does everything I want to do.
It hasn't even showed signs of slowing down.
It's amazing.
I have what is now very old note two
and it's wicked fast too and it also does everything
I can think of to do with a phone.
It's just too big and it's not waterproof
that S4 active is waterproof.
Yeah, I, we were looking at phones
because my wife wants to upgrade hers because we're due
and I was looking at the new Samsung
and it's like they can, there's no way I'd buy it.
There's, I have to have a SD card slot
and I have to have removable battery
which basically means there's only like two phones out
that do that anymore.
It's stupid.
Really? Is it that bad now?
Yeah, it's stupid.
Like, I think LG's got a phone that does it
and I think some of the Motorola phones will do it
and that's about it.
So I'm just like, I'll just stick with what I got.
I know it works.
And my two year old Motorola has the SD slot
but it does not have a removable battery.
Damn, you know, it's weird.
I was saying when we were looking at phones
and we just did a search for waterproof phones
because we figured it'd be handy
if we both had a waterproof phone on a motorcycle
and we were looking through this list
and I said, you know, it's really sad
when you look at a list of good phones
that Nokia is not here competing in this realm.
They, it's the same thing with Nokia and Blackberry both.
Like why?
Just make Android phones.
Like if you would give me a good Nokia like the N900
with a keyboard that Android, Android,
I'd be all over that shit.
I mean, you couldn't get me one fast enough
but it's just like, we have to do Windows Phone
which nobody wants.
The problem is only the nerds would buy it
because only the nerds want a physical keyboard.
Even if it didn't have a physical keyboard,
I would buy a phone that said Nokia on it way faster
than I would buy 90% of what's out there now for brands.
That's I, I cannot type on a virtual keyboard.
Like I will ignore text messages
just because I don't want to type on the fucking keyboard.
I'm just that, I hate them that much.
I just, I still want a Linux phone.
Like give me a phone that is Linux
and let me just run whatever I want on it.
Probably the pirate dragon box
which is like this game emulator thing
that people are working on now is perfect.
I want that as a phone but it's like $600
and not that powerful.
Taj, you just sound like a grumpy old man.
Get off my lawn.
Yeah, so I don't know,
cyanogen mod with the F-Droid market on it
comes pretty close to being like stable and open.
I mean, it's not GNU by any means
and it's not user friendly still.
Like you still, you don't have a file system that works.
You know, there's not a,
there's not a file browser available
that actually works well, you know, and that sucks.
But it's not bad.
I can live with it.
Not from F-Droid but I find ES Explorer.
I think that's what it's called.
Let me look, is it from Google Play
or is it from another market?
It's on the Play Store
and I would counter that there is a wonderful file manager
on F-Droid.
What's the name of it?
Have you ever used Midnight Commander?
A little, I think I tried it once or twice.
There is a program called Ghost Commander
which is basically Midnight Commander for Android.
It's ES File Explorer and it's from the Play Store.
I think I'm going to try Ghost Commander first
since it's from F-Droid.
I always try F-Droid first.
It's awesome and there's a lot,
like if you get it from the Play Store,
there's lots of plugins.
But I don't need those plugins.
The only two plugins I need are in F-Droid.
There's a plugin to do FTP and SFTP
and there's one to do Samba.
And so you can run all that through Ghost Commander
and it's awesome.
I got rid of like three proprietary apps
for that one open source app.
It was awesome.
Yeah, most of the file browsers let you run a Samba share
or an FTP or something.
I don't usually need that.
What I would like to have is maybe a progress bar.
When I'm copying, that would be Andy.
Ghost Commander has that.
Okay, I'm in.
It takes a little getting used to like knowing what,
like if you touch the icon for the file,
it opens if you touch like the right hand side of the file,
like they're in bars and you hit the right hand side,
it selects it.
So I mean, it takes a little getting used to,
but if you've ever used Midnight Commander,
it's you can fly through it.
Oh, that's cool.
Yeah, I'm gonna give that a shot
because I've been using, I think,
OI file manager for a file browser for a long time.
And it works, but not well.
Yeah, that's right.
Several others that have been worse.
I've at least three others that are just worse,
even than that.
It's funny, I was gonna do an app pick
for my beverage pick because I'm drinking water
and it's out of after a two.
Oh, that's actually a really good idea.
Speaking of picks, do you guys wanna get started?
Seems like 50's not here and it's well passed
our usualish start-ish time.
Yeah, let me run and grab my beer
so it's ready for when we reach the halfway mark.
That's a lot of bad idea.
I'll go do that too.
I usually wait till we get there, but I'll just go get it now.
I'll just do a song and dance while you guys are gone.
No, really, I'm not doing a song and dance.
That's not happening.