OT: 10,000 Pt XLIV - Guitar Things

[WTFetus]

I could be wrong since I haven’t been there in ages but isn’t the great mall all the way in Milpitas still doing ok? I think the same with Valley Fair in San Jose near the mystery house.

Great Mall is still doing well. Up north, Stonestown and Serramonte are doing well too, especially the former. Round1 is reportedly opening up at Stonestown in the next few years which should be cool.

I haven't been to Westfield Valley Fair in ages. I know there was drama the other year when they started charging everyone for parking, including employees. Eastridge in San Jose seems to be doing alright every time I go to (Tomi's is always bustin), but too bad that area is so sketch.

 

[Pavelski2112]

I could be wrong since I haven’t been there in ages but isn’t the great mall all the way in Milpitas still doing ok? I think the same with Valley Fair in San Jose near the mystery house.

Valley Fair's doing well, I go there relatively often since I live pretty close. It has more specialized upscale stores and places like Eataly that bring people in. It's not like a JC Penney and a Macy's or whatever. Oakridge is doing pretty well it seems as well.

This whole mall talk is just reminding me of:

 

[CupfortheSharks]

Valley Fair's doing well, I go there relatively often since I live pretty close. It has more specialized upscale stores and places like Eataly that bring people in. It's not like a JC Penney and a Macy's or whatever. Oakridge is doing pretty well it seems as well.

This whole mall talk is just reminding me of:

I also live close to Valley Fair. I’m there 2-3 times a week because I’m pretty much addicted to Salt and Straw. It’s doing very well. Even weekdays during the day there are people there.

 

[LadyStanley]

Crime author and 'Heavenly Creatures' killer Anne Perry dies aged 84

Anne Perry - born Juliet Hulme - died in Los Angeles, where she lived, aged 84. The crime writer rose to fame after killing Honorah Mary Parker with her friend using a brick in 1954, aged 15.

www.dailymail.co.uk

RIP author Anne Perry

 

[The Nemesis]

After getting some very mild traction at the end of the GDT, I'm considering maybe doing a semi-regular share of interesting old radio shows in here as a summer project. Specifically the thing I thought might be useful is setting up a google drive folder to host maybe a 1-5 series at a time or a selection of themed content which I can then share for download with all of you.

The advantage of this over directing everyone to sites like OTRR or archive.org being that I'm a little anal/ocd about organizing my media file collection compared to the somewhat more varied attention levels given on those download sites, so most of my files come with meticulously organized and streamlined metadata tags (so that when loaded into a media player program like iTunes or device they display the correct and consistent track name, sensible numbers, the series as the album name, stars/authors/networks in the production data, and even in some cases disc numbers to separate years of broadcast) and custom "album cover" art that's usually at least 500x500px so that it appears crisp and viewable at a glance and properly depicts the show (some sites like OTRR brand all their tracks with their logo. Others use an amateurish "advertising" image that is garish and terrible looking)

As it stands I have like 100gb of content encompassing probably close to 2 dozen shows (this is huge, yes. But it includes the fact that I have some shows that run for 200+ episodes. The current high water mark is Jack Benny whose eponymous comedy show has close to 800 surviving episodes covering almost all of its 23+ years on the air), plus maybe another 10 to 15 shows that are in various stages of download and organization. Obviously I can't put up everything at once, and maybe there's a better method than google drive that I'm neglecting, but that could always be addressed if the idea moves forward.

Or maybe I'm out to lunch. 8 likes out of a community of probably close to 50 regular or semi-regular posters isn't a huge amount but it seemed like something worth bringing up.

or we can leave it and the handful of posters that this interests can go get what they want off of download sites or just listen to youtube playlists.

So... does this interest anyone? Let me know or leave a like or whatever. If there's enough traction then we can move on to a planning stage.

EDIT: Before anyone asks, this whole thing is, to the best of my internet sleuthing and amateur legal understanding, completely permissible and legal. Every opinion on old time radio recordings that I can find tends to agree that thanks to the nature of US copyright laws prior to the 70s (with the major landmark usually being 1972 or 1978) most radio shows made in the 60s and prior will have had their original copyright periods expire and were never eligible for extension or reapplication. As a result basically any old time radio that I would share will now be in the Public Domain and freely/legally available without issue. The scripts and characters are, of course, another matter (obviously Superman is still owned by DC Comics/Warner Bros. But just as the original Fleischer cartoons are public domain nowadays, the Bud Collyer radio shows are as well)

So no, my discussing this would not be against HF rules and no we would not be committing piracy or anything. Though some shows may in fact involve pirates.

 

[Alaskanice]

After getting some very mild traction at the end of the GDT, I'm considering maybe doing a semi-regular share of interesting old radio shows in here as a summer project. Specifically the thing I thought might be useful is setting up a google drive folder to host maybe a 1-5 series at a time or a selection of themed content which I can then share for download with all of you.

The advantage of this over directing everyone to sites like OTRR or archive.org being that I'm a little anal/ocd about organizing my media file collection compared to the somewhat more varied attention levels given on those download sites, so most of my files come with meticulously organized and streamlined metadata tags (so that when loaded into a media player program like iTunes or device they display the correct and consistent track name, sensible numbers, the series as the album name, stars/authors/networks in the production data, and even in some cases disc numbers to separate years of broadcast) and custom "album cover" art that's usually at least 500x500px so that it appears crisp and viewable at a glance and properly depicts the show (some sites like OTRR brand all their tracks with their logo. Others use an amateurish "advertising" image that is garish and terrible looking)

As it stands I have like 100gb of content encompassing probably close to 2 dozen shows (this is huge, yes. But it includes the fact that I have some shows that run for 200+ episodes. The current high water mark is Jack Benny whose eponymous comedy show has close to 800 surviving episodes covering almost all of its 23+ years on the air), plus maybe another 10 to 15 shows that are in various stages of download and organization. Obviously I can't put up everything at once, and maybe there's a better method than google drive that I'm neglecting, but that could always be addressed if the idea moves forward.

Or maybe I'm out to lunch. 8 likes out of a community of probably close to 50 regular or semi-regular posters isn't a huge amount but it seemed like something worth bringing up.

or we can leave it and the handful of posters that this interests can go get what they want off of download sites or just listen to youtube playlists.

So... does this interest anyone? Let me know or leave a like or whatever. If there's enough traction then we can move on to a planning stage.

EDIT: Before anyone asks, this whole thing is, to the best of my internet sleuthing and amateur legal understanding, completely permissible and legal. Every opinion on old time radio recordings that I can find tends to agree that thanks to the nature of US copyright laws prior to the 70s (with the major landmark usually being 1972 or 1978) most radio shows made in the 60s and prior will have had their original copyright periods expire and were never eligible for extension or reapplication. As a result basically any old time radio that I would share will now be in the Public Domain and freely/legally available without issue. The scripts and characters are, of course, another matter (obviously Superman is still owned by DC Comics/Warner Bros. But just as the original Fleischer cartoons are public domain nowadays, the Bud Collyer radio shows are as well)

So no, my discussing this would not be against HF rules and no we would not be committing piracy or anything. Though some shows may in fact involve pirates.

I’m very interested in The Shadow. If it’s allowable. Either way, thank you for this.

 

[bluefunnel]

As long as it doesn’t cause too much stress on your end, Nem, I’m all for it.

 

[The Nemesis]

I’m very interested in The Shadow. If it’s allowable. Either way, thank you for this.

As long as it doesn’t cause too much stress on your end, Nem, I’m all for it.

Thanks for showing interest. It shouldn't cause too much stress because I have files for anything I would share already set and sorted. So if I used something like google drive it would just mean popping them in the folder, letting it sync to the cloud, and then posting the link. The only potential hiccup would be how long it takes to sync each set of files and how much it bottlenecks my internet speed while it's happening. Also I don't know what google's stance on bandwidth usage is and whether or not a bunch of people downloading a couple of GB of stuff every month might be a concern. But we could cross that bridge when we come to it or find an alternative method if anyone has any ideas.

I also want to especially get feedback from @hotcabbagesoup @Hawkeye8 @Great Makohead Shork @hohosaregood @Skull Knight @sharks_dynasty @LadyStanley & @Kcoyote3 since they were the ones who liked my GDT post and I need to figure out if I have 10+ points of interest or 2+ and a bunch of polite tips of the cap.


Meanwhile, since it's Jackie Robinson Day across baseball, I thought these might be fun: The complete 1949 World Series pitting the New York Yankees (featuring hall-of-famers Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, and Johnny Mize along with HOF Manager Casey Stengel) against Robinson's Brooklyn Dodgers (with their own HOF lineup of Robinson, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, and Gil Hodges)

So if you've got like 15 & 1/2 hours to kill, here's an option! Each game clocks in at around 3 hours, +/- about 20 minutes

Spoiler

Game 1


Game 2


Game 3


Game 4


Game 5

 

[LadyStanley]

Abbott & Costello are classic.

I recall finding a few audios years ago. Perhaps the Shadow. (Podcasts are ok, but some of the old audio dramas.)

One of my favorite TV shows was Ellery Queen, especially involving the reveals on Simon Brewer's radio show.

 

[Kcoyote3]

Thanks for showing interest. It shouldn't cause too much stress because I have files for anything I would share already set and sorted. So if I used something like google drive it would just mean popping them in the folder, letting it sync to the cloud, and then posting the link. The only potential hiccup would be how long it takes to sync each set of files and how much it bottlenecks my internet speed while it's happening. Also I don't know what google's stance on bandwidth usage is and whether or not a bunch of people downloading a couple of GB of stuff every month might be a concern. But we could cross that bridge when we come to it or find an alternative method if anyone has any ideas.

I also want to especially get feedback from @hotcabbagesoup @Hawkeye8 @Great Makohead Shork @hohosaregood @Skull Knight @sharks_dynasty @LadyStanley & @Kcoyote3 since they were the ones who liked my GDT post and I need to figure out if I have 10+ points of interest or 2+ and a bunch of polite tips of the cap.


Meanwhile, since it's Jackie Robinson Day across baseball, I thought these might be fun: The complete 1949 World Series pitting the New York Yankees (featuring hall-of-famers Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, and Johnny Mize along with HOF Manager Casey Stengel) against Robinson's Brooklyn Dodgers (with their own HOF lineup of Robinson, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, and Gil Hodges)

So if you've got like 15 & 1/2 hours to kill, here's an option! Each game clocks in at around 3 hours, +/- about 20 minutes

Spoiler

Game 1


Game 2


Game 3


Game 4


Game 5

I liked it and bookmarked it because it seems like something I could get into or not, but I haven't paid any attention to it prior. So it's a real unknown but I often have background things playing and I like falling asleep to shows / streams.

 

[The Nemesis]

Abbott & Costello are classic.

I recall finding a few audios years ago. Perhaps the Shadow. (Podcasts are ok, but some of the old audio dramas.)

One of my favorite TV shows was Ellery Queen, especially involving the reveals on Simon Brewer's radio show.

I do have nearly 150 episodes of Abbott & Costello already sorted and set.

and while I haven't downloaded any yet, a quick search found that there are like 17 surviving episodes of an Ellery Queen radio series.

There's also like 80-something entries in a series called Ellery Queen's Minute Mysteries that were an advertising stunt. The only hitch that might exist with getting those is that the intent of them was to present the mystery in a minute then get listeners to call in with their guesses as to the solution. When someone would get it the station would eventually play the mini-episode's conclusion/solution as a confirmation. I haven't listened to any of these things but it's possible that the solutions may not be included with the minute mystery entries and that would kind of undercut their value/entertainment

I liked it and bookmarked it because it seems like something I could get into or not, but I haven't paid any attention to it prior. So it's a real unknown but I often have background things playing and I like falling asleep to shows / streams.

That's good enough for me. I'm not necessarily looking for everyone who gave a like to be all-in on the content, but if it's even just "yeah, I might give that a shot" it's enough to consider running this as a pilot program.

 

[Great Makohead Shork]

Thanks for showing interest. It shouldn't cause too much stress because I have files for anything I would share already set and sorted. So if I used something like google drive it would just mean popping them in the folder, letting it sync to the cloud, and then posting the link. The only potential hiccup would be how long it takes to sync each set of files and how much it bottlenecks my internet speed while it's happening. Also I don't know what google's stance on bandwidth usage is and whether or not a bunch of people downloading a couple of GB of stuff every month might be a concern. But we could cross that bridge when we come to it or find an alternative method if anyone has any ideas.

I also want to especially get feedback from @hotcabbagesoup @Hawkeye8 @Great Makohead Shork @hohosaregood @Skull Knight @sharks_dynasty @LadyStanley & @Kcoyote3 since they were the ones who liked my GDT post and I need to figure out if I have 10+ points of interest or 2+ and a bunch of polite tips of the cap.


Meanwhile, since it's Jackie Robinson Day across baseball, I thought these might be fun: The complete 1949 World Series pitting the New York Yankees (featuring hall-of-famers Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, and Johnny Mize along with HOF Manager Casey Stengel) against Robinson's Brooklyn Dodgers (with their own HOF lineup of Robinson, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, and Gil Hodges)

So if you've got like 15 & 1/2 hours to kill, here's an option! Each game clocks in at around 3 hours, +/- about 20 minutes

Spoiler

Game 1


Game 2


Game 3


Game 4


Game 5

A polite tip of the cap from me.

 

[Hawkeye8]

Thanks for showing interest. It shouldn't cause too much stress because I have files for anything I would share already set and sorted. So if I used something like google drive it would just mean popping them in the folder, letting it sync to the cloud, and then posting the link. The only potential hiccup would be how long it takes to sync each set of files and how much it bottlenecks my internet speed while it's happening. Also I don't know what google's stance on bandwidth usage is and whether or not a bunch of people downloading a couple of GB of stuff every month might be a concern. But we could cross that bridge when we come to it or find an alternative method if anyone has any ideas.

I also want to especially get feedback from @hotcabbagesoup @Hawkeye8 @Great Makohead Shork @hohosaregood @Skull Knight @sharks_dynasty @LadyStanley & @Kcoyote3 since they were the ones who liked my GDT post and I need to figure out if I have 10+ points of interest or 2+ and a bunch of polite tips of the cap.


Meanwhile, since it's Jackie Robinson Day across baseball, I thought these might be fun: The complete 1949 World Series pitting the New York Yankees (featuring hall-of-famers Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, and Johnny Mize along with HOF Manager Casey Stengel) against Robinson's Brooklyn Dodgers (with their own HOF lineup of Robinson, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, and Gil Hodges)

So if you've got like 15 & 1/2 hours to kill, here's an option! Each game clocks in at around 3 hours, +/- about 20 minutes

Spoiler

Game 1


Game 2


Game 3


Game 4


Game 5

I saw your last post in the GDT but figured this would be a better spot to post a relay to that.

I always viewed the Shadow differently than the usual detective stories but I did enjoy it and probably in my top 10 most listened to radio shows.

Another two shows that I tend to listen to more frequently would be Have Gun will travel when it comes to western themed shows and I was a Spy for the FBI.

The Thin Man movies happen to be one of my favorite classic series yet I've never actually listened to the radio show, which I really should do.

I haven't heard of Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator but I will need to give that a shot as well.

I saw you had Burns and Allen in one of your posts and I always enjoyed them, as well as Fibber Mcgee and Molly.

My father still has his collections on cassette and cds. Satellite radio having a RadioClassics channel was a big draw to us as a family and a reason we got XM in the early 2000s. For thr most part I listen to radio shows on SiriusXM or a couple of old time radio apps on my phone.

I will add that one of the things I really enjoy about listening to classic radio is hearing the different sponsors and their ads and getting a feel of thr time period. I always feel like something is missing if I listen to a show and thre sponsor has been cut out.

 

[The Nemesis]

I saw your last post in the GDT but figured this would be a better spot to post a relay to that.

I always viewed the Shadow differently than the usual detective stories but I did enjoy it and probably in my top 10 most listened to radio shows.

Another two shows that I tend to listen to more frequently would be Have Gun will travel when it comes to western themed shows and I was a Spy for the FBI.

The Thin Man movies happen to be one of my favorite classic series yet I've never actually listened to the radio show, which I really should do.

I haven't heard of Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator but I will need to give that a shot as well.

I saw you had Burns and Allen in one of your posts and I always enjoyed them, as well as Fibber Mcgee and Molly.

My father still has his collections on cassette and cds. Satellite radio having a RadioClassics channel was a big draw to us as a family and a reason we got XM in the early 2000s. For thr most part I listen to radio shows on SiriusXM or a couple of old time radio apps on my phone.

I will add that one of the things I really enjoy about listening to classic radio is hearing the different sponsors and their ads and getting a feel of thr time period. I always feel like something is missing if I listen to a show and thre sponsor has been cut out.

I totally get this. It kind of helps makes things feel different from podacsts and more "alive" to have a real sponsor of the time. I love some of the creative inclusions too. Like Burns & Allen always has Bill Goodwin work the plug into a conversation within the episode (albeit in a sort of 4th-wall-breaking *wink wink, nudge, nudge* sort of way) rather than cutting away for a studio plug.

I was crushed when I found out that John Barclay from all the Shadow's Blue Coal ads wasn't a real person that worked for Blue Coal (he was actually an actor named Paul Huber.)

As for the Thin Man radio shows I think there's only like 7 to 9 surviving episodes

Another series that caught my eye that I haven't listened to yet is The Lives of Harry Lime, which stars Orson Welles in what's basically a prequel to his role in the 1949 movie The Third Man, which is one of the first examples of film noir.

In general I'm a sucker for Welles' work. I also have as many episodes of his Mercury Theatre Company's shows as I could find (including War of the Worlds) as well as a crime drama series he narrated called The Black Museum that was based on real life cases from Scotland Yard (the series name comes from an internal 'museum' room used for training officers that holds evidence and artifacts from famous cases in British crime history). I need to give it another shot though because the first episode was a bit disappointing as it's just Welles sort of sleepily narrating bits of the case while they occasionally cut in with dramatic reenactments of the circumstances around it. And that first one was about a socialite murdering her lover and it was really melodramatic to the point that it kind of took me out of the story.

 

[Alaskanice]

I totally get this. It kind of helps makes things feel different from podacsts and more "alive" to have a real sponsor of the time. I love some of the creative inclusions too. Like Burns & Allen always has Bill Goodwin work the plug into a conversation within the episode (albeit in a sort of 4th-wall-breaking *wink wink, nudge, nudge* sort of way) rather than cutting away for a studio plug.

I was crushed when I found out that John Barclay from all the Shadow's Blue Coal ads wasn't a real person that worked for Blue Coal.

As for the Thin Man radio shows I think there's only like 7 to 9 surviving episodes

Another series that caught my eye that I haven't listened to yet is The Lives of Harry Lime, which stars Orson Welles in what's basically a prequel to his role in the 1949 movie The Third Man, which is one of the first examples of film noir.

In general I'm a sucker for Welles' work. I also have as many episodes of his Mercury Theatre Company's shows as I could find (including War of the Worlds) as well as a crime drama series he narrated called The Black Museum that was based on real life cases from Scotland Yard (the series name comes from an internal 'museum' room used for training officers that holds evidence and artifacts from famous cases in British crime history). I need to give it another shot though because the first episode was a bit disappointing as it's just Welles sort of sleepily narrating bits of the case while they occasionally cut in with dramatic reenactments of the circumstances around it. And that first one was about a socialite murdering her lover and it was really melodramatic to the point that it kind of took me out of the story.

Love The Third Man. Film noir at its finest.

 

[Skull Knight]

Thanks for showing interest. It shouldn't cause too much stress because I have files for anything I would share already set and sorted. So if I used something like google drive it would just mean popping them in the folder, letting it sync to the cloud, and then posting the link. The only potential hiccup would be how long it takes to sync each set of files and how much it bottlenecks my internet speed while it's happening. Also I don't know what google's stance on bandwidth usage is and whether or not a bunch of people downloading a couple of GB of stuff every month might be a concern. But we could cross that bridge when we come to it or find an alternative method if anyone has any ideas.

I also want to especially get feedback from @hotcabbagesoup @Hawkeye8 @Great Makohead Shork @hohosaregood @Skull Knight @sharks_dynasty @LadyStanley & @Kcoyote3 since they were the ones who liked my GDT post and I need to figure out if I have 10+ points of interest or 2+ and a bunch of polite tips of the cap.


Meanwhile, since it's Jackie Robinson Day across baseball, I thought these might be fun: The complete 1949 World Series pitting the New York Yankees (featuring hall-of-famers Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, and Johnny Mize along with HOF Manager Casey Stengel) against Robinson's Brooklyn Dodgers (with their own HOF lineup of Robinson, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, and Gil Hodges)

So if you've got like 15 & 1/2 hours to kill, here's an option! Each game clocks in at around 3 hours, +/- about 20 minutes

Spoiler

Game 1


Game 2


Game 3


Game 4


Game 5

Hi there. It was mostly a tip-of-the-cap on my part, since I used to have some cassettes of the Shadow I found in a thrift store, and I listened to them on long drives back in the day. I'm also close-to-purely a lurker, so I likely wouldn't engage much. That said, it does sound like a cool niche idea, so if you go through with it, I hope you all have a good time.

 

[tahoesharksfan]

One of my favs:

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar
The adventures of the man with the action-packed expense account!

 

[The Nemesis]

Hi there. It was mostly a tip-of-the-cap on my part, since I used to have some cassettes of the Shadow I found in a thrift store, and I listened to them on long drives back in the day. I'm also close-to-purely a lurker, so I likely wouldn't engage much. That said, it does sound like a cool niche idea, so if you go through with it, I hope you all have a good time.

No worries about being a lurker. Interest is interest regardless of engagement as I'll gladly take known interest/enjoyment of someone who doesn't necessarily always post about it over silent apathy or active dislike. And if doing something you find interesting coaxes out a little bit of engagement here or there then all the better!

One of my favs:

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar
The adventures of the man with the action-packed expense account!

It's good to get another recommendation for this one. It's near the top of my "to-get" list. The only thing that scares me is that, like I noted before, it seems to be one of the more well-preserved long-runner shows of the time. Wikipedia and other sources say there were over 800 episodes broadcast and I can find as many as about 720 file listings on the sites I primarily use to fill out my collection

The major issue here is that if I had to guess I would say that the average episode probably carries a file size of about 20 MB. Not much on its own, but to cover 720 episodes that works out to around 14 GB for the whole show. I haven't checked on what sorts of limits or guidelines the site I use has for content downloading, but I can't imagine they'd be all that pleased if I just went there one night and siphoned off 14 GB+ worth of bandwidth. Plus they don't do batch or whole-series downloading (and in some cases I've found that their library is better quality files than what's uploaded on archive.org, wihch would let me do this via one-click or torrents or whatever) so that would mean several hundred instances of "click the episode, right click the player, save, repeat" which is a slow, laborious process if I did it all at once.

Maybe I'll try and download one year/season/actor's run at a time and work it that way. We'll see.

 

[tahoesharksfan]

I had Sirius in different cars at different times (although I hate their subscription model so much I will never give them money ever again). One of the channels on there was an old time radio one that played such things all the time. We used to listen to it when we went on long drives, which was enjoyable!

They’d occasionally play a whole series of Johnny Dollar which for the later seasons was five 15 minute shows (one per night each week day). It was hard to imagine that people used to tune into their radios for 15 minutes every day of the week at exactly the same time of day. My how things have changed…

 

[The Nemesis]

Alright, presuming I go ahead with this project... (I still don't have 3 responses from the posters who liked my GDT post. One of them is likely legitimate (or semi-legit) interest given that his posts were one of the things that kickstarted the radio discussion but that kind of leaves me at a near 50/50 split of interested people and 'just wanted to be nice with the like' people if I were to assume the other 2 outstanding likers were only giving a thumbs up in passing. I'm not totally sure that having maybe 4 or 5 people interested in the project is enough to sustain it, but maybe it's enough to start it as a pilot program for a couple of months to see if it picks up steam.)

...oh wow, that aside just kept going... Anyway, assuming I go ahead with things, I think I have the theme for the selection of works to share in the first month (or however long I take to rotate content)

It's not a 'best of' and it would miss out on sharing The Shadow, which would suck because that's the most popular arrow in my quiver, but hot damn is the link between these works a mind-bending set of coincidences, connections, near-misses, and a touch of hollywood boardroom skullduggery. I want to say more but that would spoil the surprise.

So maybe I'll do those and then just tack some Shadow on because its also fun. I make the rules for this whole thing so I can do what I want!

Hopefully look for that to come out in maybe a couple of weeks. I'm doing some shuffling and error-checking in my library of programs right now, I still have to obtain a couple of things to complete this set, and I also have another side project from another site that I've been neglecting for a couple of weeks (one where I'm watching and reviewing every episode of every Transformers show ever made, usually with screencaps and snarky commentary) and I need to make some starting headway on that venture's next chapter before I devote time to anything else.

 

[The Nemesis]

As a diversion while I get myself sorted out for the above, something else silly and fun I've been watching is a youtube channel called Atomic Shrimp that features an English guy doing all manner of random and strangely enjoyable things. Key category highlights include:

-messing with e-mail scammers (Scambaiting)
-looking at scam purchases from sites like Wish or the like (such as absurdly cheap tech products or impossible items like tiny flash drives that purport to hold terabytes of data)
-"weird stuff in a can" in which he discusses and reviews weird canned products, be that definition satisfied by the thing in the can being weird in and of itself or the fact that an otherwise normal thing is in a can in the first place is the source of weirdness (like canned bread)
-tips and discussion about foraging for edible plants, mushrooms, berries, and the like
-random art and craft type projects like creating stained glass out of salvaged "sea glass" (bits of glass washed ashore and polished/smoothed by the tides and rocky beaches) felting wool, creating cheap sound-dampening wall panels for audio recording out of fabric and cardboard, or other oddness
-cooking challenges including trying to see if he can feed himself (and sometimes his wife) on a minuscule budget like 1 or 2 Pounds per day, making dishes based on ingredients selected using a list and dice, or reinventing something in a crazy way.
-"slow tv" that is little more than him exploring the woods or beaches or other stuff in the region of England where he lives with a go-pro on while walking at a leisurely pace. Or sometimes just leaving the camera running on some serene trees rustling in the wind or whatever.

there's more than that but it's hard to encapsulate the truly varied and bizarre range of things he offers. All while speaking in a very pleasant tone and accent and approaching everything with measured responses that never dip into youtube standard SUPER EXCITABLE FREAK OUTS AND OVER-EMPHASIS. Plus he tends to pepper things with a lot of dry wit and pedantic picking at silliness or poor effort that he encounters (like the terrible grammar and spelling of scammers, or foodstuffs with questionable advertising patter or packaging). It's really hard to explain but there's just something about the fun of his mostly sublime narration coupled with the occasional diversion into silliness like saying "oneion" every time he buys one onion for a food challenge, or reading clunky typo-riddled scam emails verbatim so that "$1000,000,000 dollars USD" becomes "one thousand million dollars dollars united states dollars"

Just as an example, here's one of the Weird Stuff in a Can episodes in which he reviews Marmite beer (marmite being the british version of the Aussie staple Vegemite, both of which are molasses-like spreads made from the yeast residue left over after grain alcohols are fermented (usually beer). So yes, this is about beer made/flavored with a leftover by-product created in the production of other beer in some sort of weird 'snake eating its own tail' food mobius.) Be thankful it's marginally weird and not one of the really weird things like pork brains (which he does review in an even-handed way that gives it a fair shake)



and a scambaiting video that gave rise to one of his most popular running gags, the legend of John Warosa (or is it Barosa? <- That makes sense in context)

 

[landshark]

Happy 4/20 everyone!

 

[LadyStanley]

Google puts brakes on planned downtown San Jose campus

Google has been reassessing the timing of its downtown San Jose megacampus development and new reports suggest the tech giant has backed off construction indefinitely. Anne Makovec reports. (4-21-23)

www.cbsnews.com

Google downtown SJ development apparently on hold.

 

[Pavelski2112]

Google puts brakes on planned downtown San Jose campus

Google has been reassessing the timing of its downtown San Jose megacampus development and new reports suggest the tech giant has backed off construction indefinitely. Anne Makovec reports. (4-21-23)

www.cbsnews.com

Google downtown SJ development apparently on hold.

Thank god. Hopefully it stays that way.

 

[hotcabbagesoup]

@The Nemesis ...
regarding the Apr 17 long post you made probably referring to me I just have to say that I would eventually listen if it's there, but if you're looking for alot of feedback from me that's probably not going to happen (been really busy with everything these days).