Podcast - Adam Savage Project

Potpourri – 5/12/2014

Adam, Will, and Norm discuss the etiquette of smartphones, tips for tackling drudgery, and the greatest evil Western civilization has wrought upon the world.

Comments (28)

28 thoughts on “Potpourri – 5/12/2014

  1. I’ve just tried to look up the Bose Mofo’s and I got some weird google results. Adam, what is the actual model number of these headphones? Is it the IE2, or did you get some sort of pre-production set?

    I need new in-ear headphones with noise cancelling and these may be awesome for me (the IE2’s are only $150).

  2. I have a healthy collection of movies like that. A surprising amount of Tom Cruise modern movies. I use iTunes as a movie video store mostly now, then if I really like, I’ll pick it up physically.

  3. I’ve just tried to look up the Bose Mofo’s and I got some weird google results. Adam, what is the actual model number of these headphones? Is it the IE2, or did you get some sort of pre-production set?

    I need new in-ear headphones with noise cancelling and these may be awesome for me (the IE2’s are only $150).

    I would think they are the Quietcomfort 20. IE2 is not noise cancelling I believe.

  4. Love the way this podcast started off with the talk about watches.

    After that, it was all down hill.. 🙂

  5. Glad to hear Adam is learning ukulele. It’s a gateway instrument if there ever was one. Guitar Center does work on commission, which is a major problem for many of their employees. With all the wood work Adam does, I wouldn’t be supplied if he ventured into lutherie.

  6. I’m not sure lutherie is Adam’s type of woodworking, he seems to enjoy making things quick and dirty, and then dirtying them up even more. I’m sure he could make some pretty fun cigar-box guitars though 🙂

  7. Cheerios and coins in the DVD player. Lovely. I used to babysit for a friend and hers seemed to enjoy Ritz crackers and various building blocks (Lego and such) in the VCR. My personal favorite was finding several ‘sniper’ type plastic army men ‘in cover’.

  8. My daughter went berserk when she first saw a commercial at age 2 after only seeing Netflix or DVDs.

  9. Doing The Hard Thing First

    Mark Twain said

    If you have to eat a toad, don’t look at it for too long first.

    If you have to eat two toads, eat the big one first

    ,-)

  10. Guitar center employees do work on commission, but on top of that most of them know absolutely nothing about anything in the store. They work there because

    A) they’re not professionals and are therefore cheap

    and/or

    B) They play an instrument and know about that one instrument (which is most certainly not the ukulele) and feel that they are too good at it to bother with answering your pathetic questions.

    I hate those stores. Go to a local, small mom & pop shop. You might pay more, but you’ll get more.

  11. & that’s my impression, too. no slight against adam intended, but he seems mainly interested in making something with the right surface, which fits right in the larger context of propmaking. i once read (in one of the star wars prequel making-of books, i believe) that film sets are all plywood except the outermost 2 mm. those are where everything gets dressed up into whatever material it’s supposed to look like.

    so if the gun box is going to get covered in a decorative wrap anyway, plywood and staples it is, despite there being ways that are structurally stronger or more traditionally authentic or even just more beautiful from a woodworking perspective.

    it would be interesting to learn his motives behind learning how to do dovetails for his sea chest. i.e. where on the scale from “there is no immediately obvious easier solution to make something look like dovetails” to “sea chesta are dovetailed, therefore his seachest has to be dovetailed, period” they are.

  12. I suspect he wants a seachest that’ll last a lifetime, and he has an interest in mastering the skills involved in dovetails so the project makes sense. Basing that on the Q&A episode where he was asked how he decides on projects to do himself, versus commissioning another maker to do them. It all comes down to interest and the fidelity comes down to what it is used for. His Blade Runner box isn’t really going to see heavy use and mostly be left as a display, so he could make it like a prop, but if he wants a chest that’ll be in the house and serve as functional everyday storage, that would need to be sturdier.

  13. Had to laugh at my kid the other day when we were pretending to call each other … I made the usual banana shape with my thumb up and pinky finger out like an old-school handset but she just tucked her thumb into her palm and made a “smartphone”. I realised she’d never seen or used a traditional handset

  14. i completely forgot that bit, but it actually makes a lot of sense. 🙂 also, some things you just need something that does the job and looks reasonably awesome. some things, you want to own an as-faithful-as-possible recreation, and maybe even one you know you built yourself.

  15. Evil? Can’t wait to listen to this.

    For one thing Western Civilization is the best thing we’ve got going.

  16. Speaking of kids seeing ads for the first time and how effective they seem to be. They might be especially effective when kids aren’t used to them.

    I grew up in the 80’s and we used to have one of the first VHS VCRs. My parents didn’t buy me tapes of kids shows, mainly because they didn’t sell much of them back then. They did however tape a huge collection of shows themselves, with ads included of course.

    So from the very beginning I knew two things: My shows will be interrupted by advertisements at least every 15 mins, and that I can fast forward over them to get back to my show.

    I think it’s this experience that made me strongly dislike (I can’t really go as far as to say hate) commercial breaks and want to fast forward over them, and never really that interested in the products they were advertising.

    (This is more than a little ironic considering both my parents worked in advertising, and so do I as an adult.)

  17. I created an account just to say if you’re interested in the retina implant and how it disrupts life, check out the “Entire History of You” episode of Black Mirror. It’s one of the best hours of anything I’ve ever seen.

  18. The ejection seat has been around for a while.

    Got to love Black Mirror, Charlie Brooker is a genius (though, interestingly, I believe that specific episode was written by Jesse Armstrong of Peep Show fame).

  19. it would be amazing to have a recorded version of The Commander Thinks Aloud. I saw you preform it at w00tstock last comic con (5.0?) and loved it. Just a thought.

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