"I plot all of their deaths constantly" Engadget Podcast 122

podcast #122 is really the Q&A session of the 2008 NYC reader meet-up. it's short and sort of sweet. josh, nilay, and paul seem to be as articulate and sassy in person as in their podcasts. at first I thought that maybe paul was d-r-u-n-k, but then I noticed he sounded quite sober later on in the session. maybe he was able to rally? there were fewer questions than I'd anticipated, but I guess that's because everyone was eager for the raffle to occur. I wonder if I would have chimed in with a question, had I been there. sometimes I imagine having the opportunity to interview the trio and I mentally compile a list of questions.

Ryan Block (left, former engadget editor-in-chief) and Brian Lam (right, former gizmodo editor-in-chief)

the first question of the evening was, "how do you feel about the staff at gizmodo.com?" to which josh provides a very diplomatic answer that nilay chimes in on, "I plot all of their deaths constantly. Let's be honest." but then he maturely adds, "read both sites, but read ours more often." I didn't even consider a rivalry between blogs before the moment I heard that question. I suppose it's natural, especially given the fact that engadget was started by someone who left gizmodo, apparently to begin a war between tech blogs.

did Engadget kill the Palm Foleo? image from Wikipedia

the cutest question was either, "what's the gender ratio of Engadget readers?" made cuter by the fact that it was lisped by a man, or, "how do you feel about mentoring and giving out advice?"

want to write for a tech blog? answer a call for writers! that's how josh, paul, and nilay got their jobs.

during the q&a, nilay proved to me that he really does like to yell at people. he yelled at people for booing free stuff (turns out they were booing the bberry storm), and he yelled at a girl who was heckling some guy. he told her to stop being mean, and that she was already scaring [the men] around her just by being a girl. it was cute.

there was one q&a-er I found to be completely annoying, Dingo (commenter name). he got up and PROJECTED a mini speech into the mic. his demeanor made it clear that he was shamelessly begging for attention. finally, after all the other crap he let out of his mouth, he got to his question, "but really, the question that's on everyone's mind," I'm telling you, he was obnoxious, "or at least the one that's on my mind," I suppose he did reign himself in, "is, 'What Is the Meaning of Life?'" Josh didn't skip a beat. "The Meaning of Life? Oh, of course, it's 42. Everyone knows that." so true. I'm not even a nerd and I knew that (but I'm sure I wouldn't have busted it out in a nanosecond).

The Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything. image from Wikipedia.

"gnu gnu-gness" Engadget Podcast 121

the crew manages to deliver me the goods again with Engadget Podcast #121.

as soon as Josh introduces the palm portion of the podcast and says, "new new-ness," I hear it as "gnu gnu-gness." I can't help myself. when I was a wee lass, I used to watch The New Zoo Revue, featuring Gary Gnu. sure, I was young, but even then, I would think (as I watched), "this show is insane, and not particularly entertaining on a level where I want to watch it, but it's so crazy that I can't stop looking at it." oh wait, no - was Gary Gnu part of the Great Space Coaster? both shows were nuts.

"Gno Gnus is Good Gnus on the Gary Gnu Show." Image via River Bottom Nightmare Blog.

so that you're encouraged to go do an image search for each show, I've placed a couple of visual teasers here. and even though having seen these shows as they aired makes me super old now (oh please, I didn't see the original ones, they were being re-broadcast for my early hours viewing pleasure), I'm still happy I got to see the insanity in real time, as part of my normal life. without having born witness to these things, set in a presumably "normal" context, during my formative years, I'm not sure I'd be the person I am today. 

The Great Space Coaster via Retro Junk

The New Zoo Revue via Retrospace

most weeks I listen to the current This Is My Next Podcast, as well as the Engadget Podcast that I'm commenting on. so I'm aware that there are instances where, on a topical basis, the past and the present intersect. not being a real historian and not knowing how I want to structure my narrative on a philosophical basis, I've been ignoring those occurrences.  I did want to get my non-decision on the record, however, because I think that I might need to force myself to figure this issue out at some point. on the one hand, there's a real opportunity for rich discussion if I allow my knowledge of the current state of technology to inform my commentary on past podcast points and points of view (the topic of Android, for example). on the other hand, I don't actually know all that much about technology, so anything I write about it will likely be obvious, tedious, wrong-headed, or just wrong.

speaking of GNUs: ladies and gentlemen, Richard Stallman (via Wikipedia)

and with that, I'm going to skip right to the reader meet-up.

if this blog had a readership of more than 1.5 individuals, I would ask them, "hey, did anyone happen to attend this event? what was it like? was it super fun? did you get lots of cool stuff?" and then I would say, "leave your remarks in the comment section of this post." but...I'm pretty cowardly, so I've told maybe 3 people about this blog. sometimes I think about notifying its subjects, but then I get too self-conscious to actually do so. anyways, if you happened to go to the 2008 Engadget reader meet-up/holiday event, did you see Nilay? did he look like this?

or maybe you saw the entire podcast crew, and they looked like this:

notable moments in the podcast include the passage where Josh promised to probe Paul's psyche after he made a statement about preferring to "drink the kool-aid," in order to have "a more enjoyable experience," and the part when the OHA (open handset alliance) discourse winds up at how Nilay manages his contacts. Josh gets so keyed up about the topic, I feel his pain over his iphone-gmail contacts sync incident all over again. oh, and Josh called nokia terrorists.