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Justin and Jason discuss why Iron Man is the ultimate geek super hero, the positive user feedback about Justin’s recent solo interview and Jason’s concept for a math and science academy, interfacing .NET with a Win32 DLL, the latest progress on AnyFu, Jason’s HN comment that received 75 up-votes and no replies, rbutr – an application that allows people to follow inter-website debates, Jason’s idea on how to merge spaced learning with the workgroup style learning being experimented with at MIT, the two Kickstarter projects that Justin has donated to, the latest on Pluggio, Justin’s movie marathon, why Michael Lewis believes that luck is a bigger part of the equation than most successful people like to admit, the rise of synthetic biology and the bio-hacking movement, the federal judges who spiked the Apple-Google case (calling the patent system “dysfunctional”) and ruled that indefinite detention of Americans is unconstitutional and a critique of the movie Prometheus.
I’m glad to hear someone else with criticisms of Prometheus. Justin, the things you mentioned are the same things I brought up to my wife on the way out of the theater. Overall I thought it was a disappointing movie that came to a rushed, nonsensical conclusion. It almost seemed like they were filming and filming and then suddenly realized “Crap! we have 2 hours of movie, now we need to hurry up and find a way to end it.”
Jason, along the lines of your math and science academy idea, a friend of mine and his wife are doing the following. It’s been very successful so far. Check it out.
http://www.greeneacademy.net/
@Emrah – Yeah, that is very cool! It’s sort of similar to a program we signed our son up for this summer:
http://play-well.org/camps/
But I really like the Green Academy’s focus on robotics and video game design. You have to make it fun for the kids and those subject are low hanging fruit. 😉
Anyway, I’d love to talk with them at some point.
The movie review concept you guys were throwing around sounds a lot like MS3K where you guys play the part of the robots…
Regarding your math / science club idea (which is really cool… ), you mentioned online profiles for the kids and their projects. It made me think of an interview I heard over at Mixergy of the founders of Digication (http://digication.com/). They offer a really neat product that changes class room dynamics using peer review of student work that is most often used in art and architecture classes. This might be a dynamic you could incorporate… Love your idea anyway.
Hahaha! Couldn’t agree more about Prometheus!
Check out this blog which gives a remarkably convincing explanation for what the crap was going on in Prometheus. Also read the new ‘updates’ at the end, one of which links to a funny blog!
http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html
Once you’re done there, read this hilarious description of the film. This also has a section discussing what the film as about in more general terms:
http://www.toplessrobot.com/2012/06/robs_prometheus_faq.php
Enjoy!
Hey Jason/Justin…..Justin/Jason,
I’m a fan since the TZ beginning….and have greatly enjoyed the two most recent discussion episodes. Perhaps in return I can offer a few relevant links:
Regarding the repositioning of math/science/biology/chemistry from “hey kids, it’s fun!!” to “hey future bad asses, science/math is the toolkit for creating your own IronMan suit!”……here’s someone your familiar with (a TechZing interviewee) providing an anecdote of just how attainable math/science bad-assedness is, even for a relative newb/kiddo.
The entire episode is worth watching, but here’s a deep-link to the part I referenced above:
http://youtu.be/hxB-rEQvBeM?t=51m8s
As for Jason’s passion to develop a highly functional math/science oriented education outlet, some years back I met a very smart dude who executed on his own dream of revamping children’s education. He planned, developed the curriculum for, built, staffed, marketed, and brought to fruition his own charter school in Houston, Texas. He showed me the school and spoke passionately about its mission. He’d surely have some relevant insights related to the process of going all the way and opening a boutique charter school. Jason, if you’d ever like his contact information, lemme’ know.
Regarding Jason’s interest in….and Justin’s nervousness about…..the Genome Compiler project being developed by Omri Amirav-Drory….you both gotta’ watch this one. Not often that Leo Laporte is speechless and mind-blown while on air. Ahhhh…..and Justin, hacking around with E.coli is kidstuff compared to what the two dudes on the video have in mind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLhU1RGTHN4
Jason stated his desire to talk to someone of Omri’s caliber. A quick check of Omri’s Google+ page reveals that he and Jason Calacanis follow each other, and Tyler Crowley does as well. Given Jason (Roberts)’s appearance on ThisWeekInStartups and his TechCrunch50 experience….maybe Jason Roberts can reach out to Jason Calacanis or Tyler for an introduction to Omri?
Regarding Justin’s interest in superhero films, here’s a bevy of well known tech geeks (Jason Snell, Andy Ihnatko, John Siracusa, Dan Moren, Ben Boychuk) critiquing “The Avengers”. Fun stuff!
http://5by5.tv/incomparable/92
(Tangentially, their “Empire Strikes Back” 2-parter….same podcast/episodes 67 & 68….is the canonical “tech geeks as movie critics” show.)
And a hat tip to Jason for one of the best (unintended?) puns within a podcast in recent memory. Toward the end of TechZing #191, while discussing Prometheus, Jason remarked about the geologist’s incompetence, referring to him as a “punk rock geologist”. Punk -> Rock -> Geologist. 🙂
Finally……to both of you I offer my sincere gratitude for the great content…..two times every-ish week, and best wishes for continued success in your myriad projects, pursuits, and passions.
CHEERS!
David
@David. You don’t say much, but when you do, it’s AWESOME! 🙂
How cross-platform was that desktop application that you wrote in .NET?
Hey, luck is always involved, please watch the movie “Match Point” by Woody Allen.
About that gui for the library – did you consider doing everything in .net? Once you write the thing in gtk#, you should be able to throw some p/invoke at it to interface with the shared library . If you make sure that it works on Mono during the development, you get the win/mac/lin versions virtually for free.
I guess the same result can be achieved with java.
LMAO during “la critique” of Prometheus – I agree that you have to focus on “the ride” not the story. I loved the experience especially in imax.
@alex, thanks for sharing the links on the analysis – it was crazy funny, you made my morning. 🙂
@Mohammed Firdaus & Stanislaw Pitucha – I only wrote the Windows version of the app. OSX and Linux versions are both under development by separate people. I know that with Mono you can run a C# application on OSX and Linux as you can in a similar fashion with Java applications, but from the research I did Mono and Java never look 100% native and tend to retain a distinct Windows / Java look and feel.
I don’t know much about gtk#, but another option is Qt, which from what I understand does look native on all platforms, and that was one of the options that I recommended. However the friend of mine who’s the founder of this company opted not to go this route.
Going slightly off-topic, but since Jason is into soccer… 😉
You guys watching Euro 2012? The things that happened in Group A are just mind boggling. If you want to catch up, you can download all matches from TPB in 720p.
@Aleksander – To be honest, I’m not much of a soccer spectator and haven’t been keeping up with the Euro Cup. I realize I’m kind of an aberration in this regard as most of my friends who I’ve played soccer with over the years probably know the result of every match in the tournament. But the same goes for basketbal, which is the other sport I play a lot. The guys I play with find it hard to believe that I don’t follow the Lakers (since I live in LA), the NBA or the college game. I mean I don’t mind watching these sports on occasion, especially championship games and the linke, but for some reason I’m just not drawn to it.The only exception I guess is that I tend to watch a lot of NFL games, but that’s probably mostly because my wife loves watching it and so we watch it together. 😉
@David – Sorry about the delay in responding to your comment, but it contained a lot of homework. 😉
Cool, that’s Jeremy from Kaggle, who we interviewed not too long ago! A couple other TZ listeners who know him personally have told me more than once that he’s as nice of a guy as he is brilliant. That reminds me, I need to hook up with those guys on my next tript up to SF. I keep forgetting to set something up.
I downloaded the Genome Compiler and played with it a couple weeks ago after watching a few videos of Omri talking about it. It’s very cool stuff! In fact, I’ve been trying to decide on whether to invite Omri on the show, Drew Endy, or one of the other players in synthetic biology. Omri would be great because he’s not only a scientist in the field, but he’s launching a startup targeting it. I guess I just need to make a decision and send an damn email. 😉
Also, thanks so much for the positive feedback! It really does help to push us forward.
@Scott – That’s very interesting. Thanks for the link. I’ll check it out.
Jason,
If I remember the previous episodes correctly you were a lot richer in the past….
Mohammed Firdaus
Hey Jason/Justin,
Loved this weeks podcast , I look forward to it every week.
Memory hole is a excellent idea , I’d definitely subscribe to it.
Out of curiosity , how many hours a week do you both commit to your external projects?
Keep up the great work.
Edwin
@Mohammed Firdaus – If you’re referring to the before Facebook IPO and after Facebook IPO timeframe or BF/AF, then you are absolutely correct. Sigh. 😉
@Edwin Ashdown – I’d say that I probably spend between 5 and 20 hours per week on side projects depending on what my consulting obligations are, how focused and motivated I’m feeling, etc. But there’s also this podcast, which probably eats up another 3 to 6 hours per week depending on whether or not we do an interview show during the week.
I got the impression that you were richer during the housing bubble because you spent quite a lot of money renovating your house or something like that.
Anyway, I’m just mentioning it because of the “life could be worse” segment of this episode.
Thanks,
Mohammed Firdaus
@Mohammed Firdaus – Yep, that’s right. We spent a considerable sum renovating our condo (in an effort to ready it for sale) most of which was put on credit of one kind or another, we took a big loss on our investment portfolio and of course we lost a not insignificant amount of equity in our home due to the housing bust. I guess you’d say it was kind of a triple whammy. 😉 So, unfortunately I’ve spent much of the past four years digging us out of that hole.
You guys are funny. Justin was a fan of teen dramas and has now regressed into watching movies aimed at small children. Meanwhile Jason is moving in the other direction and wants to play with biotechnology in his garage.
@Martin Baker – Yeah, it’s funny you point that out. I guess we’re both indulging the “kid inside”, but each in our own way. 😉 But even if it seems a little silly it’s not all bad because it’s the childish enthusiasm and curiosity that tends to drive discovery and innovation, not to mention fun. Just note that my “kid inside” is markedly cooler than Justin’s. 😉
Did you guys ever considered that Ralph (LOL) was not on Earth, but on the moon that the Prometheus’ crew landed on right before things went ‘wrong’? It just raises more questions, but at least explains a little bit about what happened to the engineers before they got there.
Funny how the ship’s captain had the whole bio weapons gone wild all figured out in the middle of the movie. Since no one believed him or seemed to care he decided to go out with a bang 😉