Get Smarter and Make Stuff » podcast

My guest on this episode is Marshall Thompson, a friend, former co-worker from my Cognitect days, and fellow maker and learner. He is currently employed by the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, where, as the name implies, he pursues no less lofty a goal than curing cancer.

This being Get Smarter and Make Stuff, we did not limit ourselves to talk of curing cancer, but bounced around to woodworking with our kids, Tool Night with friends, and the purpose and perils of academic research and publishing, among other things.

As I note at the beginning of the episode, we recorded at a party where there was rather a lot of background noise, and to top that off my microphone was acting up. So if you’re particularly sensitive to that kind of thing, you might want to skip this one. I promise I’ll do better next time. That said, you’d miss out on a really interesting conversation with a fascinating guest, so maybe don’t skip it after all.

Listen to the podcast on this page or download it here. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or via RSS.

• Marshall is @GlassOnion9 on Twitter.
• He works at the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.
• I mentioned the Electronic Leadscrew Project.
• I mentioned the episode with Rob Stenzinger.

It was my great pleasure to sit down (virtually) with James Avery and talk about learning and making. And specifically about the huge project we both spend the majority of our time working on together: growing Kevel (formerly Adzerk), the company we both work for.

James is more than just an employee, though: he is the founder, and had a host of interesting things to say about the things he has learned and his approach to leadership. I have always been impressed with him, and after our conversation that is only more true. I hope you will enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed having it!

Listen to the podcast on this page or download it here. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or via RSS.

This episode is also available on YouTube. View it there for a transcript and subtitles.

• Our guest, James Avery
• Dunbar’s Number, which I incorrectly described as a set of numbers.

It was my great pleasure to sit down with Carin Meier and have a conversation that – as usual – ranged across a wide variety of interesting topics. We talked a lot about Carin’s current professional interest in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, but we also took a swing through gardening along the way. I always have fun talking to Carin, and this time was no exception. I think you’ll enjoy it too!

Oh, and her advice is excellent – be sure to check that out at the end of the episode.

Listen to the podcast on this page or download it here. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or via RSS.

This episode is also available on YouTube. View it there for a transcript and subtitles.

• The Cognicast, the podcast I started and which Carin also hosted
  • The first episode where I interviewed her
  • The second one
• “Our Shared Joy of Programmig”, the Strange Loop talk Carin gave wherein she had robots dance on stage, and for which I gave her a disco ball
• Bergisons G Seat, a motorized chair that gives a sensation of motion for flight simulation
  • This video is a good overview if you prefer that format.
• Carin works at Reify Health, who are hiring!
• Terraform, a cloud ops tool
• GitHub Copilot, which uses AI techniques to write code
• OpenAI, an AI research and deployment company.
• GPT3, one of their projects, an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text.
• Derivative works in software
• Vector Symbolic Architectures (VSAs) aka Hyperdimensional Computing
  • Carin recommends this paper if you are interested in the topic
• Prolog
• Possumus Ergo Faciemus – “We Can, Therefore We Do”. My family’s somewhat tongue-in-check motto.

New show! This time, I talk with Peter Bettenberg, a longtime friend of mine. Peter is an amateur blacksmith, and one of the board members of the Minnesota Guild of Metalsmiths. We talked about his journey to blacksmithing and how that connects him to his grandfather (a member of the Dutch Resistance during World War II), how a Halloween costume idea turned into a quest to make an object capable of being hit with an axe by an angry Viking, and a quote from The Edge.

Listen to the podcast on this page or download it here. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or via RSS.

This episode is also available on YouTube. View it there for a transcript and subtitles.

• The Guild of Metalsmiths
• Metalsmith Magazine of which Peter is the editor
• Arms and Armor in Minneapolis
• Ira Glass’s talk about how your taste outruns your ability
• What one man can do, another can do
• Forged in Fire
• The Artist-Blacksmith Association of North America (ABANA)
• The Endlands Pilot, an indie sci-fi film project in which Peter and his Viking getup make an appearance
• The Sutton Hoo ship burial site
• My lathe electronic leadscrew build
• Keyway broach
• MIT’s motto “Mens et Manus”
• Bruce Dickenson
• “Feel the fear and do it anyway”
• A Craftsman’s Legacy

Crass nepotism?! Why yes! Luckily, while my guest on this show is one of my brothers, he’s also a fascinating maker and learner. We talked about woodworking, music, curling, teaching as a learning technique, and a bunch of other stuff. I’m really glad I had him on. I think you’ll enjoy our conversation as well.

Oh, and I’m told we sound a lot alike. By both my wife and our mother, so it’s on good authority. If you find our voices confusingly similar, I suggest using headphones. I’ve edited the audio so we have some stereo separation between us.

Listen to the podcast on this page or download it here. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or via RSS.

This episode is also available on YouTube. View it there for a transcript and subtitles.

• NPR’s Science Friday
• MDF – Medium Density Fibreboard
• Woodworking jigs
• Flexner on Finishing – one of the definitive works on finishing in woodworking
• Curling
• setlisthelper.com – the app Clint mentioned that he uses to help with set lists and lyrics

My good friend Andrew Ehlers is a really interesting guy, and is someone I wanted to have on the show right from the start. I’m so glad I did. It was fun to discuss his projects both current and former, including the cherrywood dining room table we built together, and the stand-up paddle board he’s taken on as a pandemic project. The first was an adventure in making things straight and flat, and the second is an ongoing adventure in bending things. Good stuff.

But we also got to touch on the fact that he has had some of the most interesting jobs of anyone I know. To give you some idea of how interesting our conversation was, one of them was commanding the the USS Cole…and we didn’t even get around to talking about it! Well, I’ll just have to have him back on. Looking forward to it already.

Listen to the podcast on this page or download it here. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or via RSS.

This episode is also available on YouTube. View it there for a transcript and subtitles.

• Hofstadter’s Law
• North American lumber sizing (“quarter system”)
• Through tenon joinery
• Tru Oil
• The Tim Ewald episode
• Jarvis Boards
• Vienna Hardwoods
• Andrew’s small Lie Nielsen plane
• Professional’s Playbook podcast
• Q Section from James Bond
• Spaceship One
• The Conception Fire
  • The NTSB investigation, for which Andrew was an investigator
• El Faro cargo ship sinking
• NTSB Report on the Caribbean Fantasy incident
• Marine Evacuation System
• Gilligan’s Island
• The Love Boat

The inimitable Fogus was on my list of desired guests from the moment I started thinking about having a podcast. He is a rare combination of humble, smart, and nice, and I have always greatly enjoyed talking to him. And he’s always working on something interesting, whether that’s making a game, writing some bit of software, or reading books on a million topics.

I thought that maybe we would shake things up a bit and this time start with the question, “What are you learning?” I am so, so glad I did, because what he’s learning kind of blew my mind. I could describe it as, “Philosophy, through the lens of heavy metal,” but that only captures some of what we talked about, which included ancient Egypt, Douglas Hofstadter, and his wondrous goal of making “an influential nothing.”

It was truly my enormous pleasure to talk to Fogus, and I’m sure you’ll find it as interesting and fascinating as I did.

Listen to the podcast on this page or download it here. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or via RSS.

• Fogus can be found on:
  • Twitter @fogus
  • GitHub
  • His homepage
• Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America by Tricia Rose
• Fogus’s tweet about Metal Studies
• The International Society for Metal Music Studies
• Commentary on the relationship between punk and heavy metal
• Podcast interview with David Burke, professor at Bath Spa University
• In the Dust of this Planet: Horror of Philosophy vol. 1 by Eugene Thacker
• Awakening from the Meaning Crisis video series
• The Upper Paleolithic Transition
• Existentialism
• Nihilism
• The metal band Nile
• The Sound of Everything, a Spotify playlist with one track from every genre
• Lisp languages
• Alan Turing
• Bletchly Park
• Turing’s Paper: Computing Machinery and Intelligence
• On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem
• The Turing Machine
• The Imitation Game
• Jodorowsky’s Dune
• Philip K Dick’s The Owl In Daylight
• Bush’s Memex
• Alan Kay’s Dynabook

This episode is also available on YouTube. View it there for a transcript and subtitles.

What do you do when you’re a programmer that loves ClojureScript but you decide you might like to learn electronics? Well, if you’re my friend Mike Fikes, you jump in with both feet and find a way to marry the two up. On this episode, we talk about Mike’s journey towards electronics enlightenment by way of creating Esprit, his project to get Clojure code to run on a microcontroller. Which is just as crazy and awesome as it sounds. I enjoyed my conversation with him very much, and I think you will too.

As always, feel free to leave a comment letting me know what you thought. And if you feel like sharing the show with someone you think might like it, I’d appreciate it.

Listen to the podcast on this page or download it here. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or via RSS.

• Mike on Twitter and GitHub
• Draper Labs
• Loral Infrared and Imaging
• Ben Eater’s Digital Electronics Tutorial
• The Art of Electronics and Learning the Art of Electronics: A Hands-On Lab Course
• Analysis vs synthesis
• Bill Herd
• JLCPCB
• OshPark PCB service
• Alan Wolke
• Vouch, where Mike works
• Clojure and ClojureScript
• ESP32
• The Russ episode
• Chicken Scheme
• Scheme
• Ferret
• Espruino
• Goby, Mike’s work to run ClojureScript on iOS
• Code golf
• Esprit, Mike’s Clojure circuit board
• The Karate Kid Wax On Wax Off
• Chromatic aberration

This episode is also available on YouTube. View it there for a transcript and subtitles.

On the long, long list of interesting people I want to talk to about getting smarter and making things, my friend and former coworker (and boss) Russ Olsen is definitely up near the top list. We have many times driven down to Durham, North Carolina together, as we both work there and live relatively close to each other in the Washington, D.C. area. The drive takes five or six hours each way, but the time always flies by for me since Russ is such a fascinating and intelligent guy. I feel like this episode absolutely captures the flavor of those conversations. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed recording it!

As always, feel free to leave a comment letting me know what you thought. And if you feel like sharing the show with someone you think might like it, I’d appreciate it.

Listen to the podcast on this page or download it here. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or via RSS.

• Russ’s website
• The Cognicast, the podcast I used to host and that Russ still produces
• The Cognicast episode with Russ’s favorite cover
• The ESP 32 microcontroller
• FreeRTOS, a realtime operating system –
• Russ’s books
  • Eloquent Ruby
  • Design Patterns in Ruby
  • Getting Clojure
• Russ’s amazing talk, To the Moon
• The Bergisson G Seat
• The Ergodox keyboard
• The DIY Bass guitar kit I built
• Torsion box

This episode is also available on YouTube. View it there for a transcript and subtitles.

Three episodes – I think that means we’re here to stay! And I could not be more thrilled to welcome on to the show my coworker of many years and my close friend Tim Ewald.

Tim and I have spent many hours talking about woodworking, our shared hobby. So it’s no surprise that we chatted a lot about his latest projects. But, as seems to be the pattern with the show, we spent a lot of time talking about the meaning behind the work, which I find fascinating. And very much in keeping with the notion of exploring the intersection of making and learning.

Tim shared some photos of his projects with me, and I’m posting them here with his permission – scroll down to see them. I think you’ll agree he does lovely work.

I hope you enjoy the show. As always, feel free to leave a comment letting me know what you thought. And if you feel like sharing the show with someone you think might like it, I’d appreciate it.

Listen to the podcast on this page or download it here. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or via RSS.

• A brief description of some common woodworking terms. We threw a fair number of technical terms around, so this might make a good primer.
• The Charles Hayward Collection from Lost Art Press.
• Tim’s incredible talk, Programming with Hand Tools.
• An equally amazing talk from the talk, To the Moon by Russ Olsen.
• The Mostly Printed CNC machine, aka the MPCNC.
• My track saw video.

This episode is also available on YouTube. View it there for a transcript and subtitles.

• The desk Tim made for his mother, entirely by hand. Cherry.
• The desk installed in its new home. (Tim did not make the chair.)
• A loft Tim built for a friend, mostly from reclaimed lumber.