Hobby Horse

Steven Masuch is a "character actor of the web," with a variety of projects under his belt and a day job building iOS apps. He hosts the Slam for Hope Pog Tournament each year in Vancouver BC, Canada, with the 5th one coming up (and still accepting players and donations) on November 22nd. We go deep on something I completely missed while growing up (because I was 20 years old already). It's everything there is to know about pogs.

Some pogs:

The Canadian (evil) Justin McElroy:

Last tournament's surprise champion:

Links:

• Steven Masuch

Erin McKean is a lexicographer, writer, speaker, and maker that started Dress A Day about 13 years ago to chronicle her sewing projects. If you've ever seen Erin at a conference, chances are you've seen her in a really cool print fabric dress she made herself. We talk about her career, how she sews her dresses, as well as tips on how anyone can learn to sew their own clothes too.

One of Erin's dresses, complete with bright red piping:

Links:

• Erin McKean - Wikipedia

Dan Benjamin is the creator of the 5by5 podcast network and the podcast hosting service Fireside.fm and he is really into mechanical watches. We talk about his career in podcasting and how he got started, when he fell in love with watches, and how he wears and collects them today.

Links:

• Dan Benjamin

Darius Kazemi is a programmer and bot author and all-around internet artist that has a podcast with two fellow cohosts about an anime series they all love. Darius explains how he got into programming, gaming, bot authoring, and the social network mastodon, before we dive into the ins and outs of anime, what kinds of shows he likes and how one would go about getting started.

Links:

• Tiny Subversions | Darius Kazemi

Todd Hamina has been making wine under different labels for 26 years in the Pacific Northwest, from farming his own grapes to owning his own winery. We chatted a bit about how the wine industry works in Oregon before transitioning to bikes. Todd's been riding his whole life, but in June of 2018 he decided to participate in the Trans America (self-supported) bike race from the coast of Oregon all the way across the US to the Atlantic Ocean in Virgina.

He pulled out of the race in Colorado after nearly 1800 miles over the course of a couple weeks riding over 130 miles per day all on his own. He had to quit due to cramping in his hands and shoulders that took away his ability to use his brakes. We talk about how he trained, what his setup was like, and how he attacked each day of the race.

Links:

• Biggio Hamina Cellars of McMinnville, OR

Lucy Burningham is a writer, editorial director at Cozy, and spent a year getting certified to become a master beer taster and wrote a book about it. She brought 3 beers to the Airstream trailer at Stream PDX where we recorded and we were a bit punchy and goofy by the end.

Links:

• Lucy Burningham's website

Tiffani Ashley Bell is the founder of The Human Utility, which helps prevent water shut-offs in Detroit and Baltimore, all using a donation platform she's built. It's a fascinating project that was one of the first non-profits to go through Y Combinator.

Tiffani is also into F1 racing and as a car guy myself, I was curious to hear what makes it exciting and how one goes about following all the action.

Links:

• Tiffani Ashley Bell (@tiffani) | Twitter

Amber Castaldo is a recently retired veteran of roller derby, from one of the top teams in the world, based in Portland, Oregon. We spend much of the time getting into the nitty gritty details of roller derby rules, and talk about how much work it is to stay competitive.

Links:

• Amber Castaldo (@acastaldo) • Instagram photos and videos

Dinah Sanders has been playing D&D for nearly 40 years, and has been a dungeon master going all the way back. Her current weekly game has a handful of players that have continuously played the same campaign for the past few years.

We cover Dinah's early history in blogging, her two books and her plans for a future one as well as diving into all the ins and outs of D&D with me, someone that's never played.

P.S. The week after we recorded this, I did get to join her weekly D&D night to play my first game ever, and it was a blast. The photo above is a shot from that night.

P.P.S. There's a new theme song and I added a bit of story I forgot to cover in the John Roderick episode so stick around to the end to hear it.

Links:

• Dinah Sanders (@MetaGrrrl) | Twitter

Andy Baio is a veteran of the early web, creator of waxy.org, upcoming.org, and playfic.com. He was the first CTO for Kickstarter and went on to create the XOXO Festival in Portland Oregon.

He's also into collecting original 1980s Infocom games and still plays them today despite owning modern computers and video cards that can do so much more.

Links:

• Andy Baio (@waxpancake) | Twitter