Infrastructure as Play

Draft transcript. Some speaker labels remain unconfirmed.

Brendan Yep. Sweet. We are here at the 15th Street entrance to Prospect Park.0:00

Brendan You0:10

Henry Are described. Oh cool.0:11

Brendan Okay, I’m holding a microphone and the cord dangling out of the backpack right now and also holding an iced coffee.0:12

Speaker unknown Should0:21

Brendan We go which0:21

Henry Way? Oh yeah,0:22

Brendan Prospect park greatest park in the world I0:31

Henry Haven’t even been here too often actually0:34

Brendan All right so0:37

Henry I don’t know I don’t really do intros but0:41

Brendan Okay cool we’re just walking and talking. That’s our agenda okay.0:45

Henry Well I can say that I’m here0:49

Speaker unknown With Brendan. And so after I did the chat with Laurel, I think you were like, “Hey, you should come by Brooklyn.”0:53

Henry I was like, yeah,0:59

Speaker unknown I’m down.1:00

Brendan That was Central Park, right? Yeah,1:01

Speaker unknown Exactly.1:03

Brendan I was like, “We’ve got to do Prusik.” Exactly. Nice. So this is an experimental place-based meander podcast.1:03

Henry And I think the thing that I liked, I don’t know if you didn’t have to listen to it, but I think the thing from the map that I liked was just being able to see the path that comes out of it and then also being open to being interrupted, I guess. For her it was, she did the entire shoes three times, which I thought was funny, so we annotated that.1:13

Henry The time stamps. And then also this random lady asked us to take a picture for her, so that was in the podcast.1:35

Brendan Cool okay so I1:42

Henry Was just saying maybe nothing will happen, but it’s just kind of funny. Maybe you just stop by and start1:43

Henry Something else being1:48

Brendan Particular interest. Yeah, the annotations thing seems fun. We were just talking earlier about kind of the blue sky experiments and how to bring social commenting and annotation layer into this. I think that is cool. The API1:56

Henry Was really easy. I just put a URL of the actual tweet or the post, and then the whole thread, it automatically gets all the nested threads. And I just check if the starting post starts with the timestamp.2:12

Henry Pretty nice.2:29

Brendan Of them are double-sided like a lightsaber. Kind of situation. It’s a good day. We2:45

Henry Were afraid it was going to be too hot.2:54

Brendan It cooled off just in time. This is perfect weather in my book.2:57

Henry Actually, I’ve been here.3:02

Brendan Okay, we’re about to cross the main loop. Just heading towards the baseball fields.3:05

Henry That was a plane.3:12

Brendan Oh. Right overhead. Got a plane headed over I don’t know to LaGuardia maybe.3:14

Henry So I don’t know what have you been thinking about lately?3:30

Brendan So when we were grabbing coffee, we were chatting a bit about kind of what we’re working on with Leaflet and publishing and documents. And so that’s kind of one thing I’ve been thinking about. We launched some new integrations with Blue Sky and At Proto or At Proto however you say it. I don’t know I keep hearing it both ways. So playing with kind of social publishing and blogging on Blue Sky has been fun. We launched that pretty recently, so been trying to add new features and ways of kind of bringing social conversation into the mix, starting with kind of simple way to publish blog posts and working on some fun things with quotes and comments similar to what you were mentioning with some of your experiments. Anyway, that’s kind of one thing and then also, I’ve got some side project ideas that I thought could be fun to talk about.3:34

Brendan Just going in different directions.4:42

Brendan What have you been thinking about lately?4:45

Henry Would have to walk here in order to read it basically.5:33

Brendan Like a digital version.5:36

Henry It’s an app an5:39

Brendan App for geocaching basically with friends.5:40

Henry Be really cool right but then also6:09

Brendan You have to maintain the infrastructure, support it for at least 10 years. What does that look like? And6:11

Henry I’ve never… I don’t even know. There’s companies and apps and websites that don’t exist after like one year. So what does it look like to make something that will last for, like, I would say you’ve also got to strike6:17

Brendan Give them enough hints or scope the exploration space so I think the6:32

Henry Is Guanis. And my grandkids or whatever could even read or listen to that. I just think it’s meaningful.7:08

Brendan That’s cool. This is going to give me some ideas as a parent of a almost two-year-old, because we definitely capture a lot of photos and videos of him but just in kind of an ambient way, not in a way necessarily that’s intentionally designed as a memento or thing that we organize or present in a particular way. I think that kind of accumulates and emerges over time more. So it was a fun process of trying to capture interesting funny things he does in the moment, and then later going back and kind of pulling out favorite photos to post to our shared album that grandparents can see.7:17

Henry But8:07

Brendan Then, I don’t know, haven’t even started thinking about what does that look like on a scale of decades? I8:07

Henry Mean, I guess none of us are really thinking about. It’s, I was in the cloud, it just lasted forever, right?8:15

Infinite Storage

Brendan It’s this thing we kind of take for granted now, like, we just have infinite storage and everything will endure forever. But we do have to be, I think, more intentional still to not ultimately forget about those things, have them just disappear amidst the thousands of other random photos you take.8:19

Henry Of pass it down.9:14

Brendan Far as I can tell, one single dog at the dog beach. That’s a dog beach. Sometimes there’s lots of dogs. Let’s go through this way, kind of cut through the middle of the park, maybe wind down around the lake.9:46

Henry That’s right I’m always a little scared that this isn’t even recording.10:12

Brendan Oh yeah well but it’s okay I just10:15

Henry Enjoy the either way.10:18

Brendan Yeah it’s all right.10:19

Speaker unknown I10:23

Speaker unknown It’s10:33

Henry It’s just a series of photos.10:34

Brendan That’s kind of cool photo walks photo.10:36

Henry Walk though I’ve10:39

Brendan Was kind of fun. I was a photography art major in college, but I have not been a practicing photographer beyond casual iPhone photos for a while now, but I have a couple medium format cameras I took out, and it was fun to kind of play with those. I’ve10:55

Henry Never done a photo. I’m sure there’s a certain way to do it. You’re just walking and think photos? Well,11:18

Henry Walking the same path.11:46

Brendan You’re not all walking. We’re walking at a pretty normal relatively fast walking pace, I feel like. If we were trying to take photos, we’d be stopping and looking around more. We could pretend to do that right now.11:47

Speaker unknown Or12:06

Brendan Maybe I hang back because I noticed something over there, so I’ll catch up with you in a few, like that kind of thing. I don’t know. Or what if we go off the path? I12:07

Henry Guess not here.12:20

Brendan Into the woods. This were, right now it’s a fenced off path. But there are certain parts like on the other side of the park there was this whole, I don’t know, 20 or so foot high pile of wood chips, little like mountain of wood chips. The park uses when they need wood chips or whatever, kind of over up near the zoo on the other side. There’s some cool parts of the park. There’s a little hidden old BMX dirt bike track with some jumps and stuff. But it’s not maintained. I was looking it up. It was like 10 or 20 years ago it was12:21

Speaker unknown Like13:01

Henry I think13:01

Brendan Remnants of this little bmx course.13:13

Henry Yeah remnants I mean that’s a good word.13:19

Infrastructure For Play

Brendan There’s, coming up, we’re about to go towards the Nethermead, I think it is, the middle part. At one point some people were maintaining a disc golf frisbee golf course in the park but it was kind of an underground thing because, I don’t know, I think they eventually put a stop to that too because of the danger of hitting park goers with frisbees thrown at long distances or whatever. But it was like this layer of infrastructure in the park, infrastructure for play, but still a whole frisbee golf course that you might not even know existed if you didn’t see their little DIY map or whatever or13:21

Henry The, what do they, I don’t know, those things, the thing where you actually throw it into that bucket thing or whatever, I think14:15

Brendan That’s the bucket. I don’t know if they had any official bucket frisbee golf holes or whatever, like targets, or if it was just marks on trees or something. I don’t know. I’m not really sure to what degree there was any14:21

Speaker unknown Was14:40

Brendan Like14:40

Henry Oh, it’s like hitting. I was like, I feel like if you saw them you’d be like, “Oh, I know that’s,” well14:40

Brendan Right, if there were those, then it would probably be obvious. But I’m not sure what the targets were.14:44

Henry You wouldn’t know it if you didn’t know anything.15:00

Brendan In the middle of certain parts of the woods here. I think it’s very easy. There’s also like people doing foraging classes. Really? Yeah. Where? I don’t know what part of the park exactly. Okay, where are we now? Did we just loop all the way around? No, no. Wait, yeah. Oh, yeah. I thought we were gonna go through but we kinda did a loop around.15:19

Brendan I was like, “Did we miss a turn?” I thought we were going more that way. I’m not gonna check the map. That’s alright. We’re not going towards the lake anymore. It doesn’t matter.15:53

Henry Was like oh that’s a good example like trying16:39

Brendan To, you have to identify who the participants are in the first place. And then try to tag them.16:41

Brendan Yeah, you could do something like a park podcast day where you try to get everyone to record16:56

Brendan All at the same time. So you can see where people’s paths intersect17:11

Speaker unknown That would be cool.17:15

Henry I was thinking of, someone was telling me that we could do a remote walking podcast too. So it’s two people are walking, and then you record both locations at the same time. You’re17:16

Brendan Walking in different places just on phone call kind of that’s cool just to.17:30

Henry I guess it would be cool if you had, I mean, I don’t know if you want, like, you’re competing17:39

Brendan To see who can go faster to cover the most distance But I17:42

Henry Do think it’d be cool animation. It’s if you have a hundred people, and this is just17:50

Brendan Just all simultaneous paths in different places. That’s fun.17:55

Henry The path thing the18:14

Brendan More creative element of map making and path finding or whatever I don’t know18:15

Henry I want to make something that’s not about telling you your pace or how fast you’re going. It doesn’t really matter how fast you’re going, but… And I know people have made, I think there’s some viral things of the Strava path where they made a picture and stuff like that.18:37

Brendan Think I’ve seen some kind of app that does that or people just doing it for fun as a project. Trying to bike every block in Brooklyn or walk every block in San Francisco or whatever it is. You19:18

Brendan Framing of the walk helping you be more attentive to where you are and where you’re going than you would be otherwise just kind of like a different lens for attention. But then there’s also the angle of capturing ideas and I like that one is too. Sometimes I’ll go on a walk through Prospect Park and just do a bunch of voice notes to myself.19:55

Brendan Couple years back which kind of did a similar thing of letting you take voice notes and peg them to physical locations and20:33

Brendan Of just gets the thoughts flowing in a different way that’s why I21:01

Henry Had them my original name for my app was just called a voice note21:05

Brendan So how do you think about the importance of how it helps you extract ideas? Is that like a big part of the value, or there’s generating the ideas in the first place and then also kind of isolating them or extracting them later? I don’t know21:09

Henry I don’t know. I’m curious what you think. I guess another thought I’ve been thinking about is just this idea of trying to bring in more context from the real world, instead of reducing something to the purest form which, say, for an LLM, it’s like it just texts and it’s like there’s all this, because you could say it’s information, but, I don’t know, it’s just the whole experience of… Actually, this is something we talked about with Omar and Crystal Ball had a conference called Screenshot Comp21:31

Brendan I saw that I missed it. I couldn’t go but it sounded really fun.22:03

Speaker unknown Feel22:10

Brendan Like22:10

Henry It’s like time and place.22:27

Brendan Yeah, it’s context that you wouldn’t think of as explicit metadata that you intend to add. But it adds something just the same. That’s cool, and22:29

Henry Remember, oh, I did this at this time or around this time, or I was at this place or I saw this or it was during the day or whatever. It’s kind of like when people say it’s easier for them to read a book when it’s physical because they know it’s on the bottom left.22:42

Brendan There’s so many physical affordances. Just where on the page or the fact that you flipped through the book to find something.22:56

Henry It’s like how do we retain that, or take advantage of that or whatever it is?23:10

Henry You were mentioning other some side projects you’re thinking about too other23:22

Brendan Side projects. One thing I’ve been thinking about kind of back to parenting and ideas around. Which way? Let’s see, we’re at a fork. Should go left or right? I don’t know23:26

Brendan Go to the right. But one thing, so I’ve been thinking about kind of like having fun with kids and ideas for games and activities and I don’t… Also, books and wordplay, and there’s kind of various clusters of my own interests that I am enjoying kind of thinking about and looking at through that new perspective of what would be fun to play or do activities with Sol, my son, who’s almost two?23:46

Brendan Of when you get enough kids books and see how much slop there is out there it really makes you appreciate the ones that are thoughtful and high quality and have both creativity and some kind of spark of wit and joy about them. And so kind of beyond kids’ books, kind of thinking about more interactive things.24:54

Brendan For me, a couple areas that I’m interested in are word games. Kind of playful ways of exploring language with kids. Whether it’s coming up with silly rhymes together. Or the kinds of conversational word games you might do on a road trip. Or while you’re hiking with friends, but adapt those for kids into little silly exercises you can do.25:20

Brendan We just crossed the little bridge near the boathouse. So now we are going to turn right and kind of go down the water towards the lake.26:11

Henry Are you into board games at all?26:24

Brendan Not too much. Because when26:26

Henry Popular. I mean, it also depends on your age as well. But Codenames is probably the most popular board games right now.26:31

Brendan How does that work exactly?26:42

Henry You have a grade of five by five words. And they’re all nouns. And there’s two teams and there’s a hidden element. So there’s two people on each team that are like the code master.26:43

Brendan They see the26:57

Henry Key, and there’s different colors. So there’s a red team and a blue team. And so the point of the game is that the code master needs to get their team to guess their team’s colors correctly. And so, say there’s eight red cards and nine blue cards. And then there’s neutral cards and there’s one assassin card.26:58

Henry So the hard part is that you don’t want to give them a clue that accidentally makes them pick the other teams because they get a point, right? Or they literally just lose. And the premise is that your clues have to be only one word and one number every round. So I might be, if I say “animal three,” then that means there’s three words on that grid that have something to do with animal. Maybe it’s simple, like dog, cat, whatever. Otherwise you have to go very abstract, and it’s erased whoever gets all the words first.27:29

Brendan So if you28:04

Henry Have a low number, then you’re kind of like, you, it’s easier to get it right. Like if I just said one every time, but it would take me eight rounds to get there. So if the other team does like three and they get three of them right, then they’re gonna win first, so there’s a risk of you’re trying28:04

Brendan To group the words and concepts in the most optimal way for your team to guess.28:20

Henry But then how do you know they’re thinking what you’re thinking? And that’s why, is this, is like28:24

Brendan A board or it’s a set of cards yeah set of cards you28:28

Henry Make can you just make the board on the table28:30

Brendan Okay just like a grid of cards.28:32

Henry Like these crazy concepts and associations and people are like, “What? How’d you think of that?” You’re like, fun.28:38

Brendan That’s cool. I guess for me I’m kind of more into the meta aspect of games and reading about games and how they work and the rule sets and stuff. And I think I lose attention if I’m trying to play a long RPG game or something, I don’t know. But definitely thinking about different game mechanisms and also for the ones I’ve been thinking of having them be very simple things that you don’t need equipment necessarily to play, or maybe can use whatever balls you have or maybe just scraps of paper to write down words. Things to make it really easy for parents to learn the game in five minutes or 30 seconds or something. You don’t have to buy, just28:43

Speaker unknown Like29:37

Writing Really Good Fun Prompts

Brendan Ideas, creative exercises. You can do a lot with30:13

Henry Already made something or you’re just thinking of throwing ideas?30:34

Speaker unknown That’s31:13

Henry Like I only have31:13

Brendan Exactly. I was like31:28

Henry Changing, right? I guess that’s why.31:36

Brendan Definitely. Having something simple enough that you can take the kernel of that game idea and make it extremely simplified or add in additional layers of complexity and challenge, kind of depending on who you’re playing with. I think it’s fun.31:39

A Pattern Language

Henry With games. And I know there’s a few of these. There’s actually a book from, I think, Jesse Schnell. He’s a professor.32:01

Brendan Idea of different lenses or kind of variables for game design, different levers that can be tweaked. It’s really interesting.32:26

Henry It’s funny that you say that you don’t have that much interest in devoting all these hours to the game, but you’re interested in, I don’t know, theory, game design.32:37

Henry I actually made a GitHub rebuild a long time ago because those, the awesome lists. So I made one for awesome game talks or something like that.32:46

Brendan Nice. It was just me32:55

Henry Watching GDC talk32:56

Brendan I guess I like games like playing basketball kind of more so than, I don’t know, board games or whatever. But I do, with a couple friends, Jared, a co-founder, and Max Bicker, also in Brooklyn. They’re kind of the core of our nerd basketball crew. But we, for a while, we’re playing pretty regularly, and aside from just normal competitive games with each other, would also sometimes try weird basketball variants of constraint-based basketball. Playing where you have to shoot within five seconds, or you can only pass, no dribbles. Different ways of making the game a little bit different. And that was fun to throw in constraint-based basketball. Well, I32:59

Henry Wonder now, is it more fun to come up with the idea or actually do it? Because sometimes you’re like, oh, that was not that fun.34:07

Brendan Yeah, it really depends. Some works better than others.34:12

Henry Is there something that’s, I guess, more appealing that it’s physical versus board game or digital?34:22

Brendan Yeah, I think so. I don’t know.34:31

Henry What are your thoughts on Dynamic Land or Folk Computer?34:38

Brendan Oh, Good question.34:44

Henry I don’t know if that relates to this. I34:46

Brendan Don’t know. It probably does, yeah. I haven’t really played with it enough personally, but I find the idea of it is really cool. I like what they’re doing, what they’re working on.34:48

Brendan And I guess it seems cool. Folk computers, taking these kind of really grand visions and boiling them down to really practical implementations and making it more small-scale and approachable and doing a lot of rapid experimentation with physical computing. But I haven’t really played around with the details of specific things you can do, but I enjoy following what they’re up to.35:01

Brendan Yeah, I’m sure there are some cool kind of constraint-based games and kind of things to design with that sort of interface. It was really fun. Yeah, I mean35:32

Henry Even what you said, because strain-based DNA, I never even heard of it that way.35:44

Brendan This is cool. Okay, wow, we’re at the lake and we’re watching a big machine churning through the algae, picking it up on some kind of algae processing conveyor belt.35:48

Henry Everyone’s watching it.36:03

Henry Wow, that36:05

Brendan Is cool. I’ve not seen this before.36:07

Henry Why is there so much? I’ve never even seen36:16

Brendan It. Yeah, wow, I don’t know.36:18

Speaker unknown It’s wild.36:22

Henry Is it just this time of year? I have no idea.36:31

Brendan I think it’s kind of every summer, but I don’t know.36:34

Brendan Maybe the heat wave really amped it up. Gotta just be thousands and thousands of pounds of algae. Wow.36:40

Brendan We’re finally down by the lake, about to pass the skating rink up ahead. Have you been down in this area?36:53

Henry Maybe rarely. I don’t think so.37:00

Brendan I think a non-ice-skating thing in the summer. There’s a big splash pad area for kids too. We will have to come back to you. Yeah, it’s cool.37:10

Being A Dad

Henry How do you think being a dad is changing how you see what you make or what you’re aware of or what matters?37:28

Brendan Oh yeah, good question.37:38

Brendan Oh wow. Some swans and babies. That’s cool. I can wander over here and just take a look at the rink. I think it makes me more aware of my own playfulness, maybe.37:46

Henry I feel like38:09

Brendan I’ve always been kind of a playful, silly guy to some degree. But being more intentional and more aware of that with Soul, trying to be playful with him and encourage him to also be silly is always fun.38:10

Henry As opposed to work, I don’t know.38:41

Brendan I don’t know.38:43

Henry Is play an38:45

Brendan Activity or an attitude.38:46

Henry Don’t know, when I think people want to use the word play, it’s always like, ‘Oh, it’s only for kids.’38:50

Brendan Right. But then it’s38:54

Henry Funny that you’re growing up in the context of being a parent.38:54

Henry I think it’s obviously we should all…38:58

Brendan I guess that’s a good point. For me, there’s the activity of play. We’re doing this game or activity together. But then also being playful is more an attitude or state of being, kind of. Something about not only, I don’t know, being silly or the opposite of seriousness, but kind of like openness, like awareness. And kind of maybe similar to what we’re talking about, of framing how you’re aware of things differently by being on a walk recording a podcast or trying to look for photographs. There’s kind of a similar stance, or appreciating the weird and absurd things in life, or like trying to39:00

Brendan Being grateful, being open to new experience, trying to be appreciative and perceptive of things. I guess openness, that’s probably a good word for that. It’s almost like, this reminds me, I saw a post on Blue Sky, an example of this little poetic movement called Martianism or something, I don’t know. The idea was writing poetry through the perspectives of an alien or something.40:02

Henry And40:55

Brendan Got some tiny birds eating tiny breads. I41:45

Speaker unknown Think about openness though41:52

Brendan Because I41:53

Henry This idea of, I think the problem with work is that you have this goal, and then you have to finish it or you have to do something.42:02

Brendan And then when you’re playing42:10

Henry You still have a goal too, but it feels more like you said, open or vague or42:11

Brendan Yeah, open-ended, improvisatory or something. I guess for parenting it’s how to make sure your kids have positive experiences learning about new things instead of frustrating and scary ones or whatever.42:15

Brendan And part of that is helping them to kind of try to see as much of those new things and experiences in positive light, and it’s a thing that they can kind of gain some control over, learn to understand.42:40

Henry And I guess that’s something that seems challenging, is as they grow up. Because, like you said, a negative experience, you don’t want them to have it. But at the same time, it’s not that you want them to have an other experience, but dealing with the negative experience, that’s, I guess, the positive experience.42:57

Brendan Don’t want to prevent them from having any experience because you’re trying to constrain it only to your ideal or whatever. And it’s43:23

Henry I’m sure you can read, I don’t know if you’ve read any books, or you can read all the books in the world, doesn’t a few43:43

Brendan But none of them really compare it to living it every day. And there’s really the special particulars of seeing your kid do some new things. But there’s also the mundane day-to-day parental and family rhythms changing, adjusting to different routines as a child grows and has naps at different times.43:48

Brendan Having a bedtime routine so they go to sleep regularly. Lots of things that kind of have to identify in retrospect a little bit.44:22

More Like A Gardener

Henry Was more of a carpenter, and another one was more like a gardener.44:46

Brendan Read a book around that which44:55

Henry Is interesting. I guess it’s not necessarily the commenter is wrong, but that one is you’re kind of shaping the wood into a certain form, versus the gardener is kind of a little bit of letting go, I guess.44:57

Brendan Yeah, there’s a degree of indirection to it.45:10

Speaker unknown You know,45:13

Brendan You can’t force45:13

Brendan Exactly, right. And I45:17

Henry Think about that with just teaching in general, how should we help people learn or guide them? Like what does it even mean to guide or be that kind of figure?45:21

Henry Do we just tell them, like, ‘You guys just listen to me,’ which is maybe what they told me?45:50

Henry Or45:56

Brendan Just planting the seeds. Exactly. I think setting up the right environments, I think, is a good way to think about it.45:56

Henry Still are your responsibility to be the46:24

Brendan You set up an environment for a specific game or lesson you want to teach or something, but you can also just have an environment of having a nice home and living in a nice neighborhood.46:36

Brendan Having a good daycare, school, a lot of things like that. Longer term impact.46:58

Henry Or even just your neighborhood.47:06

Henry How long have you been in Iguanis?47:09

Brendan Iguanis, we moved a couple months ago. Two or three months now.47:12

Henry How do you like it?47:17

Brendan We like it a lot. It’s been really nice. We weren’t that far. Previously we were in Prospect Heights, which is also a nice area. But the scale feels a little different. Our daycare is closer and smaller, and there’s the little neighborhood park is also, it’s a small playground, the basketball court. And you see a lot of the same people there if you go regularly, and that’s pretty cool.47:19

Henry What was the kind of neighborhood you were looking for? I like this idea for me, it’s like, ‘Oh, you keep seeing the same people.’47:55

Brendan Right. I don’t know, we were looking for something. We’ve been in Brooklyn for a long time, and really like kind of the balance of being in a vibrant urban area, but also having enough space and kind of at least opportunity to get somewhere quiet, like Prospect Park. One of my top priorities is being close to the park, and I think we ended up a little bit further, but still like a 20-minute walk, not too far.48:04

Brendan And I like Gowanus because it’s a nice balance of residential and kind of mixed use. There’s a lot of shops, warehouses, art spaces. I think it’s changing a lot and will continue to change a lot. There’s already a lot of new development, high-rises in north Gowanus going up. Not quite yet where we are, more south go on us, but probably on its way.48:40

Brendan But I don’t know, we mostly moved just to have a bigger place.49:12

Henry One is like, it’s a person’s name?49:25

Brendan Oh, I don’t know. Yeah, good question.49:27

Henry It’s just an interesting sounding name to me.49:30

Brendan The Gowanus Canal. How long has that been there? Forever? I don’t know the story of how it got its name.49:34

Henry Live in a certain city or place for so long. It’s like,49:49

Brendan I don’t you lives in New York in your current neighborhood?49:55

Henry Oh, in the current neighborhood, I guess three years, but I’ve been here for like a decade now.49:58

Brendan I’ve been here over a decade too.50:02

Henry And I know a lot of people have mentioned wanting this audio tour guide thing. That was something I was thinking about too.50:08

Henry I think people are thinking of an AI that would tell you stuff, but I was thinking more of your friends could leave notes. Like, you’re familiar with father apart, you could say stuff about it, and you can kind of hear what people are saying. That would be kind of interesting as a way to just learn.50:19

Brendan Than you would otherwise would.50:47

Brendan That’s cool50:50

Henry I was thinking the day about a map app, I guess, where maybe it wouldn’t give you the same directions every time. It’s kind of funny to me, I always have to use Google Maps to go somewhere, and it’s always the most efficient route. It’s fine, but50:53

Brendan Also boring and sometimes51:09

Henry You have a little bit more time, but maybe it’ll just change the street, or especially when you’re walking. I always walk the same route, right?51:11

Brendan On a street I’ve never been on before?51:23

Henry A to B kind of thing, right?51:37

Henry Something like that. Have51:53

Brendan Takes 12 hours or something, constant walking probably. It was like I52:15

Henry Minutes, I think.52:26

Henry I want to do more. I haven’t done it before mostly because I was like, ‘I don’t know if I could even do it.’ But now I feel more confident.52:28

Brendan Something special to that. That would be fun to try more.52:42

Henry If you’ve been here for so long,52:48

Speaker unknown It’s52:51

Henry Why, I should have been exploring most of it.52:51

Brendan Are there parts of New York that are on your list to explore more?53:03

Henry It’s a lot bigger than53:16

Brendan Oh yeah. I53:18

Henry Many places, even more closer to me. I probably want to go to the story of more.53:22

Brendan Same. I haven’t spent a lot of time up there. There’s a huge park in Flushing Meadows up there, all kinds of good food in Astoria. I’ve been to a couple times, but there’s so much more to see.53:30

Henry Maybe go to different islands more. So there’s Roosevelt, which I’ve53:44

Henry And then there’s Governor’s Island.53:51

Brendan Yeah, we need to go to Governor’s Island with Seoul. I think that’ll be fun.53:55

Henry Can kind of walk the whole thing. Actually, I helped teach a friend how to ride a bike there.54:04

Brendan Oh, really? Because they’re city54:10

Henry Bikes. And the roads are pretty big, and those are cars. So you can kind of just…54:11

Speaker unknown Oh,54:16

Brendan That’s good. It’s hard to do it here.54:16

Brendan In the park, it’s either small paths or the big one with like… Sometimes you’ll see a cluster of 20 people going super fast and bikes together. And it’s just a little crazier. It54:19

Henry You find a good day, you can spend most of the day there. It’s pretty fun. You have to take the ferry and everything.54:35

Henry All these random island things.54:46

Henry Now I’m thinking of all the different transportation modes.54:55

Brendan I don’t really take54:59

Henry The ferry that often.55:00

Brendan We were thinking, just doing the Staten Island Ferry with Seoul so you could experience it would be cool. But also for us.55:02

Henry Probably having, most people don’t go.55:11

Just Riding A Ferry

Brendan We never really have a reason to go to Staten Island, but just riding a ferry is inherently fun.55:13

Henry And then there’s also, for Roosevelt Island, there’s this tram that you can take as well.55:21

Henry So unique forms of transportation.55:30

Brendan And there’s cool examples of how steam engines work, but also different types of trains, like monorails in the city, or trains that go up mountains, go through tunnels. Types of trains I never knew existed. And he loves that book, so the ‘how things work’ genre is definitely something we’ll have to acquire more books soon.55:47

Henry I was just at someone’s house. I was playing with the kids training toys.56:18

Brendan Nice. Well, we made our way to the other side of the lake. There’s I56:22

Henry Think I won’t go over here.56:32

Brendan Been using it that much. I feel like in years past I biked around more, and now I just walk places. But I should try to get out and ride around a bit more. What about you?57:23

Henry I have a city bike thing.57:40

Brendan Cool. It’s just57:42

Henry More expensive now. It’s just like subway, every year they increase it.57:47

Henry They actually added a speed limit, which I thought was interesting.57:52

Brendan What? Wow.57:55

Henry They decreased the max speed.57:56

Brendan Yeah, wait, for the electric ones? Yeah, wow, it57:59

Henry I was like I58:07

Speaker unknown Feel like it was a58:08

Brendan Lot slower58:09

Henry Than I thought.58:10

Brendan Wow, so you hit the max pretty often? I don’t know.58:11

Henry I have no idea. But it was like some build or something that was passed.58:16

Brendan Okay, we’re gonna go up this hill.58:25

Speaker unknown I58:28

Henry Think58:29

Brendan This is the highest part of the park. Up the hill. Kind of a nice little hill overlooking the lake.58:30

Henry Yeah, I definitely haven’t been to most of this.58:42

Brendan The main one, yeah.59:07

Brendan There’s basically one big loop and then there’s a couple points in the middle where the road cuts through. So you can do partial loops or whatever too.59:11

Brendan Okay. We’ll be getting our scent here.59:24

Henry There is something about, like, I don’t know, the effort it takes to get to the top of the hill. And then you see the whatever it is, the vista or whatever.59:35

Brendan Yes. Okay, got to prepare our big insights to emerge right at the peak. Actually, it’s funny59:44

Henry I think I only saved the latitude and longitude. I1:00:00

Brendan I see. But the phone tracks.1:00:03

Henry It does. At the1:00:04

Brendan Yeah, I got it. Because1:00:07

Henry I was like, “New York is mostly flat.”1:00:08

Speaker unknown Not that it1:00:09

Henry Changes1:00:09

Brendan That much here, yeah. Right.1:00:10

Henry But I think it would be funny to see it.1:00:13

Henry Do you usually work remote or at home?1:00:43

Brendan Yeah, mostly work from home.1:00:46

Brendan A couple times a week we’ll work together. They’re in Brooklyn too, in bed stay.1:00:58

Brendan Work in a social environment. I’ve been doing it, I don’t know, every few weeks. Not super regular, but just a fine excuse to be a little more social sometimes. Don’t have an office.1:01:27

Speaker unknown That’s a good idea.1:01:42

Henry I feel like there’s a lot of these small co-working things.1:01:42

Brendan Nice. Okay, I’m almost at the top. One more set of stairs here.1:01:47

Brendan Hahaha. Aha.1:01:57

Speaker unknown Okay.1:02:10

Brendan Cool. So we can loop around this little. Get a little view of the lake.1:02:15

Brendan It’s really cool in winter when you can see more directly down. Oh1:02:26

Henry Without all the leaves.1:02:31

Brendan Yeah, you got a better view of the lake that way. And you can watch the sunset from up here. It’s nice.1:02:31

Henry Guys working on the Hyperlink and then is Leaflet like the new thing or is it just kind of also an experiment?1:02:58

Software For Learning Collaboration

Brendan Kind of both, yeah. It was sort of, initially an experiment, and now is kind of the main thing. Yeah, so I don’t know, we’ve pivoted like a few times basically. Hyperlink itself also changed, started out as more like a internet school and turned into software for learning collaboration. And then that kind of shifted and evolved into simpler form and Leaflet. And now we’re trying to take that in the new direction with the social network stuff on blue sky et proto. So yeah, let’s see where it all goes.1:03:05

Brendan It’s kind of a startup, but also kind of like a research lab for software for learning and collaboration, I guess.1:03:52

Brendan Yeah, we can go down this way or this way. Yeah. Sure, go down this way.1:04:03

Speaker unknown Yeah.1:04:11

Brendan What else? I’m trying to think if there’s other projects or things I’ve been thinking about to talk about. I guess in the back of my mind has been thinking about what kinds of projects would be fun to collaborate with other people on.1:04:15

Brendan The new platform for launching creative projects and funding them collaboratively and stuff. I really like the idea of that. I’m trying to think of what could fit to have maybe a little series of projects that would be fun but small enough to have you1:05:38

Henry Talked to him? I1:05:59

Brendan Haven’t talked to Yancy, you know. Yeah, I talked1:06:01

Henry Her book on there.1:06:05

Brendan Right, they’ve got a lot of cool1:06:07

Henry A few projects on things for them.1:06:10

Brendan I know he1:07:16

Speaker unknown Artist1:07:24

Brendan Because I guess there’s a1:07:25

Henry C corp and a benefit corp1:07:27

Brendan It’s kind of funny that corp. It works1:07:29

Henry I think it sounds like an extension of Metal Label, as well as that you kind of own it together.1:07:35

Henry That was interesting, I think. I mean, recently I feel like I’ve been able to do a lot of1:07:44

Henry I think with all the LM stuff I’ve been able to at least try the beginning of some idea, which1:07:59

Henry Point to be like, “Do I even want to spend more time on it?”1:08:09

Brendan Right. Either gets it out of your system or gets you excited to take it to the next level. I1:08:11

Henry A lot of them that I’ve been to are really short ones where it’s not like a hackathon, like there’s prizes. It’s essentially just co-working for a few hours. You make something. Like I went to one in beta works, and cool, and it’s like you just work for a bit and then you get dinner or you eat dinner together. And then you just talk.1:08:34

Brendan So it’s really1:08:53

Henry Didn’t take a long time, but then I spent the next month working on it.1:09:05

Brendan That’s fun. I feel like there’s different things like that at different stages of a project also. I remember reading about something cool from a game designer talking about, I think it was called… This way and then to the right, and then we’ll be close to back where we started. This thing was called a depth jam, I think. So it was kind of a game jam hackathon, but with an intimate group of four or six people or something like that.1:09:10

Henry So they’re all working on individual? They1:10:02

Brendan What if it’s like hackathon, but really intimate and just with your close friends? What does that look like?1:10:23

Henry Your friend, you have all these friends, but it’s like, “How come we’re not making anything together?” Right, just hanging out, but it’s fine.1:10:32

Brendan That’s great too. But there’s a lot more potential to play with. And a lot of different forms it can take depending on, what your friends, how they work best, like what kinds of things you’re all working on. I don’t know. I think this depth jam for game designers would probably look very different if you were all musicians recording an album or something. But there’s probably a lot of overlap in the kind of high level structure that could be useful.1:10:39

Brendan We’re gonna go this. We’re like halfway up the hill, I think.1:11:14

Henry People. I mean, other than open source, but1:11:29

Henry How you get to the point where you’re like, “Okay, do you want to”, a lot, let’s say it just naturally happens.1:11:37

Brendan I don’t know.1:11:42

Brendan Do you have a main project, or is it more, no, different things, but1:11:56

Henry One to me, it’s very academic1:12:17

Henry Of going with blue sky more1:12:34

Brendan Casual and fun and stuff.1:12:35

Henry I’m thinking about that, like, are there1:13:07

Brendan A lot of activity happening for a1:13:25

Henry So I had all these people are like, “Oh, they might not do it, use that.” But then I had a people are like, “Oh well, I would do that online.” So it’s like, oh1:13:45

Brendan Yeah, it would be1:13:53

IRL Is URL

Henry Then you’re like, “Oh, Henry was here.”1:14:22

Henry And then you can have a discussion. So I feel like there’s something really meaningful about that because you both found it. And it almost feels like it has to be more obscure because1:14:24

Brendan If it’s just like1:14:32

Brendan Have a tier one, two, three, four and five, where tier one is like just 10 articles where they’re culture, the Earth, these really big things. And then by level five there’s like 50,000 of them, and it’s all specific mathematicians or scientific theories or historical events. And I think it’s kind of partly a way to measure the comprehensiveness of different languages, different wikis kind of. So1:16:01

Henry Who is curating that? I1:16:30

Brendan Think, I don’t know, Wikipedia as an organization. But I don’t know, I don’t really understand the culture of how the whole editorial ecosystem works. But somehow it’s maintained by Wikipedia. That’s1:16:33

Henry Interesting metadata, so like the hierarchy of like1:16:47

Henry Its own page rank or something even?1:16:52

Brendan Don’t know. If I see a new thing reading a book, and I look it up on Wikipedia, and that’s how I learn about what this concept means. And then I put that in the notes, like a list that I have somewhere. And so it’s like kind of my little personal filtered encyclopedia.1:17:03

Henry No, exactly, and I’ve it1:17:20

Brendan Would be fun to make a website or collection for that in some sense, but I haven’t done anything with it yet. But I have, I don’t know, some 100 or something cool concepts to chair and learn about. That was, if I ever did a podcast, one idea was like kind of take these interesting Wikipedia articles on particular concepts as a starting point. You could even have a podcast that starts by just reading that article. And then maybe kind of commenting on it or talking about it together with a friend or something like that.1:17:21

Brendan I1:18:00

Henry Would, I think that would be cool.1:18:02

Brendan Anyway, look, we’re right back. That’s where we started, up there.1:18:03

Brendan I1:18:11

Henry Guess it’s like an audiobook, but I feel like it’s different. you don’t have to read the whole book, you could read like1:18:19

Henry Excerpts or essays and1:18:25

Brendan That I think that would be fun too. It’s like not exactly a podcast, but you could think of it as something like that, a foreign I1:18:36

People Should Read Out Loud

Henry Then you can have an artifact at the end which is basically an audiobook.1:19:24

Brendan That’s fun. Or everyone chooses a famous poem or1:19:27

Henry Something has to1:19:30

Brendan Be over 100 years old, and then you see what everyone comes up with and compile the results. That’s cool.1:19:31

Henry Because at first I thought I was gonna do a book, so I was actually thinking. Something like, what would get a lot of people to do? It’s a bible or something. Yeah, like the1:19:38

Brendan Odyssey, like something, yeah, all1:19:45

Henry The religious texts, right? But then I was like, “Maybe no one would do that.” So then you could do something simpler, be like a poem which is short.1:19:48

Brendan That’d be cool too. So1:20:02

Henry I was working on that a while ago, but then now I’m like1:20:05

Henry Now maybe I could just do it because I can use the LM. I just work on multiple projects.1:20:08

Henry I’m getting back to that, but reading, nice1:20:15

Henry Do you ever use Arena at all? A1:20:19

Brendan Little bit. I1:20:23

Henry Feel like that’s also the category thing. I1:20:25

Brendan Feel like I don’t use it regularly, but I’ve used it for certain things. Like I don’t think I didn’t use it for my general favorite Wikipedia articles. But I did make an Arena channel that’s Wikipedia lists. There’s just specifically cool lists on Wikipedia, or lists of lists even. Things like, I don’t know, just weird interesting lists. Made a channel for that. I think the other big one I made was uses of GitHub for stuff other than code.1:20:27

Brendan Or blogging or like the kind of collecting awesome lists on a specific topic or like1:20:58

Brendan Like user manuals or company handbooks, like various things that people try to use GitHub for but beyond code. That was a fun collection. You1:21:06

Brendan Time are we at? This is1:21:20

Henry I guess it’s been an1:21:28

Henry Will stop it.1:21:32

Brendan Either way, it’s cool.1:21:38

Henry It’s still recording. Cool.1:21:41

Henry Sweet.1:21:42