Virtual Patch Panels, Apple Store Visit, Podfather Discount
A host describes the technical difficulties of reconfiguring a virtual audio patch panel at 1:30 in the morning. To resolve hardware issues, a visit to the Apple Store resulted in the purchase of a 27-inch Thunderbolt monitor and a new trackpad. During the transaction, the host unsuccessfully attempted to secure an educator discount by claiming the title of "Podfather" and showing a video of Steve Jobs.
apple store· thunderbolt· mac mini· podfather· steve jobs· virtual patch panel· audio engineering
00:00 How about a big bouffant? Adam Curry, John C. Dvorak. It's Sunday, June 21st, 2015. Time once again for your Gitmo Nation Media Assassination Episode 732. This is no agenda. Celebrating the summer solstice in the rain. Broadcasting live from FEMA Region 6 here in the capital of the drone star state in the morning everybody, I'm Adam Curry. And from Buzzkill Hill in Northern Silicon Valley, I'm John C. Dvorak. All right fair warning I'm grumpy Just so you know which Fair warning, and I won't say what no please don't have you ever done patch panel work John?
00:48 Patch panel yes, you know what I mean patch panel work. Why do that all the time in my stereo system downstairs? Yeah, wait a minute Let's see if I put this thing here And then if I use this and it goes into this one, and I put the HDMI cable over here. Yeah, yeah, but the only shit No, wait wait no I do the sound here and then No, no that won't work because the sound is not gonna. No there'll be sound coming through HDMI, but then again there will be then I get to the Component video over here, but that's coming out of right there now. That's just for your home Yeah, now imagine that I don't know you have a the best podcast in the universe to produce and you're trying to repatch everything and you have to do it virtually though Don't you so yeah, of course, it's that it's virtual which makes it completely ridiculous very complicated and the later it gets or I should say the earlier so around 130 in the morning, you know, then you just want to take a sledgehammer to all this stuff and
01:48 I'm glad you're laughing. I'm glad you think it's funny thing is what I used to do audio over at dishers and which is a production studio that we did the one of those public radio shows at and he had a He had everything, I mean, it's like these audio guys who have studios that are real studios where they bring musicians in. They buy, something comes out, they buy it. So they got a wall, a wall of just devices that are not really in line with anything, they're just there. Oh yeah, well I have that, but none of this is an outboard anymore. He had a real patch panel. And I always thought this was the way to go. But it was like, first you had these patch cables,
02:31 With the big jacks, which are you can't use them for anything else if you confuse a patch cable and insert with an insert You know then yeah, that would be a mess. Yeah, so what they've done in you know in in Typical UI design is you know they make it look like the old patch panels But you still have to do all the thinking in your brain is like I'm gonna patch this to that and then that loops through here And then I have to have a mix minus going back to John it's a long way around of saying I went to the Apple store to Well, I was going to fix the situation and I wound up interestingly with a more expensive solution, but I think it's better instead of... You fixed what? The situation that you had last time when the machine just dropped dead? Yeah. Yeah. So I was using two machines. One machine is the MacBook Air, which has runs all the mixing, the processing, the recording, et cetera, et cetera. And then I was using the other one for, you know, the rundown, the show notes,
03:32 And I decided instead of having two, I would incorporate it into one and though and because my gear runs off of Thunderbolt Thunderbolt Thunderbolt you can't you know you you have to if you want a good monitor you have to get the Thunderbolt monitor with pass-through Thunderbolt long story short so I actually wound up spending more money than a new Mac mini and I think I've got it all working but you know it sounds like it's working yeah but I did a pre-stream this morning and things were all misc and jiggered And you know when you try to get help from a bunch of people in a chat room. Why would that even be possible? Because well they caught it. They were hearing something else. They were hearing like what turned out to be a doubling of the music. And once someone sent me a recording I heard it immediately. People just saying, I can't hear you. Your voice is too soft. Anyway so I wound up buying the 27 inch monitor.
04:31 With the Thunderbolt pass-through and you know, so now I'm on one central processing unit should be okay Thunderbolt pass-through. Yeah. I know it's to me. So now you have a single point of failure that that should be interesting So I'm at the at the Apple store That's you have to drive out to you know, you need a passport to where this thing is located at the domain and you know, so, okay We finally talked to the guy we're talking about. Okay, I'm gonna do this and And I bought a new trackpad, of course, that was another problem. Hail Apple! Sorry, hail Apple, I should say. You get a watch? Yes, hail, not hail. The guy who helped me was one of the few guys who did not have an Apple Watch who worked at the store. Did you specifically point this out to him? I did. And you know what he said?
05:19 Hail Apple. He said, yeah, I got three kids. I got three kids. And then he said, do you have any corporate discount? No. And he's trying to, I can see he's trying to help me. Oh, he asked you if he had a corporate discount. Yeah. And he's trying to help me. And he says, well, are you an educator? I'm like, yeah. Yeah. So, well, no agenda show. He's like, oh yeah, podcasts don't count. And they said, well, look at that. You have to be an official educator and Hitler. I said, well, why don't you take a look at this? And I bring up the YouTube video of Steve Jobs introducing podcasting playing. Oh, yeah. He was very he was very confused. I said, I'm the podfather. Can I get a discount? Yeah, no. OK, thanks. And you didn't get your discount. No, no. Anyway, so hopefully everything should be much better than the previous
06:21 episode for my end, but of course I didn't get a lot of sleep and then I woke up and then there was a software bug in the in the freedom controller. I couldn't save offline copies which Dave Jones had got him out of bed and he did fix it, but I couldn't do everything I wanted to do. So I'm just a little grumpy. We'll move on. I'm just grumpy. This is this is tech grump. It's grumpy radio.com. That's what it is. Hold on. From this gear. John, let's pray. Let's just pray, okay? Okay. Let's pray. You ready? No, yeah. Time has come! May science give us the courage to do what we must! Okay, good. What? Where'd you get that? It's South Park.
