The Zipline Show

That’s it, show’s over– nothing to see here– just tons and tons of episodes to listen to! That’s right, The Zipline Show is now on it’s final episode, and it’s been a great year of talking about Rockets, Nuclear Power, Scientists in History, Technology, Programming, WiFi, Digital Publishing, Copyright…. *whew, so much stuff! We’ve had a great run, but we said at the beginning that this would be a year long project, and now that it’s October again, we’ve officially made it!

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Episode 51: Gradually Penultimate (00:49:10) This, our penultimate episode, is all about graduate degrees in STEM fields. We’ve touched on a lot of this information in the past, but we wanted to wrap it all up into one nice package of podcast for you to take with you. We kick off the show by talking… Continue reading »

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Today we talk about buying things that are sent to you via digital distribution. Well not just anything- movies, software, music, tv, books, apps, movies, etc. Content providers are giving us these things through the Internet with zero packaging and zero guarantee if you lose them. We try to decide if this is good or bad for both the consumer and the company. This discussion then brings us into the wonderful land of net neutrality.

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We’re so excited– we’re going to SPACE!!! Ok, not us, but our cameras are, we’re going to take a picture of SPACE!!! Ok, at least we think we are. Today is Ranger’s Log for stardate 7 September 2011 (I never really knew how to do star dates), and we are going to introduce to you, Project Dawn Ranger!

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Today we tell you how you can mine gold! Well, we tell you how you can mine Bitcoins. What’s a Bitcoin you ask? Bitcoins are digital currency that have been getting a lot of attention recently, so we decided to talk about them! We start the show with a discussion of currency in general and the role that digital currency is beginning to take in society.

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Today we get in your head and talk a little about Mind Games! Will and I love games, we love puzzles, we love toys– so when I walked into a store at the Mall that sold brain training toys, I knew what our next show was going to be about! As we explored how these toys and games affected mental fitness, we were intrigued about what the benefits of mental fitness were, and that led to research, and that led to the show.

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Patents serve a valuable role in industry, but lately some people have been using them more like offensive weapons instead of the defensive protection they were intended to be. Specifically, we’re talking about software patents, and to help us talk about this issue, we have a special guest host, Devi Bengfort.

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Today we talk about the Universal Serial Bus (USB) and it’s competitors and why it is so important to have connectors that can be used by all computers. We talk about data transfer as well as power transfer and the problems with standards. Towards the end we talk about the super powered Thunderbolt connector- and whether or not it will succeed in gaining any sort of market traction (sorry, firewire).

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The title of the episode is pretty much exactly what is happening, it is not a clever pun or some reference to something, we are literally talking about making video games happen through crazy while loops, and those loops packaged together that handle rendering, physics, input, etc. are called Game Engines!

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We avoided the topic of virtualization up until now because it seemed way too nerdy for our audience to bear, but if you can’t take it after 43 episodes, then I’m not sure you’ve been listening! Still, because of buzzwords like “The Cloud” perhaps it’s time that we talk about virtual machines!

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Episode 42: Phoning It In (00:48:01) We’re back with another conversational show this week. It’s also being posted late. Sorry about that. Hopefully we make up for it with our conversation on Borders bookstore closing, Amazon renting out e-textbooks, and what’s to come with Google+. Make sure to stick around after the credits for our… Continue reading »

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What is natural language vs. programming languages? Maybe we could get computers to be programmed (trained) like you would train a dog (or a cow) using natural language. If that was possible, these computers would be semi-intelligent (but not able to create themselves), so would they deserve human rights? What if the computer committed a crime because you trained it to be evil? Who is at fault?

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Will and I are still running around the country, and we could only put together a short episode for our treasured listeners (that’s right- you guys are like GOLD!). We did mention a few highlight episodes- 11, 24, and 33 to keep you guys busy on your summer road trips! Also we could not let the week pass without a nod to the final Space Shuttle mission that lifted off yesterday (hence the title of the episode).

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Episode 39: Hackvolution (00:46:03) This week’s episode is certificated fresh! Yes folks, we’re back to a normal schedule with brand new episodes. This week we spend a ton of time talking about how dumb Will is! More specifically that Lulzsec has disbanded, much to Will’s chagrin after last week’s show! We spend a good portion… Continue reading »

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Episode 38: Will Live (00:18:38) Ooops! We had planned on doing a full show this week, but we couldn’t get it scheduled right! So I’m sorry to say that you’re stuck with Will talking about a few news points. Hopefully we’ll be back to normal for next week’s show! Today’s episode covers LulzSec breaking into… Continue reading »

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Scanning… Scanning… oops too slow! You know what would have been faster? A QR Code! Quick response codes are all the rage these days- they’re showing up in magazines, on ads, billboards, even on TV (and wedding invitations). Are they just a passing fad, or are they a revolution in the way that we pass data to each other in a physical medium? Today we discuss it!

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See what I did there? It’s Frankenstein combined with computer! No, we’re not talking about monster computers this week (although that would be an awesome show topic, comment below if you want us to do that!) we’re talking about building your own computer (that makes you Dr. Frankenstein to be technical). Just try not to zap life into it with a lightning bolt- that, like static electricity, is bad for computers.

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We love space. I mean, who doesn’t? It’s so exciting- it’s the final frontier, it’s the future of the destiny of humankind- and we all want to float around and eat space ice cream, right? But there is a big problem with space– getting there. For the past 50 years we’ve been pushing ourselves off the earth using loud, dirty, expensive bombs strapped to nozzles– and it’s made space travel a political, economic, and harrowing adventure.

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Bit of a disappointment today, we missed an interview with one of the board members of the Raspberry Pi foundation- a UK charity that is dedicated to promoting the study of computer science at the high school level. David Braben, the video game designer of Roller Coaster Tycoon fame, recently developed a P.C. that was about as big as a U.S. quarter, and only costs $25.00 — the Raspberry Pi foundation intends to promote these devices both for purchase by hobbyests, but also as a teaching tool in schools.

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This week, Will and Ben learn new and exciting things about algae from the CEO of an renewable energy company- David Johnston of Aquatic Energy! Algae, exciting? Yes indeed it is! Although we were suspicious at first, just like you probably are right now- it turns out that Algae is an exciting new way to produce diesel fuel, animal feed, and omega 3 oils, all while removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and growing on marginal agricultural land!

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This week we unfortunately were unable to do our planned show– but we’ll do that next week! So instead we try to maintain journalistic integrity (without any advertising at all much to our sadness) and do a review of some of our favorite web applications. We’re hoping that you’ve never heard of most of these, and are willing to give them a try out to see what you think.

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Identity theft is a huge problem, and there isn’t a crazy amount you can do to protect yourself. Today we take a look at 4 infamous examples of data theft in order to provide you a better understanding of what’s happening, especially with simple data and privacy exploitation. We offer some tips (not legally binding) that might help minimize the consequences of someone else’s poor security or incompetence.

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It’s story day at The Zipline Show, and we are telling tales about some bat ass crazy drama queen scientists today! Turns out that what we may think of as the hallowed tome of the history of science is actually filled up with crazy, whiny, silly, petulant people that have their own personal dramas in the middle of their discoveries.

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Will and I don’t know a whole lot about animation or drawing, but we do know about computer generated graphics, and this show focuses on a comparison of traditional animation with CG rendered animation. We talk about 3D models, textures, puppets, fills, and more on today’s episode!

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Well, we’ve been promising it for a while– a show on gaming (“Compressing ideas about tech, society, and gaming into tiny packages of podcasty goodness”)– but we haven’t gotten around to it until today. We didn’t quite know how to talk about gaming, though, so we took more of an apologists stance on gaming, and discuss casual gaming vs. so called ‘hardcore’ gaming.

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In 1985, the FCC made the unprecedented move of opening up the 900 MHz and 2.4 and 5.0 GHz spectrum, the so called garbage bands, for unlicensed use to the public. At the time, it was only great news for radio nerds– but it was to set the stage for a revolution in networking– the advent of wireless local networks.

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This show dives into how databases are used and what they are doing for you, even if you don’t realize it. We briefly touch on the insanely complex math behind databases before moving into how easy it is to get working with a database! Databases are mysterious beasts like that: easy to use, hard to understand.

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We talk about the video tag, the canvas tag, offline storage, form validation, and all the awesome new shiny features of HTML5. Although it’s just a draft standard and not supported by every major browser yet, it is important if you even have an inkling of being a web developer, epublisher, or high school student (yes, I went there).

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On March 11, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck Japan, triggering a massive tsunami that severely damaged the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. In light of these events, we thought that perhaps a discussion on Nuclear Power was in order to get everyone on the same page and help folks understand what is happening in Japan.

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We get out of the library today, and kick start our reading out doors, in queues, on the bus, and in bathrooms. Well, I guess you can do all that stuff with a regular, paper book- but wouldn’t you so much rather do it electronically? That’s right, today we discuss the rise of ePublishing!

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This week’s episode jumps into the topic of The Singularity. No, not the astrophysics one, the technology one! The singularity is the point in time where technology becomes so advanced that it drastically alters how we perceive humanity and consciousness itself. This week’s show topic was suggested by one of our loyal listeners and is based on the Time magazine article linked below.

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Live from Berlin, it’s the Zipline show! Will and I are in Berlin, as you may have noticed from our video ansichskarte that we posted last week– so we actually got to do an in-studio podcast for the first time! It was a little nerve wracking sitting across from Will, who just exuded genius, but we managed to get through it! And of course, what better to talk about while on a trip to Europe but tech in travel?

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Whoops! We’re in Berlin right now and apparently couldn’t get a regular show done for this week! That’s OK though because Will thought ahead and recorded this little mini-episode to tide you over.

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Today, we interview an instructor at Minot State University — Paul Loree — to get his take and to try to close the disconnect between students and teachers. We discuss everything from his expectations of his students (why undergrads are surprised by this is a mystery to me) to his greatest fear in the classroom. I’m certain that Paul’s students will love to hear their teacher on the air– but for those of you not so lucky, his perspective is near universal (considering Will and I both taught and agree with him).

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This week, The Zipline Show goes on the road, and we’re headed (not very far) to Washington D.C. for Shmoocon 2011! Shmoocon is a D.C. hacker convention that is “an annual east coast hacker convention hell-bent on offering three days of an interesting atmosphere for demonstrating technology exploitation, inventive software and hardware solutions, and open discussions of critical infosec issues” (shmoocon.org).

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Today’s discussion centers around Solid State Drives — flash based hard disks that are a significant improvement over conventional spinning disk hard disks that are more common. Although conventional disks are becoming cheaper and higher capacity, SSDs are also riding the economy of scale and Moore’s law distribution and will be an important technology of the future.

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The big news in tech this week is that the impossible has happened; after years of speculation, rumors, and hot debate, the iPhone will now finally be available on Verizon. But what’s the big deal? Today we get into CDMA vs GSM, and why the two wireless carriers are actually very different. We debate the ‘G’ system – 3G, 3GPP, 4G, LTE, WiMAX, and other acronyms, and we figure out whether SIM cards are awesome or dangerous.

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Episode 15:  The Doctoral Dilemma (00:56:21) In an interesting The Economist article, The Disposable Academic: Why doing a PhD is often a Waste of Time, an interesting tale of the modern doctoral program emerges. Because our stated goal at The Zipline Show is to encourage students to do degree work or pursue careers in STEM,… Continue reading »

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This week we explore six new words as part of our second “Say what?” feature episode (see Episode 3 for the first episode). It is our hope that by demystifying terms and words that are often heard in media and around campus with little to no explanation, we can pique your interest and hopefully open up a new avenue of exploration for you to go on. Today we get a bit out of our comfort zone and take a multi-disciplinary approach to our words, rather than just all computer science words, so hang on!

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This week’s episode comes from our real-life experiences with programming and IT interviews. We’ve learned that they’re real beasts, so we wanted to share some of our experiences and insights with our wonderful listening audience! We also talk a bit about how to prepare for programming interviews, how to find open positions in the first place, and good ways to get some hands-on experience in the work environment.

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On a lighter note, the week before Christmas, Will and I decide to parse an email forward from one of our listeners. The email discusses whether or not Santa could possibly deliver all the gifts in 30 hours, and does Santa by the numbers. Will and I do some fact checking, then propose alternate solutions for the possibility of Santa ranging from physics to secret societies.

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School has just started in Perkins, Ohio in the fall of 1985. The Raiders have just beat the Browns in the exhibition season, Ronald Reagan takes aim at a at a national rail strike, Weird Science, Back to the Future, and Goonies are in theaters, and Terry Dunlap is getting ready for a final semester of Calculus… or so he thinks. Unfortunately, as he sits in class, the Principle and Vice Principle show up to deliver him to the police on charges of credit card fraud via hacking with a computer.

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All I want for Christmas is my bi-upper centrals! Christmas is coming, and Will and Ben are writing a letter to Santa for Geek gifts! Today we go over our top ten list of Geek gadgets and Christmas gifts for that special nerd in your life. Bonus- if you want to get Ben and Will something for Christmas, then simply look at this list!

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This week’s episode is all about digital displays! We cover everything from pixels to digital representation of color to advanced display technologies. We even have a rather length discussion about SpongeBob and Alaska voting woes. Check it out, it’s a good one.

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We’re not just technology nerds, we’re also food nerds, and Thanksgiving nerds, so since this is our first Thanksgiving show, we thought we’d talk Turkey tech! Turns out, the technology related to turkey has to do with either cooking them, or making power from their waste, so this is kind of an in-and-out show!

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In an earlier episode, we briefly described “Web 3.0″– mobile computing and ubiquitous sensor driven applications. Those might seem like buzzwords, but consider the developing world, where the cell phone is the main computing device. Coupled with the advent of always on WAN, the smart phone/mobile device is the computing device of the future.

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Whether or not you’re a computer scientist, I think everyone realizes that the Internet is a big deal; mostly because of the democratizing nature of the Internet. It’s cheap and easy for anyone to publish anything on the web! We know you’re a unique and creative person, and you should share your musical, writing, video, programing, podcasting, artistic, and social talents on the Web. Today, we’re here to help you do that. We’ll tell you how to publish, why to publish, how to get a domain, how to create communities, and finally how to navigate tricky copyright issues.

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Today we wanted to talk about programming, but that can be tough because on the one hand, we’re talking to CS folks who know programming, and on the other hand, we’re talking to non-CS folks who are considering it as a future career, or who are just interested in gaining some perspective about programming. So instead of talking about programming, today we are talking about our own personal experience of programming, which hopefully will be interesting to everyone; either you can relate to our programming joy, or you are interested in why someone in a different profession does what they do (or it will convince you to do CS)!

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Today we do a softball interview with Mike Eader, CEO of SplosionFish Interactive, and a newly minted graphic designer. Full disclosure: it’s a softball interview because Ben is a partner of SFI- as he makes up the developer component of the gaming company. We wanted it to be kind of wiffle, because it is our first interview, and the Skype conference call/interview podcast learning curve was steep.

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We recorded a brief 12 minute show on The Zipline Show. It’s all about how the show started, who we are, what we talk about, and how we want you, the listener, to be involved! If you’re just getting into the podcast, this is a great way to find out a little more about us!

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This podcast tackles the issue of computer and technology jargon. How many times have you heard someone shoot off a bunch of buzzwords that have no meaning? Well, we’re going to tell you what some of them mean! Topics include “Meme”, “Web 3.0″, “Exfiltration”, “Net Neutrality”, “The Cloud”, “Open Source”, “Torrent”, and “SSL”.

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Our discussion today concerns hackers, and is a mandate for you to go out and Hack Life! Essentially we follow Eric Raymond’s main theme from his essay: How to Become a Hacker, discussing why true Hackers are different from what Eric calls “Crackers” (pun intended). We start out mainly talking about Hollywood’s definition of hacking- are we the introverted basement dweller? The supergenius with a photographic memory? We expose all these Hollywood myths and more!

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Welcome to the first episode of The Zipline Show! Will and I are just getting started, and we’re really glad that you’ve taken the time to listen to us talk. Our goal is to compress ideas into little packages of wisdom for you! Right now Will is in Austria and Ben is in D.C. so we have a global perspective, and since we’re both programmers, we definitely have a technology focus!

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Will and I are embarking on a grand experiment- podcasting from Europe and the U.S. simultaneously! Turns out, however, that we don’t really know what we’re doing– so this podcast is intended to help us figure that out.

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