This interview with Jonathan Coulton was recorded in the spring of 2006, and I have to admit, I had a great time with it. Jonathan was more than willing answer anything that I threw at him;  you’ll find things in this interview you won’t find anywhere else.

Enjoy!

(Thanks to J.C. for the kick in the ass to get this re-released to the public.)

In order to help Tee and his daughter through this diffcult period, Pip Ballantine has set up a fund where anyone who wishes to can chip in. Please consider doing so, if you have the means.

To Tee: We’re here for you, pal. You need anything at all, you let us know.

1. In the words of Evo Terra: “Tee was the first author to make his book into a serialized audiobook delivered by a podcast. And though others soon followed independent of Tee’s actions, his ‘Hey Evo, I have an idea…’ phone call in late 2004 was the genesis of what would become Podiobooks.com.”

Then, the NanoMonkeys went silent, the domain was taken over by one of the less savory outfits on the web, and the podcast passed into legend, never to be heard again…

…until now.

Starting on 10-31-2009, The Secret Lair will present encore episodes from those original shows, releasing one a day for the month of November. Subscribe to the main feed, and you too can join the madness.

For more information and to subscribe, visit The Secret Lair.

First…I’m taking a hiatus from development on Podiobooks.com.

The reason is simple: I lack the time to do the PB 2.0 project justice. It kills me to admit that. When we started PB five years ago, I had two small kids, a simple 40 hour a week job, and my wife was not working. Now, I have a 12, 9, and 4 year old with all the commitments that follow from that, plus my wife is working full time, playing in two bands, teaching violin and fiddle, and I am working full time and filling in as Mr. Mom. It has become impossible to find the time to truly lead the project. Those things, combined with some recent health developments, have put the whammy on many of my personal projects. The PB2 project will go on (we are looking for new leads right now), and Evo and the PB2 team will continue driving it. It will grow and flourish, and I cannot wait to see where it goes next.

Second…Michelle and I will be recording the final Shadowdance podcast tonight. The reasons there are similar: my personal schedule and Michelle’s schedule no longer match up quite as well. She’s writing books, appearing on television and traveling, and I have my family and my career to look after. Also, my opinions on the subject matter of the show have changed, and I feel disingenuous continuing to give advice on a subject that I do not fully embrace. More on this in a future post.

For the record, The Secret Lair is still going strong: Kris and I will continue with our fun until the men in white coats come after us to take us away.¹ In fact, we just released Episode 29, chock full of goodness from the likes of Dr. John Cmar, Natalie Metzger, Jay Lynn, and our special guest, Mick Bradley.

So, that’s the news. How’s your day?

1. If they can get past the giant squid and the rabid zombie poodles.

Episode #0028 of The Secret Lair has broken free and is wreaking havoc across the world.  It boasts the following weaponry:

Staff Reports

Chief Medical Officer’s Progress Report. In which the Bad Doctor speculates that the Minister of Crackpot Schemes and Unfortunate Synergies ought not be involved in our plan to demoisturize the moon.

Discussion

We are joined by our lovely wives to discuss The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

• There is chili. And there are Fritos. And SPOILERS.
• Everyone talks about time travel as metaphor, but what if it’s actually a simile?
• Chris discusses the difference between men and women. He says it’s all about the potential versus the kinetic. Or something.
• We explain why Prisoner of Azkaban is the best book-to-film translation of Harry Potter to date.
• Chris issues a challenge to Neil Gaiman (American Gods, Anansi Boys).
• Kris was right about the “R”. The movie version of Clare Abshire is portrayed by Rachel McAdams.

Do yourself a favor and catch it now, before it kills somebody!

I’ve had people tell me about using air poppers and other more expensive devices to make “the perfect roast.”  I’m grateful for the advice, but I’m not doing this for perfection. I’m doing it because I wanted to cultivate a non-digital skill, and because the act of the work itself makes me happy.

A few weeks ago, my family and I visited Roscoe Village in Coshocton, Ohio. Roscoe Village is a combination town center and historical reenactment village, where you can learn how people originally lived when settling, attend an old-style school lesson in the original school house, learn about period medical practices, etc. It might be the fact that I enjoy studying history, or it might be that I went on one too many medievalist camp-outs in my youth, but I’m always drawn to the craftsmen doing their work by hand. The term “honest work” comes to mind, as does the realization that I might be able to do similar work, if only I spent the time to learn.  When I was younger, I enjoyed woodworking, though I never pursued it. I enjoyed music, but did not pursue it. I enjoyed brewing, and did not…you see the pattern here. Everyday life will overwhelm you if you let it, and for the past fifteen years, I’ve been building a career in software development, which makes all manner of odd demands on one’s time. There are all kinds of excuses for not pursuing our interests, and all seem equally valid at the time.

As we walked around the village, I began to think about this I.O.U. I’d written to myself.  I’ve spent the better part of fifteen years staring at a computer screen.  The aversion to it started about three years ago, but I worked hard to bury that feeling when I started at Mahalo, where my screen time on a weekly basis would shoot through the roof. For years I’ve been craving time away from the screen, and this reminder was just what I needed to get the ball rolling.

It must seem strange to many of you that I would need a reason to shut the computer off. Understand that I’ve been enamored with computers since I was 15, and this was my hobby long before it was my career.  Converting that hobby into a career was at once a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because I was doing something that interested me, but a curse because I did not cultivate other interests outside of the glow of a computer monitor.  When I started to resent the time I spent online outside of the office, it caused a real problem.

While walking down the streets of Roscoe Village, I had time to reflect on this.  I had other interests, but I tossed them aside for writing code, both on work time and off.  I got involved with communities of people online, spent time in virtual space with them, but back in realspace my relationships and interests were lacking.

We were standing in the basement kitchen of one of the houses, listening to a woman speak about how they would cook in the old days. She was in front of a stone fireplace, showing the tools of the trade, offering some freshly-baked bread and churned butter to taste. Then she pointed at an odd looking tool: it looks like a coffee can on a long rod with a little door cut into the side. She said that this was a coffee roaster, and people used to roast their own coffee over the fire each morning, then store it for a few days, grinding it as they needed it.

It was like a warm sun ignited in my chest. There was a sense of realization that here was something that interested me, something that I could do, hands on, for the sheer joy of doing it.  The next morning, I drove down to the local grocery, picked up a pound of green Colombian beans, and started to roast my own coffee.

I discovered that the joy I feel while working out a problem in code is the same joy I feel when working on a new roast. The realization that I was, as a good friend puts it, hacking my world was like a TNT for my brain. The experimentation and process of roasting coffee, or cooking, or brewing ignites the same fire in my mind that working through a code problem does: it’s all hacking, and it feels great.

The best part is that I can more readily share to fruits of my labor with my friends and family. The biggest drawback to my career is that if I do my job well, no one can see the craft, the reasons for things working the way they do, the very things that makes the work itself beautiful. It’s hard for people to gain an appreciation for well-crafted code, but a good cup of coffee goes a long way. They can savor and appreciate it, they can revel in the aesthetic that I felt when I was roasting it.

This has been a revelation to me. It pleases me to no end. It makes me happy.

I’m planning to go beyond roasting coffee, getting back into brewing beers and making liquors. It’s not for a business, it’s not for money, it’s for the sheer joy of doing something with my hands that both makes me feel happy and fulfilled, and that I can share with others.

To conclude: roasting coffee became a symbol to me, a process toward finding enjoyment outside of the laptop screen. It’s why I’ve been talking about it so much both in realspace and on Twitter, with my friends out there. Like all worthwhile things, it is bigger than the words I use to describe it, because the meaning is greater than the meager descriptions I can hobble together. It is joy, and joy is a rare thing in life. We need to embrace it, however we find it, whenever we are lucky enough to do so.

We just hit 7000 episodes on Podiobooks.com.  If we assume the average episode length is 30 minutes, that would mean that we now have 3500 hours of audiobook goodness for the world to experience.

What are you waiting for? Go listen to something!

As it turns out, our android librarian is equipped with neither a sense of irony nor any compulsion toward forgiveness. Nor the slightest inclination to waive a replacement fee, for that matter. However, the whole unpleasant mess has been resolved and we are now prepared to discuss Lamb, The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore.

Also in this episode:

• Chief Medical Officer’s Progress Report #2: The Bad Doctor returns to blame yet another new strain of yet another virus on our meddling—we prefer “fiddling”, really—with equine-primate hybridization. As a side note, bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees) really are very cute; it should have worked, dammit!
• From the Ministry of Crackpot Schemes and Unfortunate Synergies: Jay is in Hong Kong attempting to procure a wolf-child, but important details seem to have been lost in translation somewhere.

Lair Keeping

• Our theme music is “Skullcrusher Mountain” by Jonathan Coulton.
• Our Secretary of Artistic Propaganda is Natalie Metzger.
• Our Minister of Crackpot Schemes and Unfortunate Synergies is Jay “The Kingfish” Lynn.
• Our Chief Medical Officer is Dr. John Cmar.
• Our Airborne Legions are led by Commandante David Moore.
• Our Minister of Suspicious Substitutions and Unreasonable Facimiles often operates under the pseudonym The Cynical Optimist.
• Our Minister of Secrets and Subterfuge is classified.

Listen and learn more at The Secret Lair!

So far, everyone is moving things along pretty well.

• Thomas is making mad progress on the database migration.
• Tim is working on the new RSS engine, and has a version posted to the repository
• Jason is delving into developing tools to help authors tag their episodes and upload through the PB site, instead of the current song and dance, which is more complex than we’d like it to be.
• Evo is coming up with more ideas. Because that’s what Evo does.
• I’m working on the wireframes and working on getting sample data in for the developers. I’ve commented up the new schema and documented the old schema in the dev wiki.

The next meeting will be Monday night, 9pm EST.  As usual, notes will be published on the wiki.