Right Up My Alley

Episode Information

Date of video

February 18th, 2014

Date of upload

February 18th, 2014

Duration

8 minutes 39 seconds

Edited by

Michael Aranda

Appearances by

Michael Aranda

Stefan Chin

Katelyn Salem

Location

Missoula, Montana

Monkey Bar Gymnasium

Costco

Transcript

Michael's Apartment

Michael: One hundred and eighty-six pounds !? I need to stop eating so much pizza. I just got a package. It's got some instrument cables, which I've been waiting for. Most importantly, the Vibra-Slap II.

So this, is a Vibra-Slap. Uhm, there's a couple different ways to play it. If you grip it this way...

(Vibra Slap noise)

Michael: The, uh, the sustain is not very long.

(Two short Vibra-Slap buzzes)

Michael: If you change your grip to, uh, something looser...

(One long Vibra-Slap buzz)

Michael: It will ring out longer. One of the songs I am currently working on for my album has a Vibra-Slap in it. And I've just been using a sample that came with, uh, FL studio, the program that I've been using. It's important to me that as much of this album as possible is live recording rather than samples. So, I got this thing on Amazon so I could record some Vibra-Slap. Sounds kinda dirty.

The cat is very afraid of this Vibra-Slap. Kitty, it's just for making sweet, sweet music. Watch

(One long Vibra-Slap buzz)

Michael: Ehh.

Outside

Michael: I'm trying to run off all that pizza. I really need to get back into this. I can tell that I am in much worse shape than I was, even just a few weeks ago. This is really tiring.

EcoGeek Offices

Michael: So hankgames got this cool little plaque thing for passing 100,000 subscribers. I didn't get one of these for passing 100,000 subscribers. What the heck? Look at that reflection. Woolelalelala.

Monkey Bar Gym

Michael: Laura, are you reading for this?

Laura Chernikoff: No.

Michael: Ok, Boomrang 2. 45 on, 45 off. I assume. We've got box jumps and broad jumps and lateral box jumps. I don't even know what those are. Burpees, single-leg squats. I don't know if I've done those before either. Uh, leg curls, squats, and a bunch a jump rope. This is crazy.

Laura: This is crazy.

Michael's Car

Michael: We finished that workout. It was pretty brutal.

Laura: Yeah. It's a lot of jumping.

MIchael: And for the last half of it, it was more mentally brutal, for me. It was just so much jumpi rope.

Laura: Yeah. I would have rather it been twenty seconds on, twenty seconds off and over sooner.

Michael: Yeah.

Laura: Then, twenty minutes.

Michael: Yeah.

Michael's Apartment

Michael: Honey, I'm home.

Stefan Chin: Hey Baby.

Michael: What are you doing?

Stefan: Listening

Michael: The Freedomain Radio - Call in Show?

Radio Show: So I said, I have what I want to do in my life. Learning in my heart and that...

(Kitty meows)

Michael: Hi kitty.

Costco Parking Lot

Michael: I feel kind of anxious about this, because I should be editing Brain Scoop, but we're going on a family outing to Costco.

Stefan: You feel anxious about going to Costco?

'Michael: Well, I sh, I should be working.

Stefan: You know...

Katelyn Salem: I mean, we have to leave in thirty minutes anyway. A fast thirty minutes.

Michael: But, I should be working.

'Katelyn: It's gonna be quick.

'Stefan: Also, resistance is the compass that points you to the thing you need to do most, so.

'Michael: I really like these shrimp cocktail things that Costco has. And I always check the sell by date to make sure that I have the most recent one. 21st, good, 20th, bad.

Stefan, look at the pizza.

Stefan: Ah! It's even the Digiorno Pizzeria Supreme with Speciale. Ooooh.

Michael: Yeah, that's the good stuff.

Stefan: That's the good stuff.

Michael: That's also why I'm getting fatter.

Stefan: Oh but look! $4.56 per pizza, which actually if you go to Walmart right now, it's $4.50.

Katelyn: (Laughing)

Michael: What?

Stefan: This is 6.3 cents more expensive per pizza than at Walmart right now.

Michael: It's more expensive here?

Stefan: But, do you really want to support Walmart? I'm okay with it.

Michael: (Commerical voice) Change your world, one coconut at a time.

Banana cream and graham cracker?

Stefan: Yeah, I don't know about the flavor, but it's nine dollar off.

Michael: I've never tried those flavors.

Stefan: Well...

Katelyn: I wonder if you mix them together.

Michael: I mean.

Stefan: Might be.

Michael: You might as well, right?

Michael's Apartment

Michael: Ok! Now I can Brain Scoop.

Stefan: (Yawns)

Michael: K, I'm gonna give the graham cracker flavored muscle milk a try. Uh.

(Liquid shaking)

Katelyn: Does it smell like graham cracker?

Michael: It does smell like graham cracker a little bit.

Katelyn: Oh yeah. Very graham crackery.

Michael: That tastes like someone took some graham crackers and blended it into a cup. It's not bad.

Here on my working on some text effects for this episode of Brain Scoop. They're describing three different kinds of meteorites, so I have these difference layers of text elements that rotate around a single point. Uhm, and if I go down here to Premier, you can see it live.

Jim Holstein: (In video) Meteorites. You have stony meteorites, which are made of....

Emily Graslie: (In video) Stone.

Jim: Iron Meteorites....

Emily: Iron. Iron

Jim: Which are made of, oh you're jumping ahead. And stony-iron meteorites, which are made out of...

Emily: Both stone and iron!

MIchael: I just finished adding Jim Holstein's name tag into the episode. It's motion tracked to this cabinets up here. You can see, a, little red things up there. That's where it moves over the course of the shot. Uhm, then you've got all these layers that pop in. And, at the end, some of them zip back up inside.

And like most episodes of The Brain Scoop, this one has some tricksy things in it. Um, this scene where Jim is drawing on this white board, I didn't have enough footage to cover up some stuff that I was cutting around. So, right here where this red thing is, the footage actually slows down and then speeds back up when it gets to the end.

Jim: (In Video) Beyond Earth, we have what?

Emily: (In Video) Mars.

Jim: Mars, the red plan...

Michael: The only way you can kinda notice it is if you watch his little mic cable coming down. Um, might be easier to see if you were watching the actual video.

Jim: Haaaave what?

Emily: Mars.

Jim: Mars.

Michael: But it does look like it's going in slow motion there. This scene right here was another place I ran out of footage to cover up what I was cutting around. Um, so, I actually play the same shot back and forth a few times. So it just kinda looks like she's nodding a little bit.

Jim: (In Video) Car size object that hits the Earth, and most of it hits the ocean. Differentiated bodies: core, mantel.

Michael: But, uh, yeah, that's actually down here. It's playing forward, then backwards, then forward, then backwards, then forward. One of the last things that I do before the episode is rendered, uh, each one of these little clips is a different section of audio where I cut out the space between. Uh, because often when people talk, there's a lot of space in there. And, so, I, I usually compress all that down. Um, but, then I add a little tiny fade in between each one of these cuts. So, I go back and just listen to each individual cut to make sure that you can't hear that there's a cut there.

Ok, well, I've done all I can on Brain Scoop for tonight. There's still a few tweaks that I have to make in the morning after Emily sends me a few files. Um, but now, it's time for Banished.

So, Banished is this computer game that was designed by just one guy over the course of two or three years. And it just came out today. So I've been itching to play it, I just needed to finish all my other stuff first.

(Banished hammering sounds)

Michael: Well, I thought I was doing alright. And then, most everyone in my town died of starvation. Sooo, that's great. This is where all my citizens lived. I have a little rock quarry. Over here, a nice field for them to grow some crops. Wood cutter, blacksmith, a little, uh, place for sheep, if I had sheep. Uh, there was a little forest lodge, down there. And over here by the river, I had a nice trading post and a fishing dock. But, it was all for nought, because everybody's dead.

I'll have to play with this more tomorrow, cause it's getting late. Uhh, it's kinda like a cross between SimCity and Dwarf Fortress. It's pretty complicated, but I generally like complicated games, so I think this is right up my alley.