I can't even order fruit without becoming enraged

One thing that I think about often is that when the team behind Diablo 2 needed to record sound effects for the violence and gore in that game, they purchased a variety of fruit and took the fruit into a dark room with audio recording equipment. The iconic fleshy combat sounds of a game published more than twenty years ago are sourced from fruit.

Recently, my own experience with fruit had me thinking about smashing things in a dark room.

Earlier this year, I purchased a box of expensive fruit from Tropical Fruit Box, one of those online purveyors that saturates Facebook and Google ads with their juicy products. Although I eventually got to taste the fruit, the experience was a comical patchwork of shitty support and dark patterns. I decided to write a blog post about it since they sneakily “moderated” the review I wrote back in April.

Last week, I sat for my final scheduled podcast recording. I’ve met so many cool people in this space and I’ve truly enjoyed every appearance. Although there are still plenty of episodes that haven’t been published, the late June through mid July list provided below is substantial, with five hours of recorded conversations.

Podcasts

Dear Tech (1 hour 43 minutes)

This was one of the best flowing conversations I’ve had. Shubho and I had similar experiences growing up with Myspace. I didn’t realize that I was connected to my AirPods instead of my microphone, sorry if the audio is rough in parts!

Dynamics Corner Unplugged (1 hour 24 minutes)

My conversation with Brad and Kris was incredible, partially because in 2018, Brad actually submitted a code change that was merged into InstaPy. The creator of InstaPy was interviewed for Framed and was an editorial reviewer for the book. Beyond this, Brad and Kris have such a deep understanding of tech and marketing and I’m so happy that they strayed from their regular format to have me on.

Easy Prey (32 minutes)

Chris Parker started WhatIsMyIP.com, a classic early internet site. When he reached out to me to appear on his podcast, it was an honor, especially because I believe we’ve done a “shitty job” of preserving the early internet.

Embarrassingly, I had a busy week and, at the time of writing this, I haven’t had time to finish listening to this podcast. It was such a fun conversation and I have nothing but positive things to say about Chris.

Value Driven Data Science (Part 1) (22 minutes)

What does a social media villain know about data science? Enough to appear on Genevieve Hayes’s podcast and hold his own. Although this is a bit more technical of a discussion than other appearances and my techniques were rather “blue collar,” I think a certain audience will really enjoy this one.

Beyond Ordinary (1 hour 6 minutes)

A wide-ranging talk with Myles Youngblood.