The State of Projectors: A Comparison to OLED TVs and the Rise of Short Throw Technology

As I watched the video showcasing 4K DLP projectors, I couldn't help but think about how far technology has come. The contrast and brightness of an OLED TV is still unmatched, especially during daytime viewing. However, the quality of a 4K DLP projector surprised me, particularly when it came to projecting at over 150 inches in Mario Kart or watching a basketball game on YouTube TV. It's truly a life-changing experience at home.

The comparison between traditional projectors and OLED TVs is striking. While projectors have made significant strides in recent years, they still can't compete with the brightness and contrast of an OLED TV. However, when it comes to short throw projectors, which don't require as much space between the projector and screen, the picture quality is significantly improved. These projectors are typically laser-lit, offering better brightness and contrast.

I'm curious about this new generation of short throw projectors, which have changed the types of room configurations that can be used with a projector. They're a bit more expensive than traditional projectors but offer a level of performance that's hard to match. I've heard great things from people at Optoma Projectors and LG, who recommend their high-quality short throw models.

Investing in a good screen is also crucial for optimal picture quality. A 100-inch screen can be purchased for around $250 on Amazon, and with the right projector and screen, you can create an immersive home theater experience. I recently invested in a stretched-out vinyl screen, which took me about 30 minutes to assemble, but made a significant difference in the quality of the image.

For this week's episode, we're trying out a new format that includes a mid-podcast interview. We'd love to hear from you and know if there are any other guests or topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes. Our site has been busy with new content, including a recent video on "Model Behavior with Kate," where she teaches viewers how to create tiny fake bushes using paintbrushes for their dioramas. It's a fun and creative project that's quickly becoming popular among our audience.

I also had the opportunity to visit Looking Glass Factory, where I saw some impressive holographic displays and light field displays at 4K and 8K resolution. These technologies are pushing the boundaries of what we think is possible with display technology.

As for next week's episode, my annual hockey playoff preview will be back on air, bringing you all the sports coverage you need as the playoffs approach. With baseball, basketball, and other sports in full swing, it's an exciting time of year that promises to deliver plenty of drama and excitement.

Finally, I'd like to leave you with a question that's been on my mind for decades: why do horses only have one toe? It's a curious thing, and one that has left me scratching my head. While evolution can't provide a clear answer, it's an intriguing mystery that continues to fascinate us all.

As we wrap up this week's episode, I'd like to thank you for listening. Until next time, when we'll be back with more content, including the return of "Moment of Science," I bid you farewell.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey let's start the show for thursday or possibly friday april 21st or 22nd 2022 welcome to this is only a test the official podcast of tested dot com hello and welcome to a late podcast this week uh but for good reason which you will see as we as we get through the show i'm norm of course joining me my co-host kishore hari cashore good to see you good to see you as well yeah we are actually recording this early in the week just because of our schedules today i'll give a shout out it's actually my wife danica's birthday happy birthday danica uh happy happy 25th birthday danica exactly looks incredible for that age you know and weird's podcasting i'm podcasting in celebration of her birthday it's okay we all got she got she got a birthday present uh she got she uh the the chris paul lost the phoenix sun's lost so happy birthday to her and everyone who's uh who's not a phoenix suns fan if you're a player we're recording it early in the week and so it's 4 20 somewhere and i loathe 420 and only because i live near golden gate park in san francisco and there is a swarm of people that come to celebrate 420 and i actually don't begrudge them at all i encourage them to have fun i begrudge the people that park in my driveway so that they can enjoy the festivities yeah um and it just makes uh going to work and like picking up my kid from school just like a nightmare that day and so i for one day a year legitimately turn into an old man that has get off my lawn vibes and it's 4 20 that that's gonna happen you turn into the anti-pumpkin turn into that grumpy pumpkin uh i was in that neighborhood earlier today we took a little bit of a lunch break and walked through the san francisco botanical gardens did not smell any pot it was always actually very empty if you are visiting san francisco and you're looking for something to do i highly recommend of course golden gate park our famous park our version of of central park in new york that was the design the city planners when they planned it wanted to make something that was expansive that stretched through the city and we have amazing parts of san francisco including the polo fields that's where the big outside lands concert is uh we have the california academy of sciences which which cove we've covered untested friends have tested uh in casuar of course uh the nightlife events the young museum but the lesser known attractions a mere hop and a skip from the uh california county sciences is the sf botanical gardens the arboretum it's this large botanical preserve that was just it's left to the city it's massive it's and it's not as you know well known as maybe like the japanese tea garden but they're actually run by the same people now and free for sf residents it's only ten dollars to get in if you're looking for a place to maybe smoke some pot don't recommend it take your kids have a great children's area or just go for a leisurely stroll before getting hungry and getting a hot dog right outside the hot dog stand a great way to spend a sunny afternoon in san francisco the rare few ones that we do have i want to see you try to segue your way out of that one uh what was i going to say um what was my what was my segway oh let's go back to we were walking there for danica's birthday and then um i want to talk about some of the things i did get her because i'm very it's like a challenge i don't know if you've been married for for a while in that cash what do you usually get yours your partner or your significant other for their birthdays you trying to make a big deal of it because there are many miles there's like obviously there's the holidays in christmas time there's birthdays there's anniversaries i feel like those are the big you know things every year i try to get something nice and do something nice but it's tough it's getting tougher yeah well we're kind of at the age where we just kind of get what we want and the presents aren't as big of a deal as sort of the events like going out to a nice dinner um or like taking time for a date night away from the kiddo um it's really like the time ends up being um uh the gift as much and the experience uh as much as like a gift itself like yeah you know this year like i want an apple watch for my birthday and like i don't need my wife to get me one of those you're an adult you're a grown man but isn't it nice is it nice it's always nice to get something because you know the person best in the world to get the thing that they would not get themselves or they did not know existed i always try to achieve that so like i had the option and she doesn't listen to this podcast so she doesn't know what the other possibilities are but i was thinking i was gonna get her an ipad mini like jeremy was very happy with his and it's her her ipad's kind of dated now uh so i was like ipad mini she she would love that instead i said no no ipad mini like that that's that's a good let's just we'll we'll find some time and you know an upgrade cycle and get to that at some point of the year for the birthday it's going to be special especially you know we just had our our second kid last year and who just turned one so like it's been a kind of grueling past year with two kids wanted to make it real special and uh there was wondercon this past week and i found a print that was only sold in person at wondercon of wonder woman of course from artist michael cho who did the art for the 80th anniversary issue of wonder woman it's a beautiful piece of art of her parachuting down with steve trevor it's a very vintage like um pop art look to it uh and i got that in a 13 by nine print and um so that that arrived and then i also got our two lego sets both vespas there's a small 115 piece vespa that she opened first and then there was a new uh blue one that was uh ten times as many pieces eleven hundred piece vespa so yeah that's that's not just uh the lego set that's a commitment a promise that we will put that one together as a joint activity so those are the presents that i got got danica uh no no way to no way to to segue forward but uh this is a little bit of a different kind of episode as we talked about last week you know in this new format with jeremy having retired from podcasting we're looking for friends have tested contributors from the site to join us from time to time as well as internet friends people who we may know that we haven't had a chance to really had great conversations with on in this format and uh halfway through this show we are going to be welcoming in friend of tested ben edie fingers cross because we haven't got this video recorded yet as of this today but then edie is going to jump on and we're going to chat with him about some of his recent projects including a very special one he did with tom hanks none other than tom hanks so stay tuned for that later on in the show but we're gonna switch gears and before we do that we'll cover some news and pop culture updates the big news of course we had finally i can say finally because it's no other marvel movie in recent memory has had a trailer first footage appear so close to the release date where we finally have the first teaser trailer to thor love and thunder the fourth installment of thor directed by tech and white tt star chris hemsworth and a return of many familiar faces what did you think ashore uh this was a taiko ytd teaser trailer uh guns and roses perfect gives you the 80s vibes um even though guns roses might be early 90s gives you those vibes right off um right off the bat uh it is uh you see sort of the look and you see probably some scenes that i assume are relatively early in the movie showing um thor's sort of let's say recovery from his bodily state at the end of uh of endgame um we don't get much in this trailer uh it is rumored that the villain well it's confirmed that the villain of this movie is played by christian bale gore the god butcher we don't see any sort of preview of that character we just get one sort of i'd say two payoffs so one we see the gods of mount olympus which i was a little surprised about um that we see like a zooxian type character probably zeus probably zeus i mean literally holding a lightning bolt yes uh and uh so i was surprised that we're gonna get like mount olympus so they're just leaning way into like you know the weird thor kind of ancillary characters um in this movie and then at the end we get a big payoff um of uh natalie portman's uh character um in full costume and she looked good i like how you're dancing around at 200 million people have watched or at least this trailer has been streamed over 200 million times already i think it's fair to say what the character is as they did announce it over three years ago now natalie portman returning to the mcu as jane foster aka also thor wielding the mjolnir a reconstituted reassemble the owner not the one that steve rogers took back to the past in endgame and returned to presumably asgard in in that in that time travel uh you know event but uh the mjolnir that was shattered by hella uh in in thor ragnarok so so many questions so many what'd you think of the costume first and foremost of how she looked oh that's fantastic i mean you're so fun following cosplayers on social media that morning as the cosplayers uh who have you know in the past some of them who have done the comic book interpretation of uh jane foster thor rushed to do 3d modeling 3d printing sketching out laying their claim so saying yes they of course will be making their version of this thor costume i think i thought she looked great um lilly porter looked great she looked like she had done some working out too yeah and so definitely worthy of uh putting on putting on the costume yeah it was really pretty cool uh you mentioned the zeus thing there's of course been much speculation because gore the villain as we know it's played by christian bale not shown in the trailer but the idea is uh he hunts down gods or those who see themselves as as god figures in in uh comics mythology uh and we don't know if the greek gods are gonna survive like the the the the thinking is the zeus cameo or the zeus appearance may just be setting up the stakes of how powerful gore is uh and uh it could be laying the seeds for maybe a post-credits hercules appearance that's that's one of the potential fans uh fan theories i'm laying down my theory now i would love to see henry cavill as hercules i feel like there's better roles for henry cavill sure sure but i think that would be amazing i think he'd have a lot of fun with it that's your new mustache no uh come on that was it take it leave it yes yes yeah he could have he get a full full beard full beard henry cavill um but there are shots in the trailer rip right off of jason aaron's thor run mighty thor run of thor you know seeing fallen gods so again laying the stakes of of um of how they're gonna potentially fight this god killer you saw glimpses of valkyrie running you know the bureaucracy of new asgard including cruise ships and all clearly not looking happy although you see meek and korg so some returning favorites also from thor ragnarok uh no sign of selvig so don't know if he's gonna appear no sign of loki which is true true uh probably the right call the guardians seem like they're just going to be you know i think they've said this as much you know just in the beginning of the film connecting the dots to where they left off with end game but really getting thor on his own path in his own journey a lot of it so much seems to be him finding finding what his path is in this film yeah you know what i didn't need to watch this trailer to be excited about this movie taika what td especially after ragnarok has earned every bit of benefit of the doubt with uh his vision for this movie and it looks just as fun as ragnarok was and um what i'm really hoping for is what is what surprised me about ragnarok uh ragnarok was fun beginning to end but it had some incredible moments of heart um that just like jumped out of the screen uh and a few moments of just like pure villainy that were um very comic booky in how they were executed and i'm just looking for that so i think his vision of gore the god butcher is what i'm most excited about and um probably there's gonna be some tragedy in this uh and i'm looking at you natalie portman um i think she is in trouble yeah yeah in the comics books i mean you can find this on all the phantom pages and wikipedia pages she adopts the power of thor through necessity also because uh they do deal with her having cancer uh as a character so that may be something they tap into it's not necessarily alluded to in here but we don't know if this is gonna be the last standalone thor movie you know no other i think marvel characters has had four movies is that true was there yes there's no yeah right iron man three and that was it right and yeah so we don't know what the future holds for uh for the character and chris hemsworth taking this role so hopefully they tie a bunch of story ends create you know tie that arc together and uh i mean it's it's hard to see him stop you know put put up the cape and let the hammer uh at the end of this but maybe it he walks off into the sunset in much away that uh captain america did uh see rogers did while leaving the door open for some type of cameo coming up later on but that's coming out july 22nd i want to say so we're only a couple months away and i was happy to watch the trailer you know random aside my connection to that song sweet child of mine pro most prominently guitar hero 2. guitar hero 2. that was one of the big songs and part of me watching this trailer wanted to break out that plastic guitar and play it and get the muscle memory back and i would love a guitar hero you know playing the guitar hero song while playing while watching this trailer that'd be a feel it feels like the right right pop culture intersection all right quickly moving on um quick note batman is now on hbo max if you didn't know if you haven't seen it uh it's there's a it's a weird thing people are saying that they're enjoying it maybe less watching at home it feels like warner brothers made the right move putting this on the big screen uh exclusively can i tell you something because of everything that was going on my life i haven't seen the movie yet you haven't yet it's the first batman movie i haven't seen in a movie theater uh and i was hyped about this especially after the nirvana trailer yeah i was sold yeah um but life got in the way and now i'm gonna watch it on hbo max this weekend there you go there you go let me know how you feel sad to say it but that's where i ended up make sure you got your brightness and contrast settings correct on your tv that's my do i have to turn it on like the christian bale filter for batman's like gravel voice no no no the voice is the voice is fantastic he doesn't do gravel voice throughout it's not throughout not throughout you do you see a lot of batman and i think it's actually really his vocal performance is i think fantastic but the movie is dark lit very darkly so there are last scenes where it might be tough to make out the details uh hopefully hdr is something that makes up for that anyway um getting through the rest of the news play date reviews did drop as we talked about last week uh it's glowing reviews i'm not that surprised people love the hardware love the crank love the the interesting mix of these 24 games in the first season the price i think is going to be some off-putting especially for folks now who who if it's if the reviews are to convince people to pre-order one they won't even get to their units until next year since the supply is very limited um and it really i think it's it's positive reinforcement cognitive dissonance for folks who pre-ordered last year last july i believe who are still waiting to get their units this year because it's 180 and for you know 40 more you get a switch so it's kind of a hard sell for folks who are buying a console to actually play modern games it's more of a novelty i think it's the consensus but if you were in the group one pre-orders meaning the first ten thousand uh backers of this they should be shipping imminently and i believe jeremy is in that group so he might be the first of us to get his play date i'm in group two unfortunately yeah so i didn't pre-order this but i have to say i'm surprised by the breadth of games that are in this initial tranche that came out um saturday edition which is kind of like a a kind of a point-and-click kind of uh mystery game especially kind of tickles my fancy um the remake of snake that's called snack looks really interesting to me um a zipper which is a kind of a turn-based strategy game looks really interesting to me these are all really different game types and genres um that i mentioned and so i gotta give a nod to the developer community that they really brought on board for at least this initial tranche now where are we gonna be three six months from now um are we going to be saying the same things i don't know yeah well i mean i'm very excited i i i want that water cooler moment thing i want to try out the crank uh i don't think i'll play it as much as the steam deck but it's a nice novelty and it'll fit in my pocket pants or jacket pocket right this thing that to play five minutes on the go um okay uh we had a little bit of star wars news uh star wars video game news and we do expect much more star wars video game news potentially out of um at a celebration in a month's time now a little over a month's time uh the hope is that we will hear about um uh fallen order part two or founder two whatever the sequel is that's not ea of course but it's not just electronic arts working on star wars games amy hennig working over at sky dance new media uh she was formerly over at naughty dog one of the co-creators of uncharted the game director for the first two uncharted games i believe she is working on interacting a new star wars game a new star wars adventure game which very excited about if it's if it's dna of uncharted mixed with star wars untethered unfettered by electronic arts sign me up yeah original story is what got me uh i'm gonna say something a little out there enough with the lightsabers give me like a normal dude in the star wars universe we're at that point now you have like what everything that the mandalorian is sort of created in terms of filling out the universe we have like han solo and han solo types uh including like lando calrissian and others that are in that kind of genre that fit if they're going with an uncharted motif a little better i just feel like we've gotten so much of them trying to make lightsabers work in games yeah and then like every star wars game is either lightsaber battles or you're in a x-wing or a tie fighter fine we've gotten those games let's get like a scum and villainy game but i think it'd be primarily that but i don't think you're gonna be able to get away from lightsabers there's gonna be lightsabers too strong but i agree i don't think it might be it might not be the foremost weapon in the game like you probably will not be playing a jedi in this and i think you're right the mandalorian improves even the mandalorian that started off uh with uh with no lightsabers they gave him a freaking lightsaber they gave him the darksaber so it's it's just in the dna of star wars it's gonna be in the periphery so yeah i i don't i think it's tough to get away from that that kind of fan service yeah um last bits before we get to our special interview segment uh there's a big update coming up later this year for the quest 2 and it's a hand tracking update this is actually really cool uh the when we saw hand tracking unlocked on the quest 2 it was already a a quest one is it a quest gosh i've i've it's late i've forgotten but quest two hand tracking on quest 2 works really well but it still has some issues with precision and primarily latency and there was a high frequency tracking update that basically doubled the amount of um of sampling that they did with the cameras that reduced you know some jitter but with this new hand tracking update they actually went back and they took all the data they've been using with hand tracking ran it through some machine learning and created new predictive algorithms that what they're calling hand tracking 2.0 is supposed to be a huge vast improvement there's some video that they shared comparing the current hand tracking with what's going to be coming out and they gave this to early access to some developers like hand physics lab and the uh the unplugged air guitar cubism which has hand tracking as a method of play but i've always preferred using the controllers the the precision and they're all raving about it so i'm if this is as good as the videos indicate that's just an incredible thing that they can unlock through improvement of algorithms and software so two things first of all watch the video the video is really really impressive and two you made fun of me last week but tell me this isn't going to improve the experience in some exercise apps um on the quest like i'm not going to use this in like demo or like other games on on the quest but i might use this in a boxing game or or like uh you know one of those uh uh types of experiences um it's impressive from a technology first and foremost don't get me wrong and i think it unlocks a lot of potential but i think you're gonna see it on exercise games first hey gamer nerds i'm not no gamer nerd look how fast i can do my my air boxing uh yeah i i think it's one part of the puzzle that they need to solve for hand tracking to be good for interfaces as well as just further finding the different interaction models that all these games have been experimenting with uh cubism i think is a great example because you know you you have the poses you have to currently do in the hand tracking it's not even just like the latency and precision but the poses to register or click uh i think are not they're not they're sufficient and they're sufficient for things like web browsing but they can't compare to how immediate how responsive and the passive haptics you get from holding a controller and so it for me it'll still be tough but i i will enjoy having it as a as a way to do some more maybe social social applications uh the avatar tracking just having those types of you can grab your glasses and vr oh yeah um yeah i i would i'm gonna go a little out there now but this actually makes me more excited about an ar venture from them if they're if they can get this kind of optical hand tracking right it makes the potential of a of of a future ar uh headset um more interesting i don't even know what the right term is it's not headset glasses whatever you want to call it when it comes to actual precise hand tracking i mean you remember when uh joey and i and adam went to the mars event though oh yeah amazon thing yeah and um while we were there julie filmed um a segment with control labs this is pre-acquisition um by by meta and they had like wearable technologies like a wristband kind of thing um that would track essentially you know nervous system signals um electrical impulses and then use that to actually do precise hand tracking um they're part of meta so i imagine if when we talk about real precision hand tracking we're gonna see a wristband based off of the control labs technology i don't know these are black widow style wristbands that can read your your neural signals and again i think the promise is showing that how machine learning can improve the accuracy of the predictive algorithms even if the control lab stuff they're working on now isn't as like responsive or isn't as accurate as you would want a magical mind reading device wristband to be over time and overuse the promise is that they can be that accurate and that that magical because of all the machine training and all the improvements in the software that they're going to make they have enough of that data both in combination of the optical uh looking your hands as well as the actual neural signals um okay uh the coolest thing we've seen this week uh maybe the second coolest thing i'll say just to tee this up second coolest thing we saw this week is a 4k scan of a 16 millimeter print of film and that film was nintendo's first anime movie a super mario brothers movie called the great mission to rescue princess peach released in japan in 1986 that's right this must be terrible stories it i mean it's not great but it is so charming both in the animation this is mid 80s japanese animation and mario the first attempt of putting mario with the sensibilities of anime back then is this pre or post lou albano as mario oh this is way pre pre okay yeah uh femboy films uh did a 4k remaster scan the 60 millimeter print that two channel dolby surround sound audio captured from the vhs release english subtitles it's on the internet archive i'll click include a link to the youtube you can watch the full hour-long movie for free on youtube and it's a great way to spend an hour on 420 let's just say there you go hey everyone before we continue on this week i want to let you know that this is only a test is made possible this week from the stack overflow podcast which you should check out wondering which skills you need to break into the world of technology or level up as a developer curious about how the tools and framework you use everyday were created the stack overflow podcast is your resource for tough coding questions and your home for candid conversations with guests from leading tech companies about the art and practice of programming for 13 years the stack overflow podcast has been exploring what it means to be a developer and how the art and practice of software programming is changing our world as i'm sure has been changing in their industry as well the show dives in the topics that matter from a listenership of developers tech enthusiasts and educators of all stages of their careers at this moment and provides tangible tools and conversations about the infrastructure in tech right now with new episodes twice a week the show dives into topics like web code security cloud infrastructure and how ai can solve real world problems and more listen at stackoverflow.com podcasts or at any major podcast platform now back to the show but the coolest thing we saw this past week was actually the baseball game the cleveland guardians baseball team faced off against the san francisco giants last week and throwing out the ceremonial first pitch was none other than tom hanks tom hanks did the first pitch start his career in cleveland um as his acting career and joining him on the mound was a friend that friend being wilson the volleyball he brought a volleyball i know it's a little weird what he was in a baseball movie called a league of their own but he went with castaway you got to go okay you just gotta go with it he brought the cast away he brought he brought the volleyball it was painted face on it set it on the mound got ready to throw the pitch and as he was ready to throw the pitch wilson came alive or had a mind of its own rolled off of the mound he picked it back up put it back on it rolled off again it did a little ran around the field a little bit a little bit of a head nod to the camera it was a little bit of high jinks ensued and then of course tom hanks to the pitch decent pitch guardians lost giants won go giants and everyone's left learning how did they make that happen and to answer that we have a guest our guest this week ben edie friend of tested who actually worked with tom hanks uh recommended by adam i think i can say uh and made this remote controlled wilson ball come alive so let's take a listen to a conversation i had with men about his projects and about this project in particular so i am so thrilled to now invite to the podcast and welcome to the podcast our friend ben edie ben hey hello it's been so long how you been it's uh you don't know what i've been around everywhere it's been it's been busy but uh yeah yeah yeah for folks who i may have seen our ghostbusters coverage uh i and we on the test team met ben in person uh uh on set uh many years ago now gosh it must have been 2019 summer 2018 where you were running the props on the set of ghostbusters afterlife and uh it was so fun hanging out with you where adam got to geek out with you in the props trailer people loved that footage and since then i mean obviously the movie we all loved it uh but you've had a great opportunity to dive deeper in some of the work you did and the props team did um and how you've been enjoying that what even what you've been uh able to share you know what it's this is one thing where i seem to have developed enough trust with sony and ghost core that um i can share as much as i want they seem to trust that i'm not going to wreck anything so i've been very very lucky as somebody who's worked on a movie that this is unheard of sort of as far as like being allowed to do but um they've trusted me and so far it's been working out really well and uh yeah we got to take um i got to write it wrong i uh squish one of the rtvs it was completely destroyed and uh yeah i used that as an excuse to admit to them that i kind of took the pieces of the prop home with me and wanted to fix it so we did the the air tv rebuild and man that was a lot of fun you know it was it was frustrating but you know it was pretty fun absolutely and and we've been off on a few you know uh movie sets before met a few people who who work in props department and some of the things we love are people like you are just great obviously amazing engineers and professionals who can work in that production environment and for the needs of production which i'm sure as you can explain are maybe different than the needs of prop making for personal use or convention use right so but also you come from the community as well and you're like the other folks working on ghostbusters become stewards of the franchise and keeping true to the original and and making sure keeping everyone you know kind of honest about what's uh what fans know and love about these props well very much so and it's it's i was such wow i'm kind of full mixed because i still like it it is a dream come true it forever will be the when i was getting hired or when i went in for the interviews and stuff they asked me how much of a fan i was and i reached into my into the case that i brought with me with like my portfolio and i pulled out some resistors for proton pack and i slept on my table and i said well i'm this much of a fan is that you know i'm building stuff right now and i think that was pretty much the clincher right but they they actively looked for a lot of people in the movie for that is that like are you a fan that was like one of the critical questions and if if you couldn't answer it properly then you know maybe you didn't make the cut so it really you know everybody there on set everybody just loved it you could see the eyes are all dilated and bugged out because you doping i can't believe this and it was by no means your first rodeo because you've done you know plenty of stuff but for people who don't know because we didn't meet you know you and meet you until uh ghostbusters after life can you share some of the other projects you've been on and some of the fun engineering challenges and prop making challenges you've had to do yeah so like you know i've done everything like i started on star trek beyond again that was uh a dream come true right dream come true right yeah but i was more in special effects so i did a lot of the the giant rotating sets and stuff like that but there were things where there was the the power uh the power console that or hero had to you know decommission before the ship crashed and they they brought me the the art design and everything for that and i was like well it kind of works but the handles aren't going to be the right size and all this so i got to you know play a little bit in the prop side of things um then later on you know i did i've done like death note and maze runner predator and a few others but again everything was in special effects really cut my teeth and props by coming into ghostbusters now ghostbusters was this is where the props have special effects built into them because of that there's a lot of people going ooh that's not mine you know effects is like and we're not really the electronics kind of guys but you know we can we can try but it's not our thing and the props people are like well this is special effects and it's not ours and i just happened to walk in the door going hey you know i'm really good at electronics and stuff and and i can do props here or some other cosplays and they're like we need you so you know kind of round about how i've gotten to where i am and and i find that i'm getting stuff outside of movies now um you know uh recent project with with wilson was kind of a good example of that so yeah yeah well let's talk about that because that right is that intersection of prop making and some effects work because it had to be a real practical effect for a live broadcast yeah uh we we explained a little bit of the the scenario that happened with the the opening of the uh the pitch uh the first pitch that tom hanks did yeah um but you were brought into the project you had this brief of uh the constraints the parameters of this um and how did it happen how how did you guys make it work how did we make it work um you know basically it come down to is tom called me up and said hey you know i want wilson to roll around like a bb-8 and i'm like yeah and uh he's like can you do it and i said me personally i can't but i can i can get a team i can make this happen it's not you know not a huge deal and um this is one thing where a lot of people don't necessarily stand i'm not an island i i happen to be the forward-facing person for a lot of the stuff i do but i'm always part of a team it's never just me there's no way i could complete half the things i do so um got a hold of some friends and they put me in touch with the guy who actually developed the severo and invented it and said hey can we make this happen and he's like oh yeah yeah we could totally make this happen so we ended up with he developed this platform for me it's a little different than the sphero it's a lot more basic where it actually spins the ball it's physically connected at these two points and the reason we did that is because it's live you want it to be as robust as possible and there's so many different failure modes with some of the other spheric robots that this was sort of like the best choice um and simplicity in this case is obviously the best the best choice and so he did that and i worked on the the shell and the painting and everything so we've got there was two wilsons one is never enough so you always got to make two in case the first one breaks especially if it's a live event and so you know this was like the first major live event i've ever done and the nerves are similar but like they're amplified because you know that like you've got one take you have no choice this is this is it right yeah so you know you kind of freak out but again um i'm good at driving radio controlled stuff but i have a guy who drove the rtv um here in town and i called him up and said hey do you think you could drive this this ball robot and he said yeah let's give it a try so he drove it around and obviously he can hit his marks every time where i can't so um you know you always bring in the people that you know can do stuff and and he pulled it off mike's just yeah i i can't say enough about this this mike he's such a good person and he's calm and it's funny because like he seems like he's the calmest person in the world and no worries and after the event he's like oh my god it's nerve-wracking and thrilling at the same time i'm sure uh and then you mentioned the the bb-8 inspiration and it makes me think of all our friends who are the robot builders right who who are also have you know done work with disney and then stage work or parade work and and even that sorrow or celebration when they first rolled out the robot bb-8 on stage and everyone fell in love with bb-8 and that was that was like an unveiling and you you have to it doesn't just have to function like in a novel way being a spherical robot it has to perform it it's a character wilson has a face you know people have this connection there's a relationship that the fans have with tom hanks and wilson a the expectation if you will of the relationship um and it was real so cool i mean there's a whole bit right it was like a very important thing it wasn't just you know rolling around for rolling around sake and it was funny too because we're doing it live we can hear the announcer and they they had no idea that this was happening all right so like there was there was a day before we went out into the field and one of the announcers the guy that was announcing everybody onto the field was was there but the the other announcers calling the game had no idea so they saw it roll off and they're like yeah it's windy down there hahaha that rolls down again and they're like that's moving further than it is is it remote control that i kind of giggling stuff like you know and it's a lot of fun doing that kind of stuff for sure and it's yeah it is what it is it there's so much that you can do and and surprise people and and you could hear the the crowd really ramped up as soon as they realized it like he's alive and yeah it was so much fun yeah did you get a chance to see the the broadcast and and how they filmed it i presume the broadcast people were either in on it or they adapted fast enough to get a tight shot in a close-up shot right see the little the head camera camera knew that there's a camera um and we had we had planned everything so like you know wilson's face was going to be prominent when he put it down but as soon as the ball's rolling around you know let's show the the c on the back to show that you know the the guardian's logo and everything so you know we went with that and yeah you know it's i don't know the i'm still kind of coming down off of it it was only a few days ago and i'm i'm still kind of absorbing like what just happened well congratulations on such a fun project and a successful project and a a team effort like you said you know not just not just one person doing it all it's a bunch of different disciplines from you know the oh very rc control and and yeah the robotics inside yeah um yeah i want to switch gears a little bit and talk about some of the stuff that uh we we know you for because when you were down last in san francisco you uh were working with adam on his proton pack yes and one of the things of super you sean charlesworth and chapter all i mean again years ago now in this pre-pandemic time one of the things that you incorporated into this pack that blew my mind and like at that point couldn't really even fully comprehend it was the lighting oh my god and talk talk about your experience with lighting like the kind of principles that you use and the tech that you use because that seems to be an area that's rapidly changing and rapidly improving it is and it's it's it's so interesting because like you know back then super cutting edge stuff that i was playing with it was a company coming out and um they've changed names i'm not going to say the old name but the new name is called beconics and they come up with a really good graphic user interface for people to program things with lights and i've been working with them since um like ghostbusters time essentially and you know we've been going back and forth on what they should and shouldn't do with with their uh user interface um and you know in the end it's always these little tiny tweaks right but it's it's so easy to use it's like this drag and drop where you you get a micro controller like an itsy bitsy nrf um i i'll have to get you some links and stuff to to some of these boards but there's certain ones that work with it and the key here is that it's not necessarily wired you can wire it in the first time just sort of to rate that that initial program but after that it's all bluetooth and because it's bluetooth um i've looked like a hero on set like say fraggle rock for instance we were doing a thing where we had a modem it was blinking and they said well can it blink faster it can blink slower now normally when you do stuff like that you're like oh my god i got to plug into it i got to reprogram it's going to take a few minutes literally pull up my cell phone and go okay yeah and i i knew things like that would come up so i made three or four different programs changed the program said is that what you want and they just went like what they were expecting you know shut down it's like no rolling and it's it's really good so then you know there's some friends of mine here in town they started a company where they made their own boards and they're called enlightened boards and what i really love is it this is the full board to run a lighting system and you can run like the adam's proton pack right from the wand to everything on the pack you can run off that little tiny microcontroller and it's all bluetooth so you can control it with your phone or put in switches and we've been working with them to get servos and stuff worked into it so i think it's going to be a full-on robotics platform eventually but um in the meantime i'm kind of sharing it and it's one of those secrets where it's not a secret but it's something i've always held close to my chest because that's kind of what gets me hired in the movies is my ability to adapt really fast especially with lighting little things like that um but now i'm getting to the point where i'm really tired of holding these secrets and as much as it hurts to see other guys run with it it's like well okay here's the secret go and see what happens and i think the world's gonna be a little bit of a better place not just with movies but like i think it's it's enough to get the people who have the algorithm in their head but can't code this will be the solution to them to take that next step forward that you don't necessarily need to code you just have to have that idea and work the algorithm out through these timelines in their in their software yeah like friendly user interface yeah we'll definitely include some links to that but i think you're right i mean the sharing information and i i i would say that it's not just knowing the name the rumple still skidding yeah of the technology that's important but even as you described it the preparedness right it's that's it's about anticipating the needs of of of production and being prepared to adapt and yes they they're used to the maybe electronics being a slow thing or effects being a slow thing yeah but like that's what that's what's going to get you the job is is being able to huge you know there's so many people i'm i was just on hackaday on this this chat and we were talking about things and i said like that i spend you know 50 percent or maybe even 40 actually building the props or the effect i spend the remainder of the time like going through and thinking like how many ways can this get broken and literally taking the first iteration nick you always build multiples and you beat up that first one you put it through everything that you think it shouldn't do because it will happen and if once you figure out all the modes of failure it makes it very easy to recover from something and it also um wilson's a perfect example of this is we're monkeying around with it and i found that like if we instead of just driving it nicely that if i did full forward and went to full reverse but like a left spin it would do this really weird kind of jerky move but it looked like a spun out kid and i i showed this to tom and he's like that's perfect so in the video at the baseball game you can see him doing this really where it almost looks like he's glitching and it turns out to be one of those things where it's a mistake that turns into a feature so you know during this experimentation time not only do you learn the modes of failure you might be able to find something that's more fun to do in the end anyways yeah yeah totally yeah happy accidents and and being prepared so you can run with it yeah when those things um pop up uh the other thing that you i mean you have so many like passion projects but one thing we've covered that i wanted to kind of get an update on is uh the chain mail that you've been working on the the foam chain mail how's that going and um anything new in that world you know there's there's not a whole lot new in that world um you know it was what six eight months ago maybe actually i think it was just about this time last year um we'd launched the scale mail version of it and did a kickstarter holy like i i try not to swear it blew me away we figured like you know we were trying to fundraise for 5000 and we raised just about 50. um it kind of blew us away and and you know we're we we've had all these growing pains with this you know we've had to hire people to help us out with it and you know i've given the work that i do and the way i'm bouncing around it's very difficult for me to necessarily help with that so my my business partner stephanie's chan is is just killing it she's running everything and managing it in fact she's at the calgary comic con right now um while i'm talking to you and i'm in my basement with uh just getting over kovis so you know it seems to be this constant where she's a superhero that takes care of everything but yeah we're doing well and we're slowly developing we're looking at what our our next steps will be we're looking at uh laser-cut kits for like say helmets or different cosplay patterns and stuff like that and uh yeah we'll we're taking a look at doing some larger uh scale mail and and other sort of different patterns for scale mail um on top of that too is we've been approached by um some different movie companies and stuff going hey you know can we use your stuff so you know we're working out how to deal with that you know there's there's a lot to think about as far as it's easy enough to make in-house now do we let them go and get their own die and cut that as long as they mention us or like how does that all work yeah learning experience so yeah totally totally yeah wow that sounds like a lot of fun uh and the community is really thankful that you're manufacturing that uh it looks fantastic and keep us keep us informed because it'd be really fun to to do more with that oh yeah absolutely the next iteration um and what what's uh what else is on the horizon for you you know you guys wrapped up the wilson project um are you jumping onto more productions that you can't talk about and more personal stuff i know you have obviously put out a bunch of videos like we mentioned in the beginning with the ghostbusters stuff on your youtube channel yeah so the youtube channel i'm trying to to get that going a little more trying to get a little more traction maybe make a little bit of money off of it um and you know i'm going to be covering the the wilson i'm going to be covering the build on that um and i'm hoping to collaborate with you know different different channels there's some 3d print channels and i'm hoping custom might be interested in having me come and and run through it and um you know i've got a whole bunch of other cool builds i've i've got some robot walkers and stuff i've been wanting to do um and i've also been approached by a couple production companies about doing some other shows and like in the movie industry that's about the extent of what i'm allowed to say it you know it could be the hardest part of any production is is not being able to scream at everybody going you go believe the job i got well it sounds like you're having a ton of fun and yes i think i feel comfortable saying on half of tested we'd love to have you of course come back to san francisco yeah and hang out and spend some time you know talking about the bills showing your builds off to adam of course uh and doing some collaborations here as well are you are you doing 3d printing yourself any of the 3d printers you're really liking or digging yeah you know what um i've always had the the sidewinder at the artillery sidewinder had i got one of the the first production first ones off the line to to test out for my youtube channel years ago and the thing's a workhorse it just keeps going and go on and go on very little maintenance but um recently i needed to sort of get more volume for like i wanted to produce wilson a little faster and while i was doing that i got the what is it the any cubic viper that yeah yeah that thing's a machine so so my my oldest to 16 and she was making some stuff for her shop class and she knows how to print a little bit but um because i'm down in the basement i couldn't help her out and i said you know go try the viper pretty self-explanatory and one of the texts i got back was this is so much better than the one at our school like you know i could just get stuff done so yeah it's just one of those machines where the the barrier to entry as far as knowledge like you don't have to be a nerd that understands steppers you have to be able to understand how to download a slicer and be able to put it to your machine and you know the basics so that's kind of my new favorite printer is the anacubix um and you know while i was doing wilson 2 i started using this stuff lightweight pla so it foams up and there's some really cool tricks i learned i'm not it's kind of a hybrid between what some of the radio control guys do for aircraft and for both boat hulls and stuff um i've made a modification to it and i kind of think of my 3d models in the inside out but i can print pretty much everything in vase mode and like here give me one sec i'm going to show you that kind of proud of here sure yeah so um make these these uh helmets and an armor or something i love now i'm working on this armor helmet now this here is just a raw print right yeah yep it's it's a standard uh you know dome yep yep so you go on there and then you have like the nose bridge coming down sure yeah so normally when i print these it would take about 10 to 12 hours to to get done that one takes five hours and no supports and there's no overhangs no cleanup it is unreal doing this sort of inside out approach and that's something i'm going to be covering on my channel and on hopefully on some other 3d print channels as well because it's something i think a lot of people need to to figure out because the time savings alone is amazing it's a little tougher and yeah and the other thing too it prints faster like like i said it's like less than half the time i'm running at 40 millimeters per second so i'm running the print head really slow on this too and it's one of those where you slow down to speed up and it's such a bizarre thing to wrap your head around once it gets going i'm trying to wrap my head around this the inside-out approach you're slowing down the nozzle or the right your your xy but it's in the modeling that exactly it's in the modeling imagine like you build in all the ribs um into the model but you have to think in negative space so you have to get it so that if you look at each cross section you're looking down on it can i take a pen and draw a single line all the way around and end at the spot i started now can you do that over and over again on each layer now once you do that and you put like a micro split into the entire model so that when the nozzle comes back to the original spot it kind of bumps into that one wall it creates a rib now since you got that rib you can use that as support so now can i take that support and carry it all the way to the top and once you do that you can start getting really heavy overhangs and it doesn't drop the the filament down because the ribs seem to catch it while it's being built it's yeah yeah and that rib is a byproduct of just you know the the the x y axis or yeah you need to actually draw the entire um perimeter of every layer yeah it's it's it's like that you know can you draw a face without lifting your pen from the paper right right so now now take that to a 3d level and it can really it does mess with your mind but like once you get the basics of it and i'm going to i'm going to go through on how to make that happen it becomes really interesting and like one thing i think is interesting to see if i get the light right so you know how overhangs can be horrific look at the top there that is raw untouched no no overhangs and no support and it printed fine with no gap wow it's it's just weird man well i'm looking forward to that that's fascinating and the fact that you're running off no special you know hardware needed off your your preferred any cubic viper which i have one of those as well also highly recommended you know printing those articulated dragons and slugs all day long it's it's so easy now uh but i'm so looking forward to that and we'll of course include links um for if you're watching the video to ben's youtube channel yes please but ben yes yes absolutely go check out ben's youtube channel watch these videos and you will learn a lot i've certainly learned a lot and we can't wait to have you back in san francisco i can't wait man i really can yeah it's so good to see you so good to catch up as i know it's been been a while i hope you feel better and congratulations again on that successful uh robotic wilson well thank you so much yeah um all right thank you we'll see you soon you betcha man hey everyone it's norm and i want to let you know that this week's episode of this is only a test is made possible with support from backblaze backblaze makes backing up and accessing your data astonishingly easy it's the thing that you don't want to have to stress out about no matter how many places you might have a copy of your files for us it's video files media files photos if you have it on a hard drive a backup local drive a network attached storage you could always use an extra layer of security and for just seven dollars a month you can get unlimited computer backups for macs and pcs on backblaze you can backup documents music photos drawings projects all of your data and access those backup files on the go with their ios and android apps i found that super useful for finding old photos or thumbnails for videos and 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all right so that was ben i think the conversation went well it hasn't happened yet as a recording list but i'm sure it would great uh and uh we'll hopefully see ben more on the site soon uh we gotta do a lot of catching up to with him and uh you should also follow him on his youtube channel where he has a long history of amazing projects and things he's learned that has has made their way into the special effects and props on the films he's worked on all right wrapping up the show i want to get over some stuff we've been testing and sure i want to start with you not necessarily things you have been testing lately but things you're looking forward to testing because i hear you're on a quest it is time uh my uh we have two cars uh one of them is now 12 years old and the other is 10 years old and uh spurred on by either chip shortages or gas prices i finally decided to go on the ev quest um i have actually been looking for a while i'll be very curious to see um how um what um listeners uh recommend uh because generally there's two camps there's the uh tesla has the charting network why don't you just buy a tesla camp uh and then there's the well aren't there other cars to look at cam um and i'm gonna try to be in that second camp and look at as many different evs as possible a neighbor uh got the rivian um i uh test drove a mock e which was so much fun um that was an awesome experience um i have uh spent uh a fair amount of time in some bolts which is like the economy uh version of an eevee right now um and um i'm really interested in the the kia ev6 uh the hyundai ioniq and um the volkswagen id4 as the next three i'm going to be checking out because i'm trying to replace an suv style car um so the crossover and suv kind of styles of those three i think are particularly intriguing i'm not going way out there with any of the kind of futuristic kind of models um or stuff that is pure vaporware that exists out there looking for review um for uh for cars to to check out um over the next few months oh what did you like about the monkey well what you mean awesome fun you get in and you feel um it still retains a little bit of like the the mustang kind of um uh how do i like styling i guess is the best way yeah to put it um you get in and there's um i've been in a few evs where you're like this is all futuristic there's there's too many screens or some stuff is out of place and you get in the maki and it feels like a car still um so like everything is kind of where you sort of expect it to be in the context of an eevee vehicle uh and then you hit the the accelerator and that thing freaking goes um which is the case with all extra cars right i mean all anyone who's in the airport right drive and torque but this is was very much on like the ludicrous speed kind of level um uh of those teslas like this thing goes um and it was it just had like a kind of a fun vibe and that sort of frame which is kind of a suv kind of crossover frame uh is really interesting um so i had a grand old time in that car um it felt sort of uh sensible for an ev compared to like the tesla interior you felt like it was a different design but one that completely made sense uh in the context of how you'd use a a car uh it like handled super super well um and so i just had a blast um driving that car around and i'm not the only one a lot of reviewers have liked that car like a lot of the criticism are um around range and some other factors there the other question i have is for the mock e did they have the fake engine noise turned on or off no it was on are you sure about that if you test drove that at a dealer my guess is no no no i drove it like a a friend has one okay okay but you know that's the thing that they would turn yeah yeah so i'm glad you didn't necessarily have that on because that's one of those things that it's it's it's funny because it's a thing people expect it's weird for people to who have never been in the ev to sit in one feel the torque but not hear the revving up of an engine and this is one of those things that's just makes people feel just like the styling makes them feel more comfortable like this is a more familiar vehicle enough friends have teslas that i think i i feel like i've gotten just accustomed to like like how it feels and operates and i've been and enough friends have teslas at this point that that that feels like the standard of what to expect when you get into ev and when i got into the maki i was like oh this is different um uh but i need to sit in a bunch more uh and i i want to buy a sensible one is the thing like i want to buy a car for the next you know whatever seven to ten years so i'm looking for a sensible choice and i gotta say uh i normally would just go with something like the bolt because it's so it is the sensible of the sensible cars like it's perfectly sized for like city driving and stuff uh but jeremy was right about the bolt the the seat is uncomfortable like you can't i like i sat in a couple and i'm like this sucks to like sit in in traffic and so um i was kind of turned off by that i know that's eminently fixable but it's an interesting time because of the supply shortages because of the urgency and of the gas prices that makes everyone but at the same time supply of the vehicles is is there's a long waiting list right it's like everyone wants to get in on it now but even if they feel like they want to get a tesla the waiting list is so long that people are selling their used cars over msrp and they feel like they can jack up the prices higher and higher because people or take away the features i think uh i read recently that folks buying the new teslas will not get the home charger the plug like the iphone you don't get a charging cable they won't get the home charger they expect you to pay a couple like 250 bucks for one or have the install of the dedicated unit at home or use their charging network it's just that yeah it's a different it was eight months when i contacted tesla about like the waiting period to get one um which is like it's a long time i'm not in any rush so i might wait like a whole year to actually make the purchase like as supply shortages get get sort of sorted out um but i want to like experience as many of the ones that are coming online um as possible it's so funny in the time that we've been doing this podcast over 10 years now we've seen the the not only the rise in number of companies making these cars but really the success of the eevee marketplace and a better but i don't think we it still feels like the early days it still feels like you know this is the in the smartphone analog the the iphone 3 the iphone 3g days right or maybe i would say it may be that i don't think even yeah maybe it might even be at the flip phone stage of evs well i'm saying smartphones smartphones not cell phones in general but in terms of the smartphones where there's a dominant player lots of alternatives that are yeah that come up to market fast because the market is growing but at the same time consumer awareness of the technologies as well as long-term use is not really well-defined so for folks who can wait for maybe the 10-year after like the model 3 uh release like we're talking about you know six years from now six yeah six six five or six years from now it's gonna be really interesting because then we'll hear about what it's like for these cars after a decade of use with not only battery life but maintenance and what the networks look like as well as the competition and hopefully the economy as well as supply chain will stabilize by then where we're not everyone's not just kind of buying on tilt while the prices aren't really um skewed to what they would normally be yeah yeah and we often talk about on this podcast like how a lot of these big companies are looking for like what's the next phone because phones become a commodity we'll talk about vr and ar in that context you know car like electric cars are are the same thing they are uh vehicles of software now more so than they are hardware bits and i'm excited to actually dig into that end of the ev spectrum too you know i we've exclusively talked about the the hardware side of things but i think the the software and that experience is actually going to be um as important for your experience over the long longevity of the of the vehicle um and then i'll wrap up with saying i've been testing of course if you saw and tested a projector uh new dlp projectors uh and really seeing how viable they are compared to like a modern 1500 to 2000 oled television uh and in this category the dlp led lit dlp projectors i think still can't come to the contrast or the brightness of an oled television certainly for daytime viewing but boy i would have have been very pleased and surprised by the quality of a 4k dlp projector compared to what in my head what i thought a you know home consumer projector would uh would yield and being able to project at over 150 inches in mario kart or watch a basketball game on youtube tv is is kind of a life-changing experience at home so i watched that video i'm also very curious about this new generation of short throw projectors so you don't have to you know have this massive amount of space between where your projector is mounted and and where you're going and how much that changes the types of room configurations that you can actually use a projector in um they're a little more expensive those ones are actually uh typically laser lit so you're going to get better brightness or count contrast and there's a lot of recommendations from people from optima projectors uh lg makes a really nice short throw one uh it's one two that's the thing about the lg one yeah and it's expensive though you know it all depends on the size of screen you want because you also still as short throw as it can be the ratio of the distance to screen size means that if you're going to want a you know 150 inch screen you're it's not going to be right at the entertainment center there's still going to be some distance for that to work so there is kind of a sweet spot at around that hundred inches and number one recreation is you gotta get a got to get a good screen as well you know invest in a nice projector screen you can get a nice hundred inch one for 250 bucks on amazon it's a nice stretched out vinyl one uh took me you know 30 minutes to assemble and uh it really makes a difference uh rather than projecting on even a painted wall um in in the kind of whiter off gray um that's it for this week uh and this new format of uh throwing in a mid podcast interview let us know what you think uh and if you have other if you have people that you'd love to see us reach out to and chat with uh we do a mix of interviews that we'll throw to as well as having friends of the site come on and join us for the full hour uh in the future and um some other housekeeping on the site uh we do have some great videos out this week new episode of model behavior with kate um where she teaches you how to make tiny little fake bushes using paint brushes um for your dioramas she's quickly becoming the bob ross of tested yeah those those are super fun uh and um i went to visit our friends at looking glass factory and they showed me some more holographic uh displays light field displays that they have at the 4k and 8k resolution so that was really neat as well and i'm crossing fingers i think i'll have time to finish up a lego build um in a video for this weekend so if that happens then i didn't get to sleep i wanted but you got the video and i got the finished lego build but if it didn't happen then it'll be next week and i did end up getting the sleep that i did i know at least two people have requested this my annual hockey playoff preview will be here next week so look out next week's episode as the hockey playoffs look to begin in about 10 days stop all right a little more than that wow we're reaching that point of the year where we can have all the sports happen at once right is that is that like what is the the festivus for for all the major leagues all the it's baseball extended basketball playoffs hockey and what's still and is it would be is football no but we're still ways away maybe it's the other end of the equation where that's the case all right anyway thanks for listening good to see you sure we'll be back next week and here is an outro a vintage one courtesy of great job hi there i didn't see her all right there's one existential question that's been on my mind for decades um and and it's really one that i think most people have asked and it's it's really why do horses only have one toe whoa why would they have developed one out of that like evolution doesn't be like yeah i don't like that toe get that toe out of here that's the way god wanted it got an answer for that uh nope don't remember but moment of silence shall return all right just like mcu moment of science will return alright see y'all everyone next week byehey let's start the show for thursday or possibly friday april 21st or 22nd 2022 welcome to this is only a test the official podcast of tested dot com hello and welcome to a late podcast this week uh but for good reason which you will see as we as we get through the show i'm norm of course joining me my co-host kishore hari cashore good to see you good to see you as well yeah we are actually recording this early in the week just because of our schedules today i'll give a shout out it's actually my wife danica's birthday happy birthday danica uh happy happy 25th birthday danica exactly looks incredible for that age you know and weird's podcasting i'm podcasting in celebration of her birthday it's okay we all got she got she got a birthday present uh she got she uh the the chris paul lost the phoenix sun's lost so happy birthday to her and everyone who's uh who's not a phoenix suns fan if you're a player we're recording it early in the week and so it's 4 20 somewhere and i loathe 420 and only because i live near golden gate park in san francisco and there is a swarm of people that come to celebrate 420 and i actually don't begrudge them at all i encourage them to have fun i begrudge the people that park in my driveway so that they can enjoy the festivities yeah um and it just makes uh going to work and like picking up my kid from school just like a nightmare that day and so i for one day a year legitimately turn into an old man that has get off my lawn vibes and it's 4 20 that that's gonna happen you turn into the anti-pumpkin turn into that grumpy pumpkin uh i was in that neighborhood earlier today we took a little bit of a lunch break and walked through the san francisco botanical gardens did not smell any pot it was always actually very empty if you are visiting san francisco and you're looking for something to do i highly recommend of course golden gate park our famous park our version of of central park in new york that was the design the city planners when they planned it wanted to make something that was expansive that stretched through the city and we have amazing parts of san francisco including the polo fields that's where the big outside lands concert is uh we have the california academy of sciences which which cove we've covered untested friends have tested uh in casuar of course uh the nightlife events the young museum but the lesser known attractions a mere hop and a skip from the uh california county sciences is the sf botanical gardens the arboretum it's this large botanical preserve that was just it's left to the city it's massive it's and it's not as you know well known as maybe like the japanese tea garden but they're actually run by the same people now and free for sf residents it's only ten dollars to get in if you're looking for a place to maybe smoke some pot don't recommend it take your kids have a great children's area or just go for a leisurely stroll before getting hungry and getting a hot dog right outside the hot dog stand a great way to spend a sunny afternoon in san francisco the rare few ones that we do have i want to see you try to segue your way out of that one uh what was i going to say um what was my what was my segway oh let's go back to we were walking there for danica's birthday and then um i want to talk about some of the things i did get her because i'm very it's like a challenge i don't know if you've been married for for a while in that cash what do you usually get yours your partner or your significant other for their birthdays you trying to make a big deal of it because there are many miles there's like obviously there's the holidays in christmas time there's birthdays there's anniversaries i feel like those are the big you know things every year i try to get something nice and do something nice but it's tough it's getting tougher yeah well we're kind of at the age where we just kind of get what we want and the presents aren't as big of a deal as sort of the events like going out to a nice dinner um or like taking time for a date night away from the kiddo um it's really like the time ends up being um uh the gift as much and the experience uh as much as like a gift itself like yeah you know this year like i want an apple watch for my birthday and like i don't need my wife to get me one of those you're an adult you're a grown man but isn't it nice is it nice it's always nice to get something because you know the person best in the world to get the thing that they would not get themselves or they did not know existed i always try to achieve that so like i had the option and she doesn't listen to this podcast so she doesn't know what the other possibilities are but i was thinking i was gonna get her an ipad mini like jeremy was very happy with his and it's her her ipad's kind of dated now uh so i was like ipad mini she she would love that instead i said no no ipad mini like that that's that's a good let's just we'll we'll find some time and you know an upgrade cycle and get to that at some point of the year for the birthday it's going to be special especially you know we just had our our second kid last year and who just turned one so like it's been a kind of grueling past year with two kids wanted to make it real special and uh there was wondercon this past week and i found a print that was only sold in person at wondercon of wonder woman of course from artist michael cho who did the art for the 80th anniversary issue of wonder woman it's a beautiful piece of art of her parachuting down with steve trevor it's a very vintage like um pop art look to it uh and i got that in a 13 by nine print and um so that that arrived and then i also got our two lego sets both vespas there's a small 115 piece vespa that she opened first and then there was a new uh blue one that was uh ten times as many pieces eleven hundred piece vespa so yeah that's that's not just uh the lego set that's a commitment a promise that we will put that one together as a joint activity so those are the presents that i got got danica uh no no way to no way to to segue forward but uh this is a little bit of a different kind of episode as we talked about last week you know in this new format with jeremy having retired from podcasting we're looking for friends have tested contributors from the site to join us from time to time as well as internet friends people who we may know that we haven't had a chance to really had great conversations with on in this format and uh halfway through this show we are going to be welcoming in friend of tested ben edie fingers cross because we haven't got this video recorded yet as of this today but then edie is going to jump on and we're going to chat with him about some of his recent projects including a very special one he did with tom hanks none other than tom hanks so stay tuned for that later on in the show but we're gonna switch gears and before we do that we'll cover some news and pop culture updates the big news of course we had finally i can say finally because it's no other marvel movie in recent memory has had a trailer first footage appear so close to the release date where we finally have the first teaser trailer to thor love and thunder the fourth installment of thor directed by tech and white tt star chris hemsworth and a return of many familiar faces what did you think ashore uh this was a taiko ytd teaser trailer uh guns and roses perfect gives you the 80s vibes um even though guns roses might be early 90s gives you those vibes right off um right off the bat uh it is uh you see sort of the look and you see probably some scenes that i assume are relatively early in the movie showing um thor's sort of let's say recovery from his bodily state at the end of uh of endgame um we don't get much in this trailer uh it is rumored that the villain well it's confirmed that the villain of this movie is played by christian bale gore the god butcher we don't see any sort of preview of that character we just get one sort of i'd say two payoffs so one we see the gods of mount olympus which i was a little surprised about um that we see like a zooxian type character probably zeus probably zeus i mean literally holding a lightning bolt yes uh and uh so i was surprised that we're gonna get like mount olympus so they're just leaning way into like you know the weird thor kind of ancillary characters um in this movie and then at the end we get a big payoff um of uh natalie portman's uh character um in full costume and she looked good i like how you're dancing around at 200 million people have watched or at least this trailer has been streamed over 200 million times already i think it's fair to say what the character is as they did announce it over three years ago now natalie portman returning to the mcu as jane foster aka also thor wielding the mjolnir a reconstituted reassemble the owner not the one that steve rogers took back to the past in endgame and returned to presumably asgard in in that in that time travel uh you know event but uh the mjolnir that was shattered by hella uh in in thor ragnarok so so many questions so many what'd you think of the costume first and foremost of how she looked oh that's fantastic i mean you're so fun following cosplayers on social media that morning as the cosplayers uh who have you know in the past some of them who have done the comic book interpretation of uh jane foster thor rushed to do 3d modeling 3d printing sketching out laying their claim so saying yes they of course will be making their version of this thor costume i think i thought she looked great um lilly porter looked great she looked like she had done some working out too yeah and so definitely worthy of uh putting on putting on the costume yeah it was really pretty cool uh you mentioned the zeus thing there's of course been much speculation because gore the villain as we know it's played by christian bale not shown in the trailer but the idea is uh he hunts down gods or those who see themselves as as god figures in in uh comics mythology uh and we don't know if the greek gods are gonna survive like the the the the thinking is the zeus cameo or the zeus appearance may just be setting up the stakes of how powerful gore is uh and uh it could be laying the seeds for maybe a post-credits hercules appearance that's that's one of the potential fans uh fan theories i'm laying down my theory now i would love to see henry cavill as hercules i feel like there's better roles for henry cavill sure sure but i think that would be amazing i think he'd have a lot of fun with it that's your new mustache no uh come on that was it take it leave it yes yes yeah he could have he get a full full beard full beard henry cavill um but there are shots in the trailer rip right off of jason aaron's thor run mighty thor run of thor you know seeing fallen gods so again laying the stakes of of um of how they're gonna potentially fight this god killer you saw glimpses of valkyrie running you know the bureaucracy of new asgard including cruise ships and all clearly not looking happy although you see meek and korg so some returning favorites also from thor ragnarok uh no sign of selvig so don't know if he's gonna appear no sign of loki which is true true uh probably the right call the guardians seem like they're just going to be you know i think they've said this as much you know just in the beginning of the film connecting the dots to where they left off with end game but really getting thor on his own path in his own journey a lot of it so much seems to be him finding finding what his path is in this film yeah you know what i didn't need to watch this trailer to be excited about this movie taika what td especially after ragnarok has earned every bit of benefit of the doubt with uh his vision for this movie and it looks just as fun as ragnarok was and um what i'm really hoping for is what is what surprised me about ragnarok uh ragnarok was fun beginning to end but it had some incredible moments of heart um that just like jumped out of the screen uh and a few moments of just like pure villainy that were um very comic booky in how they were executed and i'm just looking for that so i think his vision of gore the god butcher is what i'm most excited about and um probably there's gonna be some tragedy in this uh and i'm looking at you natalie portman um i think she is in trouble yeah yeah in the comics books i mean you can find this on all the phantom pages and wikipedia pages she adopts the power of thor through necessity also because uh they do deal with her having cancer uh as a character so that may be something they tap into it's not necessarily alluded to in here but we don't know if this is gonna be the last standalone thor movie you know no other i think marvel characters has had four movies is that true was there yes there's no yeah right iron man three and that was it right and yeah so we don't know what the future holds for uh for the character and chris hemsworth taking this role so hopefully they tie a bunch of story ends create you know tie that arc together and uh i mean it's it's hard to see him stop you know put put up the cape and let the hammer uh at the end of this but maybe it he walks off into the sunset in much away that uh captain america did uh see rogers did while leaving the door open for some type of cameo coming up later on but that's coming out july 22nd i want to say so we're only a couple months away and i was happy to watch the trailer you know random aside my connection to that song sweet child of mine pro most prominently guitar hero 2. guitar hero 2. that was one of the big songs and part of me watching this trailer wanted to break out that plastic guitar and play it and get the muscle memory back and i would love a guitar hero you know playing the guitar hero song while playing while watching this trailer that'd be a feel it feels like the right right pop culture intersection all right quickly moving on um quick note batman is now on hbo max if you didn't know if you haven't seen it uh it's there's a it's a weird thing people are saying that they're enjoying it maybe less watching at home it feels like warner brothers made the right move putting this on the big screen uh exclusively can i tell you something because of everything that was going on my life i haven't seen the movie yet you haven't yet it's the first batman movie i haven't seen in a movie theater uh and i was hyped about this especially after the nirvana trailer yeah i was sold yeah um but life got in the way and now i'm gonna watch it on hbo max this weekend there you go there you go let me know how you feel sad to say it but that's where i ended up make sure you got your brightness and contrast settings correct on your tv that's my do i have to turn it on like the christian bale filter for batman's like gravel voice no no no the voice is the voice is fantastic he doesn't do gravel voice throughout it's not throughout not throughout you do you see a lot of batman and i think it's actually really his vocal performance is i think fantastic but the movie is dark lit very darkly so there are last scenes where it might be tough to make out the details uh hopefully hdr is something that makes up for that anyway um getting through the rest of the news play date reviews did drop as we talked about last week uh it's glowing reviews i'm not that surprised people love the hardware love the crank love the the interesting mix of these 24 games in the first season the price i think is going to be some off-putting especially for folks now who who if it's if the reviews are to convince people to pre-order one they won't even get to their units until next year since the supply is very limited um and it really i think it's it's positive reinforcement cognitive dissonance for folks who pre-ordered last year last july i believe who are still waiting to get their units this year because it's 180 and for you know 40 more you get a switch so it's kind of a hard sell for folks who are buying a console to actually play modern games it's more of a novelty i think it's the consensus but if you were in the group one pre-orders meaning the first ten thousand uh backers of this they should be shipping imminently and i believe jeremy is in that group so he might be the first of us to get his play date i'm in group two unfortunately yeah so i didn't pre-order this but i have to say i'm surprised by the breadth of games that are in this initial tranche that came out um saturday edition which is kind of like a a kind of a point-and-click kind of uh mystery game especially kind of tickles my fancy um the remake of snake that's called snack looks really interesting to me um a zipper which is a kind of a turn-based strategy game looks really interesting to me these are all really different game types and genres um that i mentioned and so i gotta give a nod to the developer community that they really brought on board for at least this initial tranche now where are we gonna be three six months from now um are we going to be saying the same things i don't know yeah well i mean i'm very excited i i i want that water cooler moment thing i want to try out the crank uh i don't think i'll play it as much as the steam deck but it's a nice novelty and it'll fit in my pocket pants or jacket pocket right this thing that to play five minutes on the go um okay uh we had a little bit of star wars news uh star wars video game news and we do expect much more star wars video game news potentially out of um at a celebration in a month's time now a little over a month's time uh the hope is that we will hear about um uh fallen order part two or founder two whatever the sequel is that's not ea of course but it's not just electronic arts working on star wars games amy hennig working over at sky dance new media uh she was formerly over at naughty dog one of the co-creators of uncharted the game director for the first two uncharted games i believe she is working on interacting a new star wars game a new star wars adventure game which very excited about if it's if it's dna of uncharted mixed with star wars untethered unfettered by electronic arts sign me up yeah original story is what got me uh i'm gonna say something a little out there enough with the lightsabers give me like a normal dude in the star wars universe we're at that point now you have like what everything that the mandalorian is sort of created in terms of filling out the universe we have like han solo and han solo types uh including like lando calrissian and others that are in that kind of genre that fit if they're going with an uncharted motif a little better i just feel like we've gotten so much of them trying to make lightsabers work in games yeah and then like every star wars game is either lightsaber battles or you're in a x-wing or a tie fighter fine we've gotten those games let's get like a scum and villainy game but i think it'd be primarily that but i don't think you're gonna be able to get away from lightsabers there's gonna be lightsabers too strong but i agree i don't think it might be it might not be the foremost weapon in the game like you probably will not be playing a jedi in this and i think you're right the mandalorian improves even the mandalorian that started off uh with uh with no lightsabers they gave him a freaking lightsaber they gave him the darksaber so it's it's just in the dna of star wars it's gonna be in the periphery so yeah i i don't i think it's tough to get away from that that kind of fan service yeah um last bits before we get to our special interview segment uh there's a big update coming up later this year for the quest 2 and it's a hand tracking update this is actually really cool uh the when we saw hand tracking unlocked on the quest 2 it was already a a quest one is it a quest gosh i've i've it's late i've forgotten but quest two hand tracking on quest 2 works really well but it still has some issues with precision and primarily latency and there was a high frequency tracking update that basically doubled the amount of um of sampling that they did with the cameras that reduced you know some jitter but with this new hand tracking update they actually went back and they took all the data they've been using with hand tracking ran it through some machine learning and created new predictive algorithms that what they're calling hand tracking 2.0 is supposed to be a huge vast improvement there's some video that they shared comparing the current hand tracking with what's going to be coming out and they gave this to early access to some developers like hand physics lab and the uh the unplugged air guitar cubism which has hand tracking as a method of play but i've always preferred using the controllers the the precision and they're all raving about it so i'm if this is as good as the videos indicate that's just an incredible thing that they can unlock through improvement of algorithms and software so two things first of all watch the video the video is really really impressive and two you made fun of me last week but tell me this isn't going to improve the experience in some exercise apps um on the quest like i'm not going to use this in like demo or like other games on on the quest but i might use this in a boxing game or or like uh you know one of those uh uh types of experiences um it's impressive from a technology first and foremost don't get me wrong and i think it unlocks a lot of potential but i think you're gonna see it on exercise games first hey gamer nerds i'm not no gamer nerd look how fast i can do my my air boxing uh yeah i i think it's one part of the puzzle that they need to solve for hand tracking to be good for interfaces as well as just further finding the different interaction models that all these games have been experimenting with uh cubism i think is a great example because you know you you have the poses you have to currently do in the hand tracking it's not even just like the latency and precision but the poses to register or click uh i think are not they're not they're sufficient and they're sufficient for things like web browsing but they can't compare to how immediate how responsive and the passive haptics you get from holding a controller and so it for me it'll still be tough but i i will enjoy having it as a as a way to do some more maybe social social applications uh the avatar tracking just having those types of you can grab your glasses and vr oh yeah um yeah i i would i'm gonna go a little out there now but this actually makes me more excited about an ar venture from them if they're if they can get this kind of optical hand tracking right it makes the potential of a of of a future ar uh headset um more interesting i don't even know what the right term is it's not headset glasses whatever you want to call it when it comes to actual precise hand tracking i mean you remember when uh joey and i and adam went to the mars event though oh yeah amazon thing yeah and um while we were there julie filmed um a segment with control labs this is pre-acquisition um by by meta and they had like wearable technologies like a wristband kind of thing um that would track essentially you know nervous system signals um electrical impulses and then use that to actually do precise hand tracking um they're part of meta so i imagine if when we talk about real precision hand tracking we're gonna see a wristband based off of the control labs technology i don't know these are black widow style wristbands that can read your your neural signals and again i think the promise is showing that how machine learning can improve the accuracy of the predictive algorithms even if the control lab stuff they're working on now isn't as like responsive or isn't as accurate as you would want a magical mind reading device wristband to be over time and overuse the promise is that they can be that accurate and that that magical because of all the machine training and all the improvements in the software that they're going to make they have enough of that data both in combination of the optical uh looking your hands as well as the actual neural signals um okay uh the coolest thing we've seen this week uh maybe the second coolest thing i'll say just to tee this up second coolest thing we saw this week is a 4k scan of a 16 millimeter print of film and that film was nintendo's first anime movie a super mario brothers movie called the great mission to rescue princess peach released in japan in 1986 that's right this must be terrible stories it i mean it's not great but it is so charming both in the animation this is mid 80s japanese animation and mario the first attempt of putting mario with the sensibilities of anime back then is this pre or post lou albano as mario oh this is way pre pre okay yeah uh femboy films uh did a 4k remaster scan the 60 millimeter print that two channel dolby surround sound audio captured from the vhs release english subtitles it's on the internet archive i'll click include a link to the youtube you can watch the full hour-long movie for free on youtube and it's a great way to spend an hour on 420 let's just say there you go hey everyone before we continue on this week i want to let you know that this is only a test is made possible this week from the stack overflow podcast which you should check out wondering which skills you need to break into the world of technology or level up as a developer curious about how the tools and framework you use everyday were created the stack overflow podcast is your resource for tough coding questions and your home for candid conversations with guests from leading tech companies about the art and practice of programming for 13 years the stack overflow podcast has been exploring what it means to be a developer and how the art and practice of software programming is changing our world as i'm sure has been changing in their industry as well the show dives in the topics that matter from a listenership of developers tech enthusiasts and educators of all stages of their careers at this moment and provides tangible tools and conversations about the infrastructure in tech right now with new episodes twice a week the show dives into topics like web code security cloud infrastructure and how ai can solve real world problems and more listen at stackoverflow.com podcasts or at any major podcast platform now back to the show but the coolest thing we saw this past week was actually the baseball game the cleveland guardians baseball team faced off against the san francisco giants last week and throwing out the ceremonial first pitch was none other than tom hanks tom hanks did the first pitch start his career in cleveland um as his acting career and joining him on the mound was a friend that friend being wilson the volleyball he brought a volleyball i know it's a little weird what he was in a baseball movie called a league of their own but he went with castaway you got to go okay you just gotta go with it he brought the cast away he brought he brought the volleyball it was painted face on it set it on the mound got ready to throw the pitch and as he was ready to throw the pitch wilson came alive or had a mind of its own rolled off of the mound he picked it back up put it back on it rolled off again it did a little ran around the field a little bit a little bit of a head nod to the camera it was a little bit of high jinks ensued and then of course tom hanks to the pitch decent pitch guardians lost giants won go giants and everyone's left learning how did they make that happen and to answer that we have a guest our guest this week ben edie friend of tested who actually worked with tom hanks uh recommended by adam i think i can say uh and made this remote controlled wilson ball come alive so let's take a listen to a conversation i had with men about his projects and about this project in particular so i am so thrilled to now invite to the podcast and welcome to the podcast our friend ben edie ben hey hello it's been so long how you been it's uh you don't know what i've been around everywhere it's been it's been busy but uh yeah yeah yeah for folks who i may have seen our ghostbusters coverage uh i and we on the test team met ben in person uh uh on set uh many years ago now gosh it must have been 2019 summer 2018 where you were running the props on the set of ghostbusters afterlife and uh it was so fun hanging out with you where adam got to geek out with you in the props trailer people loved that footage and since then i mean obviously the movie we all loved it uh but you've had a great opportunity to dive deeper in some of the work you did and the props team did um and how you've been enjoying that what even what you've been uh able to share you know what it's this is one thing where i seem to have developed enough trust with sony and ghost core that um i can share as much as i want they seem to trust that i'm not going to wreck anything so i've been very very lucky as somebody who's worked on a movie that this is unheard of sort of as far as like being allowed to do but um they've trusted me and so far it's been working out really well and uh yeah we got to take um i got to write it wrong i uh squish one of the rtvs it was completely destroyed and uh yeah i used that as an excuse to admit to them that i kind of took the pieces of the prop home with me and wanted to fix it so we did the the air tv rebuild and man that was a lot of fun you know it was it was frustrating but you know it was pretty fun absolutely and and we've been off on a few you know uh movie sets before met a few people who who work in props department and some of the things we love are people like you are just great obviously amazing engineers and professionals who can work in that production environment and for the needs of production which i'm sure as you can explain are maybe different than the needs of prop making for personal use or convention use right so but also you come from the community as well and you're like the other folks working on ghostbusters become stewards of the franchise and keeping true to the original and and making sure keeping everyone you know kind of honest about what's uh what fans know and love about these props well very much so and it's it's i was such wow i'm kind of full mixed because i still like it it is a dream come true it forever will be the when i was getting hired or when i went in for the interviews and stuff they asked me how much of a fan i was and i reached into my into the case that i brought with me with like my portfolio and i pulled out some resistors for proton pack and i slept on my table and i said well i'm this much of a fan is that you know i'm building stuff right now and i think that was pretty much the clincher right but they they actively looked for a lot of people in the movie for that is that like are you a fan that was like one of the critical questions and if if you couldn't answer it properly then you know maybe you didn't make the cut so it really you know everybody there on set everybody just loved it you could see the eyes are all dilated and bugged out because you doping i can't believe this and it was by no means your first rodeo because you've done you know plenty of stuff but for people who don't know because we didn't meet you know you and meet you until uh ghostbusters after life can you share some of the other projects you've been on and some of the fun engineering challenges and prop making challenges you've had to do yeah so like you know i've done everything like i started on star trek beyond again that was uh a dream come true right dream come true right yeah but i was more in special effects so i did a lot of the the giant rotating sets and stuff like that but there were things where there was the the power uh the power console that or hero had to you know decommission before the ship crashed and they they brought me the the art design and everything for that and i was like well it kind of works but the handles aren't going to be the right size and all this so i got to you know play a little bit in the prop side of things um then later on you know i did i've done like death note and maze runner predator and a few others but again everything was in special effects really cut my teeth and props by coming into ghostbusters now ghostbusters was this is where the props have special effects built into them because of that there's a lot of people going ooh that's not mine you know effects is like and we're not really the electronics kind of guys but you know we can we can try but it's not our thing and the props people are like well this is special effects and it's not ours and i just happened to walk in the door going hey you know i'm really good at electronics and stuff and and i can do props here or some other cosplays and they're like we need you so you know kind of round about how i've gotten to where i am and and i find that i'm getting stuff outside of movies now um you know uh recent project with with wilson was kind of a good example of that so yeah yeah well let's talk about that because that right is that intersection of prop making and some effects work because it had to be a real practical effect for a live broadcast yeah uh we we explained a little bit of the the scenario that happened with the the opening of the uh the pitch uh the first pitch that tom hanks did yeah um but you were brought into the project you had this brief of uh the constraints the parameters of this um and how did it happen how how did you guys make it work how did we make it work um you know basically it come down to is tom called me up and said hey you know i want wilson to roll around like a bb-8 and i'm like yeah and uh he's like can you do it and i said me personally i can't but i can i can get a team i can make this happen it's not you know not a huge deal and um this is one thing where a lot of people don't necessarily stand i'm not an island i i happen to be the forward-facing person for a lot of the stuff i do but i'm always part of a team it's never just me there's no way i could complete half the things i do so um got a hold of some friends and they put me in touch with the guy who actually developed the severo and invented it and said hey can we make this happen and he's like oh yeah yeah we could totally make this happen so we ended up with he developed this platform for me it's a little different than the sphero it's a lot more basic where it actually spins the ball it's physically connected at these two points and the reason we did that is because it's live you want it to be as robust as possible and there's so many different failure modes with some of the other spheric robots that this was sort of like the best choice um and simplicity in this case is obviously the best the best choice and so he did that and i worked on the the shell and the painting and everything so we've got there was two wilsons one is never enough so you always got to make two in case the first one breaks especially if it's a live event and so you know this was like the first major live event i've ever done and the nerves are similar but like they're amplified because you know that like you've got one take you have no choice this is this is it right yeah so you know you kind of freak out but again um i'm good at driving radio controlled stuff but i have a guy who drove the rtv um here in town and i called him up and said hey do you think you could drive this this ball robot and he said yeah let's give it a try so he drove it around and obviously he can hit his marks every time where i can't so um you know you always bring in the people that you know can do stuff and and he pulled it off mike's just yeah i i can't say enough about this this mike he's such a good person and he's calm and it's funny because like he seems like he's the calmest person in the world and no worries and after the event he's like oh my god it's nerve-wracking and thrilling at the same time i'm sure uh and then you mentioned the the bb-8 inspiration and it makes me think of all our friends who are the robot builders right who who are also have you know done work with disney and then stage work or parade work and and even that sorrow or celebration when they first rolled out the robot bb-8 on stage and everyone fell in love with bb-8 and that was that was like an unveiling and you you have to it doesn't just have to function like in a novel way being a spherical robot it has to perform it it's a character wilson has a face you know people have this connection there's a relationship that the fans have with tom hanks and wilson a the expectation if you will of the relationship um and it was real so cool i mean there's a whole bit right it was like a very important thing it wasn't just you know rolling around for rolling around sake and it was funny too because we're doing it live we can hear the announcer and they they had no idea that this was happening all right so like there was there was a day before we went out into the field and one of the announcers the guy that was announcing everybody onto the field was was there but the the other announcers calling the game had no idea so they saw it roll off and they're like yeah it's windy down there hahaha that rolls down again and they're like that's moving further than it is is it remote control that i kind of giggling stuff like you know and it's a lot of fun doing that kind of stuff for sure and it's yeah it is what it is it there's so much that you can do and and surprise people and and you could hear the the crowd really ramped up as soon as they realized it like he's alive and yeah it was so much fun yeah did you get a chance to see the the broadcast and and how they filmed it i presume the broadcast people were either in on it or they adapted fast enough to get a tight shot in a close-up shot right see the little the head camera camera knew that there's a camera um and we had we had planned everything so like you know wilson's face was going to be prominent when he put it down but as soon as the ball's rolling around you know let's show the the c on the back to show that you know the the guardian's logo and everything so you know we went with that and yeah you know it's i don't know the i'm still kind of coming down off of it it was only a few days ago and i'm i'm still kind of absorbing like what just happened well congratulations on such a fun project and a successful project and a a team effort like you said you know not just not just one person doing it all it's a bunch of different disciplines from you know the oh very rc control and and yeah the robotics inside yeah um yeah i want to switch gears a little bit and talk about some of the stuff that uh we we know you for because when you were down last in san francisco you uh were working with adam on his proton pack yes and one of the things of super you sean charlesworth and chapter all i mean again years ago now in this pre-pandemic time one of the things that you incorporated into this pack that blew my mind and like at that point couldn't really even fully comprehend it was the lighting oh my god and talk talk about your experience with lighting like the kind of principles that you use and the tech that you use because that seems to be an area that's rapidly changing and rapidly improving it is and it's it's it's so interesting because like you know back then super cutting edge stuff that i was playing with it was a company coming out and um they've changed names i'm not going to say the old name but the new name is called beconics and they come up with a really good graphic user interface for people to program things with lights and i've been working with them since um like ghostbusters time essentially and you know we've been going back and forth on what they should and shouldn't do with with their uh user interface um and you know in the end it's always these little tiny tweaks right but it's it's so easy to use it's like this drag and drop where you you get a micro controller like an itsy bitsy nrf um i i'll have to get you some links and stuff to to some of these boards but there's certain ones that work with it and the key here is that it's not necessarily wired you can wire it in the first time just sort of to rate that that initial program but after that it's all bluetooth and because it's bluetooth um i've looked like a hero on set like say fraggle rock for instance we were doing a thing where we had a modem it was blinking and they said well can it blink faster it can blink slower now normally when you do stuff like that you're like oh my god i got to plug into it i got to reprogram it's going to take a few minutes literally pull up my cell phone and go okay yeah and i i knew things like that would come up so i made three or four different programs changed the program said is that what you want and they just went like what they were expecting you know shut down it's like no rolling and it's it's really good so then you know there's some friends of mine here in town they started a company where they made their own boards and they're called enlightened boards and what i really love is it this is the full board to run a lighting system and you can run like the adam's proton pack right from the wand to everything on the pack you can run off that little tiny microcontroller and it's all bluetooth so you can control it with your phone or put in switches and we've been working with them to get servos and stuff worked into it so i think it's going to be a full-on robotics platform eventually but um in the meantime i'm kind of sharing it and it's one of those secrets where it's not a secret but it's something i've always held close to my chest because that's kind of what gets me hired in the movies is my ability to adapt really fast especially with lighting little things like that um but now i'm getting to the point where i'm really tired of holding these secrets and as much as it hurts to see other guys run with it it's like well okay here's the secret go and see what happens and i think the world's gonna be a little bit of a better place not just with movies but like i think it's it's enough to get the people who have the algorithm in their head but can't code this will be the solution to them to take that next step forward that you don't necessarily need to code you just have to have that idea and work the algorithm out through these timelines in their in their software yeah like friendly user interface yeah we'll definitely include some links to that but i think you're right i mean the sharing information and i i i would say that it's not just knowing the name the rumple still skidding yeah of the technology that's important but even as you described it the preparedness right it's that's it's about anticipating the needs of of of production and being prepared to adapt and yes they they're used to the maybe electronics being a slow thing or effects being a slow thing yeah but like that's what that's what's going to get you the job is is being able to huge you know there's so many people i'm i was just on hackaday on this this chat and we were talking about things and i said like that i spend you know 50 percent or maybe even 40 actually building the props or the effect i spend the remainder of the time like going through and thinking like how many ways can this get broken and literally taking the first iteration nick you always build multiples and you beat up that first one you put it through everything that you think it shouldn't do because it will happen and if once you figure out all the modes of failure it makes it very easy to recover from something and it also um wilson's a perfect example of this is we're monkeying around with it and i found that like if we instead of just driving it nicely that if i did full forward and went to full reverse but like a left spin it would do this really weird kind of jerky move but it looked like a spun out kid and i i showed this to tom and he's like that's perfect so in the video at the baseball game you can see him doing this really where it almost looks like he's glitching and it turns out to be one of those things where it's a mistake that turns into a feature so you know during this experimentation time not only do you learn the modes of failure you might be able to find something that's more fun to do in the end anyways yeah yeah totally yeah happy accidents and and being prepared so you can run with it yeah when those things um pop up uh the other thing that you i mean you have so many like passion projects but one thing we've covered that i wanted to kind of get an update on is uh the chain mail that you've been working on the the foam chain mail how's that going and um anything new in that world you know there's there's not a whole lot new in that world um you know it was what six eight months ago maybe actually i think it was just about this time last year um we'd launched the scale mail version of it and did a kickstarter holy like i i try not to swear it blew me away we figured like you know we were trying to fundraise for 5000 and we raised just about 50. um it kind of blew us away and and you know we're we we've had all these growing pains with this you know we've had to hire people to help us out with it and you know i've given the work that i do and the way i'm bouncing around it's very difficult for me to necessarily help with that so my my business partner stephanie's chan is is just killing it she's running everything and managing it in fact she's at the calgary comic con right now um while i'm talking to you and i'm in my basement with uh just getting over kovis so you know it seems to be this constant where she's a superhero that takes care of everything but yeah we're doing well and we're slowly developing we're looking at what our our next steps will be we're looking at uh laser-cut kits for like say helmets or different cosplay patterns and stuff like that and uh yeah we'll we're taking a look at doing some larger uh scale mail and and other sort of different patterns for scale mail um on top of that too is we've been approached by um some different movie companies and stuff going hey you know can we use your stuff so you know we're working out how to deal with that you know there's there's a lot to think about as far as it's easy enough to make in-house now do we let them go and get their own die and cut that as long as they mention us or like how does that all work yeah learning experience so yeah totally totally yeah wow that sounds like a lot of fun uh and the community is really thankful that you're manufacturing that uh it looks fantastic and keep us keep us informed because it'd be really fun to to do more with that oh yeah absolutely the next iteration um and what what's uh what else is on the horizon for you you know you guys wrapped up the wilson project um are you jumping onto more productions that you can't talk about and more personal stuff i know you have obviously put out a bunch of videos like we mentioned in the beginning with the ghostbusters stuff on your youtube channel yeah so the youtube channel i'm trying to to get that going a little more trying to get a little more traction maybe make a little bit of money off of it um and you know i'm going to be covering the the wilson i'm going to be covering the build on that um and i'm hoping to collaborate with you know different different channels there's some 3d print channels and i'm hoping custom might be interested in having me come and and run through it and um you know i've got a whole bunch of other cool builds i've i've got some robot walkers and stuff i've been wanting to do um and i've also been approached by a couple production companies about doing some other shows and like in the movie industry that's about the extent of what i'm allowed to say it you know it could be the hardest part of any production is is not being able to scream at everybody going you go believe the job i got well it sounds like you're having a ton of fun and yes i think i feel comfortable saying on half of tested we'd love to have you of course come back to san francisco yeah and hang out and spend some time you know talking about the bills showing your builds off to adam of course uh and doing some collaborations here as well are you are you doing 3d printing yourself any of the 3d printers you're really liking or digging yeah you know what um i've always had the the sidewinder at the artillery sidewinder had i got one of the the first production first ones off the line to to test out for my youtube channel years ago and the thing's a workhorse it just keeps going and go on and go on very little maintenance but um recently i needed to sort of get more volume for like i wanted to produce wilson a little faster and while i was doing that i got the what is it the any cubic viper that yeah yeah that thing's a machine so so my my oldest to 16 and she was making some stuff for her shop class and she knows how to print a little bit but um because i'm down in the basement i couldn't help her out and i said you know go try the viper pretty self-explanatory and one of the texts i got back was this is so much better than the one at our school like you know i could just get stuff done so yeah it's just one of those machines where the the barrier to entry as far as knowledge like you don't have to be a nerd that understands steppers you have to be able to understand how to download a slicer and be able to put it to your machine and you know the basics so that's kind of my new favorite printer is the anacubix um and you know while i was doing wilson 2 i started using this stuff lightweight pla so it foams up and there's some really cool tricks i learned i'm not it's kind of a hybrid between what some of the radio control guys do for aircraft and for both boat hulls and stuff um i've made a modification to it and i kind of think of my 3d models in the inside out but i can print pretty much everything in vase mode and like here give me one sec i'm going to show you that kind of proud of here sure yeah so um make these these uh helmets and an armor or something i love now i'm working on this armor helmet now this here is just a raw print right yeah yep it's it's a standard uh you know dome yep yep so you go on there and then you have like the nose bridge coming down sure yeah so normally when i print these it would take about 10 to 12 hours to to get done that one takes five hours and no supports and there's no overhangs no cleanup it is unreal doing this sort of inside out approach and that's something i'm going to be covering on my channel and on hopefully on some other 3d print channels as well because it's something i think a lot of people need to to figure out because the time savings alone is amazing it's a little tougher and yeah and the other thing too it prints faster like like i said it's like less than half the time i'm running at 40 millimeters per second so i'm running the print head really slow on this too and it's one of those where you slow down to speed up and it's such a bizarre thing to wrap your head around once it gets going i'm trying to wrap my head around this the inside-out approach you're slowing down the nozzle or the right your your xy but it's in the modeling that exactly it's in the modeling imagine like you build in all the ribs um into the model but you have to think in negative space so you have to get it so that if you look at each cross section you're looking down on it can i take a pen and draw a single line all the way around and end at the spot i started now can you do that over and over again on each layer now once you do that and you put like a micro split into the entire model so that when the nozzle comes back to the original spot it kind of bumps into that one wall it creates a rib now since you got that rib you can use that as support so now can i take that support and carry it all the way to the top and once you do that you can start getting really heavy overhangs and it doesn't drop the the filament down because the ribs seem to catch it while it's being built it's yeah yeah and that rib is a byproduct of just you know the the the x y axis or yeah you need to actually draw the entire um perimeter of every layer yeah it's it's it's like that you know can you draw a face without lifting your pen from the paper right right so now now take that to a 3d level and it can really it does mess with your mind but like once you get the basics of it and i'm going to i'm going to go through on how to make that happen it becomes really interesting and like one thing i think is interesting to see if i get the light right so you know how overhangs can be horrific look at the top there that is raw untouched no no overhangs and no support and it printed fine with no gap wow it's it's just weird man well i'm looking forward to that that's fascinating and the fact that you're running off no special you know hardware needed off your your preferred any cubic viper which i have one of those as well also highly recommended you know printing those articulated dragons and slugs all day long it's it's so easy now uh but i'm so looking forward to that and we'll of course include links um for if you're watching the video to ben's youtube channel yes please but ben yes yes absolutely go check out ben's youtube channel watch these videos and you will learn a lot i've certainly learned a lot and we can't wait to have you back in san francisco i can't wait man i really can yeah it's so good to see you so good to catch up as i know it's been been a while i hope you feel better and congratulations again on that successful uh robotic wilson well thank you so much yeah um all right thank you we'll see you soon you betcha man hey everyone it's norm and i want to let you know that this week's episode of this is only a test is made possible with support from backblaze backblaze makes backing up and accessing your data astonishingly easy it's the thing that you don't want to have to stress out about no matter how many places you might have a copy of your files for us it's video files media files photos if you have it on a hard drive a backup local drive a network attached storage you could always use an extra layer of security and for just seven dollars a month you can get unlimited computer backups for macs and pcs on backblaze you can backup documents music photos drawings projects all of your data and access those backup files on the go with their ios and android apps i found that super useful for finding old photos or thumbnails for videos and 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all right so that was ben i think the conversation went well it hasn't happened yet as a recording list but i'm sure it would great uh and uh we'll hopefully see ben more on the site soon uh we gotta do a lot of catching up to with him and uh you should also follow him on his youtube channel where he has a long history of amazing projects and things he's learned that has has made their way into the special effects and props on the films he's worked on all right wrapping up the show i want to get over some stuff we've been testing and sure i want to start with you not necessarily things you have been testing lately but things you're looking forward to testing because i hear you're on a quest it is time uh my uh we have two cars uh one of them is now 12 years old and the other is 10 years old and uh spurred on by either chip shortages or gas prices i finally decided to go on the ev quest um i have actually been looking for a while i'll be very curious to see um how um what um listeners uh recommend uh because generally there's two camps there's the uh tesla has the charting network why don't you just buy a tesla camp uh and then there's the well aren't there other cars to look at cam um and i'm gonna try to be in that second camp and look at as many different evs as possible a neighbor uh got the rivian um i uh test drove a mock e which was so much fun um that was an awesome experience um i have uh spent uh a fair amount of time in some bolts which is like the economy uh version of an eevee right now um and um i'm really interested in the the kia ev6 uh the hyundai ioniq and um the volkswagen id4 as the next three i'm going to be checking out because i'm trying to replace an suv style car um so the crossover and suv kind of styles of those three i think are particularly intriguing i'm not going way out there with any of the kind of futuristic kind of models um or stuff that is pure vaporware that exists out there looking for review um for uh for cars to to check out um over the next few months oh what did you like about the monkey well what you mean awesome fun you get in and you feel um it still retains a little bit of like the the mustang kind of um uh how do i like styling i guess is the best way yeah to put it um you get in and there's um i've been in a few evs where you're like this is all futuristic there's there's too many screens or some stuff is out of place and you get in the maki and it feels like a car still um so like everything is kind of where you sort of expect it to be in the context of an eevee vehicle uh and then you hit the the accelerator and that thing freaking goes um which is the case with all extra cars right i mean all anyone who's in the airport right drive and torque but this is was very much on like the ludicrous speed kind of level um uh of those teslas like this thing goes um and it was it just had like a kind of a fun vibe and that sort of frame which is kind of a suv kind of crossover frame uh is really interesting um so i had a grand old time in that car um it felt sort of uh sensible for an ev compared to like the tesla interior you felt like it was a different design but one that completely made sense uh in the context of how you'd use a a car uh it like handled super super well um and so i just had a blast um driving that car around and i'm not the only one a lot of reviewers have liked that car like a lot of the criticism are um around range and some other factors there the other question i have is for the mock e did they have the fake engine noise turned on or off no it was on are you sure about that if you test drove that at a dealer my guess is no no no i drove it like a a friend has one okay okay but you know that's the thing that they would turn yeah yeah so i'm glad you didn't necessarily have that on because that's one of those things that it's it's it's funny because it's a thing people expect it's weird for people to who have never been in the ev to sit in one feel the torque but not hear the revving up of an engine and this is one of those things that's just makes people feel just like the styling makes them feel more comfortable like this is a more familiar vehicle enough friends have teslas that i think i i feel like i've gotten just accustomed to like like how it feels and operates and i've been and enough friends have teslas at this point that that that feels like the standard of what to expect when you get into ev and when i got into the maki i was like oh this is different um uh but i need to sit in a bunch more uh and i i want to buy a sensible one is the thing like i want to buy a car for the next you know whatever seven to ten years so i'm looking for a sensible choice and i gotta say uh i normally would just go with something like the bolt because it's so it is the sensible of the sensible cars like it's perfectly sized for like city driving and stuff uh but jeremy was right about the bolt the the seat is uncomfortable like you can't i like i sat in a couple and i'm like this sucks to like sit in in traffic and so um i was kind of turned off by that i know that's eminently fixable but it's an interesting time because of the supply shortages because of the urgency and of the gas prices that makes everyone but at the same time supply of the vehicles is is there's a long waiting list right it's like everyone wants to get in on it now but even if they feel like they want to get a tesla the waiting list is so long that people are selling their used cars over msrp and they feel like they can jack up the prices higher and higher because people or take away the features i think uh i read recently that folks buying the new teslas will not get the home charger the plug like the iphone you don't get a charging cable they won't get the home charger they expect you to pay a couple like 250 bucks for one or have the install of the dedicated unit at home or use their charging network it's just that yeah it's a different it was eight months when i contacted tesla about like the waiting period to get one um which is like it's a long time i'm not in any rush so i might wait like a whole year to actually make the purchase like as supply shortages get get sort of sorted out um but i want to like experience as many of the ones that are coming online um as possible it's so funny in the time that we've been doing this podcast over 10 years now we've seen the the not only the rise in number of companies making these cars but really the success of the eevee marketplace and a better but i don't think we it still feels like the early days it still feels like you know this is the in the smartphone analog the the iphone 3 the iphone 3g days right or maybe i would say it may be that i don't think even yeah maybe it might even be at the flip phone stage of evs well i'm saying smartphones smartphones not cell phones in general but in terms of the smartphones where there's a dominant player lots of alternatives that are yeah that come up to market fast because the market is growing but at the same time consumer awareness of the technologies as well as long-term use is not really well-defined so for folks who can wait for maybe the 10-year after like the model 3 uh release like we're talking about you know six years from now six yeah six six five or six years from now it's gonna be really interesting because then we'll hear about what it's like for these cars after a decade of use with not only battery life but maintenance and what the networks look like as well as the competition and hopefully the economy as well as supply chain will stabilize by then where we're not everyone's not just kind of buying on tilt while the prices aren't really um skewed to what they would normally be yeah yeah and we often talk about on this podcast like how a lot of these big companies are looking for like what's the next phone because phones become a commodity we'll talk about vr and ar in that context you know car like electric cars are are the same thing they are uh vehicles of software now more so than they are hardware bits and i'm excited to actually dig into that end of the ev spectrum too you know i we've exclusively talked about the the hardware side of things but i think the the software and that experience is actually going to be um as important for your experience over the long longevity of the of the vehicle um and then i'll wrap up with saying i've been testing of course if you saw and tested a projector uh new dlp projectors uh and really seeing how viable they are compared to like a modern 1500 to 2000 oled television uh and in this category the dlp led lit dlp projectors i think still can't come to the contrast or the brightness of an oled television certainly for daytime viewing but boy i would have have been very pleased and surprised by the quality of a 4k dlp projector compared to what in my head what i thought a you know home consumer projector would uh would yield and being able to project at over 150 inches in mario kart or watch a basketball game on youtube tv is is kind of a life-changing experience at home so i watched that video i'm also very curious about this new generation of short throw projectors so you don't have to you know have this massive amount of space between where your projector is mounted and and where you're going and how much that changes the types of room configurations that you can actually use a projector in um they're a little more expensive those ones are actually uh typically laser lit so you're going to get better brightness or count contrast and there's a lot of recommendations from people from optima projectors uh lg makes a really nice short throw one uh it's one two that's the thing about the lg one yeah and it's expensive though you know it all depends on the size of screen you want because you also still as short throw as it can be the ratio of the distance to screen size means that if you're going to want a you know 150 inch screen you're it's not going to be right at the entertainment center there's still going to be some distance for that to work so there is kind of a sweet spot at around that hundred inches and number one recreation is you gotta get a got to get a good screen as well you know invest in a nice projector screen you can get a nice hundred inch one for 250 bucks on amazon it's a nice stretched out vinyl one uh took me you know 30 minutes to assemble and uh it really makes a difference uh rather than projecting on even a painted wall um in in the kind of whiter off gray um that's it for this week uh and this new format of uh throwing in a mid podcast interview let us know what you think uh and if you have other if you have people that you'd love to see us reach out to and chat with uh we do a mix of interviews that we'll throw to as well as having friends of the site come on and join us for the full hour uh in the future and um some other housekeeping on the site uh we do have some great videos out this week new episode of model behavior with kate um where she teaches you how to make tiny little fake bushes using paint brushes um for your dioramas she's quickly becoming the bob ross of tested yeah those those are super fun uh and um i went to visit our friends at looking glass factory and they showed me some more holographic uh displays light field displays that they have at the 4k and 8k resolution so that was really neat as well and i'm crossing fingers i think i'll have time to finish up a lego build um in a video for this weekend so if that happens then i didn't get to sleep i wanted but you got the video and i got the finished lego build but if it didn't happen then it'll be next week and i did end up getting the sleep that i did i know at least two people have requested this my annual hockey playoff preview will be here next week so look out next week's episode as the hockey playoffs look to begin in about 10 days stop all right a little more than that wow we're reaching that point of the year where we can have all the sports happen at once right is that is that like what is the the festivus for for all the major leagues all the it's baseball extended basketball playoffs hockey and what's still and is it would be is football no but we're still ways away maybe it's the other end of the equation where that's the case all right anyway thanks for listening good to see you sure we'll be back next week and here is an outro a vintage one courtesy of great job hi there i didn't see her all right there's one existential question that's been on my mind for decades um and and it's really one that i think most people have asked and it's it's really why do horses only have one toe whoa why would they have developed one out of that like evolution doesn't be like yeah i don't like that toe get that toe out of here that's the way god wanted it got an answer for that uh nope don't remember but moment of silence shall return all right just like mcu moment of science will return alright see y'all everyone next week bye\n"