TCLP 2011-07-06 Interview: Thomas Gideon (Comment Line 240-949-2638)




The Command Line Podcast show

Summary: This is a feature cast, an episode of The Command Line Podcast. There is no hacker word of the week this week. The feature this week is what I thought might be a delightful surprise, where a frequent guest of the podcast over these past six years interviews me in honor of my recent podcast anniversary. In the interview, Data General’s mini-computers figured prominently in my early memories. In discussion of adversity and its role in pedagogy, I refer to Spolsky’s Law of Leaky Abstraction. In considering the future cost of technology choices, my interviewer referred to the Final Cut Pro X kerfuffle. The MC Chris hit, Fett’s Vette was suggested in response to my Dad’s ’63 Corvette which he has to this day. Robert Asprin’s Myth Adventures books were some of the earliest genre fiction in which my mom got me interested. All of my enjoyment of science fiction was inspired by her. Towards the end of the interview, we chatted about one of the higher profile projects, Commotion, at my new day job. I gave the example of AWMN as a mesh that did and still does do more than just share internet access. Turning to the state of podcasting, I cited Nathan Lowell as an excellent example of an author who both gets the power of different media and who has used newer media to incrementally build modest success. My other podcast, with which I am experiencing trouble getting into iTunes, is the Living Proof Brew Cast. More news, commentary, and alternate feeds available at http://thecommandline.net/. View the detailed show notes online. You can grab the flac encoded audio from the Internet Archive. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.