399: Hey, What's Going On?
Transcript from 399: Hey, What's Going On? with Jen Costillo, Elecia White, and Christopher White.
EW (00:00:06):
Welcome to Embedded. I'm Elecia White alongside Christopher White. Remember what Owl sounded like in the last Winnie-the-Pooh reading? Well, let's talk more about voices and what it means for our talking devices. I'm pleased to welcome Jen Costillo back to the show.
CW (00:00:24):
Hey, Jen, it's nice to talk to you.
JC (00:00:26):
Hi, nice to be back.
EW (00:00:29):
It has been a long, long time
CW (00:00:33):
7,000 years.
JC (00:00:35):
How long you've been doing podcast?
EW (00:00:37):
400th is coming up, and we don't do 50 a year. So, that's a long time. But since it has been a long time, could you introduce yourself as though we had never heard your podcast or knew anything about you?
JC (00:00:57):
Sure. I'll keep it shortish. Hi, I'm Jen Costillo and I'm a firmware engineer who loves to work on wearables and sensor-related items, including the awful, awful Amazon Fire Phone. You're not supposed to laugh, but also I'm a dancer, I do fashion design, occasionally as part of doing the wearables. And lately, I've been doing a lot of knitting and voiceover.
EW (00:01:34):
Okay. Are you ready for lightning round?
JC (00:01:39):
Can you ever be ready for lightning round?
CW (00:01:41):
We're not.
JC (00:01:42):
Okay.
CW (00:01:42):
We are not ready.
JC (00:01:43):
Do you want me to feed you questions?
EW (00:01:45):
Yeah, go ahead.
CW (00:01:46):
What?
EW (00:01:46):
Go ahead. Jen, it's your turn.
JC (00:01:49):
Okay. Which is your favorite nostril to pick?
CW (00:01:51):
I'll just think about that. Oh, of my own?
JC (00:02:02):
Oh, yeah.
CW (00:02:03):
Well, that limits it too much.
JC (00:02:05):
It does.
EW (00:02:05):
Okay. How about favorite Looney Tunes cartoon voice?
JC (00:02:09):
Okay. It's either going to be Marvin the Martian or Babs Bunny, which depending on whether you count her as part of the original, which is probably just also Dot Warner, same woman. Yeah.
CW (00:02:30):
Fictional robot with the best voice.
JC (00:02:41):
I really love Alan Rickman's voice and when he was in Hitchhiker's Guide, I love that one, but I had to recently do an AI voice for class and I had to rewatch 2001. So, I'm going to go with H. Jon Benjamin's HAL.
CW (00:02:58):
It's just so relaxed. So relaxed and menacing.
JC (00:03:02):
Yeah.
EW (00:03:03):
If you could teach a college course, what would you want to teach?
JC (00:03:07):
Reverse engineering.
CW (00:03:10):
Current favorite new thing you've learned about, or seen, or obsessing about?
JC (00:03:15):
I guess it would have to be probably voiceover specifically for video games.
EW (00:03:25):
Do you have a tip everyone should know.
JC (00:03:31):
Always disconnect the power.
EW (00:03:36):
Even if you want to use it, disconnect the power and then reconnect the power.
CW (00:03:45):
I used that tip today. Just very careful about disconnecting the power today.
JC (00:03:46):
It's really important. I've seen it happen too many times.
EW (00:03:48):
Okay. You mentioned class, and games, and voices. What's going on with that?
JC (00:03:57):
I think El, if you remember from our little jaunt to Vegas, there was one of my partner's friends who came in from Israel named [Zahi]. For Israel, he was basically the voice of Israel for many, many years. He did all the voiceovers on TV, radio, and what have you. And if you remember, he did some voices for us while we were there. I think he had Al Pacino and some other stuff.
JC (00:04:34):
Anyway, talking with him a little bit more, it felt like something that I want to do, because as many of you know, I don't put my face out. I don't put my face online. It felt like this is something I could do potentially. It felt like something that didn't rely on my face. It felt like it was also something that was portable.
JC (00:05:01):
I didn't have to be in a particular location to do it depending on the type of work that you're doing. We can talk about that more. There are some types of voiceover work that you actually need to be in the studio. Most notably Hollywood animation still generally wants you to be there. But a lot of the stuff you can just do from home, in your studio, which for me is just my closet. I haven't booked paying gigs. I've booked a lot of free stuff or pick up something at work. Yeah. So, that's how it started.
EW (00:05:38):
But this is a side gig, hobby?
JC (00:05:44):
I consider myself a student and a wannabe, so I'm just learning a lot of stuff. It turns out there is absolutely no bar whatsoever in this industry. It's like Hawkins dance classes. Theoretically, you don't need any credential. There are no credentials, but somebody who really wants to be a ballet dancer professionally will go to somebody who has a strong background in ballet, maybe certified by ABT to teach ballet. But on the whole, no. It's just the same way. It's just like exactly what you would expect from actors and models and things like that. There's a lot of bullshit out there.
CW (00:06:29):
Is it a similar process for getting a gig? I guess you could have like a portfolio, but is there like an audition process for stuff, or is it mostly, here's a casting call and submit your voice files and we'll get back to you?
JC (00:06:44):
Yeah, there's a couple different places. So, there are places that are free and some of those jobs, most of those jobs are free. Sometimes, there's like Fiverr. Fiverr apparently has upended the voiceover industry so that you ... Someone like me, if I sound good enough, I can get that $5 away from somebody who's trained and does this professionally. As long as I have good enough equipment, and as long as I am what they want. I am not what they want. I don't have a really perky voice naturally. So, if you want a big commercial, I'm not that person, probably.
CW (00:07:20):
Not going to do the movie trailer?
JC (00:07:26):
Well, okay. I'll try to finish up answering your question. There is a dichotomy. There are those people who are signed. There are those people who are in the union and both of those things will open up doors to all the awesome stuff that we hear about for voiceover. Meaning, "Hey, I was in a Disney film, or a Pixar film, or I was in the latest documentary from Ken Burns." Stuff like that. It just opens a door. Same thing if you want to do a big name audiobook, you probably need to be signed. So, in the Bay Area, audiobooks are really popular. Toys are really popular. Video games are very popular.
EW (00:08:15):
I know about toys, because when I worked at LeapFrog, we would send off our script for people to say and then chop up the audio so we could put it in the toy.
JC (00:08:25):
Yeah. I did take the class on that. I did talk to ... Is it Dave Hammond, who did the voices for all of Furby? And then let's come back to the toys in just a second. Where were we? There's all the agents and union related stuff, and then there's pay for play. And those are sites like Voice123, Voices, Backstage. Backstage now owns Voice123. And you basically pay a fee monthly or yearly to have access to audition. So, they'll give you the specs and you'll deliver something online for them to peruse and they'll decide if they want to hire you or not. It's pretty damn competitive. And it gets dropped at all hours of the night.
CW (00:09:25):
Okay. You might get a call...
JC (00:09:25):
You can talk more about that too.
CW (00:09:26):
Yeah. Okay. We'll leave that for later. Okay. It seems very ... What's the word I'm looking for? Almost wild west. There's just a lot of different ways to get into things and no definitive process then.
JC (00:09:52):
Yes and no. I think right now, voiceover is really exploding because there are more products that require voiceover. So, popular genres. We already talked about video games and animation, audiobooks. But there's all of your audio tours, and documentaries. And gosh, every company wants to have a sizzle video, which means ... I have one in front of me from a company that we know that's gotten billions of dollars that I auditioned for because they're pivoting to something else. Actually, doing these auditions, I find out a lot of what's going on in the Bay Area with some of these companies.
EW (00:10:43):
Yeah. Because, you're getting their early marketing.
JC (00:10:45):
Yeah. There may be NDAs if they decide ... They may not give you the whole thing, but you may actually find out a substantial amount of stuff.
CW (00:10:56):
Right.
EW (00:10:58):
Would you do this for a career?
JC (00:11:01):
Well, that's what I've been trying to figure out. Like I said, I wanted it to be portable because I was anticipating that when I leave the Bay Area in not too long, not too far out and we were talking about moving and working internationally. I want to be able to ... If I can't get like a firmware job or an engineering job to fill my time, then it would be nice to have voiceover work and then maybe teach dance on the side or something like that.
EW (00:11:33):
I tried to record a whole short story, like five or six pages ends up being 45 minutes. It was really hard. It was exhausting. That was just doing it for my own amusement, and with Chris's help.
JC (00:11:52):
What happened? What were the things that you were running into?
EW (00:11:57):
It's hard to talk for that long without ...
CW (00:12:00):
Without your voice changing in some ways. Yeah.
EW (00:12:03):
Without your voice changing. And there were a couple of voices. And I'm okay keeping voices for a little while. I tense certain muscles and that makes my voice change. I usually get it pretty close, and yet by the end, I was just really sick of it.
JC (00:12:26):
That's how I feel about writing a book. To be honest with you, I have not done any audiobook classes yet. I mean, I've taken kind of work through intro level items related to audiobook. But I think the main issue, were you trying to do characters too?
EW (00:12:50):
Not totally radio play style characters, but audiobook style, people should have different voice characters. Yes.
JC (00:12:59):
Yeah. It's tough for everybody. Not only are you basically engaging in the marathon of voiceover, depending on how long it is, but you have to ... One of the things they tell you is you have to get at each word correct. You can't ad lib the way you would in a video game or animation. You need to honor what they wrote very precisely. So, that's one facet. Luckily, you wrote it, it sounds like, so that's good.
JC (00:13:32):
It's hard to have energy but also read slow enough that everyone can understand what's being said. Keeping the enunciation smooth, clear. Yeah. There's a whole trick to that. There's a whole personality. Like I said, book narration is going to be different, slightly different than when you're doing an audio tour for a museum versus doing that sizzle video where you want to have a little bit more energy, and it depends on whether the ... But you don't want to have so much that it's overpowering what video there may be on the screen.
EW (00:14:14):
With doing the class and some of the video work I've been doing around that, I have found that I do retakes very well. If they say, "Oh, we didn't catch something," I can definitely just pretend it never happened and do it with the same enthusiasm all of over again. And I don't think I knew how to do that before the podcast. Has having a podcast made you more excited about this, made it easier, been related at all?
JC (00:14:50):
I actually would say not related at all. It just was a good excuse for me to buy more equipment. I think Chris will relate.
EW (00:14:58):
Yeah, I think so.
JC (00:15:01):
I mean ...
CW (00:15:01):
I already had a lot of it, which is another comment on me, but ...
JC (00:15:07):
Yeah. I have a lot of Korg stuff from my past partner and things like that, like synthy stuff. I was not familiar with Sweetwater prior to picking this up. I know it's shocking, right?
EW (00:15:19):
Are you kidding? Even I shop at Sweetwater.
JC (00:15:21):
Right. I was going to Guitar Showcase and I would go to NAAM. And I would never buy from Starving Musician. I would go to Gelb's up on the Peninsula. I just would avoid chains or whatever possible. It's not surprising to me that I would be completely unaware of Sweetwater.
CW (00:15:46):
Oh, no, that wasn't why I was laughing. I'm laughing at Sweetwater, because I find them funny, for reasons which we can talk about.
JC (00:15:50):
You know what, I have mixed feelings about Sweetwater. Yeah, they're a big chain. I would rather go to them than Guitar Center by far. They do know what they're talking about, so it's not like surly teens trying to tell you why you should buy this, what bargain basement, whatever amp. You were still very reliant on yourself to make the correct choice for yourself, but I only really have to worry about microphones, so I have it way easier. But yeah, it's nice to go through and look at all the stuff. Actually, the other thing I look at a lot now is acoustical paneling, so I can make my room very silent.
EW (00:16:42):
Yes, we have a lot of acoustic paneling.
JC (00:16:46):
Have you been getting the fancy stuff?
EW (00:16:48):
We got the hexes and I made a pattern on one of our glass surfaces. And other than that, we have ... What size are these?
CW (00:16:59):
Oh, these are very large panels. We had these at the old house, so I've had these forever.
EW (00:17:04):
4x24?
CW (00:17:05):
Yeah, they're like four feet by two feet, one and a half inch. The movable panels.
JC (00:17:11):
There was some company ... For Christmas, they didn't get it here in time, and it still hasn't arrived by the way. My partner got me, ordered me some like fancier ones that have more specific designs.
EW (00:17:24):
Yes.
CW (00:17:25):
Yeah.
JC (00:17:26):
I'm very looking forward to that.
CW (00:17:28):
Yeah. The gray Auralex is not particularly attractive.
EW (00:17:32):
But they do have nice designs now, so it makes sense.
CW (00:17:35):
On these, you could get ... Which we didn't, but the ones we got, these big ones, you could put art on them if you really wanted to pay a lot of money and stuff.
JC (00:17:42):
But what art would you put on there?
CW (00:17:45):
I don't know.
EW (00:17:48):
Yeah, I know.
CW (00:17:48):
That's why we didn't get it.
EW (00:17:51):
I'd rather have color blocks.
JC (00:17:52):
Happy anniversary. Now, I can't hear you.
EW (00:17:56):
How much does it relate to your engineering job as a firmware engineer at whatever mysterious company you work on?
JC (00:18:05):
Well, gosh. Thank you. Thank you for maintaining my anonymity. It is so important to me. That genuinely is not sarcasm. Oh, man. Gosh, I would say not to firmware, maybe to the product I work on because my product is audio related. On the other hand, I would say as an engineer, my voiceover work has been helpful in so much as there's an awareness of my voice to ... And I'm going to use this, as one engineer said to me and I was very offended, to manipulate people.
EW (00:18:47):
Oh, yeah. One of the reasons to get a really good mic for Zoom calls is because it makes you sound authoritative.
JC (00:18:55):
Well, there's other things that help me. I mean, I have a pretty good mic right now, but I don't think I sound that authoritative like this. It doesn't matter how down-landing I'm doing it.
CW (00:19:10):
I will say that, that is a distinctive voice right there. That it would be hard not to listen to.
JC (00:19:15):
I mean, honestly, if it was up to me, I would already have my Kristen Schaal impersonation down. It kills me. I can't do it. I can't do it.
CW (00:19:29):
She's got all the East Coast stuff going on too, so it's hard.
JC (00:19:32):
Yeah. Where were we? Okay.
CW (00:19:39):
Manipulating.
EW (00:19:40):
Manipulating people.
JC (00:19:42):
I don't think it was so much as manipulating people, but this one engineer who was, I guess, being very blunt as they are prone to doing said, he's like, "You're just like me. You're good at manipulating people." And I'm like, "What the ..." I'm like, "Oh my god."
EW (00:20:03):
When HP sent me to win-win negotiation class, I came home and Christopher said, "This is just manipulation for idiots." Yeah, it's not manipulation. It's negotiating.
JC (00:20:17):
Sure.
CW (00:20:19):
There's absolutely nothing wrong with being aware of having a skill at communicating. Being good at communicating is being good at communicating. And getting better at that, however you do it, that's not manipulation.
EW (00:20:32):
And often, it starts with awareness.
JC (00:20:35):
I think the one thing that this has helped me in particular. So, being in the Valley, being an engineer for so long, knowing that my normal speech ... I don't think I always talk like this, but this is what I usually talk like. It sounds aggressive to people. It sounds low.
CW (00:20:54):
Really? Okay.
JC (00:20:54):
But if you want to be taken seriously, and this is where voiceover starts covering gender stuff in particular, having precision, down-landing, lower voice really helps come across as the expert.
CW (00:21:16):
Okay. That makes sense.
JC (00:21:17):
Not going up, not asking, "My name is Jennifer." Will really help you. I think it's very crucial for when you're doing your presentations and so on. That's going to help any engineer move up the ranks.
EW (00:21:37):
Introducing yourself should have no up-landing. It should not be, "I'm a firmware engineer." It should be, "I'm a firmware engineer."
CW (00:21:47):
I'm constantly surprised I'm a firmware engineer.
EW (00:21:52):
Well, yes.
JC (00:21:52):
"Whoa, I'm a firm engineer? When did that happen?"
CW (00:21:52):
Not again.
JC (00:21:57):
It is so crucial for the image of the expert to land down. Not medial, not up, not kind of trailing off, landing down on every single point that you want to make and every single bullet point that you want to make with pauses in between, and not being afraid to pause.
EW (00:22:17):
That can be hard. That does invite people to interrupt you.
JC (00:22:22):
That is a separate issue. The other thing, what I did find is that when people are not agitated, but sometimes the way to get people to listen to you is getting quieter and quieter.
EW (00:22:41):
And slower. Quieter and slower.
JC (00:22:44):
Yeah. Which is very important when they're just kind of running rough shot. Just kind of sit there, let them say ... I mean, that's also kind of negotiation in general. The other thing that I found is learning how to soften just a little bit to create an opening for them to come across and also reveal themselves. It becomes so very important. Figuring out how to add warmth to your voice becomes super important. I know we all dream of being robots as engineers, but we have to know when turn on the warmth in our voice.
EW (00:23:26):
I don't think I've ever heard you do that, and it really did make a pretty big difference. It made you sound nice.
JC (00:23:35):
Yeah, I'm not nice.
CW (00:23:37):
What are you suggesting?
JC (00:23:38):
What are you saying?
EW (00:23:41):
It made you sound, I don't want to say warm and cuddly, but yeah, softened.
CW (00:23:47):
I mean, it had the effect that you were obviously going for.
EW (00:23:48):
That it was intended to.
JC (00:23:50):
Right. Yeah. The one thing I would also say is that just doing this voiceover work means that now, when I listen to all of the commercials, I can hear exactly what they're trying to do. Why they're picking that tact to sell you stuff. And here's the biggest thing that you'll probably notice.
JC (00:24:13):
When you watch old movies and listen to old radio, how it also has like that announcer voice. "Brought to you by Maxwell's Coffee." And then they'll have to, "Poo-poo-poo-poo-poo-poo." It's like ham-fisted marketing.
CW (00:24:30):
Very affected voices with ...
JC (00:24:32):
Yeah.
EW (00:24:33):
Welcome to Embedded.
JC (00:24:35):
Yeah.
CW (00:24:36):
But more.
JC (00:24:38):
I don't want to give away the game, but that's why the Unnamed podcast always ... We always laugh a whole lot. Not the because we can't get our shit together. Anyway, today's commercials, if you listen to them, they're trying to be super relatable, super authentic and conversational. So, they sound like they're talking specifically to you.
EW (00:25:01):
As opposed to some of the older ones, which sounded authoritative. Like, "You should listen to me because I know better than you."
JC (00:25:08):
Oh, yeah. And there's like a nice smattering of sexism always embedded in those old ones. Oh my god.
CW (00:25:15):
"Ask your doctor if Wizardium is right for you." No, but it may kill you instantly.
EW (00:25:23):
What about the Micro Machines guy?
JC (00:25:26):
Oh, that's also a special genre. People can do disclaimers.
EW (00:25:30):
Yes.
JC (00:25:31):
Just disclaimers. Another area that I'm really in love with in voiceover, not popular, but pays really well, medical narration. Can you say ridiculous words really fast? I mean really slow, but can you pick it up really fast?
CW (00:25:50):
Like for transcription or ...
JC (00:25:53):
No. They'll do a lot of these videos. They'll do voiceover videos for introducing a new medicine. And go through and they'll say, "Okay, when is it appropriate for you to use this treatment? You want to check for this med when indicated by this particular test with this and etoposide and metazamine. They'll be words that you're just like, "Holy crap." That you will have to learn how to say. It pays really well. It's super interesting too.
EW (00:26:33):
I was thinking about technical books and how there are some that are being recorded and you really think that's a great thing, and it's something I would like to do with mine if I do a second edition. And yet, that is going to be hard and there will have to be images translated to words, which I guess really should happen anyway. But I don't know how you would not make it boring.
JC (00:27:04):
Wait, what?
CW (00:27:06):
Like reading a technical book.
EW (00:27:07):
Technical book.
CW (00:27:07):
How do you make a technical book?
EW (00:27:08):
How do you make a technical book work?
CW (00:27:09):
Technical audiobook.
EW (00:27:11):
I guess this is back to audiobooks too.
CW (00:27:13):
[crosstalk 00:27:13].
JC (00:27:13):
This is back to audio. It's going to be down to what the producer wants the voice to be, what the mood is going to be. There's going to be a take on what that voice should be. Usually, it's just all the energy is bubbling under the surface, as you, as the expert explaining like why this thing is so cool. But it has to have that smooth legato feel throughout, but not so much that's going to put you to sleep.
JC (00:27:44):
What your voiceover actor is doing is they're visualizing. They're trying to point like in very minute pauses and shifts in their voice, trying to show you, "Oh, when you look down here to the right, you can see how there's an opening here, where we would then put the XYZ machine. And if you look to the left over here, hey, that's going to line us up really well, so our signals come out as blah." Helping them to create that picture in the reader's mind is what's going to help them. And the voiceover person should be the narrator, should be helping to craft that visualization with their very minute inflections and pauses and so on.
CW (00:28:27):
It's a musical instrument, right? It has all of the nuances and the same kinds of ... Not same kinds of things, but you're trying to convey emotion and create emotional responses by changing how something sounds and learning to do that seems extremely difficult.
JC (00:28:45):
Yeah. For narration, it's considered you're like walking on a tightrope. You're like just so boxed in, because you can't just go, "Oh." And do all this other stuff. You can't be changing words, you can't be putting on voice. You're basically working on a tightrope in this case versus some other things like commercials. Commercials, you could just pretty much be anything. They're not asking you to be like an alien reading a book to somebody. Oh, but we did talk about toys. Toys, you can.
EW (00:29:21):
Yes. You can get a lot of voices in toys.
JC (00:29:25):
Yeah. I think maybe when you were there, you were working with Chuck Wedge.
EW (00:29:31):
I don't recall that particular name. There were a number of artists we worked with, but mostly I didn't work with the artists. I worked with the sound people who worked with the artists. I can tell you about the sound people.
JC (00:29:45):
So, maybe we should fill in what happens with the toys. Let's shift gears away from narration.
EW (00:29:51):
Yes.
JC (00:29:51):
Because we could probably talk about that all day. Let's talk about the process of making a toy. And I fill in what I know about what happens on the voiceover side, because it was really fun for me to go through that class and then fill it in from the technical side for them.
EW (00:30:12):
Okay. Someone comes up with an idea for a toy and it gets developed a bit until it gets to the point where scripts are written. If you push A, it should say ... Well, actually, let's do N. If you push N, it should say, "N-n-n-nibble on nuts." I can't believe they let that one through. That was so funny. But then N may be used in multiple different cases, so that needs to be recorded probably separate from the nibbling part. Do you just get a list? Do you get a list of what needs to be said?
JC (00:30:52):
Yes. So, I have a couple of these scripts and there could be hundreds or thousands of these things.
EW (00:30:57):
And they're unconnected, right? You just get "nibbling on nuts". You don't know that, that has to do with the letter N.
JC (00:31:03):
There are particular types of scripts for particular types of toys. In this one, because memory considerations, like you're going to be concatenating together vocabulary to save space potentially.
EW (00:31:18):
Numbers. Oh my god.
JC (00:31:20):
Numbers are a different way. There's a difference when you say, "One, two." Versus when you say it and it gets con concatenated with something else.
EW (00:31:28):
21 is not 20,1.
JC (00:31:32):
No, they will record that separately. What's interesting is when you ... And they'll be marked on the script to say ... They'll use slashes, and that will tell you ... If there's a slash at the beginning and at the end, that basically tells you two other things are going to get sandwiched around it. So, that little slash will tell you how you say it, which is if there's a slash at the end, you want to land up. If there's something at the beginning, you also kind of start a little up. And when it's sandwiched like that, you're basically saying it as fast as you can.
JC (00:32:16):
Like I want this with that. The width is going to go really fast because of that, so it doesn't sound disconnected and awkward. This is the one place that you ... Basically, in toys, you're doing the exact opposite of narration. You're going to have a really fun vibe and you're going to be talking to kids and really thinking that you're trying to teach kids all the time. And you'll use contractions and you use up speak.
CW (00:32:48):
These are great voices. I've been drawn to this.
EW (00:32:49):
An enthusiasm.
JC (00:32:52):
You can book those. Yeah. This is how I learned to do my boy voice, which is all like, "Hi and everything like that, but then you just add a little rasp on it, a little attitude."
CW (00:33:07):
This is fantastic.
EW (00:33:10):
How do you remember the voices?
CW (00:33:12):
Oh, god. Yeah.
JC (00:33:13):
In my head.
EW (00:33:16):
When I do Winnie-the-Pooh, I totally forgot what Eeyore sounded like. I know that I made Eeyore more feminine than most people expect, and I can definitely redo Owl's voice in.
JC (00:33:29):
Well, you know what my partner said to me? I was watching Daria again. And he's like, "Jen, I didn't hear you. What did you say?" And it was just Daria's voice. I was like, "Oh, no, that's not my voice. My voice baseline is ..."
JC (00:33:46):
How do you remember the voices? When you send in your audition, presumably you're working from home, you will play that back. Presumably, you will probably play it in the car as you're going back to record your final thing so you remember that. And then the studio will probably also play it for you in case you forget.
CW (00:34:07):
Do you have like a catalog of voices on your phone? Like, "These are my voices, this is my repertoire of voices."
JC (00:34:13):
Honestly, you kind of will.
EW (00:34:15):
Yeah. You'd have to.
JC (00:34:16):
To some degree. So, in toys, you're going to want to a certain amount of consistency. But one of the things that happens is you'll go in and you'll audition, or you'll be like this one main character. And then when that's all done ... And this is particular for like animation and video games. I know we're all over the place. I have not organized my mind very much.
JC (00:34:39):
If there's extra characters that they have that are only a few lines here and there, they'll just ask you, "Hey, can you do these ones? And just give me a couple different two or three takes of this." What that means is you need to come up with a completely different character in a few ... Not even a few minutes.
CW (00:34:56):
Now.
JC (00:34:57):
Just pull something out of your back ... Yeah. Basically, a lot of these well known voice actors have character books or something they've done so many times that they just ... I was like, "Okay, I'm going to take this one, which means I have this voice, this voice, this and this background. Maybe I'll just place the voice higher up or lower down on my chest or something like that, and maybe I'll give it a little different color, which is more like an attitude than anything." And then you have a new character that's slightly different than one maybe you did a couple weeks ago. It's all like making super minute changes, changing their back story, why they're accenting certain words. There's just so much you can play with. Oh my god, there's just so much you can do.
EW (00:35:47):
But it's all very intentional. Have you ever come home and forgotten that you were still in character voice?
JC (00:35:55):
One of my first voiceover recitals before we went into pandemic, I had a character. We were doing a radio play and there was some girl in the audience that clearly was from Brooklyn or New York. And I never got rid of that voice ever. I now refer to her as the bagel princess. It just happens all the time in rehearsal, honestly.
CW (00:36:21):
I have this problem where if I talk to someone new for a while, like we're working together or if I see a character in a TV show enough, I start to absorb things unintentionally into my voice. That could be a problem.
JC (00:36:36):
I think that's just being American who watches a lot of TV.
CW (00:36:39):
Well, it's probably true.
JC (00:36:41):
I mean, I can't say that I'm any different than that. Yeah.
CW (00:36:46):
That could be a skill. Not that I have that skill, but ...
JC (00:36:49):
If you can match it, that's the trick. There's a couple different areas that, that could end up being useful in. If they need people to do dubs or IVR, which is basically just dubbing. There was one thing that I auditioned for. They had an Israeli yoga commercial where the actress/model just ... They didn't like the way she sounded for whatever reason, so they needed someone to come in and say, "Hey, what's going on?" They liked my audition for that, which is insane. "Hey, what's going on?"
JC (00:37:39):
I think that was worth over $100 just saying that. Or there's international companies that are looking for you. They want to move into the United States, so they have their Dutch jingle that they want you to do their rewrite in English. Now, you have like dumb stuff in your head like ... (singing)
CW (00:38:02):
It does seem like the international dubbing would be an additional challenge, right? Because the translations don't necessarily match the length of the ... That's something that you may not know, but is that something that the voiceover talent has to worry about so much?
JC (00:38:21):
Yeah. Kind of. It's just kind of like whenever you watch any of those older Hong Kong films. There's what's been subtitled and then there's what comes out of their mouth, and you're just like, "Those are not the same thing." And that's in English too, so I don't even know what's going on.
JC (00:38:39):
We were talking about toys. I'm glad that you guys are having a good time with this, because I wasn't sure when I proposed this to El, whether she was going to enjoy this or not. Toys, toys, toys. Yeah. There's a particular way that you're supposed to speak to make things sound like they flow together. Not to mention the fact that, that's pretty much for an educational toy. There's a whole range of toys of just nonsense gibberish. I've learned how to talk gibberish or how to make up gibberish. They'll give you a line that says like, "We want an octopus character or a llama, and then here are their lines."
EW (00:39:22):
Glorp glorber.
JC (00:39:22):
They say like, "Hi." Right. Exactly.
EW (00:39:25):
That's the octopus, by the way.
JC (00:39:27):
Right. They'll say like, "Hey, she's really friendly, except if you touch her food or something like that." They'll be like, "Hi, I'm so and so." And then you have to gibberish talk. "Hi, I'm Opal the octopus," or something like that. And then they'll say like, "What are you making for me? Hey, that looks gross." You have to like act that out in gibberish and non-words as an octopus.
EW (00:39:53):
See, that I could do. That I have no problem with.
JC (00:39:58):
The thing is that the secret to all of this is, is if the kids love, love what they're hearing, but the parents hate it, you've done a great job. That's what one of my teachers told me.
EW (00:40:14):
Yeah. That's all toys. Okay. Let's set that aside for a minute.
JC (00:40:19):
Okay.
EW (00:40:20):
You have a podcast which we've mentioned. Have you named it yet?
JC (00:40:26):
I know that was a burning question. I felt like I built in this marketing joke because I was really hoping that people would suggest names for us over the course. Much like long running sitcoms, like How I Met Your Mother or whatever. I don't know.
EW (00:40:45):
Friends.
JC (00:40:45):
That was the first one that popped in my head. You know what, honestly, I never really watched How I Met Your Mother and I most definitely never watched Friends, so I'm kind of not the right person. Things that you know the show is over when so and so hooks up with the other person. There's just no point to having the show anymore.
CW (00:41:03):
So, like when your show is named, you're just going to call it ...
JC (00:41:05):
Correct. Yeah. Let me tell you, I had to spend a lot of time convincing Alvaro that this was the right name. It's a little mysterious. It's a little ridiculous. It means I can have UNRE as our acronym for the podcast, which is clever because I have an idea for the logo. I mean, it's probably the best marketing I've ever done in my entire life. I'm really bad at marketing.
EW (00:41:34):
Yes. I joined the club.
CW (00:41:35):
Yeah.
EW (00:41:37):
So, it's the Unnamed Reverse Engineering Podcast.
JC (00:41:41):
Yes.
EW (00:41:41):
So, that we get past the not having mentioned the actual name of the unnamed.
JC (00:41:46):
The full name. Yes.
EW (00:41:49):
And we've had your co-host Alvaro on a couple of times.
JC (00:41:54):
Yeah. Yes.
EW (00:41:54):
Not always talking about the show, but because he's ...
JC (00:41:57):
Cheese. Did you guys talk about cheese?
CW (00:42:02):
We did talk about cheese.
EW (00:42:02):
We talked about cheese.
CW (00:42:02):
Yes.
JC (00:42:02):
He's good for that.
EW (00:42:03):
Yeah, and bread.
JC (00:42:06):
Yeah.
EW (00:42:08):
How do you describe the Unnamed Reverse Engineer Podcast to people who have never heard it?
JC (00:42:16):
Well, mostly that it's unnamed and if they have a name, please suggest one. But then right after that, I talk about that. We talk about any aspect of reverse engineering, which is suitable from anyone from beginner all the way through expert. What's been interesting is how much people like listening to sometimes very, very long interviews. I don't know necessarily if anyone is getting anything out of them. It is difficult because reverse engineering is such a hands-on visual media it seems like. How do you make that into something interesting in an audio medium has been challenging.
EW (00:43:02):
I understand that.
JC (00:43:04):
Yeah. I can imagine.
EW (00:43:08):
Are you baffled that people listen to it?
JC (00:43:16):
I feel blessed. I definitely feel blessed. I feel bad because we don't release more episodes.
EW (00:43:24):
You're monthly. Right?
JC (00:43:26):
Pretty much. That's a very kind ...
EW (00:43:31):
Mostly monthly.
JC (00:43:33):
I would say we're like three to four weeks. Sometimes it leaks out a little bit longer than we'd like. The thing that amazes me is some of our better received episodes were ones where I was just like, "Look, we're going to talk about this guy who's doing something on Animal Crossing." And he was super nervous. I wasn't sure how it was going to pan out from a reverse engineering perspective, but it worked out really well. And actually, it begat more guests in different places.
JC (00:44:05):
I don't know. Sometimes, you get a ... I'm not saying that Animal Crossing is a bad thing. I love Animal Crossing, but not everything has to be like, "And then I applied the asset and then I read out all the bits. Now, I have an NFT farm that I've created just using all these greeting cards that I reverse engineered."
EW (00:44:34):
Which episode was that?
JC (00:44:37):
I don't know, but I think it might be coming.
CW (00:44:41):
We kind of realized a while ago that the two of us are terrible at kind of predicting what episodes people will respond to and what they won't. We'll have a show that we're like, "Well, that was awesome. Great depth into this and that, and it was great educational." And then crickets. And then we'll have a show about, I don't know, cheese, for example. People are like, "Yeah, it was great." I don't know what people want.
JC (00:45:07):
People like cheese.
CW (00:45:08):
Yeah, that's true.
JC (00:45:11):
This is meant with a lot of love for every reverse engineer. Some of the most interesting projects in reverse engineering, which I will fully admit, and Alvaro and I pretty much agree on this. It's really just really hard debugging. Debugging that nobody wanted you to do.
JC (00:45:32):
The types of people who do these really incredible breakthroughs, not that aren't researchers and so on. It takes a very particular focus. And the person who is focused in that way to bring all of this, not necessarily the right person to talk about it. I mean that with a lot of care and love. It's one of the things that I've learned from voiceover is to prep the guests to remember to check in, take a breath, slow down, visualize.
JC (00:46:14):
Because man, otherwise, not only are you going to lose me and Alvaro. I mean, I feel like a dumb ass on the show all the time, by the way. It's so important to pull in the audience by slowing down. It's the same thing that I'm trying to learn with narration. If you just talk in site, techno babble ... I mean, yes. It's like popular science. The person is going to feel pretty cool because they got a subscription to it. Are they really learning anything? Is it helping them? Is it inspiring them in some way? Or is it just kind of like a background for making them feel kind of cool? I can just put out a techno remix if that was the case.
EW (00:47:04):
I have done a little bit of reverse engineering, not much, but I find as I'm teaching, it's something I really want to teach, because it's the way that I can explain debugging hardware. And your point about this is debugging that nobody really intended you to do, are there other places that reverse engineering really helps as far as being a non-reverse engineering, a forward engineering?
CW (00:47:38):
Forward engineering.
EW (00:47:39):
That seems like somebody who's asking you things you don't want to answer.
JC (00:47:46):
Well, let me think about that question again. I know you and I had shared a place of employment at one point. That place really like to do tear downs to learn how did someone build out this product. I think they mostly viewed it as a little bit of technology with mostly mechanical engineering.
JC (00:48:18):
They didn't necessarily go deeper than that, but I feel like if you keep going deeper and you get to, "Okay, I reverse engineered the chips. I looked at this." Now, I understand like, "Oh, this is how other people are trying to do their security on their IoT product. This is how they're saving extra money." This is one of the reasons why I like tearing down toys and grading cards, because I can't think of anything cheaper.
EW (00:48:47):
Right. Taking apart toys is just super interesting. I knew Jen and I would be friends when we were quite happy to take X-ACTO to Barbie, her joints are really neat.
JC (00:49:04):
Yeah. I feel like for engineers today who are making consumer products, they really need to know what everyone else is doing in terms of security. Some of that means getting your hands fricking dirty. Figuring out like, "Oh, if I do this, maybe I shouldn't do this on my next product. It's way too easy to figure out X, Y, and Z."
EW (00:49:35):
And if reverse engineering sounds too much like hacking, call it competitive analysis.
JC (00:49:41):
I don't think the lawyers would like it if you said that. Maybe one time this came up like hacking versus reverse engineering, versus whatever, what term you want to call it. I don't know. It's kind of funny the way that hacking is now kind of considered kind of a dirty term. I don't know. I'm not particularly fond of the term hacking because it implies
EW (00:50:12):
Cats? Coughing?
JC (00:50:14):
No.
CW (00:50:14):
What?
EW (00:50:15):
Cats and hairballs.
JC (00:50:17):
No.
EW (00:50:20):
Sorry.
JC (00:50:22):
Maybe, I don't know, but not right now. To me, it implies a lack of sophistication in your intention. When I used to operate a startup out of a hacker space and people would run up on me and ask me what I'm hacking on, I'm just trying to do my fricking job. At that time in particular, I guess that's where the genesis of my annoyance, what the word is. I just found it super offensive. I'm like, "I'm not messing around with an Arduino here." Oh, man, you're going to have to do so much editing.
CW (00:51:06):
I'm good at it.
JC (00:51:06):
Okay, good.
EW (00:51:07):
I hope you're all enjoying that sound of the Apple II disc drive.
JC (00:51:13):
I was so prepared to say monkey fighting and stuff today, but it didn't happen.
CW (00:51:18):
Yeah. But you're right. The connotation of the word has always bugged too, and I have the same kind of feeling you do. It implies just kind of flailing about, trying things. "Oh, that didn't work. Let's try this. Oh, that didn't work. I'm not going to think about it. I'm just going to typey, typey, typey. There's some technical skill, but we're just going to go at this without really a plan or whatever."
JC (00:51:43):
Right. One thing that I'm really enjoying. Did you guys check out Colin and Jasper's book on reverse engineering?
EW (00:51:50):
Not yet. I saw that it came out.
JC (00:51:54):
I've been slowly going through it, but it's really good. It really formalizes a lot. Instead of me having to kind of brainstorm, "Okay, what else can I do? What else can I do?" Now, I feel like I have kind of like some backup here, like a formal doctrine for how to think about what I'm doing as a system.
EW (00:52:17):
Cool. It'll go my list ...
JC (00:52:19):
Immediately, I've only gone to like maybe chapter three, but that's what it feels like to me.
CW (00:52:25):
That can be a companion book to Alan Cohen's book about prototype to product.
EW (00:52:28):
This will be product to prototype.
JC (00:52:35):
Product to exploit.
CW (00:52:37):
Yeah.
JC (00:52:39):
It's part of a series.
EW (00:52:42):
One of the shows you were on long ago was about interviewing where we talked about suggestions on how to conduct an interview more than how to interview. How to be on the grown up side of the table. No, that's not right.
CW (00:53:00):
What are you implying?
JC (00:53:01):
I think this is where El admitted to making somebody cry, and it was the interviewer.
CW (00:53:08):
But she was the interviewee in that case.
EW (00:53:10):
I have both sides.
JC (00:53:12):
Yes. It's very impressive. It's very impressive.
EW (00:53:13):
I have made interviewees cry. I've had made interviewers cry. It's just ... talk about not using the right voice.
CW (00:53:24):
Did you talk very slowly and quietly?
EW (00:53:28):
No.
JC (00:53:30):
I think she said dumb or something.
EW (00:53:36):
I don't remember.
JC (00:53:37):
I think you said the question was dumb.
EW (00:53:37):
I definitely said the question was dumb.
CW (00:53:41):
I'm saying it was a filtering issue more than a voice one.
EW (00:53:43):
Yes. Somebody asked me deep C++ questions and I said it was a dumb question because if you're using that level of C++ on your 8051, you're doing it wrong.
CW (00:53:52):
I have also answered questions that way and did not get that job either.
EW (00:53:56):
Right. Anyway, in that show ...
JC (00:54:02):
You were interested to go back. Go back to that episode.
EW (00:54:07):
We talked about the interviewing and it's going to come up in my class soon where I'm giving a presentation that is remarkably similar to that show.
JC (00:54:19):
Are you going to ask them what their dream interview is? Because I think Chris has the answer.
EW (00:54:24):
No, but I did ask them to give me all of their interview questions and what they look for in case I ever have to interview again.
JC (00:54:32):
You just basically made a cheat sheet for yourself. You packed the interview. Are you going to put those on Twitter?
EW (00:54:42):
Huh, I may suggest it to the class. This doesn't come out until after their assignments do. Oh, dang it, it does.
CW (00:54:50):
You tell me, I don't know.
EW (00:54:53):
Anyway, in that show, we talked about diversity. It's an issue that I always bring up, because it's very, very, very, very, very important and something we don't talk about enough in engineering. But I said diversity of thoughts, and I usually try to follow that up with, and diversity of thought follows diversity of body and try to let people understand that if everyone looks the same, the chances they all think the same are pretty high. Which makes it easy to communicate with them, but it gives you giant holes in your product.
JC (00:55:31):
Oh, yes. I mean, yes.
EW (00:55:38):
You have a more direct thing that you would say, and I want to hear it because I may be saying it myself soon.
JC (00:55:45):
I'm going to come at this slightly backwards way and apologies to people who wanted a direct answer. It's coming, I swear to God. One of the things in voiceover, because it's an extension of Hollywood, is approaching diversity because voiceover historically has been pretty much all white. And any time there was a character on screen that was of color, probably still played by a white person.
JC (00:56:16):
So, there's a very active intention right now to, one, in the scripts, they're actively asking for persons of color and being very specific. And secondly, the actors are particularly if they're white, they're not applying for those roles. If they know that they're asking specifically for a person of color, they're trying to ... Or if for some reason they're asked to perform those, they do not want to ... They obviously don't want to inadvertently do vocal blackface.
JC (00:56:56):
They're trying to say, "Hey, look, there's this other person that would be great for this script. Here, have them take this role." They're really trying to change all of that at this particular time. But tech really, really hasn't done much. I mean, they've talked a lot.
JC (00:57:17):
Now, I'm going to answer the question. With more of a story also, but still, I'm getting to the answer. Back on that interviewing episode that we did, we were talking through diversity of thought. One thing that always kind of bugged me there was I said right. And when I said that I meant ... Really what I meant was, "Uh-huh, please continue going, because I'm waiting to see what happens." Not that I was necessarily co-signing at that time. One of those things that I've always felt was regrettable in that episode.
JC (00:57:52):
To elaborate further on why I thought that was a problem is that what bugged me about it is like, yes, we want diversity of thought because exactly as you said, diversity of body. Because what we end up seeing is that people say, "Oh, diversity of thought."
JC (00:58:10):
They're unintentionally, whether they realize or not, finding ... Instead of honoring the intention of it, they're finding a little loophole by saying, "Oh, well, we gave money to go find these candidates or to help these candidates get through college so they could apply to us. But we tried really hard and we didn't find anybody who was as good as this other candidate." Or, "We just picked somebody who was like still white, still guy, but he's autistic." Fine, but it's not ultimately changing the discussion and the social issue that we're experiencing, which is ...
JC (00:58:57):
The example precisely is this. Google made a phone with a camera that could not pick up people with darker pigmentation. They really don't. And now, they a release a new one, and now they're making a big deal about, yes, it can now pick up deeper skin tones. It's just like, "Come on."
EW (00:59:22):
It shouldn't be a feature.
CW (00:59:22):
New feature!
EW (00:59:24):
Oh, that's infuriating.
CW (00:59:25):
Now with brown people detection.
JC (00:59:29):
But it basically goes back to, "You all didn't have any people on your staff. Clearly your data sets were not good, completely biased. You only had whoever you had on hand. It didn't think to go bigger. Or you just ask your friends of friends of friends who clearly are not that diverse to begin with."
JC (00:59:49):
But you can see how the problem is, is there are qualified people of color out there. There are qualified women out there. There's lots of people out there. But if you're not looking for them, and if you're looking for a little way who just thinks a little different, like, "Oh, he likes to wear his ties to work in Silicon Valley instead of what everyone else wears, his hoodies. That is not enough diversity. That is not honoring the intention of diversity of thought, and we're really picking this up Silicon Valley. I mean, we're really messing this up, Silicon Valley
EW (01:00:22):
And maybe the words, diversity of thought need to need to go away, because it is too easy to say, "Oh, yeah. No, we all went to different Ivy League colleges." And count that as diverse when ...
CW (01:00:39):
No, and it's such a broad thing. It's like, "Oh, okay. Well, anything counts. This person likes rust and this person likes C, so there we go."
EW (01:00:48):
So diverse.
JC (01:00:50):
Oh my god.
EW (01:00:51):
And yet you end up with problems just as Jen said with ... Yet nobody on your team, on your QA, on your initial testing, nobody you knew was a person of color and it shows in your stupid product.
JC (01:01:13):
Your test plan did not include. I know everyone had those stupid test cards. They all had the ones that were historically used for camera and film. But man, those weren't even optimized for people of color. Yeah. Not knowing our history is hurting us. Not taking people who at least have some history to know the history.
JC (01:01:44):
Nothing really burns my eye these days more than like, "Well, they're a senior engineer." Okay. Well, they have three years of experience. We're going to toss them into a completely different area, because all senior engineers are the same. You're going to have them do this specialized thing, let's say factory work. Manufacturing design, let's say. They don't know anything about manufacturing.
JC (01:02:10):
And what do you expect to happen? They're just going to reinvent the wheel. They're going to make all the same mistakes on your dime as opposed to somebody who knows it. And as long as you press them to make better choices, you may actually get something better. I don't know, Silicon Valley just really bugs me. Sorry. Like, "Oh, we'll just take a 20 something who doesn't know anything, and then we can just make him do whatever we want." Well, you're just doing it so you could own him in all the decisions, because he doesn't know any better. Actually, they don't know any better.
EW (01:02:47):
I think we've gotten off diversity and into Silicon Valley work ethic.
CW (01:02:53):
Would you like to hear my opinions on computers?
JC (01:02:56):
Yes.
CW (01:02:56):
I don't like them. And I think the people who made them are evil.
JC (01:03:00):
You know what, this is also an unpopular opinion. I thought Snow Crash was a dumb ass book and I blame that book on what Silicon Valley is now. Oh my god, I can't think of how many more stereotypes and bad ideas have come out with that book. There you go.
EW (01:03:22):
It's funny. I love that book when it came out. And when I tried to reread it last year, it infuriated me.
JC (01:03:30):
I never read it. I never read it, and then I was like, "Okay, well." I bought the audiobook and then the whole Metaverse thing came out. I was like, "Now, I have to finish it." And yes, I was upset on every one of my bike rides as I listened to it. And by the way, at some point, I just turned it up to 2X.
EW (01:03:58):
I didn't finish my reread because I have better things to do. Okay. So, I have one more question for you and that is Cat Machines Dance. Those three words are all very good words, but they go together somehow.
JC (01:04:19):
Oh, I wasn't sure if you were testing me if I had Alzheimer's or not. Yes, that is my dance company. I've had this now for over 10 years. In my intro, I did mention I was a dancer. Yes, the pandemic has been difficult. So, yes, I've done a lot of voiceover stuff because there's only so much dancing I can do in my kitchen, which is not very big. So, I can do ballet. I can't really do point without a bar, because I will fall and hit everybody in the house.
JC (01:04:59):
But the dance company, let's see. Before of the pandemic, I had just won an award from sjDANCEco for a choreo project. I got something for a piece that I did on social media and how it is dividing us, because there are people who can't or won't go on social media like myself who basically feel like they're left out of some part of social interaction now and how that's affecting us.
JC (01:05:29):
The company tends to deal with technology issues of technology and so on. But during pandemic, I've made one other piece. In fact, I was supposed to finish a piece and present it like days before shutdown or days into shutdown and then shutdown happened. And now, I've forgotten that piece. I should have recorded it when I had a chance, I guess. I don't know. But if you're interested, parts of that are on my website and are referred to in the podcast, Opposable Thumbs, that Alvaro and I did together. We went on as guests. So anyway, the hope maybe that will be in the show notes.
JC (01:06:11):
So, I ended up making another piece from home with a bunch of dancers, all of us sitting at home about quarantine and the pandemic. That was in May of 2020 when we released the dance video. And since then, I have not created anything, and I'm so depressed.
EW (01:06:28):
But you've created voiceover work. You haven't created any dance work.
JC (01:06:33):
Yes. I've also created lots ... Well, not that much in knitting, but some.
EW (01:06:40):
Yes. It's hard to be an artist that does physical things during the pandemic.
JC (01:06:47):
Yes.
CW (01:06:48):
It's hard to be an artist at all, because most artists ... There's a lot of art that's not necessarily collaborative, but you're still engaging with an audience. And there's a lot of art that is collaborative, such as dance and music. And I've been working on a lot of music over the last few years, but I'm doing it in a collaborative way and it kind of sucks to send files back and forth and kind of write music that way. It's not that fun.
CW (01:07:17):
There's a lot of spontaneity are together with people doing stuff and that's just gone. And unfortunately, the speed of light means that even doing collaborative music over Zoom doesn't really work that well. Yeah. I've gotten kind of good at it, but it's also not the same thing, and I don't think you get the same art out of it.
JC (01:07:40):
I 100% agree with you. There is a lot of energy that Zoom, the computers, not being in the same room, really adulterates that energy that another artist puts out. And it makes it hard for us to harness it, grab it, utilize it. Yeah, taking dance classes through Zoom.
JC (01:08:12):
Last May, I went to LINES Adult Dance Intensive, which was God, it was so much fun asking to do choreography and then performing in front of people in my kitchen and everyone taking turns and getting feedback. That was so exciting. But at the same time, it's entirely dependent on how good the camera is, how good your internet is. Yeah. There's just so many factors that make it unsatisfying and feels defeating. But the fact that anybody is still doing it at this point in the pandemic, I think, is amazing.
EW (01:08:51):
Yeah, because it's exhausting to even just have normal life.
JC (01:08:59):
Yeah. I don't know, but I mean maybe your life has been pretty normal. My life has not changed in the last two years and I've regressed. I'm not dancing back in the studio since the Omicron surge has taken place. Omnirom?
EW (01:09:14):
Omnicron.
CW (01:09:14):
Omni what?
JC (01:09:14):
Omitocrom?
CW (01:09:19):
Oh, I thought you said omnicrap. I thought Elecia said that.
JC (01:09:22):
No, I wish it's something what you say. It's not that way.
CW (01:09:26):
Omnicrap is the description of the current state of everything.
EW (01:09:35):
All right. Well, Jen, it's been wonderful to talk to you. And I know some of your podcasts lasts upward of six hours, but ...
JC (01:09:43):
No.
CW (01:09:43):
Upward of six? Wow.
JC (01:09:46):
Wow. Was I awake for this?
EW (01:09:49):
Had some long ones recently.
JC (01:09:52):
We have. We have, but they've been so good.
EW (01:09:54):
Yes they have.
CW (01:09:56):
Well, I try to keep a lid on things because I don't like editing four hour podcasts.
JC (01:10:00):
I don't either.
EW (01:10:03):
Do you have any thoughts you'd like to leave us with?
JC (01:10:06):
Your voice can be a key to unlock new opportunities.
EW (01:10:11):
Our guest has been Jen Costillo, the professional cat petter. She is also an Embedded software engineer, co-host of the Unnamed Reverse Engineering Podcast, and a voiceover artist.
CW (01:10:27):
Thanks Jen.
EW (01:10:28):
And a dancer.
CW (01:10:29):
Thanks Jen.
EW (01:10:30):
And a knitter.
CW (01:10:30):
Thanks Jen. You're screwing up my routine, Elecia.
JC (01:10:38):
And I pet cats, professionally.
EW (01:10:43):
Do they pay you with hacking? Thank you too, Christopher, for producing and co-hosting and thank you for listening. You can always contact us at show@embedded.fm, or hit the contact link on embedded.fm. Now, a quote to leave you with. Oh, let's do the original old white men, Voltaire.
CW (01:11:03):
Hey, Voltaire is pretty funny.
EW (01:11:05):
He is. Let us read and let us dance. Two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.
EW (01:11:14):
Boy, does he not know what he's talking about?