Summary
This week Sam’s been battling a cold, while also battling some sort of mic problem. So the audio isn’t as clear as we normally would have it.
Chris has been upskilling his dance skills this week.
We have a date for our fireside chat in July. Also HaHa Hamilton is coming up. If you head along make sure to say hi to Chris.
Talking about Hamilton, Sam went to the musical this last week, somehow stuffing up the prepaid car park he had organised. Find out how the rest of the show went.
We learn about Jonathan Nabs and his massive run he’s embarked on. Chris is blown away by a bladder fact.
We learn how they do things differently in Ghana when it comes to movie posters. Hell Pizza has a problem with buy now pay later schemes so come up with their own.
How much would you pay to eat a fancy meal in space?
Looks like Hamilton is going to have a problem with a golden clam. And Kaikoura is turning out to be a great location for a television production.
All this and more. So come have a listen and tell a friend.
Links
Michelin Star Meals at the Edge of Space
Invasive clam found in Waikato River
Kaikōura buzzing with big television crew filming
Hell’s Buy Now, Pay Later Scheme
Hamilton – The Musical
Ghana Movie Posters
Jonathan Nabbs Long Run
Show Transcript
** This transcript was generated by an AI and may not be 100% accurate. If you have questions about any of the information found here, please reach out to us.
Sam [00:00:22]:
Hello and welcome to episode 432 of the Chris and Sam podcast. I’m Chris. And I’m Sam and I’m feeling under the weather. I feel average and I’m getting angry with the microphone.
Chris [00:00:33]:
Yeah, so it’s a little obvious that that is not your normal microphone that you’re using here right now. We’re recording remotely, so yeah, it’s 1 of those. We’re
Sam [00:00:45]:
recording remotely because I’ve had a very bad cold and I didn’t want to give it to you. Yeah, I appreciate that. Oh yeah. Oh and the other audio thing that wouldn’t start its audio encoding recording. That’s why I had to dump the other thing.
Chris [00:01:00]:
So it’s all go. Technology has failed us. It’s all tech, which is hilarious. Because this week’s newsletter is all about technology and communication. I might end up having to put you in there.
Sam [00:01:12]:
Oh, yeah, I don’t mind. But it’s I think 1 I don’t know what you’re going to write about, but 1 of the key points is to try and always have a backup. Yeah, yeah, no, I’m talking about AI and VR really nice.
Chris [00:01:26]:
Nice yeah, so this week coming up, I want to get this out of the way so I remember, while I remember, because I always forget these things. We’ve got the Ha Ha Hamilton is on Wednesday coming up. The Wednesday the, what is it, the fourth or fifth? Something like that. It’s the first Wednesday of the month. It’s the seventh. Oh the seventh, yeah, well I knew it was something. So yeah, I’m looking forward to that. Hopefully, might see Adam McFall there again. He’s usually listening to these. So yeah, he came along to the last 1. Be quite good. I don’t know the main guy, Hagen, but I’m really keen to see Joel again. Joel Vins I think is his name. He’s he’s he’s in there. He was hilarious last time. Absolutely hilarious. I hope he’s got something different because if that’s the same thing it would still be sort of funny but I’ve already heard it. So yeah, yeah, so that’d be cool anyway. Yeah, so I’m looking forward to that on Wednesday night and Last night we had dance last session for it. We do a 6 week block, so just started doing a little bit of basic cha cha.
Sam [00:02:39]:
Oh, dance, dance evolution for Chris. Yeah, it is actually it freaking gets you warmed up pretty quick. I tell you that the old charger anyway. Hey, real quick, just because you mentioned AI and there’s always something to talk about. If you have a really old photo from 20 years ago and it’s the only photo you have, and it’s a bit blurry and you want to make it better. Download a program called Topaz Gigapixel AI. It’s phenomenal. It can also repair video. In the free version, they’ll give you a free trial, you get a little tiny watermark on your photo, but it costs 99 bucks as a one-off payment. And holy crap, it’s got some real good processing. I saw it on a YouTube video. It might be some of the best out there.
Chris [00:03:26]:
Yeah, pretty cool. So I’ll have to pay attention to that because he’s been playing so much with the AI visual. He took 1 of the, we have a monthly sort of catch up with some learning guys in town and we took a photo, like a selfie of 4 or 5 of us in front of the window of IJAC in Victoria Street. So there’s like lots of reflection all the rest of us were pretty clear, but like background is. Yes, busy and so he’s been playing with the new. What is it? The firefly is it called with Adobe Photoshop? I don’t know what the actual name is. I just know it’s the Photoshop thing. Yeah, the Photoshop thing. I think it’s firefly. And so it’s got the generative fill in that. And so first of all, he made it 20% bigger or something. So it had to create the edges and he picked this mirror shot, a window shot, because it’s just it’s terrible. It’s a weird thing. And it did a really good job of it. It actually did a really good job. Not perfect. Nothing’s perfect, but really good. And then I see then went and put us all in fantasy armor. Of course, because as you do, and that was pretty impressive, Not amazing, but pretty impressive. Look pretty good. So yeah, a lot of fun with all that stuff. Hey, we want to talk about this fireside chat because people are like, have you forgotten about that? No, we haven’t forgotten. Who are the people? Is it the 1 person? The people in my head. We did hear from 1 person. Oh did we? Oh ok, I probably didn’t even read that message. Jamie Oxley is keen.
Sam [00:05:15]:
Oh cool, Cool. He does not work Sundays anymore, but he does not know what Zoom is or how it works. But he will. Well, he will sort something out.
Chris [00:05:24]:
We’ll sort that out. Yeah. So what it is, it’s going to be Sunday, the 2nd of July, July, July, July at 10 a.m. New Zealand time. And we pick that specifically so that, as we mentioned the other day, the majority of people will be in the States. That should be Saturday afternoon, evening-ish, as I understand it, something like that. I believe you. But yeah, so and if that’s we’ll put this time in the Facebook page, feel free to comment if you go. Oh, that would be better if it was this time let us know doesn’t mean we’ll necessarily change this but we can definitely take that on board for next time but yeah it’d be great to have you pop in ask us some questions have a bit of a yarn be cool tell us a joke I’ll tell you a joke.
Sam [00:06:19]:
Sounds amazing. You’re so you’re last. You’ve sold it, Chris. Really sold it. Up until that point, I wasn’t sure. But now it’s joke for joke.
Chris [00:06:31]:
Yeah, okay. All right. Let’s move on. I on.
Sam [00:06:37]:
I don’t know what today is last weekend when I saw Hamilton the musical.
Chris [00:06:43]:
I opened very good. Is that like the American Hamilton the musical?
Sam [00:06:48]:
American Hamilton the musical with mainly Australian cast.
Chris [00:06:51]:
OK, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. So it’s the official production.
Sam [00:06:56]:
Yeah, couple of things. Top tip, you can prepay your car park before you go there and when you get to the car park building, the arm should just lift and you just drive on in. Except that didn’t happen for me. Because I paid for the… It’s not a top tip there. No, no, no, no, no. The top tip is pay for the day you’re actually going. I paid for the day before for some reason. I had to pay for 2 lots of car parking and it made me happy. That’s awesome.
Chris [00:07:29]:
That’s great. That’s made my day. Yeah.
Sam [00:07:34]:
Because I was like, it’s not opening, it should be opening. Then I looked at the confirmation. I was like oh, this is yesterday. Oh, that’s why it costs so much because I paid for Friday, not the cheap Saturday.
Chris [00:07:46]:
So was that Sky at Sky parking building or?
Sam [00:07:51]:
No, so this is Spark Arena, the shows at Spark Arena in Auckland. Yeah. And this was the arena car park, which is just around the corner. Well, yeah, real easy to get to actually surprised me. Yeah, yeah, I’ve never parked there. I did know that they use cameras a lot in the sky 1. That’s why I asked. Yeah, so also did not realize my tickets for the show were the highest seats furthest away from the stage you could possibly get.
Chris [00:08:20]:
Is that because you got in late or you just random draw or? It was probably just due to the cost, but there, So you had to go like, these steps were like on a massive angle
Sam [00:08:35]:
and all these old people are like, it was like mountain climbing for them. They were huffing and puffing. There was like 90 year old. I can imagine the rope together. I was worried if someone fell. They were getting altitude sickness, I think they were like 90, you know, and so it was all good, but we got right to the top and some guy was quite vocal because to the side of us, there was 1 extra level behind, but in our row we were the furthest back. And he was like, these weren’t the tickets I brought. And he was a bit upset about it. And I was like, I have no idea what I brought. Obviously I was just mashing buttons like I was with the car park. Like now they’re advertising like $70 seats for the rest of this week, if you want to go, and there’s a weird lotto draw where they might send you a link and you get it for 10 bucks, Which is crazy. So anyway, so it was worth going. It was it was good. Really really good The cool thing was we’re right at the top. So we had a ledge behind us to put all our stuff But the seats the seats was so close together At this high altitude, So I’m sitting like this and I’ve got this 20 something year old girl next to me, who’s also from Hamilton just randomly, but she’s like wedged against me. We’re wedged together. So we’re watching the show like this. I’ve never sat 2 and a half hours with somebody completely stuck to my side. Holy crap, yeah, good show though. Good show.
Chris [00:10:10]:
Wow, OK, no, that sounds good. I didn’t even realize it was on. I did see you mentioned something, but I didn’t know if it was the Hamilton.
Sam [00:10:20]:
Yeah yeah yeah yeah.
Chris [00:10:22]:
Hey do you remember Jonathan Nabs you’ve you’ve. Did you meet Jonathan or did you just see him at the he did talk at TEDx. What was his talk about? His talk about was his talk was about helping people that were sort of depressed and that sort of thing. A journey through depression. He did that book anyway. He did. He did the book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. His brother Thomas did the same year as you, did he? Yeah, sorry, Thomas is on, no, I don’t, I know, no, no, Thomas is who I’m thinking of. I don’t think I’ve seen Jonathan’s stuff. So Jonathan’s doing this thing to support child cancer at the moment. He’s running 8000 kilometers across Canada.
Sam [00:11:13]:
Oh, no, I saw. Yeah. Okay. I saw a bit of the story. Is either 1 that had to run back to do a bit because he walked it?
Chris [00:11:20]:
I say that. No, I haven’t seen anything. I just somebody shared it because we knew Jonathan. I was like, oh, well, it’s actually that shit. And I was like, that’s amazing. And I just had a look at a couple of things. I know he was on TV or something but I’ve missed all of that and I was like oh I couldn’t remember if you’d met him or not.
Sam [00:11:39]:
No. Sky I mean obviously both brothers really cool guys so yeah. I think I think he said in the story, there was a section that he walked a little bit and he was like, no, I’m running the whole way. So he had to go back.
Chris [00:11:55]:
That does actually sound like Jonathan. That sounds like a man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause he was, when we did the talk, he was the 1, pretty sure it was him that said first, right, I’m going to practice, I’m going to give this talk 100 times before the day. And I think he was gutted that, oh no, I think he got to 100 because he was so focused on it. And then there was somebody else who a couple of the others went, oh, that’s a good idea. We’ll do that, too. And they 1 or 2 of them were like, I don’t think anyone got to 100, but 1 of them was like, I got to 95. But I’ve got not doing 5 more times.
Sam [00:12:31]:
So anyway, he he describes himself as a New Zealand born life enthusiast.
Chris [00:12:38]:
Yeah. Yeah, he’s he’s he’s cool guy. He’s a cool guy. I got 2 weird things for you if you like. 1 is, Have you ever seen anything about Ghana movie posters? I don’t know. There’s a link in the in the card there. Go and click on that link. Yeah. So in Ghana, they or in a lot of African countries, they don’t have the same movie post as we have. They basically draw them based on God knows what, like some of it’s quite. Oh, yeah. Okay. Now, I want you to scroll down and find ET, because that’s my favorite is down there. It’s quite far down the page, I think. I’ve got to read them because if I just look at the pictures I might miss it. Oh, where is it now? So we will share this, but this link because there’s some hilarious stuff in there. Oh actually,
Sam [00:13:41]:
so OK, so these that this website that you’re linked to you can buy these. Oh yeah, absolutely. Oh cool.
Chris [00:13:51]:
And this is the 1 I was looking at. There’s loads of different websites and different things. Actually, maybe this ET1 isn’t in this. I don’t think it is. It’s alphabetical and it’s not there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just had a hunt through and I was like, oh, but yeah, they randomly put all sorts of weird and wonderful things in there and the ET 1 that I’m thinking of had the alien face hugger on somebody and it had Michael Jackson in front of it. And the cycle over the moon and the actual ET. And I’m like, where’d all this stuff come from? It’s random. That’s crazy. But yeah, there’s these Ghana or I should say African movie posters. Because if you just search African movie posters, you just see loads of images all over the place. And there was 1 site that I ended up on that had some pretty good ones, so that’s why I linked to that. So
Sam [00:14:48]:
this is Deadly Prey Gallery, Chicago-based traveling art gallery with roots from Ghana, and they want to preserve the hand-painted Ghanian movie posters. They work with 10 artists directly, and they house and archive over 1000 of these posters spanning 30 plus years. So good. So good.
Chris [00:15:10]:
Yeah, I’ll let you do something and I’ll go back to my weirdness. You weirdness? Yeah, yeah, I just, I yeah, I’ve got something I want to talk about. Okay, go, go. Okay. All right. So I saw this article the other day. Let me open it up actually. And it was basically, you know. It’s on you. News Hub mean I am Chang their blood is wrong. Urologist reveals that was the headline. So I don’t know why I even clicked on that, to be honest with you, but I was like, Because they know what you want to read and it’s that. Yeah, well, I wouldn’t have thought so. And it’s basically saying that guys, particularly when they get older, like even older than me, that’s what I’m saying, they say, you know, you should pay sitting down rather than standing up because you, your body relaxes more and you’ll find it easier, particularly people with prostate issues and stuff. Okay, yeah. And it goes on about, you know, men, you know, they did all these studies of different people in different countries, how many always pay sitting down, how many pay always pay standing up, you know, all that sort of thing. Important to know. This whole thing was just like a revelation to me. I was like, what? You mean I could sit down and pay like I had never even ever even occurred to me and they’re going on about you know older guys don’t do this because they find it emasculating or whatever I’m like. It’s just that I never even considered it for 50 years. I’ve been standing, paying, paying, standing up, standing, paying, paying, standing up. And it had never occurred to me to do otherwise. And it’s just, it blew my mind.
Sam [00:17:06]:
Am I weird with what’s going on? No, no, no, no, you’re not weird. It’s just 1 of those things. I like how they’ve, the first like section of this thing that sort of you can see them keyword stuffing to make sure they cover all aspects of paying so that’s it paying when a man goes for a slash. I’m when you go for a way when you go for a number 1 it’s like okay. 1, it’s like, okay, jamming all the different ways of saying it.
Chris [00:17:38]:
Yeah, but yeah, so Germany comes in 40% of people saying they pay sitting down males pay sitting down every time and only 10% saying they never do. Oh, Germany, it’s off the list. Yeah, it’s top of the list. Efficiency. But yeah, New Zealand wasn’t included in the survey, but Australia was like 25% of respondents said they sit every time. I’m like, again, never occurred to me. Never. I mean, the only time I’ve ever paid sitting down as well lying down, sitting down was in a hospital bed where I couldn’t leave the bed and you had that. Thing that you pay and it’s the only time I’ve ever paid sitting down. But I can recall.
Sam [00:18:28]:
Anyway, how do you feel about being PLS?
Chris [00:18:32]:
I don’t know what that is. Buy Now Pay Later schemes.
Sam [00:18:36]:
Oh, yeah, yeah. Afterpay is probably the top 1. Yeah, we,
Chris [00:18:43]:
I’m not a big fan generally. So I grew up in the era of lay-bys where you paid, but you didn’t get it till you finished paying. So you’d pay a little bit every week, then you would, once you made the last payment, you get your stuff. So I was quite happy with that. But yeah. So what about… The
Sam [00:19:10]:
boss of Hell Pizza, he got approached by 1 of a couple of these buy now pay later providers who wanted HAL to offer their service to its customers. And he said, we think it’s taking it a step too far when you’ve got quick service restaurants like ours being offered the service to give to our customers for basically what’s considered a treat. He goes, it’s mental. So how did what, how does, and they’ve come up with their own scheme. Buy now, pay later, Chris. But you don’t have to pay until you’re dead.
Chris [00:19:47]:
How many times can you use that?
Sam [00:19:49]:
I don’t know. It is a legally binding agreement. They will come for you and get the money from your will in a state after you die. Yeah, it just sort of doesn’t say so. I don’t know how many that actually do. Like, you only have to do a couple maybe, but imagine if you just racked it up, you just go and get your special card, I guess, or something.
Chris [00:20:14]:
I don’t know. It’s a good it’s a it’s a great publicity stunt. Exactly,
Sam [00:20:19]:
exactly.
Chris [00:20:20]:
It’s a brilliant publicity stunt. Speaking of publicity stunts, you’ve got something written down here that I saw a little bit of, but I don’t know much about, was the space meals. Yes. So
Sam [00:20:34]:
Michelin star restaurants want to serve you amazing food on the edge of space suspended from a giant balloon. It’s the French company. So you’re not going up in a rocket, you’re going up in 1 of those balloon thingies. Yeah, the photo looks, that’s what they show you in the photo. The company is called Zapalto, but you have to pre-reserve a ticket before you can buy an actual ticket. So $10, 000 US to reserve a ticket. And then that’ll give you a chance to reserve a ticket for $131, 000 US. You will then float up in the capsule 25 kilometers up and you’ll be able to see the curvature of Earth and you’ll be wind and dined in style.
Chris [00:21:24]:
So there’s still gravity at that point, right? Yeah. Alright, OK. You’re paying for the view. It’ll be a pressurized capsule.
Sam [00:21:39]:
I assume so, yeah. Yeah, okay.
Chris [00:21:42]:
Yeah, all right. All right. I’m just thinking about what it’d do to the food. You want it to taste good, but yeah, it’ll be all right. I’m sure that’ll work it out. I’m not 130, 000 keen on that, to be honest with you. No, no.
Sam [00:22:00]:
I would much prefer to maybe set up a business and figure out how I can make money from a golden clam. A golden clam? They’ve found a gold clam which is an invasive species in the Waikato River. It is infested like Taupo, it can clog hydro dams. And this thing is, they’re pumping out potentially 400 juveniles a day. That’s their reproductive rate.
Chris [00:22:27]:
Damn. This could be a new type of meat product. We just have to get a billion of them, mush it up and flavour it. This could be like… So does it not do something good for the water too? Clams are filter units, effectively, right? So they filter the water. So does that not help our water purity? Apparently not. They’ve had trouble all around the world with these things.
Sam [00:22:54]:
They’re not sure how it’s going to behave in New Zealand conditions. If anybody spots it, they want to know. It’s very little. It’s like this big in the photo. Little puppy type thing. Yeah. They grow up to 3 centimeters across. Like that’s it. They’re quite distinctive.
Chris [00:23:15]:
I was going to say, how distinctive are they? How would you recognize 1? 0, they can be found
Sam [00:23:21]:
within the water, sitting on top of sandy or muddy surfaces. They’re a dirty white to yellow or tan color, and up to 3 centimeters. They’re not safe to eat because the Waikato River has a whole bunch of concentrated toxins. So they do filter feed from the water, but they accumulate the toxins in their gut. Yeah, well, it’s like most.
Chris [00:23:44]:
Yeah, yeah.
Sam [00:23:46]:
What are they called? Crustaceans, blobby things that live in a shell.
Chris [00:23:50]:
Yeah, there’s another word for them filter feeders. There’s a. I want to say an email, not muscle is another word for me anyway. I’ll ask. Mollusk, that’s what I’m thinking of. Mollusk. Yeah,
Sam [00:24:01]:
yeah. We bring you all the right words here at the Christmas and podcast.
Chris [00:24:08]:
All right, so now what’s this with kaikoura?
Sam [00:24:12]:
Oh, they had a story that was pretty cool. They’ve been making a New Zealand based show. And they chose it because it’s all beautiful and wonderful down there and I will say it is very nice down there. And the show is called Friends Like Her and I think it’s, is it a drama? I can’t remember. And they’re actually using a whole bunch of. A crew from there. So they’re using local crews, local extras, local bird life. Everything They’ve decided to be there. Now they’re gonna be there for, it is using 2, 126 accommodation nights in total. Yeah, and that’s just pretty good because when they have days off, everybody goes into town, they’re all spending their money and stuff.
Chris [00:25:10]:
No, that’s cool. Yeah. Because it’s not a big place, Kaikoura. I’m pretty sure Geoff Pinney’s brother lives there still. 1 of his brothers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, hmm, that’s pretty cool. Right, well, I don’t actually have much else. What have you been doing to talk about? Oh, I am so busy right now. So with work, I have to, there’s this 1 learning unit that I’ve been working on for ages. It was the first 1 I started working on for this particular client 6 months ago. And it says, do this thing. It’s quite legislatively heavy. And I started with it and went, hang on, every state has different legislation around this 1 thing. Did they not tell you that? Did you have to work that out? They sort of knew that, but I didn’t realize how different they were. I said, rather than make 1 big assessment that you have to find your state in, it’s going to be easier just to make the 8 different states books. And they go, oh, yeah, that makes sense. OK, well, we only need this 1 now and then we need these 2 later and the other ones can wait till whenever. So that first 1 I sent it in and other things became priorities. I forgot all about it and all the rest of it. So they finally came back to us and said, oh, can you get back onto this? Cause we’re gonna need it soon. I’m like, okay, all right. Started working on it and then it’s pretty much done. And then on Wednesday they said, oh, actually we need all of the states by next Wednesday. Nice. That’s right. I did 9 hours yesterday. I will be on this computer until next Wednesday. Actually, nonstop, I think at this point. So yeah, I’ve got a lot of work to do. A lot of work to do. So that’s what I’m up to. So, honestly, next week’s podcast, I might not have much to talk about. I might just be dribbling and drooling at the time. More than normal. More than normal. But at least I will have gone to the comedy club, to the comedy lounge at the Navara. Bahaha Hamilton Wednesday night. Hopefully it’s all over by then in terms of my work. But yeah.
Sam [00:27:41]:
Excellent. That pretty much brings us to the end of the podcast. We will obviously remind you about that July date again. By side chat before then we will be going to field days once they give us our free tickets.
Chris [00:27:56]:
But they not, oh, they haven’t done that yet. They’ve said we’re accredited.
Sam [00:28:01]:
Yeah, we’re all good. We’re all good to go, but we’re good to go. They physically haven’t given us the little skinny thing. Yeah, cool, cool, cool. You know what I don’t like, though? I downloaded the app and it’s like, Try and log in and it goes. If you’re logging in with details from 21 or 2022, reset it. We gotta sign up again.
Chris [00:28:24]:
OK.
Sam [00:28:25]:
Every year there’s always something a bit weird about signing back up to that app. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s like yeah, it’s a new app every time.
Chris [00:28:33]:
I thought it was pretty good the other year. I don’t know why they’re changing. This 1 looks pretty flash as well.
Sam [00:28:38]:
OK. We’ll be there stalking people, I mean, looking at people. Yeah, I’m looking forward to that. It’ll be great. So if you are going to
Chris [00:28:48]:
the show, the field days, and you see us there, come and say hello. We have got, we’ll have some little, little tiny presents for those people that approach us and say hello, that we will be giving them. And I’m not telling you what they are. Are you going to Adam’s birthday film thing?
Sam [00:29:10]:
I haven’t replied to him yet because I was feeling like death.
Chris [00:29:14]:
Feeling much better today. I should be able to make that 1 actually. Yeah, yeah, because it’s not this weekend, it’s next weekend. Is it? Or is it? I might be wrong. No, you’re right, you’re right, next weekend.
Sam [00:29:26]:
Sorry, I don’t even know what day of the week it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you should be all right by then. I’m working tomorrow. I got next weekend off. Yeah. And also shout out to Brett, my workmate. I said, I won’t be coming into work. I’ve got a cold. Feeling like crap. Do you know what his expert reply was? Don’t die.
Chris [00:29:54]:
Yeah. Thanks. Well, he’s an older guy. It’s a thing. Yeah, I bet it is.
Sam [00:30:01]:
Until next time, I’m Sam. I’m Chris. Stay up. Bye.
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