 I feel the liftoff clock has started. Okay, hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the punk rocker moon stomper podcast. I am Amy Shira Tidal with you as always and of course my co-host is Mr. I'm Jason McClellan and Amy why don't you introduce our guest today. I am super excited to have our guest today. Mr. Derek Gibbs, I think we should just let you introduce yourself what you do and why we want you on a nerd podcast. Well let's see what I do is play bass in the band Real Big Fish and why you want me here I have no no idea. Because I believe you typically tour with a telescope on a bus don't you? I've been trying to do that. Yeah your secret astronomy nerd which is why I'm super excited to chat with you about like all things space and all that weirdness because like that's not what you'd expect the two things to go together and that's what this weird podcast is all about. But as per usual before we get into the nerdery we all need to start drinking because this is way more fun when you're half drunk. So I'm gonna go with a not massive bottle that I have today. I have the new Belgium Citadelic because that's a thing that sounded really good. So I'm gonna it is pretty good. Okay I'm gonna go ahead and give you the sound bite of me cracking this on the microphones. Kind of. Derek what are you drinking today? It's in the kitchen can I go get it? Go get it. Go get it. Oh and I want to see your shirt afterwards too. I can't believe you actually have a non-big beer. Way to go. I know well the other one I have is like a massive beer. It's pretty massive. Acoustic ales strawberry fields which like this sounded really really good but I don't know that I necessarily feel like drinking a pint half right now. Maybe for a longer show. Maybe yeah maybe. I figured I'd start big today. All right. Oh nice. The latest from the enjoy by series from Stone. That's a good beer. Yeah. Excellent. Now I feel like I should have opened the bigger beer. Yeah I know you're right glass. Fantastic. Nice. Nicely done. No shame maybe you should never never never feel dissuaded from from going big. I mean I can it's sitting on my desk so I can always do it but I feel like I should show this off. I've got my vintage Apollo 12 glass today. There you go. Nice. In honor of nerdery and also my cat who's named Pete Conrad. Jason what are you drinking today? Well you know for people who have listened to the show before they may have already figured this out and for new people you'll you'll learn this very quickly but we're time travelers on this show and although you're probably listening to this in the month of February or so it's actually Festivus today so you know I decided that I would go with something festive so I'm going with a Sam Adams old Fezziwig ale now this thing it's a pretty good beer it's ale brewed with cinnamon ginger and orange peel so nice and festive thought it was good for today. Yeah also Festivus. Who do you think would win the feats of strength? Out of the three of us? Yeah you would. I'm the short one but I have been fighting a lot lately. Yeah you post videos of you kicking stuff I'm not getting involved with that. Yeah I got hit in the head like five times yesterday really hard my neck's actually quite sore but it was good it was good anyways cheers guys. Cheers. Let's get started I am I'm not really good at preparing questions for guests. That's the glory of this show because there is no structure we have we go into episodes with a sort of loose theme and I guess today our loose theme is astronomy but you know music and other things play a key element in this show so I guess I want to just jump off I alluded to this when we spoke earlier but I think you and I have actually met and this probably would have been 2003 yeah 2003 in Phoenix I produced concerts for several years and I brought forces of evil to town and that was at the brick house I think a venue that doesn't exist anymore but yeah forces of evil show in Phoenix. Was that one where we played downstairs? No. No? Okay good. Okay good. I thought I was gonna if I thought if there was a fire I definitely would have died at that show because I think there was only one way out. That would have been at the Nile I think. Okay yeah really small a lot of punk shows and stuff happened there down in this basement it had a larger upstairs you know it was a smallish mid-sized venue where the you know around thousand to fifteen hundred shows would play but the smaller shows played down in the basement in this place it was just an absolute death trap and it eventually got shut down pretty much but I was scared. Because it was a death trap? No for whatever reason venues closed down and that's usually one of them but no it changed ownership and then became a church and became a something else and it's a venue again it's back in the hands of people who were going to shows and promoting shows back then so yeah good times because you you definitely think of death trap punk venues as turning into churches that's like the natural progression in my mind I like that I like that thanks Phoenix 2000 wait would you say three mm-hmm mm-hmm yeah 2003 so yeah back back forces of evil days yeah that was a while ago I can't music history kind of flies by yeah and you've been that you've been doing this for ages you've been like working in this realm for ages yeah to remember a one day at the last yeah no I knew there was no chance I'm not the best at it yeah well it shows I mean people come up to you they're all hey I saw you so-and-so at this venue so many years ago and you're yeah I remember just doing a smile and nod and like make it a little bit you're just like I guess it can depend on the situation I try not to pretend and be phony yeah because I feel like people can see right through that when it comes to me so I'll say hey we probably did meet but if it was a year or two ago sorry man I don't remember yeah if it was a week ago I sometimes I don't remember there that's fair um I would really like to know what's on your shirt Eric oh it looks for a seat my first day wearing this I just re-renewed my membership to the planetary society and I got a new shirt that's rad nice that's not a bad one to planetary society which is like five blocks that away from my house I walk by them all the time and I've never gone in there nice all right cool appropriate I thought so I have a membership card here somewhere but I feel like they need to send me another one I don't think I just got the shirt and is that the only space-related society you belong to oh I think so I mean I subscribe to a couple of magazines but I don't think that counts yeah so I'm curious to Amy's question what what do you get with that membership I get a quarterly I wouldn't even call a magazine it's kind of a report on what they're doing with the money that they raise I get well this time I got a shirt sweet membership card although I don't know what that does other than I can show it to you and say I'm a member I don't get discounts anywhere of I don't get to go to JPL whenever I want have you ever been to JPL yeah in fact I went this year to the open house they had in the springtime and the worst the open house is like the worst day to do JPL I went two years ago with a producer I was working with and like I offered to take her because I'd been there enough to like tell her the things and not wait in line it was like it's like Disneyland without the rides like we waited three hours to look at the high bay but there was nothing in the high bay it was like why are people so excited about a big empty clean room and yeah that's a good point but yeah they tried something new this year that I think may have solved your issue with how crowded it was they did an online I wouldn't I wouldn't call it a lottery but you had to sign up and they had a limited amount of tickets and you had to tell them what time you were gonna be there so they tried to control the attendance throughout the weekend okay you know I still had to wait almost an hour for like to go to the control room with all the screens and stuff yeah but I don't think it was as bad as what you remember from a couple years yeah that's good I also don't have a comparison because the last time I went to an open house there I was probably 11 years old so that's a while right yeah it's a I've been there like I've got a bunch of friends out there cuz like I live here yeah it's a lot nicer when you can go and just like hang out with people that you know they can take you to places so yeah if you ever need a better tour I can probably put you in touch with the right people so you don't have to wait in line for five hours and you can actually like I don't know when they sent us through I think I think the control room is the the center of the inverse as they call it like the heart of the DSN which like it looks so cool if anybody out there has been there you know what I'm talking about it's all like blue lit from the floor up so it looks like a movie movie set and like they did that because they know that this stuff looks great on TV but at the open house they sort of like let you it was like soup not see style of like shuffle sideways do not talk to anybody who is working and you don't get to do anything and then they of course had the the cardboard cutout of Bobbock the Mohawk guy it's just like this is a very weird way to like show people JPL but yeah it's more fun when you get to like hang out in there for a while cuz like there's really cool shit going down so yeah so you went to your first JPL open house you were 11 so are you like a longtime space nerd where did your space nerdery come from I guess my dad got me started because he was a member of the Planetary Society he got astronomy magazine he would have me watch the original cosmos you know whatever PBS station was out here at the time 28 or 50 KCET I think or KOC and he would take me to planetarium shows at well wherever you could find them usually at a local university or college and he eventually bought a telescope for the family a small at least I call it small Celestron let's see like a classic what do you call it a C C 80 or something like that I think the 80s 80 millimeter so not very big and pretty big yeah big enough to go look at the moon and look yeah Mars and and then that kind of subsided for a while and as I got older I thought all right I want to invest in a really good one and I want to start taking pictures through it nice I was gonna ask you that yeah so first thing I did this is starting to a long story but I guess that's what no go for it why this is exactly why we want to talk to you about the space nerdery stuff just go for it you know you've got a big beer so you're good yeah yeah cheers cheers so I bought a big camera a DSLR a Canon 60d of course right before they came out with the astrophotography version but whatever and before I bought my own telescope I borrowed that that earlier one I was talking about from my dad for a while and I got some pretty good results with it but it's not computerized it's not tracking you know it's got a couple knobs to adjust it and you do it manually as you go so I was just taking pictures of the moon but they came out really nice and I think I use it for some solar stuff too like the Venus transit that was two or three years ago I mean I could probably draw it in a paint program and it would look the same as my photo you know it's a background with a disc and a little ball like this Venus sure it is yeah transit of Venus is awesome but it's one of those things like if you don't know what you're looking at it really does look like you just hit like put a black dot on a picture of the Sun in Photoshop like it's super cool but it's really hard to like tell people why it's cool but so anyways continue you're taking pictures of the transit of Venus yeah and that was one of the last things I did with that telescope then I finally invested in my own so I got a big Celestron C11 so it's an 11 inch I'm holding my hands up like people can see that on the podcast there's a video version yeah okay that's true and that's where I'm at now that's not the one I bring on tour though because it's ridiculously big and especially when I have it in a case and stuff to try and keep it safe and there's no way it would survive to or it would the mirrors would get all upset and it would be a pain in the ass are you doing astrophotography with that one oh yeah yeah and so the one I have that I take on tour lately like at first I bought a really cheap one that came in a little backpack very plasticky and my binoculars are better than this telescope so I handed that one down to my three-year-old nephew so he can trash on it and I for this work tour we did this past summer I bought yeah is an Orion I think yeah Orion but it's still like it's tabletop it doesn't have a tripod but it has motors in it so you can roughly line it up with North and it'll try to track a little bit and it's got a hand controller that you can aim it if you want I'm sorry no hand controls just got buttons on it so you can motorized use the motors to aim it a little bit but it gets a pretty good picture and it was enough to where people would walk by I don't know how many if either if you've been to the warp tour and been back where all the buses are and all the bands hang out when it's all over yeah and it's kind of a big community yeah community maybe like summer camp for band dudes and girls so after hours people are milling around and going on each other's buses and playing games and cornhole and cooking and all that and I set up a table with the telescope and I made a lot of friends that would come by and is that a telescope and you would maybe you guys wouldn't believe this but I didn't believe how many people have never even looked through one yeah and it it made me a little sad and it also made me feel like well am I some kind of warp tour astronomy ambassador now like right maybe people are gonna go oh I want to go home and buy one of those and and I would say do you want to see the rings of Saturn yeah you can do that yeah it's right there and they go how do you know it's right there I scratch my head I guess I just have paid attention and read now I know so that's awesome to hear about you know getting that attention and causing people to be become interested but have you also made friends who have had previously had similar interests and might actually have you know done some astronomy themselves you know I can really recall really one of the guys in the band his brother bought a telescope a little bit after I did and he's much more serious about photography and gets really good results like he he really does the legwork and drives out to the the middle of like near the salt and sea what's that on the Borrego the park and it's super dark and he gets some really awesome photos that makes me kind of go damn and I need to I need to do that too but other people really into astronomy I mean friends around me will take an interest in it and oh what are you looking at oh that's cool hmm but I don't think I know anyone it no big space nerds huh yeah wow if I'm forgetting someone it's gonna be really embarrassing when they go hey dude why didn't you remember me but like learning how to use a telescope and like learning how to do astrophotography like that's a commitment in itself I was once gifted a very cheap probably plastic telescope for Christmas that like yes I'd similar to you like my binoculars were better I couldn't figure out even how to use the stupid thing and I gave it away like a secret Santa thing a couple years ago and I'm pretty sure it just keeps making the round within my space friends because everyone's like oh a telescope and then they're like the next year yeah this is a really shitty telescope yeah it's like for people who aren't super committed to like learning how to track things in the sky it's like what do I do with this tube yeah at this and this big telescope I bought it it changed my world because it's so automated yeah I kind of feel like I'm cheating but who cares because it's I can just say I want to see this and it if I've set it up reasonably well it's pretty much in the frame and I go wow that's right there like I could have seen that with my dad's old telescope but it would have taken me a lot more know-how and looking at a chart and being really patient like just to find it like I know easy where the Andromeda Galaxy is if it's the right time of year I can boom boom boom okay there it is binoculars yep I see it and with this other telescope I bought for warp tour you know it's not automated and you can't just pick it up and aim it like binoculars so I'm like trying to get it and it's much smaller field of view so it's not as forgiving as far as finding it I was so hard so having the computerized thing I recommend that to everybody that's awesome and is this is this the one to that like because it's not computerized you have to manually track objects that you're looking at because I feel like that's like how much of that do you actually have to like even if you're looking at the moon I mean if you're looking at a certain spot you kind of have to like keep moving as the earth is rotating otherwise like you're gonna lose it and that's what people never think about too is like you can't just point it and go because you know there are no fixed stars thanks Aristotle yeah the little one that I take on the road it has a primitive ability if you set it up just right and it'll kind of keep it in frame somewhere between not having a motor at all or having a really good computerized telescopes somewhere like you can you can step away and have someone else look and then come back to it and it's still kind of in the frame yeah pretty good yeah yeah have you ever used any like insanely big telescopes like at observatories just playing around you know when I was a kid my dad took me to I think one one or two of the ones that are around here what Mount Wilson and Palomar is that the other one it's kind of close and I I'm sure they let us look through but I don't remember it being anything fantastic and you know even with those big university sized telescopes if they're looking at a star well it's a point of light yeah especially when you're a little kid yeah and you have to know what why what you're looking at is cool to care about it otherwise it's like well look it's a dot yeah yeah like I got nothing yeah that's true the one at Griffith I'm sorry no no go ahead the one at Griffith isn't really that big of a telescope it looks pretty impressive but I think you can do like the one I have at home even though it doesn't look as impressive it's not that far off especially again if they're just pointing like oh they're serious and you yeah it looks the same in their telescope it doesn't as it doesn't mine I think yeah but I don't know either I used to know it might be a couple feet in diameter I shouldn't even say because I don't remember it's not meant for scientific observing though you know that whole place was just built to get the public kind of into it yeah yeah well I spent more than six years as a journalist focused on UFOs next to extraterrestrial life so I've got to ask you as a sky watcher have you ever seen any anything unidentified in the sky oh no nothing that made me think I was actually seeing a UFO from another planet I've been in the desert and stuff and seeing things go across the sky that you know usually you can tell if it's a satellite right pretty steady just sometimes you'd see things that change direction but living where we live you've got Edwards Air Force Base Nellis Air Force Base places where they're trying out stuff right and like if they're doing midair refueling or testing some cruise missile or whatever it's gonna behave in ways that you're not used to seeing just living by LAX or Orange County Airport so I would not claim that I've seen a UFO ever how much is that the first question people ask you when they see you with the telescope yeah I guess it came up a few times do you think you know this or this because I feel like even the most casual space person who's like not super involved but is like everyone has some like passing interest in it the first thing they ask is always like what about aliens right it's always about aliens like that's the first it's like people don't know anything about what's really going on off the planet but it's always like aliens that's real right it's like okay let's continue on with your train of thought go on it's me and then the yeah it's weird it gets really fun but um yeah email the other day actually yeah but like I'm sure I'm sure Jason you get all the crazies I got an email the other day from somebody who is a private citizen trying to raise oh my god seven billion dollars to restore an alien structure that was destroyed by the pyramids it was the most nonsensical email it was pretty phenomenal he was asking for my help to get his cause out into the world and I was like I almost want to do it because it's really funny you know those are the new scam emails that are like the Nigerian Prince you know needing to shelter money or whatever right right because now they're like aliens it's the the creativity like I just gets me every time but yeah everyone's obsessed with aliens and like wants to know alien life it's like ooh telescope that means you're looking at aliens on Mars no no well it's funny too I mean just for for UFO watchers you know and actively looking for UFOs people for some reason think telescopes would be good for that and you're looking for things zipping through the sky telescopes not not your good tool for that yeah try and get the International Space Station in a telescope yeah it'll do it get really lucky that's hard enough to do with a camera but yeah yeah you know the coolest things I saw was you know and at the time you know it looked really weird and was pretty exciting and people I was with you know we're very excited because they thought they were with me when there was a UFO on the sky but the International Space Station was making a pass but it was also during a time when the last space shuttle was getting ready to dock so the space shuttle was kind of trailing it as it was going through the sky so you saw these two lights it was really cool to see awesome it is pretty neat yeah yeah I'm good at talking at the same time you know it's good it's on the video delay go ahead yeah it's always the awkward of the Skype calls yeah go I've seen satellites through my telescope but I wasn't trying to I'll be looking at something and then something will dart across my field of view and whoa what are the chances of that and then you look at a map of how many things are that we put up there are orbiting the planet and you're like okay maybe it's not that big a deal that I see one and it was a lot yeah how much we've littered space there's so much space junk out there it's actually a little bit amazing sometimes to me that we don't smash into things more yeah maybe that's a hint that as to how immense space is and how even just in our little yeah bubble that there's a lot of room out there yeah yeah even I think the they're not that far away like I think they're all within kind of that 200 or 3 300 mile radius like yeah it's not a lot of space but yeah we can still go places without smashing them but like all the bits and pieces of junk like panels that have broken off like there's a lot of shit out there we should probably deal with that as a well there are companies that are you know have that on their radar and are working on these machines that will go and gobble up the space junk but yeah I feel like they have as good a chance of getting funding right now as the guy wanting to raise $7 billion to recover alien artifacts from the pyramid when you're appealing to people who have an interest in space or anything going on in space you know whether it's it's good or bad I think you have a better chance of getting people to give you money to land stuff on asteroids and mine asteroids than you do cleaning up garbage that's in space so yeah if people can't see what's in it for them they're not super into it and nobody really cares about cleaning things case in point our own planet so why would we clean things that are off our planet when we could go mine and asteroid and then gain wealth for a country so that we can fight about humanity for the win yeah yeah cheers ask me if I track satellites hmm I was gonna ask you if you if you kind of keep tabs on satellites because I know some people like to try to track satellites and kind of have a rough idea where they're going I know a lot of photography I don't know personally photographers but that try to you know take those perfect pictures of like the ISS going across the moon and then you have this like perfect little outline do you ever track satellites or stations or anything just to like try to try to get those pictures I've never tried to take a picture of the space station and that's the only one that I would ever try to take a picture of I do have an app on my phone that will let me know when the space station is gonna be visible and for how long and how high any yeah some of the software I use on the on the PC either to control the telescope which you can do that by the way or to just find out where things are and then I'll go outside and hunt for it some of them actually have lists of satellites and you can enable that and then on the computer screen you'll see the dot and it'll have the name of the satellite and it'll let you know that it's where it's at but then to go outside and try and find it through the telescope away I'd rather just wait and let it happen by accident yeah you know have this surprise yeah I can imagine that trying to track a very fast-moving dot against the sky is like kind of annoying and not the most exciting thing you could do with the scope in a backyard yeah to have the app and to say to people oh hey look out the window in 10 seconds and there's gonna be the space station what how do you know that and then boom there it is that's just an airplane know it isn't look at it whoa yeah I was that you put on the bro voice for the leg no how do you know that cuz like that's exactly yeah if ever I'm out I'm like hey look it's Venus how do you know that it's just a thing that I know the easy one to pick out yeah it's probably isn't nice of me to to bring up but I won't use anyone's names I met someone once that we got in the conversation of like planetary observing and I'm like oh yeah this is a good time you can see Venus and Jupiter and I think that Saturn whoa is this like a like a special event or like it's tonight the night like no they they're just moving around sometimes you can see him sometimes you can't he goes wow next thing you're gonna tell me is that you can hold your phone up to the sky and it'll tell you what everything is and I went yeah you mean this and I did it for him and he's you know yep he thought I was a wizard even though I didn't what's yeah what's your app of choice for that I think it's just Google sky have you ever tried sky guide sky guide is my favorite because it does you can actually select the wavelength to look at the sky and so you can do ultraviolet infrared x-ray visible and there's one other one that I can't remember off top of my head UV maybe if I didn't say that so you can just like like select what you want to do and then you can zoom into all these things and it like uses Hubble data to like put together what all of these features look like it's awesome you can look at it in all these wavelengths and like tracks planets and you can do it so that it's just like by compass and you can track planets that way you can look through the earth or you can just like manual ego it's awesome what's calling it sky guide sky guide I'm right I guide yeah it's I completely unsponsored I would highly recommend it it's my favorite like nerd app to pull out and just be like yep that's what that is that's what that is here's the moon coming up right here and you can see all the things it's awesome it's a really good one yeah I just love the different wavelengths of light too because it's so cool to see stuff that you can't see right and like nobody thinks about why you would care or want to look in different wavelengths do you use any filters on your scopes to do different wavelengths imaging or just looking I have to physically put that on or can you do it with computers I have a set of filters they came with a little kid I got that had some cheap eyepieces and filters and they actually if you if you mess with a telescope the eyepiece can't see my fingers it's there's the end you look in and then on the other end most of them are usually threaded on the inside and all these filters it's all a standard and the filter just screws into the bottom of the eyepiece when then you put it in the telescope and I've tried because they say oh if you use this one you can see this planet better or this galaxy better and I mean most of the stuff I'm doing out of my backyard so I'm dealing with one of the most light polluted areas on the planet and so by the time I would get to the point where a filter would really benefit me in my opinion I just don't mess with it there's one for the moon which is really good because if you look at the full moon through a really good telescope it's bright like it's blinding like you look away from the scope and then there's the moon wherever you look because it's burned in your eye for five minutes so there is a moon filter which is essentially sunglasses for your telescope it just just dims it and it makes it more comfortable to look at yeah that's kind of awesome yeah people never I actually had this conversation dinner last night trying to explain to a friend of mine that moonlight is actually significantly bright enough that if you're in a dark area with a full moon that you can read by moonlight and he didn't believe me I was like well go out into the forest which this kid would never do go into the forest in a full moon alone with nothing and like bring a large print book for old people and you'll be able to read it by moonlight yeah that destroys all kinds of of astronomy things but as a moon person I love it yeah we used to like driving back and forth from Arizona to here especially when I was a kid you get out there are when that when the 40 was just a two-lane road if I remember I think that's the road you can turn off the headlights if it's a full moon and you know don't do this it's dangerous always drive at night with your headlights on but if you're crazy yeah for a second you just turn the lights off and you can still see yeah I was coming back from I forget where somewhere like in the hills outside LA cousin was visiting friends and I was driving back from their place and it was like 1 30 in the morning there was no one around it was a super full moon I was like I'm just gonna go real slow for half a second here and I turn my headlights off and it was insane how bright it was it's like okay not dying turning back on but it was awesome yeah and that was just for a split second if you had given your eyes the what do they say like 20 minutes or so to adjust yeah well that's why you gotta drive with an eyepatch right then you switch it and then you and then you have your night vision in that eye and then you can drive with the night vision I and then and then you also get the feeling like a pirate no this is this is actually that was a question that I got on my channel not too long ago somebody like came to a talk I gave was like why are there always pictures of astronauts running eyepatches I'm like space pirates no it was to preserve night vision for doing star sightings for guidance computers but yeah so then I went through the history of like why Apollo astronauts always wear patches and it was night vision huh it's kind of neat yeah it's real yeah because you don't think about like how bright you know the sun is when you're outside of an atmosphere that'll blind you that'll destroy your ability to see so yeah when I go to space I'm taking an eyepatch as well you should also just in case you need like to pull a mutiny or something you should be prepared I'll be ready to hijack something for sure there I go there you go yeah I had another question for you but I kind of lost it in the rant about eyepatches anything just curious looking at our solar system is there a particular favorite place you have looking at celestial bodies in our solar system not necessarily that you can see with your telescope but favorite in general for whatever reason in the solar system yep I guess I have to include the telescope experience in there okay because that's part of it for me it's got to be a toss up between Jupiter and Saturn okay maybe I should give it to Saturn because for a better part of my life it was being able to see those rings through a telescope that was neat yeah because it's such a unique sight from standing here at least yeah I mean there's only so much you can really see that's in our soul just our solar system if you expanded it to maybe our galaxy then I might say Orion the hunter is one of my favorites but as far as things to see and that's just looking up like it gives me a little comfort like oh there he is thanks guy Ryan is by far my favorite and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that when I was younger that's really the only constellation I could ever see like it's so easy to find I would look up and in my mind I could make tons of big dippers like well there's the big dipper there's the big I could connect stars all over the place but but Orion was always there and you know when I would would be camping outside all the time in the the desert in the outskirts of Phoenix I would look up and and he'd be my camping buddy that's pretty awesome yeah what about you Amy favorite constellation being from a city I can't actually find or recognize any yeah yeah no I could always recognize just Orion's belt I still can't figure out where the rest of it is even be no I got I know I was never I was I'm like really bad at constellations yeah I can't I don't really I think that Cassiopeia I can usually pick out but like yeah growing up it was only at summer camp when we were on camping trips outside of camp you could have a dark enough sky and we're like a way enough from a city to see that because like we were in Algonquin Park in Ontario where it's like there's nothing you can't even have motorboats so it's like silent and pitch black and it's amazing stars but yeah I was like being out there and I didn't know anything at that time so it was just like nope just stars pretty yeah and I tried I had one night when I was in Australia this summer of like perfect pitch black clear sky it was absolutely freezing and I realized that I don't know a single southern hemisphere constellation mm-hmm really too bad the last time I was there which was probably a year year and a half ago I finally saw the Southern Cross mm with my own eyes and I tried I don't think I have my camera with me to take a picture of it but that's okay sometimes it's just best to observe and use your brain to take a photo yeah so can the experience do you ever post do you ever do you ever publicly post in your your astrophotography I have an album on my Facebook cool but you know I pretty much use that to keep in touch with friends and family right I haven't made it the the guy from real big fish Facebook now maybe I should maybe you should because then you'll get more people going oh wow space that's cool I make my Instagram public and just anyone can follow me so as far as if there are fans follow me that's what they're gonna do is go to my Instagram I've posted a couple photos on there cool but there's a little extra work involved because you know big camera gotta get it to the computer and then get it onto the phone not complicated but just enough to where you go I'll do it later it's also losing like the joy of a good astrophotography image is like when it's big and you can see things and like Instagram is what yay big it's sort of like well it's barely obvious what I'm taking a picture of right now yeah I feel like it's perfect because I'll get this big picture and you might look at and go what am I looking at and I'll go the fuzzy right there oh yeah crop up the fuzzy thing yeah you gotta do the popouts and the captions for sure mm-hmm yeah I was I was fine the the astronomy accounts that I follow on Instagram sort of like this is kind of neat but I want it to be like 17 times bigger yeah unfortunate but I follow one or two people to do it and every time I see their pictures I go I'm not trying hard enough or I need to spend more money on my gear you know so many of the stuff the photos you see in magazines and all that they have guide scopes and they're it's another telescope piggybacking on your main scope tracking space so that it can adjust the telescope perfectly to keep it dead center and they're taking exposures that are you know half an hour or an hour and they're using filters like you were saying and they'll take photos and you'll see the caption underneath it'll say it's an L RGB exposure so they're doing a full light picture then they're taking one in green but when I say L are red green and blue RGB yeah and then they'll combine to get it yeah so it'll say total exposure time four and a half hours like what I can barely take a photo for over 20 seconds and everything starts to smear a little bit right yeah that was gonna be my question to you is what is the longest exposure picture you can manage before it starts to become like just getting to be a blurry fuzzy mass without getting too fancy hooking up my camera to a computer or something the settings in the camera I can set it for a maximum of 30 seconds which is fine because if it's if it's a nebula or something if I get past 20 25 seconds I either get stars smearing or the the orange streetlight glow starts creeping in right from the edges yeah and the sky just looks orange right have you ever gone out into the desert somewhere to just to do astrophotography let's see I took it to my parents house in Arizona once and it's much darker there but I don't know I well I wasn't having that much luck but I had just gotten there from driving five hours there was a thunderstorm on the way later so we were kind of tired and rushed and there were clouds coming in so it wasn't a good a good a good try I have taken the scope up like into the mountains arrowhead but I don't think I have my camera with me at that point and it was really cold so your fingers start to go numb and if you're not ready for it or if someone in your group didn't bring the right jacket and they're dying of cold exposure you gotta pack it up and go yeah it's definitely something that require requires patience and a lot of people don't have patience for for any type of sky watching not at all and I enjoy when I have the opportunity to do it that it lets me exercise that kind of patience and just do do that for a few hours and when I first got the setup going I'd stay out until the sun came up sometimes and just I'd take a little nap and then look at all the photos I got and get really excited but this year it's kind of been tapering off we've been on the road a lot and when I've been home I haven't been wanting to stay up really late for some reason I guess I'm being more productive during the day so it's making me tired doing on doing things around the house and we've had a lot of cloudy nights I feel like this year when I've been home and like right now it's been raining on and off it seems like for a week week and a half not that we don't need it which is awesome because we need it it is great yeah I don't have to water my plants for a long time but not good for setting up the telescope that's for sure yeah so there is a point and shoot camera on the market that has caught my attention recently because I know some people who have it and I've seen some of their the shots they get but it's a one of the Nikon Coolpix cameras and I think it's the P900 but this is a super it's a fixed lens camera but it's a super super telephoto and I think it's a 24 to 2000 millimeter or something but it's got an 83 times optical zoom and part of their part of their marketing campaign is shoot the moon and you literally with this camera can hand hold a shot shoot the moon and it's insane like anti-shake whatever kind of crazy alien technology it has in it you can seriously hand hold a photograph of the moon like shoot the moon holding it without a tripod and get a decent shot like pretty close to the moon it's incredible that is impressive yeah that's really impressive it's you know like how much camera like that cost is what I want I have no idea I know the astronomy is like people look at it as like the weird nerdy quiet door cabinet but it's actually like takes a lot of like tenacity to sit outside at night alone all day slash night and it's really expensive like no one would think about how expensive a hobby it is like how many thousand hobbies you can go you can go overboard with but yeah this camera and it's kind of why I've been interested in it for that purpose of really just photographing the moon but I think it's like in the $500 range so that's really impressive that's reasonable yeah how but just for shooting other things in the sky like you know airplanes like seeing the pilot pick his nose and stuff it's kind of cool yeah that's yeah I'd feel better knowing that my pilot was a human no maybe you don't you know I mean it's just like restaurants you don't want to know what really goes on in the kitchen you probably don't want to know if you'd see him like sleeping or something like yeah better to not know I already try not to think about the frightening level of automation in airplanes and how badly that breaks down with the human pilot in control so yeah yeah I would feel better if there were there were no pilot there so the robots do what do you really because I every time I'm a pilot I always ask Airbus or Boeing what do you prefer and I had a pilot once tell me well when you get into a Boeing it says you're in control how can I help you and when you get into an Airbus it says to you I'm in control here's how you're gonna help me and then like I have never met a pilot ever that's like I love flying Airbus they're like my airline is good to us and we fly Airbus or I love Boeing like it's actually kind of frightens me a little bit interesting try not to think I try to think about it yeah I weirdly have like a fascination with how human machine interactions break down with big technologies with things like space but also with airplanes it's creepy when you start like those tiny little like the computer does something but doesn't tell the pilot what it's doing the pilot corrects for human error but then the computer makes it worse and then 500 people die on our next episode we'll potentially have a pilot as our guest on our next episode so we can talk about his thoughts and or experiences with automation and flying yeah that would be interesting now yeah yep back in the day when I was gonna do a PhD that was gonna be one of the main topics in my PhD and then I decided fuck it good story what are your what are your guys's thoughts on on driving and automation the self-driving cars you know I was thinking that when you started this conversation about the pilots and I don't know I mean I've never been in a car that functions that way I I figure it's inevitable and we can make the machines that can do it it's just a little soon maybe but there are cars out there now that are what they have not not necessarily full automation I'm gonna take you down the road but I've heard of cruise controls that are set up to keep distance between the car in front of you mm-hmm yeah I mean fully fully automated cars are I mean we're gonna see a lot of them in 2017 a lot of companies are testing them right now on the roads and it's funny because ubers got some too that are mostly self-automated and they just got kicked out of California basically so they're all and we're going to Arizona yeah they're shipping them here to Arizona Arizona where whatever the fuck you want to do is fine that's right the thing that scares me most about the self-driving cars is that transitional period when like there are some self-driving cars mostly like human driven cars and still a bunch of idiots in control of said human cars like yeah the big element here is still that the human equation like yeah we all know how bad drivers are like yeah eliminate that the human element from it completely that'd be great but yeah you're still gonna have then you can have the car stock because it's like again to go back to like the analogy of airplanes like airplanes have that it's called t-cast the I forget what it transportation collision avoidance system I think is what it is so like if two planes are in proximity the two systems talk to each other and it commands one to go up and want to go down so the planes agree the problem is that the human pilot has to enact on that so if different in different countries if they have different rules like in the US I know that they're trained to listen to t-casts in other countries they're not and that has caused mid-air collisions so like in that transition period between like some self-driving cars and some not like who's who's responsible for reacting to a situation like that because it's all gonna come down to like people making the right choice by chance so yeah yeah because part of driving is not just controlling the vehicle and making it do what you want it to do but maybe anticipating what people around you were gonna do like oh is that gonna come into my lane I better slow down yeah are we gonna ask them the computer to do that second guess everything around it well I mean they probably have as good of a chance as anybody driving in LA because you drive in LA you know that it's a crapshoot like you have no idea even if they're they're giving you signals like if they've got their turn signal on it's more likely than not that they're not really going that way yeah yeah they could be just like an old guy with the you know the the continual left just like driving along no idea yeah it's driving in LA fun times good times good times yeah and they're talking now to you about with the automated cars just their ability to you know take into account different driving conditions like weather weather related stuff and how different you have to drive in different weather situations so it'll be interesting to see definitely things that people in both California and Arizona having lived both of those places don't know how to deal with I have never seen more accidents than when I was living in Phoenix when there was any kind of rain it's like people didn't realize like oh yeah you can't actually go 85 down surface streets and it's raining although I still think my favorite like failure of weather was when I was living in Durham for one winter and there was an inch of snow an inch of snow and there were cars on fire everywhere because nobody realized that like you can't just gun your engine to go up a slightly slippery hill you have to go slower for traction so everyone's car was overheating and just like on fire it was like overnight it became post-apocalyptic America in like the south it was very weird yeah like it is in in Arizona during the summer when people are trying to get up to flag stuff where it's slightly cooler and you know they're stuck in traffic because everybody leaves at the same time on Friday evenings or whatever and so they're they're stuck and stop and go traffic going up these hills and they're blasting their air conditioning and their old shitty cars and car overheats yeah I think that's my least favorite part of the drive to Phoenix is that like I don't know 60 miles stretch on the 10 when it's like turn off air conditioning to avoid overheating next 80 miles and I'm like this is just like this is the part of the driver if my car breaks down I'm actually gonna die because no one's gonna find my corpse like yeah it's just like that sketchy sketchy bit of broad desert out there well that's always my thought driving through Nevada you know through a lot of those just completely empty areas where there's nothing no civilization for miles and miles and miles and not really sell service either so you know you feel comfortable that you've got your phone but most of the time it says no service and yeah I haven't seen a car for an hour I don't have any cell service yeah one time home from Lake Havasu where I'm from or where I was born we came across a vehicle overturned that was I don't know probably 50 feet off the highway and oh that looks weird because this the hazard lights were still working so we stopped and there was someone trapped in the car and we still don't know what happened because it took maybe 20 30 minutes for the emergency vehicles to get there and this isn't even as remote as these locations you guys are referred to and this was on the was it the 62 or that the highway that you take to go from the 10 and go through Yucca Valley and Joshua tree it was out there past Joshua tree and 29 palms and I hope they made it I hope they got to him in time but yeah scary you know that's a great area for a guy watching yeah yeah just as long as your car is the right way up that's right that helps ideally ideally yeah well this got fun this got weird it's supposed to get weird I feel like the question that we need to ask you is um you're if you're a sort of space fan and space nerd growing up like did you ever have thoughts of pursuing that as a vocation or no I mean I started taking some math and I really I took physics one year and I really liked it but I maybe it was the time in my life I wasn't dedicated enough to studying and doing homework if I went back and did it now I'd probably do a lot better at calculus and stuff like that pursuing it I don't know I don't know that might ruin it for me even it's like I like working on cars too but do I want to go into the business of being an auto mechanic I don't know it's like being being in the band I listen to music on my own time way less than I used to yeah I used to I could never you know when I was younger maybe 20 years ago getting in the car first thing you do is pick music and play it and I'll find myself in the last 10 years or so getting in the car not even turning on the radio so I wouldn't want it to ruin the hobby by by getting into it but then again I see the people working on it and what they're working on and I go to JPL and see them I go oh I want to I want to do this I want to build that rover or because I'm into building stuff in that techie aspect and seeing the machine shop where they're you know making things out of billet aluminum and titanium and all that cool in there it's awesome yeah I love that stuff yeah so I guess I would do it if I had the right what you're saying is you've realized that the world needs to go back to a time when we had music like Jeffrey's fan club so haha just saying maybe yeah that was a good band I had a lot of fun being in that band um hmm hmm hmm I'm doing on beers guys oh well I have at least I have like two refills left of my yeah I still see I still have another bottle next to me and like I got nothing to do I don't think you guys are gonna finish your beer before we're done I know I know well that's your fault for always picking the small beers I know I know we're gonna have to just make that a rule that we've got to do big beers only I know it's got to be the big bottles from now on is that how you uh that dictates the length of the show yeah on beer oh wow because when the drink is over we're out of time yeah otherwise we would just sit here for hours and hours and people would just get really bored with it so the idea is to constrain it so that it's not horrible for people who want to listen to this um yeah because uh I think when Jason and I sat down and did our first episode it was like two and a half hours I don't know who's gonna I don't know who's gonna sit through that one I've listened to podcasts that are about two hours but I'm usually doing something else while I'm listening to it yeah so I don't think of it as I'm trapped by the length of the podcast it's just keeping company while I do something what are what are the other podcasts you listen to oh let's see related to what we're talking about I do listen to star talk once in a while what I was gonna ask you I'm way behind on that oh you want to ask me before we forget I was gonna ask you because you mentioned that you watched Cosmos the Carl Sagan Cosmos growing up I wanted to ask what your opinion was on the newest one if you watched it because you mean everyone I've asked yes that one okay so you're a fan I assume okay um I love you more than one of the main people involved with it is Seth McFarland you know the guy that makes the cartoons and say dirty jokes that's great yeah yeah that is that guy that guy's impressive between the the family guy his his musical efforts and then it's the cosmos thing that's great and that's the greatest thing too when you discover that about somebody who you you know may already kind of admire and then you find out they have this whole of the side to them that's incredibly impressive yeah when I first heard that I was a holy that's blind good at those other things too yeah like I could sit here and look I make cartoons see see that guy running and that would be the extent of it but to him it's like next level yeah yeah just succeed in that many you know variety of things it's less like he must work so good yeah gotta be yeah yeah let's see podcasts podcasts sorry to derail you I was just curious because everyone's got everyone's got an opinion on the the cosmos reboot so I think it's great uh Neil deGrasse Tyson is entertaining fun to listen to I think they tried to kind of follow the path of the original show as far as subject matter but of course they brought it up to date I think a little bit the the cartoony segments I bet that's something a lot of people have issue with I yeah I was not a fan of the cartoony segments I also I felt like Neil deGrasse Tyson was trying to be Carl Sagan instead of just being Neil deGrasse Tyson because like I love Carl Sagan's quiet like awe inspiring like he just like he just gives you that sense of like I'm a grown up and this is still amazing and it's so like quiet excitement that I love and I'm like this doesn't seem this seems weird coming out of someone who's not Carl Sagan um yeah yeah but that and the cartoon segments were a little bit odd to me yeah I guess they had reasons I'm not sure what they were but I don't know it got an entire generation back excited about space for eight weeks so go team yes yeah wasn't it an eight week run yeah I think so modern graphics and computer animation and all that stuff sure looks a hell of a lot better than 1980 or early 80s when he was doing that yeah yeah the the graphic of him like walking across the calendar to like show when dinosaurs popped up it's like this just this is it's like it's so old at this point that it's like kitschy yeah fun yeah but yeah it's not good yeah um I like radio lab so sorry podcast radio lab uh as far as techie science stuff that that's about it okay on the flip side I listen to car stuff like there's one called the smoking tire there's another one called hooniverse and it's just some guys that are basically automotive journalists so they get to test drive all this stuff and talk about their project cars and sometimes it's really interesting sometimes it's not you know I can't really relate to what a Gallardo convertible is like to drive I don't think I'll ever drive one that's a Lamborghini by the way okay got you so what what do you do with cars I try to do with cars yeah I try to keep the right question I try to keep them running and I try not to sell them so basically I'm a car hoarder I guess even though I'm only up to four I it's just that I had like I still have the one that I bought uh like the first car I bought like the first year when I was in college and I just don't want to let it go yeah and that's the one that actually right now doesn't run but that's that's next on my list I'm I'm almost three for four operational right now in fact I'm three for four drivable but one of them isn't registered yet because I need to give some money to the DMV unfortunately right yeah are there any of the you know current electric car companies or fewer future electric car companies that you know catch your eye or or have your attention I'm a big Tesla fan oh yeah but there's a new company Lucid Motors that's going to start uh manufacturing in Arizona I don't know about them um I've just just started seeing stuff about them pop up in the last couple weeks um and I think they did a road test like against uh Tesla and some other cars I didn't see the results of that but uh yeah it's interesting to see and I I love competition so I think that fuels a lot of this this development and innovation but man I I love Tesla so much and one of these days I will have a Tesla I'm into the electric car thing and you know a lot of the stuff I have is old like a couple cars from the 60s one of them just now I put on fuel injection so a fuel economy is not something I really strive for because they're big v8s and I just don't drive them that much so but let's see I grew up driving an old Volkswagen that my dad still has and there are at least one or two companies that sell kits to convert those to all-electric and they're kind of expensive and even Volkswagen's themselves are getting kind of pricey these days because there aren't that many left compared to 20 years ago but I'm talking about like old bugs but to build one of those and convert it to electric oh that would be fun just to convert anything to all electric just I wouldn't have the the what the range of a Tesla because I'm not going to buy $30,000 worth of lithium batteries or anything like that but yeah just to be able to go to the store and back in an electric car that I built I want to do that someday too but that's a cool goal I think I need an airplane hangar or a warehouse somewhere and that's not going to happen without me moving like into the sticks yeah kind of like where I live yeah my buddy who's a pilot in one of the hangars next to where their planes were housed for whatever reason somebody was housing a bunch of Teslas and so he got to take out a Tesla on the runway and just like open it up oh that's gotta be awesome yeah unique experience for sure yeah my my Muay Thai coach actually recently borrowed like a friend of theirs Tesla because their car was in the shop and he he described it as like so he kicks me in the chest a lot with padding but he just like kicks me in the chest and sends me flying across the room he's like it feels like when you kick me in the chest the acceleration on those things because he just like went in like a quiet neighborhood he's like right there's no one around straight away and just like floored it and he's like it just it was like getting thrown back it could be acceleration just instantaneous I am dying you would not expect it from an electric car I'm not a car person I don't care as if a car gets me from point A to B without catching on fire I'm really happy but I really want to try one of those like awesome electric cars and just see what that feels like so I experienced my first experience with the Tesla was was as a passenger in Las Vegas and it was with this weird random couple that I didn't know but I was at the Star Trek convention and I was working the working the sounds like it's gonna end well yeah tell me more I was there as a guest and I was I was working the table with my buddy Garrett Garrett Wong he was on Star Trek Voyager so I was at his table with him helping himself stuff and some like fans or something I guess I think they were also coming to maybe help I don't remember I think they had previous contact with Garrett but they show up and they're these kind of weirdish like hippie type people from San Francisco and they had apparently rented a Tesla from somebody and so they showed up and they're all yeah we've got a Tesla you want to go for a ride they were just like very weird about it and it was all okay these people probably want to kill me but I really want to ride in a Tesla so yes let's do it good way to die so yeah going off with these weirdos who I have no idea who they are so how strong can a Tesla yeah so does it have a latch on the inside so you can get out no no okay well you're still here so you're smiling I like that you say that with certainty because you know too no it was an amazing experience like part being terrified and not knowing like who I was getting in a car with and where we were going it was kind of added to the fun but they got on the freeway and you know again I'm glad they're drive they were driving and I wasn't because you know I'm a law abiding citizen so I certainly wouldn't have opened it up like they did but they got on the freeway in Vegas and just like floored it you know so you could do that zero to sixty and four seconds or whatever it is and you know I think he was probably flying down the freeway to a hundred or something it was it was a thrill from the back seat absolutely but yeah got home I think he actually asked if I wanted to drive and I was like nope I'm good thanks but that's the wonder of those electric motors yeah a hundred percent of a torque from zero is amazing yeah yeah and it also is cool and futuristic like everything inside inside I mean the whole like center console is like a giant ipad or something so it's pretty cool too right for a lot of people are migrating towards that and um you know they're not putting a lot of thought into the dashboard just like ah we'll put an ipad in the middle I mean I like that you know that's what SpaceX's new spacecraft is like too I don't know if you've seen the the recent press conferences but it's just like a glass panel that folds down with all the buttons on it and all I can think when I see that is what happens if you're floating around and you accidentally like wrap it with your arm because like we all know that arms will activate touch screen so like you just activated all the release mechanisms the jettison's everything in that thing because you designed a fucking glass cockpit I'm a techie and I love I love future and you love all the stuff and I love SpaceX yeah but yeah I mean I'm also a button lover I love buttons so you know I'm torn with that kind of stuff and in in Tesla and seeing how that stuff works I love it I love that display it's so sleek and sexy and awesome but at the same time I'm a button guy so you know and I see that you're like what happens when that doesn't like activate or malfunctions like all of your controls like all of it it's gone yeah um so my grandmother had one of those like old women chests of like tiny little drawers for different size color buttons that's all I can think of when you say button lover is that you clearly have a garage full of like tiny drawers with buttons I do love grandma's button collection too for sure what is it with people like like old people in button collections like that was a thing in the 50s you've always got to be prepared I guess I don't know what are your thoughts on SpaceX Derek I think it's really neat this whole privatization of space has happened in my lifetime and it's exciting I have no problem with it and seeing that that autonomous vehicle that will send the supplies up and then come back down to land on a barge like it blows me away that that's that's the best way to do it and yet it emulates some Buck Rogers movie from the beginning of when movies are being made isn't it yeah well that's big sas x can't even say cheers fine you're like halfway through a giant bottle of beer you're allowed to not be enunciating very well anymore this is great maybe that's the whole point if you're watching drunk history yeah yes I mean I'm not far from drunk but it's reminding me of that the whole trying to talk about something and sound like yeah you're speaking clearly but you're not yep yeah it's pretty good that's like basically conferences in my world everybody just gets really drunk and tries to like one up each other with space nursery until everybody's just like slurring Neil Armstrong's name everywhere it's pretty awesome okay I get paid to do it 200 nights a year fantastic so they say so you weren't in real big fish when when Tyler was the trumpet player right Tyler Jones that was before your time I got to play with him several times filling but filling in yeah I wasn't a full-time member yet but he was in the band when I was around yeah yeah I remember him being quite sloshed quite regularly but yeah he usually had a bottle of Jack you'd have a bottle of Jack exactly reach on stage at any given time yeah good times that that seems like that would get really messy really fast sorry I opened another beer here because we're still going so well that's good uh yeah well I don't he he was a funny guy and he and he had fun on stage I think he's also not in the band anymore so yep that's right I don't know that's right when did you join the band that would be around June 2007 but the first time I played with them it was probably more like 2001 or 2002 hmm yeah yeah that also explains your 10 years of not turning on the radio in the car perhaps I definitely quit listening to real big fish in my free time that's for sure yeah I bet and unless hey remember that song we should play that the next tour all right and I'll listen to it a few times at home and try and remember how to play it yeah it seems like a thing you'd have to do at some point like I keep an instrument like there it is you can't see it but it's right there thinking that oh maybe I'll practice more often if all I have to do is reach over and there it is no no no it's not enough yeah I just don't practice so were you and the knuckle brothers no no okay I just had to ask I don't know why I thought that yeah no walk us through your music history that in a sense neither I seem to really know the details oh gosh if you can remember or just to put you to put you very much on the spot my lights no I can remember I guess let's see I started playing with some some guys that were still in high school and I was only like a year or two out of high school and uh so we played like talent shows at their their respective high schools those are probably some of my first performances in front of people playing bass I was in kind of a rock band for two two and a half years that didn't I learned a lot collected some gear uh I think in that whole stint with them we played in front of people maybe six or seven times and it was it was back when if you wanted to play at the rock see they would give you a brick of tickets and say here sell these or sell these or no one will be there so most of the shows were all friends and family it wasn't until jeffrey's fan club that I went to one of those shows to check it out before I was in and there's a room full of people two or three hundred kids and they're not all friends and family I know that for sure these people just want to be here because they're into the music and this band's popular and that's when I went oh I need to do this I've been in the wrong place all this time it's time to change and that was probably 1997 and the rest I think Jason I think you know jeffrey's fan club forces of evil I may have jammed here and there with some other people but nothing ever came of it really no uh and then here I am had you been into uh Scott all before jeffrey's fan club no in fact at that point I didn't really go to see live bands play I didn't know it was kind of foreign to me maybe I was too focused on like in high school I was in the marching band and so that was my music for me was being in that and and then outside of school we were always working on cars or I'd go drag racing with my dad on the weekends and that's what I did so when uh when the jfc thing came up it was actually my sister who was friends with the drummer and said oh listen to this tape uh they might need you to play bass for them because their bass player is having a kid and his wife says he can't be in the band yada yada yada you know classic story and oh ska music and I was scratching my head doesn't have horns in it that's about all I knew and it's amazing that that's where I came from and now look at where I'm at so you you're the bass player who like replaces guys who have kids oh yeah I guess I am so weird hmm uh that would make a great business card yeah just Derek the bass player who replaces guys who have kids no other explanation if you're in a band and you play bass don't have a kid because Derek's coming for you I should take a picture of me wearing like a ninja outfit and in one hand I've got a condom in the other hand a sewing needle like hiding outside of people's homes that's perfect perfect I'll turn that one for later yeah that would be like the caricature of yourself as a really good halloween costume that's what that would be oh boy I would be explaining that constantly what are you be super meta and weird yeah what do you play hey that's weird especially with that sound just like yeah that makes it yeah way less creepy way creepier yeah yeah nice all right well yeah I mean I guess everybody's got to get there like start into an industry somehow so yeah oh you got into it yeah there's nowhere to go from there yeah we didn't kind of head to dad and didn't we that's all right because you know I mean the show has run its course because unlike you people with your giant beers making me feel inadequate here my beers by the way this acoustic ales bring experiment strawberry fields beer is fucking phenomenal it's a win all right oh my god this is so good I'm amazed that it's this delicious tastes like strawberries and um isn't gross you'd like it because you hate IPAs Jason and it's very like it's a sour but it's not like like a gross sour it's like a nice tart sour nice I like those yeah there's a brewery that's uh that's in um well they started in in Boise, Idaho and Bend, Oregon called Ten Barrel Brewing I think we've talked about them before but uh they were my favorite favorite brewery in Boise and they've since expanded and they've got I think they're in Denver now and they're opening a brew pub in San Diego um but they do a lot of experimentation a lot of weird beers and they always have a sour or two and they they do a um a raspberry crush which is you know raspberry but not not really sweet at all just kind of a hint of raspberry and and tart and nice and sour so I dig those a lot nice I'm still trying to find a taste for those sour beers I'll try them for the experience and you know people around me are drinking them and some are really nasty some are really sour and it's like you know all I can think of is like I don't know if you watch The Simpsons but the one where with the the lemon tree is it the lemon tree and Homer like bites into it and like his entire face like puffers into itself like that's what I feel like when I drink them just like this is just like like I just licked a lemon and I'm not having fun with it but if it's tart instead of sour it's kind of a nice like happy fresh medium as opposed to like but no it's the it's the sour sour gummy that's the one there you go the sourest gummy in the world because that's right the venus gummy venus demylo because I found out recently that you can buy gummy venus demylo patches and I want to get one and sew it onto the butt of one of my jeans because it'd be really funny I mean they are so weird and complex and and sour's are so strange um I mean but we talked about IPAs too like you know I do like some IPAs but there's so there's so much variety there and so much strangeness that goes on that you just have to like keep drinking them all because they're all different and and uh you know there's there's one there that you'll find that you'll like but yeah all sours are different I've had so many sours like I get excited when I'm at a place and they actually have a sour I'm like yes I'll have your sour and then it's just complete ass you know oh disappointment I have one once I even was at their brewery so the last thing you want to do is have them here drink this and then you're at their brewery and you're going this sucks yeah but I guess you could say oh I don't know if this is for me because really does the beer suck or do you just not like it right yeah good point yeah and like I thought it tasted like dirty socks not that I eat dirty socks get any ideas you have some experience in dirty socks okay but people around me were like oh this is so good yeah well you can have mine then because you know this is totally random but your dirty socks comment reminded me about what is it is it I think it's cilantro like people say that cilantro is is something that is so like polarizing with people and there there are so many people either like either you love it or you hate it and the people who hate it like a lot of people apparently to them it tastes like dirty socks no way yeah not cilantro but I know I do I know people who hate it yeah my best friend is like that I'm throwing it right now I've got to be like a plant this big nice yeah it's so bizarre to me that you know taste can be that different but yep humans are weird yeah I always feel terrible too when somebody like I go through and I'm like here's the kind of beer that I want and they give me a beer and I'm like this kind of just tastes like hot garbage yeah try something different I had to do that last night and I felt really bad I was out in this I like asked the guys like I'll just have the same and he gave me something different I'm like this isn't even palatable to me and I don't even know what it is that like I will drink pretty much any beer I'm not super fussy but like this just tastes like I don't know like like cardboard that's off I don't know yeah it was very odd Julie is the same way she'll try them and she'll sometimes she'll say she likes the smell and then she'll have a sip and takes two or three seconds and then oh there it is and it's that's it doesn't want it done you know the only one she's liked is the dogfish had 120 minute and but yeah it's super boozy what is that like 15 percent alcohol or something I've never tried that one you should seek it out try it yeah yeah I keep the the beer store across the street from my house has an awesome rotating selection they always have a 90 minute IPA but they've never had the 120 minute IPA they don't make it near as often and to ship it from there all the way here I've had it on tap in San Diego before which blows me away and in Las Vegas so you just have to be in the right place at the right time I know what happens back when I was living in Phoenix um and this is the weird thing to say on the internet but like and dating and alcoholic um he started brewing and like hunting down beer and there was one pub one night that had one keg of the hundred minute hundred and twenty minute IPA and we didn't get there in time unfortunately it was the only time I've ever like had a chance to see it or to have to try it on tap and I couldn't couldn't get there in time yeah I've never tried it yeah also Pete wants to come to say hi apparently he's super meaty right now you've ignored him long enough ignored him for an hour and a half he's getting the cat vibes just he's getting the cat vibes yeah pretty much yeah there's a litter box in here and this is probably their nap time I could go grab one and bring him in here how many cats do you have just two want me to go grab it yes yes yes yes there and it means we can hit on a pause yeah we're we're bringing in our other elements of the show this is perfect uh yeah this is good I love I just realized that like because we have this narrow shot for the video when we do three people that like all you can see is like Pete's neck and made stroking his head uh Pete this isn't gonna work no they're sleeping how old are your cats I know when they're like older and you can't really move them Pete's Pete's not even quite four so he's pretty malleable and wakes up and stuff four and a half oh yeah we adopt them and they won't they won't let you move them I mean but you're bigger than them I could I could try but okay he's gonna be really bummed let's see what happens maybe it'll be a good experiment uh I love that we just probably you're gonna hear him protesting probably from the next room fantastic I like cat conversation yep um also I feel like I should just point out because we have a second here this just came off of Pete oh no Pete what are you doing like I'm like it's it's I have not turned the heat on in my apartment yet this year yeah I don't think I've turned the heat on since the my first winter in LA but it's apparently just warm enough that like he's like mad oh kitty slightly angry kitten yeah we're gonna talk to us he was just talking to me but it wasn't nice what's his name this is digby digby oh my god look at him he's my techie cat oh yeah you want to get down this sucks huh why have I done this to you you're a great sport you're a great sport oh yeah that was an angry meow right there he always does that when it's not how old were they when you adopted them was it three months three weeks I think it was three months three months yeah it's definitely like with cats because I got Pete when he was I brought him home when he was five weeks old so he's gotten really used to me just like making him do stuff like sit with me and follow what I want to do so he doesn't protest he's just sort of like he just goes limp yeah when they were little they would both sit on my lap and like be up here tapping on the keyboard and stuff and hanging out and now it's just like no dude I'm over it oh it's sad when kids grow up yeah digby and his brother hanging out love it oh my god are they actually brothers yeah oh do they snuggle yeah they do actually it's hard to believe one minute they're chasing each other uh and then and fighting a little bit and then the next minute all you hear is licking it's just a ball of two brothers licking each other that's adorable I've got two two two small dogs they're maltese so they're white fluffy balls of nothing and they're they're more a cat than dog and they're like that they're their brothers and they're 15 now but they hate each other but they're best friends it's funny to see that just depending on what time like they either hate each other or they love each other I feel like I don't have any siblings but I feel like that's how you describe siblings they hate each other but they're best friends yeah that's right you see that I mean I have two sisters I don't hate them so usually the hate thing happens when uh when you're younger and you're like in the same house and growing up together there's that yeah that's different yeah yeah I don't know well you're missing out a only two miles it's weird okay I'm the oldest old one I don't I dislike the oldest not really but I was always jealous that I wasn't the oldest treated me like the little brother he never had that was weird yeah yeah so we've got only child oldest and you must be something else I'm I'm second oldest out of five how many five boys you're in the middle somewhere yep yeah in the nebulous middle region yeah my my my brother uh older brother is uh I think three years older than I am and uh then five years below me starts a like a year span between the three youngest ice yep five five boys in a house uh you know all at the same time it was kind of insanity but we we survived five boys wow a lot my parents wanted a daughter and I don't blame them but uh never happened so they they call the quits smart choice yeah yeah they ended up with 12 boys yes my god yes that's how it works apparently that sounds insane but kind of fun how many broken bones were there in your house per year you know as crazy and insane as they all are um it's surprising that it didn't happen that often um I mean kids are also basically made of rubber like they break and then they kind of like bounce back yeah which is so weird your bones are really brittle till you are like super uh what's the opposite brittle pliable pliable until you're like 12 yeah so I think there were there were it was more the case that things got broken and not not bones or anything with the body like just a lot of destruction destruction in mayhem sounds better right yep yeah oh we are so off topic right now if anyone was listening they're definitely not listening now you know we've got something for everybody so you know yeah but this is this is the whole point is like when when do you ever in life with anybody sit down and have a beer and then have like a focused conversation on one topic that doesn't just like go off rails and like onto weird topics that's right so for all of you who joined in because we told you that today's topic was astronomy hi we and we probably like like drew you in with with mention of real big fish and then we talked about none of that and a lot about space nerdery yeah I feel like you're stuck with it we really didn't stay on topic too well but oh well that's kind of our goal yeah no there was like like 45 minutes on astronomy and astrophotography and then like then you just become humans who drink and then it's way more fun for everyone so that's the goal the goal is just fun the goal is just like yeah hanging out let's conclude this show and Derek I'll just ask you one more thing and that is if somebody were to have an interest in astronomy and want to get into astrophotography what advice might you have for an entry into astrophotography I think astronomy magazine is really good because they have basic star charts they have a section on astrophotography they review the gear they have updates on what's going on as far as exploration and all the science that's going on yeah I don't work for them I pay for my subscription but it's it's close I'm a little behind on reading the issues for some reason like I said this year's been a weird year as far as astronomy goes but I think that's a good place awesome and maybe the other question sorry maybe find a star party near you or if you poke around you might find that there's a group of people that come out to a public area and just set up their telescopes like I've been a Griffith observatory and out in the like the grassy area between the parking lot and the building they'll just set up scopes and you can just look through them that's really cool I feel like the the other question thank you the other question that we usually ask people at the end of the show is if you could go to any body in our solar system where would you want to go and why well is this uh not thinking about how safe it would be to go or yeah yeah don't so like you're gonna throw out everything you have all the food all the life support you could need this is purely because this is a place that you want to visit for whatever reason space magic yeah space magic hashtag I think I would pick one of the the moons that are either around Jupiter or Saturn that are most likely where we're gonna find some kind of life elsewhere than here I'd probably pick Titan that's uh what's that around Saturn so I want to see an ocean made of methane liquid methane have you heard about the rain and what it's like on Titan so no actually no that I think about it because of the density or the the way the liquid is the liquid methane if you can even imagine what that is I like it when I think of methane I just think of whoa what was that right okay yeah sorry digressed they say between the gravity and the atmosphere and the liquid methane that the raindrops would be you know like marbles or or large snowflakes and they would I'm sorry the snowflake comparison they would fall at the same rate as a snowflake falls here so imagine a giant raindrop that floats down like a snowflake that sounds like some crazy sci-fi movie right yeah that's that's the matrix all slowed down yeah yeah that's that's awesome I never thought about rain methane and ethane rain on Titan but yeah yep weird it's not I have said Titan fans here we're both big Titan fans partially have you ever read the sirens of Titan Kurt Vonnegut I'd recommend it sci-fi but sci-fi that also will like punch you in the chest at the end of it it's brilliant and it's did I write this book no I wrote I wrote this book you mentioned chest punching or kicking I figured no science of Titan is Kurt Vonnegut and it's it's one of those I know if you're a Vonnegut fan at all but like Sirens of Titan is one of the reasons that I like I don't know I was 20 like I was very much already a fan of Titan that I've read that book and it sort of like solidified my obsession with this moon even though it's not about Titan it's about like finding your place in the universe because it's Vonnegut and everything he does is steeped in allegory and then like kills you right at the end because he's such a good writer but yeah Sirens of Titan I'd always tell people to read that book I'll add that to my to-do list thanks guys yeah I have not read that either Amy you should read that it's a good book yeah it's the last sci-fi spacy book I read was uh rare earth so it's a couple guys I think they teach a university in the northwest and they went over all the we're making this podcast so much longer now aren't we we're back on topic but they went over all the things that they feel had to happen for earth to be like it is and they're trying to add points to the argument that there are so many billions of planets some of them have to have life like ours they're trying to say but look at all the things that had to happen here for it to be like it is what if we are really really rare interesting books yeah yeah yeah books yeah books your books are good book Amy but thank you yeah I mean for different reasons not on a philosophical level not a lot of not not a lot of philosophy more Nazi history yep because who doesn't love some good Nazi history that's right everybody loves and good not the history um yeah all right show Amy let's wrap this up all right so where I mean Derek you're a fairly private person on the internet but if people want to find out more about what you're doing and follow your activities where can they find you on the internet I guess you can find me on instagram what what is my name on there I guess it's just my name all right that won't be that hard or you can you know you search for real big fish and I'm probably tagged in a bunch of the photos you're you're pretty findable on the internet um Jason I think it's Derek Chase Gibbs I think I use my whole name I think it is actually yeah well we'll make sure to to track it down and we'll put some links somewhere so people can see it it's the same on twitter even though I don't really tweet if I do it's probably a a beer check in from my untapped app so that's that's important too yeah everything's better with beer sure uh Jason where can we find more about you and then UFOs by extension yeah well twitter is good for me I'm at acentric that's a c e c e n t r i c also a website where you can find this show and other content rogueplanet.tv all right and you can find more of me all of my space things uh on twitter I am ast vintage space my youtube channel vintage space just google it and you'll find me um and if you are watching this podcast on my main or my uh my second channel rather which is just amish your title you don't need to find that um but I'll have links to all of these things in the description below um Derek thank you so much for having a very large beer and chatting with us about like all the nerdery stuff because like the nerdery is the fun stuff yeah cheers to nerdery um yeah thanks for having me yeah thank you so much cheers cheers guys