Christina Warren

I think it's really important for us to be able to preserve our history, especially in the digital age, the way that we were able to preserve things in the analog age. But there is some kind of frame about like, okay, I had it or I didn't. 

This is the Techsploder podcast, conversations with tech professionals about being human in a binary world. Episode six, Christina Warren. Techsploder is made possible by the financial support of our patrons, like one of our newest patrons, Jake Pusey. Also, Dyami, who has supported me since as far back as 2016. If you want to support the show, head on over to patreon.com/JasonHowell, and you can support the show directly. And thank you for making independent podcasting possible. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Techsploder podcast. I'm Jason Howell. Boy, a little red because you almost didn't get an episode this week. 

I didn't hit record. And we got a little bit into today's episode and then realized it. Thanks to Katie Lake, one of the community manager for the stuff that I'm doing here with Techsploder. So you have an episode because Katie alerted me. So thank you, Katie. 

Thank you, everybody, for your patience. Today is obviously starting a little different because normally I do this show edited and then I throw in B-roll after the fact and everything. Today it is live and it almost bit me in the butt. But I'm really happy that it didn't because we have an amazing guest joining us on the Techsploder podcast today. 

Without further ado, let's do this. Again, welcoming to the show, Christina Warren, developer advocate, starting actually your career, the unofficial web blog, the unofficial Apple web blog, I think is what it's called. Yeah, Mashable, Gizmodo. So starting in journalism, then leaving tech journalism in 2017 to work for Microsoft, and then now GitHub in developer advocacy roles. So kind of getting out of the reporter realm into the working for the technology company realm, which I definitely want to talk to you about. And then, of course, podcasting. 

Rocket, which had an eight-year amazing run. Frequent guest on the Twit.tv podcast network and so many other things. It's really great to have you here, Christina. And thank you for allowing me to do a do-over on the top of the show. I'm so embarrassed. 

It's completely fine. If you have not had one of those fails where you, you know, and look, we've all had this. I mean, and I've definitely even been in situations where you think that you're alive and you need to be live and you're not. And so, no, I mean, I'm glad that Katie from your chat caught that. But no, it's not a big deal. 

It happens. Yeah, it's true. Thank you for the gut check because that is absolutely the truth. If you're in podcasting for any duration, everyone has that horror story, right? I got to the end of the interview and then I realized it wasn't recording. Or I realized the audio was distorted beyond all recognition or something. 

Oh, God. No, we've all had that. I mean, gosh, I had an incident. So this was like four years ago now. So I did a podcast with the New York Times, their branding content division. I hosted a podcast that it was actually a pretty cool podcast kind of about the possibilities of 5G and connected technology. And I worked with their team a lot. And I worked with a great audio production studio. And I interviewed a lot of people. And we did some of these interviews. 

And some of these interviews were hard to set up. And there was an instance where my audio captured even using the best microphones, the best stuff. Turns out that by using a cloud lifter, I live on top of a radio station or some waves. And you could hear the radio station coming in the background on the track. 

Oh, no kidding. 

And so it sounded a little bit like Gribblins. Yeah. So, well, you know, it just happened to just be like where I live, right? It just I happen to be like on top of basically like a W.E .X.P., which is a really big NPR kind of music station. 

And then there's a college station as well. And it's one of those things I'd actually noticed that this was kind of coming up with some really cheap speakers that I had in like they might not even been plugged in, but if they were powered on like I could hear them occasionally. But I didn't realize that this was going to show up on the podcast because when I recorded at a lower resolution, it was fine. But by recording in the highest resolution, that's when we found it. 

Now, without the cloud lifter, it ended up being OK. But anyway, long story short, to your point, we had these great interviews. The interviewee's half was great. My half was not. So I had to go back in and ADR my own voice. 

Oh, no way. And like totally match it to the video and everything. How long did something like that take? That sounds like a beast. 

Fortunately, it wasn't video. If it had been video, we would have. OK. It was just audio. But I still had to track, you know, the whole thing. I had to go back in and like, you know, retract my voice and try to get it correctly. And if there were interjections or other things. So that was that was a really but it was one of those things where I was like, OK, even like the pros, like the most professional people, because the audio team who put it together were fantastic and we were having to do it remote. 

But these were, you know, like genuinely like, you know, pro broadcast folks. And like it happens sometimes. It was also happens to everyone. 

It does. And frankly, it was also a good learning experience to be like, OK, I've never had to go back in and loop my own stuff before. But that's not a bad skill to have, you know, to have to know. But absolutely not. 

And yeah, situations like that. Right. You do learn a lot. I had an experience when I think the first time. So, you know, when I was at Twit and for all about Android, we would get invited to go to Google.io. And then finally, one time Google was like, hey, do you want to talk with the people who are making Android? You know, the people from the keynote, you could have them on your podcast. 

We'll push you up in a room here at Google and you bring your equipment and you can interview them. And we were like, wow, this is an amazing opportunity. And I can't tell you I can't tell you why I did this because we had a team. 

I have no idea to this day why I thought to do this. But right before the interview started, I pulled out my phone and I put it on the desk and I hit audio record like I opened up the audio recorder and I hit record. And like it's just not something that I would normally do in that situation. But for whatever reason, something pointed me in that direction. And it turned out at the end of the recording, all of the audio was distorted beyond recognition. 

Oh, my God. That was recorded through the standard setup. And, you know, so, of course, John Slonina, one of the engineers who was there was like, oh, my goodness, I'm so sorry. Like this interview is lost. And I was like, dude, I don't know why I did it. But I recorded the audio on my phone. And ever since then, like the lesson that I learned that follows me to this day, except for just earlier, because this is a little different. I'm still learning my lessons here. But is that is just the power and the necessity of redundancy. You can never be too redundant in situations like that. 

No, it's true. Right. And it's funny because the more advanced we get, the better the tech gets. Like, I think the more we have kind of, you know, the ability to trust that those systems will backups will work. But I think that those of us who have been at this long enough, it's almost like I almost had the inverse effect where I'm almost like, yeah, I know that this works ninety nine percent of the time, but I'm still paranoid about that one percent of the time where it's either my screw up or somebody else's because we've seen that happen before. So it's like the tech has gotten so much better and is so much less brittle than it was even a decade ago. 

Right. Like when you know, when you were at CNET and at TWIT, you know, the live streaming setups that we've had even like in the last, you know, like four or five years, like we would have killed for that sort of stuff, you know, earlier on. But the technology has improved. But at the same time, I think we all still have those lessons that like, no, you know, it's still it's still brittle a little bit. We still have to have our backup plans, which which is a good reminder. And I think when I like think about like the technology landscape in general, like it's always like it's good for me to kind of like remind myself both of how far we've come, but also, hey, there are there are still, you know, pratfalls to be had as well. Don't don't get too caught up in the marketing message. 

That's true. Yeah, the the ongoing kind of message is that technology is so much better. Just look at all you can do. And it it gives you the false sense to some degree, the false sense of security of like, oh, well, it's it's so good now that the previous worries and previous concerns aren't things that I really need to pay as close attention to. 

But you know what? Backups are still incredibly important, even though we're throwing our information in the cloud. Yeah, even more so. I mean, the amount of data that we're that we're managing nowadays, you know, it's it's incredibly important to back yourself up. 

And yeah, redundancy, man, it just it keeps coming back to redundancy for me time and time again. So I'm happy that today worked out. So let's so let's take a step back because I because one thing I really love to do in this show is get a sense of kind of like where the light bulb of technology passion turns on for the first time or kind of kind of some of your earlier memories or kind of the foundation of your technology passion that I imagine has driven much of what you do nowadays. Is there anything comes to mind from when you were a kid or younger where you were like, OK, hey, I obviously really enjoy this stuff. And that's the foundation for what comes ahead. 

Yeah, totally. So like a lot of people, video games are probably one of my first big kind of, I guess, you know, entrees into into technology. And I would say, you know, TVs and VCRs and and things like that, too. But video games, especially, you know, gadgets of all sorts. 

I just kind of I don't know. Video games were, I think, kind of the first way where I got really into kind of the fandom aspect of things. I would read publications like GamePro and Entertainment or Electronic Gaming Monthly and Nintendo Power and things like that that I really, really liked. This was, you know, when I was in elementary school, right before the World Wide Web exploded. And but I think even before that, like I for whatever reason, I just I got gadgets like I remember that we had a VCR when I was really, really little and I figured out how to, you know, put all that stuff on it and how to connect two of them together. 

And I don't even think I could tell time yet, but like I knew how to set the time on the VCR. And so for whatever reason, I just I just got computers. I remember having them in elementary school. You know, we had Macs. 

I think we had some some IBM PCs, too, but they're primarily Macs. And I just for whatever reason, I just I got it. But when I was when I was 12, I was in a bike accident. I was coming down a really tall hill. And I did this all the time where there was kind of like a right turn or actually it's left from it was kind of a right angle turn. 

And you come down this big hill and take the turn and then just kind of coast. And I turned in a little second too late and I went right into a tree and I messed up the entire side of my of my face. I cracked my jaw. It was a whole thing. Like it was bad. 

It was bad. Like I'm lucky that I don't have scars at all. I'm lucky that like I, you know, didn't die. 

I mean, you know, it could have been so much worse than it was. And and I and I went to the ER and like, you know, got all my scans and whatnot. And my mom took me. This was this was in May. This was at the end of the school year and which was awful because then I had to go to like awards day with like my face completely like hamburger and whatnot. But she took me to the ER and when we were coming, you know, going to the I guess pharmacy at the grocery store for me to get my medications and pain pills and whatnot. She was like, OK, you can get magazines to make yourself feel better. Well, I'd already gotten like that month, like 17 magazine and teen and, you know, teen beaten, those types of things. But I again, I was 12 and I was like, I really kind of want to get into computers. 

This is a thing that I I like and I I want to know more about. And so I bought these two computer magazines and I didn't understand anything that was really on the cover of them. Like the whole thing was kind of Greek, but that was kind of where I was taking like a conscientious choice. Like I was very, very into video games at the time and I was very into following the latest things were happening on those systems like the PlayStation had been announced. I don't think it had come out yet. And, you know, we were still kind of in that era that Nintendo 64 was was being discussed. 

I think they were still calling it the Ultra 64. But I didn't really have anything. I didn't really have any knowledge about the real computing industry until I got those magazines. And that kind of kick started like that summer, me going to the library and and reading more and playing with things on our old laptop that we had that my dad had didn't know how to use. 

But I figured out how to use and figured out things about it. And by the end of that summer, so I got in the accident in May. And by the time school started up again in August, I understood basically everything that were in those first two magazines. And that for me was sort of like, you know, I always say like it was the catalyst. Like I think I would have gotten into computers without that push, to be clear. Like I think I would have, you know, found my way into it. 

But that just kind of kicked off with me kind of this, OK, I want to know about this. I don't have access to all this technology, but I can read about it and I can learn about things that way. And then when I have access to things, I can start to, you know, experiment and see what more I can do. And so for me, that was kind of the light bulb moment was getting in that bike accident and then, you know, reading and playing around with things from that. But I would say after that, the World Wide Web was the real big catalyst. Like I, you know, would read about people building Web pages and like what the Web was. And that was the most exciting. 

And just I don't I don't know what it is like. I always I always say like the Web is my first love. And I feel that like very truly because it just kind of made sense to me where I was like, oh, my gosh, this is the coolest thing ever. 

What you mean? I can build my own Web page. I can build my own space to do my own things. What I can and other people can do that, too. 

And people can share them with one another. It just it was something that was just at a very young age, just profoundly opened up just the the sense of possibility. I think that's really what it was. And that has never left. And so even like what I do today, you know, all these years later, it's, you know, I'm I'm thinking about like, OK, this this is, you know, the the the possibility. And this is what what can we do next? Yeah. 

What kind of early on when you were when you were kind of experiencing the Web and realizing you could kind of create things and have them hosted online and people could visit them like, were you doing this all straight HTML, like learning the HTML code? Yeah, WYSIWYG. 

Yeah, no, it was mostly HTML. I mean, I used those WYSIWYGs. I remember like having front page and services like that. But those were all, you know, Dreamweaver, things like that. 

But I didn't always like the results from that. For me, the the main thing was was was HTML. And when I was in like sixth grade, like I created like a like a class like project where I built my first Web page. And that was my first time building something with HTML, where I basically, you know, like got like a book like HTML for dummies from the library. Again, a shout out to the public library for being a real one back then. And like, you know, this was like 1996 and like, you know, it was building like everybody else was doing stuff on poster board. 

And I was like, no, no, no, I'm going to do my African folktale thing as a Web page that is actually going to be live that anyone can access from, you know, their their Web browser, all you know, 50 of you, you know, I mean, and that's that's a over exaggeration. But it was certainly not that it was still at that time when like most of the services were charging like by the hour for Internet access. And it was right before they were kind of going into the unlimited plan era. So a lot of my peers didn't have access to the Internet, but we did at school and we had like the school's AOL account, which included Web access was unlimited, which AOL was not offering at the time that they would a few months later. 

But at the time they were they were it was, I guess, just a perk they would give to schools. My amazing Mac admin, you know, teacher at school, she was great with with my friend Lee and I and would let us kind of run amok all over the Mac labs at school. But we figured out the password to the AOL account. 

And so I also I will I will admit this now, you know, nearly 30 years later that, yes, I did steal AOL access from from from sixth grade. But, you know, it's yeah. But yeah, it was a shame. 

I mean, I mean, I made a lot of poor BBS before the Internet, BBS decisions and choices in the sixth grade as well. So maybe that's just the era during which we make horrible decisions when it comes to technology, which is something that I should keep in mind because I have my daughter going into sixth grade, you know, coming up here. So I'll have to be on high alert and see what kind of trouble that gets her into. That's so cool. 

Yes. I mean, realizing that we had the ability to create, you know, kind of a digital footprint of some sort. And that's our space that we can make it look, you know, as rudimentary as it was, at least in hindsight, at the time, it probably looked really cutting edge and cool. But wow, you look at stuff now and. I mean, yeah, no, it changed a lot, but is this something that you can find on on on like the Internet Archive? Have you gone hunting for this to kind of find it? 

Some of it you can, some of it you can't. The problem was so my first page that I ever built was on AOL, but primarily where I built on myself was on GeoCities, at least until, you know, more advanced things happened. The problem with the GeoCities thing was that so I was unpaid child labor for GeoCities. 

And I mean that very I mean that completely like I'm not even I'm being like joking about it, but I'm not actually joking because I was a minor and I was under 13 and I was a community what was called a community leader, which was basically this is so funny. You could never get away with this now. I don't know how they I don't know how they got away with it in 1996, to be completely honest with you. I really don't. But in 1996, they would let 12 year olds who were not lying about the fact that they were 12. 

I should be clear about that. Like I lied later, but I didn't lie. I didn't lie then sign up for accounts and then volunteer because you only got two megabytes for your free account. 

But if you wanted more space, you wanted more space. You could be a community leader, which basically meant free tech support. So people would email us. 

How do I, you know, do this, you know, sort of feature or I'm having a problem with this. And in addition to that, part of my job was to patrol different sites in geocity neighborhoods that were associated with like where my site was hosted, which was in Silicon Valley. They had this concept of neighborhoods, which it really didn't matter. 

It didn't really matter where your site was, but the idea of where these neighborhoods, I guess, would be kind of like interest based. So there was like Hollywood is where all like the entertainment stuff would go. And Silicon Valley was where, you know, the tech stuff would go. And they had, you know, other things for art and maybe for history. 

And like, I think that was called Athens or something. Anyway, as part of like, you know, the exchange and getting these extra megabytes, these very crucial megabytes of space for my thoughts and my autoplay MIDI files, I would have to go in, I guess, check people's pages to make sure they weren't violating the community guidelines. 

Again, I'm 12. Oh my goodness, at 12 years old. 

Again, I'm 12. That is so crazy. I didn't even think about it at the time. Like, oh yeah, that was absolutely not a thing that you should have children doing. And I really wasn't exposed. You know what? 

You have to say way less bad stuff that you were exposed to that way than you would think. But no, but because of that, I had a special URL as part of that process. And that URL was not part of the, I guess, the regular expression that the archive team used when they were archiving the GeoCity stuff. Like they were going based on a certain, like this is what usernames look like, and this is where sites were located. And I had a special URL that even changed a little bit over time. And so I've been able to find some snapshots of some stuff, but like not the earliest things. 

Because it just, you know, not comprehensive, not right. Sometimes you go to those old things and you're like, oh, there's the skeleton, but there's a lot of images missing. It's just not perfect. You know, the nostalgic kind of fan that I am, like I love like early tech nostalgia and going back to things and remembering what it felt like when I saw or made that back then. And that part of me sees, you know, I'm happy that certain pieces of these things still exist, but it's just, oh man, I wish I had taken like some sort of, you know, saved the HTML folder or taken a snapshot of the whole screen. You know, same. 

And I did in some cases. And then, you know, we were talking about redundancy. Remember the click of death with the Zip drives? Do you remember that? 

I know. No, no. Okay. So explain this because I vaguely remember. 

But okay. So Zip was a storage medium, which was kind of like, it was very briefly existed. But for anybody out there who doesn't know what a Zip drive is, and don't worry, that's completely fine. Floppy disks could only store 1.44 megabytes of data for the dual density floppy disks. And then CD burners were expensive and slow. And Zip was a medium that could store 100 megabytes. And then I think the next, they had a version that also could store 250 megabytes per disk. 

And these were on these plastic disks. And it was kind of like an early precursor to, frankly, what became solid state media for things like, you know, compact flash and secure digital memory cards. But the Zip drive had this flaw where something weird would happen with, I guess, the drive mechanism, and you would hear a click. 

And if you heard a click, when you inserted your disk, basically, it meant that the disk had been erased and was lost all your information. And this was a known thing. And the company who owned them, I think first was 3M or Iomega, and then I think 3M bought them or something. Maybe I'm forgetting that. 

But I know it was Iomega. They had to do major recalls. It was a massive problem for them. And so I had backups of things. But in the 90s, I remember it. I remember getting the click of death instance. 

And so there might be some floppy disks that are in my parents' house somewhere that might be retrievable. But yeah, I'm with you. I wish that I'd done a better job over the years. Because I've oftentimes saved things. And then what I don't do a good job with is like, OK, but where is what's been saved on that? And have I actually audited that backup? That's the bigger thing, right? 

That speaks so directly to me. And I'm sure I'm guessing that we've all experienced this to a certain degree, especially as decade after decade, all we're doing is adding more to our data archive, right? And so I might have a new computer now. I get a new computer. I've got all the stuff that's on my old computer. Do I take the time when I move that data over to organize it into some sensible way? 

Or do I do what I usually do, which is I just create a folder that says, 2017 MacBook Pro. Everything gets dumped into there. And that keeps happening. And so I think of my kids. And I think of the stuff that we pass down from generation to generation. It used to be tangible, in-your-hands stuff. 

And now it's the point to where we're passing down just these huge, gigantic archives of data, unorganized, unsorted. Really, what are they going to do with that? They're probably just going to hit delete and move on. And that would probably be fine. 

Honestly, probably. And that's the thing, right? There's something freeing about that. I know that can make people sad about it. But I think there's something almost freeing about it too. I'm really into archiving and preservation of the web and of other things. I think it's a really important thing that we preserve our history. But at the same time, I have to say, there is something kind of freeing about the fact that you're like, yeah, my first website is not available. Or if aspects of it are, not all of it's there. 

It sucks in one sense. Because again, I do think it's really important for us to be able to preserve our history, especially in the digital age, the way that we were. Able to preserve things in the analog age. But there is some kind of freeing about like, okay, I had it or I didn't. You know, like. 

And it is what it was. It is what it was. And it's no longer. And that's fine. Move on. Because at the end of the day, how much does it really matter to our existence now? 

Well, that's the thing, right? And it's one of those things, it was like, how much is it actually going to matter to other people, right? Like they might. 

Well, to other people, especially, yes. 

Right, you know what I mean? Because it's like, they might appreciate being able to see an old photo or being able to get a glimpse of what life was like. But do they really care about every single thing you wrote? And do they really care about like what all the, you know, every pixel looks like or every photo you took, right? Like, I don't care about every photo that I took, right? Like that's what I think about, you know, back home. Like I have, you know, 15 years of iPhone photos stored in multiple places. I have like redundancy there. 

Like they're in multiple clouds. But I'm, you know, but I'm like, but how many times have I looked at any of these things? How many times have I audited these things? Like, right, like I bet most of the photos have never even been, you know, looked at once. And certainly, you know, people who come after me are not going to care about like my, you know, like 100 gigabytes of, you know, images or whatever. 

Yeah. The 20 times you press the button to make sure that one of those images is the one where everybody's eyes are open. And yet we just shovel it all into a folder. And by the way, we got to shovel the most high res version of it into a folder. All of those incomplete takes. 

Absolutely. Because what are we going to do with that stuff? I don't even know, you know, it's interesting. 

It's an interesting conundrum, like corner that we're painting ourselves into. I had an experience not too long ago, actually, probably like at this point, about three years ago. I'm curious if you've had a similar experience with data loss. But I had a external hard drive that a lot like I couldn't even tell you exactly what's on it. But it was like one of those places that like, all right, I need space on my drive. 

So I'm taking like these projects, these old music projects and whatever. I'm just putting it over here. It's not backed up anywhere. It's just on this drive. But that's OK, because I'm just putting this drive on a shelf and it'll be fine. And I pulled it out one night and, you know, set it on the table and hooked up my laptop and was kind of perusing through like, oh, you know, there's all these music projects and everything. 

Listen to these. And then my elbow hits the drive. The drive hits the ground and it will not boot up anymore beyond that. And I was faced with the kind of the situation where I looked into pricing and all that stuff for data restoration. 

And I mean, it's insanely expensive. You have to ask yourself in that moment, is all of this information, this data, which, you know, still to this day, like I can think of a couple of things that I know were on there, but really it was a bunch of stuff that like I have a really hard time knowing for certain that this was on there outside of the fact that I know that there was stuff on there that I knew I wanted to save. Right. 

And that's all that I remember. And so at the end of the day, I just decided like, you know what, let's just let it. This will be an exercise in letting go. I'm just going to let it go. And it was yeah, it was kind of freeing. It was kind of like, okay, I don't, I'm not burdened by the need to like carry around this data with me anymore for what? For me to pull out once or twice in my lifetime and remember what it was like. And then, you know, that's it. 

No. And I think, I think, I think you're right. I mean, yeah, because the, that recovery stuff can be so expensive and it's fascinating what they do, you know, and it's even, and it's getting harder now, right? Like it's, it's interesting, like solid state drives are obviously far better and more redundant, but that also like the tech, the process there for recovery is different than it was, you know, with the platters was in some ways easier with, you know, the older drives for them to do what they can do. But like, there's only so much you can do in terms of trying to recreate those bits. 

And now that we're getting into things like drive encryption, you know, which by default, like it gets even harder. There, there's a lot of factors involved and yeah, you have to think, really ask yourself like, okay, is this something that is this like necessary? Is this data that I have to have? Or yeah, can I maybe, you know, Marie Kondo my, my digital life and, and ask, do I need this? 

You know, well, does it spark joy? And if the answer is no, then it's probably okay to let it go, which can be difficult. And, and yeah, I'm, I'm always at two minds of that. Cause like there's the hoarder part of me that wants to keep everything forever. Then there's like the more maybe like rational part of me that goes, no, you know, you're, you're going to look at this twice and you're going to have the fond memories, but also who, who does this have value to you? Well, to me, right. It has, I, I have value because I remember the good things, but is anyone else ever going to care? Probably not. Right. 

So can I have, I have, I have a box, like literally like a box, this big full of audio cassettes from when I was my children's age, um, starting there recording music, you know, with friends, just turning on a tape recorder and ha ha ha, you know, talking about stupid, like seventh grade stuff. And I have opera, you know, I've, I've carried this with me throughout my life thinking someday my kids are going to want to listen to this stuff and know what their dad was like. 

They have zero interest. Like I've brought it up a couple of times and I'm certain that that hard drive had some of that stuff digitized. I was like, well, I might as well digitize it. And, uh, that was kind of part of letting go. It's like, you know, I just don't think that they really care. Like, and that's okay. Like it doesn't need to matter to them. But how do I feel letting go of it? You know? Right. 

And the thing is, is like, maybe they would like to hear your snippets, right? Like, like see pieces, see pieces of it, but you don't need all of it. Right. Like, I think that maybe that's, maybe that's the lesson is there's balance. There's, there's a way that you can go without having to go to one extreme or the other, right. Where you can preserve things, but also don't have to keep everything. It's okay. Yeah. 

Balance. That's, that's something that comes up often in my life as a need, something that I need to do. You mentioned kind of collecting things and I want to talk about that, but let's take a quick break before we do. And then when we get back, we're going to talk about your collectibles obsession. I don't know what we'll call it, but we'll talk about that in a second. 

All right. So Christina Warren, one thing that I have learned about you in, you know, in the years that you were, especially when you were a guest on This Week in Tech and I was producing behind the scenes is that you have kind of a part of you that likes to collect things. Now you've got collectibles related to shoes, I believe, right? You're collecting, you're a collector of shoes. I am. You're also a collector of, of technology company, companies like defunct technology companies. Like, tell me a little bit about that. I'm curious. 

Yeah. Yeah. So I have a kind of a, I guess kind of a defunct or a, or a shamed company swag collection. So like for, for me, it's just, it's not enough for a company to have like gone out of business. 

Like it needs to have like done it in a spectacular way, like a very well-known failure or, and it can be product-based too, right? Like I have like, I have Internet Explorer t-shirts, but like I have, I have like a Theranos vest and I have, let me find, I have this. Ah, this is great. This is an FTX bobblehead. And, uh, that was actually, and here's, here's what's, here's, what's great about this. This was given out at the Warriors game the day after, or the day that, um, uh, uh, Sam Bankman-Freed was, um, I guess arrested and charged. 

And so that's awesome. What a coincidence. Yeah. 

It was hysterical that they were, they wound up doing that. And so I have, I have this bottle, uh, I have this bottle of it. It was like $69. Oh, and it's broken. I just, I just opened this up and realized it had been on my desk for a long time. And I guess it just got broken in the box. I'm going to have to buy another one. Um, okay. 

Well, now what, okay. Yeah. I'm having a hard time seeing what, what is broken about it? 

Uh, the little guy's arms and the hoop of this, of this thing have come off. Oh no. Oh yeah. Okay. I see. I see. 

Oh, that's a bummer. Now, where did you, this 

has been on my desk for a long time on eBay. And, and I, I'm sure, I'm sure I can find this again because they gave them out to everybody at the warriors game. 

And, and I'm sure I can find this. It'll probably make my cost me more. That's disappointing. All right. Well, that's, um, um, uh, it should have kept it on my desk and not put it back in the box, trying to be, see, this is what happens when you try to preserve things. 

Um, well, there's always the question, um, of, you know, when it comes to things like that, like, do you keep it in the box to preserve it? Or do you actually bring it out of the box and enjoy it? You know, for, for what it actually is when you're a collector, you know, you can go both ways, but 

I 

usually, where do you tend to stand? 

I tend to stay in, in, in the display and play with things factor, right? Like I'm not buying these things to like appreciate value. Um, like, like, like I, I know a lot of shoe collectors who, who buy shoes never to wear and just to display. 

And that's great. I buy shoes to wear. Um, and, and I've, I'm going to spend, you know, a bunch of money on a pair of shoes. 

I want to wear those shoes. So, uh, and I feel kind of the same way about some of my swag stuff. So like I have, you know, like, uh, I bought like fire festival merch, um, for instance, that still have the tags on it, but I've, but I've worn those shirts. I kept the tags, the tags are cool, but I wore the shirt because it's funny. Like, and again, like why I buy these things to buy them the same thing with, you know, sometimes there are some gadgets you might want to keep boxed up, I guess. 

Um, I understand the, the, the nature there. And I have some vinyl where I might buy multiple copies of, of the same vinyl and keep something sealed. But, but that again is potentially, cause I'm like, well, maybe you'll resell it. 

Right. But if I'm actually going to, I don't know, for me collectible, you should, you, you should use or display like what you collected. That's, that's how I feel. I feel like if I'm only going to keep it in the box, I'm never going to have it out. 

I don't know what the point is. Um, I'm disappointed now that, that, that, uh, bobblehead is, is broken. It was not broken before. It's fine. It's fine. 

No, no, no, no. I'm glad I figured that out actually. Cause now I can hopefully get another one, but, um, but yeah, uh, you know, that's another freeing thing too with collectibles. Very few things. 

There's only one of them. Um, even, even with like the, you know, companies that, that have gone out of business, there's a lot of, now some of the stuff can be really competitive to find official stuff because there are a few of us who are active collectors in this space and the price can go up. And I've sort of been responsible for my own downfall in this regard because there was an NPR story, um, about me and about the collection that I, that I do a few years ago. And, and that, that created more competition for myself. 

So that awakened people to the, the idea and they're like, oh wow, that's actually a, that's actually a, a focus or a, a passion that I could, you know, start to pursue my Yeah. It's a cool idea. It's a super cool idea. Like the, the thought of having like a fire festival shirt, knowing what a spectacular failure it was and what kind of like a cultural moment 

it was like, that's, that's really cool that you have that totem from that, you know? No, it totally is. Right. And, and, and for me, like, I, I want it to all be like official stuff. So people will often send me like red bubble or other shirts people have created. And like, it can be funny. Like I do have a shirt that says Enron, um, um, in like the fire festival, or maybe it says fire, but like in the Enron logo. 

And that's very funny. And like, I have like one-off things like that, but like, I want the real Enron stuff. Like I have an Enron mug actually. Um, and I have, um, I have like some stuff from Washington mutual, which was a bank, um, in, in the Seattle area that, that, um, it was like the biggest bank failure in history. They made Barbie dolls actually, like, like, like not official Barbie dolls, but they made, um, dolls that they like based on tellers and stuff that they had commercials for that they gave out like in the late nineties or the early two thousands. 

Yeah, I have, I have some of those, you know, these are just weird trinkets, weird like moments of history. And, and it's just, uh, I don't know. I, I, I find it funny. I also think that it's, it's kind of, again, go back. It's a little bit humbling to remember like how things can go. Like you can think something's the greatest thing in the world or has a lot of potential and it can turn out, you know, yeah, great FTX. You got your name, you know, on a bobblehead. You were also, uh, you know, um, committing a bunch of crimes, um, and, uh, like not, not on the up and up. Um, it's, it's a, it's a good reminder to be like, Hey, we thought that these ideas were going to be great. Uh, but they weren't. And, um, I don't know. I, I, I, I, I, I like that. 

And now it's like a punch, a punchline, you know, having the merchandise is kind of like a punchline. 

It totally is. And it's funny because like, you know, people sometimes get scared. They see if I'm wearing a shirt with something, oh, you think that that's dying. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. They're separate things. Like sometimes I just like to wear shirts of things to carry. And then sometimes, of course, the sad thing is that, you know, shirts can go from, from one status to the other, you know, over time. So, you know, um, um, hopefully in this case it'll be good. But like a Gizmodo website I used to work for was sold for the second time, I guess, technically third time, um, uh, this week. 

And, um, so like every time things like that happen, I'm like, well, my Gizmodo shirts, you know, just get closer to switching from being like vintage is where I used to work to being, you know, collectible of your like defunct. 

Right. Yeah. Framed on the wall. 

Right. Right. Um, uh, I, I think the new owners actually have really good intentions and, um, and, and seem to, um, have really high hopes for things. So hopefully, you know, that one will stay out of the, the, um, you know, um, dead company, um, pile for a while. But yeah, it is sort of funny to just think like there are things you can look back on and go, oh, right. Remember that when we all thought pets.com was going to be. Oh yes, exactly. 

Great example. Great example. I mean that, that would, they had like the super bowl commercial with the stock. 

Yep. 

They were, they were, they were big, big time. And oh my goodness. How so many of those businesses that were what once seemed impenetrable just, yeah, just lost to the wind. And it was really only a small amount of time 

that they were relevant, but it was such an important, like big moment in technology that like.com boom, it, it felt so different. And companies like pets.com, you know, we're offering something that we hadn't seen at that scale or in that, that kind of presentation that way before. No, they had to fail for the other ones to win later. You know what I mean? It's so interesting because when you look at all those big.com companies, you know, the only one that really lasted was Amazon. And that was not a guaranteed thing. I mean, granted they were early and Amazon was big from the beginning, but it was not a guarantee that they were going to last. Like I remember the first time they had like a, you know, like a quarterly profit or, or, you know, break even moment. 

And that was like well into the early two thousands. And, and, and this was before they started to not profit on purpose, which, which was a strategic move to be clear for tax reasons and other purposes. This was, but, but this was back when, you know, a lot of the companies had gone public and there was this big gold rush and then the bottom dropped out and most of them went under and, and Amazon, you know, is one of the few that kind of lasted and they acquired a lot of those other companies. And you know, but there, but a lot of those ideas that those things had, some of them were incredibly dumb and some of them were really, you know, when you, you, you look back and you're going, wow, you really thought you could have a business model where you would just sell everything at a loss, but it would somehow make up for it. Like, and it's like all the volume in the world is not going to do that yet. We like, we run into these problems over and over and over again. 

Oh, that, yeah, that continues that I feel like that is, is pervasive in the industry. And we see these companies running for literally, you know, five, six, seven years off of that mentality and that thought. And yeah, lesson not learned, I guess. Absolutely. 

Lesson not learned, but, but it is just kind of funny to kind of go back and kind of remember, right. We all thought this was going to be the next big thing. Like remember, um, yeah, remember web TV, which, which was like Microsoft as attempt to like, how like a set-top box that you would connect to the internet and like browse, like the web, like you wouldn't use a computer, which would make sense. No, just use something slower and worse, even lower resolution on your television set. 

Yeah. But browsing the web, anything on your TV and yes, that was, that was a thing for a while where it was like, well, this, this gives you the power and, you know, and amazing qualities of the internet and you can do it from the comfort of your couch. But, oh, it was never, it was never, it was so brutal anytime I ever tried to do it. 

Oh no, it was terrible. It was a terrible experience. And like the idea, you understand where it was going, right. And obviously now the internet has infused its way into everything we do. And you can see like the germs of like where we are 25 years later, but at the time, yeah, no, the experience was terrible. And so, you know, you kind of look at these things and you're like, wow, but people really thought that was going to be, everybody's going to have these. And then sometimes you do have things that for a moment really are everywhere. Like, like, like TiVo, right? Like TiVo was one of my favorite tech products ever. And one of the things that. Oh, for sure. 

I was even a beta tester for them. Again, unpaid. Most of, most of the work that I would do, like as a, as a, you know, teenager would be unpaid, but they would send me like early units of, of different things. 

And I would, you know, play around with the features and whatnot. And TiVo always makes me so sad because in most cases I can look at technology that we have today. And I can say definitively that the experience is better than it was 20 years ago. I actually think watching television, at least with like a DVR and whatnot experience, I think it's worse. I think TiVo, you know, not just the fact that you could auto skip commercials and things like that, but the way that they're very early versions of algorithms would, you know, learn the type to auto record content that you would like and predict things that you would like were very crude and very rudimentary, but very good. And frankly, better in a lot of ways than some of the things we have now. 

Even though they had, they were, you know, again, like a far less technologically advanced and, and it's, it's, it's sad to me sometimes to think about, okay, what have we lost? And sometimes I think, okay, well, how much of this is just your nostalgia, Christina? And how much of this is a demonstrably worse experience? And I would actually say, like, I think that especially like, like a DVR experience whether it's, you know, through a cable company or if you have something like YouTube TV or, or whatnot, like is worse than it was 20 years ago. 

And that, that, that's, that's, that's kind of sad. Now we watch TV in different ways, but you know, there were, there were things out there that I should probably get some TiVo merch because that was, that would just be fun. 

Oh, that would be a good one. That would be a solid one though. Because I mean, TiVo, you know, was a success until it wasn't anymore. And there's no denying that it imprinted what came after it. And, you know, I would say most people, I mean, I certainly had a TiVo. I loved that thing. I mean, that was such a change, such an evolution in watching TV. Now I don't really watch TV anymore. It's, you know, it's a totally on demand world. Like, you know, I don't, I don't have much need for a live TV subscription. 

And if I do like the Olympics are coming up, so I'll probably drop in on a month, you know, for YouTube TV or whatever, but I would agree. Like even the online kind of cloud DVR experience, it does similar. It does basically the same things, but there's some, there was something about that locally stored. I mean, it was just so instantaneous 

and really just straightforward and super fast. It was super fast. And they even had, you know, like a network to capabilities where if you had multiple TiVos in your home, then you could access one from one, you know, a program recorded on one, on another device. And you could, you know, transfer things even like they have like a weird, like a Windows and I think Mac app where you could like watch their encrypted recordings on your machine. Like they were really trying to innovate. If they licensed a Comcast, if they licensed their technology to the set-top box makers instead of making the set-top box makers create their own inferior software, I think TiVo might still be around. You know, but, but, but, but it is what it is. 

Um, but yeah, they thought, well, they thought they, they believed that they had the secret sauce, which is what we create the hardware that people love and the, you know, our hardware is going to win out over everything else. The problem is, you know, cable. Oh, sorry. 

No, you're right. Right. The problem was, yeah, they, they thought people would pay the premium for their hardware and their software and not realize that no, if people can get something easier, that's a little bit less expensive, even though it's a much worse experience from the cable company, they're going to do that. And, you know, and, and then fundamentally that model changed anyway. 

Right. Because, you know, very few people will watch live TV anymore, but, um, but yeah, I think they, they really, they, they thought they had something and, um, and they did. It's just, uh, it was a case where customers didn't care enough. It ran out. Yeah. 

It ran out. Unfortunately it was superseded by, yeah, poor. I remember having Comcast, you know, and, uh, them, you know, of course they, that's exactly what happened. Comcast ended up offering, you know, a deal that includes the DVR and, you know, all this other stuff and make it seem like it's the right choice. 

And then you get it and you're just like, wow, this is, this was totally a step down, but I am saving some money or whatever the case may be, whatever the justification was. And that just made TiVo irrelevant. I think you definitely need to get some TiVo collectible merch. 

I definitely do. I need to get some TiVo merch for sure. That makes a lot of sense to me. 

Yeah, Christina Warren, we could, I could talk to you about this, uh, all day. I love the nostalgic quality of what, what kind of lights your fire when it comes to technology. It certainly does for me too. And, um, thank you for sharing some of your thoughts on kind of your story on technology and what, what keeps you engaged with what you do? What do you want to leave people with as far as, you know, how they can follow what you're doing now? And yeah, just tell us a little bit about what you are doing now. Sure. 

Yeah. So I work at GitHub. I work in developer relations. And so one of the things I do is I talk to developers all day, which is really great. I'm going to be in San Jose this coming week, um, uh, kind of hanging around, um, WWDC and I'm going to be in San Francisco, um, in, in two weeks, actually, or I guess three weeks, um, for, uh, the AI, um, world's fair. So I, um, I spend a lot of time, you know, talking to people, um, online or in person and kind of keeping abreast of the latest things people are building. 

And then I, you know, people are having issues using some of our tools that I can connect them with our product teams and I can offer feedback on that kind of stuff. Um, but to keep up with me, you know, I'm, I'm still active on social media. I'm not as active as I used to be, but I'm, I'm on Twitter. I'm on Mastodon. I'm on threads. Um, uh, I'm on blue sky, uh, less, less than, um, some of the others, but I'm, I'm on, I'm on all of those places. I'm film underscore girl. 

Um, in most places, if, if I'm not film underscore girl, it's because they don't have underscores and so then it's film girl, one word. Um, actually, um, I always tell people to follow me on GitHub, not for my code. My code is not really why you want to follow me, but I, I star a lot of good projects. 

So if you go to github.com slash film girl, if you look at my, and that's all one word. If you look at my, my star collection, I have about 3,500 projects starred going all the way back. You can search through things. I have some lists that I create, um, about various projects, but like I just find cool things that, that I, that I find all the time. Many of them are, are, can be retro, you know, um, a focus. Some of them are, um, you know, uh, around other things. Um, but, uh, that's, that's something that I, you know, if you want to keep up with some of the stuff that I do day in and day out, you can get a good idea into what I'm kind of obsessed with by looking at my stars. 

My stars are like a good insight into, into what I want. Like for instance, um, I've been looking at a, I found, I discovered a new, um, a tiling window manager for, um, um, Mac OS yesterday called aerospace. And then that got me down a rabbit hole to look into some windows, um, tiling, uh, window managers. And so those are some of the first things that I have. Um, like if you, if you scroll up a little bit, you can see, or scroll down a little bit. You can see my star repose, um, uh, whim and aerospace and things like that. And so, yeah. 

Right on. That's cool. I haven't, I personally, I haven't spent a whole lot of time on GitHub. I'm not a developer. So I honestly didn't know that you could like, that there is this kind of like social kind of sharing element of it. This is actually really cool. 

Yeah. I mean, I would say, I would say even if you're not a developer, GitHub is a great place just to go to look for projects, um, you know, to see if there's something that interests you. And, uh, like for instance, uh, the other day, um, a friend of mine sent me a tech talk that showed how, um, somebody could customize the, the login screen on their Mac to have like a customized video. Um, when, when you log in to have one of the, the moving, um, wallpapers and there's a way you can customize that you have to replace a file in kind of a hidden folder. Um, but someone created a project on GitHub that automates that process and actually makes it like an official screensaver. So, you know, that's like an example right there of something that, you know, okay, I could do this thing manually, but someone else has already made it better. GitHub is a great place to find out like, Hey, I want to do this, this nerdy thing. Has someone else already done it? 

Yeah, probably. And, um, so you don't have to be a developer, you know, but, but it's just a great place to kind of look in and go to, you know, figure out what other people have built and shared. 

Love it. Love it. Christina, thank you so much for doing what you do. Thank you for sharing, uh, who you are with, uh, me and, uh, the fans of text voter today. It was really fun talking with you about all this stuff. And thanks for being patient at the beginning too, because redundancy wins again. 

Again, if this hasn't happened to you at least once, like you haven't done this long enough, so not at all. And, uh, and I think you're fantastic. Thank you for having me and, and, um, and congrats on everything. I know, you know, with, with the, with, with your new venture, I'm so excited that you're still doing all this stuff because you're so good at it. And I've been such a fan of yours for such a long time. And I've always loved working with you and, um, and you're, you're just the best. 

Oh, right on. I really appreciate hearing that. Thank you, Christina. Really good to see you and best of luck with everything. We'll be in touch. And, uh, all right. All right. Thank you. All right, everybody. 

We are going to round this out. Uh, just real quick here, of course, just to let you know, reminder, patreon.com/JasonHowell, how support me and the, the work that we're doing here. You get a lot of perks if you do that, but I think one of the more awesome perks is that at a certain tier, you get to be an executive producer of this show like Jeffrey Marraccini, John Kuehne, Catie Lake, Bill Rudder, four folks who give a little bit extra and definitely help me continue doing tech splitter for you all. So thank you all for supporting this independent podcast. And with that, I think we have reached the end of this episode. Um, please, uh, rem reminder. We do the show every Friday, essentially. 

Usually it's live, but it'll be premiering while I'm gone on my vacation here next week for the next three weeks, you'll get some new episodes at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern on the tech splitter YouTube channel. And don't forget to like rate review, subscribe. That really helps me out. You can find everything you need to know about this show at Techsploder. Thanks again to Christina Warren for joining me. I'm Jason Howell. We'll see you next week on another episode of the tech splitter podcast.