# Tech Talk (Troubles) and Tourney Tongue Twisters

**Source:** BlahCade Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2015-09-22  
**Duration:** 40m 4s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/blahcade-pinball-podcast/episodes/Tech-Talk-Troubles-and-Tourney-Tongue-Twisters-e1bkfum

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## Analysis

Chris Frebus and Jared Morgan discuss Pinball Arcade platform updates, Pro Pack features, and technical settings like mipmapping. They announce their tournament schedule with four tables (Circus Voltaire, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Lights Camera Action, Dr. Dude) and clarify participation mechanics. The episode includes extended off-topic discussion about fall TV shows and Australian programming.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Table exploration mode is the primary feature Chris uses from Pro Packs, prompting consideration of purchase despite limited perceived value — _Chris discusses his Pro Pack usage habits and questions whether to purchase based solely on table exploration mode_
- [HIGH] A better view mode interface exists in Pinball Arcade beta that is superior to current Pro Pack exploration mode — _Jared describes stumbling across a developer key sequence in beta that activates better camera angle controls than current Pro Pack implementation_
- [MEDIUM] New player tournament signups do not post scores, possibly because they confuse Blockade's day-long tournament with FarSight's week-long concurrent tournament — _Chris speculates about new players' confusion regarding score submission and tournament mechanics_
- [HIGH] Dr. Dude Table of the Week includes new tuning changes allowing the rolling shot to hit Gift of Gab reflex shot (at least on PC) — _Jared confirms the tuning change and notes implementation differs between platforms_
- [HIGH] Mipmapping setting on Android controls image sharpness by letting GPU select optimal resolution for device — _Jared explains technical function of mipmapping as a graphics optimization feature specific to Android_

### Notable Quotes

> "Well, I have the Pro Packs for seasons three and four because those were gifted to me. Okay, thank you so much, Leroy."
> — **Chris Frebus**, early
> _Acknowledges community support; establishes context for Pro Pack discussion_

> "I started using the table exploration mode a lot...no, I want to see if I can figure this out for myself"
> — **Chris Frebus**, mid-opening
> _Explains motivation for exploring Pro Pack features beyond initial assumptions_

> "What this will do is it will just increases the sharpness of the images, okay? Like distance views and stuff like that."
> — **Jared Morgan**, tech_talk
> _Simplifies technical explanation of mipmapping in accessible terms_

> "The Blockade Tournament of the Month has nothing to do with FarSight. They just like to give us prizes."
> — **Chris Frebus**, tournament_section
> _Clarifies relationship with FarSight to address perceived confusion among new players_

> "And you do need to actually go to the website and post your scores."
> — **Chris Frebus**, tournament_section
> _Emphasizes manual score submission requirement for Blockade tournament_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Chris Frebus | person | Host of Blockade Pinball Podcast, also known as Shut Your Trap; discusses Pinball Arcade features and tournament administration |
| Jared Morgan | person | Co-host of Blockade Pinball Podcast; provides technical explanations of Pinball Arcade settings and maintains Android User's Guide |
| Kay Fitzner (Bonzo) | person | Occasional co-host of Blockade Pinball Podcast; not present in this episode |
| Scott Humble | person | Developer at FarSight Studios; implied to work on Android development issues |
| Blockade Pinball Podcast | organization | Pinball-focused podcast hosting Table of the Week tournament and monthly competition |
| FarSight Studios | company | Developer of Pinball Arcade platform; runs concurrent week-long tournament; provides prizes to Blockade tournament |
| WizardAmusement.com | company | Sponsor of Blockade Podcast; manufactures custom pinball shooter rods; providing tournament prize |
| Pinball Arcade | product | Virtual pinball platform by FarSight with Pro Packs, table exploration mode, and Android-specific settings |
| F-14 Tomcat | game | Recently released table in Pinball Arcade; Chris unable to beta test due to not purchasing newest season |
| Dr. Dude | game | Current Table of the Week for Blockade tournament; includes new tuning changes for reflex shots |
| Scared Stiff | game | Pinball Arcade table; Chris previously purchased Pro Pack specifically for audio quality |
| Game of Thrones | game | Recently announced Pinball Arcade table; Chris criticizes shooter rod aesthetic as 'pretty ugly' |
| Circus Voltaire | game | Tournament table for September 2015 Blockade competition |
| Bram Stoker's Dracula | game | Tournament table for September 2015 Blockade competition |
| Lights, Camera, Action | game | Tournament table for September 2015 Blockade competition; Chris criticized table art previously |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Pinball Arcade Pro Pack features and value, Technical settings: mipmapping and Android optimization, Blockade Tournament of the Month logistics and signups, Table of the Week: Dr. Dude mechanics and tuning changes
- **Secondary:** Pinball Arcade platform updates and incremental rollout strategy, Fall TV season viewing habits, Custom pinball accessories (shooter rods) as differentiation

### Sentiment

**Mixed** (0.55) — Positive engagement with technical topics and tournament organization, but frustration about Pro Pack value proposition, unclear FarSight hints, website URL complexity, and Wi-Fi connectivity issues during recording. Extended off-topic TV discussion dilutes pinball focus.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Pro Pack pricing model creates 'gotta catch 'em all' tension; users weighing purchase against limited perceived value; feature gaps incentivize purchases not aligned with core player needs (confidence: medium) — Chris debates purchasing Pro Packs despite primary use case (exploration mode) being niche; contemplates 'what if they add feature X' purchase motivation; acknowledges early implementation quality issues
- **[community_signal]** New players conflate Blockade's independent day-long tournament with concurrent FarSight week-long tournament, resulting in failure to submit scores and unclear participation mechanics (confidence: medium) — Chris observes pattern of new signups not posting scores; speculates confusion about FarSight vs Blockade tournament relationship and score submission requirements
- **[technology_signal]** Pinball Arcade features rolling out incrementally across platforms (PC receives updates before Android); parity issues create user confusion and guide maintenance burden (confidence: high) — Jared notes tuning changes not yet repeatable on Android; live drop catches implemented on PC but not Android; mipmapping only on Android, not iOS
- **[product_strategy]** Dr. Dude tuning changes enable previously impossible reflex shot routing on PC platform, improving playfield flow and player options (confidence: high) — Jared confirms new tuning allows rolling shot into Gift of Gab reflex; notes platform-specific implementation differences
- **[technology_signal]** Mipmapping/anisotropic filtering remains poorly named and confusing in Pinball Arcade UI, requiring user guide explanation; feature naming lacks intuitive language (confidence: high) — Jared discusses inadequate terminology in menu and advocates for renaming to 'Sharpness' for clarity; maintains Android User's Guide to work around UI issues
- **[technology_signal]** Blockade Podcast URL complexity (goo.gl shortlinks with alphanumeric strings) creates friction for verbal communication and new player signup, motivating website/domain upgrade investment (confidence: high) — Chris reads URLs aloud to demonstrate awkwardness; explicitly states 'This will be the last time we repeat these hits until we somehow fix it'; acknowledges need for domain and hosting to embed forms

---

## Transcript

 Before we launch into the podcast, just wanted to apologize. There have been some audio issues on my end with access to Wi-Fi here in this episode. So I will cut in and out a bit during this podcast. You should be able to piece everything together. So just stick with it and we'll sort out the connectivity issues for the next podcast. Thanks for listening. You're listening to the... The door's open, so come on in. WizardAmusement.com The site to visit for custom pinball shooter rods. Easy to install, totally unique. mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order. Wizardamusement.com. Sales, restoration, customization. You are listening to the Blockade Podcast. I am your host, Chris Frebus, a.k.a. Shut Your Trap. My co-host, as usual, Jared Morgan. Hey, hey, hey, Chris. Hey, hey. And also occasionally we get Kay Fitzner, a.k.a. Bonzo, in here with us. Just not at the moment. Yep. Hey, isn't this a little early for us to be talking to each other? I mean, what, is a month over already? Yeah, no, it's a month that's just flown by, hasn't it? It feels like it's only been a week or something. Yeah, that's right. It's uncanny. It's uncanny. Wow. And the amazing part was we recorded it, and like two days later, it was actually up and ready for download. And that was kind of freaky how it worked. Yeah, exactly. like there was there was dates that were thrown out and they were valid people seem to be pretty okay with it like they seem to like the idea of a weekly podcast with us rambling on so hey look we'll keep on doing it eh rambling on for a shorter period of time maybe they just don't like us that much just like us in short doses i think that's what it is exactly it's like it's nice to visit but they want to kick us out quickly hey so uh just the other day a brand new release uh came out from uh farsight that being uh f14 tomcat yeah now the the the problem for me was same as last time with not being able to beta test that much because i haven't purchased the uh newest season of pinball arcade so i started thinking about i was like okay well when am i going to be able to do this and everything and then it dawned on me well i have the pro packs for season three and four um because those were were gifted to me okay thank you so much leroy um anyway uh because i previously the only pro table i'd gotten was for scared stiff because i wanted the audio and beyond that i hadn't really felt that there was much benefit to the pro packs. But then the strange thing happened. And that is I started using the table exploration mode a lot. Oh, really? Yeah, because there was just certain things where rather than going through the instructions, I was like, no, I want to see if I can figure this out for myself. And so I'd start doing the table exploration and seeing if there actually wasn't insert telling you to shoot here you know what it what it said and stuff like that and so i've gotten kind of gotten used to that so now i'm debating okay do i go ahead and pay for the pro pack even though that's the only thing i'm using out of it or do i save the 10 bucks and not do the pro pack and then i was looking at season one and two going oh i should get the pro packs for those but then again not all the tables have the pro mode available um I don't know. I'm in a quandary. Yeah, it's tough, isn't it? I must admit, I have never purchased ever, ever a Pro Pack. I think when Farsight originally implemented the Pro Packs, they were a little bit rough around the edges, and I just didn't really see the value in it. Because, you know, a lot of the time you can just go and look at pictures on IMDB for close-ups, right? So, yeah, it was a bit of a tough sell for me. What I did find, though, in the beta, this is a bit of, I guess, in-shop talk, but in the beta, there's this key sequence you can use to activate a view mode that allows the Farsight guys to set camera angles in-game. And I stumbled across it because I'm using a controller. Key combination to open up this mode, which they normally don't include in the beta. It was just an accident that they included it. And I tell you what, from what I've seen of the table exploration mode, this interface that they've got is actually better than what they've got in the exploration mode currently implemented. So everyone that owned ProPax are going, oh, so could you implement that as the view? Because it looks really good, and it actually allows you to really, really get close to play field inserts and stuff like that. Really close. Well, see, the best would be if you could do it in-game while you're playing the game, if you could pause the game and then go into an insert. Because, I mean, I've done that while playing an actual table. You know, catch the ball with the flipper, and then you lean over and you look really close at the inserts, and then, oh, that's the shot I need, and then you lean back and then you flip the flipper. Yeah, that'd be cool. I'm not a fan of having to do it, especially if something's blinking, because, again, in normal table exploration mode, you're, you're out of that. Yeah. And, uh, so sometimes the, the, the thing that's catching your eye is not now catching your eye when you're in regular table exploration mode. So anyway, to me it's, it's, see, here's where they get you with the ProPack thing is it's that, it's that complete thing of me. Um, you gotta catch them all well for instance i don't have a 3d tv right now okay yeah i know that i want one i know when i eventually buy a new tv it's going to have 3d unless they completely phase 3d out of everything but point being all the blu-rays that i'm buying well i shouldn't say all blu-rays but some of the blu-rays that i'm buying i'm buying them in the 3d version you know you know it comes with it because when you first buy that first week it's like maybe two three bucks more than what the other version was, as opposed to if you waited a while, then all of a sudden it's going to be $12 to $15 more than the regular version. So, you know, it's like, okay. And I feel that I'm worried that, actually, I'd be more hopeful that at some point once you make Tro Mode awesome, they're going to drop something into it that you just go, oh, brilliant, this is why I have it. You know? So, I don't know. I think it would be nice to see some pro mode features implemented as standard features, although I think the challenge with that is that for those people who have gone all in and invested in pro packs, having some of those features made standard might actually rub them the wrong way. So it's a bit of a balancing act they've got to do there. I mean, things like table exploration mode, I know a lot of people on the forums said that should just be part of the... It should be. it certainly is on Ask Homeworks offering but yeah I think it would be nice just to be able to zoom in real close and take a look at things I think you're right it needs to happen speaking of zooming in and looking at things really bad segue here table of the week segues are us let's zoom in and take a look at the table of the week hey uh this week we are playing dr dude which i kind of found ironic because for as much as i was complaining about the uh table art on lights camera action um many people hate the table art on dr dude also um yeah it's like here's my here's my only caveat with that is at least it's consistent yeah that's true it's consistent throughout the entire table and it you know is cohesive as opposed to, that was my main gripe with the other, where it's just like, again, why are these heads looking completely different on the women than they do on the men? I don't know. Anyway. I actually decided to go and put some time into the tournament tables this week, and I actually did go and put some time in on that table, and once you see it, you can't unsee it. That bloody woman with the head. Her neck snapped. Oh my god, what were they thinking? Neck snapped, and then and the tumor growing under her armpit. Stop, Uber. Although, Dr. Dude, I was looking at it, and I'm like, okay, yeah, so doctor wearing a leopard print sport coat over his scrubs. Sure, it makes perfect sense. You know, about as much sense as it did for detectives wearing pastel suits with T-shirts and no socks in their shoes, you know, rolling up the sleeves on Miami Vice. You know, it's the 80s, baby. It's the 80s, and even Dr. Dude has shoulder pads, right? like it's pretty epic i picture dr dude is a plastic surgeon that's you know that's what he is he's not he's not a heart surgeon he's a plastic surgeon so he's got to look cool that's right he's driving like an 80s testarossa as well i reckon exactly exactly um this uh this table does have the new tuning changes in it so everybody will be happy to know that know that when you doing the one two three reflex shot that you can actually hit reflex number 2 from the rolling shot which is into the gift of gab which previously you weren able to do I think that might just be on PC at the moment. I played it the other day, because I also did a bit of time on that one as well, just so I know what tables are going on. It didn't seem to be that repeatable in Android. that the flippers they sort of felt really bouncy still like the flippers you know that the non-tune flippers to right like versus the tune flippers it's really apparent when you see them oh so are you not able yeah I'm able to do live drop catches now I forget that is something that's been implemented on the PC yeah I think so not yet I think they are like he was saying last time when we were doing the Bobby interview I think they are rolling it out incrementally but it's a lot of work to go through and apply them to each table so So yeah, on the to-do list, but it's a long-reaching goal. Well, for us on the PC Master Race, we're jumping for joy. Your PC Master Race, I like that. And I got to say, one of my main goals for the Table of the Weeks every time is to complete all the Wizard goals. And for Dr. Dude, it's literally just a few-hour adventure. It's nothing painful. nothing that drives you bonkers trying to get some of it. I would even say that you can probably get three of the four or three of the five wizard goals in one game. Right. Yeah. Sometimes you get a role like that. Hey, you can just get in there and smash a whole stack in one game and go, all right, I'm done. Yeah. It's great. So anyway, this is the last table of the week for this month's tournament but we'll talk about the tournament a little later I just want to highlight what our table of the week was let's move on to our next bit of business which is our featured moment of this pod hit it Jared Tech Talk Jared Tech Talk Jared Tech Talk Jared Tech Talk so Jared what are you going to talk to us about this time Well, this is something, again, that is from the Pinball Arcade User's Guide for Android that I wrote up a while back. This feature might be familiar to the people that use a PC, although they probably would never have to tweak the setting in the Pinball Arcade. But the setting, this is another thing with the old UI. and I think this sort of was all they could fit into the word gap that they've got for each menu item. It's sort of a bit more developer speak than it probably should be in a menu item. Mitmapping is actually, it's a way of sending multiple images, little chunks of images and letting the GPU or the graphics processing unit pick the best sample resolution for the device. Of course, this is a concern on Android and iOS because, you know, with the different screen sizes and stuff on all the devices, you do get a little bit of variance there. For the record, this menu item is actually not there on iOS. It's only on Android because of when the platform was launched, they did have some performance issues when they started putting in some of the more high-definition... It defaults to off now, I think, when you first run the app. So to understand what MIP mapping is, I won't go into it here because it's a bit dry, but if you go to... It is really quite dry. Really, it should be called, in the menu item, it would be better if it was called anisotropic filtering or anisotropic filtering is its correct term. But it's also... One of those words that when I've gone on a PC game and seen that in the, you know... Menu item. No idea. So, yeah, let's try that setting. Let's see what it does. I don't even bother with the try that setting. I just go and look and see what other people, you know, if they say, yes, set it to this. Then I go, okay, I guess I'll set it to that and see what happens. That's right. I think really what it does is it... in a nutshell what it does is it just increases the sharpness of the images okay like distance views and stuff like that um so if you've got like uh your what they call it kid mode in the views where like he's really down low with the flippers what this will do is it will um if you if you have it um off what it will do it will just serve the highest resolution mipmap image and that requires a little bit more processing power and could in some cases result in a bit of a performance impact for some older devices but again it's really something you just need to experiment with in the android app to see how it actually affects your device and this is the balancing act that is android like because of the all the different devices and their performance and their GPU architecture and all this all this variable stuff that Android developers have to deal with I can see Scott just shaking his head now the Android yeah I live it every day he's probably saying um so yeah it's it really is something you need to experiment with but you'll see it if your device is affected by it'll actually serve up multiple MITMAP images. So this is little chunks of image data basically and then it'll hand off the task to the GPU and say right you pick whatever the best sample resolution is for that for my hardware and I'll just let you take care of it now. I'm not going to try and manage it. You just make worky and then display it to the user so you can play pinball. So that's pretty much what it does. But I think if I was writing the menu items for this, I'd probably change it from MIP mapping and change it to something like sharpness high or sharpness normal. Hey, that would make sense. Yeah, sharpness. That's a bit of language we can understand. Sharpness works for me. So there you go. That's a really quick overview. I also wanted to add too that I'm a little bit recalcitrant in my duties updating this guide. For the record, this- Let me bust out a quarter for recalcitrant. Okay, go ahead. It should be the title of the podcast, recalcitrant. So. But there's a section that I really do need to update about the, how sound works on Android now. I think we touched on this in a previous podcast, but yeah. Yeah. I need to do some updates to that guide and, and I'll be glad, very glad to make that change to the guide. Cause the idea with this Android users guide is it shouldn't exist, but it does because you have to work around some of the issues in the UI. So total victory is when you have to delete it. Yeah, total victory is when there's so many caveats in there saying, well, actually, this is how it was, but now they fixed it, so all is good. And at that point, I'll just leave it up there for historical purposes. But, yeah, that would be ideal. Maybe it will happen when the new UI eventually gets done. I don't know. But it would be good. Anyhow, that's a wrap for Tech Talk. fantastic as always a bit educational for somebody that's not necessarily a neophyte but when it comes to certain tech language I just go what me no understand hey let's talk about tournament of the month why don't we tournament of the month shall be on September 26th with signups starting on the Wednesday before, obviously, which would be the 23rd of September. So probably the day after this podcast gets released, thinking, maybe? Somewhere around there. Anyway, unless you're on the Southern Hemisphere like Jared, and then that messes up all the dates. The future. I am an agent for the future. I'll try and get this out the next couple of days anyhow. Yeah. So anyway, just as a reminder, we're playing Circus Voltaire, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Lights, Camera, Action, and Dr. Dude. When you sign up, you get to vote for which table you think should be the put up or shut up around. Let me try that again there. Everybody votes, and then that's what the heads up play goes up against. This is a little bit different this month, in that normally we finish our tables, and then there's another week before the tournament starts. but this time Dr. Dude is going to go right up until tournament start. And then I think, I think the following month, we're back to the normal schedule. It all depends on when the weekends fall, because like I say, we always play on the last Saturday of the month. I do want to stress, because I'm not sure if this is being an issue now and then we get new players signing up, doing signups and almost without fail, those new players then do not post a score to us. and I'm always wondering why and I'm kind of thinking it might have something to do with the fact that Farsight runs their week-long tournament starting on the same time as us. Yeah. So whereas ours is a day-long tournament, theirs is a week-long tournament and I wondering if people are thinking that just like the Farsight tournament if their scores are automatically updated or if you know maybe they confusing that ours is part of Farsight So I just want to stress the blockade tournament of the month has nothing to do with Farsight. They just like to give us prizes. And you do need to actually go to the website and post your scores. Now, unfortunately, our websites are a little bit um hard to say out loud yeah we have kind of copy and pasteable yeah they're short urls just take a look in the in the show notes i'll make sure i put them in there when i do the post processing on this and i'll put the links in there so you guys can just click through them um and so we know show notes are available on shout engine uh yes you don't have to go to the pinball arcade fans forum um i'll give you i'll tell you guys audibly i'm just going to do this this one time you can see how kind of annoying it is to say out loud um if you were though to listen to this podcast and write this down get your pen and paper right now i'll stall but don't it's like alphabet soup like the alphabet suit so literally the url for signups is goo, G-O-O dot G-L, no E for Google, but so, G-O-O dot G-L forward slash forms forward slash five lowercase V uppercase J-M zero lowercase L uppercase M lowercase O zero lowercase M. Boy, that just rolls right off the tongue. It's just so fluid. Why have we up and saying this out loud the entire time. I don't know. People can totally get that, right? Totally. And since you have your pen and paper out, why don't you write down whether you can enter your scores, too? Now, fortunately, if you already wrote the thing, right, so Google Form, so it's that goo.gl forward slash forms forward slash lowercase l, lowercase r, uppercase v, lowercase d, zero, lowercase E, uppercase Z, uppercase X, three three. I can remember it so well. Yep, exactly right. And this will be the last time we repeat these hits. Until we somehow fix it, which won't happen until we get a domain name, and God knows when that's going to be. So, go fund us. Yeah, totally. For us to make that easier, we'd need to have our own domain, and we'd need to dedicate a like just a page. I think we can actually embed those signup forms, which is pretty cool. Yeah, you would be able to, yeah. Yeah, we just got to get some cash for hosting, which would be kind of nice. Get like a decent domain name, then I can start setting up a website. Yeah, then we can say, hey, go to blockade.com. Hey, wouldn't that be nice? Go to Blockade Squares. Blockade signup. Wow, it would be beautiful, but we don't. It would. Yeah, that's right. I do. One other thing that I want to mention with the tournament is that we are giving away prizes. Farsight has supplied us with six copies of The Addams Family on the Xbox 360. I'll be giving away those. Also, we are going to be once again giving away a custom shooter rod from WizardAmusements.com our sponsor. And you may even be able to pick your own. I don't know. I know he's got, he's working on custom shooter rods for the just announced turntable which is Game of Thrones. I guarantee his custom shooter rod is going to look better than anything that's on that table because it's pretty ugly enough it will be the highlight of the table i think it would be i think you need to get a custom shooter rod just to make it look decent so there's actually something game of thrones on the table um just for people to actually walk up to the table and actually want to put a quarter into it or actually now a dollar pretty much isn't it over there um yeah it'd be a dollar but i don't think anybody i don't think any operators are buying custom shooter rod well you know what no i take that back i was talking to mike and he was saying that he was getting a big order from just that uh an operator that was had a large collection of sterns and was going to be uh you know on site and want custom shooter rods so it's you know it's anything very well it's anything that would that would make a customer walk up and drop a drop a coin like it's it's just a simple thing to do but it's just yeah it's it's a great way to actually tied up a machine and it's a really boring part of the machine the plunger generally so um unless it's a gun america i think bespoke yeah um so anyway that's uh that's our table or tournament of the month uh moving on oh wait wait okay just play it warning the following contains little to no actual talk so there you go here comes the on pinball talk you know what used to be my favorite time of the year well there's many many favorite times of the year but anyway i used to very much look forward to this very time of the year which is the fall because that meant brand new tv shows whether it meant old shows that i was watching were coming back and then we were done with reruns um this is a kind of an odd thing to say in this day and age because i'm thinking back to the days where summer was entirely reruns and now it's kind of new around programming but anyway I just kind of wanted to I was looking over the list of all the shows that are coming out and I realized that there's not much new I'm going to be watching and then there's not much old that I watch and I kind of thought wow that's interesting so here's just a a trip into my viewing habits and you can take it or leave it as you like I don't care it's my segment so i'll just kind of go into uh you know stuff i watch on sundays i watch uh last man on earth and brooklyn 99 which are the uh comedy dose that i'll take uh and then walking dead is about to start back up which i'm very much looking forward to because i need my you know good dose of blood and guts on the tv um also can't wait uh starting up on mondays will be uh fargo if you did not watched the first season of Fargo on FX. It's brilliant. Absolutely amazing TV. It's not a retelling of the movie. It's its own story, but there's a lot of nods and the tone is bang on from the movie. So anyway, can't recommend. Go binge watch Fargo and then start watching the new season when that starts up. I also watched Gotham, which started out horribly last season and I almost gave up on it and then all of a sudden it would give me these little drops of interest and then it got really good and I think I talked about in a previous podcast how they totally just chunked the last episode it was like oh my god that was horrible so hopefully it'll redeem itself and uh not become like a different show that I was watching which was Sleepy Hollow where I taped all the second season because I just didn't have time to get to it and I watched about two episodes and I went, eh. I deleted the entire thing. It's a bit of a bad thing. I don't know if it was not... I can't necessarily say it was the show's quality that was a problem or I just didn't care. Yeah. So anyway, Tuesday is... This will be a night of me just checking things out. I'll check out Scream Queens, which is It's another Ryan Murphy show. It's like a debris of, what is it, glee? It's glee in American Horror Story, yeah. But the part when I was reading up on it that made me go, oh, I think I might have to check it out, is the fact that they said it's heavily influenced by Heathers. And I love Heathers. So if it can capture any piece of that magic, then it would be interesting. And for those of you that have not watched Heathers, you youngins out there go watch Heathers. It's so timely it deals with bullying and teen suicide like it's totally fresh. I mean the only thing that's not fresh is the costumes but you'll come away with a new appreciation for ways to cuss like you've never heard before even sailors will blush yes I'll also I will check out the Muppets just because it's the Muppets you gotta love them yeah and then i'll hate watch agents of shield it's one of those shows i don't really like it but you kind of got to keep up on the marvel universe if you're watching the movies so and i do watch the movies so um you know uh that's that's my hate watch show uh wednesdays uh well south park is back on right now which is brilliant and of course it'll be gone before we even know it because I only do 8 or 10 episodes and then I gotta mention American Horror Story because I'm actually working on it so I will of course be checking that out and then I have nothing that I watch on Thursdays or Fridays and then I get to oh excuse me my wife just shouted at me that I watch Project Runway so yes excuse me sorry I'm back again I'm having such technical difficulties here at the moment. I need to get a let's just put it this way. I need to get a LAN adapter for my Mac because the Wi-Fi here is shit. Yeah, so I miss all that, but I'll catch it when I'm doing post-processing, I guess. Yes, exactly. Anyway, Doctor Who just started back up, so there's some Saturday viewing. That'll be good and I mention shows that I probably should be watching but I don really care about The Supergirl is coming on but I kind of at my superhero limit So I'm not watching that. Same reason why I don't watch The Flash or Arrow. I don't know. They're too teen for me. Just can't get into them. You know, Heroes Reborn is going to be coming on. And I'm sorry. I hated Heroes when it was on the first time. So I won't be going there either. Shows I wish I could watch, but I don't have them. The Cable Networks, The Nick, which is on Cinemax. Again, if you didn't catch the first time it was around, 10 episodes, it's brilliant TV. Ash vs. the Evil Dead, that'll be so good. But again, I won't be able to see it. I was just reading about The Man in the High Castle, which is based on a Philip K. Dick short story. and you know Philip K. Dick creator of Blade Runner how can you go wrong with that right and Total Recall I mean come on that'd be awesome and then I'm looking forward to X-Files coming back whenever that is I think like January or so and Twin Peaks is filming right now so go watch all the old Twin Peaks so when that comes out you can enjoy that again I don't know that's kind of that's kind of what's on my TV radar which, like I said, there's very few brand new shows that are coming out. To me, it's waiting for Better Call Saul to come back in the air and stuff. I don't know. I'm not excited by this TV series, season, I should say. They have this documentary on Peter Allen. So one of our TV channels here actually does sort of mini movies, and they've done one on InXS already, and they've just done one on Peter Allen, which I think you guys probably would be aware of over there in the US. And yeah, it was a wonderful, wonderful miniseries. So if it ever gets over to the US, do watch it. Is it a documentary series or, I mean, by name or? It's basically about the length of a movie. So they chop it up into about, you know, it's maybe about three hours long. So they chop it up a bit. but it's an autobiography of Peter Allen's life and as an Australian, seeing this guy who's like an icon of Australia and also, you know, he did get international acclaim as well but just seeing his life as it unfolded and some of the background behind some of the songs like Tenderfield Sadler and all these... ...is where they originated from. So, yeah, the backstory is really interesting and they produce it really well. The next one they're going to be doing is one on Molly Meldrum, who was the host of Countdown over here. Again, maybe an Australian thing, but he's incredibly famous here. Yeah, I don't know him at all. Yeah, it'll be good. So Australian TV for Australians. I like it. That reminds me, there's a show I've also been watching on Comedy Central called Documentary Now. And it's Fred Armisen and Bill Hader, who are from SNL formerly. they're doing these mini documentaries you know half hour long documentaries but they're about completely made up subjects oh but they're filmed and they're the premises that this show has been on the you know like pbs for 50 years and it's pledge week and so they're so they're showing the best of documentary now and so some of them are filmed like they were done in different eras of time and uh it's it's a particular kind of humor it's a kind of humor that i appreciate um or it's subtle but it's it's pretty funny to um just not you know laugh out loud necessarily it's more like it just kind of tickles you and then makes you grin um but anyway something to check out called documentary now i think their series finale is uh coming up this week but again that's what online streaming for. That's exactly right. Hey, look at the Farsight newsletter that was released a couple of days ago, and I can't for the life of me work out what the hint is. I don't even know who those two people are. Well, okay, so the first guy is Al Franken. He used to be on several podcasts. He is a political talk show host now. Right. And then the other guy is Ben Stein from Win Ben Stein's Money and on everybody knows him from Ferris Bueller Bueller so if you combine yeah if you combine their two last names Frankenstein hmm I wonder what that table could be which will be pretty cool I already closed the table speculation thread normally I wait until Farsight actually confirms what the table is you know be a Facebook post or whatever it's so stupidly obvious I'm just like, no, this thread's closed. I don't care. We're done here. Yeah, we're done here. Go on to the next one. They might as well have just taken a picture of the table and go, can you guess what this is? Just like done. There's actually another thread, which is probably more tawny talk, but I mean forum talk. But there's another thread where members are actually taking really close up parts of the play field and get you to guess what they are. It's quite a fun thread and off topic. And you go in there and, yeah, make guesses on tables. I'll tell you what, some people really nail it. but this one would be a dead giveaway. So yeah, there you go. Well, that's something to look forward to. Yes. Hey, before we go, let's just mention this cause it is a rather important that we get this out. As we mentioned last time, we are migrating our podcast over to slightly different, you know, call them server farm, if you will. We've, we've always been hosted by shout engine. Jeff was the one set up the account, but Jeff has ownership of the account. Therefore we can't make changes to it without calling up Jeff constantly. And so, no change like this and believe me if you've seen the amount of changes that me and jared have been doing like every half an hour we're like this oh yeah i just you know we're like bouncy little puppies or something like that so anyway we created as we mentioned our own uh uh new shout engine link uh so that we can take control of the podcast here um we are going to be cutting off the David Fawcett as you will of the old shout engine account uh in about a month's time what that'll do also will be it will stop the previous itunes account which was known as the pinball blockade podcast we have shortened that up the new one is called blockade podcast so if you do a search in itunes in your podcast for blockade podcast that's the new one that's the one you want to subscribe to because the other one, the Pinball Arcade broadcast, that will be eventually going bye-bye and not being updated. So Jared's migrating all the old episodes to the new account. Yep, they're already done. So all the old stuff's up there. Yep. So basically we just want to make sure that all of our audience subscribes to the new stuff, both to the new ShoutEngine link and site where you can get all the show notes and everything, and also to the previous iTunes account upgrade to the new one. Yep. Well, I think our time is up. It goes so quickly, Jared. It does, yes. It's always, we're here for a good time, not a long time. We were hoping Kay would be able to join us. He was on a road trip and trying to speed home and get here in time. We were hoping for a last second guten tag, but we didn't get our guten tag, so hopefully maybe we'll hear from hear from Kay next time. Oh, Kay, by the way, that's a.k.a. Bonzo. Yeah. Why don't you, if you'd like to socialize with us, though, hit us up on our Twitter accounts at ShutYourTraps or at JaredMorgz. Bonzo is at DrexClown. For all show info, table of the week and tournament of the month links, go ahead and go to the main account, which is at Blockade. yeah anything else we should mention jared i think i think that's about does it huh i think i think we're done we're a little bit over time today so um you'll have to find um the eight minutes that we've run over a little bit from somewhere maybe go and get a coffee and calm down after after the eight minute overlap um but uh yeah it was a good show it's it's it's it's a target we're aiming for and obviously we're not always going to hit headshots so it'll be like you know it'll be plus minus 10 minutes. There you go. Mostly plus. Mostly plus. I doubt it's ever going to be minus. Anyway, we want to thank you all for tuning in. Once again, I have been Shut Your Trap, a.k.a. Chris Freebus. Ooh, I did it in reverse there. That has been Jared Morgan. We will chat to you next week. Thanks for tuning in. Sayonara. custom pinball shooter rods to buyer specifications. Swap out your standard ball plunger with something themed to your specific table. Installs in less than five minutes with no custom tools. Even if you don't own a table, looks great as a pinball memento to admire. Prices start at $39, but mention Blockade Podcast and receive 10% off your order. WizardAmusement.com. Sales, restoration, customization. remember to leave a review on itunes or any podcasting channel blockade is distributed through we can't improve and we should tell us how until next time remember

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: fb26a8bb-d85e-4db5-b122-ec42cdcc3e2a*