I'm Scott.
I'm Russell.
And I'm Leo.
This is Spitball.
Welcome to Spitball, where three groundbreaking geeks and a guest empty our heads of startup
and tech product ideas that we have stuck up in there so you can all have them for free.
Anything that we say is yours to keep.
Scott, I believe you brought our guest this week.
Who'd
you bring?
- I did, guys.
I'm very excited to finally bring on the show,
the David Webster.
David, not only a long time friend,
but also professional percussionist.
He's the drummer behind the weirdo death doom metal madness
that is Slugchild.
You know, if the name Slugchild's familiar,
it's because the new hit single "Love Leech" I believe,
just hit the
Billboard Top 100 on
Spotify this week.
We have been
trying
to book him
ever since this show started.
We're very excited to have David Webster.
- Now you have a
hard
stop in 50 minutes
for
going to Rolling Stone, right?
- 15
actually, yeah, sorry.
(laughing)
I'm so busy, you know, with all of my--
- Thank you for being here, David.
- Yeah, no worries.
- This is gonna be a good time.
- My Spotify millions has turned me
into a really selfish, rancid person, yeah.
(laughing)
- We've all gotta have a hobby, and mine's being rancid.
Yeah,
my hobby is getting paid for playing music.
That's my main hobby.
Making royalties.
Well, in addition to being an excellent musician, sir,
I always tell my friends that I can always tell
when David's been at a party that I've hosted
because when I go to do my returns,
there's these weird ass
beer cans
that can't be accepted anywhere
because you are an enthusiast of
adult
beverages.
So to get us warmed up today,
I wrote a little game for us
that I'm gonna call Algorithms.
Great.
In this one, I'm just gonna list a word.
You're gonna tell me, is it a Midwestern beer
made by someone in one of our neighboring states here,
or is it a programming language?
(laughing)
I love this.
This is great.
And we gotta start always as we do with David, our guest.
David. Okay.
Crystal, programming language or beer?
Or drug.
Or Pepsi.
Oh, I mean, it's certainly Pepsi.
It's a Pepsi.
I'm gonna say,
I'm going to say obscure programming language.
It's an obscure programming language.
A Ruby-inspired
language with a focus on speed and type
safety.
Very good.
That tracks.
Scott, Cascadian.
I'm going to go beer on that one.
I
just can't--
It's a beer.
It's a style of beer.
David is already nodding.
David's going to--
No, I don't know it.
I'm just agreeing with you.
Very good.
Found in various Midwestern breweries.
Russell, Cobra.
Oh, man.
That's both.
Is that a trick question?
That is both.
- Triple checked,
maybe there is somewhere,
but in the Midwest is where I tried to limit it down to.
- I'm gonna say then, oh man.
- Cobra.
- I'm gonna say coding language.
- It
is, very good.
Object oriented for.NET.
That's three for three, right?
Well done, okay, this should get
harder.
- Let's go beat the game.
(laughing)
Ooh, let's go.
- Dastard.
(laughing)
- Getting cocky
in round one.
David, Bodhi, B-O-D-H-I.
I'm gonna say that's programming language.
- Columbus Brewing Company in Ohio.
Condolences.
- Dermot!
(laughing)
- I'm out! - Storm off.
- Yeah, I'm outta here.
He's gotta write a song.
- Scott,
mosaic.
- Ooh, everything in me is screaming beer,
but I have to do the opposite of what I say,
so I'm gonna say programming language.
- It is very good.
- Nice. - Strategy, guys.
- Damn, Scott, you figured this out.
- 'Cause it would be mosaic, hopped, IPA.
- 37 episodes.
(laughing)
- Russell, Matilda.
- Oh man, that's a beer.
That's gotta be a beer.
- Goose Island, Illinois, very
good.
- Okay,
that's right.
- Way to go guys.
- David,
Dart.
- I'm gonna say beer.
- It's a programming language from Google.
- Fuck.
- It's a UI development one, yeah.
- Scott, Pike, P-I-K-E.
- Going beer.
- It's another programming language.
- Ah, okay, see?
- Is it a four letter word?
- Programming language.
Well, these are all Russell Vala, V-A-L-A.
V-A-L-A.
This is the four letter round.
Yeah.
That's a programming language.
It is, developed by Gnome.
Yes, very good.
Last time through, David Enigma.
Beer.
Yeah, New Glarus in Wisconsin.
You've probably had all of these.
I don't know.
Scott
Groovy.
That's got to be a beer.
It's a
programming language.
Runs on JVM, yeah.
Very good.
What?
Yeah, condolences.
And then Russell, furious.
Oh,
that's a beer.
Yeah, surly brewing in Minnesota.
David-- oh, oh, come on.
Oh, I called David--
It's good.
So if you got it, does that mean that Russell, you got all four?
Did you?
I think
so.
I think he did.
Did I get all four?
Damn.
You might
have.
Although I never keep track during these.
Don't worry about it.
Well done.
Russell, does that mean you go first
or you pick who goes first?
We've never really figured out what
the prize is.
Yeah, he gets to decide.
And Leo, I'm always impressed.
Not only do you come each week with an idea to pitch,
but you gotta come up with a game as well.
Yeah.
Well done, Randy.
The door's
always open if one of you guys
wants to.
(laughing)
One
of you guys wants to
do something.
Yeah,
come on, to collaborate, co-collaborate.
(laughing)
I'll go first.
Do it. That's fine.
Hit us, go ahead Russell.
All right guys, so as you know,
I do my yearly patronage out to Florida
for a couple weeks.
Ah yes, welcome back.
Yes.
Patronage.
Is that what it is?
In your retirement,
yeah.
What's the word?
Your--
Your snowbird.
Pilgrimage.
That's the word, pilgrimage.
That's what
I--
Yeah.
I yearly pilgrimage out to
Florida.
To the holy land of Tampa, Florida, or wherever.
That's right, yes.
I'm
more of a Gulf of America guy.
Insane,
right?
Got
to see that for the first time.
- I'm used to seeing the Mexico version.
And now that I got, when I was there,
I brought this up in the past,
but they have these awesome sailboats
called Hobie Cats, they're catamarans.
And these boats are basically two car boys
and a trampoline between them
with a sail,
all right?
- There you go.
- And,
or like, you know, two inflatable tubes.
And I'm like, basically I want to disrupt
the pontoon industry through these Hobie Cat pontoon boats.
They fold
up, they collapse on each other, right?
So like
the whole thing is basically, yeah,
two tubes, two metal pipes, and a piece of fabric
that keeps everybody together.
You
throw a motor on that thing, and you're off, right?
The pontoon boats of today are like 30 grand, like new.
And it just blows my mind.
- Right, they have all that disgusting electricity
and like, you know.
- Cushions.
- And
sensors.
- Seats, yeah, a steering mechanism.
- Yeah, right.
- Hate that shit, it sucks.
- Sorry, you weren't
done.
- Ruins the boating vibe.
- You, okay,
outside of the
electricity, okay,
you
put that in a plastic
bag, all right?
Everybody's got those, all right?
(laughing)
These sailboats are like, what,
I think they're five grand maybe?
- Sure.
- 10, 15, it depends on how you're looking at it.
But I just don't see why you can't create
a collapsible, cheaper pontoon boat
using, you know, like the smart car of
pontoon boats,
but not
as lame.
So,
and then you have, right, a rudder, you know,
- Just the millennial version of a pontoon boat,
because listen,
only the boomers can afford the real ones.
- That's factual.
- I'm
out here like dreaming and drooling
over a collapsible boat and not a dinghy.
Those things are just
nobody deserves.
- A collapsible party boat.
- Yes.
- Hell yeah.
- And then it can collapse when you're having a party on it.
That's like.
- No, you have some industrial
metal
pontoons.
You know what I mean?
Can you
elaborate
what
you mean by collapse?
I'm having trouble picturing this.
I want to fit this in the back of my car.
Like the two just come together.
OK.
Yes.
So you want
it to somehow lock into place,
and then unlock, and then fold up or something?
I'm saving on shipping costs, right?
And so-- hey, get it?
Boat,
shipping.
Yeah, Ikea boat,
shipping.
Yeah, a
little bit of an Ikea boat assembly kind of thing.
But it also adds to the portability.
You can throw it on the roof of your car.
Car.
or you know what I mean?
Like
something like
two, you can put two kayaks on a car.
Why can't you make a pontoon boat
that works kind of like that?
- Boom. - Interesting.
- Okay.
- Russell, I think you could seriously do this
with some tent poles.
Okay, like something stronger than tent poles,
but that idea that you build them on itself
and like two inflatable kayaks.
Fully, like that
whole thing could fit
into a duffel bag at that point.
And then you just need an air compressor,
a car battery and a trolling motor.
- Yes, thank you Scott.
- I'd buy water
for $300, man.
- Yes, and it's like a bed.
And dude, what if you turn that into a camping tent?
Somebody said this.
The tent pole is like, why
not
sleep on the water?
- That's fun.
- Because you can't sleep in a kayak, really, I don't
think.
- But it's like a hammock
in between the two kayaks.
That's nice.
- Throw a little anchor on the end.
That sounds
amazing.
- It does
sound amazing.
- Poles are rigid.
They keep the two sides apart.
Oh, yeah, this could
work.
- You know what's funny, too?
I think you can just park your
boat in the middle of the lake
and no fees, right?
You can moor it out there.
You'd have to add an anchor to your whole contraption,
but we could do it.
Yeah.
I mean, that's free living.
Like, no property taxes.
Buy a PO box, and you're gone.
You just buy
an actual tent and put it on top in the water.
Right.
Do people-- like, houseboats, I guess they don't moor it,
right?
They don't do what I--
do crazy shit like
that.
You could.
Yeah.
You just
got to have supplies, right?
Houseboats have that electricity, though.
They got to
plug in.
Yeah, they have that
filthy refrigeration
technology.
It sucks.
Have they solved for that yet, electricity?
They're working on it.
Batteries, I guess.
Solar cells.
Yeah.
I mean, if you had an OK solar array that wasn't like 10,000
pounds, you know?
There's some cheap thin
ones out there
you can get on
AliExpress now.
It's gotten a lot better.
This might be my privilege talking,
but I can think of at least two people in my life
who've bought a kayak or a canoe
and don't really use it anymore.
It sits in a garage or something.
So
yeah, okay, you're one of them, David.
Okay. Inflatable, but yes.
Sure.
What about if your business, Russell,
sold the conversion kit,
where you have the, like,
you attach the rods and stuff
onto what you already have gathering dust
up in that attic in a garage
that you haven't gotten out in two or three seasons.
do something new with that thing
that you don't know what to do with.
- I like that.
- I want
on Craig's list for 50 bucks
and lash it to your other one that you've got.
Reduce, reuse, recycle.
- I like that.
- This is why we spit ballio,
yes.
- Then you're on the hook for like,
I don't know, when it goes catastrophically wrong
when they have two different kayaks
or they're puncturing holes in their
inflatable
thing
then trying to go out on the water.
- No, no, you have the obviously legally binding
user agreement that they don't read when they sign it.
There's a
sticker on
it that says, do not
use.
Do not use ever.
Don't sue us.
Also, you can't,
OK?
But like, yeah, hypothetically, you get--
man, actually, if it's light enough--
I mean, a conversion
kit would be--
yeah, if you're just selling a conversion kit,
I don't think you're really responsible,
because it's someone--
they're DIYing it, you know what I mean?
You just sell the kit.
they're responsible for their own shoddy workmanship, right?
A master never blames his
tools.
Basically a bag
of Menards supplies,
right?
Some Lowe's
screws
and a rod.
Have you bought furniture any time
in like the last six years?
Yeah, that's true.
That's all furniture is.
Yeah, you are the Ikea of hammock on the water.
Yes.
Is there a way to do collapsible boats?
Well,
that's a great, okay, David,
you have an inflatable kayak.
How
small could
you get that guy?
It becomes like, let's see, probably about a foot around
and like 2 and 1/2 feet long.
OK.
2 and 1/2 feet long?
Queen size air mattress.
That's pretty short.
Like smashed
into the bag.
Yeah, because I mean, there's still a fair amount of material.
Guys, have you seen those gigantic unicorn or inflatables
that fit six or eight people?
Yeah, my mom
has a paddle board
that you
You can have like
four people comfortably seated on
or standing
on, walking around.
It's like a tank.
It's awesome.
It's cool.
So maybe we just need like an attachment that--
Is this for turning it into
a sailboat
mechanism?
What is the attachment doing for us here?
OK.
I'm spinning this hard now.
All right.
What is it?
A jet ski.
So imagine a jet ski, but remote controlled, without--
like it just sits in front of you and pulls
your boat.
I've seen that for water skiing.
There's like a little individual jet ski like thing
that's autonomous that you can go water skiing behind.
And the handle that you're holding onto
has controls on it.
See, it's been solved.
We don't need to worry about
electricity anymore.
We just create two
kayaks and an adapter.
No.
[LAUGHTER]
I don't
know what they're running.
We need
gas now, right?
Can you make it roll coal?
Slap a diesel engine
on it.
You ready to go out for a calm afternoon summering on the lake?
(imitates boat engine revving)
- Mount a giant steel tailpipe
on the back
of your rubber
inflatable.
(laughing)
- Do you think those could
pull though?
- Drive aggressively
around sailboats
cause you're mad at a
sailboat.
- You gotta
get eight of them Russel,
and on
Dasher and Dancer and just be all holding up
in front for you.
- And then you die.
Then you disintegrate when you hit the water.
Yeah, why do all boats push?
There's got to be
some reason,
some scientific reason.
Like, why are they always in the back of the boat pushing?
Why can't we just have one that's pulling?
Frickin' sinks in the front, doesn't it?
I mean, I think that exists, but it's like an oar.
Front wheel drive.
Front wheel drive, right.
Why can't we do front wheel drive?
Why is everything
back wheel drive?
Because it's easier
to have--
You ever tried to push a shopping
cart backwards?
Yeah.
It's very difficult.
Yeah, you want to-- oh, yeah, because it's getting
steered from the back, huh?
What is the problem that you're trying to solve by moving the location of the engine?
A motor that pulls,
okay?
At the end of the day, I just want everybody to have a boat that's cost
-effective,
get
more millennials on the water, right?
More cheap skates like myself and not use dinghies.
Those things are
ugly
and I can't believe they can
be in the
water, let alone make.
And I think, yeah, I love this
recycle version.
I think that's the way to go.
A roof over every head, a chicken in every pot, a jet ski pulled inflatable party
pontoon
in every garage.
All right, David, let's hear what you got for us this week.
So my idea is basically a neighborhood-centric, hyper-local potluck app.
So like, the biggest problem is vetting, right?
It's user vetting, because obviously,
if you're going to welcome potentially a stranger
into your house, like, problem.
But I feel like there are a number of ways
you could probably do it in a fairly simple way
to confirm that a person actually lives where
they say they live, like you're actually there.
The search radius would be like something really short, right?
'cause ideally it's like something you can even walk to
rather than have to drive.
'Cause then it's like, you know,
if you can just like walk to a neighbor's house
and like they say, I am making fucking chili,
bring toppings or bring, you know,
something to go with chili,
you know?
But like, I was just kinda,
I'm getting involved with some sort of like
direct community action out here in Grand Rapids
with just sort of like providing hospitality
trying to feed people who are maybe experiencing instability.
And I don't know, I have a lot of neighbors and like every time I've gotten a chance to
like talk with them for the most part, they're cool.
They're like chill people.
Sometimes you know, you have crazy people, but around me, it's it's mostly cool.
And I don't know, I feel like we are incredibly isolated usually, you know, and like, I feel
like just sort of nothing makes you more like, okay, I feel I feel at peace. I feel like
connected to my city and my community more than like, you know, just cooking food for
people and sharing food, you know, I don't know, at least for me. That's like, I love
doing that stuff. So I was just sort of thinking I pot dot luck was one of the initial names
and I don't know if that carries water,
but like...
It's either a casino, a
leprechaun, or potluck.
I was kind of thinking about like, with user vetting, I think like,
it's probably a higher barrier of entry to host than to attend, right?
Because like, you want to make sure if someone is saying,
"I'm going to host a potluck," they're not like, doing any weird shit, you know?
I would hope that like if I feel like going the Craigslist route of like it's not ad supported
It's not try it's really not even trying to make money
It's just kind of trying to like exist
You know as a resource like that helps because then you don't really worry about like growth or any bullshit like
that
It's more just
like a useful tool
Bear bear probably pretty bare-bones interface and then I like something along the lines of like you say, okay
I'm making food and I have room for two extra plates at the table basically.
And so only two people get to sign up and once it's full, it's full and like you can't
even see it to avoid extra people showing up.
And like I think you'd probably also have to go by like basement show rules where the
your address is not posted anywhere
and you basically
get notified of the people who are
going to attend and you tell them your address.
Because otherwise, you just don't want cops showing up.
It's got to be
cool.
It's a brownie party, boys.
It's got to
be on the DL.
Post
free food here.
I don't know.
I feel like I don't want to do this shit on Facebook.
I don't want to do this shit on Instagram.
I don't want to do this shit on anything like that, because all that stuff is too public.
I feel like it
would be impossible
to totally avoid bad actors, probably.
- Chat roulette or Omegle for food.
- Chat roulette with my neighbors, which
is--
- I
don't know, yeah, I feel like it'd be fun.
- That's
kinda cool. - I feel like it
would be fun.
But it's not bulletproof, for
sure.
- With an Uber-like rating system
so you can avoid the one-star weirdo
who made arsenic pie or whatever.
- Yeah, I think it's one of those things
where it's like you'd either have to,
it's a one strike and you're out type thing,
you know?
Like I feel like there would have to be like actual,
like you just don't get to do this anymore,
you know, type things.
But then you
can't really like run
background
checks
on every person who uses it.
But
like,
I feel like some sort of like
local identity verification.
- I don't want any of the safety features, man.
I just wanna go in
and I just wanna see what the hell happens.
- I mean--
- Let's play with that roulette.
That's why it's called roulette.
- So yeah,
like there's the safety version, right?
I'm almost thinking that would be fun, Scott.
Seriously,
though.
Pop that career.
College kids.
The
only reason I see my neighbors--
this is the street I live on.
The only reason I see my neighbors
is when all the cops come outside one
house.
Right.
And then all the neighbors come out,
and they all just kind of gawk, and we
call that neighborhood get-togethers.
You see your
neighbors, you give them the nod,
they give you the nod, and they're like, OK,
what's going
on?
Right.
It would be very interesting to do a roulette game of dinner
parties with them.
I'd be into
it.
I mean, it might be a disaster, you know?
Or it might be like you find common ground,
and you share a nice meal,
and at least then you feel more welcome
in the place where you live, you know?
- I think that's it.
I would love a round robin kind of idea,
right?
So let's say you get 10 neighbors in the community
to commit to, hey, every week
we're gonna round
robin.
Potluck, we come to your house, you come to my
house.
We get to know each other, right?
It's kind of like the post-block party
hangover
to meet
your neighbors, right?
And if you could have like--
yeah, it's just that would be really, I think, cool, casual.
You don't have to worry about too many safety features.
It's not open
to the
public as
much.
It's more like, hey, this block, 22nd Street on Next Door
wants to do a round robin.
You want to jump
in?
Yeah, I like that.
Yeah, you can vet it, right?
So maybe
in a way--
And Next Door already has the vetting
of where you have to verify your address and stuff.
this almost seems like a feature of that platform
or something, yeah.
- Yeah, I could totally see it being
as like
sort of a spin off of that.
And like again, you know, it's like,
I think there's a part of me that's like very weird
about like data collection and stuff like that,
you know what I mean?
'Cause I mean,
but it's
also a bit of like,
well, it's all, that ship's sailed, you know?
It's
already like,
I don't know.
- They already know.
- Yeah. - Right.
- And I think the coordination of like 10 different families
and trying to round robin between 10 different dinners
across 10 different weeks,
managing vacations
and time off,
this app would solve all of that headache
and now it would just be,
all right, we're meeting the neighbor across the street
that we've, I mean like in a way,
I've lived in this house for four, five, nine
years?
Shoot.
And I barely know a lot of my neighbors.
I know of them, but I, you know.
- Yeah.
- Not gonna knock on their door for a cup of sugar.
- Right.
- Right?
- The people-- - That's too sketch.
- Like the people behind us,
they threw some dope ass parties.
They were very cool.
They were super duper welcoming,
like aggressively welcoming, you know?
And the people who moved, they moved out,
and the people who moved in were perfectly nice,
but you know, had four children, no time, you know?
And they're moving, and it's like,
well, maybe the next neighbors will be cool,
Or maybe I just need to be the cool neighbor.
That might
be what
I need to do.
- It's gotta start somewhere.
- Right.
- What a cool way to introduce somebody
to the neighborhood too.
Like, hey, join the Ron Robbin app.
We have
10 neighbors that would love to
just get to know you,
have you over for dinner
while you
do your move-ins
and whatever, right?
- Absolutely.
- Way better than a drop off of cookies or jello, right?
Hey,
nice,
welcome you to the neighborhood,
bye.
Like, we'll see you later.
- Right.
I mean,
it's funny 'cause it's like,
In some ways, I think the internet has usurped that
in a really huge way.
And it's nice to be able to pick your friends,
because I'm sure you end up with some awkward conversations
with your people.
But then it's also like, I don't know,
it would be kind of nice to know the people around you
well enough where it's like, oh shit, I need a tool.
I can just go ask my neighbor if they have a tool and borrow it
and--
rather than having to pay in Home Depot or something
to get,
like, to rent a tool if your neighbor literally has it,
you know?
Episode 21.
So true.
I think, like, yeah, you're going
to vibe with certain neighbors
around Robin
better than you would, you know, eight of the 10.
I think it could be fun.
But yeah, the Pot Dot Luck, or--
Pot Dot Luck.
I don't know.
I feel like there would be other pun names that
would work better.
Dot Luck.
I don't know.
I'm hosting a Dot Luck next week.
- Yeah, oh, just dot look I think is good, yeah.
- Man, you could do this for,
you know, I organized a block party a long time ago
and
it was
hard.
It's just like, well, it could be,
it's just that you don't know
and like there's weather delays
and you just wish you could communicate with everybody
about the events or
whatever.
- I mean, Facebook neighborhood
groups
are pretty good for that.
You know, we have an okay one, but I don't know.
It's also hard because it's like, you kind of just have to be welcoming and make a point
of it, even if it's kind of weird or awkward, you know?
It just kind of has
to...
Yeah.
I think this
summer I would like to just kind of throw some backyard parties.
Just kind of just a post, "Hey, we're chilling.
Come
grill."
Because
I
like doing that.
Scott.
Scott,
what do you have for us?
- Thank you, David.
Okay, I got something a little different this week.
I do not actually have an idea.
However, I have a market.
I have hundreds of thousands of contact names
in that market, which as Russell, you and I know,
is probably one of the most important parts
of trying to get a product out in the world.
It's not even a niche market, it's big.
And I have no idea what to sell, either product or service.
and I want to Spitball what we should do with that.
So I was literally, I saw a movie last night.
I saw Mickey 17, it's good.
But the credits came up and they just kept going
and going and going.
And I realized every one of these is a name of someone
in the movie industry, not even just the actors,
but the producers, all the people on the light sets
and costume and everything.
All these people are in the niche market
of the movie industry.
You could easily find them on LinkedIn or IMDB or some form.
There's thousands upon thousands of movies out there that you could go and
capture all these names and put them on a list and just mass spam them
with some product or service.
What do you sell a bunch of people that have been in movies in the background?
Oh, cool.
First thing
that came to mind was just like some kind of trophy that
memorializes their role in that film.
So you take all the people from Mickey 17, you'd be like, "I'm going to give
you this special collectible coin or like a lasered out on acrylic frame that
shows their credit page with their name on it highlighted or something and then
you just you know hundreds of letters or emails or whatever way and just make
them to order as they come in that's that is all I've got so far I've been
thinking about this about seven minutes what
if you either scraped IMDB or tore
optical character recognition and AI loose on those
credits itself
and
assembled the database and sold that as the contact sharing directory to the
other people who might want to know, network in Hollywood. Oh, you want to
know who some of the best sound designers are
on set?
This guy's been in 37 movies.
Oh, that is clever.
I
think that IMDB kind of does that, but do they do that with like second grips and
stuff like that? Like background whatevers? I bet that there's value in
and having a comprehensive list of everyone
who's been in there.
And there are special rules in those credits, Scott,
for what they mean.
Like if you have people who wrote the movie
and it's A-N-D, two people,
that's different than ampersand
people,
whether they
collaborated on it together
or one of them wrote it and the
other one rewrote it.
There's like a structure to credits and what they mean.
It's almost its own little like database
that you could scrape.
You could get trends on what songs have been most popular
across the decades.
You could get all kinds of stuff.
The
thing, this is like very easy to do.
It would not be hard to create a tool that could do that
scraping for it.
You just have to pirate every movie.
Yeah, and like you said, this, like every Sundance Film Festival producer would
be like,
oh my gosh, we can get expert, like D-list talent, right?
That's seen the real good
stuff.
And you hire them to do the Sundance film that's going to make it to their, you know,
instead of the fourth grip, they're the first grip now because they did a Sundance, whatever
one night interesting I love that idea though selling the plaque I am always
curious
like in
the back of the film they want recognition to write totally
and then you Facebook target add them were you the assistant dolly on
super-targeted assistant
dolly who was born on the 4th of July and I love too
hard and yes my director bought me this plaque sell him a t-shirt with exactly
that I love it
that'd be funny you just have the whole credits and then their
name highlighted
oh I wonder if there's something to that no hold on what if
there you sold them
a movie what's
a physical representation of the whole
credits a flipbook what if you sold them a flipbook and when you flip through it
all it is is just the credits frame by frame,
but then their name is circled.
You add in the circle.
And you can be like, hey,
here's
a memento of the thing
that you did.
A scroll.
A scroll that like-- a
long
scroll.
Yeah, Star Wars style.
And you can do it on physical paper.
A lot of credits are artsy.
Oh,
yeah.
Yeah.
That's meant to be fun.
And then you can see like, oh, yeah, I was the--
I remember that.
--microphone holder for the whatever.
Yeah.
That
would be really scalable too, right?
Because you just get like-- you print the same credits
over and over again.
And you could just, for every order,
you just manually put a sticker over the name.
Right.
And now you're just like--
Got
to hope a lot of orders are coming in, though.
Yeah, and
then if you could frame the scroll in a way
where it's preset to their thing, but at any point in time
they can press a button, right?
And it can scroll through all the credits,
or
literally the old Roman
scrolls.
That
would be interesting.
For a couple past projects that we did,
These were like very in-depth, very awful engineering projects that took months or years.
And at the end of them, we would order like a little hexagonal PCB with like the project etched in the front and like the date or something on the back.
And we'd have them as like tokens, like, "Hey, oh, you survived that project? That's awesome."
And keep them as collectibles on your desk.
Just do that.
Have the movie, make a bunch of these tokens, have the movie on one side, print them one for every person in the credits.
and then
serialize or whatever,
put their name on the back if they order these.
And then be, you gotta collect all the movies
you've been in, you know?
Or you can
show 'em off to your friends.
- That's not a bad idea. - Something up on your wall.
- What about like one of those,
one of those like picture frame,
like digital picture frame things?
Where, I don't know exactly how you do this,
but like you take like a little snippet screenshot
of every credit, like from the credits of every movie
they've been in where their name
appears.
- There it is,
yep.
just scrolling with all of the different names and all the different fonts.
I don't know.
That'd be cool.
Yeah.
Consolidation of all their work.
Right.
Into just this long.
I don't know.
I like
that.
I,
all of these could work, honestly.
I don't think there's a right answer.
People love merch, right?
People
love merch about
themselves.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Oh, you target their friends and family.
Whether it's something that you don't.
Like this would be a great gift.
I mean,
so like if there was a tool, like a
website to
So here's Doyle Lewis, here's all the films he's been in.
If you want to create memorabilia or buy it for him--
Absolutely.
Yeah.
People are proud of their kids or whatever, right?
Definitely.
That might actually be cool, too.
You were joking, David.
And my director bought me this shirt.
But if you have the
production company or whatever
able to place a bulk order for everyone
as their thank you for working on this gift,
it seems like an easy way to get a couple hundred orders.
I mean, there's-- listen, I feel like the floor
pretty low. There's some real dog shit rap gifts out there, you know, and just just some like, you know,
the Bourne identity not even in the movie font, you know, just in like Ariel, you know, like on a t-shirt.
On a mug. Right, exactly.
Yeah.
It's I feel like that wouldn't even be very expensive, like none of this shit would
be expensive, you know.
I like my favorites the scroll idea.
I like that a
lot. The credits but in flat form like an old ancient scroll.
That's cool. Yes, that would be fun. Yeah, like get the the weathered paper so you could just be like
You know
Maybe you can have the poster on one side and this and the credits on the other right?
Oh, that'd be cool
How legal we
could or how far you get without getting sued for trademarking?
Let's push a lot of like a lot of triple
-a movies make like a thing
of their credits, too
They're like they've got the art your characters like dancing around the credits and stuff, right?
So this might border on infringement.
I don't know.
- It doesn't have to be the produced credits, right?
It could just be our own version
of
parody credits.
We put a...
- Right.
- Parody credits.
- How does parody law work?
We gotta talk about that.
I'm one
of these spit-falsies.
- I feel like you could play pretty fast and loose with it.
Listen, I don't know, man.
Is anybody gonna be checking on this shit in like a year
once the United States
like is no
longer a thing, you know?
When the US Patent and Copyright Office is shut down.
Right,
exactly.
Maybe that won't happen because that's
like--
Corporate interests.
Exactly,
yeah.
The oligarchs, Disney, whatever.
The very last thing to go.
Who owns the patent office now?
Is it Elon, or is it--
Disney.
Bezos is his point.
Disney, Disney, that's it.
All right, Leo, what have you brought this week?
All right, y'all been to Sam's Club in the last two years?
Costco?
I'm not familiar.
Costco's
the better Sam's Club, and we all know it.
But if you end up slumming it in a Sam's Club,
they have
taken the high school janitor's floor cleaner
that you ride on, and they've made it self-driving.
And it's the coolest thing to watch in the world.
All day long,
this thing's
just going, beep, beep,
and driving around and going back up and down the aisles.
And not only is it autonomously cleaning the floors,
but it has a stick with a camera on it,
and it's taking inventory of all the shelves.
- What?
- It's so
cool.
It's how it drives.
It'll just like stop and wait for people
with their carts to go by and stuff,
and then it'll just keep going
and it beeps every 10 seconds.
It's so fun.
I love it, and I'm very inspired by it.
Parallel to that, I know, that's already,
that's not even a pitch, that's a product that exists.
- That's amazing. - Parallel to that,
we have in our town,
one of thousands of Midwest festivals that happen.
We love our festivals around here.
And in order to prepare our town for it,
Our grounds and city hall and all that
go crazy with beautification, including street sweepers.
We have so many of them.
I know autonomous vehicles are very hard,
but what if you had an autonomous vehicle
whose only job was to stick real close to the curb
and street sweep?
It seems like the perfect usage, the perfect little niche
for baby's first self-driving.
My pitch--
I don't think that would necessarily
be that hard.
No.
Take
my Roomba and put it outside?
(laughing)
Roomba, street sweeper, outdoor,
self-driving street sweepers, yes.
It seems like--
Why not?
You'd have the camera so you could do the whole like,
you know, mapping out of all the streets and stuff
and have an up-to-date map of, I don't know,
what would you wanna have real-time information on?
It's like Street View but daily updated, right?
And it's just going
around.
It's gotta be the size of like a Zamboni or smaller,
a little thing.
Full-size driven street sweepers are not that
big.
They are like half a car.
I love the idea.
And I'm trying to figure out what other data you
could collect to make it an easier
sell to the municipality.
Like, our town is notorious for if you have not
cut your lawn in a reasonable time,
they will put
a little ticket on your door
and be like,
hey, guys, you got to do that.
We'll find you.
Well, this robot actually hops up and trims out the lawn, too.
I forgot
to mention that.
It's got blades on the back.
Of course, of course.
Yes.
Yeah, it's got citation management.
You just put in a fence and you didn't pull a permit.
This
vehicle's not registered.
The robot
saw, yeah, right.
It's got like the equivalent of like a pigeon launcher,
but the pigeon is just like a disc
with a bunch of tickets
like stapled
to the other side.
Just shoots it inside your window as it goes
by.
Through a brick full of citations.
Yeah, exactly.
Each one's stuck into the hole,
that it just yeah
we are teetering on the edge of powered mail delivery
robots
I think here
this thing
is the mailman - it shoots you packages right
it yeah
couldn't be more American we gave the mailman a gun this pitch evolved
quick
yeah but seriously getting
back to the core right this thing hugs the curb the
whole time.
Yeah.
It goes slow.
It's like cautious by nature.
It's something that people are already trained to go around.
You could absolutely take an existing street sweeper
and retrofit this thing.
I cannot imagine that they have a very complicated driving
pattern.
They got to
go around trash cans
and parked cars,
and that's about the hardest
that it gets, right?
I mean, that sort of lower speed decision making is--
I mean, it's a solved problem for
sure.
They can do it in a Sam's Club where people are walking around with
their
toddlers.
Yeah, for sure.
That's the
speed that this thing needs to go.
It works all day,
all night.
Doesn't
sleep.
Yes.
You don't have to pay
it.
Hell, and you don't have to get it healthcare, you
know.
That's
right.
To our city parks department.
I'm sorry.
I'm gunning for your job.
It never says that it wants to work from home, you know,
unlike the existing
street sweeper drivers.
Right.
But you can imagine a fleet of 10 of these things, right?
They come back to their charging station like a Roomba.
Yeah.
Could we just have it so the street sweepers work from home?
We just give them a remote control in there.
Like, we take out all the AI part of this
and just
have them drive the robot.
At least there's a stopgap until we can get the AI part
figured
out.
And then five Indonesian children
are remote controlling
this.
Yes.
Uh-huh.
Yep.
You got it.
But damn, they'd be better than any American driver
behind
the wheel.
Of course they would.
Yeah, for real.
even with a couple seconds of latency.
- They're like professional gamers
just cleaning the entire city in 30 minutes.
- They're all Rainbow Six Siege
high tier people.
- Downtown Kalamazoo speed run 80%.
- They can do
7,000 ping and they'll beat you
every single day. - So Pivoting,
this is now
a thing that Twitch has, right?
So we are
going to turn this into a sport
that
people can compete.
Twitch clean streets.
Exactly.
So anyone can plug in their controller and open your app,
and you're suddenly in control of a street sweeper
across these United States.
OK, you could seriously--
if you created a device that could pick up trash
in some form and gamified it
in that
way--
No joke, though.
--and you can control it--
Oh, man.
The little park cleanup bot.
You just solved global warming
right there.
Absolutely.
You turn park cleanup 2025 simulator
into a remote control robot thing.
That's
great.
I'm the beach cleaner guy.
I love that.
I
mean, I genuinely think a lot about like,
if the government decided that they were gonna do
universal basic income, but they were still mad about people
like maybe not working, you could do a make work program
of a whole bunch of things like that.
You could even do like, I've been watching a lot of like,
biology type videos where people just go out for surveys
of like bugs and snakes and stuff.
And it's really funny to be how much of that work
Just walking around, finding bugs, you know,
finding creatures.
Like, I feel like you could do like a distributed
citizen science and just have like a bunch of yokels
walking around being like,
"I seen a bird with my camera, look!"
You know, and you just
like, "Oh, look
a bird!"
I don't know, I mean, that feels like that would be,
if that was my job, man, that would be awesome.
I would love that.
Get paid to walk around in the woods
and look at creatures for a survey.
Get paid to sit at home and do street sweeping simulator
2025, but it's real and I'm actually helping.
Yeah.
The market's there.
The market is absolutely there.
If
people will drive Euro Truck Simulator.
I mean, if people will do forklift
simulator and
power
washing simulator, people
like doing stuff.
There's a pitch.
Power washing simulator plug-in, but it's actually
cleaning
your local community
centers.
- Whoa, that'd be great.
- We need a Spitball on that.
I wanna go hard on that.
- Absolutely.
- It's Ender's game,
but it's
just helpful.
- They
flip it to real life without you even knowing.
- Right,
it's just a nice thing.
- That's literally what I wrote down, Ender's game.
(laughing)
For street sweeping.
- Ender, don't be mad.
This whole time you've actually been
cleaning
the homeless shelter.
- All
you need is a Snapchat filter
that makes it look like a game.
like takes in real life images and you know,
takes out all the resolution.
You must never lose in order to win.
And then you just get paid money all of a sudden, right?
You're like,
holy cow,
I'm making money or something.
- I mean, it would be great.
- And no, seriously, it would not
be hard
to make a power washing robot
that you can remote
control from anywhere.
- It would be
really not hard.
- Just a couple
of, a power washer,
like some kind of shaft that goes up and down
with an angle on
it.
- Right. - Oh my God.
- Well, you need also, you know,
if you're gonna do a robot,
You also have to have image recognition
so you're not giving people fluid injection injuries.
No, that's all on the person driving the thing.
This is America.
We don't have safety.
How does it get set up and plugged in?
You hire one guy, and he
runs around and drops it off.
One really, really stressed out guy with a laptop.
That's
usually how
it works.
He's got
20 of these things in his garage,
and he just drops it off and runs to the next place.
There needs to
be five guys with laptops,
and they're all still kind of stressed.
But there's only one.
- But at least they work from home.
- Well, they work from, it's one of those things
where it's remote, but it's like 50% travel.
But the travel would be local, so it'd be fine, you know.
(laughing)
- It's just down to my coffee shop.
- I'm sorry I
drove the street
sweeper
through that brick wall.
I
was on the airplane wifi
and I
got some
lag.
(laughing)
- Okay, hear me out.
Could you just like triple your human cost on there
and have like three people all controlling the same one?
and then as a fail safe, do it Age of
Empires style.
-Oh, so like
three people controlling
the same player.
-You're all trying to do
the same thing and there's a right and wrong answer,
but if two of the three say that this person's wrong,
then they get negative points or something.
-Consensus model.
It's like the opposite of a firing squad,
where only one person
has the bullet.
[laughter]
-As
long as it was score-based and really horrible.
-It weights them based off
of how good their driving's been in the
past.
- Yeah, based on the other two.
And as long as all three of you are the same, then.
- Well, I mean, you're accruing a score.
I've got a 4.9 rating in my staying between the lines
and you're only a 2.6.
- It's out of 10, man.
- Oh, fun.
- What if, okay, local residents
just bought street sweepers, okay?
Hypothetically,
okay?
Government incentivizes them.
All right, you buy this special street sweeper,
you get all the compost that comes out of it,
hypothetically.
It's a lot of free, like, what is,
Do you know, Leo, if people take all those leaves
and they just throw it in the dump?
Are they composting
it?
There is such thing as a vacuum truck
that's different than the street sweeper that just brushes,
but doesn't actually--
Oh, I guess that's what they
do.
They don't pick up
any of the materials.
But there is-- what you're describing does exist also.
So yeah, we could have a fleet of vacuum trucks.
[LAUGHS]
And you get the compost from it.
I think
that compost is one of these hidden revenue sources.
and I thought maybe this would be a--
- Isn't compost expensive?
Compost is like--
- No idea.
- Guys, it's like eight bucks a pound.
- You can make your own free compost,
but people don't wanna do it.
- It's
a lot of work.
And I thought maybe
you can take all
the community leaves
and just boom, compost it.
- I think you definitely can.
I mean, Grand Rapids does like civic yard waste collection.
You know, they do a good job with that.
I'm assuming, well, I hope it doesn't get incinerated,
but it
probably does.
products that they collect get filtered and then sold to
Soil making
place like six bucks a bag or something really good stuff, you know, yeah
Yeah,
cuz they turned they did all of that, you know
Work that it takes right?
Yeah. Yeah,
I mean I like
I like collecting the like just the piles of like rotten leaves
That like collect around my house and it's like well sweep that up and dump it on you know stuff
I want to grow it's it's already dirt by the time it comes spring,
you know
Mm-hmm.
I don't really I don't really mow my lawn ever or like I raked leaves for a few years
And then I discover the joy of mowing your
leaves and
mulching it all that is been my last two years
Lifehack
absolute game changer. Yeah, they get too high just
mow it. We have a street collection system in
Our local town here. They'll come twice a year and pick up your your sticks and stuff from the curbside
and
that
all gets shuffled away.
Another great candidate for dump truck
front end loader
simulator people.
(laughing)
- Ab-so
-lutely.
- That'd be fun. - Oh yeah.
- I love this.
This
is morphing
into autonomous vehicle video
gamification.
This is fun.
- That would be awesome.
I mean, you know that's going to be a genre of job,
like certainly within our lifetimes, right?
Like 100%?
- It's never dawned
on me, but yeah,
This is probably not untreaded ground.
- Right, like you just add something to your lawnmower
and now somebody mows your lawn.
It's like Uber,
you just hit a button
and it just mows your lawn.
Turns left and right.
This is, Scott, you made this whole autonomous snowplow.
It's too hard to make the robot version, right?
So like you just get the human version.
- Tell me about your snowplow.
What's the deal with the
snowplow?
- Durabot.
That
was
our senior design
project.
We thought we were so clever.
And then Michigan, we made a prototype.
And then Michigan Tech that winter
had a contest for all the students
to make autonomous snowplows.
And they beat the absolute crap out of what we made.
So yeah, we let that patent die and moved on.
Michigan
Tech did that?
You didn't sue them?
Of course
they
did.
Those engineers are nuts.
They have nothing to do
up there except be good engineers.
What was the biggest difference?
Like, what was it that made it so much more of a killer app?
Well,
Michigan Tech--
Why was theirs better?
Yeah, yeah, why was their snow pile just so much superior?
Was
it a bunch of things?
All the things ours was
bouncing around using an invisible dog
fence as its perimeter and trying to go straight lines.
Do you
have any idea
how hard it is to make
a robot go in a straight line?
It's obscenely difficult.
I don't
care how many compasses
and accelerometers and crap on it,
it'll always start to weave, which
is why I like your sidewalk sweeper, Leo,
because it has
a curb to follow.
It just-- I know where I'm at, and I just
keep going from there.
98% of the time it's literally on a track.
- That's so much easier.
It can cross the street.
I can go to straight
line for, you know,
20 feet before I get the curb again.
- Also, I have to imagine things have gotten
a little bit better since you attempted that, Scott.
- Yeah, there's probably a couple more LIDAR
off the shelf kits and
stuff.
- Yeah, that's right.
That was 10 years ago.
- A lot of this stuff has been kind of like
made a lot easier even in those 10 years.
- Would you mow your lawn from your computer?
- Never. - Or snowplow?
- Never.
- Hill plow, yes,
100%.
Yeah, that would be fun.
I would love that.
- I fantasized about
the little lawn mowing robots a lot.
You can get them for under a grand now.
The little Hertz Covina Roomba, but for lawn mowing.
They're
sweet.
- I would love that.
- That's awesome.
- No, I probably wouldn't do it for my computer,
but if I could pay a robot to do it, I would.
- See, okay, that's what I'm wondering.
Like, would you Roomba your house
if you could remote control it from your computer?
Like, all right, I got a vacuum.
- That?
- Can I get
to my desk?
I but snow plowing I have so little snow to plow that I think it would be fun
Pull out the Xbox controller and
yeah couch
for an hour and a half vacuuming right under your feet,
right?
like
Sorry, that's amazing. Well, I mean that's what we're doing for lawn mowing and snow plowing right in
a way
I I think the biggest issue with that is like as soon as you control a video game vehicle
You immediately start driving like a dumbass
Like instantly, you know, and so I think you'd have to really fight the impulse to like
Crash the shit
out of your thing for fun. You know,
I forgot this wasn't Grand Theft Auto right ran over a hooker
Yeah, this is
it for tonight. I can't like ramp my shit off of like a hundred like meter cliff and be fine
You know,
okay totally different tangent
on there
You
said Xbox
controller mowing your lawn is snow plowing driveway or whatever
Could you do it once where you drive it yourself and follow it around?
Like record it and then just dead reckoning do it the next time just hit play and have it go again
I think
so you'd have to do a lot of like built-in course
Automatic course correction. Yes, we got LIDAR we could
yeah. Yeah
- Yeah, a mouse is fine.
You can do that one time and it'll just repeat.
I think there are so many weird little,
snow plowing especially, you're gonna get into
a bunch of really dumb, annoying physics
that make it so
that the forces it's feeling
are very
different.
Yeah, absolutely.
- It is.
- I think it would be doable for sure.
- I remember making some programs
with Windows screen recorder
where it records your mouse clicks
and it's like, but if you move the mouse,
well, I don't know.
You could have some points on your lawn, right?
That it just always course corrects to.
- Oh yeah.
It's doable.
I think it's totally doable, but you know.
- Well, dear listener, as you are sitting on the couch,
having us on in the background,
mowing your lawn and driving around your Roomba,
we hope you enjoyed yourself.
And thank you so much, David, for being here.
This was so fun.
- This was a blast.
I had a really nice time.
- Our website is Spitball.show.
There you can find our YouTube channel,
other social media, email us, comments, feedback, ideas.
We'd love to hear from you.
We're podcast@Spitball.show.
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Please, if you wouldn't mind,
you know that one friend who is always coming into work
stained with grass, and you're like,
"Did you get up at 4 a.m. just to mow your lawn?
"How do you already have so much gumption?
I barely rolled out of bed to get here.
Tell them about our show.
I'm
sure we'd love to have them
as a listener.
If you wouldn't mind, review us on Apple Podcasts,
Spotify, whatever it is that you're listening on right now.
That's the best way for people to find out about the show.
New episodes coming out in two weeks.
We will see you then.
(dramatic music)