MachinePix Weekly #52: Year One Retrospective
MachinePix Weekly #52: Year One Retrospective
One year of MachinePix Weekly: the top interviews and posts šš„³
This is the fifty-second issue of MachinePix Weekly, which means itās been a year since I started publishing my thoughts on machines posted to @MachinePix and interviewing the people that created them. Since then, @MachinePix has expanded into multiple channels, in decreasing order of engagement:
Twitter - 159.3K followers
Instagram - 36.4K followers
Linkedin - 4.4K followers
TikTok - 3.0K followers
Substack - 1.6K followers (thank you dear reader!)
Facebook - 1.0K followers
OnlyFans - 1 follower
Clearly I have a long way to go in some channels, but Iām optimistic. What have I learned this past year? Creating content regularly is hard. Every week, Iāve thought āI should schedule ahead more interviewsā, and every week I procrastinate and desperately reach out to friends and colleagues to put together interviews last minuteāand for that I am eternally grateful.
Another learning, and this is more intuitive than empirical: a postās popularity is completely uncorrelated to how complex or impressive the machine is. People are more engaged with machines that make or interact with things they recognize, which is why I think egg machines consistently generate reliable engagement. Woe is me if I post anything related to the chicken thoughāpeople are a lot less excited whenever animal processing machines are posted š
In lieu of a weekly review, this special issue has the top ten most popular interviews below the fold, as reported by Substackās analytics. If you have suggestions or ideas, donāt be shyāreplies go straight to my inbox.
The most popular post this week was an extremely powerful cleaning laser. Laser cleaning videos go viral every once in a while, and Laserax has one of the best explainers on how it works.
Iām always looking for interesting people to interview, have anyone in mind?
āKane
The Year in Review: Most Popular Interviews
Take these rankings with a grain of salt: subscriber count grew steadily over the past year, and these rankings arenāt normalized for how many subscribers I had at the time these were published. Iāve excerpted some of my favorite anecdotes.
10: Alfred Jones, Senior Director of mechanical engineering, Peloton
Alfred had a formal-looking Peloton-themed Zoom background when we started, but I convinced him to show me his office and his awesome collection of toys and kicks. He spoke eloquently about the unappreciated challenges of mechanical engineering at scale:
All of that is taken for granted, because users, the first and the millionth, kind of just expect it to work. I used to laugh that blood, sweat, and tears, and years of our lives, went into these projects, and people would just throw them to children and expect them to work. If you mess up, thereās a flood of bad Amazon reviews. Itās brutal.
9: Seamus Blackley, "Father of the Xbox"
Seamus wasted no time in spilling the tea on the chaos that was the first Xbox team. Iām honestly surprised it got made at all, given a series of comedic stumbles like, well:
The size of the Duke [first controller], and itās, well, bulk, was so unmarketable in Japan that many people we spoke to thought it was a prank. They thought it was a sick joke insult, like an American, Texas, look-how-big-everything-is jokeā¦ I got stuff literally thrown at me at conferences.
8: Jeff Linnell, founder of Bot & Dolly
Has your tech demo ever accidentally discovered a buildingās resonant frequency and almost caused a collapse? Jeffās stories about pioneering robotics for creative industry work was filled with whimsical, inspiring, and āoh shitā moments:
We thought the challenge would be in creating this giant fiberglass sphere, what we found out a day before we were supposed to bolt this thing in, when you moved this thing around, the entire building would resonate in this really scary way. You have this two ton robot with a giant sphere on it vibrating the entire building. Taking down the Moscone Center would not be good.
7: David Mƶllerstedt, co-founder of Teenage Engineering
Look, Iāll square with you: I did the interview because I wanted to finagle early access to Playdate, the Panic x Teenage Engineering collab. Well, that didnāt workābut I did learn a lot about one of the coolest consumer electronic cos and funny stumbles along the way:
The prototype, when we stuck it on the wall [at Apple HQ], it fell apart. In the process of falling apart, it kept sending volume up commands to the OD-11. So the controller was in pieces, the speaker volume was at max, we were trapped in this small room. Someone had to dive for the power cable. At least we got to test it at full volume.
6: Carl Bass, former CEO of Autodesk
Carl is a canoe builder that found himself the CEO of a Fortune 100 company, having to occasionally call out Steve Jobsās BS:
I remember when [Steve Jobs] was at Pixar, he preemptively called me to yell at me about something. At some point he said āCarl, listen to me, Iām your best customerā. I stopped himāI said āhold on, in what world are you my best customer? Youāre cheap as hell, and youāre incredibly technically demanding. And you never give us public credit for anything!ā As those who knew Steve well, it didnāt change his opinion at all. In his mind he continued to be our best customer. That said, in some ways he was great. He really pushed our softwareās capabilities.
5: Frank Ippolito, founder of Thingergy, Inc.
Frank makes costumes for Star Wars (among others), which honestly sounds like a dream jobā¦ until you realize fans know canon better than you do, and are always keeping you on your toes:
I wouldnāt put this in a major fuckup category, but in the first season ofĀ The Mandalorian, the biker scouts, and they have Baby Yoda in the back, all the fans exploded because they had their knee pads upside down. We built the costumes, but we didnāt dress the scout troopers. It could have been an oversight, it could have been the design saying āhey itās more comfortable this other way,ā and honestly it kind of is. But everyone noticed.
4: Laura Kampf, Maker Extraordinaire
Speaking with Laura was really cool because her answer to āwhat do you work onā was āwhatever I wantā, and sheās inspired millions of people to get their hands dirty:
Being ok with being weird, different, really helped me find the right community and focus on the things that make me happy. I could have just copied the most popular designs or styles. Embracing the things about you, wonāt necessarily bring you the biggest audience, but they will be the truest, the most meaningful.
3: Brian Ignaut, lead solar array designer at SpaceX
Brian is, without hyperbole, a Renaissance man. I tried my best to keep up as he explained how studying bugs and publishing math papers on Origami inspired him to design the most performant spacecraft solar panels in the world for SpaceX:
Imagine peanut brittle the thickness of paper in a paint can on a paint shaker. Thatās launching space solar arrays: the array team makes the peanut brittle, the vehicle team makes the paint can, the rocket team makes the paint shaker.
2: Milo Werner, former Head of New Product Introduction, Tesla
Milo gave us a peek behind the curtains of the most popular EV company in the world, from crazy prototypes to chartered jumbo jets. Her favorite car? Her personal Ship-of-Theseusād Model S:
At home I have a Model S with many, many miles and an uncountable number of prototype parts. Thatās my favorite. My car along with many other employee cars were used to validate pre-production assemblies.
1: Dr. Steve Gass, inventor of SawStop
Finally, the most popular interview this past year was with the inventor of SawStop. Sorry, Tesla: I suppose electric supercars will never be as entertaining as putting a hot dog through a table saw š¤·š»āāļøšāļø
The audience didnāt speak much English and I didn't speak any German, so we were trying to get these German woodworkers to come see the demo. The one guy we dragged over, he didnāt speak English so he didnāt have any idea what we were trying to show him. So we get the hot dog out, and he gets a confused look. We try to mime at him to watch carefully. My partner David pushes the hot dog through the saw and it cuts right through. The woodworker looked at us like we were insane and we couldn't explain, so we just smiled. Oh man the look he gave us.
Postscript
Converting a Shelby Cobra to an EV at Carl Bassās shop:
If you enjoyed this newsletter, forward it to friends (and interesting enemies). I am always looking to connect with interesting people and learn about interesting machinesāreach out.
āKane