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Cortex

98: A Stable Stack of Bricks

 

00:00:00   Record. I can confirm I am recording. Levels levels levels levels.

00:00:04   I'm also talking really close to the microphone. Thank you. To try to do it the way you want.

00:00:08   Like a professional you mean? Yeah yeah. I just want you happy with my microphone set up,

00:00:13   but I also want my microphone set up the way I want it to be.

00:00:17   There is not a consensus in the middle of those two things.

00:00:19   They are too very... it's like a rock and a hard place, you know.

00:00:28   Well look, we recorded today, we're connected, we're good. Levels, levels went perfect,

00:00:33   so we're all set.

00:00:34   [DING]

00:00:34   How's floating time zones working for you? I saw you tweet that you were very excited

00:00:39   that since our last episode the OmniFocus beta is now OmniFocus stable, and the most recent update

00:00:46   brought with it floating time zone support. Well, one, have you enabled it? Two, have you tested it?

00:00:50   Right. Well, you immediately put a little rain cloud on my happy parade by putting the idea in

00:00:58   in my head of, "Oh, I hope your database migration goes fine."

00:01:04   I was surprised.

00:01:05   I was trying to get a rise out of you, and I was surprised that you didn't say anything

00:01:10   back, but now I've achieved because you haven't got it out of your head clearly, which makes

00:01:15   me feel even better.

00:01:16   Right.

00:01:17   Well, what you should imagine is that when I tweeted something like, "Long have I waited

00:01:23   for this day and the smile on my face and then you said to me, "I hope that database migration goes

00:01:30   well." Just imagine the lids of my eyes slightly narrowing in annoyance at you. That was sort of my

00:01:37   reaction. Like, I'm not going to dignify this with a reply. I know what he wants. I'm not going to

00:01:44   give him what he wants. You know that like what you're doing right now, this is so much better

00:01:47   for me than any reply you could have given. I feel very pleased about this.

00:01:53   Good, I'm glad you're happy. It's not an unreasonable comment on your end. So I sort of waited a couple

00:02:00   of days until the release had worked its way through all of my various devices which have

00:02:05   different frequencies of being actually connected to the internet. And you get a little message from

00:02:10   Omni which says, "Hey, all your devices are ready. Would you like to upgrade your database?" And so

00:02:15   So it had been a few days, I felt relatively comfortable,

00:02:18   there was no emergency update.

00:02:20   So yes, I updated, and then a beauty for the eye to behold.

00:02:24   Now, below in OmniFocus where you select the date

00:02:29   or the deferred date, there's a little checkbox

00:02:32   that says use floating time zones.

00:02:35   - Just in time for all the travel.

00:02:37   (laughing)

00:02:38   - All right, well, so, this is like two weeks ago,

00:02:43   I immediately opened up OmniFocus to my perspective where I can see every single task that I have

00:02:49   currently available or at any time in the future.

00:02:52   I did a "Select All", very carefully checked the "Use Floating Timezones" button,

00:02:59   and as far as I can tell, everything went great.

00:03:03   But yes, it is a little bit of a "Gift of the Magi" situation because it was a week before I started getting concerned about coronavirus

00:03:12   and then two weeks before when everybody started getting concerned about

00:03:15   coronavirus. And so, you know,

00:03:18   because you've been trying to nail me down for Cortex scheduling times,

00:03:21   I had a Summer of Gray travel plan that

00:03:26   started in April and ended in maybe July.

00:03:30   Yeah. Of all of the time that I've known you,

00:03:32   this was the wildest Cortexmas season that you were about to embark

00:03:37   upon.

00:03:37   No, Summer of Gray is not Cortexmas, right?

00:03:39   Oh, you're finally saying this now? Because I thought there was summer

00:03:43   cortexmas. This is the line that you have always given me.

00:03:46   No, no, no, like, cortexmas is a relaxed time, right, where there's no work or anything.

00:03:52   Summer of grey is a travel time, and it's not cortexmas because it's extra stressful trying to

00:03:59   fit in when can cortex recordings happen. Cortexmas is a joyous time.

00:04:03   Right, right. A summer of grey, a summer of travel, is much more mixed, right?

00:04:09   The emotional resonance is much more mixed.

00:04:12   As is always the case, but there's a bunch of conferences or events

00:04:16   and you start committing to things and then

00:04:19   I never like to change time zones if I don't absolutely have to

00:04:22   and so I always end up combining a whole bunch of things together

00:04:26   where I say, "Well, if there's only five days between these two events,

00:04:29   I'm not going to go back to London and then return.

00:04:32   That's crazy. Let me figure out something else I can do."

00:04:35   So I had stuff that started on April 1st and was tentative to the end of June or July, depending on a few things.

00:04:44   And basically after the floating time zones got implemented, I was like, "Wow, I'm really gonna give this a workout this summer."

00:04:51   One by one, events started to cancel and I quickly was looking at a schedule that just didn't make sense anymore.

00:04:59   And so like, Summer of Grey is cancelled.

00:05:02   There is no Summer of Grey.

00:05:03   All of my summer travel plans have been cancelled.

00:05:06   This is not happening.

00:05:07   So while I do have floating time zones, I will not be in an environment to test their...

00:05:14   - Floatiness.

00:05:14   - Yeah, I will not be able to test their floatiness for...

00:05:18   I don't know, months?

00:05:20   September?

00:05:21   - Maybe.

00:05:21   - Maybe the earliest?

00:05:23   October?

00:05:23   I don't know.

00:05:24   Like, we're gonna have to see how this goes, but maybe not until 2021?

00:05:28   We'll see. So thank you, OmniFocus.

00:05:30   I'm really happy to have all those checkboxes checked,

00:05:33   but I will not actually be able to test them for maybe the rest of the year.

00:05:38   One of the things that's been canceled is WWDC.

00:05:40   Yes. Which I only really bring up at this point because it means

00:05:44   we will not be doing our much loved in-person WWDC reactions episode, I guess.

00:05:49   Yes. I have to say, though,

00:05:52   I've been waiting with bated breath for what is Apple going to do?

00:05:56   And there were two things I thought were going to happen.

00:05:59   And I love, I love the way that Apple has done this.

00:06:01   Their, their announcement is, "Coming this summer, WWDC 20 brings a completely new

00:06:10   online experience to millions of talented creative developers around the world.

00:06:14   Join us for a fully packed program, keynote and sessions, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

00:06:19   It's so Apple to be like, "Coronavirus?

00:06:22   Never heard of it.

00:06:23   I don't know what you're talking about."

00:06:24   They mention it in their press release kind of.

00:06:27   Oh do they?

00:06:28   In the press release they say due to the global health concern.

00:06:32   And then they had another press release that went up a couple of days later talking about

00:06:37   their coronavirus efforts and in that one they mentioned WWDC being online.

00:06:42   So it's like this reverse staged process that they went through.

00:06:47   But you know I kind of get it right?

00:06:49   Like in the WWDC thing you don't want to bring it down.

00:06:52   Like they want to make it like, don't worry,

00:06:54   it's still going to be good and fun and great.

00:06:58   You know, I get that.

00:06:59   Like if I was writing that message, that's what I would do.

00:07:01   - Oh, I agree.

00:07:02   Yeah, I agree 100%.

00:07:04   It's just, it's funny because it's so Apple, right?

00:07:08   - Yes. - This is 100%

00:07:11   what you would expect Apple to do.

00:07:13   It's not wrong, I'm not saying it's bad,

00:07:16   but it makes me laugh because it's just, it's perfect.

00:07:20   I am personally very frustrated about June.

00:07:23   - What do you mean? - There's no date.

00:07:24   - Oh, I didn't even realize that, right, this June.

00:07:27   - I have to plan my life around

00:07:29   when is WWDC going to be happening, right?

00:07:32   I have a lot of preparation to still do,

00:07:33   even though I'm gonna be at home now.

00:07:35   But in theory, this week may be busier in different ways

00:07:39   because I will actually be able to consume

00:07:41   all of the information, which I can't usually do

00:07:43   because there's other things going on

00:07:44   when we're at San Jose.

00:07:47   So I would really like to know

00:07:48   when exactly they're gonna do it.

00:07:49   My personal theory of why is because they still, I reckon,

00:07:53   would like to do a keynote where they invite press to come.

00:07:56   And so they don't want to announce a date yet

00:07:59   in case it's like, well, if we just did it a week later,

00:08:01   we can do that, right?

00:08:03   But depending on what the situation will actually be like

00:08:06   in June, because they don't have to have anybody

00:08:08   plan anything, they can choose the date

00:08:11   whenever is best for them.

00:08:12   So I get why they've done it,

00:08:13   but I would love to know when that date's gonna be

00:08:16   with a little bit of notice.

00:08:18   Yeah, that's an interesting point.

00:08:19   If your theory is right, you should assume that this is just like when Apple says,

00:08:24   "Oh, the new whatever coming out in fall."

00:08:27   And you just, you just say, "Okay, what is the last day that a reasonable

00:08:33   person could remotely consider fall?"

00:08:35   And that, that is when Apple is going to say, "It's the end of fall."

00:08:39   They need to give a bit of notice on this one, not just for people like me,

00:08:42   but for actual developers who need to plan that like there's, they're

00:08:46   going to be learning for a week, right?

00:08:48   They are planning around, like, okay, we've got to shut down a lot of our regular business

00:08:52   activities because I'll be consuming courses.

00:08:55   And hopefully, something we don't know yet, like, will there be any sessions, like interactive

00:08:59   things, that WWDC will allow between developers and Apple engineers?

00:09:05   We don't know if any of that stuff's going to happen.

00:09:07   And I'm sure they will.

00:09:08   I reckon sometime in May they will announce the dates of all of this stuff.

00:09:11   I know there could be a possibility.

00:09:12   We'll see how things go.

00:09:14   Maybe you could come to Mega Studio and we could record in person for funsies.

00:09:17   Don't plan on me to come.

00:09:19   The Grey household is in quarantine.

00:09:21   Yeah, yeah, I imagine.

00:09:22   It's not gonna happen.

00:09:23   But again, you know, I'm trying to stay optimistic, Grey.

00:09:24   Like June is a way away.

00:09:26   Yeah, no, June is a way away.

00:09:28   I'm looking at the calendar and I think Smart Money is June 22nd to 26th if they want to

00:09:34   do a whole like, look at all these events and try to have a period of time.

00:09:39   Yeah, and I've just three months.

00:09:41   Three months is a lot can happen in three months, you know?

00:09:43   Yeah, but I'm just saying like if you're if you're trying to make money on when is WWDC my top bet would be

00:09:48   22 to 26th and my second bet would be 29th to the third or they can be like it started in June

00:09:54   It was that's totally June June 29th. That's when WWDC is

00:09:58   While we're on this subject, I have a couple of rumors I would like to share with you. Okay

00:10:03   One is that there is a smart keyboard with a trackpad in the works for release sometime soon

00:10:11   The original idea is that this was going to come sometime in March, but who knows now,

00:10:16   like everything's up in the air.

00:10:17   But with a new iPad Pro, which should be in theory debuted sometime before WWDC, there

00:10:23   is also a rumor of, and this has come from multiple sources now, a trackpad smart keyboard

00:10:30   in development.

00:10:31   So there will be a smart keyboard that integrates a trackpad inside of it.

00:10:39   This is where, sorry, it's like the Apple language

00:10:41   sometimes gets me.

00:10:43   I'm thinking like Magic Keyboard,

00:10:45   but no, Magic Keyboard is not Smart Keyboard.

00:10:46   - Smart Keyboard is the iPad keyboard, right?

00:10:48   - Right, right, yes.

00:10:49   - The one that goes on the iPad.

00:10:50   So like the Smart Folio or whatever you would call it

00:10:52   with a trackpad inside of it.

00:10:54   And then iOS 14 is expected to get full on cursor support.

00:10:59   - Where would the trackpad go?

00:11:03   - Well, this is it, right?

00:11:04   There is a lot of questions about how exactly

00:11:07   they would make it.

00:11:08   you could make a completely different product,

00:11:10   something more like bridge,

00:11:11   where you have an integrated hinge,

00:11:13   but that would make it a lot heavier,

00:11:15   or something I'd considered,

00:11:16   like you could maybe have an extra fold out portion,

00:11:19   which has a track pad.

00:11:20   You remember like the old smart keyboard

00:11:22   used to be this origami nonsense, right?

00:11:25   So they might move more towards something like that again,

00:11:28   to allow them to make that work.

00:11:31   That's kind of something that I was wondering.

00:11:33   But yeah, so then potentially,

00:11:35   let's imagine they release it before,

00:11:38   WWDC before iPad OS 14 and they like say, oh, it has limited support via this means or whatever.

00:11:44   But then with iOS 14 or iPad OS 14, it is expected now, according to some new rumors from 9to5Mac,

00:11:52   that there will be a full-on cursor

00:11:55   in iPad OS. I'm very excited about this.

00:11:59   So when you say full-on cursor, having now played with several times that accessibility feature,

00:12:05   What does that mean compared to the current functionality?

00:12:09   So this will apparently be pointers like you're used to, like on a Mac.

00:12:14   An arrow and a hand, those kinds of things.

00:12:17   I wouldn't be surprised if it is represented slightly differently,

00:12:21   but the idea is that it should look more like something you're used to.

00:12:25   So quoting them, this includes support for multiple pointers depending on what is being hovered over.

00:12:31   like switching from a standard arrow pointer to a pointing hand when hovering over links.

00:12:36   That's really interesting.

00:12:37   There is also gestures, right clicks, all that kind of stuff that's going to be coming,

00:12:41   in theory, as part of iPadOS 14.

00:12:43   That's very interesting. Are you excited?

00:12:45   I'm absolutely thrilled by it.

00:12:47   So like over the last week or so, I've pretty much just used my iPad in the stand with my

00:12:55   keyboard and the mouse. Like that's how I've been using it. I have been...

00:13:00   I had a little bit of a problem in my hand because of it, because I was only using a mouse,

00:13:04   right? Where like when I sit down at my iMac or if I use my iPad with not in the stand mode,

00:13:10   I'm using more input devices. So like I'm just being mindful of that. I wish I could connect

00:13:15   a trackpad to my iPad right now. So I had a way to separate between mouse and trackpad. But like

00:13:21   that's just a thing I have to, I have to just be a bit more smart about the way I'm doing that.

00:13:25   Like I might get two different mice, you know, one more ergonomic and one more regular as a way to

00:13:30   Just kind of, as we spoke about in the past, both me and Gray do this, we have multiple input devices that we just cycle through,

00:13:37   and it just reduces the repetitive strain in any area.

00:13:40   And that has been an absolute savior for me over the past years.

00:13:45   Yeah, on my desk right now, the things I constantly switch between is I have the, you know, the MX Master 3 ergonomic mouse,

00:13:52   but I also keep the MX Anywhere 2S just on the other side of my keyboard,

00:13:58   so that I can even just switch between the left and right hands in different devices.

00:14:02   It's such a lifesaver with RSI stuff, being able to switch between two different things.

00:14:06   So which MX are you using?

00:14:08   The latest one, MX Master 3.

00:14:10   I use that in my right hand because it's sculpted for the right hand.

00:14:12   Right, but that's not the ergonomic one though.

00:14:15   Oh, yeah, that is the other one.

00:14:17   So I cycle those two on my right hand, the trackball ergonomic one.

00:14:22   I'll swap between that trackball and the regular mouse from my right hand.

00:14:25   I haven't tried one of the trackball ones. Do you recommend I give that a go?

00:14:29   Wait, which one are you talking about then when you mean the ergonomic one?

00:14:32   Oh no, the vertical. I use the MX vertical.

00:14:35   Oh, the vertical one.

00:14:35   It's another one of their ergonomic knives.

00:14:37   Okay, yes. So I did get the vertical one and I tried it, but I found for me it wasn't helpful.

00:14:44   I felt like it was aggravating some stuff in my arm the way that it worked.

00:14:47   I actually do find that a little bit, so I don't use it all the time,

00:14:50   but if I use it too much, it can be a different thing.

00:14:53   God, which is the worst. I hate this. I hate this.

00:14:57   I know, I know.

00:14:58   It has become much more manageable in my life since I've known you, right?

00:15:02   But I still, it's just so much of a pain.

00:15:05   Yeah, and I know that this is a thing that we talk about on the show all the time,

00:15:09   but it really is, like, it's such a problem when your whole life revolves around making

00:15:16   things on computers and iPads and what are the input devices. And I've said it before,

00:15:22   but I always think of this science fiction story of like,

00:15:24   oh, these poor creatures that are made of sand

00:15:26   and they have to be very careful

00:15:28   about what they're eroding away.

00:15:30   And that's what it is,

00:15:31   like cycling between these different devices.

00:15:33   Like, well, am I eroding away the joints in my arm

00:15:36   or the joints in my wrist?

00:15:37   Like I have to pick one

00:15:39   and the question is just cycle evenly between them

00:15:43   to have the maximum amount of career that you possibly can.

00:15:46   But yeah, so when you talk about that vertical one,

00:15:50   I know people who love and live by vertical mice, and I ages ago did use to use one, but

00:15:57   that one and my current desk setup, I decided just not to use it.

00:16:02   But with my right hand, I mainly alternate between the MX Master 3, which is like a traditional

00:16:08   mouse that's sculpted to fit your hand, and I've always been a big, big proponent of the

00:16:14   trackball mice.

00:16:15   And Logitech, maybe two years ago, updated their very, very old trackball design.

00:16:21   And I love it.

00:16:22   Like, I think that thing is great.

00:16:23   And that's always the device that I travel with.

00:16:26   Okay.

00:16:27   Yeah, I've seen you use that.

00:16:28   I think I saw you use it at my bachelor party.

00:16:30   I think I stumbled upon you one day.

00:16:34   You were using it, which was a funny thing for me to see.

00:16:37   Yeah.

00:16:38   And it's also an insight into how exciting Myke's bachelor party is.

00:16:41   Hey, what's that?

00:16:42   What's that input device?

00:16:43   Bachelor party was great for the people that were there.

00:16:47   Let me tell you, I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

00:16:49   No.

00:16:50   My brothers didn't get it, but everybody else had a great time.

00:16:54   We were just a big nerdy bachelor party.

00:16:58   And I think your brothers got a view into, "Oh, what is Myke's life and friends like?"

00:17:03   Yeah, they had to have, and they did kind of have their own bachelor party in the evenings,

00:17:08   and we just all went to bed.

00:17:10   This MXM ergo, have you used it with an iPad at all?

00:17:14   Have you tried?

00:17:15   The trackball one?

00:17:16   Yeah.

00:17:17   Yeah.

00:17:18   And it works?

00:17:19   That is actually when I was telling you last time about, oh, I tried it with the mouse.

00:17:21   That was actually the device that I was using, was using the ergo.

00:17:24   And I like it a lot.

00:17:25   So this one doesn't move.

00:17:27   Like you put it down and it stays where it is, right?

00:17:29   And then you move the trackball.

00:17:31   That's how it works.

00:17:32   Yes.

00:17:33   So in the decision of what am I eroding away?

00:17:38   This is the device that allows you to focus solely on eroding away your thumb joints.

00:17:43   So the reason I like to switch with that one is it completely takes your wrist out of the

00:17:50   whole situation.

00:17:51   And the reason I travel with it is because it is by far and away the best device to use

00:17:56   if you're in cramped quarters.

00:17:58   So if you're on an airplane or if you don't know what the hotel desk is going to be like,

00:18:04   you want a trackball because you don't have to move your hand.

00:18:07   I hadn't thought of that before. You could put it anywhere, right?

00:18:10   So one of the things I do on flights is I will often have it on my lap.

00:18:15   Yes.

00:18:16   Like I won't even try to put it on the tray table.

00:18:18   You just have it on your lap and you can use it that way.

00:18:20   So I highly recommend to anybody-

00:18:22   Oh, it's £22 off on Amazon right now.

00:18:25   Oh, great. There you go. Perfect. Pick one up.

00:18:27   [Laughter]

00:18:28   Anyone who travels a lot, you should seriously consider using a trackball as an input device when you're traveling.

00:18:33   It's a little weird to get used to at first in the same way that ages ago we talked about how

00:18:38   pen tablets are a little weird to get used to at first, but once you adapt to it, you'll really

00:18:44   like it as an alternate pointing device. Obviously lots of people are working from home at the moment.

00:18:49   This is the thing that is becoming a thing. If we can give you one piece of advice about your

00:18:54   working from home life, this is it. It's really watching the input devices that you're using

00:19:00   and being very careful of posture because office environments, they are built to try

00:19:07   and give you good posture because your bosses do not want you to ever have any kind of injury

00:19:13   that could stop you from producing the work that they need. I could get, when I was working

00:19:20   at the bank, any type of ergonomic support I needed, they would provide it. They had

00:19:25   assessments and all that kind of stuff.

00:19:27   That was like a thing.

00:19:28   It's like, please be careful of your posture and consider moving around.

00:19:33   Like if you start getting pains in your hands or risks, then think about different input

00:19:37   devices.

00:19:38   Because I bet a lot of people are working from laptops where they're used to working

00:19:40   at desktops.

00:19:41   I bet that's the thing that's happening right now.

00:19:43   Yeah, for sure.

00:19:45   I agree.

00:19:46   That's definitely a work at home tip.

00:19:48   I'm going to add to the other one, which is, um, I know that, I know that your

00:19:54   mega studio has some progress, which I'm, which I'm very interested to hear.

00:19:58   I was again, 10, 14 days ago, very excited because I, I finally had found someone

00:20:04   who was going to take me around to a few office options locally that I thought

00:20:08   like, okay, thank God I'm going to be able to get a, an office out of my house.

00:20:11   And then I was like, Oh, I need to cancel this because of coronavirus.

00:20:15   I was like, this is, you know, when I don't want to be touring a whole

00:20:18   bunch of office buildings and then immediately moving into dense

00:20:21   office buildings right now.

00:20:23   So I was like, Nope, canceled.

00:20:24   But my other main tip for, okay, the gray household is in quarantine.

00:20:29   I have to hunker down for a while is even in small spaces, I'm very, very

00:20:35   insistent on always trying to divide up.

00:20:38   If you have different kinds of work, do them in different places.

00:20:42   And so while I've been working at home, I caught myself being a little bit lazy about sometimes doing administrative work on my main,

00:20:49   like the main iMac computer that I have that I'm recording with you right now.

00:20:54   I was like, "Oh, sometimes I'll do email on this this machine." I'm like, "No, no, no.

00:20:57   Confine all administrative communication work to one laptop, and I'm just like, I'm just gonna sit at the kitchen table when I do administration work,

00:21:07   and to create that real little division of

00:21:11   productive work versus logistic and administrative work and now I'm being super serious since I know

00:21:18   that I'm working at home into making sure that I keep those two spaces clean and clear into what

00:21:25   they're used for and I think that stuff just helps if you're in the same environment over a long

00:21:30   period of time like define little areas and have specific activities for those areas.

00:21:35   This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Indeed. When you start your hiring process,

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00:22:42   While we are in the coronavirus portion of the show,

00:22:46   I want to talk about the journals.

00:22:48   Oh yes, how are the journals doing?

00:22:50   I don't want to talk about this because it's sad to me,

00:22:54   but I have to address it because it's important.

00:22:56   So we had been working on having journals for sale again

00:23:01   in late March, early April to allow people

00:23:04   who had been using the system to make sure

00:23:06   they had their new book for a new quarter.

00:23:09   We got our order in before Lunar New Year.

00:23:11   We are now, of course, dealing with coronavirus.

00:23:14   We were supposed to have them in time.

00:23:15   The order was placed because I've learned

00:23:17   from the year previous that everything shuts down.

00:23:21   But if you had been following this,

00:23:23   coronavirus hit China during Lunar New Year.

00:23:27   So they extended it.

00:23:28   And then China was first and they have been dealing with it

00:23:31   and it seems like they're starting to come out of it.

00:23:35   But coronavirus is affecting manufacturing.

00:23:38   I actually want to put in the show notes

00:23:39   a video from Linus Tech Tips,

00:23:41   where Linus has a really good kind of overview

00:23:44   of the knock-on effects that can happen

00:23:47   due to these types of things in manufacturing.

00:23:50   And obviously he's mainly talking about computer parts,

00:23:54   but this affects all manufacture.

00:23:56   So I just want to put that in there.

00:23:57   I find it very interesting to see how these types of issues can affect manufacture.

00:24:02   Is he talking about the just-in-time manufacturing kind of stuff?

00:24:05   It's just in time, but also just like regular manufacturing.

00:24:10   You can be ready, you can have a stockpile of stuff,

00:24:12   but then there are problems about moving it.

00:24:14   So you may not be in just-in-time manufacturing,

00:24:18   you may be in a manufacturing process where you have warehouses full of stuff,

00:24:22   but now the trucks can't move it.

00:24:25   So it doesn't matter how much stuff you have if it can't be taken to the port.

00:24:30   Yeah, I find it kind of endlessly fascinating modern supply chain logistics

00:24:35   and it's because it is this weird combination of breathtakingly efficient

00:24:42   but also terrifyingly fragile.

00:24:45   It is a very incredibly well-made house of cards, but a house of cards it still is.

00:24:52   Yeah, that's a good way to put it. And it's like, "Oh hey, guess what? If Chinese factories shut

00:24:58   down for two weeks, that's not the same kind of thing like, 'Oh, you got two weeks of snow days

00:25:05   at your school.' Like, 'Oh yeah, there's disruption, but it's localized and contained.'" It's like,

00:25:10   "No, no, no. That will ripple out for a year." So as it stands right now, the most recent update

00:25:18   date we have had from our manufacturer is that the notebooks will be completed on April

00:25:22   5th, but these timelines are incredibly hard to predict. Like that's what they have given

00:25:27   to us, they are working, we've been told, and we're going to get an update at the end

00:25:32   of March and then we're going to move from there. But even if they were ready on April

00:25:37   5th, which I don't think will be the date, I think it will slip into sometime later in

00:25:41   April, this is just when the books are made, we still need to then have samples sent and

00:25:46   and we know what happened last time.

00:25:48   The samples just fall out of a box somewhere

00:25:51   and then they have to be shipped.

00:25:52   So honestly, I don't know when we're gonna have

00:25:55   journals back in stock and all I can do is apologize.

00:26:00   I'm sorry.

00:26:01   And it's causing me great anxiety because

00:26:03   I know there are a lot of people that have

00:26:06   bought into this idea because they believe in it like we do.

00:26:10   And it just makes me, I feel so upset about the fact

00:26:14   that we can't provide people with the notebooks

00:26:18   if they want them or need them.

00:26:20   - Yeah, it is a real bummer because we are in that position

00:26:24   of people who really like it want to get the next one

00:26:28   if they're using it every day, and it's like,

00:26:30   oh, we're coming up against that deadline,

00:26:32   but we're just not gonna be able to do that.

00:26:35   - So yeah, I take solace in the idea

00:26:37   that our system is simple enough that somebody could,

00:26:39   once they're into it, they could draw it out

00:26:41   for themselves in a notebook,

00:26:42   but I hope that you will then still buy another one

00:26:46   later down the line.

00:26:48   - Yeah, you can have a makeshift quarantine notebook

00:26:52   to get you through this difficult time.

00:26:54   But yeah, for those of you keeping score at home,

00:26:58   what can delay a physical product?

00:27:01   We have been through many things

00:27:03   and now you can add pandemic to that list.

00:27:07   - I hadn't realized that until you just said it.

00:27:10   Like, this was supposed to be the one where it's like,

00:27:14   okay, we've experienced everything now.

00:27:16   - Right, yeah, yeah.

00:27:17   - So we can plan, right?

00:27:18   So I had planned everything into this, like lead time-wise.

00:27:23   - We were very confident last time we spoke about it,

00:27:26   like, oh, we've been through a bunch of orders.

00:27:28   - What else could happen?

00:27:29   - Yeah, what else could happen?

00:27:31   Pandemic can happen.

00:27:32   - So yeah, look, obviously it doesn't need to be said,

00:27:35   but we most first and foremost just want everybody

00:27:40   who is involved in our notebooks to be safe, right?

00:27:42   Like that is what we care about most.

00:27:44   And that's why we are just taking this on the chin.

00:27:48   But it still brings me great anxiety and sadness, right?

00:27:53   That we can't continue the way that we want.

00:27:57   But things are still moving ahead.

00:27:59   There will be books at some point.

00:28:01   We are still moving ahead with version two.

00:28:03   The design of version two is now finished

00:28:06   and we're currently getting quotes for that.

00:28:08   So my hope will be by the end of the year,

00:28:10   we will have a slightly revised version two,

00:28:13   and that's when the big order will come.

00:28:15   But who knows what's going to happen now?

00:28:16   Like it's it's all very up in the air, but.

00:28:18   Bear with us, I guess.

00:28:23   All right, so sad things, happy things.

00:28:25   How is mega studio progressing?

00:28:28   Well, I mean, how can a studio progress when you're quarantined?

00:28:31   Well, OK, so you're not going to mega studio?

00:28:35   Are you joining the ranks of everyone working at home?

00:28:38   Like what's the deal here?

00:28:40   'Cause I thought stuff was still happening with Mega Studio.

00:28:42   - Well, yes and no.

00:28:44   So like I have been in self-isolation

00:28:47   for the last couple of weeks.

00:28:49   - Okay.

00:28:50   - But it's worked out fine anyway

00:28:51   'cause we haven't really needed to be at the studio.

00:28:53   So I kind of took this as a time to do it.

00:28:55   - Okay.

00:28:56   - But we are going to be back in the studio next week

00:28:59   because we have a lot of deliveries coming.

00:29:01   This is mostly all to do with soundproofing

00:29:05   trying to get the audio environment right.

00:29:07   And it has been an ordeal over the last couple of weeks.

00:29:11   So I started to notice these loud dings coming

00:29:14   from the pipes in the room.

00:29:17   And we had a contractor come out and look at it.

00:29:20   And it's basically like, well, that's

00:29:22   just what these radiators are going to do.

00:29:23   So it's like, OK.

00:29:24   So it's like thermal expansion and contraction kind of stuff?

00:29:27   Yeah, or there's like sediment in the pipes.

00:29:32   Oh, OK.

00:29:33   Right?

00:29:34   just because it's like an old system.

00:29:35   - Right.

00:29:36   So there's rocks moving around in there.

00:29:39   - Probably.

00:29:40   And like, yeah, there is a thing you can do for this,

00:29:42   which is to run this like sludge through,

00:29:45   but we would need to do that on the entire building,

00:29:50   which is not going to happen.

00:29:51   We need to rule that one out.

00:29:52   There is no way we're going to be able to convince

00:29:55   the owner of the building to do this work.

00:29:58   And neither would I even bother,

00:30:00   because it's not important to anyone else except us.

00:30:04   All right, so it's like fine, whatever,

00:30:06   we'll find another way of doing it.

00:30:07   And so we're just gonna get some foam insulation

00:30:10   to put around the pipes, like actual pipe insulation.

00:30:12   It will dampen it a little bit,

00:30:14   and that's kind of all I need.

00:30:16   I've been doing audio tests,

00:30:18   and with a little bit of dampening, it won't be a problem.

00:30:21   - Okay, good.

00:30:22   - Plus, the more that we have spent in the office,

00:30:24   we're realizing that it is around temperature changes,

00:30:28   So just being smart about when the heating is on and off

00:30:31   in the office and how we heat the office

00:30:34   will allow us to reduce that a little bit.

00:30:36   But the soundproofing thing has just been,

00:30:39   it's so difficult.

00:30:41   Idina has been researching all of this.

00:30:43   And so really, there's two things going on here for me.

00:30:48   One, I do not want to build any structures.

00:30:52   Like I think I said this before,

00:30:53   but I am not interested in building a room

00:30:55   inside of the room.

00:30:56   - Right, you don't want a recording booth.

00:30:57   I do not want a booth because I don't want to install anything into the studio

00:31:02   that cannot be easily taken with us whenever we move studio in the future.

00:31:07   And I feel like a structure is built within the constraints of the room that it

00:31:12   is in and that won't be the same if we move, right?

00:31:17   Uh, and,

00:31:19   and I also can't imagine that a room that is built is as easy to break down as

00:31:25   you have some panels, you have some blankets,

00:31:28   you have some foam on the walls, right?

00:31:30   That stuff is more movable, more adjustable.

00:31:34   - Yeah, I mean, I get it that you don't wanna build

00:31:37   a structure inside the office.

00:31:39   I get it, because it's not easy to take with you.

00:31:42   I mean, my thought is, Myke, all of your work

00:31:46   depends on high quality audio.

00:31:47   - Okay, okay, okay, okay.

00:31:48   - So-- - Look, you are doing

00:31:50   what the Reddit is doing,

00:31:51   so allow me to finish my thought process.

00:31:53   No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no

00:32:23   that you say. So it is like plan D, right?

00:32:28   Yeah, the black monolith in my office, which even I disassembled because of being in this

00:32:36   office long term, it doesn't make sense if I'm here for a lot of time.

00:32:40   Oh, I didn't know that.

00:32:42   Yeah, I've disassembled it. Okay, so for the listeners, my home office is this little rectangular

00:32:50   room and the thing that I've referred to as the black monolith in the past is I took the

00:32:56   back 40% of the room and built like a completely self-contained soundproofing cube to do the

00:33:04   podcast recording in.

00:33:05   But yeah, several months ago around the time I got my standing desk when I knew like, oh,

00:33:09   I'm going to be in this home office a lot, I disassembled it and kind of spread the parts

00:33:15   all around the room.

00:33:16   Right, so you turned the booth into sound isolation, which is really all you needed in that room.

00:33:21   Like, you just needed some panels on the walls, but I understand you went a bit overkill, but that's fine.

00:33:26   Yeah, it does. It's less good this way, but it's fine, right? This is the thing of like, it's totally fine.

00:33:33   I would have kept the booth because if I had an additional space, but if I have to make decisions about the space,

00:33:38   like, that's a very different kind of decision. But for me, because I record podcasts so rarely,

00:33:46   that structure totally made sense.

00:33:48   But as you've seen in person,

00:33:50   people would go into that booth and they would just go,

00:33:53   "Oh, no, I don't want to be in this space."

00:33:56   I hate it in there. There's something about really good soundproof rooms

00:34:03   that feel very uncomfortable to be in.

00:34:06   Yeah. It's often like people usually describe it as a pressure on the ears,

00:34:11   or when people talk,

00:34:13   they're uncomfortable because they're just not getting the feedback they're used to hearing from their own voice.

00:34:19   And so, even just my office, if you weren't in the booth,

00:34:24   people didn't like being in the office because there was too much sound absorption in the space.

00:34:29   And so, it made sense for me, like, because I was doing so much less audio than you,

00:34:36   but I'm with you on this, like, you do not want to spend, with the number of shows that you do,

00:34:42   a significant amount of time in a sound coffin. Like that's brutal and if you have to live with

00:34:48   pipe dings, I fully support that and all the audio files who want their perfect wave files with no

00:34:57   reduction in sound quality and no dings, they're gonna have to accept that like, oh, maybe there's

00:35:02   a tiny bit of echo because Myke has to keep his sanity while recording all of these shows.

00:35:07   But that is plan D, right? Like if I can't do this then I will have to get something.

00:35:16   Plan E is hiring a professional because it is incredibly expensive. Like I don't want

00:35:24   to do it, it's incredibly expensive. We are currently working on plan B first.

00:35:32   So plan B is get some stuff that can provide an environment that will work but is not going

00:35:39   to be the permanent solution.

00:35:42   So Adina has been doing so much research and we found some products and they're kind of

00:35:46   all arriving over the next week.

00:35:49   And this includes these, I think I've mentioned these before, like there are these panels

00:35:54   that will go behind me, like they're freestanding.

00:35:57   And they are sound isolating, like they have stuff inside them, I don't know what it is,

00:36:02   like whatever, research.

00:36:04   But they are mainly so I have something behind me

00:36:08   'cause I don't want to record with an open area behind me.

00:36:11   If anybody approaches me, I wanna be able to see them

00:36:15   from the sides, not from behind, right?

00:36:17   I just don't like that.

00:36:18   Then we found these soundproofing blankets.

00:36:22   And they're very heavy, it's like a five kilogram blanket.

00:36:27   They're massive.

00:36:28   And we bought one of them and I draped it over me

00:36:32   and it completely removed the echo.

00:36:34   - Okay, just to be clear here,

00:36:36   is this a blanket that you could cozy up on the couch with

00:36:41   in your relaxation area, or is this--

00:36:43   - I wouldn't recommend it, 'cause it is,

00:36:46   it's not like a weighted blanket.

00:36:49   Like it's not that idea. - Yeah, that's what

00:36:50   I'm wondering, okay. - It is a blanket

00:36:51   which is heavy, but it is made by a soundproofing company.

00:36:55   - I'd like, I don't know, sound blankets.

00:36:58   - Yeah, I know, right?

00:36:59   I'd never heard of such a thing until we found them.

00:37:00   I've never, I can't believe I haven't come across something like this.

00:37:04   So let me find you.

00:37:05   Sound blankets, heavy duty sound absorbing blankets.

00:37:08   They exist.

00:37:10   Currently unavailable.

00:37:11   Uh, last one purchased by Myke is what Amazon says.

00:37:14   Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

00:37:16   Not Amazon, not Amazon.

00:37:18   This is the company that we used.

00:37:20   I'll put this in the show notes so people can find it.

00:37:22   I'm just, I'm very curious.

00:37:23   Like, I feel like I too have spent a million hours looking at all the various

00:37:27   soundproofing options and this is a new thing I've just never come across.

00:37:30   I didn't have found it. She's very good at research, right?

00:37:32   Like this is something that she came across. And so we ordered,

00:37:35   you'll see them as the VB 76 G black on one side,

00:37:40   white on the other so that I will be looking at the white side,

00:37:43   which I feel will be nicer for me.

00:37:44   So the plan right now is two of these blankets on stands on either side of me,

00:37:50   the soundproofing panel behind,

00:37:54   and then possibly we're going to like build like we have that foam,

00:38:00   right? We're just going to build like a foam roof to go on top of it.

00:38:05   Right. Okay. Yeah.

00:38:06   And then we have good sound panels that are going to go on the wall behind the

00:38:11   desk.

00:38:12   And from the testing that we have done with these elements individually,

00:38:16   I think a combination of all of this will provide us with a good enough for now

00:38:21   solution. Right. Right. So then we can actually be in the studio,

00:38:28   I can record in the studio and then we will be slowly building plan A,

00:38:33   which is more of these panels on the walls, put in some bass traps in,

00:38:39   which are like these phone things that go in the corners and then maybe over my

00:38:44   desk eventually hanging something to stop the echo going into the ceiling.

00:38:49   All of that is more difficult,

00:38:52   more expensive and all of the stuff that we're buying we could use for other

00:38:57   stuff.

00:38:57   So like if I wanted to record video in the space,

00:39:01   I would then have these blankets

00:39:03   that could be placed behind cameras

00:39:05   on the stands that we're buying

00:39:07   and provide different sound isolation.

00:39:09   It can be more moved around, right?

00:39:11   - Oh, that's interesting.

00:39:12   What are you up to there with video mic?

00:39:13   What are you doing?

00:39:15   What little mic-y plans do you have?

00:39:17   - I have recently had the feeling again of video.

00:39:22   - I was like, are you getting back into vlogging?

00:39:24   I always really enjoyed your vlogs

00:39:25   and I was sad when you stopped.

00:39:27   I don't want to do vlogs.

00:39:28   You don't want to be a vlogger?

00:39:30   But I've just had a feeling again of like, the point is just like with all this space,

00:39:38   I have more flexibility again and it might allow for more technology-focused videos to

00:39:45   be produced, potentially.

00:39:47   But my point is just like I want to buy stuff now that can be used in the future.

00:39:53   I don't want to buy things that will just only be used for that one purpose.

00:39:58   So that's the plan.

00:39:59   Yeah, that makes sense.

00:40:00   And that is plan B with plan A of like, as we are continuing to fill the studio up,

00:40:06   then finding more panels to go in the areas where there's still echo.

00:40:10   Because like we still are missing most of our soft furnishings.

00:40:14   We're basically going to buy a massive rug.

00:40:17   A friend of the show, Jason Snow, recommended to me or gave me the phrase

00:40:21   carpet remnant? Have you ever heard of this before? No. So there are

00:40:26   companies that take large offcuts of carpets that we use in other places and

00:40:30   can make them into rugs for you. So you can get massive rugs cheaply. We have

00:40:37   our little rugs that we like for the areas but like for all of the concrete

00:40:40   floor, just a massive rug which is effectively a carpet but you can get

00:40:45   for way cheaper. So we're looking into that. There's still a lot of stuff to be

00:40:48   done but I'm kind of fed up now of not being able to use this studio for its purpose, right?

00:40:54   I've paid one and a half rent payments now and have not been there.

00:40:58   Now of course there is this other problem of like the self-isolation but our main thing is just we're

00:41:05   just going to get to the studio and then it's basically just like being at home because nobody

00:41:09   else comes in. Yeah, yeah. I think from the impression I've gotten about the physical setup

00:41:15   of the office and your entry there, you can much more easily than I could, you could maintain

00:41:20   a quarantine bubble that basically extends into that office and back.

00:41:26   Yeah, the week would be very in the studio, we don't have to leave it, we just gotta get

00:41:30   to it. So, you know, and so we're gonna be spending a bit more time there again next

00:41:36   week when things start arriving and we can start getting it more set up again. I have

00:41:42   I've been on an absolute emotional rollercoaster over the last month of like, "Oh crap, we

00:41:48   can't do this," to, "Oh, actually I think we can."

00:41:52   What do you mean you can't do this?

00:41:54   Like you can't set up the office?

00:41:55   What is the—

00:41:56   As in like, "I'm never gonna get this place non-echoing."

00:41:59   Oh, okay.

00:42:00   Or at least, "Cannot do this without spending tens of thousands of pounds."

00:42:04   Yeah.

00:42:05   Right?

00:42:06   Like that is—I've been going on this emotional rollercoaster, but luckily we are now at a

00:42:11   where I feel like it's never going to be perfect, but it's going to be more than sufficient.

00:42:18   Yeah, and I think that's just a side effect of you bring in the one sound isolating thing

00:42:23   and you think, "Oh, this hasn't made any difference at all."

00:42:27   But the whole game of trying to reduce sound is lots of things.

00:42:31   I can see why maybe you would be upset, you're like, "Oh, this blanket isn't doing anything

00:42:35   unless I wrap it around my head."

00:42:37   It was like, "But yes, it's just another thing in the room plus the carpet plus the

00:42:40   the soft furnishing, it's like, yeah, you're gonna get there, you'll be fine, I think.

00:42:43   - We are.

00:42:44   I feel like now I feel confident that we're gonna get there, but it was just like, I was

00:42:49   doing all these things and it was making no difference, like at all.

00:42:53   But then when we found this blanket, like, again, draping over me in a way that I wouldn't

00:42:58   want to work, but it made a, it was the first thing that made a noticeable difference.

00:43:04   - You might not want to work that way, but I'm going to forever imagine that you are

00:43:08   wrapped up in a cozy sound isolating blanket fort when I know that you're recording in

00:43:15   the Mega Studio.

00:43:16   That's just how I'm going to picture it.

00:43:18   But yeah, so I feel like now there is a path again, which is good.

00:43:26   Not the next time we record, but in a couple of episodes' time, maybe in April, we'll

00:43:33   be the first Cortex from Mega Studio.

00:43:36   Oh, exciting.

00:43:37   Yeah, so we'll see.

00:43:39   This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Squarespace.

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00:45:15   Very into VESA arms right now.

00:45:17   So I have two desks, they both have two arms on them.

00:45:21   I'm very excited about this.

00:45:23   Okay, I need to know, okay, so for listeners who want to wear VESA arms are the little

00:45:28   arms that can hold up computer monitors.

00:45:31   So, yeah, if you're in an office environment, you'll often see that they don't use the regular stands that the computers come with,

00:45:38   they're attached to an arm that can move the screen around.

00:45:41   So, I've tried various VESA arms, but I feel like I have never found one that I like.

00:45:49   That hits the nice balance between, you can move the monitor,

00:45:54   and also the monitor will stay in position when you stop touching it.

00:45:59   and it won't slowly droop like a sad flower in the sunlight over time.

00:46:03   I can't tell you that I've found that yet because I don't have a monitor on any of the arms.

00:46:08   Okay, well, okay, but then that might be what you're going to experience in the future.

00:46:13   So the arms that I have, it's one arm and then the other arm has a laptop stand on it?

00:46:20   Right, yes, yes, I know that title.

00:46:21   And I've been putting laptops and iPads on them and they've been perfectly fine.

00:46:25   They're very adjustable.

00:46:26   Yeah, the laptop stuff has always been fine. I just, my experience has been, like, I tried to mount my iMac Pro on a VESA arm and eventually came to the conclusion of I didn't want to live life on the edge like this because it's like this really expensive computer and I just never found an arm that felt secure or was mobile enough. So I've, yeah.

00:46:49   Well, we'll find out.

00:46:50   Interesting.

00:46:50   I know people that do it like it is possible. Yeah. Yeah, and the arms that I have they are very

00:46:55   They feel very sturdy and so we'll see right like I will report back on that one

00:47:01   Please do we move in to the studio like actually moved in I'm gonna be putting my iMac on that arm

00:47:07   But also in the meantime, so when I'm recording I am going to at some point

00:47:12   I think liberate your LG 5k ultra fine that you've been trying to palm off on me for a while

00:47:19   Well, if we can make a drop, I don't know how we're gonna do it.

00:47:23   Here's the thing. I've been living with the burden of this monitor for so long,

00:47:28   and standing out in the streets going, "Hey, LG 5K? LG 5K? Anybody want it? Good working condition."

00:47:35   And everyone's like, "No, those monitors are gross. We all know that. No one's gonna take them."

00:47:38   And finally, Myke, you messaged me, and I was like, "Hey, do you still have that 5K LG monitor?"

00:47:46   monitor, like I do, boy, do I have it for you.

00:47:51   And then the gray household went into total quarantine

00:47:54   and I'm not exactly sure how we're going to transfer this

00:47:58   because I will not see you in person.

00:48:02   Like maybe I can leave it on a street corner

00:48:04   and you can do a drive by and pick it up really quick

00:48:06   or something. - Yeah, we can do that.

00:48:07   - But yeah, yeah.

00:48:09   We will need to figure out a system for how the monitor

00:48:11   will actually get transferred to you.

00:48:12   - We'll exchange hands, yeah.

00:48:13   but at some point I will be liberating that monitor from you.

00:48:17   - Yeah, and I will be so happy to know

00:48:20   that you're getting use out of it,

00:48:23   that it's found a good home.

00:48:24   - Yeah, it will be, you know, I'm gonna need monitors.

00:48:27   Like I need a monitor on my recording desk,

00:48:29   and I need a monitor on the hot desk

00:48:32   that I'm gonna be setting up too.

00:48:33   So it will find a home, like even if I end up not liking it,

00:48:36   it will still find a home.

00:48:38   - Yeah, and it's perfect for that kind of thing.

00:48:39   Like you need some monitors,

00:48:41   where can you get some monitors?

00:48:43   Grey's got a monitor for you.

00:48:44   - Yeah, so I might as well take it.

00:48:46   Like it's needed and you're not using it.

00:48:47   And finally we can get to tie a bow on this long standing.

00:48:51   (laughing)

00:48:53   I will take it from you.

00:48:54   - Yeah, it feels like the conclusion

00:48:56   of an epic story arc somehow.

00:48:58   - It's super difficult to try and work out

00:49:00   what a desk needs when you're not actually

00:49:02   working on the desk.

00:49:04   - Yeah.

00:49:05   - Right, so like I've been trying to work out at home,

00:49:07   like what is each desk going to need?

00:49:09   'Cause just to recap, like I will have two desks.

00:49:11   So I have my desk where I record and then my desk where I do my editing and all my other

00:49:16   work.

00:49:17   So it's going to be set up for both an iPad and iMac Pro.

00:49:21   So like there will be two setups there.

00:49:22   I do like the idea of you sitting on the couch at home, fantasizing about Mega Studio and

00:49:28   making little drawings about, "Ooh, which desk is going to go there?"

00:49:32   I've been mind mapping.

00:49:33   Oh yeah?

00:49:34   That's the way that it made sense to me.

00:49:36   So like I have each desk and then each piece of equipment and what each piece of equipment

00:49:40   needs from it. Like I've been trying to mind map that out. I still found it incredibly

00:49:46   difficult to actually work out what pieces of equipment I'm going to need to purchase,

00:49:50   but that's fine because I have enough mobile gear that I can jerry-rig everything together

00:49:57   until I work out what fixed gear I'm going to need on each desk. Because as we have established,

00:50:06   mobile gear and fixed gear, different.

00:50:09   But also the same. Yeah.

00:50:10   Sure. Different, but the same.

00:50:12   Mm-hmm.

00:50:13   So yeah, I'm still working that out, but I am so excited to be able to actually get the

00:50:19   desks out. I have the desks and they're amazing. I'm so happy with my desks, Gray. I have two

00:50:25   desks. One is absolutely massive and one is regular size, small.

00:50:30   Are they standing desks?

00:50:32   Both standing desks, yep.

00:50:33   Ooh, very exciting.

00:50:34   Yeah, I just figured that... Well, it's just the same as the desk I have here. I want to

00:50:39   have the flexibility. In the desk that I was looking at, there wasn't like a wild price

00:50:43   difference between having standing and not standing. And it's, I've really come around

00:50:48   to, especially when looking at stuff in the studio and I've been trying to instill this

00:50:52   idea into Adina as she's been helping me plan all this stuff out. I don't want to buy lots

00:50:58   of things many times. I want to spend a little bit more money and buy it once.

00:51:02   Yep, yep, that makes sense.

00:51:04   I've learned this over time, which is just like,

00:51:07   you can try and save money,

00:51:10   but you eventually end up replacing.

00:51:13   One thing that I've really learned this in is chairs.

00:51:16   So I use Herman Miller chairs now.

00:51:20   I use the M-body chair after it being recommended to me

00:51:22   by everybody that I know, basically.

00:51:24   Because I had, prior to buying one of these chairs,

00:51:29   maybe three years ago, I had gone through like

00:51:31   two or three chairs from Amazon that were between

00:51:35   150 and 200 pounds each.

00:51:36   Like something broke on them, something stopped working.

00:51:39   Now these Herman Miller chairs,

00:51:40   they cost like 900 or 1,000 pounds,

00:51:43   but they come with a 10 year warranty.

00:51:45   So what I learned is I was spending 150 to 200 pounds

00:51:50   basically every year buying a new chair

00:51:52   because something would fail in my chair.

00:51:54   So now I extrapolated that out.

00:51:56   I spend 900 pounds on a chair,

00:51:58   but I get it guaranteed for 10 years.

00:52:01   So this is kind of like a thing that I've learned now that my business is a place where

00:52:07   I can afford these things, which I treat as assets now.

00:52:10   They're things my company owns, right?

00:52:13   Just actually just buy them once rather than buying three desks.

00:52:17   So I have an IKEA desk here, right?

00:52:19   The IKEA desk that I bought was cheaper than the desks that I'm buying now, but the stand

00:52:25   mechanism was broken.

00:52:28   So now I'm, again, spending more money on a desk that has a guarantee on it and that

00:52:35   is better made.

00:52:36   So that's kind of the route that I'm going down.

00:52:39   Yeah, yeah, and this is also this big difference between - and I think it's tricky for a lot

00:52:47   of people when you become self-employed or you start to run your own business - of having

00:52:54   to shift the way you think about spending money on purchases and it can be very hard to do but this

00:53:02   is this is a really important part of this and you know on top of just the straight up financial

00:53:09   calculation there's also I mean I think the listeners can hear that setting up your office

00:53:14   is a big deal like it's a big project that's going to take a long time and what you don't want is to

00:53:20   to get a bunch of equipment in there, which then,

00:53:23   because you have a lot of things,

00:53:26   each part might slowly need to be replaced.

00:53:29   You wanna do this once

00:53:32   and never have to think about it again.

00:53:34   - Yeah, the initial setup that I'm doing here,

00:53:36   which is taking way longer than I want it to,

00:53:39   is this should be the setup that lasts me another 10 years.

00:53:43   So even if we move office, we move like you move your home.

00:53:47   We're not gonna start again with new desks and new chairs

00:53:50   and all that stuff.

00:53:52   - Yeah, yeah.

00:53:53   So it makes sense to get stuff that's gonna last

00:53:56   at this point and to not in two years

00:53:59   have to redo one of the desk setups

00:54:01   because that desk was flaky or it's bending

00:54:04   or it's wobbling and it doesn't work anymore.

00:54:05   It's like, no, no, no, that's not the way to handle this.

00:54:08   Like this is, you have an office

00:54:11   like for all of the company work that you do,

00:54:14   like set it up properly and do it right the first time

00:54:19   as best you can.

00:54:19   So the desks that I bought these desks was the Jarvis desk and I bought them from a company

00:54:26   called Fully who is going to be a sponsor on other shows that I do and I had never heard

00:54:32   of them but then as soon as I found them I then bought two desks with my own money from

00:54:37   this company.

00:54:38   Right, so like I just want to make that all very clear, right, like they haven't, we haven't

00:54:42   actually done any sponsorship stuff with them yet.

00:54:45   Right.

00:54:46   But I found this company at just the right time and bought two desks from them out of

00:54:48   own money because what I really liked is the Jarvis frame I've heard lots of good things about in the

00:54:55   past like this isn't their frame they sell this frame but then also make their own desktops right

00:55:01   and what I liked is the desks are very customizable. Oh I you know it's funny I came across when I was

00:55:08   looking for my standing desk I came across this company because I like their um this thing here

00:55:14   They have this little like jigsaw, my first standing desk for kids, which I think is adorable.

00:55:20   Oh my god, I've not seen this. Wait, where is this?

00:55:22   Myke, how did you not know about the standing desk for children?

00:55:26   I have never heard of this.

00:55:28   I'll send it to you.

00:55:30   Oh my god, this is amazing.

00:55:32   Right, isn't it? It's adorable.

00:55:33   It's called the jazz wig. It's not jigsaw.

00:55:35   Oh, sorry. I must have been looking at the wrong thing.

00:55:38   No, no, I think it's meant to trick you because it's all the same letters.

00:55:41   Oh, I see. Right. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, jazz wig. Yeah.

00:55:44   But yeah, no, standing desk for kids. I came across that. I can't remember whatever it was. Anyway, like,

00:55:48   yeah, they were one of the things that I was looking at. And also, it is on my list to get from them.

00:55:56   They have these kneeling chairs,

00:55:58   which I totally forgot that a long time ago I used to use and really love and then kind of forgot about existing.

00:56:04   I've been looking at them, but thought that they would be horrible.

00:56:08   I can say I've used them in

00:56:12   college like I had one in my dorm room and

00:56:15   It was interesting because so I've got like the same Herman Miller chair that you do because it's the same Herman Miller chair that everybody has

00:56:24   and I

00:56:26   Like it

00:56:27   but one of the things I am aware of it is a little too easy to start slouching sometimes and

00:56:33   like slide down the chair a little bit and

00:56:36   It's been on my mind to

00:56:40   have one of the kneeling chairs as an alternate because the thing that I really liked about it

00:56:44   Was that those chairs?

00:56:47   It's very hard to slouch like they force you much more into a correct posture

00:56:53   Which sounds like torture, but I mean it in a good way

00:56:57   This different chair. I've been seeing this different chair design popping up in places

00:57:03   And again, this company sells it. It's called the capisco chair and it's like a super weird

00:57:09   looking chair? Like it doesn't look like a regular chair, but like you look at the pictures of it and the thinking is that like

00:57:15   It allows you to sit in a lot of different positions

00:57:20   Huh. I've been seeing this chair more and more recently. I

00:57:24   I don't know that that looks very that looks very weird to me. Yep, isn't it? I feel

00:57:30   Significantly less sold on this idea as an idea for a chair that I would want

00:57:37   Yeah, I don't think I want it either but like I've been seeing more and more people use it

00:57:41   That feels like a chair. I would want to drive before buying. Yes. Yep

00:57:47   Like like I need that to be in some co-working space where I am for a day and you can just give it a go

00:57:54   Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I don't know about that. I don't know about that

00:57:57   Yeah, I'm not sure about that one either but I say I've been seeing it more and more recently

00:58:00   Yeah, but I give my full thumbs up to kneeling chairs. So they have one called the Balan

00:58:07   one's kneeling chair, which actually looks like one that they make. But I don't know.

00:58:12   Yeah. Yeah. It's on my mind as a thing to try. But yeah, so standing desks for children,

00:58:17   which is adorable. And kneeling chairs. And also this is Myke's current standing desk.

00:58:25   What I like about it is that they, you can basically just make your own specification.

00:58:30   So I have one which is I think the smallest that they make. And then also the largest

00:58:36   that they make. And the smallest one is the recording desk and then the largest one is

00:58:40   my regular desk. And it's massive. It's 180 centimeters by 80 centimeters. That's the

00:58:47   big one.

00:58:48   Oh, that's pretty big.

00:58:49   Yeah, it's massive. It's great.

00:58:51   That's nice to have though. Now, you've got me distracted looking at office furniture.

00:58:55   Yep.

00:58:56   Like, oh, do I need a stool?

00:58:58   Maybe.

00:58:59   No, not really.

00:59:00   Maybe.

00:59:01   But maybe I do. I don't know. Maybe that can go in my kitchen where I do my administrative

00:59:04   work now. Would you get a kneeling chair with a back on it or no back on it? So the one I used

00:59:11   had no back on it. See when I look at those chairs I just imagine myself falling off them.

00:59:19   I feel like I would fall off it a lot. You think you're going to but you don't. Like yeah I get it.

00:59:24   Is the falling offness what keeps you from slouching? Because you're constantly scared

00:59:28   you're gonna fall off it? No that's not... I'm trying to think of how to explain it. So

00:59:34   The reason that the kneeling chair works is I feel like it puts you in a position where

00:59:42   like your gravity is just going straight down. Because your legs are sort of underneath you,

00:59:48   it feels very much like, "Oh, I am a stable stack of bricks here, each one on top of the other."

00:59:54   And they're all pushing down in the same direction. So you don't lean forward and you don't

00:59:59   lean back. It's not because of a fear of falling, though it is very weird to get into one for the

01:00:05   first time because you're like, "This is not chairs. This is not how chairs chairs. I don't

01:00:08   like this at all." I don't know if I like the phrase "get into the chair." That doesn't make

01:00:14   me feel good. Look, it's like getting on a horse, right? It's weird the first time and you're like,

01:00:19   "Why is it so high? I don't understand." Why do you keep talking about horses so much?

01:00:25   Is this your new hobby? Are you horse riding now?

01:00:28   Look, I'm just trying to throw out metaphors that you might be familiar with, right?

01:00:33   You know I don't know how to ride a horse. I barely know how to ride a bike.

01:00:39   Everybody knows how to ride a horse. That just seems like a thing everyone knows. But anyway,

01:00:42   look, so you get into the chair and it is weird the first time and it takes a little while to get

01:00:47   used to. But my feeling is it's very stable and it's very slouch resistant. Which that's my one

01:00:55   complaint with the chair that I have, which I do love, but I want the chair to be less forgiving

01:01:01   of my slow ability to sit in a non-optimal position. So that's why the kneeling chairs

01:01:07   have been on my mind. Anyway, try a kneeling chair. Get one for Mega Studio. It can be a fun

01:01:14   talking point anyway.

01:01:15   Yeah, I'll add it to my Apple note where I add things that are inspiring to me, you

01:01:21   know?

01:01:22   Right, good.

01:01:23   Sounds good.

01:01:24   Oh, I wanted to provide a piece of follow-up for you about my internet.

01:01:26   Okay.

01:01:27   So I was super mad about it if you remember the price of everything.

01:01:30   Yes, very expensive internet.

01:01:31   The deposit, which I will never be happy about, and I had to pay it, and I was so mad about

01:01:40   it, right?

01:01:41   Like, just so mad.

01:01:42   because right you know they say it's for the equipment they didn't even need any

01:01:46   equipment the equipment was already in there the engineer came and there was a

01:01:49   box of equipment that was delivered he's like oh I don't need any of this it's

01:01:52   already in there right yeah no of course I'll just take it away for you it's like

01:01:55   okay there goes my deposit I suppose I'm just here to take your deposit away yeah

01:02:00   yeah it's like oh you see that thing you paid all that money for I'm just gonna

01:02:03   take that great thank you bye engineer but gray I said it was slow my internet

01:02:09   I was wrong my friend. Oh my god.

01:02:12   Is this again where you're just gonna flex all over me about how fast your internet is?

01:02:17   900 up and down.

01:02:19   God damn you.

01:02:21   Up and down.

01:02:24   God damn it.

01:02:26   On wifi. That's my wifi speed.

01:02:28   I'm very happy for you.

01:02:30   Oh I'm so happy.

01:02:31   Let me run a speed test while we're recording a podcast right now.

01:02:34   I have been doing speed tests of the studio while at home because I'm so happy about it.

01:02:42   I will run a speed test for you right now for the studio so I can tell you because I

01:02:47   can do that now.

01:02:48   Yeah good I'm very happy for you.

01:02:51   I'm sitting here with my 19 up and 17 down like a peasant.

01:02:55   Oh my god Gray.

01:02:56   How do you do anything?

01:02:58   I don't know.

01:02:59   I don't know how we're even able to talk to each other.

01:03:01   Because this was one of the things where I was like oh because I have really good internet

01:03:03   at home too, right?

01:03:04   So I was like, oh man.

01:03:05   - You know, I'm very aware

01:03:06   that you have great internet at home, Myke.

01:03:08   Yes.

01:03:09   - Every time I get called over, I'm like,

01:03:10   "Hey, just do this feed test, see what you get."

01:03:12   - I'm very aware, you don't need to tell me

01:03:14   that you have great internet at home.

01:03:16   - So I just got 889 down and 874 up.

01:03:20   That is of my office speed test.

01:03:23   - Great, I'm very happy for you.

01:03:25   - It's great, right?

01:03:26   - Yeah, that's very good.

01:03:27   - Isn't that fast?

01:03:29   Oh, no, wait, the speed test wasn't complete.

01:03:31   916 down, 917 up.

01:03:33   Great. Even better. Even better.

01:03:35   It's better.

01:03:36   Yeah.

01:03:37   That is better. You were right.

01:03:38   That was 100 better each way.

01:03:39   Right. It's your your margin

01:03:43   of error is five times faster

01:03:45   than my absolute speed.

01:03:46   Yeah.

01:03:47   Yep. So, you know, it's still really

01:03:51   expensive. It's still more money than

01:03:53   I want to pay for Internet, but at

01:03:54   least I have really good Internet.

01:03:56   OK, good.

01:03:57   I'm happy for you.

01:03:58   I also wanted to share one last thing

01:04:00   about like being at Mega Studio.

01:04:02   Well, I actually have a bunch of stuff, but I'm going to talk about that later.

01:04:05   Because this changed a lot about my work, right?

01:04:07   But a couple of weeks ago, I was spending some time there while waiting for some

01:04:11   deliveries and stuff, and I felt much more productive than when I'm at home.

01:04:16   It reminded me of when I would co-work because in a working environment, I found

01:04:21   myself getting a lot of little tasks done I otherwise would procrastinate over

01:04:26   because it was kind of like, "But while I'm here, I might as well just do this

01:04:32   thing instead of where I'm at home where I'm like oh well I'll just do this thing

01:04:37   and it's a home related thing you know right well you know I'll just watch this

01:04:41   or I'll go wash the dishes or I'll just go take a shower or like whatever you

01:04:45   know like that type of procrastinating now I am work procrastinating right

01:04:50   actually finding other work things to do it's how I feel when I take my early

01:04:54   days as well right you know like the great creation idea where it's just like

01:04:57   well I'm here so I may as well do this thing so I'm feeling pretty confident

01:05:02   about my long-term productivity with the studio

01:05:05   that I will actually be getting more done when I'm there,

01:05:09   which is what I wanted.

01:05:10   So I'm feeling enthused about that, right?

01:05:14   Like that feels really good to me.

01:05:16   - Yeah, that's great.

01:05:17   And like that's one of the main advantages

01:05:19   of having an office outside of the house

01:05:21   is like you constrain the activities,

01:05:24   it increases the kind of focus you now have

01:05:28   with your new mega studio, you have more space.

01:05:32   So you're already, your brain is already turning

01:05:35   towards like other projects that you could possibly do.

01:05:38   Ooh, video, maybe I'll get back into that.

01:05:40   And I think it's, I think that's like,

01:05:43   that's really great and I'm happy to hear that,

01:05:46   I'm happy to hear that your internet is so fast.

01:05:48   But also I'm very happy to hear that,

01:05:51   even though you have been quarantined from it

01:05:54   for a little while, that the,

01:05:56   like the mega studio is turning into what you want it to be.

01:05:59   That it's like,

01:06:01   it's a productive environment that is ultimately going to be like better for you

01:06:05   and better for your work.

01:06:06   Yeah, it is a slow process. I'm enjoying documenting it here,

01:06:11   especially because you know, we don't record every week. Right.

01:06:14   So like a lot happens in between our recordings. So, which is good.

01:06:18   Are there going to be Instagram photos to update?

01:06:20   Like are we going to have more Instagram photos? I want to,

01:06:23   I want to see like half, cause here's the thing.

01:06:26   You're going to be tempted on the grams to just show the shiny final office.

01:06:30   But I want to see updates of the "here's what it looks like halfway through" process.

01:06:36   Okay.

01:06:37   I don't have any now, but I'll take some.

01:06:38   I'll put some up and I'll share them with you.

01:06:41   But I don't have anything at the moment.

01:06:44   Because there's been the last voters that I do have, that I think I may have sent you

01:06:48   one of them, there's been more progress in the space since then.

01:06:52   So I'll make sure to put some up so that I'll have them to put in the show notes.

01:06:57   But it's good because this type, having longer periods of time is good because otherwise

01:07:03   you would have got two weeks of despair, right?

01:07:06   So it's good to not have to have those.

01:07:10   We missed the despair period.

01:07:11   Yeah, the despair phase has passed for now.

01:07:15   Maybe next time there will be more despair if the plan doesn't work.

01:07:19   there was a plan which was abandoned and then there was no plan and now we have a better plan

01:07:25   in place again about the sound stuff. Right, well I think in this time of global health situation

01:07:32   we did we didn't need a despairful update from Myke. I'm happy we skipped right over that

01:07:38   and got to the happy update about what's going on with Mega Studio. Today's episode is brought to

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01:09:47   Let's talk about tumbleweeds. Tumbleweeds. Who would want to talk about such a boring

01:09:52   topic? You would. And I was genuinely surprised at the reception to that video. It seems to

01:10:00   have done very well. Like, this isn't, I don't mean this negatively, but like it was, it's

01:10:07   It's a very, it's just much smaller video and like it feels to me like less zeitgeisty

01:10:13   than some other stuff, you know?

01:10:15   Like, so I was, I was, it's done, it's got like over 2 million views, like it has performed

01:10:19   very well.

01:10:20   So I'm just curious, I'm curious because this is sort of like a, this video for me is an

01:10:24   interesting example of a bunch of things, but I'm curious, what do you mean by the word

01:10:28   like smaller?

01:10:29   When you say it's a smaller video, what does that, what does that mean to you?

01:10:33   Okay, so well.

01:10:35   Well…

01:10:36   Because it's not short, right?

01:10:38   No.

01:10:39   It's almost eight minutes or so.

01:10:41   Yeah, okay.

01:10:42   But I know…

01:10:43   Well, this comes from my knowledge of your work.

01:10:47   And some videos that you are working on now, I know you've been working on for years.

01:10:53   And have required, like, spanning the globe, which I am very confident you didn't do

01:11:00   for this video.

01:11:01   Now, I know you have.

01:11:03   No, no.

01:11:04   you jump in. I know you have footage of tumbleweeds, but I know that that tumbleweed footage was

01:11:11   not for this video. Like, my expectation is, because I know what you were doing when you

01:11:16   encountered tumbleweeds, that that gave you the idea to make the video, but you weren't

01:11:20   making like a tumbleweed video and went to find tumbleweeds. Right?

01:11:25   Well, I mean, yeah, sort of.

01:11:30   Sort of, yeah.

01:11:31   - You didn't go in search of tumbleweeds for,

01:11:34   like you didn't travel across from England

01:11:36   to somewhere in America to shoot video of tumbleweeds, right?

01:11:40   Like that didn't happen.

01:11:41   - Look, 'cause I've got something else

01:11:43   that's coming out hopefully soon.

01:11:45   So I cannot confirm or deny whether I did or did not travel,

01:11:49   but I did travel as part of this tumbleweed project

01:11:52   explicitly for tumbleweeds.

01:11:54   So you're actually wrong about that.

01:11:56   - No, I know, see I don't buy this great.

01:11:58   I don't buy this.

01:12:00   Like you didn't go, you weren't in London,

01:12:02   and were like, I need to go to America to film tumbleweeds.

01:12:06   - You're trying to like, you're trying to get me

01:12:08   to talk about a future project.

01:12:10   - I'm not trying to get, you started this.

01:12:13   You knew what I meant.

01:12:14   But like so anyway. - No, no, okay.

01:12:16   - The tumbleweed video. - Okay, so listen to it.

01:12:18   So listen to it, it's like, okay,

01:12:20   there's so many things that have happened here,

01:12:21   but Myke is confused because Myke does know some of my future stuff here.

01:12:26   And I know what Myke thinks he thinks he's talking about,

01:12:28   but he's not talking about what I think he's talking about.

01:12:30   Oh my God.

01:12:32   All I'm saying is when I say this is a smaller video,

01:12:36   I am not aware of you having been working on this Tumbleweed video for a long

01:12:41   time.

01:12:41   Now it feels to me like it's more like a typical work length,

01:12:46   which has not been what has been happening to you more recently,

01:12:50   which is why you've shifted your business model

01:12:53   a bit with focusing on the Patreon of like

01:12:55   these really long spanning videos,

01:12:57   which takes you going to places

01:12:59   and understanding how things work.

01:13:02   And like, so the tumbleweed video

01:13:04   feels more like a typical idea

01:13:06   where like something happened to you

01:13:08   and you were like, this is interesting,

01:13:09   let me look into it.

01:13:10   - Okay. - Which is so like,

01:13:11   there was an inciting event made you create the video,

01:13:14   which is different to like,

01:13:15   I'm going to investigate the entire history of people.

01:13:20   Right, and travel all over America looking at this stuff and finding out like it's very different.

01:13:27   So when I say smaller, I mean more like regular.

01:13:32   Right, okay.

01:13:34   That's fine. I'm just kind of curious about your perception of it.

01:13:40   It's been really interesting because I keep thinking about the year of clarity stuff,

01:13:47   And I think particularly because this is the most unactionable, non-specific theme I've had on the show,

01:13:58   I find myself sometimes thinking like, "How can I explain what this means to me?"

01:14:02   Or like, "Why this also feels like one of the most important themes that I've ever done?"

01:14:07   And you're not wrong in pegging something about like,

01:14:13   "Oh, this tumbleweed project feels kind of different and feels kind of small."

01:14:17   And you're mostly right in that I was thinking about the thing I said last time, and I don't

01:14:30   think I explained really well, but one of these ideas that has come out of locking in topics

01:14:41   is this ability that I feel like I have really figured out for me

01:14:46   how it works best to explore potential future topics and how to stay focused but also flexible.

01:14:59   - Right. - And so this is where,

01:15:03   so like Myke is obviously referencing like, oh, the American Indian project has been this enormous

01:15:08   project that I've been working on for a really long period of time.

01:15:11   And I said in the in I think the previous episode of Cortex like oh I'm going to have an animated video

01:15:16   that sort of relates to this main thing and I keep thinking of this as like the as this phrase

01:15:26   of fractal creativity of you know a fractal is an object that you can zoom into infinitely and

01:15:37   And it's always sort of interesting and different.

01:15:39   Like, that's the fundamental feature of what a fractal is.

01:15:42   You can magnify it a million times and you still have an interesting pattern.

01:15:46   Whereas with most stuff, you magnify it a million times and that doesn't happen.

01:15:51   Like, it still looks the same.

01:15:53   You know, it just becomes uninteresting when you magnify it too much.

01:15:56   And so, Indians has been topic locked for a long time of like,

01:16:02   "Okay, I've got three things that I'm locked in on.

01:16:05   American Indian project is one of them.

01:16:08   But I'm also aware of like, I think one of the things

01:16:13   that I got...

01:16:16   that I used to get more tripped up on and I feel like I've kind of solved now

01:16:20   is I used to get kind of stuck behind bigger projects.

01:16:27   And like, Statue of Liberty is an example of this,

01:16:31   where it's like, the Statue of Liberty video took a long time to make

01:16:34   and it's partly because I was a little bit confused about like what is this is what parts

01:16:38   of this is Billup and various things but like it was easy to get kind of stuck behind a big project

01:16:43   but now I've kind of figured out it's perfectly fine to while you're working on a big project

01:16:53   zoom into parts that are interesting for whatever reason as long as for me it has this feeling of

01:17:04   of, like, down further into the fractal is perfectly fine, as opposed to getting distracted

01:17:14   by lateral topic exploration. So I think of this as like, you get like lost on Wikipedia,

01:17:21   you go "oh, I'm gonna look up something on Wikipedia!" and you start to read, and in

01:17:26   several clicks you can be in a whole different world of things.

01:17:30   I hear this a lot. I know people do this. This has never happened to me.

01:17:34   Really? Interesting. Okay.

01:17:36   Well, you know, it is very rare that I will decide to go and read a bunch of stuff, right?

01:17:42   You don't go on a Wikipedia wander?

01:17:44   This happens to me more with YouTube than Wikipedia.

01:17:47   Okay, yeah, but YouTube is the same thing. I think it's the same phenomenon expressing itself in different ways.

01:17:53   where you're on YouTube and you're investigating something in particular

01:17:58   and instead of continually diving deeper into that topic, depending on what you're clicking on in the related fields,

01:18:06   you can easily, an hour later, end up in a totally unrelated field, right?

01:18:11   Like, "Oh, I started out looking up how to fix my sink and now I'm watching a video about how lipstick is made."

01:18:18   Right? It's like, "I don't even know. How did I get here?" Right? Like, I don't know. There was some connection.

01:18:22   Are we just using Wikipedia as an example because Wikipedia isn't algorithmically

01:18:27   trying to keep you on the site for as long as possible, you can actually draw a line

01:18:31   of like, "How are all of these topics related to each other?"

01:18:33   Or "Are they?"

01:18:35   Oh god, I really hope Wikipedia doesn't introduce algorithmic suggestions in a sidebar

01:18:43   at some point.

01:18:44   Although, now, as soon as you say that, it feels inevitable.

01:18:47   What if it's an algorithm that's making the edits to link to other pages to just keep

01:18:53   you in there?

01:18:54   BHARTH: Right, maybe.

01:18:55   Although I know they do have a lot of bots already that do a lot of the maintenance work

01:18:58   on Wikipedia.

01:19:00   And if any internet project is going to become self-aware, maybe Wikipedia is it.

01:19:04   MARTIN ANDERSON-MILLER-BROWNING>> All the knowledge.

01:19:05   BHARTH>> All the knowledge.

01:19:06   MARTIN ANDERSON-MILLER-BROWNING>> That's wrong.

01:19:07   We shouldn't be plugging bots into all the knowledge.

01:19:09   Someone needs to take care of that.

01:19:11   Stop that.

01:19:12   BHARTH>> Yeah.

01:19:13   I've heard many an AI researcher say something like, "Well, you know, we started designing

01:19:16   an algorithm and we just downloaded all of Wikipedia and gave it to them.

01:19:20   Maybe don't start with that.

01:19:23   Don't give it all of the knowledge we've amassed as humanity.

01:19:26   Could you pick a different training set to just be like, "Oh, I happen to give it something."

01:19:31   Here's the whole history of humans, everything they're good at and bad at.

01:19:36   Give that to the robot.

01:19:38   This is the starting point for learning.

01:19:41   Then we'll give it all of Google Images.

01:19:45   No problem.

01:19:46   Yeah, yeah. And then the bot is going from Wikipedia article to Wikipedia article going,

01:19:50   "Ooh, this is interesting. Ooh, that's interesting."

01:19:54   But so one of the things I've become very aware of is the topic lock provides a kind

01:20:02   of framework for me to think about what is not inside this boundary. And so I know it

01:20:10   will seem crazy to people when I say, "Oh, this Tumbleweed video came out of the Indians

01:20:15   project. Like, I don't think that that's going to be clear to people, like, how this process is.

01:20:23   But to me, I have really been able to refine this kind of thinking in my own mind of

01:20:30   tumbleweeds is further down the fractal of the Indian topic. It is related to this. There's

01:20:39   steps where it goes from the big topic down to the smaller topic.

01:20:44   And yeah, when you say like, "Oh, it's a smaller video,"

01:20:48   that was also my perception of it.

01:20:51   What you said there about the fractals is a much more eloquent way of what I was trying to explain.

01:20:58   Which was like, I could see that this video was not a self-contained thing.

01:21:02   Like, it wasn't just a project you decided to embark upon,

01:21:08   like some of your other videos are. It reminded me more about the planet video,

01:21:13   which was like you were doing something and then something popped out of it.

01:21:19   BRIAN KARDELL-SMITH Yeah, yeah. And the planet video is another one of these perfect fractal

01:21:23   videos. There was a bigger project. I ended up homing in on this fact about Mercury's orbit. And

01:21:31   that bigger project has is now when I was reassessing like which topics are locked

01:21:38   that bigger project got kind of bumped out to I'll consider it at a later point of like I'm still

01:21:45   interested in that project but I'm not going to give it one of these three locked slots like I've

01:21:50   picked something interesting out of it and that one's temporarily on pause but the Indian one has

01:21:55   has been topic locked for a long time.

01:21:57   And one of the things that, I like to do this kind of stuff

01:22:02   because I know it's the sort of thing

01:22:03   that I as a viewer appreciate.

01:22:05   But if you go back and you look at all of the videos

01:22:09   I've released since the Statue of Liberty video,

01:22:13   you can see how many times I use

01:22:17   the little cartoon American Indian girl,

01:22:19   when it's not really necessary for her to be there,

01:22:22   but she's like, she pops up.

01:22:24   And that's kind of an indication of, look at all of these videos that have come out

01:22:31   of this project in one way or another.

01:22:34   And it's why in the Tumbleweed video, like the American Indian girl, she's there for

01:22:37   two seconds.

01:22:38   Does she need to be there?

01:22:41   Not really.

01:22:42   But this is part of the thing that I like to do with making videos over long periods

01:22:48   of time is you can put these fun little connections between them.

01:22:52   And that's one of the things I've been kind of laying down for people who are really attentive

01:22:58   viewers to see.

01:22:59   Like, "Oh, here's all these Indians."

01:23:00   Is this the beginning of the GCU?

01:23:03   Like the Grey Cinematic Universe?

01:23:05   Like all of these things are connected?

01:23:08   In a weird way, it kind of is.

01:23:10   Yeah, it is.

01:23:11   That's the Grey Cinematic Universe you're building there.

01:23:13   You know, like different types of people make different kinds of things.

01:23:18   And I think you always have to take advantage of what makes you different.

01:23:25   And so I as a YouTube channel - I think it will come as news to no one - am not the fastest

01:23:31   producer of videos.

01:23:32   Like they take a long time.

01:23:35   But what that means and what I feel like I've really sorted out over the past year or so

01:23:42   is this ability through topic lock and through some other things related to Year of Clarity

01:23:46   of how do I have parallel projects but also keep forward motion on all of these things.

01:23:57   And it's just really interesting to me because I think if you go back and listen to Cortex,

01:24:01   like this has always been something I've struggled with of how many projects am I working on

01:24:06   at once. And it's like I've always had a really hard time with this and it finally feels like

01:24:12   something I really locked down. But one of the big advantages is, okay, if you're a channel

01:24:18   that doesn't produce stuff quickly, and you're producing a couple of parallel things over

01:24:23   a long period of time, there are totally ways in which you can make them connect to each

01:24:29   other. Or you can show kind of like a wink at the viewer to see like this thing is related

01:24:36   to that thing. And I really enjoy doing that because I really like that as a viewer. And

01:24:43   it's why I really wanted to try to work in the American Indian Girl to the Tumbleweed

01:24:47   video because it's less clear now, but I think in a few months, viewers will be able to really

01:24:59   clearly draw the connection between three videos of like, "Oh, here is the exact path.

01:25:07   Grey started here, this thing happened, this thing happened, and then he made the Tumbleweed

01:25:13   video."

01:25:14   And so it sort of goes back to like a thing we mentioned forever ago about this really

01:25:17   non-linear life, but one of the ways I feel like I figured out how to keep forward motion

01:25:24   is sometimes working on things in this reverse order of work from the bottom of the fractal

01:25:31   up to the higher layers of the fractal. The Tumbleweed one is just a perfect example of

01:25:38   this. This is the bottom of the bottom of anything that can be considered to be an American

01:25:43   Indians video. Two videos from now in this little series, it'll be much clearer like,

01:25:50   how did I get here? But it isn't right now. And part of the reason I feel so confident about,

01:25:57   I've kind of figured out this process, is like for the first time in my nine-year career of working

01:26:07   on YouTube, I have a video that is completely finished ahead of time. Like it is edited,

01:26:17   it is done, it is uploaded to my channel, and I'm just waiting to release it because I want to finish

01:26:25   something else before that video goes up. Congratulations to you on many fronts there,

01:26:31   and I mean that seriously and sincerely because not only have you done it, which has proven that

01:26:36   your method has worked, that you are restraining yourself. Because I know how difficult that can

01:26:41   be. Like you have a thing that's made and someone else can make it, right? Like that's always the

01:26:45   the fear. But yeah, I think this is the combination of the year of clarity, but also your time

01:26:53   away from the internet, right? Project Cyclops.

01:26:55   Yeah, it is.

01:26:56   I think it has allowed you to not be so terrified about somebody scooping you basically. That

01:27:03   you are confident in your work now that even if that happens, it doesn't matter because

01:27:08   it's your work and people want to see your work, no matter if it's been done a million

01:27:12   times before because you have your process, you have your outlook, you have your opinion,

01:27:19   and people like that. So I think that that is an example of your growth over the last few years

01:27:27   with these elements that you've been focusing on. That one, you've been able to do it, and two,

01:27:31   that you're comfortable with it just not being visible to people.

01:27:37   Yeah, yeah, I mean, there's a couple of things here like why was that able to happen. One of

01:27:44   the reasons is it's a real life video, so it's not an animated video that's done and complete,

01:27:50   but it is on a thing that is totally scoopable. It's not like my Tesla road trip, right, where

01:27:57   someone can't scoop that because like, "Hey, here's a thing I did," right? It's, you know, so

01:28:03   I have a real life thing and it is theoretically scoopable, but I'm happy to leave it the way

01:28:09   that it is. I don't want to leave it forever because I do still have that little bit of

01:28:14   concern. But this is where I'm talking about this idea of what's the order in the fractal,

01:28:21   and it's like, okay, tumbleweed is first, this thing is done, and in theory I could upload it,

01:28:27   but I want to make sure I have another layer up done first before I release this.

01:28:33   And so...

01:28:34   So do you have a video that's coming before it or you just want to get

01:28:38   to a point in the video that's coming after it before you release this one?

01:28:42   I just want to make sure I understand that.

01:28:43   I want to get to a point in the video after before I release this next one.

01:28:48   Because for whatever reason, you don't want to leave too long a gap between the two, right?

01:28:54   Yeah, the two things are connected and I just want to make sure I'm far enough along in this

01:28:59   in the next related thing before I release this one.

01:29:03   So you don't end up in a Summer of Grey scenario, right? Where it's like this is part two and part

01:29:10   one and three will come in like two years.

01:29:12   Yes, that's exactly correct. It could... it's less clear than that, but that's the same idea of...

01:29:18   Oh, here's the thing. I also have something that's related. It'll be out in two years. Goodbye.

01:29:23   So that's why I'm kind of holding on it.

01:29:26   Yeah, it is really shocking to me that I have a video that's done, even if it's not an animated

01:29:32   video, like I cannot believe that I have something ahead of time in this way.

01:29:36   And also with the topic lock, it's like, okay, tumbleweeds is this thing, but I also have

01:29:41   another sort of fun, small, totally isolated, not connected to anything, little animated video

01:29:50   that's in the works that's topic locked and is like, "Is going along really well?"

01:29:54   And you were bugging me about "Did I travel for tumbleweeds?" and the answer is yes, but

01:29:58   I also have a video for that coming along really well and hopefully should be done reasonably

01:30:05   soon.

01:30:06   MADDIE No, see, I just… you didn't go for the

01:30:08   tumbleweeds though, did you?

01:30:10   Like I know the other thing.

01:30:13   You didn't go for the tumbleweeds and then go to the other thing.

01:30:16   You did to the other thing and there were tumbleweeds.

01:30:19   I won't believe this is true.

01:30:21   You don't-- like, Myke, do I have to whisper to you what the thing is and you have to bleep it?

01:30:26   Because I don't know what you're thinking about.

01:30:28   But I went to-- like, Myke, I went to the c**t.

01:30:33   Do you know that? Do you know this thing?

01:30:34   No.

01:30:35   Okay, right. Well, that's the thing that I did.

01:30:39   No, that has nothing to do with this thing. You don't know what I'm talking about.

01:30:42   Do you see why I'm in this situation?

01:30:45   Yeah, that's why.

01:30:46   Wait, what is it? Wait, is the, is it ****?

01:30:49   It's, look, look, there's going to be so many bleeps in this section, I can't explain it to you.

01:30:52   Not like, it's hard that I'm going to cut out because it's too much bleeping.

01:30:55   No, no, it's funnier if it's bleeping.

01:30:57   Okay, no, is it, wait, what are we talking about now?

01:31:00   We're talking about tumble ****ing weeds, that's what we're talking about.

01:31:03   Okay, you understand why I got to this point?

01:31:08   I totally understand.

01:31:09   But now at this point I will say fine, right?

01:31:13   You win on that point.

01:31:16   Thank you.

01:31:17   But now I understand a little bit more about the link between this video and the next video.

01:31:21   Right, yeah.

01:31:21   Because I've seen the next one, I think.

01:31:23   Right, yes.

01:31:25   Yeah, you have seen the thing that is done and is up on my channel and is just waiting.

01:31:29   Right.

01:31:30   So I think the thing we can say is, as annoying as all that censoring is,

01:31:34   one, Gray said I had to censor it, it wasn't my choice.

01:31:37   And two, it isn't going to be six years until you find out what we were talking about.

01:31:42   So that's good advice.

01:31:43   Yeah, I mean, I hope it's going to be something like a couple of weeks at most.

01:31:48   So yeah, it'll be pretty fast.

01:31:50   But look, for me, editing something that's like a vlog in under three weeks is like lightning

01:31:59   fast, right?

01:32:00   So that's my perspective.

01:32:01   Oh, I'm not criticizing that.

01:32:02   I'm not criticizing that.

01:32:03   There is no criticism here.

01:32:05   I don't know.

01:32:09   It's been a really interesting year so far.

01:32:14   I was talking last time about the month of unexpected urgency, which has become a lot

01:32:19   more like the two months of unexpected urgency.

01:32:22   But even through all of this, what you said about some of the long run byproducts of my

01:32:30   year away from the internet, that totally works into it.

01:32:34   It's why Year of Clarity to me feels very much like there's a lot of threads over the

01:32:41   past few years that have all come together right around the same time and are working

01:32:49   to help each other.

01:32:51   And one of those things is just recognizing in my own work process that I am just a person

01:33:02   who works really well in isolation. Like, just on my own, focused on projects for long

01:33:12   periods of time with as little of the outside world as I can manage to get by without. And

01:33:20   I know that I've always been crazy about this stuff, like managing my notifications and

01:33:24   trying to clamp all that stuff down and I feel like I'm just really leaning into that

01:33:34   because it's also the thing that makes my video work so clearly much better of, you

01:33:42   know, I'm just gonna get up in the mornings and I'm gonna try to be isolated on this work

01:33:49   And if a day is going really well, like I'm just gonna stay isolated and I'm just gonna keep working on this thing and

01:33:56   there's something about it that I, it's hard to put my finger on, but it feels like something has, has changed and it's just more

01:34:04   satisfying.

01:34:07   And it's, it's part of the way as well, like even during what, what would have been in past years,

01:34:13   an incredibly disruptive outside environment that would have completely destroyed my ability to make videos.

01:34:20   I've ended up in a situation where it's like,

01:34:23   "Tumbleweed video came out. Boy, do I love it and it's great.

01:34:26   Oh, by the way, I also have another video that's like ready and waiting to go."

01:34:30   And there's like two more in the chamber that are coming along really well.

01:34:35   And part of this is just

01:34:37   some hard to articulate thoughts about how am I selecting topics

01:34:43   and some more practical stuff about,

01:34:46   "Hey, your temperament is like to work on your own,

01:34:52   on projects, sort of in this isolated way."

01:34:56   In the way that people for all of time who did work

01:35:00   that revolved around reading and writing always would have,

01:35:04   and like, just lean into that.

01:35:06   And I don't know, like, you're really happy

01:35:09   about Mega Studio, and I feel like I'm really happy

01:35:12   about the way my video production process is going now.

01:35:17   And I think like,

01:35:19   Year of Clarity is really the correct focusing thought

01:35:23   around a bunch of decisions related to all of this stuff.

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01:36:31   show and Relay FM. You did something a little different this time you did a

01:36:35   the directors commentary stream for your Patreon backers?

01:36:39   Yes.

01:36:40   Oh.

01:36:41   Live streaming, Myke.

01:36:43   Live streaming.

01:36:44   Now, I wanna just ask, how did you do the live streaming?

01:36:48   Badly, I guess, is the answer.

01:36:52   I don't know.

01:36:53   I've seen most of the video, and the video begins, like the Patreon video begins, with

01:37:00   you basically saying, "Oh, finally an hour later!"

01:37:03   I was like, "Oh boy, you had a lot of trouble over there."

01:37:06   - Yeah, what am I, Wave, Wirecast?

01:37:10   Yeah, Wirecast.

01:37:12   - I sent you a text message.

01:37:14   - Okay.

01:37:15   - Did you not see my text message that I sent you?

01:37:17   - What, just now?

01:37:18   - No, no, like on the day you announced the live stream.

01:37:22   You announced I'm gonna live stream today,

01:37:24   and then I sent you an iMessage, didn't I?

01:37:27   - Look, Myke, I was having a hell of a day

01:37:31   making anything work. - No, this was before.

01:37:32   This was before, this was hours before,

01:37:34   this was when you announced you were gonna do it.

01:37:36   And I sent you a message.

01:37:38   - Okay, yeah, this thing about like,

01:37:40   Ecamm Live, powerful Mac streaming.

01:37:43   Yes, no, look, I understand that when I announced

01:37:46   that there was gonna be a director's commentary,

01:37:47   you sent me a thing about a brand new piece of software

01:37:50   that I immediately put out of my mind,

01:37:52   'cause I thought, you know what I'm not gonna do,

01:37:53   at the 11th hour here, swap out what I think is gonna be.

01:37:56   - This software is so easy to use.

01:37:58   I feel like this is the one I used and didn't like.

01:38:02   Do you like this?

01:38:03   - It only came out like eight months ago.

01:38:06   I've tried lots of things for the Mac.

01:38:10   This is the easiest Mac live streaming software

01:38:13   that I've used, yeah.

01:38:15   This is the one you should be using.

01:38:16   - Okay, I'm clicking--

01:38:17   - Or you should just get a PC and it's just the thing to do.

01:38:22   And you get Streamlabs and then you're fine.

01:38:24   But if you're not gonna do that,

01:38:26   this is what you should use.

01:38:27   Like me and Steven used it for a bunch of stuff leading up to the Podcastathon.

01:38:31   Okay.

01:38:32   Okay.

01:38:33   I've downloaded it.

01:38:34   It's on my desktop.

01:38:35   This is what you should use if you're going to do these again, which I think you will.

01:38:39   Cause I've, it seemed like it went really well and it's a good little

01:38:42   perk for your Patreon backers.

01:38:44   Look, I use Wirecasts and it only, it only took me an hour to close

01:38:50   to 90 minutes to get it to work.

01:38:51   You used one of the absolutely most complicated pieces of

01:38:56   software I've ever come across.

01:38:58   Okay, look, that's the one, the roulette wheel of me looking online to find software, like

01:39:05   that's what that landed on.

01:39:06   Yeah, Ecamm is a new kid on the block with this, so like it's not very well known.

01:39:11   I will give it a try because I could never quite figure out what it was, but there was

01:39:14   some audio button I would press in Wirecast that would start a self-feedback loop of the

01:39:19   audio that would immediately spiral into the maximum volume that someone's computer could

01:39:25   [laughter]

01:39:27   And that was, that was, like, that's not what I want to be doing.

01:39:32   Like, literally injuring the ears of the people who were, who were,

01:39:35   who are being very kind and are there for the pre-stream trying to help me set up the stream.

01:39:40   They are giving you both time and money.

01:39:44   [laughter]

01:39:45   Right? And then you're blowing out their eardrums.

01:39:47   It was bad, but there was a very dedicated group of people who were trying to help me fumble through

01:39:51   setting up a live stream. But doing something like a director's commentary is something that's been

01:40:00   on my mind for a while as a thing to do. And it's one of the reasons why when we talked a few months

01:40:08   ago about how I switched the Patreon model, this was one of the things in the back of my mind of...

01:40:19   Because, I mean, Patreon is a company that's been around for a while,

01:40:23   and when they started, you had the option of like, "Oh, per thing or per month?"

01:40:28   And those things were sort of treated equally, but as time has gone on,

01:40:33   the features and the way Patreon works are really all lean towards the monthly system.

01:40:41   There wasn't a good way to be able to do something like, "Oh hey, I have this video.

01:40:47   if you want to watch it, you can just pay the five dollars, watch the video, and then

01:40:53   cancel the next month's payment, right? Like, there wasn't... there was no way to do that under

01:40:58   the old system of, like, per thing. Yeah, because you would have had to get people to sign up

01:41:04   before you did the thing, so then when the thing happened, a payment would be triggered,

01:41:09   which is, like, a terrible way to... Yeah, it was really frustrating, and there are a number of

01:41:15   of things that I was thinking about with like, I'm fighting the system here and

01:41:20   it's causing me problems with just trying to think about stuff.

01:41:23   So the director's commentary had been on my mind for a long time.

01:41:27   And it's partly because we've discussed on the show.

01:41:30   It's hard sometimes to think about, you know, when you, when you have an audience

01:41:36   like, like we have with this show, you will have people ask for things that

01:41:42   don't necessarily make sense or you think you wouldn't actually like it if we gave it to you.

01:41:46   And that's what we've discussed many times with an unedited version of this show, for example.

01:41:50   Exactly. Yes, the people who support the show, they're like,

01:41:53   "Hey, I'd love an unedited version." And the answer is no, you wouldn't.

01:41:57   Right? You just don't want that.

01:41:58   The thing I was saying is you may enjoy it if you already enjoy the show, maybe,

01:42:02   but like this isn't the show you want.

01:42:04   Right.

01:42:05   One of the reasons you enjoy the show is because of how hard we edit it.

01:42:08   Like, please trust me on that one.

01:42:10   Yeah, always show a screenshot of like the hundreds and hundreds of edits you do.

01:42:13   Yeah, I will put a screenshot in the show notes of the edit of this episode,

01:42:18   and then you will see how much was taken out. So if you even at this point in the show,

01:42:21   you're like, "Oh, this is a good episode so far. It's because of everything I cut."

01:42:24   [laughs]

01:42:25   Yeah, yeah. It really is true. And so I've always had the same thing with the YouTube

01:42:32   channel where people are asking for stuff, things like, "Show us the deleted scenes."

01:42:36   And the way I make videos, if I have a deleted scene, it's because I've done something terribly wrong.

01:42:43   Like, it should never get to the state.

01:42:44   You should never have gotten to animation.

01:42:46   Yes, exactly. Like, it should never have gotten to the state where I recorded something and it was animated.

01:42:51   In the entire time I've done this, I've only ever once had a deleted scene,

01:42:57   which was from the Fable of the Dragon Tyrant,

01:43:00   where much later I realized there was a little section that could be cut and nothing would be lost.

01:43:05   But it's like that just shouldn't happen with the tightly animated videos.

01:43:10   And so people would ask for like deleted scenes or people would ask for a bunch of the behind the scenes stuff and

01:43:16   I always just like I had a hard time trying to think about what is a way that this makes sense to

01:43:24   show people.

01:43:26   So like people would ask sometimes for "Oh show us your notes on this thing"

01:43:31   Like I'd love to see more of the details that that went out.

01:43:34   It's like, it's not really a thing that makes sense to just show or like it totally loses all

01:43:42   of the context. So it was part of my previous summer when I was driving around in America,

01:43:48   that it dawned on me that something like a director's commentary would make sense. And

01:43:52   I was waiting to be able to change the business model so it could actually support that. And I

01:44:00   I was also waiting for what felt like the right video to start it with.

01:44:07   Tumbleweeds just happened to be the right video at the right time.

01:44:12   Like I love it as a topic, and it's a topic that is weirdly infinite.

01:44:19   Like you can just… there's so much detail that ended up being part of this, and I often

01:44:25   think of the natural discussion size or the natural discussion length for topics. And

01:44:34   so, you can make a five-minute video about tumbleweed. And if you make a five-minute

01:44:39   video about tumbleweed, then you have to limit what you talk about, but it also can spread

01:44:46   further because what people don't want is a university-length course on tumbleweed management,

01:44:56   right? People don't want to sit through all of that. But then there's, like, on this podcast,

01:45:02   we can talk about how is this video made? And that's sort of a longer conversation about

01:45:09   the production of the video or like, how did this come to be or why was I thinking about it in this

01:45:13   way and that's like a podcast's natural length of discussion. Or, maybe as I did, you can

01:45:21   go talk to experts and spend eight hours discussing tumbleweed with people. And that's a very

01:45:28   different kind of thing. And the director's commentary concept made me realize, "Oh, here

01:45:38   is a natural size of discussion that hits a bunch of bullet points.

01:45:46   Bullet point number one is it doesn't have to be a thing that takes up hours and hours

01:45:53   and hours of my time to prepare for because when I'm doing the discussion about the

01:45:58   behind the scenes production commentary of the video, I will have just finished thinking

01:46:05   about this for six to eight weeks in a row in a very intense way. So like, it is all in my head.

01:46:11   And for the people who are asking about more behind the scenes stuff,

01:46:18   it can have the details that don't make sense to talk about like on a podcast or to upload as a

01:46:27   separate video. So for example, Myke, I would not make you sit through on this show, "Hey,

01:46:35   let me run through my favorite highlights that I made in this 1890 Department of Agriculture

01:46:42   report on the situation in Tumbleweed out in the Midwest."

01:46:46   MATT: I think that conversation as well, it just doesn't work as well in this setting.

01:46:52   It does work better when there is a visual component too.

01:46:56   Yeah, it works better with a visual component and it just, it's this thing about different

01:47:03   sized discussions are better in different formats or better in different places.

01:47:09   And I just sort of felt like, okay, this is a thing that makes sense.

01:47:14   I think it kind of answers the question of what a lot of the people who crowdfund the

01:47:20   video are looking for.

01:47:22   Like, hey, tell me more about this.

01:47:24   Well, you've kind of opened yourself up to it.

01:47:27   Like, if you came to this episode and then we start talking about Tumbleweed in, like,

01:47:31   a lot of detail, it probably wasn't what you were expecting and maybe it'd be a bit

01:47:37   like, "I don't know why I'm being subjected to this conversation."

01:47:42   Yes, yeah.

01:47:43   Right?

01:47:44   Well, that's the other thing is that it's a very self-selecting audience of who wants

01:47:48   to listen to this much detail, right?

01:47:50   cortex is a much broader audience than the like, "Who really wants to know all the details?"

01:47:56   Like, it's a self-selection effect as well. It is a thing that had been on my mind. I've

01:48:00   been, again, with Year of Clarity feeling like a lot of stuff is coming together. I

01:48:04   was at the point where I had set it up so that it could make sense and it could work.

01:48:08   I'd also played around with streaming on my other channels and like, okay, I had an

01:48:13   idea of how to do this at least barely competently, so that came together and yeah, I think it

01:48:22   went well. It was very interesting to do. I'm still regarding it as experimental at

01:48:27   this point in time, but it's something that, at least for the animated videos, I think

01:48:34   I'm going to continue to do going forward. I don't think it makes sense for the live

01:48:39   action stuff because that's just way less dense, it's much less intense of a project.

01:48:47   But yeah, so anyway, it's just like us talking about our businesses and like, what can we

01:48:51   do and this was an experiment that is initially promising and that I think fills a space of

01:48:59   people are interested and it's a right discussion size for a certain kind of thing.

01:49:05   I think I found a bag for you.

01:49:07   Okay.

01:49:08   So, I heard about this on one of my favourite podcasts, Dubai Friday.

01:49:15   Company Tom Bihn.

01:49:16   Can I click the link?

01:49:17   Yeah, click the link.

01:49:18   They make a thing called the handy little thing pouch.

01:49:22   It's like the fertility bag that you always dreamed of, I think.

01:49:25   It's a little bag and you can put it on a sling or on a strap that goes around your

01:49:30   waist.

01:49:31   it in different sizes and it's got a bunch of pockets inside.

01:49:34   No. No? Okay, tell me why. Okay. I want to know why.

01:49:49   Too big. Too big? Yeah. Okay. I'm looking at the small one. It's too big. It's too...

01:49:57   I think it's a good product.

01:49:59   - The small one's too big?

01:50:00   - Yes, the small one's too big.

01:50:02   It's a good product.

01:50:03   I like this idea of a little bag

01:50:06   that you can have some vital items in for travel.

01:50:09   Like I might use that actually.

01:50:12   But if you're thinking this is the

01:50:15   fertility bag that I want, this is not the thing.

01:50:19   Like I want something, yeah,

01:50:22   that's just like an additional pocket, right?

01:50:25   that's small or I can put some additional things.

01:50:29   - It's basically a clip-on pocket

01:50:31   is what you're looking for.

01:50:32   - Kind of, yeah, I'm kind of looking for something

01:50:34   like a clip-on pocket, so this is too much.

01:50:37   I appreciate what you're trying to do here,

01:50:39   but I'm going to veto this as a satisfactory bag.

01:50:43   - All right, and keep looking out for you then.

01:50:45   - Yeah, thank you, I appreciate that.

01:50:47   - It did make me think about bags in general though,

01:50:49   like I'm thinking about bags again,

01:50:51   because I'm probably gonna need a daily bag now,

01:50:54   which I haven't needed in a long time.

01:50:56   - Why?

01:50:57   - For moving from home to studio.

01:51:00   - No, no.

01:51:01   - No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

01:51:02   There will be little things that I will wanna bring with me.

01:51:05   - What things? - Frequently.

01:51:05   Not every day.

01:51:06   Stuff like pens, coffee stuff, maybe food.

01:51:11   There might be a time where I will wanna take an iPad

01:51:15   there and back, like stuff like that.

01:51:19   Right, and it's not gonna be every day,

01:51:20   but it's gonna be frequently enough

01:51:21   that I'm thinking I will wanna have a more

01:51:24   daily bag again.

01:51:25   No, no, don't do this.

01:51:27   Don't do this, Myke.

01:51:27   Just double up, double up, double up everything that you can ever conceive of at the office.

01:51:31   Everything.

01:51:32   Right.

01:51:33   Okay.

01:51:33   Okay.

01:51:33   Sandwiches.

01:51:34   No, but sandwiches.

01:51:36   You can, you can bring in a little brown paper bag like you're going to school, but no pens.

01:51:42   No iPads.

01:51:43   No, you should have redundant equipment in mega studio so that you're packing.

01:51:49   That's crazy making like I'm just, no, no, don't do this.

01:51:53   Don't do this, Myke.

01:51:54   Just get redundant equipment, please.

01:51:56   I'm begging you.

01:51:57   (laughs)

01:51:58   I can't, I don't think I can live with the idea

01:52:00   that you have a whole mega studio

01:52:02   and then you have a bag full of junk

01:52:04   that you're bringing back and forth frequently.

01:52:07   So when you had the glass cube,

01:52:09   you had no bag that you took with you?

01:52:12   I had no, I had literally no bag.

01:52:16   And it was like being a leaf on the wind, right?

01:52:20   It was just freedom.

01:52:21   It was great.

01:52:22   everything I could conceive of, there was a redundant version of it in the glass cube.

01:52:28   This is how you should live life, Myke.

01:52:31   Don't start schlepping a bag, please.

01:52:35   For your own sake.

01:52:36   I see I found a bag that I like though.

01:52:40   No, okay.

01:52:41   Now, if you want to buy a bag because you like the bag, that's a totally different

01:52:45   thing.

01:52:46   Right, but this bag would only be useful to me in this situation because it's not big

01:52:49   enough I don't think like for like traveling. It's more like a daily bag.

01:52:54   Okay. But okay no I'm gonna I'm gonna take your advice and I'm not gonna buy the bag.

01:52:59   I'm looking at this thing it's a million times too big don't do this I think I think you

01:53:04   should seriously consider this as a constraint to focus you on realizing

01:53:10   what do you want to have in mega office. Alright so what I'm gonna do is I'm

01:53:16   I'm going to postpone bag buying.

01:53:18   Okay.

01:53:19   I'm not going to buy this bag now.

01:53:22   Right.

01:53:22   Like, and I will do what you are suggesting.

01:53:24   Like, cause I have bags right now, which I am using to take stuff to the office,

01:53:28   but then the most of the stuff is staying there or it's stuff that has to come back

01:53:32   home because I don't have it set up yet.

01:53:34   But I think I, I think I am on board with this idea that you're setting out, right.

01:53:39   Where like maybe the things that I'm mentioning, I could just have a tote bag,

01:53:45   right, to put my coffee cup and my sandwich box in, right?

01:53:49   Like, and that's like a different situation.

01:53:51   That's like basically a carrier bag.

01:53:53   Like it's not a gear bag of any kind, right?

01:53:57   You know, like a regular tote bag,

01:53:58   not this tote backpack that I'm showing you.

01:54:01   You know what I mean?

01:54:01   Like a canvas tote bag,

01:54:03   if I want to take a sandwich to the office.

01:54:05   - Okay, sandwich, yes.

01:54:07   Coffee cup, what do you mean by coffee cup?

01:54:09   - One of those travel coffee mugs.

01:54:11   Like I'm planning on making coffee at home before I leave

01:54:13   'cause I have really good equipment here.

01:54:16   - Okay. - Right?

01:54:17   And putting it in like a flask cup thing

01:54:19   and taking it with me to the office to have on the go.

01:54:23   This is like not necessarily a thing I'm gonna do,

01:54:25   but like a thing I'll get to sometimes.

01:54:28   - Okay, all right, all right.

01:54:29   I have to also just reframe my brain

01:54:32   for the way that you use coffee.

01:54:33   So you just wanna have coffee on your way to the office.

01:54:37   That's fine. - Maybe.

01:54:38   - That's fine. - Maybe.

01:54:39   Like that isn't necessarily something I'm gonna do,

01:54:41   but it might be something that I do sometimes.

01:54:43   Like if I'm in a rush.

01:54:44   - Right, but what you're not doing is you're not

01:54:46   bringing a cup, which is your favorite coffee cup

01:54:50   to the office to drink. - No, I will have a coffee cup

01:54:52   at the office.

01:54:53   - Okay, okay.

01:54:54   - Probably. - Right.

01:54:55   - Right, because I'm not-- - Yes, yes.

01:54:56   - No, no, no, like 'cause I'm not,

01:54:57   'cause there's also like, I might just go to the cafe

01:55:01   which is like next to the place, right?

01:55:03   Like just down the street. - Yeah, but what are you

01:55:04   gonna do when people come visit,

01:55:05   when they're at the hot desk and they're like,

01:55:07   "Oh, where's the coffee?"

01:55:08   - Oh, we're gonna have like glasses and water and stuff,

01:55:10   but like coffee, I don't know if we're gonna have,

01:55:12   We don't have a sink in the studio.

01:55:14   Who's going to, who's going to visit you if there's no coffee in your studio?

01:55:18   Not me.

01:55:19   There is a, I can just get you a coffee from the coffee shop.

01:55:21   How far is that coffee shop?

01:55:23   Like that's super close.

01:55:25   Like you would be there in 20 seconds.

01:55:26   Okay.

01:55:27   Maybe that's satisfying.

01:55:27   There's actually like three.

01:55:29   There's like lots of options, right?

01:55:31   It's like a, we're in a town here and we're in a city.

01:55:33   Okay.

01:55:34   Anyway, like I just haven't worked out the, if there's going to be an in studio

01:55:37   coffee solution yet, because it will require effort, right?

01:55:41   because we don't have a sink, so you'd have to go to the communal sink to deal with that.

01:55:45   And I just haven't worked out how or if that's gonna work.

01:55:50   - Then. - Alright. No bag.

01:55:52   - Okay. - Great.

01:55:53   - Phew! - For now.

01:55:55   - I'll take it. I'll take it. - Alright.

01:55:58   I feel like I've saved a life today. That's how relieved I feel.

01:56:01   Wow. Alright.

01:56:02   - Cortex Movie Club next time! - Movie Club!

01:56:05   We're gonna be watching Inside Bill's Brain.

01:56:08   This is a three-part series on Netflix.

01:56:11   We've watched the whole thing.

01:56:12   It's not going to just be one episode, all three episodes.

01:56:15   It's basically one big three hour documentary that they cut up into three

01:56:19   parts. It doesn't really need to be three episodes specifically, but it's

01:56:22   structured that way.

01:56:23   This is pretty relevant right now.

01:56:25   It's kind of funny. Bill Gates just stepped down from Microsoft's board to

01:56:30   focus on his philanthropy and it is mostly about his, well, it's kind of like

01:56:35   the documentary focuses on mostly the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, but

01:56:41   then looks back at his history and how it applies to the things that he's now doing

01:56:45   as a philanthropist. The reason that I, well you will understand the reasons when you've

01:56:50   watched this as to why I think this is relevant for the show, but like it does focus a lot

01:56:54   on the type of person Bill Gates is and as his leader and also how he thinks and works.

01:57:01   And this is now the second time that I've seen it because I watched it a few months

01:57:04   ago and I put it on the list because it was like felt so prime to talk about on the show.

01:57:11   So go and watch it. It's on Netflix. It's great and we're going to talk about it on

01:57:15   the next episode.