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Cortex

72: Adulting Complete

 

00:00:00   Grey, I have joined the Roomba lifestyle.

00:00:03   Hey! Oh good!

00:00:05   I feel like we've spoken about Roomba on this show.

00:00:09   I'm sure that we have had this conversation before.

00:00:12   I'm disappointed in you Myke. You don't remember?

00:00:14   That I was promoting the Roomba lifestyle a while back?

00:00:17   No, you see, I know I have spoken to you about Roomba.

00:00:21   I just can't remember if we have spoken about Roomba on Cortex.

00:00:26   - Right, this is the problem where what is in the show,

00:00:31   what is part of our two hour chit chat run up to the show

00:00:36   or one hour post show chit chat, right?

00:00:39   - Oh, I found it now.

00:00:40   - Which bits of those made it into the show, yes.

00:00:42   - It was episode 67.

00:00:45   - I talked about getting a Roomba

00:00:47   and I think in that conversation,

00:00:50   it eventually morphed into a metaphor for having employees.

00:00:54   - Oh yeah.

00:00:54   - This is how that conversation went.

00:00:55   - Yeah, I remember that, I was really uncomfortable with that.

00:00:59   - Myke, I don't know why you're uncomfortable

00:01:01   with a metaphor that treats employees

00:01:03   as though they are mindless automaton doing what you wish.

00:01:07   I don't understand why that would make you uncomfortable.

00:01:09   But that's how that conversation went.

00:01:11   But so I'm very happy that apparently that seeped

00:01:14   into your subconscious and you decided to get a Roomba.

00:01:19   - It's Prime Day, man.

00:01:20   It's 30% off on Prime Day.

00:01:23   - Oh, well, I mean, 30% off,

00:01:25   depending on what Roomba you got, that is a serious chunk of change off of a Roomba.

00:01:29   I think I got the same one as you, the 960?

00:01:32   Yeah, I think so.

00:01:33   That's the one that was in our show notes for that episode, right?

00:01:36   I've just looked at it now, the Roomba 960.

00:01:39   And it has an app and we can hook it into the Echo, which I really like,

00:01:43   so I can just be like, "Hey Echo, tell the Roomba to start cleaning."

00:01:47   And it goes like doo doo, and off it goes.

00:01:50   Out into the world.

00:01:51   - I don't have an Amazon Echo.

00:01:54   I don't have that in my house.

00:01:55   I do have the HomePod,

00:01:57   and unfortunately Roomba is not built in

00:02:00   with HomeKit support.

00:02:02   I did try to follow Jason Snell's instructions

00:02:06   about how to set up this HomeBridge thing,

00:02:08   and I got 99% of the way there

00:02:11   in that I had this IP address and password for the Roomba.

00:02:15   And I was like, but I was just about to go the final step,

00:02:18   and then I had one of those moments

00:02:20   where I always think it is so important to know yourself.

00:02:25   And I was thinking, I thought,

00:02:27   Gray, think about this for a moment.

00:02:30   You're setting up this system on a laptop in your closet

00:02:35   that's supposed to act as this homebridge setup thing

00:02:39   forever, like, are you going to maintain this?

00:02:41   Are you going to want to tinker around with this

00:02:44   when it inevitably doesn't quite work?

00:02:46   Is that really what's going to happen?

00:02:48   And I said to myself, "No, of course not.

00:02:50   I don't ever want to have to think about this again,

00:02:52   and I inevitably will have to think about it again."

00:02:55   So I stopped meters before the finish line

00:02:59   of trying to get it set up so that I could tell the HomePod

00:03:01   to make the Roomba go.

00:03:02   So unfortunately, I don't have voice control of my Roomba,

00:03:05   and there are certainly times when I would want that.

00:03:07   So I'm a little bit envious of your Alexa skill ability

00:03:12   with the Roomba, but I don't really trust Amazon

00:03:14   in my house that much, so there will be no Alexas here.

00:03:17   I don't want to get into that conversation today.

00:03:19   There is stuff you could do with IFTTT with the Roomba,

00:03:21   but that's still not gonna give you the voice access

00:03:24   that you require yet.

00:03:25   Who knows, right?

00:03:26   We'll talk about Siri shortcuts later.

00:03:28   Maybe if we're lucky, IFTTT will find a way

00:03:30   to work with Siri shortcuts,

00:03:32   and then you'll be able to do it.

00:03:34   - Yeah, I was poking around in IFTTT for a while,

00:03:36   and the main thing that I would want to do,

00:03:39   which it seemed like there's no way to do it,

00:03:40   is set up a rule where if I leave the house,

00:03:44   and my wife leaves the house,

00:03:47   then have the Roomba go.

00:03:49   It's like, oh, you want two conditions,

00:03:51   you can go straight to hell on if this, then that.

00:03:55   It's not if this and this, then that, no.

00:03:57   It's just if this, then that.

00:03:59   - You actually can do two conditions now

00:04:01   with this new tool that they have,

00:04:04   but I think it's still not gonna work

00:04:05   for two independent people.

00:04:07   I think that's too much.

00:04:08   - There's no way that's gonna happen.

00:04:09   - Can you even imagine the horrors that would occur

00:04:12   if you could trigger an action

00:04:14   based upon somebody else's location?

00:04:16   I don't think anything could possibly go wrong with that.

00:04:18   - No, that seems fine.

00:04:19   - It didn't stop me from sitting down

00:04:20   and thinking about it for a while thinking,

00:04:22   is there anything I can do

00:04:24   where my wife's change in location triggers something else

00:04:29   that then if this, then that can read?

00:04:33   As I was just kept wondering,

00:04:35   I kept trying to think that through

00:04:36   and there was nothing I could figure out

00:04:37   that wouldn't require some sort of action on my wife's part.

00:04:40   And then that defeats the whole purpose

00:04:42   of the pleasing automation of the Roomba.

00:04:45   And so I had to give up on that eventually.

00:04:47   And we just have a regular schedule for our Roomba

00:04:49   to go out and vacuum the flat.

00:04:51   - We haven't set up a schedule yet.

00:04:53   I think we're still kind of trying to work out

00:04:55   when's the best time.

00:04:56   So I'll tell you two things.

00:04:58   Actually, it's one thing that means both results.

00:05:02   I kind of think of the Roomba as like an animal.

00:05:06   It's like a little pet that we have at home.

00:05:08   - Yeah, of course.

00:05:10   Obviously.

00:05:11   Because it is unbearably cute, in my opinion, because it makes its little songs, makes its

00:05:17   little sounds that it does when it starts and when it ends. But also, it kind of bumps

00:05:22   into everything lightly. And I find that so hilarious as it's, you know, moving around

00:05:27   the house and it bumps into something and it moves around and it bumps into something

00:05:31   else. It's kind of that is also very cute to me. And then the same thing is both cute

00:05:36   and annoying. Our Roomba gets trapped in rooms because what it's doing is we open the doors

00:05:43   and we have door stops on the doors, right? It's finding the door, it's turning, and it's

00:05:48   cleaning along the edge of the door, taking the doorstop with it, closing the door.

00:05:53   20 minutes later, I'm like, where's the Roomba? Oh, the Roomba's been in the dark in the bathroom

00:05:59   for 20 minutes, thoroughly cleaning the bathroom is what it's been doing.

00:06:04   That's very sad.

00:06:05   So we're currently, we're still trying, we're trying to find some new doorstops that are

00:06:08   a little bit stronger, and I think we may have found what we were looking for.

00:06:12   We got this one on Amazon, but more testing must occur.

00:06:16   It is impossible not to anthropomorphize the Roomba, because it is, it gives off the impression

00:06:26   of trying really hard in the vacuuming.

00:06:32   That's the key thing.

00:06:33   You get this feeling like Roomba is really trying.

00:06:38   And he does a great job.

00:06:40   Not a perfect job, but you know, he has problems, he's very limited, he has no arms or crab-like

00:06:46   pincers with which to manipulate anything.

00:06:49   He's just a little circle.

00:06:50   But like boy is he really giving it his go.

00:06:54   And there's something about the motion of it, or even when the Roomba finds a spot that

00:06:59   that is unusually dirty the way it ramps up the vacuum.

00:07:02   It's like, "Oh yeah, I really gotta scrub this spot."

00:07:05   - We haven't come across that yet.

00:07:06   Like, it was in the app, it's like dirt events.

00:07:09   I'm like, "What is a dirt event?"

00:07:10   And I looked it up, I was like, "Oh."

00:07:12   So like, maybe if we dropped like a pack of rice

00:07:14   and then just sent the Roomba out to clean,

00:07:16   it would like, "Oh, okay, he's gonna get the rice for us."

00:07:19   - Yeah, or for, let's say, as a theoretical example,

00:07:22   a dog makes a big mess with its food bowl, right?

00:07:25   Like, that's a dirt event.

00:07:27   And like, that's-- - Okay.

00:07:28   Then the Roomba's like, "Okay, there's some serious business

00:07:30   over here, like there's tons of food crumbs

00:07:33   all over the place."

00:07:34   It'll ramp up the little motor,

00:07:35   and it just feels like it's really giving it

00:07:38   some elbow grease at that spot of what it's trying to clean.

00:07:41   And yes, it is just adorable

00:07:43   and impossible not to anthropomorphize.

00:07:45   And the thing that really gets me,

00:07:47   and also I cannot believe how well it works.

00:07:51   Okay, so the way we set up our Roomba is we have a couch

00:07:57   that is elevated in our main room,

00:07:59   and there's enough space under the couch for the Roomba to go.

00:08:02   So I decided this is where the Roomba is going to live,

00:08:05   is under the couch in the main room.

00:08:08   So this way, it's out of sight all the time.

00:08:10   And then it just pops out from under the couch

00:08:13   and goes about its business.

00:08:15   And it never doesn't make me feel like Jean-Baptiste

00:08:19   de Manuel Zorg when this little robot

00:08:21   just pops out from nowhere and starts cleaning the floor.

00:08:24   Like, every time, it just feels that way.

00:08:26   But anyway, as the Roomba goes and does its business,

00:08:29   it'll end up, say, on the way other side of the house

00:08:33   through a zigzag pattern, out one room, down the hall,

00:08:36   and in another room.

00:08:37   And when it either decides that the job is done,

00:08:40   or as happens, it needs to go back to charge up

00:08:43   to finish the job, I cannot believe how well

00:08:47   it can turn around and decide,

00:08:50   "Oh, I've gotta go find my charger.

00:08:52   "I've gotta go back to the charger."

00:08:54   And when I see it clearly doing its little beeline

00:08:57   down the hallway to then turn into the main room

00:08:59   and go right under the couch, I swear to God,

00:09:02   it's the cutest thing I've ever seen.

00:09:03   - It's like, "I'm ready!

00:09:05   "Start from that now!"

00:09:06   And then off he goes.

00:09:08   - Yeah, it's adorable.

00:09:10   Roombas, they're almost worth it

00:09:13   because even if they didn't vacuum

00:09:15   just for how cute they are.

00:09:16   - The first time we set it off,

00:09:17   we were both just chasing it.

00:09:19   (laughing)

00:09:20   Right?

00:09:21   Like, "Where's he gonna go?

00:09:22   "What's he gonna do?"

00:09:23   The one thing I wished it could do, and I find this a real shame that you can't do this,

00:09:28   and I'm really hoping, I know this isn't the case, but I tell you this, and you're like,

00:09:31   "Oh, of course you can," is say, "Remember, go clean the kitchen."

00:09:34   Mmm.

00:09:36   I really wished that it was possible, because it generates maps, and I feel like it would

00:09:42   be amazing if I could take the map that it generates, zone off each area, and then ask

00:09:49   to go clean an area because sometimes I just need it to clean the kitchen. It's all I need

00:09:55   and like you can pick it up and put it down but that feels so dumb right because I have this robot

00:10:00   right so I don't pick up and put down the robot I may as well at that point go and get the vacuum

00:10:05   that we have and just go over it myself. Yeah that to me was in our first conversation we had about

00:10:10   the Roomba was a thing I was pushing up against the way I was thinking people people Roomba wrong

00:10:15   that they're treating it like it's a little vacuum cleaner.

00:10:18   And I totally agree.

00:10:19   If you find yourself in a position

00:10:20   where you're picking up the Roomba,

00:10:22   and then you are taking out those little cylinders

00:10:25   that you can use to block it off with infrared,

00:10:28   and you're blocking off,

00:10:30   you should just vacuum at that point.

00:10:32   That's not how the Roomba is supposed to be used.

00:10:35   You're doing it, you're getting all the disadvantages

00:10:38   of the Roomba isn't a perfect vacuum cleaner,

00:10:40   and none of the advantages of it is an autonomous

00:10:44   vacuum cleaner if you're like setting it up in a room.

00:10:47   That feature never occurred to me,

00:10:48   but that would be really cool if on those little maps,

00:10:51   'cause it clearly learns the basic gist

00:10:54   of what your house looks like over time.

00:10:56   - I feel like it's not though.

00:10:58   I feel like we think it is.

00:11:00   Every single time the Roomba is learning a new route,

00:11:04   like every time it goes out, it's just going again,

00:11:07   because it doesn't ever change,

00:11:10   'cause I feel like if it learned,

00:11:11   it would stop bumping into stuff, but it doesn't.

00:11:13   Like every single time all it's ever trying to do is go as far as it can

00:11:18   forward and it just does it.

00:11:20   But we think that it's learning because the map is the same every time,

00:11:23   but that's because our houses don't change.

00:11:25   Like because if it was learning anything, then you would be able to say,

00:11:29   like open up a map, press on it and the Roomba would go there.

00:11:33   I think it doesn't have that technology.

00:11:34   All it's doing is relying on its sensors to tell it,

00:11:37   I can't go any further because we've done this, right? Like on its first pass,

00:11:42   It bumps into something and goes past it.

00:11:44   If you move that thing on its second pass,

00:11:45   it will clean that area.

00:11:47   'Cause it didn't actually learn,

00:11:49   it just didn't bump into anything that time.

00:11:51   - Maybe you're right.

00:11:52   I feel like it's just the impressiveness

00:11:54   of the return to base from a far away location

00:11:57   always surprises me.

00:11:58   And I guess that has fooled me into thinking

00:12:01   it knows the house better than it really does.

00:12:05   - I think all it does is it knows the route

00:12:06   it's just taken since it left.

00:12:09   - Yeah, maybe.

00:12:10   I know I have on occasion had to move it and it can still find its way back, but I think

00:12:16   you're right.

00:12:17   I think listening to you describe it, it is just learning the house anew every time.

00:12:20   And then it's just making a best guess on this run about where must it be now and then

00:12:27   therefore where must the base be, even if it's been moved in between those two.

00:12:31   We do use the little kind of beacon-y thing that it has that shoots out this infrared

00:12:37   to stop it going in a certain area because it kept pulling out or just bumping into our

00:12:43   internet cable and at a certain point we'd be like "the internet's down" "oh Roomba"

00:12:50   "you did it again" so we have to use that thing around where our modem is because otherwise

00:12:54   it just bumps into it and pulls it like just does enough doesn't pull the cable out of

00:12:58   the wall but it was doing just enough that it would trip the internet every time.

00:13:02   I've had to use one of those beacons because they have a mode which is great, which is

00:13:08   probably what you did where it puts out like a little cone of protection, like it's a

00:13:12   don't come within whatever it is, three feet of this beacon.

00:13:16   And I've had to use that actually at the entrance to the recording monolith that I'm

00:13:22   in right now because...

00:13:24   - The voice.

00:13:25   - No, no, no.

00:13:26   Not because of the reason that you would think, because I would be very happy to have the

00:13:31   the Roomba come into the recording monolith and give it a little sweep.

00:13:35   Now, the reason I have to use it is because there is a doggo who, when the Roomba is active,

00:13:43   uses the monolith as a safe space.

00:13:46   So, I put one of the beacons at the entrance to the recording monolith so that the sanctity

00:13:53   of the safe space is not broken by the entrance of a Roomba.

00:13:57   And it's sort of adorable to see it come up to this black recording area and then be like,

00:14:02   "Oop, I'm not allowed in there!" and seeing a pair of doggo eyes looking out from the darkness

00:14:08   at the Roomba cautiously. I completely understand why an animal would be scared of the Roomba,

00:14:13   because typically moving things, you know, you can... animals can put up a front against them

00:14:20   and it might learn, right? To not go near it, but the Roomba will never stop. Yeah, the Roomba will

00:14:26   go until it bumps in, and I have seen more than one dog and Roomba collision.

00:14:31   It will keep advancing on the animal!

00:14:35   If I could put in a feature request, it would be "do image recognition on what is a pet

00:14:40   with its little front-facing camera", because yes, I have seen more than- like, the Roomba

00:14:44   is pretty gentle. There are not any worries about actual injury, unless you had like a

00:14:50   newborn kitten or something, like then I would keep an eye on it. But for, let's say, a

00:14:55   pretty solid, smallish dog. The Roomba is just going to bump up against them, but it

00:15:00   still feels like, "Oh, poor doggo, this Roomba is not going to learn that you aren't

00:15:06   a table or anything." It just never is.

00:15:09   The Roomba is like the real alpha. Because it just will never quit. It will never quit.

00:15:16   Yeah, that's why you have to use a little beacon to create a safe space from the Roomba.

00:15:22   I'm glad you got it.

00:15:24   I feel like when we recorded that first show,

00:15:26   I just had inarticulate joy at having a Roomba.

00:15:30   It's partly 'cause to me, I don't know.

00:15:33   There's something about the Roomba that,

00:15:38   like so few technologies,

00:15:40   I feel like it just really delivers on the promise

00:15:45   of automation and a better future in this unambiguous way.

00:15:50   And that's, it's one of the reasons that I just, I just love it so much.

00:15:55   Cause it's like, it just cleans the house.

00:15:58   I don't have to be involved in any way.

00:16:02   Like it, you know, it just, it just does what it does.

00:16:04   The house always to my surprise is obviously visually

00:16:09   cleaner after the Roomba has run.

00:16:11   Like you just don't notice the little bits of dust and dirt that get on

00:16:15   the floor, but they're there.

00:16:16   And it's just great.

00:16:18   Like, I don't know.

00:16:18   There's something about it that that is just like,

00:16:21   it does what it does, it gets totally out of the way,

00:16:25   there's never really any problems with it,

00:16:28   and it just works.

00:16:29   Whereas, like lots of other,

00:16:32   particularly house automation stuff,

00:16:33   because I've been trying to really up my game

00:16:36   with house automation, and a lot of it is like,

00:16:41   it's great, and I like it,

00:16:43   and it's better than the alternative,

00:16:45   but it flakes out enough to be annoying,

00:16:49   or you run into these weird things

00:16:51   like the lights in the house

00:16:53   clearly seem to want to listen to instructions

00:16:55   from my wife less than instructions from me.

00:16:58   - What I like about it and why I think it's better

00:17:00   and more ideal is automation

00:17:03   than a lot of the stuff we use is,

00:17:05   the Roomba can actually be performing a productive task

00:17:10   when I am not around.

00:17:12   where pretty much every other home automation,

00:17:16   we call home automation product,

00:17:18   is performing tasks that I could perform,

00:17:22   but just slightly more conveniently, right?

00:17:25   Like I turn on my lights in my voice

00:17:27   rather than pressing the switch,

00:17:28   or my lights can be any color,

00:17:30   or I can unlock my door using my phone rather than a key.

00:17:34   Like it's not really doing automation,

00:17:37   it's like home convenience, like technology convenience,

00:17:40   but the Roomba is true automation

00:17:42   in that I can set a schedule for it to go,

00:17:45   but the other thing is it is performing a task

00:17:48   that is a time saving because it can happen

00:17:52   when I'm not there and reduces my requirement

00:17:55   to perform an action.

00:17:57   I don't need to clean the house today.

00:17:59   The Roomba can do it when I'm doing something else

00:18:02   somewhere else.

00:18:03   That's what I like about it.

00:18:05   - Yeah, that's a good point.

00:18:07   'Cause I was just trying to think about

00:18:08   what other technologies make me feel this way.

00:18:11   And actually the one that was just popping up in my head is,

00:18:14   it's not a home automation thing,

00:18:16   but using Hazel on the Mac.

00:18:19   And like I was mentioning,

00:18:21   I have this laptop that's just set up in the closet.

00:18:23   And one of the main things it does

00:18:25   is I set up all my Hazel rules on there.

00:18:29   So Hazel is watching folders in Dropbox

00:18:32   for things to happen and then like renaming

00:18:34   and sorting stuff for me.

00:18:35   And that's the same feeling like,

00:18:38   oh, I can take a couple of gigabytes of video,

00:18:41   drop them in this folder and I know that I walk away

00:18:45   and as it sinks over the next hour,

00:18:46   like Hazel will just take care of renaming and sorting

00:18:50   and basically tagging these things for me in a way

00:18:53   and I just never have to think about it.

00:18:54   And when I come back, it's just all done

00:18:56   in this finalized folder.

00:18:58   So yeah, maybe that's what it is.

00:18:59   It's the like, it's the automation that does something

00:19:03   when I'm not there and without any interaction from me

00:19:07   that feels like it's truly delivering

00:19:09   on what you want automation to be and how it improves your life.

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00:20:37   they include some personal moments that are great for me. I just got married I'm

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00:20:44   photos but I also have the moment when Tim Cook is standing on stage with our

00:20:48   connected artwork. I have some pictures of some live shows. I put on my wall

00:20:53   things that are really important to me and that is one of the things that I

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00:21:30   of this show and relay FM.

00:21:32   Myke.

00:21:35   Yep.

00:21:35   I have some follow up for the show about my favorite thing.

00:21:42   The USBC spec.

00:21:48   I just, you know, I had this whole thing where I was trying to set up my charging situation

00:21:54   and I thought I would use USB-C. And I eventually gave up and I thought, "No, I'm just going

00:21:58   to go back to USB-A and I have a nice little charging setup now."

00:22:03   And I thought I kind of obviated the need for USB-C in my life, but I just, just two

00:22:12   two days ago went through perhaps the most frustrating USB-C experience a human could

00:22:21   go through.

00:22:23   So let me let me paint this picture.

00:22:27   There are four devices that I want to connect to each other.

00:22:33   I have device number one, a MacBook Pro device.

00:22:38   Place number two, an external LG monitor, which runs on USB-C.

00:22:44   The Apple one? Like the one that Apple worked with OG with? That one?

00:22:47   Yeah, that Apple, yeah, that Apple LG one.

00:22:50   I feel like that's important to state, right, that like, it is the one that's supposed to

00:22:54   work.

00:22:55   Right, yes. It's the one that's supposed to work. Oh boy, it is supposed to work, isn't

00:23:01   it?

00:23:02   Mm-hmm.

00:23:03   have

00:23:27   sound what's that sound like why did you buy that I don't understand what that's for well

00:23:33   I mean if you're gonna be no driving a virtual truck across a landscape an external GPU is

00:23:42   a thing that helps with your sluggish frame rate how much was how much is that black magic

00:23:47   thing I don't I don't remember I think they were selling them in like a two for one deal

00:23:52   or something I don't know I wasn't paying attention a two for one deal who's doing a

00:23:57   Two for one deal.

00:23:58   I don't know.

00:24:00   I split it with some other guy.

00:24:01   I don't know.

00:24:02   It was super cheap.

00:24:03   No, it totally wasn't.

00:24:04   But listen, that's not the point of the story, Myke.

00:24:06   From my point of view, it's just I prefer to buy a PC.

00:24:08   I can really help you.

00:24:09   It would be amazing.

00:24:10   No, no, no.

00:24:11   Look, look, look, look.

00:24:12   Okay, okay.

00:24:13   Sorry, sorry, sorry.

00:24:14   The point of the story is I want to be a Mac gaming streamer.

00:24:16   It's impossible.

00:24:17   I've got to have a sweet, cool setup.

00:24:20   I tried.

00:24:21   It is absolutely impossible.

00:24:23   But no, listen.

00:24:24   with 12 frames per second and if I can crank that up to 20 it's like a 60%

00:24:29   improvement that's all I'm looking for.

00:24:30   Right but then you're still only two-thirds of the bare minimum that people want you to be.

00:24:34   I know, yeah I know what, look I know where people want me to be I'm just like I'm just

00:24:38   trying to deal with the fact that I'm not gonna happen to a whole other

00:24:41   operator, I'm not gonna do this. So anyway listen that's not the point of the story

00:24:44   the point of the story is I'm setting up my home office this is the home office

00:24:49   in my apartment and I thought like, okay,

00:24:54   I have a bunch of pieces of stuff,

00:24:55   I'm gonna put it together, I'm also gonna get this eGPU,

00:24:58   like it can help with speeding up the computer a bit

00:25:00   for some things when I'm at home,

00:25:02   including gaming, blah, blah, blah.

00:25:04   Okay, so that's four things that I wanna connect.

00:25:07   Laptop, monitor, eGPU, hard drive.

00:25:11   I have next to me a box full of USB-C wires.

00:25:16   I spent an entire afternoon going through

00:25:21   this crazy debugging process of trying to figure out

00:25:27   which (beep) wire needs to be plugged into which device

00:25:33   so that all four of them work at maximum capacity.

00:25:38   And the whole thing that set off this crazy chain

00:25:43   is that the eGPU came with this teeny tiny USB-C wire.

00:25:48   It's like six inches long.

00:25:50   I was like, you have got to be kidding me, Blackmagic.

00:25:52   Like this eGPU was going on the floor.

00:25:55   Like I don't need it to sit on my desk,

00:25:56   so I need a longer wire.

00:25:58   - It's 0.5 meters is the cable that it comes with.

00:26:01   - Yeah, like I said, it's basically six inches.

00:26:03   It's comical.

00:26:04   - I have to say, while it's not six inches,

00:26:06   half a meter is too small.

00:26:08   It's too small.

00:26:08   - It's ridiculous.

00:26:10   This was the problem.

00:26:12   So it's like, I need an additional wire.

00:26:14   I've got a box full of wires.

00:26:17   And then somehow I lost track of which wire

00:26:20   was the wire that works with the LG monitor

00:26:23   as I'm going through these things.

00:26:25   And I cannot tell you what a nightmare this was.

00:26:29   This reminded me of, I used to have this job

00:26:33   back in college, which was great.

00:26:36   As far as jobs go, it was great,

00:26:38   but it could be really frustrating.

00:26:39   But it was the job where I learned the concept of

00:26:43   how to debug a system,

00:26:45   which is the piece that doesn't work.

00:26:47   Because my university physics department

00:26:50   had a literal warehouse full of broken computers,

00:26:53   and they're like, "Hey, guess what?

00:26:54   We would like you to make working computers

00:26:56   out of all of these broken computers."

00:26:57   Right, and I was like, "Okay, great.

00:26:59   I'll just sit here for a summer

00:27:00   and slowly try to figure out which parts really don't work

00:27:03   and what burned out and put together

00:27:05   some kind of Franken-system for the department to use

00:27:08   out of whatever happens to work in these things.

00:27:11   But it was really great having to like hundreds of times

00:27:14   go through that process of like,

00:27:15   make sure you only change one thing at a time

00:27:18   and don't be overconfident about all the things

00:27:21   that you can slap together.

00:27:22   So I was doing that, moving these USB-C wires around.

00:27:26   And like I had an Amazon Now order where I'm like,

00:27:30   I need a guy to come to my house right now

00:27:32   with a super expensive USB-C cable

00:27:35   that claims it can do everything

00:27:37   to plug into the Blackmagic thing on the floor

00:27:39   into my MacBook, and it's like this cable arrives,

00:27:42   and I plug it in, and it's like,

00:27:43   somehow this cable doesn't work,

00:27:45   even though it's like 80 freaking pounds.

00:27:48   And if I'm plugging the wrong wires into the monitor,

00:27:52   the USB-C monitor, it's like, it would turn on the LG monitor

00:27:55   but I'd look at it and I'd go, it seems a little blurry.

00:27:58   And then I'm like debugging it, and it's like, oh right,

00:28:00   if I don't have just the right wire plugged in,

00:28:03   the resolution is not as high as it's going to be otherwise,

00:28:07   even though it looks like everything's fine.

00:28:08   I'm like, I cannot tell you how maddening

00:28:11   and frustrating this was,

00:28:13   where I'm going through these boxes

00:28:14   and trying to like guess how many capabilities

00:28:17   the USB-C wire has based on how thick it is, right?

00:28:21   Like, ooh, this one feels like a real thick wire.

00:28:24   Maybe this one is Thunderbolt 3 compatible.

00:28:26   Maybe it isn't cool. - There you go, okay.

00:28:27   - I don't know. - I was waiting

00:28:28   for you to say it.

00:28:29   Right, 'cause the problem you have found yourself in,

00:28:32   and you know this now, right,

00:28:33   but like I'm just summing it up for our listeners.

00:28:36   Sum it up for the listeners.

00:28:37   - You need Thunderbolt 3 cables,

00:28:40   which are USB-C cables that have some additional

00:28:43   capabilities because that's what you require

00:28:46   to drive all this powerful graphics stuff.

00:28:48   Like the cable that came with your Blackmagic

00:28:52   was a Thunderbolt 3 USB-C cable.

00:28:55   You had a box of USB-C cables,

00:28:57   'cause that's what comes with everything else.

00:28:59   USB-C cables do not have all of the power

00:29:02   or the chips in the cable that's required

00:29:04   to do everything that Thunderbolt 3 needs,

00:29:07   which means, very unfortunately, the cable fits.

00:29:11   It will kind of work, which makes it worse, I think,

00:29:14   than if it didn't work at all.

00:29:16   For a lot of things, it will kind of work,

00:29:18   but something will feel kind of broken.

00:29:21   And Thunderbolt 3 cables are very expensive.

00:29:25   - Yeah, well, the extra frustrating thing here is,

00:29:28   I'm perfectly aware that there's the data transfer bit of it

00:29:32   but there's also the power bit of it.

00:29:34   So at one point, I thought, oh, I have the system working,

00:29:38   but my laptop is just slowly draining over time.

00:29:41   So it's like, oh, okay, whatever wire I have plugged in now

00:29:45   is not quite able to really deliver the 80 watts necessary

00:29:50   for the MacBook or whatever it is.

00:29:52   It was just incredibly frustrating.

00:29:55   I've said it before, but I cannot believe

00:30:01   that these wires are not labeled to specify

00:30:05   what the goddamn wire can do.

00:30:08   Like, tell me how much data can it transfer

00:30:11   and how much power can it transfer?

00:30:14   And the madness of looking at a monitor

00:30:17   and trying to eyeball, am I getting all the pixels

00:30:21   I'm supposed to, like, does this look like 5,000 pixels

00:30:24   or does it not look like 5,000 pixels?

00:30:26   And then you start losing your mind as you're like,

00:30:28   boy, this looks blurry, but maybe this is

00:30:31   what 5,000 pixels look like when my eyeball is one inch away

00:30:34   from the screen because I'm trying to discern

00:30:36   like what the difference is and doing like read-write tests

00:30:39   on a hard drive to see how fast is it actually writing

00:30:42   to this time machine thing.

00:30:43   It was just crazy making, partly it was my own fault

00:30:47   because I did know that in that box of wires,

00:30:49   I'm like, I know some of these wires have Thunderbolt 3.

00:30:52   Like I know they're in here,

00:30:54   I just don't know which ones they are.

00:30:56   It was absolutely maddening.

00:31:00   And the thing that I did not know,

00:31:02   which made me feel like I really resent a choice

00:31:06   that you have made here, Apple, is I assumed

00:31:09   that the Apple cables that I buy for like 100 pounds,

00:31:13   surely I can always rely on those

00:31:17   to be what I need them to be.

00:31:18   And spoiler alert, no, you can't,

00:31:20   even though they're incredibly expensive.

00:31:22   You can't know that like,

00:31:24   oh, as long as I have an Apple USB-C wire, I'm always good.

00:31:27   The answer is no, you're not.

00:31:29   - So some of their USB-C cables are just USB-C cables.

00:31:33   They are not Thunderbolt 3 cables,

00:31:34   which doesn't make any sense considering.

00:31:37   Thunderbolt started off as something that Apple did.

00:31:40   I mean, I think now they work with Intel

00:31:42   and it's open source, but nobody else is using it really.

00:31:45   Everybody else just uses USB-C

00:31:47   and doesn't do everything that Apple wants to try and do.

00:31:51   - Yeah, it is crazy making, but it's like USB-C,

00:31:54   you got me in the mobile situation

00:31:58   when I was out in the world trying to figure out

00:32:00   how to charge all my devices, and you got me again

00:32:03   when I was just sitting here trying to set up an office.

00:32:06   And it's like, I could not believe that I found myself

00:32:09   with this pile of wires next to me,

00:32:11   this promised standard of USB-C thinking,

00:32:15   I would genuinely prefer if the connector shape

00:32:18   was different so that I wouldn't have to waste my time

00:32:21   trying to figure out which of these wires is gonna work.

00:32:24   - That's the way. - Yeah.

00:32:25   It's not convenient to have it be the same shape

00:32:28   if it's effectively a different cable.

00:32:31   It's not helpful.

00:32:32   - What I decided is that the only way this makes sense,

00:32:35   with all the craziness we've had

00:32:38   across all the various different types of cables,

00:32:40   is that the head of the USB-C consortium is the devil.

00:32:45   Like, that's the only thing that makes any sense,

00:32:48   because it's like, "Oh, we're gonna give you a cable."

00:32:50   That, like, the USB-A, it's externally symmetrical,

00:32:54   but internally asymmetrical.

00:32:56   Oh, we're gonna give you micro-USB,

00:32:57   the worst feeling connector in the world

00:33:00   that you can shove into and break the connector very easily.

00:33:03   And they're like, "Oh, we're gonna fix all these problems

00:33:05   with USB-C, but ha ha ha, the wires are all different

00:33:09   and they're not labeled."

00:33:10   So it's like, yeah, that's my conclusion here,

00:33:14   is the devil designs USB-C cables,

00:33:17   and we're never gonna get one

00:33:19   that actually solves all of the problems

00:33:22   because they're intentionally designed to be infuriating in invisible ways.

00:33:28   I feel really bad that this is all happening during the Year of Water.

00:33:32   I know, like, that's, but this is, like, I'm gonna have a really nice home office

00:33:41   set up and in the end it's like I have a box of cables that I want to set on fire.

00:33:45   Like, that was the result of that.

00:33:47   You have gotten to it though, right?

00:33:48   You have it all set now, I'm sure.

00:33:51   I do have it all set, but every day I look at my monitor

00:33:54   and I squint my eyes at it and I think,

00:33:56   am I getting all the pixels?

00:33:57   I don't think I'm getting all the pixels.

00:33:59   But I can't figure out a way to tell

00:34:02   if I'm just getting 80% of the pixels

00:34:04   or if I'm getting 100% of the pixels.

00:34:06   - I have no help for you.

00:34:11   I don't know how you find that out.

00:34:13   You'll probably never know.

00:34:15   - Yeah, all I think of is like,

00:34:17   this monitor, which is super expensive

00:34:19   and it's supposed to be super crisp,

00:34:21   always looks kind of blurry and I don't know if that's the monitor or if that's just the fact that I'm sitting too close to it.

00:34:27   Yeah, if you consider it might be you.

00:34:29   It might be me.

00:34:33   Burn in hell forever, USB-C.

00:34:35   You're useless and I hate you.

00:34:37   Well, we're talking about yearly themes or at least mentioning them.

00:34:41   I feel like I have completed the year of adulting.

00:34:45   I am now a married man.

00:34:46   Congratulations, Myke.

00:34:48   A lot's happened since the last time we spoke.

00:34:49   Yeah, a lot's happened.

00:34:50   Yeah, I'm now married. I feel like that that is enough for the year of adulting.

00:34:55   I feel like I don't have to do anything more to have completed it.

00:34:59   There is a bonus stage.

00:35:00   I was going to say, wasn't there one more?

00:35:01   Wasn't there one more thing on the year of adulting?

00:35:03   I can. It's getting a car, but I consider that a bonus stage because that

00:35:07   that doesn't need to happen this year.

00:35:10   That can happen within the next year.

00:35:11   But like, you know, if I do it great, if I don't, it's not important.

00:35:15   I don't really consider it, to be honest, in all of that.

00:35:18   Like the year of adulting was mostly focused around the wedding,

00:35:21   which has now occurred.

00:35:22   So I have done that.

00:35:24   And it was fantastic.

00:35:25   The wedding was amazing.

00:35:26   We had a great day.

00:35:27   Everything went perfectly.

00:35:28   Our honeymoon was wonderful.

00:35:30   We're very, very happy.

00:35:31   We're both very happy.

00:35:32   Do you feel like more of an adult?

00:35:35   100%.

00:35:37   Really?

00:35:37   Interesting.

00:35:38   Yeah, the wedding ring, man.

00:35:40   Have you gotten used to it yet?

00:35:41   Yeah, I'm very used to it.

00:35:42   Because I sleep in it.

00:35:43   So I never take it off.

00:35:45   And I figured all I needed to do was do that.

00:35:47   and I would get used to it.

00:35:49   You know, I play with it a lot, you know,

00:35:51   like it's like my new fidget toy, which is great.

00:35:54   Take it off, put it on other fingers,

00:35:56   spin it around to do all sorts of stuff.

00:35:58   - Put it on other fingers, oh.

00:35:59   - Just for funsies, just for funsies.

00:36:01   Just, you know, and that all works.

00:36:03   I haven't got it stuck yet, so that's good.

00:36:05   - Right.

00:36:06   - And I've noticed that the skin on my ring finger

00:36:11   is slightly shinier than the other skin.

00:36:14   - Yep, that's what happens, yep.

00:36:15   - Because that's kind of wearing down

00:36:16   to a fine callus is my expectation there.

00:36:19   - I think of it that the ring is polishing

00:36:23   the section of your hand directly beneath it.

00:36:25   That's what it is.

00:36:27   - Sure, we'll think of it that way.

00:36:29   - That's why it gets shinier.

00:36:31   - And I have an irrational fear of sinks now.

00:36:36   - Why?

00:36:38   - 'Cause I am convinced I'm gonna lose my wedding ring.

00:36:42   - Down the sink?

00:36:43   Like this is a 1950s sitcom kind of thing?

00:36:46   So it's probably better to say,

00:36:47   instead of saying I have a fear of sinks,

00:36:49   that was probably the wrong way to put it,

00:36:50   I am very aware of plug holes now.

00:36:53   - Okay, all right.

00:36:55   - If I'm washing my hands somewhere that I don't know,

00:36:58   I will find myself checking the plug

00:37:01   to make sure that this is not a situation

00:37:03   where I could lose the ring if I'm not paying attention.

00:37:06   Because I find when you use soap,

00:37:08   if things get a bit slippier,

00:37:10   and I'm still pretty aware of the ring

00:37:13   even though I'm used to it,

00:37:14   So like I feel it moving when it moves, right?

00:37:17   Which I expect will probably be a thing

00:37:18   that I will pay less attention to over time.

00:37:21   So I'm constantly convinced that I'm gonna lose it.

00:37:24   So to try and make, you know,

00:37:26   and I feel like one of the easiest places to lose it

00:37:29   is when my hands are covered in slippery, slippery soap.

00:37:33   So that is making me check for plug holes

00:37:37   in places that I visit.

00:37:38   - Well, I mean, two things here.

00:37:40   One, that's why sinks have that little bend in the bottom,

00:37:43   is to catch stuff in them.

00:37:44   - Yeah, but like, if I'm in some public bathroom somewhere.

00:37:49   - Yeah, you just reach under the sink

00:37:50   and you just unscrew that little bend

00:37:53   and you reach right in there.

00:37:55   - And public bathrooms have it completely accessible.

00:37:59   Right, like what about on a plane?

00:38:01   - Yeah, you just pull off the panel directly below the sink

00:38:06   and then the air marshal comes in and tazes you in the back

00:38:10   and then you explain that your ring fell down the sink.

00:38:14   That's how that works on the airplane.

00:38:15   - Then they're all very understanding and helpful.

00:38:18   - Yeah, yeah, you'll get your ring back

00:38:20   after they release you from custody.

00:38:22   That's so, you don't really have to worry about that.

00:38:25   But the second thing is,

00:38:27   I would recommend to married couples

00:38:31   that you have a little discussion with your partner

00:38:35   about the concept that it is perfectly fine

00:38:38   to lose a wedding ring.

00:38:40   - Yeah, yeah. - This is not a portent

00:38:45   of the inevitable breakup of your relationship

00:38:48   because that's crazy thinking.

00:38:50   - But it's a bit soon, right?

00:38:52   Again, we know we're gonna lose them.

00:38:54   Eventually somebody's gonna lose them,

00:38:56   especially because I keep finding Adina's wedding ring

00:38:58   around the house.

00:38:59   So she takes it off, she puts it down,

00:39:02   and her ring is like a fly could blow on it

00:39:06   and it would take off forever.

00:39:07   It is the smallest, thinnest piece of metal you've ever seen in your life, right?

00:39:12   Or for example, a Roomba could eat it.

00:39:15   Oh, without a shadow of a doubt.

00:39:16   And we'd never find it in the Roomba staff's compartment because it would never even make it there.

00:39:20   It would get stuck in one of the mechanisms somewhere and it would just become part of the Roomba.

00:39:25   So I fully, I know that she will lose hers.

00:39:29   And again, this is nothing on her, it's more just the ring is so small, right, that it will get lost.

00:39:35   And I know at some point I will lose mine,

00:39:37   but neither of us want it to happen within the first month.

00:39:40   You know?

00:39:41   You wanna leave it a little bit longer than that, I think.

00:39:45   - Yeah, I just, I think it is worth saying out loud

00:39:50   this concept, that it's perfectly fine to lose the ring,

00:39:54   and you expect that you're gonna lose the ring

00:39:56   at some point.

00:39:56   It's worth as a couple saying that to each other.

00:39:59   - Okay.

00:40:00   - So that's all I'm saying, right?

00:40:02   Because you lay the groundwork.

00:40:04   soon as Idina comes home today, I'll look deeply into her eyes and say, "I'm going

00:40:08   to lose this ring."

00:40:09   B: Right, it's an inevitability.

00:40:11   H: But I also have a second ring, because my ring I bought from Amazon for £30. Because

00:40:19   I got tungsten, which is incredibly cheap, it turns out, if you don't go to a jewelry

00:40:26   store because tungsten is not a precious metal, so there's no reason to pay large amounts

00:40:31   of money for it. So I bought two from Amazon because I wasn't sure of the exact color that

00:40:36   I wanted but I liked them both so I have a second ring right here. Adina's ring was custom

00:40:41   made so it's a little bit trickier to replace.

00:40:43   Yeah, yeah, that is a little bit trickier to replace. But yeah, no, Tung-Sin is the

00:40:48   best for wedding rings. Looks the coolest.

00:40:51   Makes loud noises.

00:40:52   I was gonna say, as you know, makes loud noises when you're a teacher and you need to slam

00:40:58   limit on the desk to capture attention.

00:41:01   And it's perfect, great material, A++.

00:41:03   - Yeah, I decided I wanted a tungsten ring

00:41:06   when me and you very early on in our working lunches

00:41:10   met for lunch one day and you were explaining a point

00:41:12   whilst banging your hand on the desk

00:41:14   and it was making a very loud noise

00:41:16   and it made your point land extremely firmly

00:41:18   and I decided at that point I wanted one

00:41:20   that made that noise too.

00:41:22   - Yeah, I still think this is a story

00:41:23   that you have made up in your head.

00:41:24   - No, see you think you don't do this,

00:41:26   you still do this every now and then you still do this.

00:41:29   - I don't think that I do this,

00:41:30   but nonetheless I recommend tungsten rings.

00:41:33   They're very cool.

00:41:34   And I'm glad you have one and you will eventually lose it,

00:41:36   but that's okay, that's fine.

00:41:38   Possibly down to sink, maybe on an airplane.

00:41:40   - Yes, but the year of adulting was not my only yearly theme.

00:41:44   I also had the year of branching out.

00:41:47   And one of the things in the year of branching out

00:41:49   is a project that I've been talking about a bunch,

00:41:51   which was more fictional in nature.

00:41:53   - You keep teasing the people, Myke.

00:41:55   - Right, well this is where I'm gonna tell people

00:41:57   to stop asking me because it's not happening this year.

00:42:00   - Oh, okay, okay.

00:42:02   - So what I had previously said was,

00:42:04   if it didn't happen this year,

00:42:06   it wasn't gonna happen at all, right?

00:42:07   That was the thing that I'd said.

00:42:09   But what that was predicated on was the idea

00:42:12   that I would be actively working on it

00:42:13   for long periods of time.

00:42:15   That is not the case.

00:42:16   I have not put any work other than thinking

00:42:21   into this project for months.

00:42:25   So I am officially giving this project back burner status.

00:42:29   So I'm removing the deadline that I'd set for myself,

00:42:34   because the reason I set that deadline was

00:42:36   I thought I would actively work on it,

00:42:38   and if when actively working on it,

00:42:40   I couldn't get it to where I wanted it to be,

00:42:43   then that meant it was time to get rid of it.

00:42:45   But I haven't been working on it

00:42:47   because I've just had too many other things in my life

00:42:50   that have needed my attention.

00:42:52   So I'm deciding to make it long-term

00:42:56   and it may change in a million ways,

00:42:58   but I don't wanna say goodbye to it yet

00:43:02   because I don't feel like I've given it the attention

00:43:04   that I need to give it.

00:43:05   So I'm gonna put it on the back burner for the time being.

00:43:09   - Yeah, these kind of big new projects

00:43:13   are hard to find, it's hard to figure out,

00:43:18   like where does this fit in your working life?

00:43:22   especially when you're self-employed and you're juggling a whole bunch of other stuff.

00:43:27   Maybe even, say, getting married during that year.

00:43:30   I feel like I need almost an external Eureka moment for this,

00:43:35   which I think can happen. It requires a person or a thing.

00:43:39   I know what you're saying here is like,

00:43:40   maybe there is something that comes along that acts as a catalyst.

00:43:45   But the other thing is, because I know some details about this project behind the scenes,

00:43:52   Like this is also the kind of thing that,

00:43:55   I can't conceive of how this would actually work

00:44:00   in your schedule and with your business.

00:44:02   - Yes, exactly.

00:44:03   - But that almost would require like a sabbatical,

00:44:08   for you to say, oh, I'm just gonna take two months

00:44:11   and this is gonna be the thing that I'm gonna focus on.

00:44:13   But that's, in your situation,

00:44:15   that is just a wildly unrealistic thing to do.

00:44:17   - I also don't work that way.

00:44:19   I don't work that way.

00:44:20   Like if I took the time off to work on the project, I would come back having taken the

00:44:24   time off and not gotten far enough along with the project.

00:44:27   I work better under pressure, not better under freedom.

00:44:33   Really the only way this is ever going to work for me is if I get it to the point where

00:44:38   I'm comfortable enough to begin and then begin.

00:44:41   And then the pressure of having begun the project like publicly is what pushes it through

00:44:46   to its completion.

00:44:48   I'm not near that beginning point yet. Like I am, I work way better under deadlines and

00:44:54   crises than I do under free-wheeling time. Right? And that's just how I am. I thrive

00:45:02   in pressure situations, even though, I think I said this on the show before, right? My

00:45:08   My general temperament as a person does not like high pressure stress situations, but

00:45:18   I also work better in them.

00:45:19   It doesn't make any sense to me.

00:45:22   But that's just how I am.

00:45:23   I'm a weird person, right?

00:45:24   But that's just how I am.

00:45:26   I don't think you're alone in that temperament.

00:45:29   There are plenty of people who work better under pressure, know they work better under

00:45:33   pressure, but would never describe themselves as feeling, "Oh boy, I really enjoy this

00:45:39   time when I'm under pressure."

00:45:40   That I don't think you are alone in that.

00:45:44   And again, like so much in life is your ability to know yourself.

00:45:50   And I think it's good that you have decided that this is going to be a back burner

00:45:55   project, and I think it's also good that you're publicly announcing that this shift

00:46:01   has occurred.

00:46:02   I feel like that gives you a clean slate to be open to something like a catalyst at some

00:46:09   point in the future, as opposed to having that niggling feeling in the background like,

00:46:13   "Oh, I should be working on this thing that I said I was going to be working on, and the

00:46:16   year is beginning to come to a close now, and I don't have anything to show for it,

00:46:20   and do I try to rush it, and blah blah blah blah."

00:46:22   So I think this is a good move to publicly announce the backburner status of the project.

00:46:29   And as soon as I did it, as soon as I thought to myself, "This is what's going to happen,"

00:46:34   I had an idea for how I can help push it along when I'm ready.

00:46:37   >> Right.

00:46:38   Oh, there you go.

00:46:39   >> Right?

00:46:40   I think giving myself the freedom to make it less ambitious allowed me to think of some

00:46:44   ways that I think I can get it closer to what I want it to be, but also at the same time

00:46:50   I'm not rushing it.

00:46:51   So it's...

00:46:53   But anyway, so that's kind of where I am with that.

00:46:56   of the reason is because I am currently working on a new project which is not podcast related

00:47:00   it is podcast adjacent and I'm more excited about that right now than I am about the fiction

00:47:09   thing and I also believe it has a better chance of succeeding and that the the success conditions

00:47:18   are way clearer.

00:47:20   Do I know what that project is Myke?

00:47:22   Yes you do know what that project is.

00:47:23   Oh okay cool.

00:47:24   I'll be quiet.

00:47:25   - Right, you good now?

00:47:26   You know what it is?

00:47:27   - Yeah, no, I know.

00:47:28   - Are you following?

00:47:29   Okay.

00:47:29   - Yeah, no, I'm picking up what you're putting down here,

00:47:31   Myke.

00:47:32   - Yeah, and it also, you know, as with all good projects,

00:47:37   gives me more than, like, what that project will provide

00:47:41   is more than just its output.

00:47:43   This will all become clear at some point in the future.

00:47:46   But, so that is now, if I'm thinking of,

00:47:49   'cause this fiction thing was always like in my mind,

00:47:53   Like it is to the side of what I do, right?

00:47:58   So it's like, it's related,

00:47:59   but it's almost like my side project.

00:48:02   And this new, this other thing is the same.

00:48:05   It is like a side project,

00:48:07   but still very tied into what I do every day.

00:48:09   So that's kind of where I'm,

00:48:11   so the rest of the year of branching out

00:48:16   will include me seeing if this thing

00:48:19   is gonna go anywhere.

00:48:21   - Yeah.

00:48:22   - Right there what you're saying is always the thing about

00:48:24   juggling projects which is hard.

00:48:30   You as the individual are constantly having to reassess

00:48:34   the projects and decide what the priority

00:48:37   of these things are.

00:48:38   Something like the fiction project can be,

00:48:45   that's a project that in particular can be very grand

00:48:49   in your mind, as we've discussed before,

00:48:52   this idea that you have this Venus de Milo in your head,

00:48:55   to what it can possibly be,

00:48:56   which can end up being quite intimidating.

00:48:59   Maybe it's good to take a step back from that,

00:49:02   and then you have another project

00:49:05   which comes along in your mind of like,

00:49:06   oh, this one is clearly more actionable

00:49:10   and has a potentially clearer or more immediate upside

00:49:15   than another project.

00:49:17   you're always having to constantly reassess these things

00:49:20   and think like, where do these projects fit

00:49:22   in the balance of how much time you actually have in a day

00:49:26   to move these various things forward?

00:49:30   And you don't have an infinite amount of time in the day

00:49:34   to move all of the projects forward at once.

00:49:36   You actually have a terrifyingly limited amount of time

00:49:39   to move projects forward, so.

00:49:40   - And nor do I even want to.

00:49:42   I don't want to spend all of the working time

00:49:45   I have available working anyway.

00:49:47   That's not my ideal outcome.

00:49:50   Like I want to be somewhere in the middle.

00:49:53   Like I still want to be able to have the freedom to give myself free time rather

00:49:59   than fill every possible moment with work.

00:50:03   Oh yeah.

00:50:04   Yeah.

00:50:04   I think we've, we've discussed that, that many times, but it is, it's always worth

00:50:08   saying is that like having to, having to block off time that's, that's not

00:50:15   and how do you think about that?

00:50:18   When I was saying about juggling the projects,

00:50:20   I was just thinking about that in terms of

00:50:22   the number of hours for work that you have in a day

00:50:25   that are like high quality work,

00:50:28   and like what can you actually move forward in that time,

00:50:30   like outside of the,

00:50:32   and you also need to be a person who has free time

00:50:35   and the ability to do things,

00:50:36   and even just the concept of

00:50:39   if all of your work time is blocked off,

00:50:43   that means you are also closed off

00:50:45   from any future or different projects.

00:50:48   Like that there's something optimal in being unoptimized

00:50:53   to have the flexibility to say like,

00:50:56   oh, perhaps something catalyzes the fiction project.

00:51:01   And then you have this feeling like,

00:51:03   oh, I really know what I want to do with this

00:51:04   and I want to work on it.

00:51:05   But if you've already optimized all of your working time,

00:51:10   like you have no slack in the system

00:51:12   to take on this additional thing if it ever comes up.

00:51:15   So yeah, it's like maximizing hours is a foolish goal

00:51:20   that is often just self-defeating in the long run.

00:51:25   I think this is good.

00:51:26   I think it's a good move, Myke.

00:51:27   And my strong feeling with the yearly themes is

00:51:32   they don't have to be a year.

00:51:34   It's just, that's just a phrase that we use,

00:51:36   but a year, it can be two years.

00:51:39   It can be a lifetime.

00:51:40   They're themes.

00:51:41   They're themes that follow along with you.

00:51:43   - I just don't think that I want my 2019 theme

00:51:48   to also be the year of branching out.

00:51:50   - No, no, it can become a sub-theme,

00:51:53   like a tectonic plate being sublimated

00:51:56   under the one that's coming over it.

00:51:58   It can be underneath, under the surface there.

00:52:00   - The year of backburners.

00:52:02   - Yeah, I feel like that sounds

00:52:05   like a very uninspiring year.

00:52:07   - Everything goes on the backburner for a year.

00:52:09   (laughing)

00:52:10   These four burners, no more.

00:52:13   Back burners only.

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00:54:47   - Myke, we mentioned that you got married.

00:54:50   You went on your honeymoon.

00:54:53   I'm sure you did very many lovely things in Hawaii,

00:54:57   but the thing that I would like to know about for this show

00:55:02   is how did that email system of yours end up working out?

00:55:07   How did the wheel of email treat you in Hawaii?

00:55:13   Was it a success? Was it a total failure?

00:55:16   I'm kind of hoping that you just blew off email the whole time,

00:55:19   but I don't know what to expect of Myke on his honeymoon

00:55:24   and email.

00:55:25   - You know I didn't blow it off for the whole time.

00:55:29   You know that.

00:55:30   - I was hoping, did you really do email?

00:55:34   - Yeah, of course I did.

00:55:35   - Oh, I was really kind of hoping

00:55:36   that you might've gotten to Hawaii

00:55:38   and it would just be like, no email.

00:55:39   - No, see we started this wrong.

00:55:41   We started this wrong because now we're starting

00:55:44   on a download because this is a positive.

00:55:46   This is it.

00:55:47   I consider my email experience to be a resounding success, but now we're starting off of like,

00:55:54   "Oh no, you did it.

00:55:56   I'm so upset."

00:55:57   No, no, no, no.

00:55:58   It was an incredible success.

00:56:00   I worked significantly.

00:56:02   What matters is it was a success for you, not a success for me.

00:56:06   I was just hoping you would have succeeded in the way that I would have wanted to succeed.

00:56:10   No, that's the madness.

00:56:11   I don't even know how you could succeed because you decided to just stop answering email

00:56:16   randomly, right? So like, you know, the success in your mind would be like negative email.

00:56:22   Like, I don't know how it would even occur.

00:56:24   Okay, so tell me what happened.

00:56:28   It was a resounding success. I worked less than I thought I would. If I did 10 minutes a day on

00:56:35   average, I would have been surprised.

00:56:37   Oh, wow, that's great.

00:56:39   It was, I did so little email, I couldn't believe it really, honestly, like how little I actually

00:56:45   had to do. There was one day where I did extra work. This was because I sprained my ankle

00:56:52   and kind of had to stay in bed the whole day. Everything's fine. Nothing was ruined. I just

00:56:56   lost one day. But I actually made a choice to do this because I figured, well, I have

00:57:01   this day, I may as well make my return home easier by picking up some admin work now.

00:57:08   Right. Right. So I don't have to deal with that like home horror, you know, of all these

00:57:14   things that you have to take care of that you haven't done.

00:57:16   So there was one day where I sat out on the balcony and sent some invoices, you know,

00:57:21   and it was perfectly lovely.

00:57:24   I have nothing but good things to say about Spark's email sharing functions.

00:57:28   Oh, interesting.

00:57:29   Okay.

00:57:30   I feel like I really sung its praises on our last episode in talking about why I felt I

00:57:36   could do this, and it worked absolutely perfectly for the intended purpose.

00:57:41   Oh, that's very interesting.

00:57:42   Yeah, because you were really selling it and it's been on my mind as a possible solution

00:57:48   for a few things.

00:57:49   So I'm very interested to hear that it went as well as you were hoping it would.

00:57:54   Yeah, I realized that there was something that I was thinking about doing, which I haven't

00:57:59   yet done and I'm going to do as soon as we're finished today, which is because I'm on their

00:58:02   free plan because there's so few people in the team, there's only two of us, that there

00:58:08   is a free plan that includes it.

00:58:09   I am going to pay for the paid plan now,

00:58:13   even though I don't need to,

00:58:14   because I love the service so much,

00:58:16   I wanna do everything I can to make sure that it remains.

00:58:20   Did you see that Newton email is going away?

00:58:23   - No, no, I didn't see that.

00:58:25   - It's one of the, it's one app,

00:58:25   it used to be called Cloud Magic, now it's called Newton.

00:58:28   - Oh, it was Cloud, right, that's right, Cloud Magic.

00:58:30   That's how I remember it.

00:58:31   - Yeah, the worst, just the worst.

00:58:32   They're shutting down.

00:58:33   They don't really go into detail

00:58:35   other than saying that they believe that in today's world,

00:58:39   charging for emails ultimately unsustainable because there are huge providers that give

00:58:44   it away for free. Which I agree with, which is why I'm going to give Spark some money

00:58:49   because the service is so, so good. So for anybody that needs a recap, in my application

00:58:57   Spark, which is on all of Apple's platforms, it has a new feature where it allows you to

00:59:02   share email with people in a team. So you can take an email message, share it with somebody

00:59:07   and it shows up in their inbox as if it was sent to them, then they can reply to it. It's

00:59:11   wonderful. So what I would get is I'd be getting emails from people, I would share them, and

00:59:17   then my assistant would either deal with them or she would provide me the information that

00:59:20   I needed within a chat, which is contained within the email message that only the two

00:59:25   of us ever see. Wonderful. And it worked fantastically. I was able to send a bunch of stuff when I

00:59:32   woke up, then my assistant would do her things when she woke up, because she's on the other

00:59:36   of the world and then before I would go to bed probably I would just action whatever

00:59:41   needed to be actioned. If I did 10 minutes of work a day I would be surprised. It was

00:59:47   so simple. I mean most of the stuff was just like an email would come in, I would assign

00:59:52   it to her as in the idea of now it's yours to deal with. And I mean we do this anyway

00:59:58   but I figure I don't recognise how much time it saves or aggravation it saves when I'm

01:00:04   also just doing it as part of my daily work, right?

01:00:08   Where like I'm just sending stuff over,

01:00:09   then I'm replying to something,

01:00:10   sending something over, replying to something.

01:00:12   But instead when I'm just opening it up

01:00:14   and basically sending everything over,

01:00:16   I realize kind of the impact that it has

01:00:18   when I also don't have my usual daily tasks to do.

01:00:21   So really, really amazing.

01:00:24   I loved it.

01:00:25   It's a fantastic system.

01:00:27   Luckily, there are many services available

01:00:33   where this kind of stuff happens.

01:00:35   I really like the way that Spark does it.

01:00:37   And I like that it's in an application that I understand how to use.

01:00:41   But if it did had to go away someday like this is

01:00:44   this is not a completely unique thing that they created.

01:00:47   Right. The idea of sharing email like this.

01:00:49   But it is probably the most accessible

01:00:52   for the price that I've found on the market today.

01:00:56   And the features are really good, too.

01:00:58   So that's really good.

01:01:00   I don't mean to put the expectations

01:01:03   of how I would want to spend my time on you.

01:01:05   So I'm very happy that you got your email done

01:01:08   in a super minimal time way.

01:01:10   I'm very happy for you.

01:01:11   If there's a nice place to send some invoices from,

01:01:16   a porch in Hawaii seems like it's a pretty good spot.

01:01:19   - It's about as good as it gets.

01:01:20   - Just do that.

01:01:20   (laughs)

01:01:23   It's not a bad place to put your feet up and say,

01:01:27   "I'm gonna collect some money today.

01:01:28   Let me send out some invoices.

01:01:30   (laughs)

01:01:31   - Or it's one of those things like, look where I am,

01:01:33   I really need to collect some money today.

01:01:35   - Yeah, that's...

01:01:36   Oh, is Hawaii not incredibly cheap?

01:01:40   Is it an expensive location in the middle of nowhere,

01:01:44   in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?

01:01:46   I'm sure it's very cheap to ship things over there,

01:01:49   including people.

01:01:50   So I've been in a little bit of a consolidation phase

01:01:56   with some of my apps.

01:01:58   - Year of order.

01:01:59   - Yeah, a little bit.

01:02:00   We have mentioned on the show many times

01:02:02   like using different apps for different things.

01:02:06   And there are a couple of points of frustration for me

01:02:10   where I've been using a bunch of different notes apps,

01:02:13   for example, to try to keep track of different stuff.

01:02:16   And this is one area where I'm giving something a try.

01:02:21   I don't know how well this is going to work for me,

01:02:25   but I'm attempting to consolidate all of my notes

01:02:30   into the Notes app and to actually use the Notes app

01:02:35   in the way that Apple clearly wants you to use it,

01:02:38   which is to keep notes and to keep lists of things.

01:02:42   Because I found myself having just too many

01:02:46   different little places where I was like,

01:02:47   "Oh, these kinds of notes go over here,

01:02:49   and those kinds of notes go over there."

01:02:51   And keeping that distinction became less important to me

01:02:56   as I found myself using the iPad less.

01:03:00   So I tried using a bunch of different note systems

01:03:03   for different things and eventually I thought,

01:03:05   you know what, I'm just gonna try actually putting it

01:03:08   all in notes.

01:03:09   And this is one of the areas in which I'm consolidating

01:03:14   some stuff.

01:03:15   And one of the things that actually put me over the edge

01:03:18   for this is I've installed the Mojave beta

01:03:22   on a couple of my computers.

01:03:25   And I totally love that in Mojave in the dark mode,

01:03:30   the Notes app has this black paper now,

01:03:33   which I find kind of hilarious

01:03:35   that they're still keeping the paper themes.

01:03:36   - I think it's absolutely ridiculous.

01:03:39   - I think it's less ridiculous

01:03:40   because I'm the person who commissioned black paper texture

01:03:45   when I had all of those papers made for me

01:03:48   from my iPad. - Oh, so there's a detail

01:03:50   about this paper that you've promised to release.

01:03:52   (laughing)

01:03:55   - The black paper was one of them,

01:03:56   it's like, "Ooh, I want night mode paper."

01:03:59   And it seemed totally ridiculous to me at the time,

01:04:02   but I thought, "Well, while I'm having this done, why not?

01:04:04   Maybe there's a time in which I want to write white

01:04:07   on a black piece of paper."

01:04:09   Never used it, but you know,

01:04:10   it was there just as an option in case.

01:04:13   And now I think it's hilarious that it's there in notes.

01:04:17   But I always kind of hated on the, like,

01:04:18   I hate the bright white, and so like all of my notes,

01:04:22   it was required to have a dark background.

01:04:24   - Yeah, yeah. - I just didn't want

01:04:25   to look at that stuff. - I wanted dark mode

01:04:26   for notes, I just want them to get rid

01:04:28   of the stupid texture.

01:04:29   (laughing)

01:04:31   - I think the fact that the texture has made it

01:04:33   into black paper indicates that that is never going away.

01:04:35   - It's not going away, yeah, someone had to make it.

01:04:38   - That is, if they were gonna transition things,

01:04:40   they would have transitioned out of it at this point.

01:04:42   But no, that black paper is gonna be there forever.

01:04:45   But so anyway, that's one of the areas

01:04:48   where I'm trying to have fewer places to put things.

01:04:53   And so I'm just trying to use that Notes app.

01:04:56   And so I like, I consolidated out a whole bunch of stuff.

01:05:00   And I don't know if that's gonna work in the long run,

01:05:03   but I don't know, for the past few years,

01:05:05   I've been hearing everybody talk about

01:05:06   how fantastic Notes is and how it's super great.

01:05:08   And I'm the only person who uses it in this disposable way.

01:05:13   So I decided to give that a shot

01:05:15   as a thing that is being consolidated.

01:05:18   But the more exciting consolidation news,

01:05:24   I have consolidated down my many to-do managers

01:05:29   to one to-do manager.

01:05:34   There can be only one,

01:05:38   And the one that has survived is OmniFocus 3.

01:05:43   So now when people see screenshots of my phone,

01:05:47   they will no longer be able to freak out

01:05:49   about why are there four to-do apps on there.

01:05:51   There is now only one to-do app.

01:05:54   And I've been using OmniFocus 3 as my sole place

01:05:57   to keep track of to-dos and projects

01:05:59   since the OmniFocus 3 beta came out.

01:06:04   And I totally love it.

01:06:07   I just absolutely super duper love OmniFocus 3.

01:06:12   And I think if you're someone who's thinking

01:06:17   about trying OmniFocus,

01:06:19   I think this is a really good time to give them a shot

01:06:24   because a bunch of the things that I've complained about

01:06:26   in the past, sort of these holdovers

01:06:29   from the getting things done system,

01:06:31   almost all of them have now been excised from OmniFocus.

01:06:37   and it's much more like a to-do app

01:06:42   that is free from those constraints

01:06:45   and like 10 million times more flexible than it used to be.

01:06:50   So yeah, I'm keeping everything in one spot

01:06:54   in OmniFocus 3 and it's amazing, like.

01:06:57   - Can you give me some examples of why you like it so much?

01:07:00   - Okay, the biggest thing that makes the biggest difference

01:07:06   is they now let you assign tags to every action

01:07:11   in every project.

01:07:13   So before they had this getting things done holdover,

01:07:17   this idea of a context,

01:07:19   and you could only have one context associated with a task,

01:07:24   which was dumb and it was confusing to users

01:07:26   and it was a strange thing and who cares, it's gone now.

01:07:29   When you can put an arbitrary number of tags on any task,

01:07:35   task, it then allows you to filter and sort through those tasks in any way that you want.

01:07:45   And so in addition to those tags, OmniFocus allows you to write essentially an arbitrary

01:07:54   if and or statement that applies across all of those tags.

01:07:59   So you can say like, I want to see all of my tasks that have a due date and are in this folder, or have this tag, but not this tag, right?

01:08:12   And show me just those things.

01:08:14   And like, this is exactly what I have wanted out of a task manager for forever.

01:08:21   And that it's one of the reasons why like, I've been spreading my tasks across different things for years.

01:08:28   because I have so many different kinds of things

01:08:32   that I want to keep track of.

01:08:35   And I find like the number one frustrating thing for me

01:08:39   in any task manager is a task manager

01:08:42   that shows me something that I can't

01:08:45   or don't want to act upon at this moment.

01:08:48   Like I always want to just see what can I do now?

01:08:53   Don't show me stuff that's gonna happen later

01:08:56   or like things where I need to be somewhere else.

01:08:57   I don't wanna see any of that.

01:08:59   I only wanna see the stuff that's now.

01:09:01   And in order to make that a reality,

01:09:03   like a task manager has to be able to

01:09:06   filter to a really precise degree,

01:09:10   and it has to be able to exclude stuff.

01:09:13   And that's what the new version of OmniFocus does.

01:09:16   And that is what is amazing to me, as I can say.

01:09:19   Like, show me just this kind of thing

01:09:23   and ignore absolutely everything else.

01:09:26   As an example, one of the kinds of tasks that I have

01:09:30   are like the little checklist that I have

01:09:33   when I wake up in the morning

01:09:34   and before I go to bed at night,

01:09:36   what I think of as like the boot up and the shutdown things.

01:09:40   Like those are just a bunch of little checklists

01:09:42   of like here's what you do

01:09:42   when you wake up in the morning

01:09:43   and here's what you do at the end of the evening.

01:09:46   And like I don't want to see

01:09:51   the evening shutdown tasks all day long, right?

01:09:56   Like I want to be able to hide those

01:09:58   until it's actually eight o'clock.

01:10:00   And now I'm going to start winding down the rest of the day.

01:10:04   And that's the kind of thing that in the new version

01:10:07   of OmniFocus is super easy to do, to be like,

01:10:09   show me all the work stuff,

01:10:11   but then everything that's tagged as evening shutdown,

01:10:13   like hide that.

01:10:14   I don't want to see that when I'm in working mode.

01:10:16   I'll see that later, but I don't want to see that now.

01:10:20   - Right, so I assume you can take a search

01:10:22   and save it behind UI in the app?

01:10:26   - Yes, that's correct.

01:10:27   So they call them perspectives.

01:10:29   They have these little drag and drop bubbles

01:10:31   that allow you to say like, and or not.

01:10:34   And you can save any one of those searches as a perspective

01:10:39   and you can just tap on it and then it will like

01:10:41   bring up whatever that saved searches.

01:10:44   And it's just, it's incredibly powerful

01:10:46   and they've put in just so many different ways

01:10:49   that you can sort or filter through the different tasks.

01:10:53   It's really absolutely fantastic.

01:10:56   I just love it.

01:10:57   Except for the one thing that I've always complained about,

01:11:01   which is this crazy time zone thing.

01:11:02   - No.

01:11:04   - But I have been promised by OmniFocus that that is coming,

01:11:09   that is going to be fixed in the relatively near future.

01:11:13   So I'm gonna be super happy about that,

01:11:16   but I'm also holding OmniFocus to that promise.

01:11:18   (laughs)

01:11:19   - I'll say if when they fix that,

01:11:21   that's when I might look at it again.

01:11:23   I mean, this is not, you know, I'm not holding you to hostage on the group like

01:11:27   that.

01:11:27   No, that's the hostage star there, Myke.

01:11:29   That's what you're doing.

01:11:30   You know, like, oh no, no, no.

01:11:32   OmniFocus is incredible.

01:11:34   It's, you know, it's, it's overpowered for me and because, but I like everything

01:11:39   that it has, but missing that one feature is it's a really big feature to me that

01:11:43   when I go abroad, cause I travel, when I travel, I travel across the world.

01:11:47   Like the time zone differences are so huge.

01:11:50   Yeah.

01:11:50   I just, and I never want my tasks to go off

01:11:55   in the local time of home.

01:11:56   I know some people do that, but I never do.

01:11:58   I always want my tasks to go off in the local time

01:12:01   of wherever I am, because for 99% of my tasks,

01:12:05   that works perfectly.

01:12:07   I'm good.

01:12:08   So if they add that feature in,

01:12:12   and I'm pleased to hear that they will,

01:12:13   then I will be able to give it a college try again,

01:12:17   because the problem is it doesn't matter how good

01:12:20   the app is, when I'm traveling,

01:12:23   that is such an annoyance for me.

01:12:25   I have to change all of the times of my tasks.

01:12:28   Any tasks I have when I'm away will trigger

01:12:30   at the wrong time when I get back home again.

01:12:33   That is a nightmare.

01:12:34   If I'm in California and I set a task for 2 p.m.

01:12:40   in three weeks time, it's gonna happen

01:12:44   like 10 p.m. at night when I get back home again.

01:12:46   That doesn't make any sense to me

01:12:48   because I don't think about time in that way.

01:12:52   I think about time as wherever I am.

01:12:54   It's just how I perceive it.

01:12:56   - And this again is, I think this is again a side effect

01:12:58   of like the self-employed person timeframe

01:13:02   that like your timeframe follows you where you go.

01:13:05   You don't have the London office,

01:13:08   which is waiting for you to deliver a thing to them

01:13:11   at 5 p.m. on Friday in London, right?

01:13:14   Where it's like, that's what OmniFocus

01:13:16   is kind of optimizing for,

01:13:17   like that idea that there's a canonical time and place

01:13:19   that you're always referencing.

01:13:21   And if you're self-employed and you're self-employed

01:13:23   and you travel, like you don't care at all.

01:13:25   - I think as well, if you are self-employed and working

01:13:28   and the majority of people that need you

01:13:30   are in the time zones you're traveling to.

01:13:32   - Yeah, that's true, yeah.

01:13:33   But just to give you an indication of how much I love

01:13:38   the new tagging and sorting features of OmniFocus

01:13:41   and how much I think it has improved the app,

01:13:44   I was willing to put up with that time zone problem

01:13:49   this summer when I traveled, let's see if I can remember,

01:13:55   but I went from London to the East Coast to the West Coast,

01:14:00   back to the East Coast, back to the West Coast,

01:14:05   to Central Time to the East Coast again,

01:14:10   then to Europe time, then back to London.

01:14:13   Like that's, if I'm remembering it off the top of my head,

01:14:16   that's what my travel looked like this past summer.

01:14:19   - Order.

01:14:20   - Every time I did that, I had to rearrange

01:14:24   like 30 little checklist items

01:14:27   for what do I do in the morning

01:14:28   and what do I do in the evening.

01:14:30   It was infuriating, but knowing that the fix was coming,

01:14:34   plus having the current features of the new OmniFocus,

01:14:36   like made it worth doing,

01:14:38   'cause I was trying to figure out like,

01:14:40   ooh, now how am I gonna actually use this app now?

01:14:42   like let me rethink about how my system is set up.

01:14:45   It made it worth it, but boy was it frustrating.

01:14:48   It was frustrating to move those every time.

01:14:51   But I think for quite a while,

01:14:55   my search and my frustration with to-do apps

01:14:58   is over for a little while.

01:15:01   So I have OmniFocus, I'm super happy with it.

01:15:05   I really like it, I love the searching.

01:15:08   And I think if you wanna give OmniFocus a try,

01:15:11   This is a great version to give it a try with.

01:15:15   There's been one final consolidation,

01:15:16   which I'll just mention quickly.

01:15:17   I have finally been able to move away

01:15:21   from the craziness of having two Apple Watches.

01:15:25   The nighttime/morning Apple Watch

01:15:29   and the evening Apple Watch,

01:15:31   'cause longtime listeners of the show will know

01:15:34   I was maintaining two Apple Watches

01:15:36   because it was the only way to try

01:15:39   and get notifications to work the way I wanted to,

01:15:43   to have different settings for different times.

01:15:46   And thanks to some of the stuff in the iOS 12 beta,

01:15:51   the way notifications have worked,

01:15:53   I've been able to mostly replicate

01:15:57   what I wanted out of that setup.

01:15:59   And I'm back to just having a single watch

01:16:03   and it feels like all is sane again in the world.

01:16:07   I never really wanted to have two Apple watches,

01:16:10   I was just forced into that situation.

01:16:12   So now I'm back to just one watch.

01:16:14   I'm very happy about it.

01:16:16   And I've also, because I have the one watch,

01:16:18   I've turned on, I can finally turn on that feature

01:16:21   in macOS which lets you unlock your computer

01:16:24   using your watch.

01:16:26   And I know I'm super late to this party,

01:16:28   but boy is that a nice feature

01:16:29   that I have never been able to take advantage of

01:16:31   over these past many years,

01:16:33   because I had more than one watch

01:16:34   and that feature did not work with more than one watch.

01:16:37   So one more consolidation.

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01:18:01   While we're talking about betas, since the last episode,

01:18:05   Apple released a semi-public beta for the Shortcuts app, which is the thing that we

01:18:12   had wished would happen, and it did happen, that during the beta period they would release

01:18:18   the Shortcuts app, which replaces the Workflow app.

01:18:20   Yeah, formerly known as Workflow.

01:18:22   AKA, yeah, formerly known as the artist, formerly known as Workflow.

01:18:27   If you want an overview of the Shortcuts app, I would point people to episode 65 of Canvas

01:18:33   here on Relay FM. There's a great overview from Federico Vittucci and Jason Snow. They

01:18:37   kind of talk about where and why and how the Shortcut set came to be, what it does, what

01:18:43   it lacks.

01:18:44   Yeah, that was a great episode.

01:18:45   So if you want to get a primer on it, I really recommend listening to that. But really, I

01:18:50   kind of wondered what have we been doing with it? We both have access to it. We were both

01:18:53   picked out of the big, I mean, many thousands of people, I'm sure, that signed up. We just

01:18:59   threw her name into the hat and got picked for it.

01:19:02   I mean, I've mostly been poking around.

01:19:07   I really think that a lot of the stuff

01:19:10   that I will be hoping to build will come September time

01:19:14   when a lot of the apps that I use

01:19:17   start offering up functionality more explicitly to Siri

01:19:22   'cause there's a bunch of stuff you can do right now

01:19:25   but a lot of things don't really work the way you would want

01:19:28   and developers will be able to take advantage of some of the Siri shortcuts

01:19:31   API's to make things a little bit more advanced.

01:19:34   You know, I hope, for example, to be able to resume playback in my podcast app

01:19:40   of choice and stuff like that, which is not the kind of thing that you can do

01:19:43   right now, right?

01:19:44   But it seems like should be available to be able to offer up to the shortcuts app.

01:19:50   So there's some stuff that I've been playing around with.

01:19:52   There are some stuff that I have actually been using every day.

01:19:55   one of them is just setting my morning alarms.

01:19:59   I was so happy when I realized I could do this.

01:20:03   All right.

01:20:04   I am a person who hates going to sleep,

01:20:08   but when I am asleep, I never wanna leave.

01:20:11   (laughing)

01:20:13   Right?

01:20:14   - Okay, yeah.

01:20:17   That sounds like my wife, right?

01:20:19   Okay. - So here's the problem.

01:20:20   Someone who never wants to go to sleep

01:20:22   means they stay awake for too long.

01:20:24   - Right, of course.

01:20:25   - Right, and then if they never want to wake up,

01:20:27   it means one alarm in the morning will not suffice.

01:20:31   - Ah, okay.

01:20:33   - So I set many alarms for myself.

01:20:36   - How many is many? - I may set nine maybe.

01:20:40   - Is that for real, really nine?

01:20:42   - Yeah, sure.

01:20:43   - Like what, five minutes apart from each other?

01:20:45   - Like 10 minutes apart maybe.

01:20:47   - 10 minutes apart, nine alarms, okay, all right.

01:20:50   - I don't know the exact number, but it's a big number,

01:20:52   right, so we'll just say nine.

01:20:54   So I would sit in the morning, at night, every night,

01:20:57   check, check, check, check,

01:20:59   turn in these alarms on, right?

01:21:01   And then in the morning, going in and unchecking

01:21:03   all the alarms that hadn't gone off yet.

01:21:05   Now, I have set up a Siri shortcut,

01:21:09   where I just, I either ask Siri

01:21:11   or I press the button in the widget,

01:21:14   and it just sets all those alarms.

01:21:15   - This is taking advantage of,

01:21:18   'cause some stuff pops up in the interface

01:21:21   in this weird way, where there's things

01:21:23   that you can explicitly tell it to do that's just built into the Workflow app.

01:21:27   And then it picks up on stuff you've recently done.

01:21:29   Right. This is the thing that it took me a while to realize is if you set an alarm,

01:21:36   it will suggest this as an option. In the Shortcuts app.

01:21:40   Right. In the Shortcuts app. But it won't always be there. So you kind of have to be like,

01:21:46   "Look at what I'm doing." You cannot in the Shortcuts app say,

01:21:50   I want to set an alarm for this time.

01:21:52   Right.

01:21:53   Doesn't work like that.

01:21:54   You have to go into the alarm app,

01:21:56   or it's a clock app, go into alarms, turn on three alarms,

01:21:59   go back to the shortcuts app.

01:22:01   And then when it says Siri suggestions, you tap on that

01:22:03   and it will say clock and it will have the last three alarms that you set.

01:22:06   So you do that a couple of times to get your nine alarms all in.

01:22:09   And then you see a list of alarms for certain times that you cannot change

01:22:14   and you can toggle them on and off.

01:22:16   So that's how that works.

01:22:17   and then when you want to set your other shortcut

01:22:20   to disable the alarms, you have to go in,

01:22:22   disable the alarms, go back into series suggestions

01:22:24   and shortcuts, add them in,

01:22:26   and then you've got your shortcuts, right?

01:22:27   They're done. - Yeah.

01:22:28   - So I now have them.

01:22:29   It takes a while to set up, but they're there,

01:22:30   and I have them. - Yeah.

01:22:31   - It's a little clunky, but I'll take the clunkiness

01:22:33   over the fact that this is incredible and I love it, right?

01:22:36   So I now have these.

01:22:38   - A thing that is clunky to set up,

01:22:40   but then works forever is fine, right?

01:22:43   Like, that's totally fine.

01:22:44   And I ran into this, it's funny,

01:22:47   It's sleep related as well.

01:22:48   I ran into this exact thing when I was setting up a workflow

01:22:52   or sorry, a shortcut that I use for naps

01:22:57   where I wanted to be able to specify,

01:23:01   am I taking a 20 minute power nap

01:23:04   or am I taking a slightly longer, like 40 minute nap,

01:23:07   like one sleep cycle nap?

01:23:09   So I wanted to be able to select like 20 minutes

01:23:11   or 40 minutes for this workflow to run

01:23:14   and then set a timer that's going to be 25 minutes

01:23:19   or it's going to be 45 minutes long.

01:23:21   I was like, how is there no way that I can tell the phone

01:23:26   to set a timer for 25 minutes?

01:23:28   And then I ran into this thing, I'm like, oh, I see.

01:23:31   If I just start a 25 minute timer

01:23:34   a couple of times on the phone,

01:23:37   then the phone will be like,

01:23:38   hey, this is a thing that you're doing a lot.

01:23:40   Do you want to drag this into one of your shortcuts?

01:23:43   like "yes phone I do that's exactly what I want to do" so yeah that's a case where I use the thing

01:23:48   where it's it's watching what you do and trying to learn from that. And whilst this system seems

01:23:54   weird if you're a power user you've got to think about like why they're doing it like this is how

01:23:59   you get regular users to try this stuff out because the system is watching and when it sees you're

01:24:05   doing things a bunch of times it suggests it to you and you're like "hey I do that all the time

01:24:10   I should make a thing for that, right?

01:24:11   And it's like, so that's why I totally get it

01:24:13   and I'm fine with it.

01:24:14   - Yeah, I agree, yeah.

01:24:15   - Like a lot of third party apps will offer this stuff up.

01:24:18   Like, you know, I figure we're in this in-between time

01:24:20   right now where it's, where this is the way

01:24:22   that most of the stuff is being added into the system.

01:24:25   - Yeah, it makes perfect sense to do that way.

01:24:27   And this is almost power user disease

01:24:32   where you wanna dive right into the,

01:24:35   where can I specify a timer of arbitrary time

01:24:38   and like, "Oh, I can't do that."

01:24:40   I think, again, I feel like I've gushed over it already

01:24:45   many times, but this shortcut integration

01:24:48   into the system framework of iOS is just amazing

01:24:53   on many levels, and this ability to watch what you're doing

01:24:57   and suggest things to you, like, man, what a great

01:25:02   and gentle ramp into the idea of automating

01:25:07   for people who may not be familiar with this concept at all.

01:25:10   I think it's done so well.

01:25:13   And even if it seems a bit clunky for the power user,

01:25:17   ultimately, but you can still do it.

01:25:20   It's not preventing you from doing anything.

01:25:22   It's just suggesting stuff in a way

01:25:25   that's a bit more newbie friendly.

01:25:27   But I think it's a great design.

01:25:28   I think it's a really good idea.

01:25:30   And I agree with you that I cannot wait

01:25:33   until more apps start exposing all of the things

01:25:38   that they can do, because it's really going to be

01:25:42   an incredibly powerful system.

01:25:43   Like being part of this beta and getting to see it

01:25:46   in just these baby steps,

01:25:47   like I'm already incredibly impressed with it

01:25:51   and it barely has any third party app functionality,

01:25:56   which is where a ton of the real power is gonna come from.

01:25:59   - And I'm hoping that some third party stuff

01:26:02   will enhance it, some will repair some of the stuff

01:26:04   that's changed, like you can't save folders

01:26:08   to Dropbox anymore, it can only be saved

01:26:11   to a specific folder in iCloud Drive,

01:26:12   which has broken a bunch of stuff for me,

01:26:14   which is why I'm happy that Workflow still exists

01:26:16   for the time being, but I'm hoping that Dropbox

01:26:20   will create their own Siri shortcuts

01:26:22   that will allow you to do this,

01:26:24   so that they will enable that, so fingers crossed there.

01:26:27   - Yeah, that may exist in the future,

01:26:29   but that is also a perfect example

01:26:31   of the thing I mentioned earlier in the show where I have Hazel watching some folders and

01:26:35   it's like, "Hey, Hazel, why don't you watch some of these iCloud folders and if

01:26:39   files show up there, why don't you shuffle them over to this Dropbox folder over here?"

01:26:43   H: I've already thought about like, worse comes to worse, that's what I'll set up,

01:26:47   but I don't want to have to do that. I mean, and honestly, I think that there are also

01:26:50   places where, you know, with a company like Dropbox, a third party could come in and do

01:26:54   this, could create an app that could also do this. But some of the actions that are

01:26:59   are available are wild, like the ability to enable

01:27:02   do not disturb for periods of time that you wish,

01:27:06   or you can turn on low power mode.

01:27:07   There is stuff that is available in the Shortcuts beta

01:27:12   that I never would have expected to see.

01:27:14   - I have to tell you, since you mentioned low power mode,

01:27:16   I have to tell you my favorite thing that I've done

01:27:18   with the Shortcuts app that I'm also, not gonna lie,

01:27:22   super pleased with myself about.

01:27:24   So this is an integration with the good old

01:27:28   Launch Center Pro, right, which disappeared

01:27:31   from my phone for a while, but it was back

01:27:34   because I realized Launch Center Pro has a feature

01:27:38   which if it exists in other apps,

01:27:39   I don't know where to find it,

01:27:40   but Launch Center Pro can watch your location.

01:27:45   And then because it had this old integration

01:27:50   with workflow that still exists,

01:27:53   it can watch your location and trigger a workflow,

01:27:57   but it does work with shortcuts,

01:27:59   if you know how to change the URL scheme.

01:28:01   It will trigger a shortcut based on your location.

01:28:06   And so what I set up is I drew a geofence

01:28:11   that covers the area that is essentially

01:28:17   my daily operations, like walking around in London.

01:28:21   What is the circle that includes my office

01:28:26   and the local supermarkets that I go to

01:28:28   and like the little park where I walk the dog

01:28:31   and it's like, what is the areas

01:28:33   where I spend 99% of my time?

01:28:35   And draw a circle around those.

01:28:37   If I leave that circle,

01:28:39   trigger a workflow that will turn on low power mode.

01:28:45   Now, unfortunately, it can't do it automatically,

01:28:51   but it just pops up an alert on my phone.

01:28:54   And if I press that alert, it triggers the shortcut

01:28:57   and it turns on low power mode automatically.

01:29:00   And boy, do I love this because that's the time

01:29:03   where it's like, if I leave my normal area of operations,

01:29:06   I'm probably going somewhere for a while

01:29:09   and I just wanna put the phone in low power mode

01:29:12   in preparation of maybe I'm gonna be gone all day

01:29:14   and I just haven't thought about it.

01:29:16   And I just love that and I still feel like every time

01:29:19   I take an Uber out of my radius and that pops up reminding me

01:29:24   to turn on low power mode and then I hit the button

01:29:26   and it just automatically does it.

01:29:27   I don't need to dig around in the settings

01:29:29   or I don't even need to pull down control center.

01:29:31   It just does it.

01:29:33   It feels like magic every time and I totally love it.

01:29:37   - I guess in the same vein using Launch Center Pro

01:29:39   you could set up scheduled things.

01:29:42   So it would pop up at a certain time on a certain day

01:29:45   and you just press a button and it will run the shortcut.

01:29:47   - Yeah, yeah.

01:29:48   There's a lot of, I don't have any other

01:29:51   geo-fenced ones right now, but it's been on the back

01:29:55   of my mind of thinking about what can I do,

01:30:00   say, when I get to the office?

01:30:02   And that's a geo-fenced kind of thing.

01:30:05   I'm in the office now, there's almost certainly

01:30:07   little things that I just want to kick off

01:30:08   to have the environment ready for me.

01:30:12   It just seems like there's a lot of

01:30:14   interesting possibilities here.

01:30:16   And even just this little simple one of turn on

01:30:19   low power mode when I leave my normal area of operations,

01:30:21   I totally love it.

01:30:23   And it's only possible because they're integrated

01:30:26   with the system.

01:30:28   - One thing that I'm really excited to do

01:30:30   is to build what I'm thinking of morning

01:30:35   and evening routines.

01:30:36   And I'm seeing a lot of people playing around

01:30:39   with this sort of stuff.

01:30:40   And it's like these huge shortcuts that you can set

01:30:45   that will do things in the morning and the evening.

01:30:48   So my morning, like my enabling and disabling alarms, right, is part of this.

01:30:53   Because you can run shortcuts within shortcuts.

01:30:56   Yes.

01:30:57   It's so powerful.

01:30:58   So like right now I'm building an evening routine.

01:31:01   So this will become very useful when this all ships, because I'll be

01:31:05   able to get my HomePod to do this.

01:31:07   So I'll be able to say to the HomePod, it'll be like, HomePod,

01:31:10   good evening, or like bedtime or something like that.

01:31:14   And what I've set up right now is with a little bit of help from Federico,

01:31:17   some regular expressions to check what the day is.

01:31:19   And if the subsequent day will be like a work day.

01:31:23   Oh, right. OK, yeah.

01:31:25   I have an if statement using some regex and a bunch of amazing stuff

01:31:30   that he helped me build.

01:31:31   And now I feel like I have a good understanding of

01:31:33   to if if the next day will be a work day, run my morning alarms.

01:31:38   Then once that's taken care of, once the statement is closed,

01:31:42   they then run my nighttime scene that I created in HomeKit,

01:31:46   which turns off the lights everywhere in the house except the bedroom where it turns those on so we go to bed.

01:31:51   Right, so we go into the bedroom and the lights are on dim

01:31:54   and then eventually I will set other stuff in here as well.

01:31:57   So like turn on do not disturb on my phone.

01:32:00   Well, and like a bunch of things that you can add in to create these really large shortcuts and like I expect to do a

01:32:06   morning one where it like I'm trying to build it now where I have Siri read to me what my appointments are today.

01:32:13   Ideally, I would love to know, like, it could just tell me how many emails or give me some

01:32:17   like subject lines of emails that I've received overnight.

01:32:20   Ask me if I want to play my most recent podcast or whatever.

01:32:23   Like I could maybe resume that.

01:32:25   Say to me like, oh, hey, would you like to send a message to your mum?

01:32:29   What do you want to say to her this morning?

01:32:31   Like stuff like that.

01:32:32   And all of these things feel like they're possible with just the right amount of work to

01:32:37   put into them. And I'm very excited about building stuff like this because this is going

01:32:43   to give me a lot of what I want Siri to do. Like, I don't necessarily want Siri to be

01:32:49   smart, I just want it to be smart in the things I want it to be smart about. And a great way

01:32:54   to do that is for me to program it in this way. And I'm really excited. I was apprehensive

01:33:02   of the beta, like what is it really going to unearth? And I, for me personally, have

01:33:09   lost one thing and I genuinely believe that that one thing will be fixed come

01:33:15   September by somebody else. Everything else I could I've got way more than I

01:33:20   expected and I always enjoyed using workflow and tinkering around with

01:33:25   workflow but I really believe the shortcuts is going to be an incredibly

01:33:30   important part of the way that I get work done because it's gonna be

01:33:34   basically everywhere, and in theory can control basically anything.

01:33:38   Yeah, it's incredible. And I do think we always have that, I don't know, anxiety about

01:33:47   this thing looks amazing, but what are going to be the limitations that we're not expecting when

01:33:53   we actually get it into our hands? And you just never know because your mind starts running off

01:33:58   with, "Oh, I'm going to be able to do everything." And then you're like, "Oh, it's much more limited

01:34:02   than I thought. But man, like shortcuts has been just everything workflow was and more.

01:34:09   And it's the same thing. I found one thing that didn't work for me. And after a quick DM to

01:34:17   Tichi, he told me the little workaround. I was like, "Oh, I used to pull the text from a Dropbox

01:34:22   file and it doesn't look like I can do that anymore." He's like, "Okay, here's what you need

01:34:25   to do. Just like do these three things and then you're fine." I'm like, "Oh, great. All my OmniFocus

01:34:29   'cause templates work again, thank you.

01:34:31   So like just one incredibly minor thing was lost

01:34:33   and so much has been gained.

01:34:35   It's really impressive and I was wondering,

01:34:38   like I wish I had the statistics on it,

01:34:41   but I think it is not an exaggeration to say

01:34:44   that my use of Siri has increased 10,000%

01:34:49   with the addition of shortcuts.

01:34:53   And it's partly because I have been slowly converting

01:34:58   all of my toggle launches into Siri commands.

01:35:03   And I cannot like, I'm not a person,

01:35:05   like I still find that there's a little bit of a resistance

01:35:09   to giving the commands out loud.

01:35:12   Like I still find it like this little bit

01:35:14   of a mental burden to talk, but man, man,

01:35:18   do I love setting the time tracker using Siri.

01:35:23   It's so good.

01:35:24   - So what if you've been like setting

01:35:26   a bunch of individual shortcuts for different timers.

01:35:30   I plan to do this.

01:35:31   I'm gonna have like 60, but like whatever.

01:35:34   - Yeah, there's, I was trying to think,

01:35:36   is there a way to do this by kicking off a little shortcut

01:35:39   within a shortcut?

01:35:40   And the answer was like, it doesn't really save you any time.

01:35:43   But yeah, basically what I've been doing is

01:35:46   anytime I'm about to start a timer,

01:35:48   I try to do it with voice.

01:35:49   And if I don't have the voice thing built,

01:35:52   I'll just quickly change the few things that I need to

01:35:55   for that one timer, right?

01:35:57   So like I've replaced like 90%

01:36:01   of my most frequently used timers.

01:36:04   And of course there's a long tail on that

01:36:06   of like what else are the things that need to be converted?

01:36:09   But yeah, I've built individual little workflows

01:36:12   and we were talking in the last episode

01:36:14   about having to figure out what a syntax is.

01:36:17   And I quickly realized that Siri gets super confused

01:36:20   if you're tracking time and you say something like,

01:36:22   "Hey, Siri, start the Cortex timer."

01:36:25   and Siri's like, "I don't understand what cortex,

01:36:27   "how long do you want the timer to set for?"

01:36:29   I was like, "No, I don't want your timer,

01:36:31   "I wanna start this."

01:36:32   So I've ended up using the syntax track string,

01:36:37   so I'll say like, "Hey, Siri, track cortex."

01:36:42   Like track is the word that works the best in my mind

01:36:45   for what am I trying to do,

01:36:46   and then I have the word for like,

01:36:47   which timer is it supposed to kick off?

01:36:49   Because if you're using the word timer,

01:36:51   Siri gets super confused lots of times

01:36:53   about what is it that you're attempting to accomplish.

01:36:56   But I just, I love it.

01:36:58   I totally love being able to start the timer with Siri.

01:37:02   It's fantastic.

01:37:04   It even has me doing the thing

01:37:06   which I've just never used before,

01:37:07   but the AirPods double tap to invoke Siri,

01:37:12   which I hate and I think is an uncomfortable gesture,

01:37:16   but man, is it great sometimes when I'm out and about

01:37:20   and suddenly the context change of what am I doing

01:37:23   And it's like, to just like, doot doot,

01:37:26   tap on the ear to get Siri to talk to you

01:37:30   and start the timer to switch the context

01:37:32   of what I'm up to.

01:37:33   I love it, it's so great.

01:37:35   But it really is a case, like I have used Siri

01:37:40   more in the past two months with the beta

01:37:43   than I think I have used in the entire existence of Siri

01:37:46   up until this point.

01:37:48   There is no way that statement isn't true.

01:37:53   So it's like, "Hey Apple, if you wanted us to use Siri more, this works!"

01:37:58   Your Siri stats have to be amazing, at least for some set of users, including me.

01:38:04   Important announcement, Cortex listeners. It is that time of year again.

01:38:09   It is Relay FM membership month, because we are in the wonderful month of August.

01:38:14   And what that means is, of course, we have another amazing crossover with Upgrade,

01:38:21   where we have the Snellatron return for a text adventure.

01:38:25   And we will, of course, be playing a trailer at the end of this episode

01:38:29   for the much desired from the both of us Space Station game.

01:38:34   We are going to space and we have a job to do.

01:38:38   And you're going to hear at the end of this episode.

01:38:40   So stick around so you can hear what you'll be getting

01:38:42   if you are a relay FM member.

01:38:45   If you are not a relay FM member, let me tell you why you should be

01:38:49   Relay FM memberships start at just $5 a month.

01:38:52   And if you sign up to be a member, you'll get access to a bunch of members

01:38:56   only content, which includes a monthly behind the scenes newsletter,

01:39:00   wonderful 5K desktop wallpapers of Relay FM show artwork,

01:39:04   and also a monthly Relay FM host crossover show where a couple of Relay FM

01:39:09   hosts will get together and talk about a topic which means something to the two of them.

01:39:13   And as well as all of that, of course, you get access to a feed

01:39:17   which is full of bonus episodes of relay FM shows throughout August and September,

01:39:22   including ours and all of the other bonuses that will happen across the network

01:39:26   and all of the ones that have ever happened.

01:39:29   So as I said, this will be our third text adventure that we've played together.

01:39:33   So if you want to hear me and Gray in the wild west,

01:39:35   if you want to hear me and Gray in a spooky manner

01:39:38   and now me and Gray in a space adventure, you'll be able to do that.

01:39:44   Now the Space Station text adventure will be publishing on the 17th of August is when

01:39:51   that's going to be going up.

01:39:52   But whether you sign up before, on that day or after or any time you will have access

01:39:57   to that episode.

01:39:59   So if you want to show your support for this show go to relay.fm/cortex and you'll be able

01:40:04   to find buttons there to sign up to be a member or you can find out more by going to relay.fm/membership.

01:40:11   Now there is one important note that I do need to mention this time.

01:40:14   So for this year, we have changed the URL of the feed that we use for that bonus content.

01:40:20   If you are an active Relay FM member, you're a current paying member,

01:40:24   you will have gotten an email about that.

01:40:25   So if you haven't changed the feed over, check your email.

01:40:29   If you have previously cancelled your membership

01:40:31   or you think you're a member and don't see that email,

01:40:34   it means your membership may have lapsed and you'll need to sign up again

01:40:38   to get the new feed to get yourself this text adventure.

01:40:43   So if you sign up, thank you so much.

01:40:45   We really, really appreciate your support.

01:40:48   And again, you can go to relay.fm/cortex

01:40:51   and you can sign up to support this show right there.

01:40:53   But what you're probably waiting for right now

01:40:55   is to hear the trailer.

01:40:56   So enjoy Space Station and we'll see you soon.

01:41:00   - We were told the Space Station was too difficult for us.

01:41:06   Was it or was it not?

01:41:08   You'll be the judge.

01:41:10   Thanks for listening.

01:41:11   - Gray, Myke, welcome to Space Station.

01:41:16   You wake up inside the cramped confines

01:41:22   of a cryosleep capsule.

01:41:24   You're still in your service uniform

01:41:26   and have a world-class headache.

01:41:28   A hypo-injector rests on a countertop just within reach.

01:41:32   - Okay, let's inject ourselves straight in the heart

01:41:35   with the injector. Let's not let's not be very specific about where it's going to go.

01:41:39   Let's just let the Snellatron decide where that ends up being. Okay. There is one thing

01:41:44   we haven't checked. Like, are we human? Do we know this? We don't know this. Yeah, you

01:41:49   could you could examine yourself if you want. Yeah, examine ourselves. You are wearing the

01:41:53   regulation green technicians uniform marking you as a member of the planetary action research

01:41:59   science exploration corps or parsec. And yes, you are a human being. You figured that out

01:42:04   when you injected yourself with the hypo-injector.

01:42:07   We only know what we think we know.

01:42:08   Now you know your uniform is green.

01:42:11   There is a robot here.

01:42:12   Look at robot.

01:42:13   You see a dog-sized robot designed to perform repetitive or dangerous tasks.

01:42:18   The name FROZ, F-R-O-Z, is laser etched into its skin.

01:42:24   Say hello, Froz.

01:42:25   Froz beeps and flashes its lights and twitches its mechanical arms.

01:42:31   It's adorable.

01:42:32   I knew it would be. Myke, I've got four words for you. Never give up, never surrender.

01:42:39   Okay. Oh, Snalatron, how many save slots do we have?

01:42:44   You have three save slots, as always. Myke, don't you dare. We've done nothing.

01:42:48   Nothing has happened. I agree with Gray in this case. You've literally

01:42:51   just wandered around and learned things. I wasn't gonna say.

01:42:53   And picked up a couple of things. I just wanted to know.

01:42:56   (laughter)

01:42:59   - You can see the mysterious death world.

01:43:03   - Whoa.

01:43:04   - Some kind of alien warship is positioned nearby.

01:43:07   - All right, what else, is there anything else in the room?

01:43:09   - Oh, I'm sorry.

01:43:09   Does the view of the death world not,

01:43:11   is that not enough for you, Myke?

01:43:13   - Yeah, but I can't do anything with that.

01:43:16   - Myke, what I lack in knowledge,

01:43:17   I make up for with confidence.

01:43:19   (laughter)

01:43:22   - Incoming message, unknown language.

01:43:24   Please input language to translate.

01:43:27   - Input Frellion.

01:43:28   - It translates the message.

01:43:29   - Attention humans, surrender space station

01:43:32   or be destroyed with gravity cannon.

01:43:35   - I'm very nervous about this game.

01:43:37   - Right.

01:43:38   - Because it all seems pretty simple.

01:43:41   - The Frellion warship attacks the space station

01:43:43   with a gun that fires black holes.

01:43:44   The end.

01:43:45   - Oh.

01:43:46   - You have died.

01:43:47   - Can we press the launch button

01:43:50   on the escape pod with the mop?

01:43:52   - No, you can't.

01:43:53   [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:43:56   [ Music ]