Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► So last time on the show we debuted our two spin-off shows, Core Tech and Care Techs,

00:00:04 ◼   ► and I just wondered if you had happened upon the artwork that has been created for those two shows.

00:00:09 ◼   ► We're nearly there now for launch.

00:00:11 ◼   ► Is that all that's required for a new podcast is just simply some fantastic artwork?

00:00:18 ◼   ► Is that the first step towards making a new podcast?

00:00:21 ◼   ► Once the artwork is made, and if the artwork is good, at that point you have to do the show

00:00:25 ◼   ► because you've got the artwork. That's the way that I look at it anyway.

00:00:28 ◼   ► That is not the way I look at it.

00:00:31 ◼   ► But I like this core tech, care tech artwork.

00:00:34 ◼   ► But just to be clear, in my terms of service,

00:00:36 ◼   ► this does not obligate me to actually doing new shows.

00:00:39 ◼   ► - Is this just step one?

00:00:41 ◼   ► - No, it's step zero, Myke.

00:00:43 ◼   ► - God dang.

00:00:45 ◼   ► Have you seen this mechanical iPad Pro keyboard

00:00:51 ◼   ► that's been going around the internet the last few days?

00:00:54 ◼   ► - Why indeed I have, Myke, indeed I have.

00:00:57 ◼   ► It's made by Razer, and Razer, they make gaming PCs, right?

00:01:02 ◼   ► And peripherals? I think they're more of like a gaming company.

00:01:05 ◼   ► Yeah, they make very cool looking gaming peripherals.

00:01:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:01:09 ◼   ► And they're very awesome looking stuff.

00:01:12 ◼   ► Like with lots of lights and it's all customizable and loads of crazy stuff you can do with it.

00:01:17 ◼   ► Yep. Lots of green and blue neon.

00:01:20 ◼   ► You know, you can't have a really solid piece of gaming equipment unless it is neon green or blue.

00:01:25 ◼   ► I'm looking at their website right now at the Razor Black Widow Chroma.

00:01:29 ◼   ► See, that's an amazing name!

00:01:32 ◼   ► I have never seen something so insane.

00:01:34 ◼   ► Just go to this URL and just check out the GIF that they've got running at the top.

00:01:40 ◼   ► Okay.

00:01:41 ◼   ► Let me look at this thing.

00:01:43 ◼   ► Oooooooh!

00:01:44 ◼   ► Nobody needs their computer to do this!

00:01:48 ◼   ► Or actually, maybe everybody does.

00:01:49 ◼   ► I think everybody does.

00:01:51 ◼   ► For the listener, it's a keyboard.

00:01:56 ◼   ► The reason they're calling it the Chroma is it looks like it will dance rainbow colors

00:02:01 ◼   ► across and around all of the keys.

00:02:03 ◼   ► They must have a whole bunch of LEDs behind all of the keys.

00:02:06 ◼   ► It's a dancing rainbow across your keyboard.

00:02:08 ◼   ► It looks awesome.

00:02:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I kind of want one.

00:02:12 ◼   ► This is how they get you.

00:02:13 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:02:14 ◼   ► I have been on their site.

00:02:15 ◼   ► I have known about them because every once in a while I'll remember some piece of gaming equipment or gear.

00:02:20 ◼   ► and I'll look at their website and I'll think, "Ooh, it all looks so cool!"

00:02:23 ◼   ► I've never actually bought one because I just don't have any real need for this stuff,

00:02:27 ◼   ► but it's always very tempting.

00:02:28 ◼   ► Well, I've often considered a gaming mouse.

00:02:32 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:02:33 ◼   ► And a friend at a show, Underscore David Smith, suggested this to me

00:02:37 ◼   ► when I was having RSI problems,

00:02:39 ◼   ► because the programmable buttons are way easier to trigger.

00:02:43 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:02:43 ◼   ► And they're made for that, so I've considered it.

00:02:46 ◼   ► Like, you know, one of those ones that looks like, basically,

00:02:48 ◼   ► buttons have been vomited onto the mouse. I've considered it, but I haven't done it

00:02:53 ◼   ► yet, just because I love my Wacom and trackpad setup so much. But if I ever decide to go

00:02:58 ◼   ► back to mice again, I'm going to look into gaming mice.

00:03:01 ◼   ► Yes, well I also like their names. They have the Death Adder Chroma as the name for a mouse.

00:03:09 ◼   ► There's the Diamondback. There's the Abyss. These are fantastic names as well.

00:03:15 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the death at a chroma is an ergonomic mouse too.

00:03:20 ◼   ► How can you not? How can you not buy it?

00:03:21 ◼   ► And it's also got rainbow LEDs in it. Oh, man, I'm gonna drive everyone crazy. You

00:03:27 ◼   ► just get it take it to a co-working space, you get the chroma keyboard and the chroma

00:03:30 ◼   ► mouse and you just have a little rave in the corner.

00:03:33 ◼   ► The Ouroboros wireless gaming mouse, that one looks pretty awesome. Look at this thing.

00:03:37 ◼   ► I have to say how you know you're on a gaming website when all of the photos of the mice

00:03:42 ◼   ► have cords on them?

00:03:43 ◼   ► Yes, yeah, that's...

00:03:44 ◼   ► That's how you know you're looking at gaming peripherals?

00:03:48 ◼   ► Right.

00:03:49 ◼   ► Oh, I don't like this one, it's got a snake.

00:03:51 ◼   ► Yeah, but look at it, it's like a badass Transformer mouse.

00:03:54 ◼   ► It looks like Batman's mouse.

00:03:56 ◼   ► Yeah, it looks like the Batmobile in terms of a mouse.

00:03:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I kinda want this one now.

00:04:01 ◼   ► Right.

00:04:02 ◼   ► With lots of sharp edges to cut your hands, but it doesn't matter because you're a gaming

00:04:07 ◼   ► pro.

00:04:08 ◼   ► But this one doesn't have rainbow LEDs on it, so...

00:04:10 ◼   ► Yeah, but it comes with a snake apparently, if the picture is to be believed.

00:04:14 ◼   ► I don't want it.

00:04:15 ◼   ► I really don't want it.

00:04:17 ◼   ► Anyway!

00:04:18 ◼   ► See, but this is, we're getting distracted by all of the cool looking gamer gear.

00:04:23 ◼   ► You can't help but be distracted.

00:04:26 ◼   ► So Razer have made a keyboard case for the iPad Pro 12.9 inch, where the keyboard side

00:04:34 ◼   ► of the case features a mechanical switch keyboard that they have created.

00:04:37 ◼   ► It is a mechanical key design of their own design.

00:04:40 ◼   ► It's ultra low profile, right?

00:04:42 ◼   ► It's not the big huge clicky keyboards like you have.

00:04:44 ◼   ► Can you demonstrate clicky keyboards for the listener, Gray?

00:04:47 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

00:04:48 ◼   ► This is me typing on a clicky keyboard.

00:04:51 ◼   ► I don't know if you can hear that or not.

00:04:52 ◼   ► - You can hear that that has a deep switch in it, right?

00:04:54 ◼   ► Like this, I don't know,

00:04:55 ◼   ► like it's got some hollowness to it.

00:04:57 ◼   ► And I expect that this isn't that.

00:04:58 ◼   ► And I'll put a link in the show notes

00:05:00 ◼   ► to a video that Austin Evans did on YouTube

00:05:02 ◼   ► kind of testing it out.

00:05:03 ◼   ► And you can kind of hear it.

00:05:04 ◼   ► And it basically sounds like a laptop keyboard, right?

00:05:07 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:05:08 ◼   ► - And it looks like it's got a bit more travel on it,

00:05:10 ◼   ► it's thicker.

00:05:11 ◼   ► But the thing that interests me the most about this

00:05:13 ◼   ► is it comes with like a stand.

00:05:16 ◼   ► There's like two parts.

00:05:16 ◼   ► The keyboard part, which can be detached

00:05:18 ◼   ► from the stand/case part.

00:05:20 ◼   ► And the case, the stand on the case can be put

00:05:22 ◼   ► into multiple different viewing angles.

00:05:25 ◼   ► That's what interests me.

00:05:28 ◼   ► Because the smart keyboards,

00:05:31 ◼   ► they have terrible viewing angles.

00:05:34 ◼   ► Yeah, this is one of those products that I'm interested in but I would totally just have

00:05:41 ◼   ► to handle it in person.

00:05:44 ◼   ► Sure.

00:05:45 ◼   ► Because there's no amount of... the most amazing video review of this thing doesn't convey

00:05:52 ◼   ► the information that you need to know.

00:05:54 ◼   ► With a keyboard, so much of it is the feel of it, how much do you actually like typing

00:06:00 ◼   ► on the thing, how much better are those mechanical switches.

00:06:03 ◼   ► I might, who knows, I might actually not like typing on a mechanical keyboard that has very low travel.

00:06:09 ◼   ► Like maybe my brain is super used to the idea of clicky switches have huge amounts of travel.

00:06:14 ◼   ► Like, you know, my keyboard, it has a lot of depth when I press each of those buttons.

00:06:18 ◼   ► There's also questions of weight.

00:06:20 ◼   ► I just have to say, I think it's a really interesting product.

00:06:24 ◼   ► I think it is really interesting that a company is even estimating that there is a market for this.

00:06:32 ◼   ► that they put the money into product development.

00:06:34 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:06:35 ◼   ► That's what I find is very interesting about this.

00:06:38 ◼   ► And what I really like about this

00:06:40 ◼   ► is I feel like it's a little indication

00:06:41 ◼   ► of companies willing to do crazy extra stuff

00:06:46 ◼   ► for the pro market using the big iPad Pro.

00:06:52 ◼   ► Like I am glad this thing exists.

00:06:54 ◼   ► I would love to try it out in person to see what it is like.

00:06:57 ◼   ► But I'm even gladder that someone

00:07:00 ◼   ► is willing to roll the dice on this thinking there might actually be a market

00:07:04 ◼   ► of people who want to buy mechanical keyboard for their iPad pro.

00:07:08 ◼   ► Yep. I don't think I want this.

00:07:10 ◼   ► I think that the smart keyboard is fine for me, but I do want to try it.

00:07:15 ◼   ► I don't like that it would be so thick and so heavy.

00:07:18 ◼   ► Like it will be like carrying a laptop instead of an iPad. Um, but I,

00:07:22 ◼   ► I'm interested in giving it a go, but, um, it isn't easy.

00:07:26 ◼   ► It doesn't seem easy to get my hands on or at least to try.

00:07:29 ◼   ► Like if it was on Amazon, which it's not right now, at least in the UK,

00:07:32 ◼   ► I would have just got it because it would be here in a day and I could return it.

00:07:35 ◼   ► But other than that, like I'm going,

00:07:37 ◼   ► I'm keeping my eye on the electronic stores when I'm out and about to see if

00:07:40 ◼   ► they've got one in there, you know, so I can actually try typing on it.

00:07:44 ◼   ► I could tell you what probably won't have it, which is the Apple store.

00:07:46 ◼   ► I'd be very surprised if the Apple store carries this, which it should,

00:07:49 ◼   ► because this is a pro accessory for their product.

00:07:53 ◼   ► But I think Apple probably doesn't like that they're not using the smart

00:07:56 ◼   ► connector because they're using Bluetooth.

00:07:58 ◼   ► Yeah, but the Bluetooth is a bit of a feature though because it allows you to have the screen disconnected from the keyboard and

00:08:05 ◼   ► for years and years when I was writing on my iPad before smart keyboard covers and iPad pros existed

00:08:11 ◼   ► I was using a Bluetooth keyboard with an iPad and that was a really great feature being able to

00:08:16 ◼   ► separate the screen from the keyboard to not have to have my hands right up against the edge of it and

00:08:22 ◼   ► that's one thing I actually do get kind of annoyed with some apps on the iPad Pro of how

00:08:27 ◼   ► you are typing at the very bottom of the screen and

00:08:30 ◼   ► your own hands can get in the way of looking at the words that you're trying to type. So sometimes

00:08:35 ◼   ► it's nice to have a bit of space between the screen and the keyboard. So using Bluetooth

00:08:39 ◼   ► I could actually see them sitting in a meeting room somewhere and deciding

00:08:43 ◼   ► entirely not for licensing reasons or anything, but that they want to go Bluetooth for that feature, that they don't want to use a smart connector.

00:08:51 ◼   ► I think part of the reason they might have done the Bluetooth is because they wanted the keys to be backlit.

00:08:55 ◼   ► And if you need the keys to be backlit, it has to have a battery in it anyway, so they may as well go the Bluetooth route.

00:09:00 ◼   ► Right, exactly. You have to go down this path.

00:09:03 ◼   ► I suspect that the weight in this one would be a killer for me.

00:09:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

00:09:10 ◼   ► Because I think the iPad Pro is already right on the edge of what I'm willing to carry around.

00:09:17 ◼   ► I agree.

00:09:18 ◼   ► So, like this past summer when I was doing all of my travels, I was using primarily the iPad Pro.

00:09:24 ◼   ► And when I am traveling, I don't normally do it, but when I'm traveling I put the back case on the iPad Pro,

00:09:31 ◼   ► the whatever it is, like the silicone back case thing.

00:09:35 ◼   ► The super expensive thing.

00:09:37 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, the ridiculous one. But that does fit very nicely with the smart keyboard cover.

00:09:41 ◼   ► And I do that mainly because I'm thinking I'm going to be moving this thing around a lot, I'm traveling,

00:09:47 ◼   ► and this is a really, like I vastly increased the probability of dropping this,

00:09:51 ◼   ► and so I want to have a bit more protection.

00:09:53 ◼   ► But I was really aware that the iPad Pro with the back case and the keyboard cover

00:09:58 ◼   ► I don't want to carry a thing that's grams heavier than that. That is absolutely right at the edge of what I want to be carrying around anyway.

00:10:06 ◼   ► Yeah, whenever I take the keyboard cover off, I'm always surprised how light it is.

00:10:09 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:10:10 ◼   ► Which is frustrating, but it's just because it's so much material.

00:10:13 ◼   ► Which actually brings me on to another question that I have and you probably know what I'm gonna ask you here.

00:10:19 ◼   ► Tweeted a picture the other day of

00:10:22 ◼   ► your baby pro sitting in the keyboard cover of the big pro?

00:10:28 ◼   ► Yep.

00:10:28 ◼   ► What are you doing?

00:10:29 ◼   ► I'm typing comfortably, that's what I'm doing.

00:10:32 ◼   ► Have you tried, or for a long period of time, the smaller 9.7 keyboard cover?

00:10:37 ◼   ► Yeah, I definitely did. I tried the smaller keyboard cover.

00:10:41 ◼   ► It's fine, it's totally fine, but I would prefer to use the bigger one.

00:10:46 ◼   ► Right. But why don't you just use a Bluetooth keyboard?

00:10:49 ◼   ► Like, if in this scenario, why are you using the case?

00:10:53 ◼   ► I'm using the case because that particular iPad, the little baby pro, I'm often just

00:10:58 ◼   ► using it on the couch.

00:11:00 ◼   ► And it's really comfortable sitting on the couch while watching TV to use the full-size

00:11:05 ◼   ► keyboard cover to have the thing in my lap to type on.

00:11:08 ◼   ► Like, it's just very convenient, it's a single little piece.

00:11:11 ◼   ► Plus with the keyboard case, I don't have to worry about charging it.

00:11:15 ◼   ► I just find that it's a very comfortable experience.

00:11:17 ◼   ► And I want to reiterate again that whoever is on the design team for the keyboard cases

00:11:23 ◼   ► for these iPads, it's an incredible, incredible job.

00:11:28 ◼   ► Without a doubt, that is the keyboard that I type the most on, is like that keyboard

00:11:33 ◼   ► cover and I just absolutely love it.

00:11:38 ◼   ► Like I think it's a really fantastic keyboard.

00:11:40 ◼   ► Same.

00:11:41 ◼   ► I use them both, right, because my iPad Pros are both in the cases, the keyboard cases.

00:11:47 ◼   ► And I love both keyboards. I think they're both great. It is more cramped than 9.71 but

00:11:52 ◼   ► you adjust, I adjust to it at least surprisingly fast. I can go from one to the other and I

00:11:57 ◼   ► barely even notice. I just really, really, really wish they would give me a UK layout.

00:12:05 ◼   ► I don't know why it's so difficult for them to do this, but they haven't done this and

00:12:09 ◼   ► it's nearly been a year now.

00:12:11 ◼   ► Oh, you know, it's not my problem. American layout is clearly superior.

00:12:15 ◼   ► That return key, no.

00:12:17 ◼   ► Fantastic.

00:12:18 ◼   ► No, it's for chumps.

00:12:19 ◼   ► It's easy to hit.

00:12:20 ◼   ► You have to move your pinky less to hit the return key on the US keyboard.

00:12:22 ◼   ► It's great.

00:12:23 ◼   ► No, no.

00:12:24 ◼   ► I will actually argue that it is the superior layout.

00:12:27 ◼   ► I know you will.

00:12:28 ◼   ► But that aside, this is the big problem for anybody who wants to compete with what am

00:12:33 ◼   ► I going to use for a keyboard on my iPad Pro, is that I really, really like the keyboard

00:12:39 ◼   ► cover that Apple makes.

00:12:41 ◼   ► I think it's fantastic.

00:12:42 ◼   ► It's really light.

00:12:43 ◼   ► I never have to power it, I never have to worry about connecting it.

00:12:47 ◼   ► It just, it wins on every level.

00:12:50 ◼   ► The convenience of it makes up for all of the things you might not like about it.

00:12:54 ◼   ► Right? Like the fact that it's not, the switches aren't amazing, right?

00:12:58 ◼   ► That there isn't a lot of travel on the keys.

00:13:00 ◼   ► For me, like, I don't even notice that because I'm so happy about the fact that it's always there.

00:13:04 ◼   ► Yeah, it's always there. I think that the, whoever designed those keys,

00:13:08 ◼   ► I always compare it to, it's almost like typing on bubble wrap or something.

00:13:14 ◼   ► It's like the keys have a little bit of pop to them.

00:13:16 ◼   ► I like the sound that they make.

00:13:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:13:19 ◼   ► And that little bit of pop, whatever is inside those keys, it conveys a feeling of satisfaction

00:13:26 ◼   ► when you're typing that is similar, although not the same, to an actual mechanical keyboard

00:13:32 ◼   ► in a way that I think that the traditional dome cap keys don't have any kind of satisfaction

00:13:37 ◼   ► when you type on them.

00:13:38 ◼   ► So I think that the iPad built-in keyboard is really fantastic, I really like it.

00:13:46 ◼   ► The biggest thing is what you said before, that you don't have the ability to adjust

00:13:50 ◼   ► the viewing angle, which is a pain.

00:13:52 ◼   ► And it's particularly a pain if you're trying to FaceTime with someone while using that,

00:13:56 ◼   ► because the angle is just ridiculously far back for the camera, right?

00:14:01 ◼   ► So the person's always looking at the very top of your head, so you have to stuff it

00:14:04 ◼   ► up on a pillow or something.

00:14:05 ◼   ► If like rearrange the iPad to make FaceTime work with it.

00:14:08 ◼   ► But aside, like that is the only thing that I don't like.

00:14:12 ◼   ► And so I'm curious to see this Razer keyboard,

00:14:15 ◼   ► but it's gonna be incredibly hard

00:14:18 ◼   ► to displace the iPad keyboard, the built-in one already.

00:14:22 ◼   ► So, but I'm glad it exists.

00:14:25 ◼   ► I'm glad someone made it.

00:14:27 ◼   ► I'm glad Razer made it.

00:14:28 ◼   ► - There should be more rainbow LEDs on it though.

00:14:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm surprised it's not called

00:14:32 ◼   ► like the Razer Skull Death mechanical keyboard for iPad Pro.

00:14:36 ◼   ► - The snake venom side winder.

00:14:39 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:14:40 ◼   ► - For the iPad.

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00:16:53 ◼   ► We have not done a hiring update on the show for a while. You hadn't mentioned anything

00:16:58 ◼   ► to me about this for a while in any of our conversations, so I figured it was best to

00:17:04 ◼   ► not ask you about it.

00:17:05 ◼   ► Excellent, Myke.

00:17:06 ◼   ► I know you'd been traveling, so I figured, okay, maybe Grey doesn't want to talk about

00:17:10 ◼   ► this. But then you put out a video about Brexit, which was much demanded of you, and you put

00:17:18 ◼   ► that video out because everybody needs the Grey logic in this.

00:17:21 ◼   ► Do they?

00:17:22 ◼   ► somebody who is concerned, unhappy and uncomfortable about Brexit.

00:17:26 ◼   ► Hearing your betting odds maybe feel a lot better about it all.

00:17:30 ◼   ► But I noticed something almost immediately in this video.

00:17:34 ◼   ► What did you notice, Myke?

00:17:35 ◼   ► I could tell it wasn't you.

00:17:37 ◼   ► Oh, really? How, how do you think you know that it wasn't me?

00:17:41 ◼   ► There's a couple of things.

00:17:42 ◼   ► Okay.

00:17:43 ◼   ► One that many people I saw in the Reddit notice.

00:17:46 ◼   ► Fingers on people's arms.

00:17:48 ◼   ► You've never done that before.

00:17:51 ◼   ► But the thing that I noticed was the fluidity of the animation.

00:17:56 ◼   ► That was the biggest change.

00:17:57 ◼   ► So things were moving differently.

00:17:59 ◼   ► There was less movement by just like jump cut.

00:18:02 ◼   ► There was more like actual movement in the slides.

00:18:04 ◼   ► And one of the big tells for me was, I think it's at one point, either the gray

00:18:11 ◼   ► character or somebody moves an arm and it moves in a non-CTP gray way.

00:18:17 ◼   ► There's just little movements.

00:18:19 ◼   ► and also like the illustration of the big red button,

00:18:21 ◼   ► that isn't something you do.

00:18:22 ◼   ► I'm watching a video right now in case you couldn't tell.

00:18:24 ◼   ► - Oh, okay, is that what you're doing?

00:18:26 ◼   ► You're going through it. - The whistling face?

00:18:28 ◼   ► Gray wouldn't animate the whistling face.

00:18:30 ◼   ► - Uh-huh.

00:18:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause when I watch this video,

00:18:33 ◼   ► it's what makes sense to me as to which type of style

00:18:36 ◼   ► should have won out in your submission,

00:18:39 ◼   ► which is the if CGP Gray truly cared about animation

00:18:44 ◼   ► to the point that he wanted to learn more skills in it,

00:18:48 ◼   ► this is how it would look like.

00:18:49 ◼   ► So it's your style, everything looks like you drew it,

00:18:51 ◼   ► right, like the stick figures are all there,

00:18:53 ◼   ► it's not a wild departure.

00:18:55 ◼   ► But the animation of all the characters

00:18:58 ◼   ► looks more alive and more fluid,

00:19:00 ◼   ► and it's just like the next step.

00:19:02 ◼   ► But because for you, the videos are in the work

00:19:05 ◼   ► that you do in the scripts, and the animation

00:19:08 ◼   ► is just to help bring the script to life,

00:19:10 ◼   ► putting that amount of effort and time

00:19:12 ◼   ► into learning how to animate in this different way

00:19:15 ◼   ► just was never in your view.

00:19:18 ◼   ► But if you have somebody who does this, they're able to just bring it to life a little bit more

00:19:22 ◼   ► and add a bit more fluidity to the motion, which I can totally see in these.

00:19:26 ◼   ► You're so confident that I didn't animate it.

00:19:28 ◼   ► I'm 100% confident.

00:19:29 ◼   ► The interesting thing to me is I don't quite know what you mean.

00:19:33 ◼   ► Oh, also, speculation time, which is the best thing that you've put in any video of all time.

00:19:38 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:19:39 ◼   ► Speculation time is my entire life right now.

00:19:42 ◼   ► That rainbow? My word, so good.

00:19:44 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:19:45 ◼   ► We can get back to speculation time.

00:19:47 ◼   ► Like I don't know what you mean by fluid because I know the timeline of this video and there

00:19:54 ◼   ► are only I think two or three moments that aren't just static images on the screen.

00:20:02 ◼   ► So when you keep saying "more fluid" like I'm not quite sure what you think you're seeing

00:20:06 ◼   ► there, but it is actually a very large series of static images.

00:20:11 ◼   ► There's only three things that I think are actually animated.

00:20:14 ◼   ► The little country girls popping out of the United Kingdom, speculation time rainbow is animated, it wipes in on the screen, and there's one other little moment that's animated.

00:20:25 ◼   ► Everything else is a still shot.

00:20:27 ◼   ► Let me give you an example of what I mean by fluidity, which is in the cuts.

00:20:31 ◼   ► Mhm.

00:20:32 ◼   ► Which is in the little parts that happen that aren't necessary.

00:20:36 ◼   ► So, for example, quite early in the video you're sitting behind your desk and something changed on the screen behind you and your arm goes from bent straight to point at it.

00:20:44 ◼   ► I just don't think that's something you would have done.

00:20:47 ◼   ► So it's like it adds more life to the video.

00:20:50 ◼   ► And when I say fluid, that's kind of what I mean.

00:20:52 ◼   ► There's more happening, there are more little movements.

00:20:55 ◼   ► There's less still.

00:20:58 ◼   ► Like there's little elements change.

00:21:00 ◼   ► Like again, like the whistling thing.

00:21:02 ◼   ► It's not necessary, but it's there.

00:21:05 ◼   ► And then also just an illustration quality that's higher than yours, which is like,

00:21:09 ◼   ► for example, the betting cap.

00:21:11 ◼   ► What would you call it?

00:21:12 ◼   ► Little visor?

00:21:13 ◼   ► looks kind of out of place in the CGB Grey flat world, because it's got like a little

00:21:18 ◼   ► shine to it and stuff. So these are the things that make me 100% certain that you did not

00:21:26 ◼   ► do the illustration and animation for this video. So am I right?

00:21:31 ◼   ► So confident you are, Myke. So confident. And yes, you are right about that. This was

00:21:37 ◼   ► the first video that someone else did 99.5% of the animation for this.

00:21:47 ◼   ► There was just a tiny amount that I changed at the last second, a couple little frames,

00:21:51 ◼   ► but essentially this was entirely done by a different person.

00:21:54 ◼   ► I handed over a bunch of my assets for them to work with, so I handed over the assets

00:22:01 ◼   ► that had created of me at the desk, a few of the things that I normally use, fonts,

00:22:06 ◼   ► I handed over the country girls file, a bunch of style guide kind of elements, but I was

00:22:16 ◼   ► working with somebody else to create the animation for this video.

00:22:19 ◼   ► So you were right.

00:22:20 ◼   ► You were right, Myke.

00:22:21 ◼   ► I want to come back to the assets, I think.

00:22:24 ◼   ► But there's an important question in this, which is, is the hiring process over?

00:22:31 ◼   ► Not exactly.

00:22:33 ◼   ► I am in parallel trying a few things with a few different people is what's going on

00:22:40 ◼   ► and there's, there are some things that might come out in the future which are done in a

00:22:45 ◼   ► different way, there are some things that are just being tested, so strictly speaking

00:22:49 ◼   ► no the hiring process is not over at this stage.

00:22:53 ◼   ► Well I guess it depends on your interpretation of my question.

00:22:57 ◼   ► I think you're answering this in like, I haven't found my first employee, but are you still

00:23:02 ◼   ► looking for suggestions from people? Are you still going through any of that? Or do you

00:23:07 ◼   ► have like at least a few people where you're like, they are good enough that I will use

00:23:11 ◼   ► them?

00:23:12 ◼   ► I am still refining down the list of people who I would want to work with in the future.

00:23:16 ◼   ► But you have at least obviously found someone who fits the bill. At a base level.

00:23:22 ◼   ► So yes, in that sense, yes. I have found so far at least one person who I would be happy

00:23:30 ◼   ► to work with in the future.

00:23:32 ◼   ► you know like I want to see it go further but that that requires maybe different people as well

00:23:38 ◼   ► like I want- you can never never be satisfied you can never satisfy the people right this is like

00:23:43 ◼   ► further further more more I still think there's more that can be done right so I assume that you

00:23:49 ◼   ► put some constraints on this video but I would love to see more animation in your videos than

00:23:58 ◼   ► than what we have here as well.

00:23:59 ◼   ► So I mean, I'm hoping that you continue to push it.

00:24:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's gonna be Pixar Studios eventually.

00:24:05 ◼   ► That's where this is going, Myke.

00:24:06 ◼   ► - Why not?

00:24:07 ◼   ► - It's gonna be-- - Why not?

00:24:09 ◼   ► - This is gonna be hair animated on monster skins.

00:24:13 ◼   ► - Sky's the limit, baby.

00:24:14 ◼   ► Why box yourself in?

00:24:16 ◼   ► - The entire video is shot under CGI water.

00:24:20 ◼   ► - You can do like what Pixar do.

00:24:21 ◼   ► You can take your animation team snorkeling

00:24:23 ◼   ► so you can understand the way that fish move.

00:24:25 ◼   ► You can do all of that.

00:24:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's the endgame for grey industries without a doubt.

00:24:30 ◼   ► Yeah, that's how that's that's gonna work.

00:24:31 ◼   ► Don't limit yourself, grey.

00:24:33 ◼   ► Field trips to Harvard to see what universities are like.

00:24:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:24:37 ◼   ► This is how this is gonna go.

00:24:38 ◼   ► You can go and tour classrooms so they can really understand how to animate the whiteboard.

00:24:41 ◼   ► I really do think that stuff matters, but that's a whole other issue.

00:24:46 ◼   ► It's like, yes, Ed Kavil, I actually do think that is a very legitimate business expense

00:24:51 ◼   ► if you're gonna animate Monsters, Inc. is take everybody to Harvard.

00:24:53 ◼   ► Oh, I completely agree.

00:24:54 ◼   ► I 100% agree.

00:24:56 ◼   ► It sounds crazy, but I think he's right.

00:24:57 ◼   ► I think he was right to do that.

00:24:59 ◼   ► - There was no Apple Pencil on the desk.

00:25:00 ◼   ► - Yes, I was totally aware of that,

00:25:02 ◼   ► and I was kind of shaking my fist afterward.

00:25:04 ◼   ► - I was very upset.

00:25:06 ◼   ► - I handed over the asset file that has the old,

00:25:09 ◼   ► I think that's the iPad 4 on my desk there.

00:25:12 ◼   ► - I can tell it's an old one,

00:25:13 ◼   ► 'cause I remember the day

00:25:14 ◼   ► where you were working on animation,

00:25:16 ◼   ► and you very proudly sent me a screenshot

00:25:18 ◼   ► with the pencil on the iPad.

00:25:21 ◼   ► And I think you just sent me attention to detail

00:25:23 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:25:24 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:25:26 ◼   ► Yeah, but yeah, so through a slight asset mix up,

00:25:30 ◼   ► I did end up with an old iPad on the desk.

00:25:33 ◼   ► - This is one of those times where you really wish

00:25:35 ◼   ► YouTube could let you swap out the video.

00:25:37 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:25:37 ◼   ► - I really do, right?

00:25:39 ◼   ► Listen, YouTube, I absolutely have to change

00:25:41 ◼   ► the iPad on the desk.

00:25:42 ◼   ► You don't understand how important this is

00:25:44 ◼   ► to me and four other people in the world

00:25:46 ◼   ► who notice that I very slowly update the set of tools

00:25:49 ◼   ► that I use on my desk.

00:25:50 ◼   ► - 'Cause now it's like you're a time traveler.

00:25:53 ◼   ► because you're now talking about Brexit with an iPad 4.

00:25:56 ◼   ► This is pre-iPad Pro time.

00:25:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, it doesn't make any sense.

00:26:01 ◼   ► I actually wonder, someone should find

00:26:03 ◼   ► where is the first time that I had an iPad on the desk.

00:26:06 ◼   ► I don't know which video it would have been,

00:26:08 ◼   ► and I'd be curious to know,

00:26:09 ◼   ► because there are older ones where you can see

00:26:11 ◼   ► that I still show myself using a laptop in various shots,

00:26:14 ◼   ► but I don't know when I first put the iPad on the desk.

00:26:16 ◼   ► I'm not sure when that happened, but yeah.

00:26:17 ◼   ► So that was a little editing glitch

00:26:20 ◼   ► that occurred in the process of animation.

00:26:22 ◼   ► Not fatal, obviously. I didn't feel the need to pull the whole video because of it.

00:26:26 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:26:27 ◼   ► That is debatable, at least.

00:26:29 ◼   ► But yes, there are things that a few very eagle-eyed people did notice that were

00:26:34 ◼   ► a little bit different with this animation or, um...

00:26:38 ◼   ► Yeah, just a little bit out of the ordinary.

00:26:40 ◼   ► And yeah, but so that was partly because I was working with somebody else,

00:26:44 ◼   ► which was a very interesting process.

00:26:46 ◼   ► And I also have to say that this video would...

00:26:49 ◼   ► never, ever have occurred were it not for being able to work with someone on the animation.

00:26:55 ◼   ► It just...

00:26:56 ◼   ► It was interesting, but during the process of thinking about

00:27:01 ◼   ► "Am I actually going to do a video on Brexit?"

00:27:04 ◼   ► Like, what might this look like? How might it come to be?

00:27:07 ◼   ► I was really aware that

00:27:10 ◼   ► had I not gotten to this stage that I was at with

00:27:14 ◼   ► filtering down a list of people to work with

00:27:17 ◼   ► and seriously being able to consider working with some of them,

00:27:20 ◼   ► there's no way I would have considered a Brexit video.

00:27:24 ◼   ► It just wouldn't have even been remotely feasible.

00:27:27 ◼   ► Why?

00:27:28 ◼   ► It wouldn't have been feasible because of

00:27:31 ◼   ► the time frame of producing something like this.

00:27:34 ◼   ► Yeah, so if you will allow me to pull back the curtain a little bit,

00:27:38 ◼   ► will you allow me to do that?

00:27:39 ◼   ► Okay. I don't know how much of the curtain you're going to pull back.

00:27:42 ◼   ► We were talking about this video.

00:27:45 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. You sent me a script to look over because me and you have been talking about Brexit a bunch

00:27:51 ◼   ► And maybe I've followed some of the news more than you have which again between me and you it's not very much

00:27:57 ◼   ► but I've been kind of looking at it and I looked over the script and

00:28:01 ◼   ► Then things started to come together like super quickly like way faster

00:28:07 ◼   ► Than usual for you, which that raised my eyebrows in the first instance, right?

00:28:13 ◼   ► Like when I knew you were animating, I was like, "Well, this is quick."

00:28:15 ◼   ► Like either Gray is working with someone or he's decided to say,

00:28:19 ◼   ► "To hell with my hands."

00:28:20 ◼   ► So this timeline is a lot faster.

00:28:24 ◼   ► And that is very interesting because we had previously on this show spoken about

00:28:29 ◼   ► the fact that when you do this, when you bring someone in,

00:28:32 ◼   ► you were kind of expecting it to be a lot of hard work to get them to the point

00:28:36 ◼   ► where they could do this for you. But maybe that's,

00:28:39 ◼   ► at least if it's hard work, it's not work that takes a lot of time.

00:28:42 ◼   ► Yeah, well this is part of the process of trying to figure out which is the person that I want to work with

00:28:48 ◼   ► and doing just a little bit of initial feedback.

00:28:50 ◼   ► And essentially in no small way, this very video was a bit like a job application stage of saying,

00:29:01 ◼   ► "Listen, let's see if we can do a thing really quickly."

00:29:05 ◼   ► And with the person I was working with, I would have known within the first day or two

00:29:10 ◼   ► based on what I was getting back from them if this was even possible.

00:29:12 ◼   ► And so the person that I chose to work with on this, I was just immediately seeing like, yes, I think that this is possible

00:29:19 ◼   ► let's just see if we can go for it.

00:29:21 ◼   ► And one of the ways in which I like to try to arrange projects is to have them be

00:29:27 ◼   ► valuable

00:29:30 ◼   ► even if they fail or even if they don't work out. And so when I was thinking about doing this Brexit video

00:29:36 ◼   ► one of the things I was thinking of was, well if I work on this script and

00:29:42 ◼   ► I am trying to make this video with somebody else and it doesn't

00:29:48 ◼   ► work out because of the animations, like if the animations are not able to be done in the required time and to the required quality that

00:29:54 ◼   ► I need. At the very least I have learned something about one of my finalist candidates, right?

00:30:00 ◼   ► So it's like even if this is a disaster, it's not a total disaster

00:30:04 ◼   ► There is something that is kind of salvaged out of it. The time money calculation works out. It checks out.

00:30:09 ◼   ► It checks out because it's like, look, I'm essentially giving someone something to do under a kind of time constraint

00:30:14 ◼   ► and I need to be able to see what they're able to do.

00:30:16 ◼   ► Because if you didn't do this, you'd never notice about this person, and then that is counter to how you want to run your business going forward.

00:30:23 ◼   ► Exactly, exactly. So my view was even if the video didn't come out, there was still an upside to even doing this.

00:30:32 ◼   ► And that was one of the reasons why I wanted to do this. It's like, okay, let me see.

00:30:36 ◼   ► And it was also just an ability to see and to test a kind of quick turnaround.

00:30:42 ◼   ► Because in the process of making this, I was looking it up and I think it was something like 11 days start to finish on this video.

00:30:52 ◼   ► Which is a pretty fast turnaround for me.

00:30:55 ◼   ► I think you're underselling that.

00:30:57 ◼   ► Oh yeah?

00:30:58 ◼   ► 11 days start to finish is very fast.

00:31:02 ◼   ► It's very fast for me. It's not a pace that I would want to work out regularly,

00:31:06 ◼   ► and it's not a pace that I would want my animators to work out regularly.

00:31:10 ◼   ► Your business so far has proven that you don't need to do that.

00:31:13 ◼   ► Right, right. This video was a case of there is an implicit time pressure,

00:31:17 ◼   ► because this video can only be produced so fast. We're trying to talk about a changing situation,

00:31:26 ◼   ► And so if this is a thing that's going to take three weeks, there's no good way to talk about it three weeks from now.

00:31:34 ◼   ► Right, because too much will have changed.

00:31:36 ◼   ► Talk about a change in situation.

00:31:38 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. And yes, the script did change several times over even the space of those 11 days. Like, oh no, right?

00:31:45 ◼   ► Everything has changed because now we have a Prime Minister.

00:31:48 ◼   ► Yeah, that was like, curse you increasing stability of the world. This is not what I want from my script.

00:31:55 ◼   ► My script is based on the premise that there won't be a Prime Minister for several months, but somehow this has just changed overnight.

00:32:01 ◼   ► I have to say, when I knew this was coming together, I just, every few hours I would just go to the BBC News homepage and just see and would just keep sending you articles.

00:32:11 ◼   ► I was like, I felt a duty. I was like, I know you're not looking. You need to know if we have a Prime Minister.

00:32:17 ◼   ► Yes, I was glad to be kept up to date.

00:32:21 ◼   ► But all of this is just a long way of saying that I couldn't have possibly considered doing this video on my own.

00:32:26 ◼   ► Because, essentially, the animator was working simultaneously on this as I was writing the script.

00:32:33 ◼   ► And so, that meant that I was kind of burning some of his work when I was making changes.

00:32:39 ◼   ► But it was still like, we are each trying to get towards the thing at the same time.

00:32:44 ◼   ► And he only had the final audio the evening before it was supposed to go up.

00:32:51 ◼   ► Right, but kept working off of my drafts and storyboards and things.

00:32:56 ◼   ► So this is why it was able to be done, because if that hadn't occurred, it took me 11 days to get a finished script.

00:33:05 ◼   ► And then if I had to sit down and animate it, that would have been, especially because it's a longer video than normal,

00:33:11 ◼   ► It would have been close to a week maybe?

00:33:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm gonna say close to a week if I was really pushing it and not caring at all about my hands.

00:33:20 ◼   ► And then in all honesty you've had to have rewritten the script again.

00:33:22 ◼   ► Yeah, but yeah.

00:33:23 ◼   ► Yeah, there's no way it would have worked.

00:33:25 ◼   ► That's exactly it. An additional week would have meant too much changing in the political situation.

00:33:30 ◼   ► I would have gone back to go the audio and like guess what? This loop will just continue forever.

00:33:34 ◼   ► You can't fix this audio and this script fast enough to also be able to animate whatever the changes are

00:33:40 ◼   ► and you're just gonna get stuck in this forever.

00:33:42 ◼   ► - I wanna talk about some of the practicalities

00:33:45 ◼   ► of this process.

00:33:46 ◼   ► Because this is a way that you have worked

00:33:50 ◼   ► very closely with someone in a different way to before.

00:33:53 ◼   ► You know, like me and you work quite closely

00:33:55 ◼   ► with sending audio files back and forth,

00:33:57 ◼   ► but not at the speed and pace and frequency.

00:34:00 ◼   ► Like, I'm not making an edit and then sending it to you

00:34:03 ◼   ► and then you don't make an edit and send it to me.

00:34:05 ◼   ► Like, I just do the full show and then send it to you

00:34:08 ◼   ► and then you take a look at the full show.

00:34:10 ◼   ► We're not like taking little blocks and chopping them up and stuff like that.

00:34:13 ◼   ► Which is what I assume was a little bit more of what was happening

00:34:16 ◼   ► with the animator, that you were kind of sending it back and forwards to them

00:34:20 ◼   ► and they were checking things of you.

00:34:23 ◼   ► You were sending them edits, they were making more edits.

00:34:25 ◼   ► You were checking them, that kind of thing.

00:34:26 ◼   ► So how was that process going backwards and forwards?

00:34:28 ◼   ► How were you communicating?

00:34:30 ◼   ► How were you transferring files, that kind of thing?

00:34:32 ◼   ► OK, so here was the rough process.

00:34:34 ◼   ► This would have been the Friday before the video went up.

00:34:37 ◼   ► so like a week earlier, I had finished what I thought was a pretty decent rough script for a video.

00:34:45 ◼   ► This is a stage I always have to get to which is a bit of a proof of concept.

00:34:50 ◼   ► Like, is there something to talk about here?

00:34:53 ◼   ► Like, I'm not exactly sure there was a great thing to talk about,

00:34:56 ◼   ► and so I eventually settled on this idea of talking about it in terms of bets, and then I thought, okay,

00:35:00 ◼   ► maybe there's a thing to discuss here,

00:35:02 ◼   ► so let me just try to see if I can find a script. And sometimes in this process

00:35:06 ◼   ► I discover like actually no there really isn't anything to talk about but so I had about

00:35:10 ◼   ► 1,500 words for a script

00:35:13 ◼   ► That I thought okay. This is enough that I can look at this and I can say

00:35:17 ◼   ► Go like we can try to do this and so

00:35:21 ◼   ► The first the first stage was just doing a very rough

00:35:26 ◼   ► Storyboard for if this rough script is to become a video

00:35:31 ◼   ► What are the things that are going to be needed on screen?

00:35:36 ◼   ► What are the items that we're talking about? And so like how is

00:35:40 ◼   ► entering and leaving the EU going to be conceptualized? How are the political parties going to be shown?

00:35:47 ◼   ► How are all of these elements going to be on screen?

00:35:50 ◼   ► And there's a way you can do that, which is to just

00:35:53 ◼   ► just do it by stick figures. And so I largely turned that over to the animator and said

00:36:01 ◼   ► storyboard this out for me?" And that was kind of like my first test of seeing

00:36:05 ◼   ► "Can you get back to me a storyboard on this rough script

00:36:09 ◼   ► that looks reasonable to me?" And the answer was yes. And so when I got back a storyboard that looked reasonable

00:36:15 ◼   ► it's like, "Okay, we're gonna go."

00:36:17 ◼   ► What does a storyboard look like?

00:36:19 ◼   ► A storyboard just looks like a bunch of hand-drawn boxes with little stick figures in it and

00:36:25 ◼   ► like just the roughest possible drawing that you could have of what is going to happen in each section of the script.

00:36:31 ◼   ► We had that and then the way it worked was that I just spent

00:36:36 ◼   ► the like each morning working on the script, each afternoon

00:36:41 ◼   ► trying to keep up a little bit with politically what's going on in reading, and then each evening working on the script again.

00:36:47 ◼   ► So I was doing like two major writing and one like reading section each day.

00:36:51 ◼   ► So this was like my cycle of going through it.

00:36:53 ◼   ► And while I was doing that,

00:36:55 ◼   ► the animator wasn't trying to animate the video directly,

00:37:01 ◼   ► but was instead trying to create all of the pieces

00:37:05 ◼   ► that would need to be assembled at the end.

00:37:07 ◼   ► So, this is how this was able to be done.

00:37:11 ◼   ► There's a way to work on the animations

00:37:13 ◼   ► without having to actually be animating,

00:37:16 ◼   ► like, each frame that's going to occur.

00:37:18 ◼   ► It's more like create the pieces that will be frantically assembled together at the last possible second.

00:37:25 ◼   ► But, you know, 90% of the work has been done in the creation of the assets that are going to be on screen.

00:37:31 ◼   ► So that's the way this was working.

00:37:33 ◼   ► I kept messaging him every time I had done a major revision.

00:37:37 ◼   ► I just said, "Okay, here's the stuff that's changed.

00:37:40 ◼   ► If you were working on these assets, like this thing no longer needs to be there, so just dump it if you're working on it.

00:37:46 ◼   ► and here's anything new that will need to be created.

00:37:49 ◼   ► And so a perfect example is like, oh we need a Prime Minister now, right?

00:37:53 ◼   ► There was no reference to a Prime Minister in this script,

00:37:55 ◼   ► but now we need something for the Prime Minister to do,

00:37:57 ◼   ► and there needs to be some reference to her.

00:37:59 ◼   ► Or now there needs to be a specific Prime Minister.

00:38:02 ◼   ► Right, right. There doesn't need to be a generic nobody's doing the job Prime Minister.

00:38:07 ◼   ► And so that is roughly how it went, and as the days went on,

00:38:12 ◼   ► more and more assets were created, and then there's parts of the script

00:38:15 ◼   ► parts of the script which look very unlikely to change and so those start

00:38:19 ◼   ► getting created into different slides and it all starts coming

00:38:23 ◼   ► together until the very end where the day before I'm able to say "okay here is

00:38:26 ◼   ► the final audio" and animate it against this. So now we know what the timings

00:38:32 ◼   ► need to be for how long it takes me to say each individual part. And I'm assuming

00:38:37 ◼   ► you're communicating via Slack transferring files by Dropbox.

00:38:41 ◼   ► This is an entirely Slack Dropbox project.

00:38:45 ◼   ► Which is always kind of amazing to me that again you can work with someone just anywhere randomly in the world.

00:38:49 ◼   ► But we have like instant messaging platform, files can be transferred back and forth immediately.

00:38:55 ◼   ► There's even little things that I just, I don't know, I still feel like it's slightly magical that I can get a message from a guy who's like,

00:39:02 ◼   ► "Oh hey, I need that scroll that you use all the time."

00:39:05 ◼   ► and I can open up my phone, like drill down into Dropbox where I keep that, copy it over into the shared folder that we have,

00:39:11 ◼   ► and then he gets it seconds later, right?

00:39:12 ◼   ► But I'm like walking to my house, just doing this on my phone with one hand.

00:39:16 ◼   ► That's a step on from that, like, the way that improves the collaboration process between you and this person is amazing,

00:39:22 ◼   ► because now they never need to ask for that again.

00:39:24 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:39:25 ◼   ► This is the idea of the assets, right?

00:39:26 ◼   ► Right.

00:39:27 ◼   ► And eventually, like, you just don't need to give anything like that anymore, because they have it all, which is interesting.

00:39:33 ◼   ► Yeah, there was... I mean, my description might sound a little bit like, rushed and chaotic,

00:39:39 ◼   ► and I have to say, this was definitely a little bit rushed and chaotic.

00:39:43 ◼   ► There were a bunch of ways we were doing stuff that, you know, we were talking at the time like,

00:39:47 ◼   ► "This is not how we're normally going to do this if we work together in the future!"

00:39:50 ◼   ► But you don't have processes yet.

00:39:52 ◼   ► Yeah, but it was a question of, "Is there just a super-fast way to do it right now?

00:39:57 ◼   ► Just do it that way, even if this is not a good way to do things in the future."

00:40:01 ◼   ► Because what matters is we need this up by Friday.

00:40:05 ◼   ► Like we cannot afford an additional weekend news cycle.

00:40:09 ◼   ► So just whatever is fastest, just do that.

00:40:13 ◼   ► That's what we're gonna do.

00:40:14 ◼   ► And at the end of it, you just delivered a video file?

00:40:17 ◼   ► Yes, the way we did it this time was I was delivered a video file,

00:40:22 ◼   ► just a straight up MP4, that I imported into Final Cut Pro,

00:40:27 ◼   ► added a few things that I needed to do,

00:40:29 ◼   ► to do, added in a couple of little transitions that I wanted in there, and then I re-export it again

00:40:36 ◼   ► and upload it to YouTube. That's a perfect example of, this is a terrible way to normally do it,

00:40:41 ◼   ► but this is the fastest way to just do it now. But it's like, get it done, great, just send me

00:40:47 ◼   ► an MP4 file, like we don't have time to deal with, you know, like me re-rendering it on my end,

00:40:53 ◼   ► like nope, it's actually faster to just send it across the internet as an MP4, let's just do it

00:40:57 ◼   ► Did it feel pretty good though?

00:40:59 ◼   ► I was just pleased that it was done and I've been thinking about it a lot that it's...

00:41:06 ◼   ► I don't really like doing super fast turnaround stuff. I find it very stressful.

00:41:13 ◼   ► I really don't like playing any games with the news cycle.

00:41:17 ◼   ► But it was interesting and useful to have done this one this time, just to see that it's possible, and to have that as a thing to keep in mind for the future.

00:41:32 ◼   ► Because there are things that you focus on that every few years there is a video like this that should be made.

00:41:41 ◼   ► Like, an election occurs, and something crazy happens in the election.

00:41:46 ◼   ► Like, that is so within your wheelhouse, it just makes sense for you to have a video about

00:41:50 ◼   ► it.

00:41:51 ◼   ► It's why everybody really wanted a Brexit video from you, right?

00:41:53 ◼   ► Because there are so many elements of Brexit which fall directly into CGP Grey's video

00:42:00 ◼   ► wheelhouse, right?

00:42:01 ◼   ► There is a really interesting election that's done in a certain way, movements between countries,

00:42:06 ◼   ► like political, it all kind of ties together so nicely.

00:42:11 ◼   ► That's why everybody wanted it, and it's good to know now that you at least, in your back

00:42:15 ◼   ► pocket, have the ability to have a video from conception to delivery in like 10 days.

00:42:23 ◼   ► It's just a good thing to know you can do, which you couldn't have done.

00:42:28 ◼   ► As you said earlier, there's no way this video would have existed if you were trying to do

00:42:31 ◼   ► it on your own.

00:42:32 ◼   ► Yeah, there's no way.

00:42:34 ◼   ► It's just not possible.

00:42:35 ◼   ► The fastest turnaround I ever did was the Confederate flag video.

00:42:40 ◼   ► But if you go back and look at that, first of all, it's incredibly short.

00:42:44 ◼   ► It is a very short video that is very minimal in information that needs to get out there,

00:42:52 ◼   ► which is the only reason I was able to even consider doing that one.

00:42:55 ◼   ► Yeah, two minutes and twenty seconds.

00:42:57 ◼   ► So it's like hardly anything.

00:42:59 ◼   ► It was almost like a second thought kind of video, right?

00:43:02 ◼   ► It was just like, here's the thing, I have some thoughts on it, and it's done.

00:43:05 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:43:06 ◼   ► It was very, very, very short.

00:43:08 ◼   ► Whereas the Brexit one, because I really felt that the only way to talk about it was, with

00:43:14 ◼   ► speculation time, was to acknowledge and discuss the fact that there is no process, that this

00:43:21 ◼   ► is all just speculation.

00:43:23 ◼   ► It's kind of why I felt okay doing that video in that way, because speculation is an intrinsic

00:43:28 ◼   ► part of what is occurring now, so let's speculate, let's do that.

00:43:33 ◼   ► And in order to get to that stage of the video, like why is it speculation time?

00:43:39 ◼   ► There's enough groundwork that needs to be laid and enough stuff that needs to be talked

00:43:42 ◼   ► about that there's no way that that can be a short video.

00:43:47 ◼   ► I couldn't do a video where I just came out and just talked about the odds of Brexit.

00:43:52 ◼   ► It wouldn't make sense.

00:43:53 ◼   ► I think it needed a little bit of context.

00:43:56 ◼   ► But then that's why the video is whatever it is.

00:43:59 ◼   ► Six minutes, seven minutes long?

00:44:00 ◼   ► I have no idea.

00:44:01 ◼   ► It's pretty long.

00:44:02 ◼   ► And I'm talking pretty fast through the script.

00:44:05 ◼   ► So, yeah, it was not doable on my own, but doable with somebody else.

00:44:11 ◼   ► How do you feel about the future now?

00:44:13 ◼   ► One of the things when I think about the future, just in general, is the importance of proof of concepts.

00:44:22 ◼   ► Like, just the proof that a thing is able to be done, even if it is not done in a cost-effective or elegant or quick way.

00:44:31 ◼   ► but like you have proved that a thing is possible to do, usually with regards to the world of

00:44:36 ◼   ► technology.

00:44:37 ◼   ► Like proof of concepts are very interesting, and to me this is me essentially having gone

00:44:43 ◼   ► through a proof of concept that I can do a video with having someone else do the animation

00:44:52 ◼   ► if I'm able to work with the right person.

00:44:56 ◼   ► There are several ways that this has an impact on my work, and I feel like I'm still trying

00:45:04 ◼   ► to think through precisely what this means.

00:45:08 ◼   ► I haven't really come to a solid conclusion, but I feel like one of the main things that

00:45:16 ◼   ► I had on my mind when we started this whole #YearOfLessMe was trying to remove myself

00:45:26 ◼   ► from parts of the business which are incredibly time consuming.

00:45:29 ◼   ► And this was one of the big ones that was like in the back of my mind is a thing that

00:45:33 ◼   ► like is this possible to do?

00:45:35 ◼   ► And so now here, you know, just over halfway through the year, the answer is yes, this

00:45:40 ◼   ► is a thing that was possible to do.

00:45:43 ◼   ► And I could see straight away some of the things that were on my mind about reasons

00:45:48 ◼   ► why I would want to do this.

00:45:50 ◼   ► And one of the big ones was, even though this was a lot of work to get the script done in

00:45:59 ◼   ► this amount of time, it was ultimately though still a lot less disruptive to my regular

00:46:06 ◼   ► working routine.

00:46:09 ◼   ► So I did need some downtime after the video went up, but it wasn't like when I normally

00:46:17 ◼   ► put up a video and I feel like I have been drained of all of my life force, right?

00:46:22 ◼   ► And it's like I am now knocking almost like a week out of my schedule before I'm back

00:46:28 ◼   ► to being a normal person.

00:46:30 ◼   ► And also a whole bunch of knock-on effects that has of just like, someday we need to

00:46:34 ◼   ► revisit the whole idea of routines again.

00:46:36 ◼   ► But just being aware that every time I uploaded a video it really punches out a whole section

00:46:42 ◼   ► of my calendar and my schedule and my routines in a not helpful way.

00:46:48 ◼   ► And so doing this video with another person I was really aware like, "Okay, this was very

00:46:53 ◼   ► busy, this was an unusual amount of work time, this was a big crunch, but I don't feel like

00:46:58 ◼   ► I've just blasted a hole in my calendar as a result of this."

00:47:04 ◼   ► And so I think that has an interesting impact on the future.

00:47:07 ◼   ► So I guess the answer is I am interested to see where this goes, but I can't say I have

00:47:15 ◼   ► super solid specific thoughts on it now, but what I do have is a successful proof of concept

00:47:21 ◼   ► and I'm pretty happy about that.

00:47:23 ◼   ► If you're not doing the animation or the illustration, do you feel like all of your creative itches

00:47:28 ◼   ► will be scratched?

00:47:30 ◼   ► So for me, there are certain shows that I edit that I can't let go of because I like

00:47:36 ◼   ► to put my touch on them. Like the flourishes that I do that I hear, you know, my little

00:47:43 ◼   ► things, the things that I can't explain to somebody else, like why I feel like a sound

00:47:47 ◼   ► effect needs to go here, or why I think this part needs the girl from Ipanema, you know,

00:47:52 ◼   ► like why that I think that stuff should happen. That's part of my own creative vision, I guess,

00:48:01 ◼   ► which is a terrible way to say that but there's no other way I can think of.

00:48:04 ◼   ► You're such an artiste, Myke. I know, you know podcasts as art, right?

00:48:09 ◼   ► Right. Do you think that in doing this in handing

00:48:13 ◼   ► over all of this part of the video creation, do you think that you might end up feeling

00:48:18 ◼   ► like you're missing something?

00:48:21 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:48:23 ◼   ► That's hard to project in the future.

00:48:25 ◼   ► But again, in this world of a proof of concept, one of the things in the proof of concept

00:48:31 ◼   ► stage was giving feedback on the storyboards, for example.

00:48:38 ◼   ► Like before anything starts to get animated, like here's changes that need to be made,

00:48:41 ◼   ► or this needs to be different, this needs to be different.

00:48:45 ◼   ► And that was an interesting thing to see where it's the same feeling of, I don't know why

00:48:52 ◼   ► I need or want this section to be different, but I just feel it's better if it's shown

00:48:57 ◼   ► this way versus that way.

00:48:59 ◼   ► And I didn't do a ton of that, but it was, again, just I think part of the process of

00:49:05 ◼   ► trying to work with somebody else and getting into the experience of like giving a list

00:49:12 ◼   ► of changes, seeing what comes back, seeing how that goes.

00:49:16 ◼   ► And I can see that being just fine in the future, working on rough storyboards with

00:49:21 ◼   ► somebody else and doing a bunch of feedback in that stage and feeling totally fine with

00:49:26 ◼   ► that.

00:49:28 ◼   ► That the end result with the animations is what I want and in lots of little details

00:49:35 ◼   ► is better than something that I could produce on my own.

00:49:38 ◼   ► So I don't necessarily worry that I'm going to feel like, "Oh, I don't have an expression

00:49:43 ◼   ► for my creative side."

00:49:44 ◼   ► I'm not too concerned about that.

00:49:47 ◼   ► But maybe I'm wrong.

00:49:48 ◼   ► It's hard to know your future self.

00:49:49 ◼   ► You definitely have a creative flair for making your little jokes and stuff that you do.

00:49:55 ◼   ► And I just wonder, can you explain that to someone easily?

00:49:58 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:50:01 ◼   ► Again, there's many ways where we'll have to see, in the future, developing an actual process for working together with other people.

00:50:11 ◼   ► As opposed to just like, "Oh god, let's get it up right now!"

00:50:15 ◼   ► And I think that that'll be part of what this is.

00:50:19 ◼   ► When I'm writing a script, I often, like I always say, I have a very clear idea in my head of what it is that I want up on screen.

00:50:27 ◼   ► So I think part of the process in the future might be figuring out a way to communicate

00:50:32 ◼   ► what I think are the most important parts of that.

00:50:34 ◼   ► Like, "I am saying these words, and these words, they look on paper like they don't

00:50:40 ◼   ► work, but I think they will work if this is on the screen when I'm saying them."

00:50:45 ◼   ► That is a thing that comes up all the time when I'm writing, is being aware of words

00:50:51 ◼   ► that just don't work if the right thing isn't on the screen.

00:50:55 ◼   ► So you feel like you have that vision when you're writing rather than when you're animating?

00:51:00 ◼   ► Yes, exactly.

00:51:01 ◼   ► Well then that's going to be great for you then, right?

00:51:03 ◼   ► Because for me, I only get some of those thoughts when I'm actually hearing the audio go through.

00:51:08 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:51:09 ◼   ► Right?

00:51:10 ◼   ► And I'm like, "Oh, this would work really great here."

00:51:11 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:51:12 ◼   ► So that's when I do it.

00:51:13 ◼   ► But if you're seeing it when you're writing, then you're still probably going to get the

00:51:16 ◼   ► majority of that creativity out.

00:51:18 ◼   ► Right, right.

00:51:20 ◼   ► Listening to you talk about this and knowing the process that you've been through, and

00:51:25 ◼   ► as our listeners have heard us go along this, and seeing the output, I think the future

00:51:31 ◼   ► is very bright.

00:51:33 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe.

00:51:35 ◼   ► I don't know, my feeling is just things are different.

00:51:42 ◼   ► We're just looking back at the conversations that we've had over the last few months.

00:51:47 ◼   ► What you have here is exactly what you were looking for, like at a base level.

00:51:53 ◼   ► Somebody has created a video that looks like one of your videos, is maybe of even higher

00:52:01 ◼   ► quality than some of them, and it's worked perfectly.

00:52:06 ◼   ► And they've not diverged from you, you know, we haven't got red stick figures, like this,

00:52:11 ◼   ► you know, they're not doing something crazy.

00:52:14 ◼   ► All of the additions are great. Speculation time again. Best thing ever. You know, all

00:52:20 ◼   ► of this stuff has worked and it's output something that not only is good, it's something, as

00:52:26 ◼   ► we've said many times, you couldn't have done. So this has been like a net win for the business.

00:52:32 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I definitely think so. I definitely think so. So I think like what I don't know

00:52:39 ◼   ► I don't know if in a year from now I will exactly be in this position, but going forward

00:52:44 ◼   ► I would like ideally to do as little of the animation as possible for all of the various

00:52:51 ◼   ► reasons we have discussed on previous shows.

00:52:54 ◼   ► And it seems to me that there is a way to do that now that is real.

00:53:01 ◼   ► So I am looking forward to seeing how this goes.

00:53:05 ◼   ► I feel like you're on the plane, this.

00:53:06 ◼   ► Yeah?

00:53:07 ◼   ► I mean, you might just want to be conservative about it, but this just seems like perfect.

00:53:13 ◼   ► Like you've done it.

00:53:16 ◼   ► And it's worked.

00:53:19 ◼   ► And now you're able to do more than you've ever been able to do before.

00:53:22 ◼   ► Like this just seems like an absolute unbridled victory.

00:53:28 ◼   ► I'm a cautious person, Myke.

00:53:29 ◼   ► I know you are.

00:53:30 ◼   ► I mean, that's all this is.

00:53:32 ◼   ► I just can't believe how you're not like, you know, running down the road, clicking

00:53:36 ◼   ► your heels.

00:53:37 ◼   ► This is exactly what you were looking for.

00:53:40 ◼   ► First try.

00:53:42 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:53:43 ◼   ► Right, this is amazing.

00:53:44 ◼   ► I'm very excited for you.

00:53:47 ◼   ► - I'm glad you're very excited for me.

00:53:49 ◼   ► I am also happy.

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00:55:45 ◼   ► So in what will be regarded as a classic Cortex moment from the last episode where you got

00:55:50 ◼   ► very upset about Evernote it has brought people out in their droves to recommend other services

00:55:58 ◼   ► to you as a replacement for Evernote. So I kind of, first off, are you totally ditching

00:56:06 ◼   ► it? Have you made the decision? Is it dead to you? Is Evernote gone?

00:56:12 ◼   ► I mean look, look. The short answer to this is no, right? I spent, after that episode,

00:56:20 ◼   ► a long, frustrating weekend trying my darndest to find a solution to this.

00:56:27 ◼   ► And the closest thing by far is OneNote. And I was like, I am determined to make OneNote

00:56:35 ◼   ► work, but there are a few things that are just total deal breakers about the way OneNote

00:56:43 ◼   ► works. I think that Evernote is really just a tool that sits at a unique place.

00:56:49 ◼   ► That there really isn't anything else that does all of the things that it does.

00:56:55 ◼   ► It's just deeply unfortunate that Evernote is at a company that I don't

00:57:01 ◼   ► feel like I can trust very much and that does not do a great job with the iPad

00:57:09 ◼   ► implementation of their app and has dumb limits. And so the end result of what it

00:57:16 ◼   ► is that I'm going to do so far is since there is nothing that I can switch to

00:57:20 ◼   ► right now and since this is still a tool that I need to keep using, a bunch of

00:57:26 ◼   ► people very helpfully pointed out that there are ways to try to get around these

00:57:30 ◼   ► Evernote limitations by using tags. So instead of having individual notebooks

00:57:36 ◼   ► for things, you can instead tag all of your notes, and that there is some ridiculous limit

00:57:44 ◼   ► on the number of tags. So it's like 10,000 or 100,000 tags, I don't remember exactly,

00:57:49 ◼   ► but the limit is very, very high. So like, I can kick the can down the road to 10 years

00:57:55 ◼   ► from now Gray, who has to worry about what happens when he runs up against the 10,000

00:58:00 ◼   ► tag limit in Evernote and has another little freakout.

00:58:01 ◼   ► Well Evernote is a 100 year company, right, so you're gonna be fine.

00:58:05 ◼   ► Right, they'll definitely be around in 10 years. And tags can be arranged in a hierarchical

00:58:10 ◼   ► manner which I was not aware of because it's not something that you can do on the iPad.

00:58:17 ◼   ► It's only a thing that you can do on the desktop version.

00:58:21 ◼   ► Turns out, same with Apple Notes. You can have nested folders, we were told, but only

00:58:27 ◼   ► on OS X. You can set them up and then you can view them on iOS.

00:58:32 ◼   ► That kind of stuff always makes me nervous when the feature...

00:58:36 ◼   ► So I can nest the tags on the desktop, but I can't do it on iOS?

00:58:41 ◼   ► It's like it got in the old version, but when they decided to make the new touch version,

00:58:45 ◼   ► they decided not to put it in?

00:58:47 ◼   ► Right, yeah.

00:58:48 ◼   ► Yeah, which doesn't make me feel super confident about that as well.

00:58:53 ◼   ► But it's really just the result of...

00:58:57 ◼   ► I think as often happens with tools that people use professionally, and computer tools in

00:59:03 ◼   ► general, that you can end up feeling kind of trapped by a tool that you rely upon, that

00:59:09 ◼   ► there's no good way to move.

00:59:12 ◼   ► And with Evernote there's always just some deal-breaking feature of trying to move to

00:59:17 ◼   ► another system.

00:59:18 ◼   ► Like, I'll definitely give a pretty good recommendation to Google Drive as well as an alternative

00:59:24 ◼   ► way to try to do this kind of thing.

00:59:26 ◼   ► Yeah, a few people wrote in about this. It seems like it has a lot of the features.

00:59:30 ◼   ► So you can upload files, it's searchable, they do OCR, it has hierarchical folders,

00:59:36 ◼   ► it works on all devices, there's no limits.

00:59:39 ◼   ► Why is Google Drive not like an obvious replacement?

00:59:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I played around with it. It's not as good as Evernote at getting stuff into it.

00:59:49 ◼   ► It's like it totally chokes on a thing that I do all the time, which is

00:59:52 ◼   ► I would like to save this web page into Google Drive.

00:59:56 ◼   ► It doesn't do the thing where Evernote kind of grabs a whole HTML

01:00:00 ◼   ► copy of the web page and then the whole thing is searchable.

01:00:02 ◼   ► Does it do that on iOS, the web clipping, Evernote?

01:00:05 ◼   ► Yeah, it does. Interesting.

01:00:07 ◼   ► I think they're cheating it in some way, but it definitely does do it.

01:00:10 ◼   ► I'm sure that, like, I mean, this is an annoying thing, but you could use other applications

01:00:14 ◼   ► to get that stuff into Google Drive.

01:00:16 ◼   ► Right, here's the thing. There's totally ways to try to think about doing this.

01:00:20 ◼   ► But one of the other things that is frustrating is the problem of how do I get all of my stuff out of Evernote?

01:00:27 ◼   ► Right? Now, this is one of these things where I don't know if we've ever mentioned on the podcast before,

01:00:33 ◼   ► but I have always been really annoyed at Evernote's claims of data portability. With her like, "Oh, don't worry!

01:00:39 ◼   ► You can export your data anytime you want. It's super easy. All you have to do is select one notebook at a time,

01:00:47 ◼   ► export that one notebook and you will get a file on your desktop, which is some custom XML

01:00:55 ◼   ► file that we have written that essentially nothing else can read. Like, but we've exported your data!

01:01:01 ◼   ► It's like not in any way that I find useful Evernote.

01:01:04 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:01:05 ◼   ► When I think of "I would love to get all my data out of Evernote," what I want is a way to say

01:01:09 ◼   ► "Export the whole database," and what you would give me is a series of nested folders

01:01:15 ◼   ► with rich text documents and images in them.

01:01:19 ◼   ► But you don't do that. Exporting your data into a proprietary

01:01:23 ◼   ► format that can only be reliably read by your own application

01:01:27 ◼   ► is not data export. It's just moving it. Exactly.

01:01:31 ◼   ► It's like making a backup, and they also do it in this really inconvenient way,

01:01:35 ◼   ► but it has always bothered me, this kind of Evernote championing of "Oh don't worry, you can leave anytime

01:01:39 ◼   ► you want." But I've always known that that's not the case.

01:01:43 ◼   ► It's like, here's a hard drive of all your stuff, but it's password protected and only we know the password.

01:01:48 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's like, yes, in theory all of the data is there.

01:01:51 ◼   ► Like, okay, I guess I could hire someone to write a custom XML parser.

01:01:57 ◼   ► But this starts getting into crazy land.

01:02:00 ◼   ► There's stuff that exists as well, like there are things that can take the Evernote data and turn it into something else.

01:02:06 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:02:06 ◼   ► But you just know it's never gonna be as you put it in.

01:02:11 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. You have no idea. And the problem with this as well, that why do I feel stuck with Evernote,

01:02:17 ◼   ► is because Evernote is legitimately serving the function of this external brain.

01:02:21 ◼   ► And so, the way it works is it is not possible for me to really export and import into something else

01:02:28 ◼   ► and feel super confident that everything has actually arrived,

01:02:32 ◼   ► because there's no way for me to be able to check all of the stuff that I have put in it.

01:02:37 ◼   ► And you only find out it's gone wrong at the time you need it.

01:02:40 ◼   ► Exactly. Which is no good.

01:02:43 ◼   ► Yeah, and as I think I said in the last show, I have something on the order of 3,000 notes.

01:02:48 ◼   ► It's a lot of notes to move.

01:02:50 ◼   ► And even some of the other things I was trying, like they totally choke trying to import even much smaller numbers than that.

01:02:58 ◼   ► And so it's just, it's interesting. I will still say for anybody who is starting afresh,

01:03:06 ◼   ► at looking into trying to build some kind of external brain.

01:03:10 ◼   ► I would probably recommend Google Drive or OneNote, and then

01:03:14 ◼   ► you pick between those two based on your own personal preferences.

01:03:18 ◼   ► Can I throw Dropbox in the mix here? I mean, I know it doesn't have

01:03:22 ◼   ► the OCR stuff, but Dropbox is potentially an infinitely

01:03:26 ◼   ► better service because ultimately it's just file

01:03:30 ◼   ► storage. Because even Google Drive, it can do some weird

01:03:34 ◼   ► stuff with files. You know, like if you decide that, oh, it's part of my Google Drive system,

01:03:39 ◼   ► I'm going to save some things into a Google Doc. It's not, what it downloads is not really a

01:03:45 ◼   ► document that you can use. It's a Google Drive document. Like the good thing about things going

01:03:50 ◼   ► into a service like Dropbox is all it is is just storage of files that you can then use in other

01:03:57 ◼   ► applications super easy. Yeah, if you can give up OCR and searching within

01:04:04 ◼   ► documents, my recommendation would be Dropbox. Unless there are applications

01:04:08 ◼   ► that can just take a document and OCR it on the fly. Yeah, I also looked into a

01:04:14 ◼   ► whole bunch of this. I was playing around with creating like a little workflow in

01:04:20 ◼   ► the workflow app to try to take a document, OCR it, and then push it into

01:04:25 ◼   ► another service. But this starts getting into again like the the the use case for

01:04:30 ◼   ► me with Evernote is very often like oh here's the thing that might be

01:04:32 ◼   ► interesting I just want to quickly save it. Right what I don't want to do is to

01:04:37 ◼   ► have a little barrier of yeah like I'm invoking a thing like I'm I don't want

01:04:41 ◼   ► to turn saving stuff into a conscious decision of do I want to get out of the

01:04:46 ◼   ► flow of what I'm working on right now. Right I just want to press a button and

01:04:50 ◼   ► have it go.

01:04:51 ◼   ► This is when another device can help you.

01:04:55 ◼   ► Like if you had like a server that could process that stuff for you in the background, right?

01:05:02 ◼   ► So you could set up something that performs a bunch of rules and all you're doing is just

01:05:08 ◼   ► saving it to a folder, but in the background there's something else working on it that

01:05:12 ◼   ► does it.

01:05:13 ◼   ► And again, that isn't elegant.

01:05:15 ◼   ► That is not part of the multi-pad lifestyle to have this Mac mini that's over in the corner

01:05:18 ◼   ► doing something, but it would give you what you wanted.

01:05:21 ◼   ► Oh yeah, and I have done crazy stuff like this before, of having Dropbox folders that

01:05:27 ◼   ► say "Hazel is watching" and then "Hazel invokes certain rules" depending on what happens in

01:05:32 ◼   ► there.

01:05:33 ◼   ► Like, I have done all of this stuff, but I'm ultimately, like, what I'm trying to not do

01:05:37 ◼   ► is ending up building my own house of cards that's going to collapse someday, because

01:05:43 ◼   ► I'm really...

01:05:45 ◼   ► I'm trying to have a thing be simple and even if I build my own crazy system

01:05:49 ◼   ► it still doesn't get around the problem of how do I get everything out of Evernote

01:05:52 ◼   ► in a way that is reasonable to then import into this new system.

01:05:55 ◼   ► Oh yeah, all of this stuff that I'm suggesting is

01:05:58 ◼   ► if you're starting afresh.

01:06:00 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. If you're starting afresh

01:06:03 ◼   ► I think yeah, I would suggest someone uses

01:06:08 ◼   ► OneNote, Google Drive or Dropbox if you're willing to give up a couple of features.

01:06:11 ◼   ► I think those are all totally reasonable solutions.

01:06:14 ◼   ► But it's just like, what do I do?

01:06:17 ◼   ► What do I do now?

01:06:19 ◼   ► It's like I'm even running these crazy ideas in my head.

01:06:21 ◼   ► It's like, what if I started a software company

01:06:24 ◼   ► to make my own Evernote?

01:06:26 ◼   ► Like, could I do that?

01:06:26 ◼   ► And I was like, no, wait, that dude, that's, you know what?

01:06:29 ◼   ► That is not an easier thing to do, right?

01:06:31 ◼   ► - However, this is on my topic list

01:06:33 ◼   ► for some point in the future.

01:06:34 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:06:35 ◼   ► Because so many of your problems would be solved this way.

01:06:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, but it's like, I start wandering down that path

01:06:43 ◼   ► And then I'm like, hey dude, do you remember the time you thought maybe I should start a clothing manufacturing company in order to get the t-shirt that I want?

01:06:51 ◼   ► It's like, you know what, this is not, the solution to these problems is not, I could reinvent the wheel.

01:06:57 ◼   ► So it's like a question of, do I want to start like an Evernote competitor versus do I want to just keep using Evernote, try to make it work with tags,

01:07:08 ◼   ► kick the can down a number of years, hopefully assuming Evernote stays in business, and do that. And it's like...

01:07:15 ◼   ► You know what this feels like to me? It feels like when you

01:07:21 ◼   ► occasionally hear about how some company somewhere still has like a punch card system

01:07:27 ◼   ► that's in the basement of their offices that the whole company relies upon.

01:07:31 ◼   ► And

01:07:34 ◼   ► Using Evernote to me feels like this. It feels like this legacy thing that I don't like,

01:07:39 ◼   ► but there is no

01:07:42 ◼   ► optimal move to get rid of it. So I'm going to end up continuing using it, and I'm going to keep just liking it.

01:07:47 ◼   ► But this is precisely why

01:07:49 ◼   ► companies do this kind of thing, or governments do this kind of thing, where they end up using something

01:07:53 ◼   ► that's incredibly out-of-date and awkward and like, and nobody likes it. But the answer of

01:07:59 ◼   ► what is the move to make

01:08:03 ◼   ► that is an optimal move to switch away from this thing? The answer is there is no move.

01:08:07 ◼   ► So we're going to keep using this thing forever. And the punch card example, I don't even mean that as a joke,

01:08:13 ◼   ► there are companies that still

01:08:15 ◼   ► manufacture brand new punch cards because there are entities out there that require them. Like this is actually a thing that still exists in the world.

01:08:23 ◼   ► You need to see how a lot of banks are run.

01:08:26 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, banks must have the most crazy old soft-- because who wants to be the guy who's like,

01:08:32 ◼   ► let's run a software update on the banking industry.

01:08:35 ◼   ► Yes. Nobody. Nobody wants to do that. Nope.

01:08:39 ◼   ► So you have stuff that is literally from the 60s and 70s running the banking industry behind the scenes

01:08:45 ◼   ► because it's like everybody does the exact same cost-benefit calculation of what are we going to change to?

01:08:51 ◼   ► Nothing is what we're going to change to. We're just going to keep making this old thing work even if it's horrifically awkward.

01:08:57 ◼   ► And so there are a few pieces of software in my life that are like that, and I feel like maybe Evernote is the absolute apex of this for me in terms of what piece of software do I use the most but I'm also perhaps the unhappiest with.

01:09:15 ◼   ► And I think maybe Evernote wins that calculation of all of the things that I use. So, little sticker there for Evernote.

01:09:22 ◼   ► I wanted to just mention something about Apple Notes as a piece of follow-up.

01:09:27 ◼   ► I referenced that you could take your Evernote database and put it into Apple Notes, right?

01:09:32 ◼   ► That is a feature that is officially supported. Quite a few listeners wrote in to say that they've put in the region of 2000, say, notes from Evernote into Apple Notes,

01:09:40 ◼   ► and Apple Notes becomes horrifically unstable and unresponsive around that kind of level.

01:09:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm not surprised because I don't think Apple is really imagining that anybody is using it in that use case of having 2000 notes in there.

01:09:55 ◼   ► I can't imagine anybody was thinking that that's going to be what happens with Apple Notes.

01:10:00 ◼   ► I hope that they change that though. Because eventually, lots of people will get to that limit.

01:10:06 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean Apple is just dealing with the crazy law of large numbers, right?

01:10:11 ◼   ► They have so many people using it that yes, they are going to have some users at the edge case of that.

01:10:15 ◼   ► of that. But yes, I'm not surprised to hear that Apple Notes kind of chokes on every note

01:10:20 ◼   ► size databases.

01:10:23 ◼   ► This feels kind of sad to me.

01:10:26 ◼   ► That's because it is sad, Myke.

01:10:27 ◼   ► Because there's like, we've come to, I feel like we're at the end of this topic and there's

01:10:31 ◼   ► no answer. The answer is I'm stuck. And that's that. I don't feel like that's how we usually

01:10:35 ◼   ► do things. Right. We're all about optimizing here and improving. But no, no, here we are.

01:10:40 ◼   ► I mean, you're stuck. I'm not stuck. I am pretty confident that after my next trip,

01:10:45 ◼   ► I will be canceling my Evernote account because I'm very confident that I have everything

01:10:49 ◼   ► that I need in my Apple Notes right now. I've been saving PDFs in there and stuff and I

01:10:55 ◼   ► thought it's been fantastic. So I'm just going to make the trip. If it works as well as I

01:11:00 ◼   ► hope it will, then I'm going to be moving away completely from Evernote because I've

01:11:04 ◼   ► now been able to replace the only thing that it does for me. There are many solutions for

01:11:09 ◼   ► for you but none of them are better unfortunately.

01:11:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's why when you say,

01:11:13 ◼   ► oh, you know, this feels like a sad ending.

01:11:18 ◼   ► I am frustrated but I feel like the core of this decision,

01:11:23 ◼   ► like with so many things, is about optimization.

01:11:27 ◼   ► And so the answer to what is the optimal move?

01:11:29 ◼   ► The optimal move is to stay put with Evernote.

01:11:32 ◼   ► - So the winning move is not to play or something?

01:11:34 ◼   ► - Yes, yeah, sort of, but not really

01:11:36 ◼   ► 'cause it's still paying Evernote every month.

01:11:39 ◼   ► Alright, so it's not exactly like you're stepping aside from the thing.

01:11:43 ◼   ► But that's just what happens sometimes.

01:11:46 ◼   ► My only real concern is that I do worry about the financial viability of Evernote.

01:11:52 ◼   ► That enough people cancelling subscriptions combined with all of their global offices and all of their people who do who knows what,

01:12:01 ◼   ► that the company might just implode upon itself.

01:12:04 ◼   ► But I feel like, okay, well, if and when Evernote implodes upon itself, that then shifts the calculus of what is the optimal move.

01:12:12 ◼   ► And then the optimal move is, well, you just, you know, you gotta do something and you have to pick the least bad option.

01:12:18 ◼   ► And so that day is the day that I will move.

01:12:23 ◼   ► But for now, yeah, just sticking with Evernote and having really positive feelings with that elephant icon.

01:12:33 ◼   ► elephant icon.

01:12:34 ◼   ► So once you have decided that you want to be the person to create the next amazing application

01:12:39 ◼   ► or service that stores everybody's text, or maybe you want to be the first person that

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01:12:50 ◼   ► go to Hover. Because with Hover you will be able to get the domain name that you need

01:12:56 ◼   ► super easily, ridiculously easily in fact. And they're going to have all of the extensions

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01:13:07 ◼   ► All the classics are there. .com, .net, .co, .io, they're all there. But maybe you have

01:13:12 ◼   ► something more fun that you're doing. Maybe you want to add design or .tech. Maybe you're

01:13:16 ◼   ► looking for that quirky extension like .ninja or maybe you just set up a store and you want

01:13:20 ◼   ► to start .store. No matter what it is, whether you want to create Evercore, .net, they're

01:13:25 ◼   ► all going to be there with Hover. And then once you find that domain, you can use Hover

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01:13:50 ◼   ► this show and Relay FM.

01:13:52 ◼   ► So many weeks ago we spoke about VR and I've been collecting up just a few bits of follow

01:13:58 ◼   ► up that I wanted to mention about this. So you will remember, of course, as many people

01:14:03 ◼   ► have, the way that we described VR was like dropping acid, or at least you did, and I

01:14:08 ◼   ► was totally on board with the idea. A guy called Quantum Tunneling Dave on the Reddit

01:14:13 ◼   ► has confirmed this for us. And as Dave says, as somebody who has dropped acid a few times,

01:14:18 ◼   ► I agree that the analogy is quite apt. I now want to try VR. It sounds like it tickles

01:14:24 ◼   ► a few of the same spots in the brain as Acid. So you did it! Congratulations.

01:14:30 ◼   ► So someone who does Acid agrees with my analogy that it was like dropping Acid.

01:14:34 ◼   ► Yep. Which is great, because I have never dropped

01:14:37 ◼   ► Acid, so I was just reaching for something and yes, just trying to go with like, how

01:14:42 ◼   ► is it to explain a thing when you have certain experiences, you just can't explain them to

01:14:47 ◼   ► someone who hasn't had those experiences. So I'm glad that someone is in agreement on

01:14:54 ◼   ► Have you moved forward with VR at all? Have you made any purchases?

01:14:58 ◼   ► I actually have not moved forward mainly because other things have just occupied my attention.

01:15:06 ◼   ► And this is one of these things where I feel like I need to sit down and seriously figure out how this is going to work.

01:15:18 ◼   ► This is not a quick like, "Ooh, let me just add two carts, right? Check out VR and have it delivered to the house."

01:15:26 ◼   ► Like, this is a big thing about where is it going to go, exactly what computer do I need, what equipment am I going to get.

01:15:32 ◼   ► This is a thing where I need to sit down and spend an afternoon figuring it out, and I just haven't been able to have that afternoon.

01:15:37 ◼   ► And plus, as we are recording right now, I am shortly leaving for America in just a couple of days.

01:15:42 ◼   ► of days and so anything that would be shipped would just be sitting here for

01:15:47 ◼   ► like a month untouched as I'm out of the country so I feel like I have mentally

01:15:52 ◼   ► postponed this until I get back from America for the final time from the for

01:15:57 ◼   ► the end of the summer.

01:15:58 ◼   ► Yeah I'm still waiting on the PlayStation VR. I've already pre-ordered that. I already have 50% of the equipment.

01:16:06 ◼   ► Actually about 25% of the equipment at the PlayStation but it still needs a couple of additions.

01:16:11 ◼   ► So I'm just gonna wait for that because if it gives me, as I said on the show, if it gives me

01:16:17 ◼   ► at least most of the experience that the Oculus did, then I'll be more than happy because I won't

01:16:24 ◼   ► have to put another big spinning box in my house with a big fan and a big power supply and all that

01:16:31 ◼   ► stuff. I doesn't want to do it. So I'll be happy if I can just hook up to my PlayStation and enjoy VR

01:16:35 ◼   ► that way. So we'll see. However, something that I have noticed in the comments on YouTube and in

01:16:42 ◼   ► the comments on Reddit is that the VR console wars have begun. I know, I know. This was a thing that

01:16:51 ◼   ► just simply did not occur to me when we recorded or put up the episode. Same. Right, but in

01:16:57 ◼   ► retrospect seems incredibly obvious. That is like, just as in all human endeavors,

01:17:03 ◼   ► the tribal lines form immediately. Right? So there were just an enormous number of comments about

01:17:11 ◼   ► various competing VR systems and why they are obviously superior and why this is

01:17:16 ◼   ► like, here we go, like it's Sega and Nintendo all over again.

01:17:21 ◼   ► And basically everybody was saying to us that the Vive was better.

01:17:27 ◼   ► I have some counter to this argument, again having not tried the Vive, is that most people

01:17:34 ◼   ► have tried the Oculus without the touch controllers because they're not available.

01:17:39 ◼   ► And so many people say that the HTC Vive is superior because of the touch controllers,

01:17:44 ◼   ► as well as the room sensors that they have.

01:17:48 ◼   ► So there's like the double part of it.

01:17:50 ◼   ► So again, it might be that combination of both makes it better.

01:17:54 ◼   ► I don't really have a space where I could set up a HTC Vive in my home, so that is a

01:17:59 ◼   ► black mark against the Vive.

01:18:01 ◼   ► I don't know, as well, like Facebook, they took us and let us play with this stuff.

01:18:07 ◼   ► I'm not seeing HTC do it.

01:18:09 ◼   ► Right?

01:18:10 ◼   ► Where are they?

01:18:11 ◼   ► You know?

01:18:12 ◼   ► Oh, is that, is that, that's what's happening here, Myke?

01:18:14 ◼   ► That's a mark for me, you know?

01:18:19 ◼   ► so easily bribed you are.

01:18:24 ◼   ► It's a point in the column.

01:18:28 ◼   ► Another thing that I really liked was people saying that the Vive was better because Facebook

01:18:32 ◼   ► was evil and locking down the platform and making exclusives for games.

01:18:38 ◼   ► And Nintendo and Sega, man, this is the same as PlayStation and Microsoft right now.

01:18:43 ◼   ► It's all about console exclusives.

01:18:45 ◼   ► This is how the industry works.

01:18:47 ◼   ► I say, I don't care if Facebook are evil, they have nice burritos. We had really great

01:18:51 ◼   ► burritos on that campus that day. So you know, I have no complaints.

01:18:56 ◼   ► Yeah, they had fantastic food. And it is also funny when someone's like, oh, locking down

01:19:02 ◼   ► the platform. I, as someone who grew up with Nintendo, find that argument entirely unmoving.

01:19:08 ◼   ► It's like, I don't care. If a thing is amazing, I care if the games are good, I care if the

01:19:15 ◼   ► the hardware is great.

01:19:18 ◼   ► Gaming platforms are kind of inherently exclusive things.

01:19:22 ◼   ► I just, I'm not convinced by that as an argument.

01:19:27 ◼   ► So yeah, I kind of agree with that.

01:19:29 ◼   ► I may have the chance to try out an HTC Vive

01:19:35 ◼   ► between now and when I might be making a decision

01:19:39 ◼   ► about what to purchase.

01:19:40 ◼   ► - Well, look at this now.

01:19:44 ◼   ► I will be curious to see what that experience is like.

01:19:47 ◼   ► I'll be curious too.

01:19:48 ◼   ► I'll be curious.

01:19:49 ◼   ► I'll look forward to your report, Gray.

01:19:55 ◼   ► I'll let you know, Myke.

01:19:57 ◼   ► Please.

01:19:58 ◼   ► Please, please do.

01:19:59 ◼   ► So I'll be curious to see.

01:20:01 ◼   ► But it also does have the problem, as you said, like, living in London, I don't have

01:20:05 ◼   ► a room that is big enough to do any of this kind of stuff in.

01:20:10 ◼   ► There's just no space.

01:20:11 ◼   ► I know that I move around when I was wearing the Oculus, like I know that that happened,

01:20:16 ◼   ► but I can maybe over time learn to not move around, but part of what makes the Vive great

01:20:21 ◼   ► is the fact that you're supposed to move around.

01:20:23 ◼   ► I just don't have that space.

01:20:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean I am imagining that an enormous number of the actual VR stuff that I will

01:20:31 ◼   ► be doing is centered around the notion of sitting on a couch, right?

01:20:37 ◼   ► And doing VR in that way.

01:20:39 ◼   ► And so the extra salesmanship of "you can move around with an HTC Vive" is not appealing

01:20:44 ◼   ► to me because I have nowhere to move around because I live in the center of a city.

01:20:49 ◼   ► I was doing some thinking about VR and my thoughts led me back to our old friend, American

01:20:55 ◼   ► Truck Simulator.

01:20:56 ◼   ► And I was thinking to myself how much fun it would be to play Truck Simulator with a

01:21:02 ◼   ► VR headset on.

01:21:03 ◼   ► Well, I mean, this is a perfect sitting on the couch VR experience.

01:21:09 ◼   ► Like you know you wanted like the wheel and stuff.

01:21:11 ◼   ► Can you imagine a wheel, pedals, and a VR headset?

01:21:14 ◼   ► You like turn around, look out the window, look in the mirrors.

01:21:17 ◼   ► Man it would be amazing!

01:21:21 ◼   ► Yeah by far and away that was actually one of the things I was thinking about after we

01:21:24 ◼   ► had our VR experiences.

01:21:26 ◼   ► Just me and you though right?

01:21:27 ◼   ► Like we're the only ones.

01:21:29 ◼   ► No!

01:21:30 ◼   ► I did really, I did really keep thinking about that.

01:21:33 ◼   ► I was like man, VR trucking is going to be amazing.

01:21:37 ◼   ► I can't wait to do VR trucking.

01:21:40 ◼   ► And it is also a situation that this would work perfectly in my house.

01:21:43 ◼   ► Sitting around, sitting down, I can't move anyway.

01:21:47 ◼   ► There's nowhere to go.

01:21:49 ◼   ► And then if I end up buying a PC for my VR equipment, well, guess what?

01:21:56 ◼   ► Now all of those wheels and pedals and stuff that doesn't work with my Mac, they don't

01:22:00 ◼   ► work with PC.

01:22:02 ◼   ► I don't know why you haven't done this already now.

01:22:07 ◼   ► It's like it's the perfect reason to buy the wheel you've always wanted.

01:22:10 ◼   ► Yeah, this will be the excuse.

01:22:13 ◼   ► It's like, "I would like to buy this wheel, so I have to spend several thousand dollars

01:22:18 ◼   ► on a new PC and VR equipment."

01:22:20 ◼   ► But I know you've been close to that just because of the wheel.

01:22:24 ◼   ► And now there's two reasons.

01:22:27 ◼   ► But a lot of the PlayStation stuff, a lot of the stuff that they're showing off, is

01:22:30 ◼   ► focused around just sitting down with a PlayStation controller and the screen is in the VR headset.

01:22:37 ◼   ► And they're also promoting it that like non VR games, you can play them like that.

01:22:40 ◼   ► And I think that's really cool.

01:22:42 ◼   ► Like, and it's like a cinema screen in front of your face.

01:22:45 ◼   ► I'm looking forward to playing games like that.

01:22:48 ◼   ► I think it'll be fun.

01:22:50 ◼   ► Just a different way to experience them.

01:22:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I could totally see that.

01:22:53 ◼   ► Again, this is where just I have had essentially no console experience since the Super Nintendo.

01:23:01 ◼   ► Like I have been just a computer game player since then.

01:23:03 ◼   ► So I feel like I just don't have a good sense of like, what is a PlayStation capable of?

01:23:08 ◼   ► What could you do with it?

01:23:09 ◼   ► But it does seem like it's an interesting option to consider as an alternative.

01:23:12 ◼   ► And yes, that whole idea of even if it's not a genuine VR experience,

01:23:18 ◼   ► it might be really nice to just be able to play the equivalent of,

01:23:22 ◼   ► I have just like an IMAX screen virtually in front of me upon which I'm playing just a regular game.

01:23:28 ◼   ► Like that might be a nice experience as well.

01:23:32 ◼   ► So it's interesting. But this is all partly why I just keep saying now that I haven't moved forward because I really need to sit down and try to think about this.

01:23:41 ◼   ► I need to possibly try the HTC Vive before I do this. I need to make some decisions before I decide what I'm going to invest in for the glorious VR future.

01:23:51 ◼   ► Whilst we're talking about Truck Simulator, you saw the article that they wrote about rescaling the game, right?

01:23:57 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I definitely did. I definitely did. I feel like no other podcast is going to talk about

01:24:03 ◼   ► virtual truck driving, so this is our responsibility.

01:24:07 ◼   ► I am literally opening iTunes now to find what I'm sure must be the American Truck Simulator

01:24:14 ◼   ► podcast. I don't, I cannot possibly exist.

01:24:17 ◼   ► I'm taking a look. It cannot possibly exist.

01:24:20 ◼   ► Core truck, that's what they call it. Yeah, that's it. Core truck.

01:24:26 ◼   ► I can't find a dedicated show.

01:24:28 ◼   ► Yeah, see there's not gonna be one.

01:24:30 ◼   ► So there you go, there's our next spinoff.

01:24:32 ◼   ► Quattruck.

01:24:33 ◼   ► No, not gonna happen.

01:24:34 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:24:35 ◼   ► But, like actually of all of the ones that could happen, that's the one most likely to happen.

01:24:39 ◼   ► But yeah, when we first talked about American Truck Simulator, I was super happy with it.

01:24:46 ◼   ► But I think the thing that both of us commented on was that it felt small.

01:24:53 ◼   ► It felt like it was a little bit of a toy America when you're driving between cities

01:24:58 ◼   ► in the truck simulator world.

01:25:01 ◼   ► It just seemed like, I forget the exact timing, but driving from the north of California all

01:25:08 ◼   ► the way down to Las Vegas seemed like it took far too little time.

01:25:14 ◼   ► And then trying to extrapolate about what does this mean for how long will a coast-to-coast

01:25:18 ◼   ► journey taken and what is going to be the subjective experience as the player of driving

01:25:24 ◼   ► across this tiny America.

01:25:26 ◼   ► And that was the thing that concerned me the most, was that particularly the middle parts

01:25:31 ◼   ► of America, the experience of them is that they are long, right?

01:25:34 ◼   ► That is part of what is going on.

01:25:38 ◼   ► And so I have to say, in what might be personally the most exciting video game news of 2016

01:25:45 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:25:47 ◼   ► Yeah!

01:25:49 ◼   ► The company making American Truck Simulator announced that they are going to be rescaling the map.

01:25:55 ◼   ► Which is super exciting.

01:25:58 ◼   ► So it is currently on a 35 to 1 scale.

01:26:03 ◼   ► So it's a 35th the size of the actual United States.

01:26:06 ◼   ► And they're going to upscale it to a 1/20th scale.

01:26:10 ◼   ► So it's going to be essentially like 75% longer roads once you're outside of the cities.

01:26:16 ◼   ► And that to me feels just about perfect.

01:26:19 ◼   ► If you take the current driving distances and you make them not quite double, but 75% bigger,

01:26:25 ◼   ► I am super excited by this.

01:26:27 ◼   ► I'm like so ridiculously happy to see this.

01:26:32 ◼   ► And I wonder, I will speculate,

01:26:37 ◼   ► then maybe this was like a plan?

01:26:40 ◼   ► That this was- that they released it on a smaller scale to get it out sooner?

01:26:45 ◼   ► Maybe a little bit like a proof of concept.

01:26:48 ◼   ► But that's exactly what I'm thinking, right? It's like

01:26:50 ◼   ► it already took them so long and so much time to get out California and Nevada

01:26:57 ◼   ► that if they had to make them almost twice as big

01:27:02 ◼   ► that adds on a significant amount of time.

01:27:05 ◼   ► And so maybe this was a case of, they'll put it out there,

01:27:09 ◼   ► "Will people buy this?"

01:27:10 ◼   ► Right, will people buy it? We know it's small.

01:27:13 ◼   ► Will people care if it's small?

01:27:15 ◼   ► And it seemed like a lot of the feedback was,

01:27:18 ◼   ► "It is small."

01:27:19 ◼   ► And it's like, "But it also sold very, very well!"

01:27:22 ◼   ► And so, you know, maybe we're imagining too much of them thinking ahead,

01:27:27 ◼   ► but I wouldn't be surprised if this was an actual decision of,

01:27:32 ◼   ► let's upscale it later if we need to, if it's even as successful as we hope it'll be.

01:27:39 ◼   ► So what is this going to look like? Like, say a trip took me like 10 minutes, it's going to take me nearly 20?

01:27:45 ◼   ► Yeah, it'll take you like 17 minutes.

01:27:48 ◼   ► Right.

01:27:48 ◼   ► Right, that's about what it's going to be.

01:27:50 ◼   ► Which is great!

01:27:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's absolutely fantastic.

01:27:55 ◼   ► And again, this for me is just such a game that hits a particular spot.

01:28:02 ◼   ► And the thing that I like the most is driving on the highways.

01:28:05 ◼   ► And so this essentially doubles driving on the highway time.

01:28:08 ◼   ► And it's absolutely great.

01:28:10 ◼   ► And so this announcement was super exciting to me.

01:28:14 ◼   ► And I saw it around the time that you could download and make available the Arizona beta.

01:28:19 ◼   ► So you could drive around Arizona as well.

01:28:21 ◼   ► So I was like the happiest camper that day.

01:28:23 ◼   ► It's like, "Great! There's a new state to drive around, and I know they're going to make this bigger at some point in the future.

01:28:28 ◼   ► I'm American truck happy."

01:28:31 ◼   ► Okay, so Cortexmas has come. Summer Cortexmas. It is here. It's upon us.

01:28:37 ◼   ► Which means that me and you are not going to be recording for the whole month of August.

01:28:44 ◼   ► It's glorious. It's absolutely glorious, Myke.

01:28:47 ◼   ► It's not though, is it really?

01:28:49 ◼   ► Everybody needs some summertime off.

01:28:52 ◼   ► And we're gonna get some summer time off.

01:28:55 ◼   ► Now, Myke, you know how I feel about schedules.

01:29:00 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm. - How do I feel about schedules?

01:29:02 ◼   ► - You love them. - I do not love them.

01:29:04 ◼   ► - Oh. - See, I think if Cortex miss,

01:29:08 ◼   ► if we're taking time off, Cortex the show should take time off.

01:29:13 ◼   ► But because I work with you,

01:29:16 ◼   ► and because of a coincidence related to Relay's birthday,

01:29:20 ◼   ► That is actually not what is going to happen this month at all.

01:29:23 ◼   ► I care about the listener.

01:29:25 ◼   ► I... I care deeply about the listener too, Myke.

01:29:30 ◼   ► But you care about your holiday more.

01:29:32 ◼   ► Right, but I also care about a long summer of #lotsoftravelandnotfun

01:29:39 ◼   ► and trying to minimize work doing that.

01:29:41 ◼   ► But nonetheless, somehow the stars have aligned so that you, listener,

01:29:48 ◼   ► we'll actually still get two Cortex episodes, even though we won't be around to actually do them.

01:29:55 ◼   ► Because months ago, when we knew that this was going to come up because there was a Cortex miss

01:30:02 ◼   ► on the calendar, Myke and I recorded an episode in advance. An episode which, quite frankly,

01:30:09 ◼   ► right now, I have no idea what we talked about anymore.

01:30:13 ◼   ► I'm excited to listen to it, to edit it, because I have no memory of it at all.

01:30:18 ◼   ► Like, that is my feeling too. I'll be like, "Wow, this is going to be essentially the closest I ever get

01:30:25 ◼   ► to hearing an episode of the show as a listener must hear it,

01:30:28 ◼   ► because I have no idea what we discussed. Just no memory whatsoever."

01:30:31 ◼   ► It's effectively a time capsule.

01:30:33 ◼   ► Yeah, it is. It's a time capsule episode from several months ago,

01:30:38 ◼   ► containing mysteries to you and mysteries to us.

01:30:42 ◼   ► And that is going to be at the end of August at some point. I'm not exactly sure when.

01:30:48 ◼   ► So at the end of August you were going to hear an episode that is out of the time continuum and

01:30:54 ◼   ► was recorded a while ago. And I thought okay, well, it's summertime. There should be a little gap in the schedule.

01:31:01 ◼   ► You know, it's good to mix things up.

01:31:03 ◼   ► You don't want things too regular. People get bored if there's just a regular schedule that happens all the time.

01:31:07 ◼   ► Don't you agree Myke? I don't think they do. I think people are satisfied. No people happy people get bored

01:31:13 ◼   ► It's just it's just regular you got to mix it up sometimes and I thought okay. This is great

01:31:18 ◼   ► There's going to be a little gap in the schedule mix it up for the people right there. Love it. However

01:31:23 ◼   ► It turned out we didn't realize until later that

01:31:27 ◼   ► The summer is relay's birthday. Mm-hmm

01:31:30 ◼   ► Relays first birthday this year second birthday second birthday this year good work ending on you counted

01:31:37 ◼   ► If you count it correctly or incorrectly, you know.

01:31:41 ◼   ► I'm zero indexing? Wait, I don't know how to fix this.

01:31:45 ◼   ► No, that doesn't fix it at all. I'm negative one indexing.

01:31:49 ◼   ► God, two years, wow. Time goes fast.

01:31:53 ◼   ► This show has been around for over a year. Oh yeah, that's a good point.

01:31:57 ◼   ► That's an excellent point. I guess in my mind I still feel like this is the

01:32:01 ◼   ► new thing, right? This is the newest project, so it's still only a couple months old

01:32:05 ◼   ► even though the chronology doesn't work that way at all.

01:32:08 ◼   ► So yes, Relay is 2, as everybody knows.

01:32:11 ◼   ► And as part of the membership program,

01:32:15 ◼   ► we said that there was going to be, at some point, a special episode,

01:32:20 ◼   ► a non-Cortex bonus episode.

01:32:23 ◼   ► And it just so happened that it is going to be...

01:32:28 ◼   ► When is it going to be, Myke? I don't know anything.

01:32:30 ◼   ► It's going to be in a couple weeks?

01:32:32 ◼   ► It's going to be mid-August.

01:32:33 ◼   ► mid-August. Okay, mid-August, that's right, because we haven't 100% finalized the date at this point. But so if you are a

01:32:41 ◼   ► relay member, you will get access to the Cortex bonus show in what should be the week off.

01:32:48 ◼   ► But if you are a member, there will be an episode there. This is a non-Cortex

01:32:52 ◼   ► episode, so we're not going to be discussing the finer details of

01:32:59 ◼   ► Trucks. Yeah, I was gonna go for Dvorak typing, but yes, also trucks. No, we're not going to be discussing any of those things.

01:33:05 ◼   ► There's not going to be a secret care tech in which we answer

01:33:09 ◼   ► listener emails. No, instead we ended up playing a

01:33:14 ◼   ► text adventure with Jason Snell on

01:33:18 ◼   ► a kind of

01:33:20 ◼   ► wacky game podcast, which was a very strange but very fun

01:33:26 ◼   ► experience and is totally out of the chronology and is a bizarre crossover between Cortex

01:33:33 ◼   ► and Upgrade.

01:33:34 ◼   ► If you would like to find out more, we have set up a special page for you at cgpray.com/cortexspecial.

01:33:42 ◼   ► But if you want to get a taste of this members episode, we have also created a trailer.

01:33:49 ◼   ► Please enjoy.

01:33:50 ◼   ► See you after the summer, everybody!

01:33:55 ◼   ► I mean, my instinct is to just kill him.

01:33:57 ◼   ► (explosion)

01:34:00 ◼   ► - And we have all six bullets.

01:34:01 ◼   ► Myke wins.

01:34:02 ◼   ► (explosion)

01:34:04 ◼   ► - You have died.

01:34:06 ◼   ► Game over.

01:34:07 ◼   ► (explosion)

01:34:09 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:34:14 ◼   ► - Ray, Myke, welcome to Six Gun Showdown.

01:34:19 ◼   ► You're fresh out of the drunk tank.

01:34:21 ◼   ► You're standing in the rundown shack.

01:34:22 ◼   ► - Look around.

01:34:23 ◼   ► What's in this place?

01:34:24 ◼   ► Is there a refrigerator?

01:34:25 ◼   ► You are in the old west. I don't know what a refrigerator is.

01:34:28 ◼   ► You see a broken bottle on the floor, a hook, a burlap sack you use as a bed.

01:34:33 ◼   ► Tired and parched, you sit down to rest. A lizard runs over your foot,

01:34:38 ◼   ► looks up at you and says, "Howdy, partner!" Surely that can't be right.

01:34:42 ◼   ► Blackjack is faster on the draw and hurls his knife into your chest.

01:34:52 ◼   ► You have died! Would you like to load the game?

01:34:54 ◼   ► Excellent, yeah.

01:34:56 ◼   ► [Music]

01:35:23 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]