00:00SPEAKERWordle is dead.
00:02SPEAKER- What?
00:03SPEAKERWell, hang on, I don't necessarily disagree with you,
00:06SPEAKERbut I also would like to hear your rationale.
00:09SPEAKER- Well, okay, this has nothing to do
00:10SPEAKERwith the New York Times things.
00:11SPEAKERI'm glad that the Wordle guy got paid,
00:13SPEAKERand I think that's cool, great for him.
00:17SPEAKERHe made something that made a lot of people happy,
00:18SPEAKERand now New York Times is gonna monetize it somehow.
00:20SPEAKERI don't care, I already pay for this.
00:22SPEAKERWe've already talked about this.
00:24SPEAKERHere's the why it's dead, though.
00:27SPEAKERThis morning I learned about Cordle.
00:29SPEAKER- Could you repeat that?
00:30SPEAKERActually, could you spell that?
00:31SPEAKER- Q-U-O-R-D-L-E dot com.
00:35SPEAKERWhat if, instead of solving one Wordle at one time,
00:38SPEAKERyou solve four Wordles with the same hints and same clues?
00:42SPEAKER- Oh, wow.
00:43SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like meta Wordle.
00:45SPEAKER- Well, okay, I'm clicking daily Cordle.
00:47SPEAKER- You shouldn't do it live.
00:48SPEAKER- Oh, my, I'm just closing this tab right now.
00:50SPEAKER- It's too many squares, it's a lot of squares.
00:52SPEAKER- Let's see, this is one, two, three, four, five, six.
00:54SPEAKERI think that's 12 across, and it's literally
00:57SPEAKERjust four Wordles.
00:58SPEAKER- Well, no, no, there's, I think, eight hints instead of six.
01:01SPEAKER- You get more guesses than Wordle, it looks like.
01:04SPEAKER- But here's the thing.
01:05SPEAKERIt's basically the same as when we went
01:07SPEAKERfrom standard deaf TV to HDTV.
01:09SPEAKERThis is HD Wordle.
01:10SPEAKER- You literally could make one of those screen diagrams
01:12SPEAKERwhere you fit one Wordle 20 times into, well, not 20,
01:17SPEAKERbut quite a few times into this giant grid.
01:19SPEAKERThis is too much.
01:20SPEAKER- I mean, plus 25% or whatever, 20, I don't know, 33%.
01:24SPEAKER- I'm closing this.
01:25SPEAKER- Look, I'm gonna go ahead and tell you.
01:26SPEAKERI don't know if it's good or not,
01:27SPEAKER'cause I, but I've been playing them,
01:28SPEAKERand they give you more, as many as you want.
01:30SPEAKERIt's not just one a day.
01:31SPEAKER- Ooh.
01:32SPEAKER- So you can get as many Quartals, Q-U-O-R-D-L-E.coms
01:35SPEAKERas you want.
01:36SPEAKER- Is it time to come up with a name for this genre,
01:39SPEAKERbecause the proliferation of, not Wordle clones,
01:42SPEAKER'cause clone implies they're just doing the same thing,
01:44SPEAKERbut kind of more Wordle spin-offs, I would say.
01:46SPEAKERLike, I have found, yesterday I came across one
01:49SPEAKERthat is a geography Wordle.
01:51SPEAKER- That one's pretty good.
01:52SPEAKER- Wordle?
01:53SPEAKER- Yeah, Wordle, I like that one.
01:55SPEAKERIt was hard.
01:56SPEAKER- Oh, gosh, what was the other one I saw yesterday?
01:57SPEAKER- Well, there's Gary Whitta's Loodle,
01:59SPEAKERwhich is all naughty words.
02:00SPEAKERDon't go there.
02:01SPEAKERIt's not safe for people, eyes especially.
02:05SPEAKER- Gosh, what was the other one I saw?
02:06SPEAKER- The problem, which is somebody made with words
02:08SPEAKERthat we use in the tech pod, apparently.
02:10SPEAKER- Yes, I saw that, that was a good piece of work.
02:14SPEAKERThere's one, like, this is a little more,
02:16SPEAKERthis is a little further afield of the concept.
02:18SPEAKERIt's not Word-based, and it's not even the same
02:19SPEAKERkind of format, but it's a history,
02:22SPEAKERit's a daily history quiz.
02:23SPEAKER- Ooh.
02:24SPEAKER- It presents you with, I wish I had made a note
02:26SPEAKERof the name, I cannot remember it.
02:27SPEAKERIt literally randomly spits out historical events,
02:31SPEAKERand you drag them onto a timeline in the order
02:33SPEAKERthat you think they occurred.
02:34SPEAKERAnd you keep going, I think you get three misses,
02:37SPEAKERand you just keep going until you run out of guesses.
02:40SPEAKER- So some of these--
02:40SPEAKER- And they score you, it's awesome, it's really cool.
02:43SPEAKERAnd the general idea is people are just taking data sets
02:46SPEAKERand turning them into games, and it's kinda awesome.
02:48SPEAKER- That one and the geography one both seem designed
02:52SPEAKERto make Americans feel inadequate and bad.
02:54SPEAKER- That's fair.
02:56SPEAKER- But I don't know, maybe this is the year of the grid,
02:59SPEAKERis that where we're at?
03:00SPEAKER- The year of the grid, I'm kind of into that, yeah.
03:05SPEAKERAlso the other thing, I mean,
03:07SPEAKERI get why you said Wirtle is dead.
03:09SPEAKER- I just said Wirtle is dead is a good intro for that.
03:11SPEAKERSo I actually still play Wirtle every day,
03:12SPEAKERand I love Wirtle despite the New York Times business.
03:15SPEAKERPeople can get upset about that, but that's fine,
03:17SPEAKERI'm not gonna--
03:17SPEAKER- So I don't fully, I haven't unpacked this,
03:19SPEAKERI don't fully understand this myself.
03:21SPEAKERI don't begrudge that dude getting paid at all,
03:23SPEAKERor any of that situation.
03:25SPEAKER- Yeah.
03:26SPEAKER- I also have not played Wirtle since the day
03:28SPEAKERthey announced they were buying it.
03:29SPEAKERLike, I don't know what happened, like I--
03:31SPEAKER- I mean--
03:32SPEAKER- I don't know why somehow in my mind it's over,
03:35SPEAKERbut it kinda is.
03:37SPEAKER- It must have been Love Brand, but it's over now.
03:39SPEAKER- I guess so.
03:41SPEAKER- Look, once bitten, twice shy, I don't know,
03:43SPEAKERI'm just keep getting '80s lyrics out here
03:45SPEAKERuntil we get one that works.
03:46SPEAKER- Just, yep, just keep spewing out,
03:49SPEAKERwelcome to the jungle of the random podcast topics
03:53SPEAKERthat we're about to talk about as the show starts right now.
03:57SPEAKER(upbeat music)
04:23SPEAKER(upbeat music)
04:25SPEAKERWelcome to Brad and Will Made at TechPod, I'm Will.
04:29SPEAKER- I am Brad, hi.
04:30SPEAKER- Brad, it's my favorite kind of episode.
04:32SPEAKER- Oh.
04:33SPEAKER- Well, okay, maybe--
04:34SPEAKER- Hang on, hang on, like, hang on, can I take a sniff?
04:37SPEAKERWhat's that I smell, is that lavender?
04:40SPEAKER- It's a hint of lavender, maybe a little bit of apple,
04:42SPEAKERapple, cinnamony apple.
04:44SPEAKER- Apple peel, cinnamon, some chamomile,
04:46SPEAKERperhaps peppermint extract?
04:48SPEAKER- A delicious sachet, perhaps.
04:51SPEAKER- Some vanilla.
04:52SPEAKER- It's a potpourri episode, Brad.
04:54SPEAKER- It is a potpourri episode 'cause we've got, hang on,
04:57SPEAKERlet me count the bullet points here, one, two, three, four.
05:00SPEAKEROkay, currently we have six bullet points
05:02SPEAKERof things we would like to talk about,
05:03SPEAKERnone of which are likely to fill a whole episode, so.
05:06SPEAKER- Yeah, so if you're new, every once in a while
05:08SPEAKERwe get to a point where we have on our idea list
05:12SPEAKERa bunch of stuff that we think is worth talking about
05:14SPEAKERbut is not, as you said, worthy of a full 45 minute
05:17SPEAKERto hour long episode, and here we are.
05:21SPEAKERFirst off, a bunch of people sent me lovely messages
05:24SPEAKERon Twitter and on the Discord, hoping that I get well
05:26SPEAKERafter I posted that I had surgery last week.
05:29SPEAKERMy gallbladder has been successfully removed.
05:31SPEAKERNice job, UCSF surgical outpatient surgical team.
05:35SPEAKER- Has it only been a week?
05:36SPEAKER- It has been seven, eight days as of right now.
05:38SPEAKER- God, you're right, it feels like a month ago.
05:40SPEAKER- It was, look, it was kind of,
05:42SPEAKERwe launched a podcast last week too.
05:45SPEAKER- Hours before you had to go under the knife.
05:48SPEAKER- Yeah, and then we promoted it, we waited to promote it.
05:50SPEAKER- It was good, it was a good idea to not promote it
05:52SPEAKERuntil Sunday, just for the record.
05:53SPEAKER- Okay.
05:55SPEAKER- But yeah, I hadn't had, the last time I had surgery
05:58SPEAKERI was in the hospital for a few days afterwards
05:59SPEAKER'cause I had my appendix out
06:00SPEAKERand that's a little bit more of an inpatient thing.
06:04SPEAKER- So I mean, first of all, that's interesting to hear for me
06:06SPEAKERbecause in my mind they're both just kind of similar
06:09SPEAKERabdominal procedures where something comes out.
06:11SPEAKERSo I don't know why one is,
06:13SPEAKERalthough I mean, I assume the appendix
06:15SPEAKERis more of an emergency situation, right?
06:16SPEAKERLike that's an unexpected, like this has to be dealt with now
06:19SPEAKERkind of thing.
06:20SPEAKER- Yeah, but like the appendix is a useless thing
06:23SPEAKERthat you don't do anything with
06:24SPEAKERand the gallbladder is an important part
06:25SPEAKERof your digestive tract.
06:26SPEAKERYou'd think you'd stay in longer for the important thing
06:28SPEAKERthan the stupid thing that should have gone away.
06:30SPEAKERBut here we are.
06:32SPEAKER- What if maybe everybody should just have the appendix out
06:34SPEAKERelectively?
06:35SPEAKER- Look, I got, so often if they do gallbladder
06:38SPEAKERand you still have your appendix,
06:39SPEAKERthey'll go ahead and take it out while they're in there.
06:40SPEAKER- Really?
06:41SPEAKER- Yeah.
06:41SPEAKER- Are they close together?
06:43SPEAKER- Look, man, I'm not a geographer.
06:45SPEAKER- Ask you anything?
06:47SPEAKERYes.
06:48SPEAKER- So I did learn a couple of interesting things.
06:50SPEAKEROne is that I got a laugh from the OR team
06:53SPEAKERas I was getting strapped onto the table
06:56SPEAKER'cause the last thing I said
06:58SPEAKERas they were getting ready to put me under
06:59SPEAKERwhen the oxygen mask was on my face was,
07:01SPEAKER"Hey, we're all here for a gallbladder, right?"
07:04SPEAKER(laughs)
07:06SPEAKER- But you're still completely coherent at this point, right?
07:09SPEAKEROr have they already administered the anesthesia?
07:12SPEAKER- Look, they gave me the good business
07:14SPEAKERwhen I was getting rolled from the pre-op room
07:17SPEAKERinto the OR.
07:18SPEAKER- Oh, really?
07:19SPEAKERBefore you got into the OR?
07:20SPEAKER- Yeah, well, they want you relaxed, right?
07:22SPEAKERPeople get anxious.
07:23SPEAKER- I didn't get it.
07:24SPEAKERI was fully awake and when there were eight people
07:27SPEAKERbuzzing around me in the OR and I was still fully there
07:30SPEAKERand then all of a sudden I was.
07:31SPEAKER- Oh, see, as I was being wheeled into the OR,
07:34SPEAKERas the doors were opening, I was going in,
07:36SPEAKERI literally remember thinking, "Wow, my chest is tingling.
07:39SPEAKER"If they haven't given me the good stuff already,
07:41SPEAKER"I should probably tell them
07:42SPEAKER"'cause that seems like it might be a bad thing."
07:45SPEAKERAnd then they were like,
07:46SPEAKER"Hey, are you still able to get up onto the bed?"
07:50SPEAKERI was like, "The table?"
07:51SPEAKERAnd I was like, "Yeah, I can do it."
07:52SPEAKERAnd they were like, "Wait, wait, wait.
07:53SPEAKER"Let's lock the wheels in place first."
07:55SPEAKERAnd then I got the gallbladder laugh
07:57SPEAKER'cause I was like, "Man, I don't wanna be
07:58SPEAKER"in the leg room by accident.
07:59SPEAKER"That would be bad."
08:01SPEAKERBut that surgery, apparently they strap you to the table
08:04SPEAKERand then they do it vertically.
08:05SPEAKER- What?
08:06SPEAKER- Yeah.
08:07SPEAKER- Like some kind of literal Frankenstein's
08:09SPEAKERmonster kind of situation?
08:10SPEAKER- I assume they want orientation or something
08:12SPEAKERfor the organs or whatever.
08:13SPEAKERI don't know.
08:14SPEAKER- I wonder if gravity plays a part.
08:16SPEAKER- Yeah, maybe.
08:16SPEAKERI don't know.
08:17SPEAKERI didn't actually confirm that.
08:19SPEAKERSomebody told me that afterwards.
08:20SPEAKERI was like, "That sounds right.
08:21SPEAKER"I don't know, I was asleep."
08:22SPEAKERBut yeah, I woke up, recovered nicely.
08:25SPEAKERDidn't even need narcotic.
08:27SPEAKERThe pain for the surgery was way less than the pain
08:29SPEAKERfrom the thing that made me have the surgery.
08:31SPEAKER- Wow, that's a plus.
08:32SPEAKER- Yeah, it was really nice.
08:35SPEAKER- My general understanding is that laparoscopic procedures
08:37SPEAKERare wildly advanced today compared to where they were
08:41SPEAKERlike 20 years ago.
08:41SPEAKERHow big is your incision?
08:43SPEAKER- I have four incisions ranging from like an inch and a half
08:46SPEAKERto like a quarter of an inch probably.
08:49SPEAKERSome of them they just used to inflate you.
08:51SPEAKERThey deflated my stomach.
08:53SPEAKERI went and read the post-op notes
08:55SPEAKER'cause you can do that now.
08:56SPEAKER- Never wanna do that.
08:57SPEAKER- And it's like they deflate your stomach
08:58SPEAKERand inflate your abdominal cavity
09:01SPEAKERand do all sorts of other stuff.
09:03SPEAKERBut then they stitched me up and then glued the skin closed
09:07SPEAKERon top of the stitches.
09:09SPEAKERAnd this glue just kind of flakes off
09:11SPEAKERover a period of weeks and then it's all better
09:13SPEAKERand there's no, like I could see the incision
09:16SPEAKERso there's no like dressings to open and change
09:19SPEAKERor anything like that.
09:20SPEAKERIt's all just sealed up and sterile
09:22SPEAKERfrom inside the operating room presumably.
09:23SPEAKERSo I wanna mention that prior to this recording,
09:26SPEAKERyou started to stand up on this video call
09:28SPEAKERand pull your shirt off.
09:29SPEAKER- No, no, no, I was just looking.
09:30SPEAKERI was just checking.
09:32SPEAKERI'll take your word for it.
09:33SPEAKER- Look, I have pictures.
09:34SPEAKERI can send them.
09:35SPEAKERI did have some really gnarly bruises
09:37SPEAKERaround the bigger incision over the days afterwards,
09:40SPEAKERbut you know, minor.
09:41SPEAKER- The kind of medical glue, like second skin,
09:44SPEAKERlike tekaderm, all that type of stuff,
09:46SPEAKERjust fascinates me these days.
09:48SPEAKERLike it feels like future Star Trek medical tech,
09:50SPEAKERbut they're not using metal staples anymore.
09:52SPEAKERThey're just like, here's some kind of space age polymer
09:56SPEAKERthat we were spreading on your thing
09:57SPEAKERand it's going to get better
09:58SPEAKERand then it's just gonna vanish.
09:59SPEAKER- Probably made of corn.
10:00SPEAKER- Maybe, hopefully.
10:03SPEAKER- This glue feels almost like,
10:06SPEAKERit's a weird texture on the glue.
10:08SPEAKERIt doesn't feel like,
10:10SPEAKERit feels kind of like rubber cement
10:12SPEAKERwithout the tacky surface, if that makes sense.
10:14SPEAKER- Do you have to keep it dry?
10:15SPEAKERCan you?
10:16SPEAKER- No, I had to stay out of the shower for three days.
10:19SPEAKERI'm not allowed to submerge myself
10:20SPEAKERfor a couple of weeks still.
10:22SPEAKER- Okay.
10:23SPEAKER- 'Cause like the, you don't, look,
10:25SPEAKERthe thought as I was in the shower the first time,
10:27SPEAKERlike three days after the surgery, I was like,
10:29SPEAKERman, I don't want to,
10:30SPEAKERI don't want water to go in any places it's not supposed,
10:33SPEAKERlike I don't want to leak the wrong way.
10:34SPEAKERThat seems like blood coming out.
10:36SPEAKERDoes it seem that bad?
10:37SPEAKERBut water going in seems real bad.
10:39SPEAKER- Especially like not sterile shower water, you know,
10:42SPEAKERlike maybe distilled water would be okay, but yeah.
10:45SPEAKER- Nope, I don't want anything going in
10:46SPEAKERthat's not supposed to go in.
10:48SPEAKER- I mean, I have kind of a similar situation with mine.
10:51SPEAKERSo first of all,
10:52SPEAKERwhen I had the sinus surgery a couple of years ago,
10:53SPEAKERthey also did not really suture internally
10:56SPEAKERor there was no gauze, like they didn't,
10:59SPEAKERother people I know that have had the same procedure
11:00SPEAKERhave like the full on gauze packed up their nose
11:03SPEAKERfor three days afterwards. - Oh God, horrible.
11:05SPEAKER- My surgeon was just like, oh, you know,
11:06SPEAKERI think it promotes healing better
11:08SPEAKERif we don't close it all up.
11:09SPEAKERSo we just leave it open.
11:10SPEAKERAnd so like.
11:12SPEAKER- Did that hurt like hell or did it get like all scabby
11:13SPEAKERand gross in there and you were like, oh, it scabs out.
11:16SPEAKER- You do not want to know.
11:17SPEAKERYou genuinely do not want to know
11:18SPEAKERwhat was coming out of my nose for about two weeks.
11:21SPEAKERLike it was, I will never forget,
11:24SPEAKERbut I'm not going to tell you.
11:26SPEAKERI will tell you, I mean, I will say like, so he, yeah,
11:28SPEAKERhe used, I don't remember what the sinus was,
11:30SPEAKERbut it was a similar, some kind of glue or, you know,
11:32SPEAKERdisposable, dissolvable sort of.
11:36SPEAKER- Something that breaks down over time.
11:37SPEAKER- Gluey suture, which yeah, it was nice that I didn't have
11:40SPEAKERto go back and have anything out or whatever.
11:41SPEAKERBut the downside of that is that every time I showered
11:45SPEAKERfor about the first two weeks, have you ever seen,
11:48SPEAKERdo you remember that Andrew WK album?
11:51SPEAKER- I mean, several of them.
11:52SPEAKER- The one, it's like his first one, I think,
11:55SPEAKERwhere it's just like a big closeup of his face
11:57SPEAKERwith like blood pouring down his.
11:59SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
12:00SPEAKER- I looked like that after every shower.
12:02SPEAKER- That sounds bad.
12:03SPEAKER- Two weeks.
12:04SPEAKERI'm sorry, this is.
12:05SPEAKER- Wow, so body horror, it starts early
12:08SPEAKERon the potpourri episode.
12:09SPEAKERWe started, we look, we eased him in with talks of lavender
12:11SPEAKERand apples peel, and then we're like, bam,
12:14SPEAKERhere's the body horror.
12:15SPEAKER- You gotta shock him into submission.
12:17SPEAKER- So let's see, I've gotta get the bile ducts
12:20SPEAKERdone out next week, but after that, I'm done.
12:22SPEAKER- Oh, is that another incision?
12:25SPEAKER- No, that's straight down the old gullet, arthroscope.
12:29SPEAKER- Oh, wow, okay.
12:30SPEAKERAnd then I don't know if you wanna get into this or not,
12:32SPEAKERbut like, are there like dramatic lifestyle changes
12:35SPEAKERthat go along with not having a gallbladder?
12:37SPEAKER- You, some people digest, have problems eating fatty food,
12:42SPEAKERlike fried stuff.
12:43SPEAKERI don't, I like, I eat, I guess I eat kind of a lot
12:46SPEAKERof French fries, like most Americans, I think,
12:48SPEAKERbut like, I don't eat a lot of fried stuff
12:51SPEAKERoutside of that really, so it hasn't come up yet.
12:53SPEAKERI did have a sausage biscuit the other day
12:56SPEAKERthat was, it had an impact that was unusual and novel.
13:02SPEAKER- So time will tell.
13:03SPEAKER- That's supposed to recede over time, so.
13:06SPEAKER- Okay, so by the time the end of the year rolls around,
13:09SPEAKERwe'll see what your nog capacity might be.
13:11SPEAKER- Yeah, my guess is that my nog is going to go
13:14SPEAKERfrom a single old-fashioned to like a shot glass situation
13:17SPEAKERfrom here on out.
13:18SPEAKER- Okay, well, you know.
13:19SPEAKER- But I had some ice cream the other day
13:20SPEAKERand that was delicious, so.
13:23SPEAKERSo what, let's eat it.
13:25SPEAKER- Glad you're on the mend.
13:26SPEAKER- Thank you, I feel better.
13:29SPEAKERI wouldn't encourage people to do this if they can avoid it,
13:32SPEAKERbut it wasn't as bad as I was expecting, so there you go.
13:34SPEAKER- Well, you can avoid it though, right?
13:35SPEAKERLike that's where you got to. - No, it was necessary.
13:38SPEAKER- I had a similar situation where I put off my sinus issue
13:40SPEAKERfor years, like getting it looked at
13:42SPEAKERuntil it became like literally kind of debilitating.
13:45SPEAKER- Yeah.
13:46SPEAKER- But like once you get to that point, like you were in,
13:48SPEAKERI don't know if agony is the word you would use,
13:50SPEAKERbut like you were clearly not having a good time.
13:52SPEAKER- I mean, yeah, the big takeaway for me
13:55SPEAKERfor this whole thing was like pain is an important signal
14:01SPEAKERand just because it's not so bad that you can't take it,
14:04SPEAKERthat just means you probably have a high pain threshold
14:06SPEAKERand not that you shouldn't go to the emergency room.
14:08SPEAKER- Right.
14:09SPEAKER- Like I tried to treat this by going to primary care
14:12SPEAKERand urgent care and stuff like that and then that was,
14:14SPEAKERin retrospect, probably a mistake, so yeah.
14:18SPEAKER- But anyway.
14:19SPEAKER- Similar situation where there were frequently times
14:21SPEAKERwhere I could not breathe through my nose at all,
14:22SPEAKERlike the obstruction was 100%.
14:24SPEAKER- Yeah, that seems bad.
14:25SPEAKER- And like what that was doing to my sleep
14:27SPEAKERand like I was getting sinus infections about once a month
14:30SPEAKERand it was just, but the reason I bring that up
14:33SPEAKERis that like, it's almost like flipping a switch
14:35SPEAKERafter the procedure is over, right?
14:36SPEAKERIt's like, oh my God, like this thing that was like,
14:40SPEAKERI don't wanna say ruining my life,
14:41SPEAKERbut it was having a severe impact is just gone now.
14:45SPEAKER- Yeah.
14:46SPEAKER- It's like a magic, like magically in the space
14:48SPEAKERof a few hours, like this thing that was dominating
14:51SPEAKERmy thoughts is just no longer a thing
14:53SPEAKERand like that's just, it's the best feeling.
14:55SPEAKER- It's a--
14:56SPEAKER- It's a nice reward after all of the hassle
14:58SPEAKERof going through a procedure.
15:00SPEAKER- I mean, this started for me around Thanksgiving
15:02SPEAKERand like just conceptually having a thing
15:08SPEAKERthat causes intense abdominal pain
15:10SPEAKERevery time you ate too much fat in a meal,
15:12SPEAKERlike more than five or six grams of fat.
15:14SPEAKERIt turns out, strong motivator to adjust your diet
15:18SPEAKERin a way that has been really positive for me.
15:20SPEAKERSo I feel better. - That's good.
15:21SPEAKER- And like, you know, it's good.
15:22SPEAKER- That's another plus.
15:24SPEAKER- Yeah, what should we hit first?
15:26SPEAKERYou wanna talk about, let's see,
15:27SPEAKERpeople had asked some questions last week
15:28SPEAKERabout our podcast workflow, especially given,
15:32SPEAKERlike we handled this podcast
15:33SPEAKERand the FOS pod a little bit differently.
15:35SPEAKERThe FOS pod's a little bit more produced.
15:37SPEAKER- Yeah, quite a bit of editing went into that first episode.
15:40SPEAKER- Yeah, both because it's like,
15:43SPEAKERinterview episodes on the tech pod
15:44SPEAKERalways involve more editing too,
15:45SPEAKERjust because it's when you're talking to people who aren't,
15:48SPEAKERlike Brad and I have a pretty good rhythm at this point
15:50SPEAKERfrom doing 150 episodes or whatever
15:52SPEAKERbetween this and tech pod and bomb guest
15:54SPEAKERand all that together over the years.
15:56SPEAKER- Yeah.
15:58SPEAKER- But there's, you know, with,
16:03SPEAKERwe also wanted to make something that was more accessible
16:05SPEAKERto an audience that maybe doesn't know us
16:08SPEAKERwith the FOS pod since Google's gonna help promote it
16:10SPEAKERand hopefully it'll get a broader audience
16:13SPEAKEReven though it's a little more of a niche topic.
16:17SPEAKERBut I bring this up because we haven't talked
16:22SPEAKERabout the podcast workflow in a long time
16:24SPEAKERand also you have got to replace your damn microphone.
16:27SPEAKER- That's kind of the real reason to talk about this
16:29SPEAKERbut I guess I don't even know
16:31SPEAKERif we want to get into software stuff too much.
16:33SPEAKERI mean, are you recording in Audacity?
16:35SPEAKERI am, I've always, I started using Audacity
16:38SPEAKERlike eight years ago at this point
16:39SPEAKERand like I just know it inside and out enough at this point
16:41SPEAKERthat like I can't bring myself to learn another workflow
16:44SPEAKERin something like Audition.
16:46SPEAKER- So the only reason, so I record Audacity
16:48SPEAKERbecause the timings stay closest
16:50SPEAKERwhen we use the same application.
16:52SPEAKER- Interesting, yeah.
16:53SPEAKER- That is one of the most arcane arts
16:56SPEAKERabout recording remotely on separate computers
16:58SPEAKERis the like very nondescript kind of drift that can happen
17:03SPEAKERbased on like the timings of your CPU
17:06SPEAKERand like whatever audio library
17:08SPEAKERthe thing you're recording in is using and blah, blah, blah.
17:10SPEAKER- What crystal timing clock is on your motherboard.
17:15SPEAKERLike there's all sorts of stuff.
17:20SPEAKER- In a perfect world since I use a real audio interface
17:23SPEAKERthat has an SEO, ASIO interface,
17:26SPEAKERI should probably be using Audition
17:29SPEAKERsince it supports ASIO and Audacity doesn't.
17:34SPEAKERLike, oh, that gives you more precise timing
17:36SPEAKERand less drift over the course of the recording.
17:39SPEAKER- Okay, well, we'll get to that in a minute then.
17:41SPEAKERMaybe I need to change, but like.
17:45SPEAKER- Yeah, well, I was gonna say it's weird
17:46SPEAKER'cause I've always used Audition to edit stuff
17:48SPEAKERjust because I'm much more comfortable
17:51SPEAKERwith the nondestructive editor
17:53SPEAKERin that you can, so basically, well, so, okay.
17:58SPEAKERSo the difference is when you make a cut in Audition,
18:03SPEAKERit's just putting a marker.
18:05SPEAKERLike it doesn't adjust the source file at all.
18:07SPEAKERIt just says, hey, take the segment
18:09SPEAKERfrom this time to this time and put it here.
18:11SPEAKERAnd then if you wanna stretch the beginning or end of that,
18:14SPEAKERthen you can, it's still there.
18:15SPEAKERWith Audacity, that's not an option.
18:17SPEAKEROnce you do the cut, then you can't drag back
18:20SPEAKERinto what was the source file anymore.
18:23SPEAKER- You mean like once you delete a clip?
18:24SPEAKER- Well, or once you make a cut
18:26SPEAKERand then place the edge of that cut, then that's gone.
18:30SPEAKERYeah, there's no, it's easier to make mistakes
18:36SPEAKERthat have lasting consequences
18:38SPEAKERand require you to roll back a lot of work in Audacity,
18:40SPEAKERI find. - Yeah, I think
18:41SPEAKERyou're probably right.
18:42SPEAKERI'm sitting here trying to envision
18:44SPEAKERif there's a way to replicate what you're talking about.
18:46SPEAKER- I haven't edited in Audacity, or I would,
18:48SPEAKERanother problem here is they both start with the syllable.
18:51SPEAKER- The same word, yeah, it's really annoying.
18:53SPEAKER- I have not edited in Audition, so I can't say for sure,
18:56SPEAKERbut like there is possible that Audacity
18:58SPEAKERmight have something like that.
18:59SPEAKERI mean, you can certainly just, instead of deleting clips,
19:01SPEAKERjust drag them off into a muted track elsewhere,
19:03SPEAKERbut that's kind of messy.
19:05SPEAKER- Yeah, so that's the thing that you get with Audacity
19:07SPEAKERis you can put stuff in buckets and then say, okay,
19:11SPEAKERthis is the bucket that's this part of the conversation.
19:13SPEAKERThis is the bucket that's this part of the conversation.
19:15SPEAKERAnd then you can layer 35 tracks
19:18SPEAKERand apply all the filters and stuff like that.
19:22SPEAKERSo, okay, so our workflow is we record in Audacity,
19:26SPEAKERthen I take both of the files that result,
19:28SPEAKERor all three of the files if we have a guest,
19:30SPEAKERand I sync them up using Audition
19:33SPEAKERbecause it's easier to do the time sync in Audition.
19:36SPEAKER- So yeah, I don't know if we've,
19:37SPEAKERI think we've talked about this off mic a little bit,
19:40SPEAKERbut does it have specific tools that make syncing,
19:43SPEAKERlike if there's drift, does it actually have ways
19:45SPEAKERto compensate for that that are kind of built in?
19:47SPEAKER- So there's always drift is the first part.
19:50SPEAKERThere's always at least a couple hundred milliseconds
19:53SPEAKERof drift, maybe like for you and me,
19:56SPEAKERit's usually a little like around 50,
19:59SPEAKERbut if we have a guest that's using
20:00SPEAKERlike a different USB mic or something weird,
20:01SPEAKERthen they can have 150 milliseconds, 200 milliseconds easy.
20:05SPEAKERThe neat thing about Audacity is you can line up the bars,
20:08SPEAKERyou line up, we have the beeps on one side
20:11SPEAKERfrom our, from Thrift Heart's Time.is beeping syncing app.
20:17SPEAKERWe, I line up the first, the start of the recording
20:21SPEAKERon all three machines, on all three tracks.
20:23SPEAKERAnd then I go there and I go to the other end
20:25SPEAKERand I can, you can literally place a marker
20:28SPEAKERon the one that you want to sync with
20:30SPEAKERand drag the other ones until the beeps precisely line up
20:33SPEAKERand I can get down to like sample size for the beeps.
20:37SPEAKERSo I can get a really precise sync.
20:39SPEAKER- And then I have like filters,
20:42SPEAKERlike noise gates and compression and stuff like that,
20:45SPEAKERthat audio like signal compression, not file compression
20:50SPEAKERthat ends up on the individual tracks.
20:53SPEAKERAnd usually I level them,
20:55SPEAKERbut sometimes I forget to do that, it turns out.
20:57SPEAKER- Right.
20:58SPEAKER- And then they go to you.
20:59SPEAKER- Yes, so you essentially sync everything up
21:01SPEAKERand then do the leveling and mastering is maybe,
21:03SPEAKERis mastering an appropriate term for what you're-
21:06SPEAKER- It's kind of first pass, right?
21:08SPEAKERIt's like, it's like giving a clean,
21:10SPEAKERlike my goal out of that is to give you clean audio
21:13SPEAKERthat then, 'cause you run it through Levelator at the end,
21:16SPEAKERwhich does like the real kind of audio signal mastering
21:20SPEAKERso that everything's the right volume and stuff.
21:22SPEAKER- It actually just occurred to me
21:23SPEAKERthat if you look at the wave form
21:24SPEAKERafter it's gone through Levelator,
21:25SPEAKERI think it's the, I think audio kind of,
21:29SPEAKERaudio engineers might correct me,
21:31SPEAKERbut I think it's the loudness wars problem
21:33SPEAKERfrom 90s CD mastering, you know what I'm talking about,
21:36SPEAKERwhere like they just brought everything up
21:37SPEAKERto the same ridiculous volume.
21:39SPEAKER- Well, you're using the entire,
21:41SPEAKERlike you use the entire available range of volume.
21:45SPEAKER- Right.
21:46SPEAKER- Yeah, and-
21:47SPEAKER- And with voice, that's probably appropriate.
21:50SPEAKERLike you want everybody to sound about the same loudness,
21:52SPEAKERthe same intensity, but like-
21:53SPEAKER- Yeah.
21:54SPEAKER- But it was the same thing that made people complain
21:55SPEAKERabout CD mastering in the 90s
21:58SPEAKERwith having no dynamics to the highs and lows.
22:01SPEAKER- It's why like some stuff sounds really nice on vinyl.
22:04SPEAKER- Sure.
22:05SPEAKER- If it's mastered appropriately.
22:06SPEAKERAnyway.
22:06SPEAKER- So yes, where were we?
22:08SPEAKERI've lost my train of thought.
22:09SPEAKER- So I hand off the, so I also chunk up,
22:11SPEAKERif we have segments, I chunk up the segments
22:13SPEAKERand I like will, you know, split out the intro
22:17SPEAKERand the main body and the outro.
22:19SPEAKERAnd if there's like places where we have over talking
22:22SPEAKERor big segments that like,
22:25SPEAKERbig segments that need to be chopped out,
22:26SPEAKERlike if somebody has to get up and go to the bathroom
22:27SPEAKERor take a call or something, then I'll chop that out.
22:29SPEAKER- Yes.
22:30SPEAKER- And rejoin them seamlessly,
22:32SPEAKER'cause it's really easy to do that in Audition
22:33SPEAKERbecause of the way the tracks, the track stuff works.
22:36SPEAKER- Yes, so you export clean audio to me,
22:39SPEAKERwhich before we get to that is now a good time
22:41SPEAKERto ask you to adjust your export settings again,
22:43SPEAKER'cause they've somehow gotten set back to 32 bit again.
22:47SPEAKER- Oh, you told me that that was fine when I did it,
22:49SPEAKERwhen we got to the last time.
22:51SPEAKER- But I down convert them before, so.
22:53SPEAKER- Yeah, just let me know what to do and I'll change it.
22:55SPEAKER- So I archive the Audacity project
22:56SPEAKERfor every episode we ever do.
22:58SPEAKERLike I, just out of paranoia, I was like,
22:59SPEAKERoh, kind of nice to have the raw export capabilities
23:02SPEAKERfor any, it's like just, you know, for that day in the future
23:06SPEAKERwhen we'd start posting all of these things as flax, right?
23:09SPEAKERLike that's definitely going to happen.
23:10SPEAKER- Yeah, no, it's not gonna happen, okay, okay.
23:12SPEAKER- But anyway, like the point is the size
23:16SPEAKERof the resulting Audacity project is entirely based
23:18SPEAKERon the source files you feed into it.
23:20SPEAKER- Got it.
23:21SPEAKER- And so 32 bit files are dramatically bigger
23:22SPEAKERthan 16 bit wave files, so I can just down convert them
23:26SPEAKERbefore I create the project.
23:28SPEAKER- I can, I think I have control over that.
23:31SPEAKERI'll have to look.
23:32SPEAKER- You do, you've done it before.
23:33SPEAKERI think it just got changed back somehow.
23:34SPEAKER- What happens is every year Adobe gives you new versions
23:38SPEAKERof all of their software and it almost always fucks up
23:41SPEAKERsome setting or another, so.
23:42SPEAKER- I bet that's what happened.
23:43SPEAKERIt's totally fine, like, I mean, if anything,
23:46SPEAKERlike it lets me use my, use my new found PowerShell stuff.
23:50SPEAKERLike it's a one liner in PowerShell
23:51SPEAKERto just spit everything back out at the size I want.
23:54SPEAKER- But better to not create it in the, like we're not,
23:59SPEAKERwe're recording 24 bit, so there's no reason
24:01SPEAKERto give you 32 bit, 'cause I'm giving you individual tracks.
24:04SPEAKERLike 32 bit is just gonna, is just padding out the files.
24:07SPEAKER- I'm just, I'm exporting at 48 kilohertz, 16 bit anyway,
24:10SPEAKERand then that goes to MP3, so it doesn't.
24:12SPEAKER- What an incredible reduction in quality
24:14SPEAKERpeople are getting.
24:15SPEAKER- Much bigger.
24:16SPEAKER- Brad, I can't believe it.
24:18SPEAKER- Much bigger source files.
24:19SPEAKERActually that came up on the Discord a while back that,
24:24SPEAKERso we export here on Nextlander, like kind of
24:27SPEAKERacross the board at 128 kilobits MP3.
24:30SPEAKERAnd there was some thought on the Discord
24:32SPEAKERthat that might be excessive, which I don't entirely--
24:34SPEAKER- It probably is since we're mono.
24:36SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't entirely disagree,
24:37SPEAKERbut also like storage is so ubiquitous
24:40SPEAKERand large at this point.
24:43SPEAKER- I think we do that because our host for the podcast,
24:45SPEAKERactually that's the maximum they support.
24:48SPEAKER- Yes.
24:48SPEAKER- And they don't charge us more for transferring.
24:50SPEAKER- Yes, that's a big part of it.
24:52SPEAKERAnyway, so you--
24:53SPEAKER- And also since that MP3 file gets converted for Spotify
24:57SPEAKERand Stitcher and the other places that it shows up
25:00SPEAKERthat they do the conversion and hosting,
25:02SPEAKERhaving the higher quality for them
25:06SPEAKERmakes the podcast there sound less,
25:08SPEAKERlike it gives you less double lossless conversion problems.
25:11SPEAKERAnyways, I don't know, we can turn it down.
25:13SPEAKERIf our podcast is taking up too much space,
25:15SPEAKERwe can turn it down, I don't care.
25:16SPEAKER- I think it's fine.
25:17SPEAKERI mean, they're not wrong, but also eh, you know.
25:19SPEAKERAnyway, yeah, you hand me off those source files,
25:21SPEAKERI pull those into an Audacity project
25:23SPEAKERand kind of do all the kind of heavy cutting
25:26SPEAKERof moving intros around and like lay music in
25:28SPEAKERand do the ducking on that and I usually do a polish pass
25:31SPEAKERto go through and look for egregious talk over parts
25:36SPEAKERand stuff like that and like try to clean
25:37SPEAKERand tighten stuff up a bit.
25:40SPEAKER- But we don't do too much on the tech pod.
25:41SPEAKER- No, like when we started doing this podcast,
25:43SPEAKERthe first few episodes, I was like obsessively cutting out
25:46SPEAKERevery um and ah and like massaging it.
25:50SPEAKER- Fool's errand, that's a fool's errand, Brad.
25:52SPEAKER- Was like polishing it to a mirror sheen
25:54SPEAKERand that was taking like upwards of three hours
25:57SPEAKERplus an episode just for that part of the process
26:01SPEAKERand it was a lot on the weekends.
26:03SPEAKERSo, you know, the kind of one of the production tricks
26:09SPEAKERyou can employ is that the cleaner your conversation
26:11SPEAKERis up front, the less it takes to make it sound better
26:14SPEAKERon the back end.
26:15SPEAKERSo you've tried to get better at just talking.
26:18SPEAKER- It turns out you can get better at just talking.
26:22SPEAKEROkay, but let's look, we so far you've successfully avoided
26:25SPEAKERthe real problem here.
26:27SPEAKERWhich is that your Yeti, which has served you long
26:30SPEAKERand is a good microphone and I know you love it
26:31SPEAKERand you have a deep meaningful relationship with it.
26:34SPEAKER- I don't love it.
26:34SPEAKERI honestly don't, like it's not, I don't care about it.
26:37SPEAKERIt's just what I've got.
26:38SPEAKER- It's time.
26:39SPEAKER- Yes, I agree.
26:40SPEAKER- It's time to ditch the USB mic and get a real interface.
26:43SPEAKER- Remember, was it about six months ago maybe?
26:47SPEAKER- Uh huh.
26:48SPEAKER- That we talked about.
26:49SPEAKEROkay, look, I am a little bit of a paranoid person,
26:52SPEAKERbut I also just think it's a best practice
26:53SPEAKERnot to leave microphones and cameras plugged in
26:55SPEAKERwhen you're not using.
26:56SPEAKER- Look, I have Google Homes in the house,
26:57SPEAKERso I'm not gonna engage with this conversation at all
26:59SPEAKER'cause I can't meaningfully contribute to it.
27:03SPEAKER- Look, I'm taking an ideological stand here.
27:06SPEAKER- Look, yes, I appreciate that.
27:08SPEAKERBut I also like be able to say, hey,
27:10SPEAKERturn on the light and the light turns on.
27:12SPEAKERSo I get it, I get it.
27:13SPEAKERThere is no hey Siri in this house.
27:15SPEAKERAnyway, like we talked about this a few months ago
27:17SPEAKERthat I would unplug the--
27:19SPEAKER- Wait, you have it turned off on your phone too?
27:21SPEAKER- Oh yeah.
27:24SPEAKER- Okay.
27:25SPEAKER- Continue. - What?
27:28SPEAKER- No, no, it's fine.
27:28SPEAKERIt's fine, it's fine, it's fine.
27:29SPEAKERI'm not judging.
27:30SPEAKERI'm just gonna move on.
27:32SPEAKER- On top of the privacy stuff,
27:34SPEAKERI assume it is saving an infinitesimal amount
27:36SPEAKERof battery life by having it off.
27:39SPEAKER- On your iPhone 8, it probably is.
27:41SPEAKER- Yes.
27:43SPEAKER- On stuff with U1s, it probably doesn't matter.
27:44SPEAKERAnyway.
27:45SPEAKER- Anyway, I said this a while back
27:47SPEAKERthat I would make sure the Yeti was off by pulling the,
27:50SPEAKERgosh, what is it?
27:51SPEAKERIt's a USB mini A.
27:53SPEAKER- Have you been unplugging and plugging it this whole time?
27:56SPEAKER- Yeah, we talked about this.
27:57SPEAKER- I told you not to.
27:58SPEAKERI said it was gonna kill the USB port.
27:59SPEAKERBrad, what's happened to your Yeti?
28:00SPEAKERWhat's wrong with it?
28:01SPEAKER- This is when you introduced me to the phrase duty cycle.
28:04SPEAKER- Yes.
28:05SPEAKER- I may have run out of duty cycles.
28:08SPEAKER- You can always unplug the other end.
28:10SPEAKERYou plug the end on the hub
28:12SPEAKERbecause that one's rated for way more.
28:13SPEAKERWe talked about this.
28:14SPEAKER- Yeah, you're probably right.
28:15SPEAKERSo it's getting a little loose.
28:16SPEAKERThe connection, it's been acting a little weird at times.
28:20SPEAKERThe other day it was sort of recognizing
28:22SPEAKERand disconnecting in windows over and over
28:24SPEAKERand moving it to a different port on the machine,
28:26SPEAKERon the PC actually fixed that.
28:28SPEAKERSo I don't wanna play what's going on there,
28:30SPEAKERbut there's, I don't wanna mess up the recording.
28:33SPEAKER- I would not touch it if I were you.
28:34SPEAKERYou're in the denser zone.
28:36SPEAKER- But I've had the cable just sort of fall out of the port
28:38SPEAKERa couple of times as I moved the mic around,
28:39SPEAKERwhich can't be good.
28:40SPEAKER- No, that's bad.
28:41SPEAKER- So it's time, as you said.
28:44SPEAKER- Oh boy.
28:47SPEAKER- To solder on a new USB port.
28:48SPEAKER- Nope, that is not the right answer to this problem.
28:52SPEAKER- I am joking, except not, except I am, listen, okay.
28:56SPEAKERI am joking.
28:57SPEAKERI am going to get an audio interface and an XLR mic, but.
29:00SPEAKER- Yes.
29:01SPEAKER- Also, could I solder on a new USB port?
29:05SPEAKER- If you're gonna solder on a new USB port,
29:07SPEAKERyou want to get a USB, a reflow station,
29:10SPEAKERa cheap reflow station,
29:11SPEAKERbecause de-soldering that with a wick and a solder sucker
29:14SPEAKERwill make you absolutely crazy,
29:15SPEAKER'cause I'm sure that that board.
29:17SPEAKER- Is tiny, I'm sure.
29:18SPEAKER- Well, no, it's not even that it's tiny.
29:20SPEAKERIt's that it's like, it's gonna be four pins, I think,
29:22SPEAKERmaybe five.
29:23SPEAKER- Yeah, I think it's five.
29:24SPEAKER- 'Cause it's four data pins and a ground, maybe,
29:27SPEAKERor two grounds and three data.
29:29SPEAKER- It'll be a five volt and a ground, and then whatever.
29:31SPEAKER- A data and another ground, I think.
29:33SPEAKER- Yeah.
29:34SPEAKER- But anyway, the upshot is provisionally,
29:38SPEAKERyes, you can do that.
29:40SPEAKERYou need to get the right pin out on the USB port
29:42SPEAKERthat matches the board, which I think is fairly standard.
29:45SPEAKERI've never done a USB-A host side one before.
29:50SPEAKERI've done USB mini and micro host sides,
29:55SPEAKERand those are sadly not,
29:57SPEAKERI think they weren't interchangeable.
29:58SPEAKERI think I wanted to change something
29:59SPEAKERthat was mini to a micro,
30:01SPEAKERand the pinout on the board wasn't the same,
30:02SPEAKERso then I had to do a bunch of weird
30:04SPEAKERshenanigans to make it work.
30:05SPEAKER- Interesting, interesting.
30:07SPEAKER- But yeah, so you gotta match the port with the board.
30:11SPEAKERIf you go to iFixit and you search for USB replacement
30:14SPEAKERfor the device that you have, for the Yeti in this case,
30:17SPEAKER'cause you're gonna take this so you have a travel mic,
30:20SPEAKERis the idea, right?
30:20SPEAKER- This is literally, yes, this is literally just,
30:22SPEAKERhey, it's still a good mic other than the port,
30:23SPEAKERand I need a travel microphone,
30:24SPEAKERand it's compact enough for that.
30:27SPEAKERSo I just, you know, this is a podcast
30:30SPEAKERwhere we just had Kyle Wiens of iFixit on a few months ago.
30:33SPEAKEROf course I want to try to make this thing work.
30:36SPEAKER- So the thing I will say,
30:38SPEAKERsometimes the right thing to do is to fix things.
30:42SPEAKERFor things that are business-related and critical,
30:47SPEAKERI tend to buy depth too.
30:49SPEAKER- Yeah, you're right.
30:52SPEAKER- And basically what you're telling me
30:54SPEAKERis you've gone from having a fairly reliable USB microphone
30:57SPEAKERto a completely unreliable USB microphone,
31:01SPEAKERand thus I'm going to go to Amazon
31:02SPEAKERand order you a new microphone in the interface
31:04SPEAKERwhen we get off this podcast.
31:06SPEAKER- Okay, it's maybe not quite as dire as it sounds like.
31:08SPEAKERIt's not like--
31:10SPEAKER- How many times is the USB port,
31:11SPEAKERhow many times has your USB port
31:12SPEAKERfallen out of the microphone?
31:14SPEAKER- Twice.
31:15SPEAKER- Yeah, that's--
31:15SPEAKER- Twice in like a month.
31:18SPEAKER- Look, okay, if we weren't in the middle of the pandemic
31:22SPEAKERand there weren't supply chain issues,
31:23SPEAKERI would say yes, you're fine,
31:24SPEAKER'cause you can always order something,
31:25SPEAKERyou'll be here the next day on Amazon.
31:29SPEAKERYou can't rely on that to happen right now.
31:31SPEAKER- Currently my fallback is to plug the headset microphone
31:37SPEAKERback into this pair of Astor A40s I'm wearing.
31:40SPEAKER- That's not, nope, nope, that's not gonna, no, nope, nope.
31:42SPEAKER- It's not great, it's not great.
31:44SPEAKERIt is workable, barely.
31:47SPEAKERI would not call it podcast quality.
31:49SPEAKER- That is not, no, that is not an acceptable level
31:52SPEAKERof micromophone for where I sit.
31:56SPEAKER- Okay, well, we've buried the true lead here,
31:58SPEAKERwhich like, this is maybe more of a conversation
32:02SPEAKERfor the Discord.
32:03SPEAKEREd, if you're listening, I will be calling on you.
32:07SPEAKERI was gonna go into the kind of audio, video,
32:10SPEAKERinternet broadcasting channel and solicit opinions there,
32:12SPEAKERbut like, yeah, I will get an XLR mic
32:14SPEAKERand an audio interface, and it sounds like
32:17SPEAKERthe audio interface conversation starts and stops
32:19SPEAKERwith a Motu M2 at this point.
32:21SPEAKER- So I have, over the last five years or six years
32:24SPEAKERsince we were doing FOO stuff, I've used,
32:26SPEAKERI've used almost, I've used Focusrite, I've used Teek,
32:29SPEAKERI've used the M-Audio, I've used all of the,
32:34SPEAKERlike the entry level slash inexpensive two to four port
32:38SPEAKERaudio interfaces on the market, I think,
32:40SPEAKERthat are like less than $500.
32:43SPEAKERThe Focusrites are great if you're using Mac,
32:46SPEAKERbut if you're on Windows, the drivers are real bad.
32:49SPEAKER- Yeah, I've still got the Focusrite you let me borrow
32:52SPEAKERages ago, and I ended up uninstalling all the software
32:55SPEAKERand drivers in Windows because it was garbage.
32:57SPEAKER- It is firmly in the realm of it's okay,
33:00SPEAKERlike 90% of the time, but 10% of the time,
33:02SPEAKERit will fuck up your recording.
33:04SPEAKERAnd if you can't monitor it actively,
33:06SPEAKERif you can't monitor the recording actively,
33:08SPEAKERthen you're not gonna know it's bad until it's too late.
33:11SPEAKERSo that's bad.
33:12SPEAKER- The Teek was good, it just randomly died for no reason,
33:16SPEAKERabout two years in, which is not long enough for me.
33:20SPEAKERI bought a Motu M4, 'cause the M4 and the M2
33:25SPEAKERare like a $40, $50 price difference.
33:27SPEAKER- Is it, I don't know, like a hundred?
33:30SPEAKER- Well, at the time, the problem was the M2
33:32SPEAKERwas out of stock when I needed it,
33:34SPEAKERand for a not, for a third party M2 seller on Sweetwater
33:41SPEAKERor any B&H or Amazon or any of the places
33:44SPEAKERthat sell this stuff, it was gonna be a short,
33:47SPEAKERsmall upgrade to get it first party for the M4.
33:50SPEAKERSo I just bought the M4.
33:52SPEAKER- Oh, you're right.
33:53SPEAKERActually, yes, looking at Amazon right now,
33:54SPEAKERthe prices are a bit higher than they were a few months ago.
34:00SPEAKER- The Motu stuff is going, goes in and out of stock
34:02SPEAKER'cause they, you know, it's a small company.
34:04SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, you're absolutely right.
34:05SPEAKERThe M4, the M4 has four ports
34:07SPEAKERcompared to the two on the two, surprisingly.
34:09SPEAKER- Yeah.
34:10SPEAKER- So you're right, as of right now,
34:11SPEAKERthey are not that far apart in price,
34:13SPEAKERbut that's mostly because the M2
34:14SPEAKERis a lot more expensive than it was.
34:16SPEAKER- Yeah, the M2, I think is usually like 160 bucks
34:19SPEAKERas MSRP or something like that.
34:20SPEAKER- Yes, 150.
34:21SPEAKER- And usually, like for the last year,
34:23SPEAKERit's been 200 every time I've looked.
34:24SPEAKER- These are 200 or more,
34:25SPEAKERdepending on the seller at this point, yeah.
34:27SPEAKER- So the nice thing about the M4 is that I have,
34:30SPEAKERI have speakers and headphones.
34:32SPEAKERThe speakers are on a different set of outputs,
34:35SPEAKERso I can set Spotify to only play through the speakers
34:37SPEAKERand have music come through the speakers when I want,
34:39SPEAKERwhich is nice.
34:42SPEAKER- So I think I am sold on that thing, it sounds great.
34:45SPEAKEREverything I've heard you and other people say about it
34:47SPEAKERis that it kind of just works.
34:48SPEAKER- The drivers are really good, it's really stable,
34:50SPEAKERthe SEO interface is stable,
34:52SPEAKERI haven't had any problems with it.
34:55SPEAKERAnd also, the trick, the Focusrite SEO drivers are good,
34:59SPEAKERthe problem is the WME drivers are bad,
35:01SPEAKERso if you record in Audacity,
35:02SPEAKERyou get all sorts of weird noise sometimes.
35:04SPEAKERIf you record in Audition, that's fine.
35:07SPEAKER- Okay.
35:09SPEAKER- The next thing is the microphone.
35:10SPEAKER- Yes, the microphone is a bigger question for me
35:12SPEAKERbecause the spread and prices is pretty significant
35:14SPEAKERand I don't know exactly what I need.
35:16SPEAKERFirst of all, I have no need for an M4, right?
35:18SPEAKERLike I'm sure an M2 with two inputs is more than enough.
35:21SPEAKER- Given how you, like the reason I got the M4 ultimately
35:24SPEAKERis that it has two XLRs on the front,
35:26SPEAKERso if I wanted to record two people on one computer, I could.
35:29SPEAKER- Oh, am I not necessarily gonna be using XLR for this?
35:32SPEAKERLike is it possible? - No, you'll use XLR
35:34SPEAKERfor this. - Okay, oh, okay, yeah.
35:36SPEAKER- Yeah, so the XLR inputs on the front of these devices
35:39SPEAKERare typically those combo ones
35:40SPEAKERthat are a quarter inch slash XLR.
35:42SPEAKER- Oh, so you can plug a guitar in or something.
35:46SPEAKER- Oh, interesting, I've never eyeballed it enough
35:49SPEAKERto realize that it would take both.
35:50SPEAKER- Yeah, and then on the back,
35:51SPEAKERyou'll have either RCA line levels
35:53SPEAKERor quarter inch balanced usually.
35:55SPEAKER- Yeah, I think the M4 has two quarter inch on the back.
35:58SPEAKER- Yeah. - But I guess
35:59SPEAKERI probably am fine with the two.
36:01SPEAKERWell, we'll see what I can get.
36:03SPEAKER- So I used it to, I used the M2 for years,
36:06SPEAKERor the focus right equivalent of the M2 for years
36:09SPEAKERwith no problem. - Okay.
36:10SPEAKER- Like, but I also have hooked up to the streaming PC
36:15SPEAKERof an 18 input digital mixer 'cause I'm a lunatic, so.
36:20SPEAKERThe question is the microphone,
36:22SPEAKERand there's like, there's a big range on what you can get.
36:24SPEAKERI'm using an AT2035 right now,
36:26SPEAKERwhich is an old Audio-Technica
36:28SPEAKERthat I've had for like 10 years.
36:30SPEAKERI've been kind of eyeing a slightly better microphone,
36:33SPEAKERand the thing I'd been looking at
36:34SPEAKERwas the Shure SM7 probably, or SM7B.
36:38SPEAKER- Okay. - Which is like a,
36:41SPEAKERit is the, if the AT2035 is like the high-end pro-sumer
36:48SPEAKERkind of like, hey, I want a hobbyist kind of microphone,
36:52SPEAKERI think the 7B is firmly in the middle of the,
36:55SPEAKERhey, I have a real studio
36:56SPEAKERand I wanna record people talking space.
36:59SPEAKER- Yes, the difference in price is?
37:03SPEAKER- Like 300 bucks. - Pretty significant.
37:05SPEAKER- Yeah, the Shure is like 400 bucks, I think, usually.
37:07SPEAKERFour or 500 bucks. - Yes, it is 400 right now
37:09SPEAKERon Amazon, and the Audio-Technica is 150.
37:14SPEAKER- Yeah. - I don't know,
37:15SPEAKERyou sound pretty good to me.
37:16SPEAKERYou sound better than I do now, so I don't know.
37:18SPEAKER- Well, so the problem with the Audio-Technica
37:20SPEAKERis it picks up a lot of room.
37:22SPEAKERIt's not super direct.
37:23SPEAKERIt's not as directional as I would like.
37:25SPEAKER- Oh, that's not great. - The back of it is open,
37:26SPEAKERand you get, it's like, if you're sitting here
37:28SPEAKERwith a, for example, a keyboard
37:30SPEAKERor something that makes noise
37:32SPEAKERon the other side of the microphone,
37:33SPEAKERbecause that's where your hands live,
37:34SPEAKERit picks up a lot of that.
37:36SPEAKER- Or so, you know what, when the primary product
37:39SPEAKERis audio-based, perhaps spending the money
37:42SPEAKERon a good audio, receptacle is justified.
37:45SPEAKER- That's kind of where, like, that's literally,
37:48SPEAKERthat's kind of why I was looking at upgrading,
37:49SPEAKERis 'cause it would be nice to be able to type
37:51SPEAKERwhile we're recording it and not come through the recording.
37:53SPEAKER- Yeah, also, pulling up the Shure sure makes me realize
37:58SPEAKERthat I have seen this thing
37:59SPEAKERon a whole lot of Twitch streams.
38:00SPEAKER- This is the default, hey, I'm making money
38:05SPEAKERon my Twitch stream, what should I buy?
38:07SPEAKER- The look of this microphone is very familiar to me,
38:10SPEAKERnow that I look at it.
38:11SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a, it is, like, look,
38:14SPEAKERwhen you start talking to audio people,
38:16SPEAKERyou realize that there's some famous microphones.
38:18SPEAKERThis is one of them.
38:20SPEAKERThere's reasons for that, usually.
38:21SPEAKERI don't know, I'm not a microphone guy.
38:23SPEAKERI just talk to a bunch of people
38:25SPEAKERabout what they have and what they like,
38:26SPEAKERand everybody who's gone from something like what I have
38:29SPEAKERto someone of those who's been happy with it, so.
38:32SPEAKER- Okay, that's good to know.
38:33SPEAKER- But you do need the driver to run it,
38:35SPEAKERand you, depending, I can't remember,
38:37SPEAKERI don't think it's, I think it's a,
38:39SPEAKERthere's other stuff about, for example,
38:42SPEAKERif you have, like, condenser mics or dynamic mics,
38:44SPEAKERsometimes you have to put a powered amplifier
38:47SPEAKERin between that and the device.
38:49SPEAKERI think that the Shure is not one that requires that,
38:51SPEAKERbut I don't remember off the top of my head.
38:53SPEAKER- Oh, it is, it says right here,
38:54SPEAKERthe SM7B does not require phantom power.
38:56SPEAKERSo is it a dynamic or is it a condenser?
38:58SPEAKERAnd God, this is a whole paragraph, let's see.
39:02SPEAKERDoes not require phantom power,
39:03SPEAKERis not affected if phantom power
39:04SPEAKERis present on its mixer input.
39:05SPEAKERSee, this is why I've never gotten into XLR stuff.
39:07SPEAKERIt's just there's the power situation
39:09SPEAKERand all this stuff is so complicated.
39:12SPEAKERNote that some third-party external preamps commonly used
39:15SPEAKERwith this mic do require phantom power to operate.
39:18SPEAKER- Yeah.
39:19SPEAKER- At least 60 decibels of gain is recommended
39:21SPEAKERto get that iconic warm and balanced tone
39:23SPEAKERmost commonly associated with the SM7B.
39:26SPEAKER- So that puts you in cloud lifter territory?
39:29SPEAKER- What?
39:30SPEAKER- A cloud lifter is a device that uses phantom power.
39:33SPEAKERSo phantom power is just a electricity
39:35SPEAKERthat comes from your XLR port and energizes the microphone,
39:40SPEAKERwhatever's in the microphone.
39:42SPEAKERThe cloud lifter is a device that does that
39:46SPEAKERand provides a gain boost.
39:49SPEAKER- Okay, I have heard of that.
39:51SPEAKER- Yeah, I use a cloud lifter for the headset mic
39:54SPEAKER'cause it's a dynamic mic that requires the additional gain.
40:01SPEAKER- Cloud lifter is literally the first customers
40:03SPEAKERwho viewed this item also viewed.
40:05SPEAKER- Yeah, so basically what that does
40:09SPEAKERis increase the available range that you have
40:12SPEAKERto tweak the gain on the microphone.
40:14SPEAKERSo it gives you a wider range for what you can look for.
40:18SPEAKER- As with everything that has a learning curve,
40:20SPEAKERI'm sure once you get into it,
40:21SPEAKERit's not that arcane.
40:23SPEAKER- Well, so the thing that's nice about all of this
40:25SPEAKERis that once you set it,
40:26SPEAKERyou never have to muck with it again, really.
40:28SPEAKERLike you figure it out once
40:29SPEAKERand assuming you don't change the way your setup works
40:32SPEAKERor the way you're aimed
40:33SPEAKERor the distance you stay to the microphone,
40:36SPEAKERyou never have to futz with it again.
40:38SPEAKER- Okay, that sounds very appealing.
40:40SPEAKERMy last question. - And stuff like the auto gain
40:42SPEAKERthat we always have to deal with on Jitsi doesn't adjust.
40:45SPEAKERIt can't touch the gain settings on these microphones.
40:48SPEAKER- Interesting, but can it try to adjust the gain
40:51SPEAKERon the audio interface or?
40:52SPEAKER- If you're using the SEO interface, it doesn't matter
40:54SPEAKER'cause the SEO ignores all that stuff.
40:55SPEAKER- Okay, good, good.
40:57SPEAKERThat's fantastic.
40:58SPEAKERThat's good to hear.
41:00SPEAKERWhat was my last, oh, my last question before we move on,
41:03SPEAKERis there some way on the M2 to,
41:07SPEAKERit doesn't have to be a literal mute switch,
41:09SPEAKERbut is there a functional equivalent of a way
41:11SPEAKERto physically mute the mic?
41:12SPEAKER- So that's, you want to put a mute button
41:15SPEAKERin between in your line someplace.
41:18SPEAKER- Is that easy to do?
41:19SPEAKER- Well, that's really appealing to me,
41:21SPEAKERis to be able to hit a thing that makes me know
41:23SPEAKERthat the mic is muted, 'cause sometimes you just have
41:25SPEAKERto cough or whatever, and it's just.
41:26SPEAKER- Yeah, so you need an inline mute switch or cough button.
41:30SPEAKERThey're usually like 50 bucks, and it sits between.
41:33SPEAKEROr, alternately, you can do, if you have a stream deck,
41:36SPEAKERyou can program a button to do that
41:39SPEAKERon the software level as well.
41:41SPEAKER- Doing it in software always weirds me out,
41:43SPEAKERlike I like a physical hype rig.
41:45SPEAKER- Knowing how you operate, you want a physical switch
41:48SPEAKERfor that.
41:49SPEAKER- Like you said, think about just in this conversation
41:51SPEAKERhow many times software or drivers have,
41:53SPEAKERor some application has messed with some sensitivity
41:57SPEAKERor output setting.
42:00SPEAKER- And also, using the software to do this
42:04SPEAKERcauses other problems.
42:05SPEAKER- Right, it's just not a clean solution, like a button is.
42:10SPEAKER- Buttons, buttons are nice.
42:11SPEAKERI wish that people made double toggle buttons for this.
42:15SPEAKER- Yes, that's exactly what I, I mean, the Yeti has that.
42:17SPEAKER- That would be fantastic, but I understand
42:20SPEAKERthat just electrically we are in different territory here.
42:23SPEAKER- Yeah, there's a Rolls mic switch that's 50 bucks
42:25SPEAKERthat does exactly what you're looking for.
42:27SPEAKER- Okay.
42:29SPEAKER- I don't know if it's momentary or click.
42:31SPEAKER- Okay, I would love a toggle rather than a hold.
42:34SPEAKERDoes that sit in the XLR chain, or is that,
42:36SPEAKERI mean, it has to be, right?
42:37SPEAKER- That sits in the XLR change, yeah.
42:38SPEAKER- Okay, interesting, boy.
42:40SPEAKERLots of learnings.
42:41SPEAKER- So you'll have two or three things in your XLR cable
42:45SPEAKERbetween your microphone and the interface.
42:48SPEAKERThe other thing with the XLR is it's much less susceptible
42:51SPEAKERto noise than the normal analog cables,
42:53SPEAKERbut you are gonna wanna route it away from power
42:55SPEAKERas much as you can, or cross power at 90 degrees,
42:57SPEAKERpower and data at 90 degrees.
42:59SPEAKER- Okay, this has gone from intimidating to interesting,
43:02SPEAKERintriguing in the course of this conversation.
43:04SPEAKER- I was gonna say, it's much less difficult
43:07SPEAKERthan it seems like when you're starting,
43:09SPEAKERand you have the benefit of having a real business case
43:12SPEAKERfor doing it, so you have actual budget to spend on it.
43:14SPEAKERLike, if you wanna start out streaming
43:17SPEAKERand you wanna do this, my advice is don't get into this.
43:21SPEAKERLike, this is not the place to go
43:23SPEAKERwhen you wanna start out.
43:24SPEAKERIf you're like, "Hey, I wanna experiment with streaming.
43:26SPEAKER"I'm not making any money at it.
43:27SPEAKER"It's not something I'm doing.
43:28SPEAKER"I'm just doing it for fun."
43:30SPEAKERThat's firmly, like, buy a Blue Yeti
43:32SPEAKERor a Snowball Territory, not spend $600 on a Shure
43:38SPEAKERand a Motu and a Cloudlifter and a mic switch.
43:42SPEAKERLike, you're in a different, you're in a higher priced year
43:46SPEAKERfor this because of your job.
43:47SPEAKER- Absolutely.
43:48SPEAKERThat's how I got a Yeti in the first place
43:49SPEAKERwas when we started doing Extra Life at home
43:52SPEAKERat China Gone years ago.
43:54SPEAKERI needed a decent mic here, and that's what I got.
43:57SPEAKER- Yeah.
43:57SPEAKER- 'Cause it was once a year, right?
43:59SPEAKERWe were not streaming or recording from home at all,
44:01SPEAKERso I was like, "Ah, this is fine for once a year."
44:03SPEAKER- But now you're doing it every day,
44:05SPEAKERand there's a real benefit to having it just set up
44:07SPEAKERso it doesn't take you 20 minutes to set up every morning
44:09SPEAKERand stuff like that.
44:10SPEAKER- Yep, yep.
44:11SPEAKER- Also, the duty cycle on XLR cables is nearly infinite,
44:15SPEAKERso it's less of a problem.
44:17SPEAKER- Okay, well, actually, I guess I could unplug.
44:22SPEAKER- I would still unplug.
44:23SPEAKERI would unplug on the interface end, not the microphone end,
44:26SPEAKERor ideally on two cables in between,
44:29SPEAKERlike somewhere in the in-between.
44:31SPEAKER- Oh, interesting, okay.
44:35SPEAKER- Should we talk about ARM and NVIDIA?
44:37SPEAKER- We can, briefly.
44:38SPEAKERI don't know that I have a ton of insight to offer
44:41SPEAKERother than the, so the NVIDIA,
44:43SPEAKERwe did a whole episode about when NVIDIA announced
44:45SPEAKERits intent to acquire ARM,
44:47SPEAKERand that deal has actually collapsed as of this week.
44:51SPEAKER- Yep.
44:53SPEAKER- Which I feel like you don't see happen very often.
44:56SPEAKERIt fell apart in Europe, right?
44:58SPEAKEROr in the UK?
44:59SPEAKERNot here.
45:00SPEAKER- No, there was pressure on all sides.
45:02SPEAKERSo the FTC sued to block it.
45:06SPEAKER- Oh.
45:06SPEAKER- The UK didn't want it to happen
45:08SPEAKERbecause it seems like ARM is their only silicon,
45:11SPEAKERis it like their biggest silicon conductor company?
45:15SPEAKER- Okay, I just assumed this was in the EU
45:18SPEAKERbecause the regulatory action still exists over there.
45:20SPEAKERLike I very cynically just assumed that no acquisition
45:23SPEAKERor merger will ever be blocked in this country again,
45:25SPEAKERbut maybe I was wrong.
45:27SPEAKER- Well, so okay, so the big thing was
45:29SPEAKERthe people who use ARM currently that aren't NVIDIA
45:31SPEAKERdidn't like this because they didn't want ARM,
45:35SPEAKERbecause ARM just sells technology and doesn't sell chips
45:38SPEAKERand doesn't make their own chips.
45:39SPEAKERIt means that everybody operates on the same schedule
45:42SPEAKERand like Qualcomm and NVIDIA and Apple
45:45SPEAKERand all the other places that build ARM chips
45:47SPEAKERget them at the same time.
45:50SPEAKERI assume Qualcomm felt like,
45:52SPEAKERand Apple felt like if NVIDIA owns ARM
45:54SPEAKERthey're gonna get first dibs on the good stuff
45:56SPEAKERand they didn't want that to happen.
46:00SPEAKERThe FTC and Britain's Competition and Markets Authority
46:04SPEAKERboth sued, or both objected to the thing
46:09SPEAKERand the EU had an investigation last year
46:13SPEAKERand a full antitrust probe in October.
46:16SPEAKERAnd also there was stuff happening in China
46:18SPEAKERwith the ARM China about around an executive ouster
46:24SPEAKERand drama there, and seemingly maybe
46:30SPEAKERChina's regulatory authority also objected.
46:32SPEAKERSo NVIDIA basically said, "Hey, we're not gonna do this,"
46:35SPEAKERand washed their hands of the $1.25 billion
46:39SPEAKERthey spent trying to get this going.
46:42SPEAKER- Ah, they can afford it. - Which must be nice.
46:43SPEAKER- Yeah, NVIDIA's doing pretty well.
46:45SPEAKERTheir stock took almost no hit on this.
46:48SPEAKER- I don't believe they took a hit related to this.
46:51SPEAKERThey also have had, they own 80 plus percent
46:54SPEAKERof the GPU market across data centers and consumers,
46:58SPEAKERso it's less of a, this was a future looking thing
47:02SPEAKERand they could afford to swing and miss on it,
47:04SPEAKERit seems like. - Yeah.
47:06SPEAKERDid you see, I can't remember which part
47:09SPEAKERof Digital Foundry put this up.
47:10SPEAKERI don't know if it was DF Retro
47:11SPEAKERor what category this fell into.
47:13SPEAKERJohn over there put up a retrospective
47:16SPEAKERon the original GeForce 256.
47:18SPEAKER- Oh, I saw this, yeah. - SDR.
47:20SPEAKER- Yeah. - Which I bought one of.
47:21SPEAKERI love, that was a fantastic video.
47:23SPEAKERPeople should go watch that.
47:24SPEAKER- That was the first video card I reviewed
47:26SPEAKERat Maximum PC. - Really?
47:27SPEAKER- Yeah.
47:28SPEAKER- It was probably the first video card
47:30SPEAKERI truly fetishized or obsessed over wanting
47:32SPEAKERonce it was announced, but anyway,
47:35SPEAKERit just made me think back to like,
47:36SPEAKERthat was probably the actual turning point
47:39SPEAKERwhere NVIDIA went from just one of the umpteen
47:44SPEAKERvideo card makers all competing for the same slice of market
47:48SPEAKERto like, wow, they are doing interesting stuff
47:51SPEAKERnobody else is doing in this space, right?
47:52SPEAKERLike that was, I mean, it was literally the genesis
47:55SPEAKERof the GeForce brand, which has persisted for God
47:58SPEAKERover two decades at this point,
47:59SPEAKERbut also it was like, they moved R and D forward
48:02SPEAKERon that card in a way that had not really happened.
48:05SPEAKER- Well, yeah, I mean, up until that point,
48:07SPEAKERvideo cards were just accelerating texturing
48:09SPEAKERand triangle generation and that was pretty much it.
48:12SPEAKERAnd like they, yeah, it was a big,
48:15SPEAKERit was the last card I reviewed at R
48:16SPEAKERis the first card I reviewed at Maximum PC,
48:19SPEAKERwhich was funny.
48:20SPEAKER- They came up with, we talked about it on the Discord,
48:22SPEAKERI believe that was when they started pushing the term GPU?
48:26SPEAKER- Yeah, that was when they,
48:28SPEAKERand at the time we all kind of thought it was kind of
48:29SPEAKERbullshit and then we'd look at what, like,
48:32SPEAKER'cause the other thing to remember is at that point,
48:34SPEAKERthe dev cycle on a game was 18 months to two years
48:37SPEAKERfor something that was pretty long.
48:39SPEAKER- Right.
48:39SPEAKER- So we didn't see games that use the GeForce stuff
48:43SPEAKERfor a fairly long time after the GeForce came out.
48:46SPEAKERWe saw tech demos and like 3DMark and stuff like that,
48:49SPEAKERor Benchmark, it wasn't even 3DMark at that point yet,
48:51SPEAKERI don't think, but it wasn't until later
48:54SPEAKERthat you saw the impact.
48:56SPEAKERLike, it wasn't really until like the GeForce 2 MX
49:00SPEAKERkind of mid-range cards shipped,
49:04SPEAKERand then the GeForce 3 came out
49:06SPEAKERand that's when we actually saw stuff
49:07SPEAKERthat launched around the same time
49:09SPEAKERwith the DX7 triangle setup
49:12SPEAKERand hardware transformer lighting and stuff like that.
49:14SPEAKER- Right, yeah, like moving the geometry setup off the CPU
49:16SPEAKERonto the graphics card, I feel like, in retrospect,
49:19SPEAKERthat is a pretty good justification for actually saying
49:21SPEAKERthat a graphics processing unit is an appropriate term.
49:25SPEAKER- But at the time, you didn't know
49:27SPEAKERwhether anybody was actually gonna use it or not.
49:30SPEAKER- Sure.
49:30SPEAKER- Like, it was still, that stuff was all early enough
49:33SPEAKERthat you never knew--
49:34SPEAKER- That's fair.
49:35SPEAKER- People would come out with features
49:36SPEAKERthat sounded great on paper
49:38SPEAKERand then nobody would implement them
49:39SPEAKERand you were like, well--
49:42SPEAKER- You didn't know if it was just gonna be another PhysX.
49:44SPEAKER- Well, PhysX--
49:45SPEAKER- I mean, I know PhysX got integrated into the GPUs eventually,
49:47SPEAKERmaybe that's a bad example,
49:48SPEAKERbut I understand what you're talking about.
49:50SPEAKERLike, there were a lot of questionable hardware
49:53SPEAKERacceleration technologies happening at that time.
49:55SPEAKER- Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that we don't remember
49:57SPEAKERbecause like, two games shipped with it
49:59SPEAKERand it didn't do anything, so--
50:01SPEAKER- There were like, gamer ethernet cards shipping
50:04SPEAKERand stuff like that.
50:05SPEAKER- Look, the gamer ethernet cards are still a problem.
50:07SPEAKERIf you buy a gaming laptop,
50:10SPEAKERodds are it has a fucking terrible killer network card in it
50:12SPEAKERthat you have to pop out and replace
50:14SPEAKERwith something from Intel or somebody else.
50:15SPEAKER- Yeah.
50:20SPEAKER- PowerVR stuff is a good example 'cause they did that,
50:22SPEAKERthey did the front to back tile rendering and that seemed
50:27SPEAKERlike a really good, much more efficient way
50:29SPEAKERto do the rendering, except for none of the,
50:31SPEAKEReverybody would have to rewrite their graphics pipelines
50:33SPEAKERto use it and so it didn't do anything
50:35SPEAKERuntil people started putting it in mobile
50:38SPEAKERand the APIs advanced enough
50:39SPEAKERthat it just handled the hard part for you.
50:41SPEAKER- Right.
50:42SPEAKER- So yeah, like, yeah, but it was a transformative,
50:47SPEAKERlike, the other secret of that card,
50:49SPEAKERand I can't, I didn't watch the whole video,
50:51SPEAKERso John may have gotten into this,
50:52SPEAKERbut the other secret of that card was it was just stupid,
50:54SPEAKERit was the first thing I used
50:55SPEAKERthat was faster than a Voodoo 2 in OpenGL
50:59SPEAKERand like the 3D games I was playing every day,
51:01SPEAKERlike Quake 3 and stuff like that.
51:03SPEAKER- Yeah, so I had been on a TNT prior to that.
51:05SPEAKERI had already ended up on an Nvidia card
51:07SPEAKERand was already very excited about the prospect
51:09SPEAKERof only having one graphics card in your machine.
51:12SPEAKERThis, I was talking to some people on the Discord
51:14SPEAKERwhen we were discussing that video
51:15SPEAKERwho were not around in the Voodoo days
51:17SPEAKERand did not understand how many awful compromises
51:19SPEAKERyou were making there.
51:20SPEAKERLike, yeah, you had to buy a separate 2D card
51:23SPEAKERand a 3D card.
51:24SPEAKER- Well, and that 3D, that external 2D,
51:26SPEAKERlike the fact that the 2D signal went through the 3D card,
51:29SPEAKERadded a shitload of noise,
51:31SPEAKERand made your entire desktop look mushy.
51:33SPEAKER- That was the one that blew their mind was yes,
51:35SPEAKERyou had to run the nice, clean, pristine 2D signal
51:38SPEAKERout of your nice Matrox millennium
51:39SPEAKERthrough this shitty, noisy pass-through on the Voodoo,
51:42SPEAKERand then yes, your desktop looked like garbage.
51:45SPEAKER- See, like, I was always in the realm of I didn't care
51:47SPEAKER'cause I had cheap monitors,
51:49SPEAKERso I was running two Voodoo 2s in SLI,
51:54SPEAKERI think, at that point, probably.
51:56SPEAKER- So my last CRT computer monitor,
51:59SPEAKERwhich is still in my parents' basement,
52:00SPEAKERwhich is going to be paired with a mister at some point,
52:02SPEAKERis a 21-inch Trinitron SGI branded,
52:05SPEAKERlike Silicon Graphics surplus.
52:06SPEAKERIt was like, I got it on eBay for some insanely cheap price,
52:10SPEAKERand it was obviously, it was brand new in box.
52:12SPEAKERIt was clearly like SGI was faltering
52:15SPEAKERand they were clearing out stock.
52:16SPEAKERSo it's like, it's full-on got the Jurassic Park era
52:20SPEAKERoriginal SGI logo on it.
52:21SPEAKERLike, I love that thing to death, but, so yeah.
52:23SPEAKERSo I, that thing has B and C connections on it.
52:25SPEAKERIt's like, that's how nice that monitor was.
52:27SPEAKER- That's a good-ass monitor right there.
52:29SPEAKER- So like, I will never get rid of that monitor,
52:30SPEAKERbut that's, yeah, so I had a nice one,
52:32SPEAKERso that's why I wanted a nice desktop.
52:33SPEAKER- I remain sad that when I wanted rid
52:36SPEAKERof the 24-inch, 118-pound or whatever,
52:39SPEAKERSony Trinitron widescreen that I gave it,
52:42SPEAKERjust took it back in the lab
52:43SPEAKERand put it in the lab at Maximum PC
52:45SPEAKERinstead of keeping it for myself.
52:46SPEAKER- Anyway.
52:47SPEAKER- Was that the FDM?
52:49SPEAKER- I can't remember.
52:50SPEAKERIt had two, it had the two lines and it was gorgeous.
52:53SPEAKERIt was like 1600 by 900 or 2,400 by,
52:57SPEAKERit was a 16 by nine ratio.
52:59SPEAKER- Dude, that's the one.
53:00SPEAKERWas it the 1440p Sony?
53:02SPEAKER- That seems, it might've been, yeah.
53:05SPEAKER- That's the one, I mean, I know we've talked about this.
53:07SPEAKER- I used it for testing video cards for years.
53:09SPEAKER- That's the one that a new in box one was found recently
53:11SPEAKERand sold for 30 grand on eBay.
53:13SPEAKER- That seems right.
53:14SPEAKERIt was a lovely monitor.
53:15SPEAKER- Yes, it was flat, like it was a flat,
53:18SPEAKERbut it was like, literally it was a problem moving it
53:21SPEAKER'cause I could, it took two people to lift it.
53:22SPEAKER- Oh yeah, oh yeah, I believe it, I believe it.
53:24SPEAKERAnyway, yeah, well, we won't belabor this,
53:27SPEAKERbut the Nvidia ARM news also as every ARM headline does
53:32SPEAKERhas got me thinking about RISC-V again,
53:34SPEAKERwhich is the open source,
53:35SPEAKERthe open source RISC instruction set
53:38SPEAKERdeveloped at UC Berkeley that is license-free,
53:41SPEAKERroyalty-free as a competitor to ARM.
53:43SPEAKERLike we don't need to get into it now
53:45SPEAKER'cause I don't think either of us
53:45SPEAKERreally understands it well enough,
53:46SPEAKERbut I do wonder.
53:49SPEAKER- I think there's an episode there.
53:50SPEAKER- That might be, I don't know if that's,
53:52SPEAKERI'm really torn on whether that's like a FOSPOD topic.
53:54SPEAKERI mean, granted, we're still kind of
53:56SPEAKERfiguring out the FOSPOD as we go,
53:58SPEAKERbut that is open source hardware.
54:00SPEAKERThat is like anybody can design a CPU
54:02SPEAKERbased on this instruction set
54:04SPEAKERthat kind of fills the same role as ARM.
54:06SPEAKER- I think we can figure it out as we go.
54:08SPEAKER- Without the royalties.
54:08SPEAKERI'm fascinated by that whole framework.
54:12SPEAKER- I'm really skeptical.
54:13SPEAKER- Of open source hardware at that scale.
54:16SPEAKERIt's hard to do instruction sets in chips.
54:18SPEAKER- The thing that really caught my eye
54:19SPEAKERwas I was on Western Digital's site the other day
54:22SPEAKERand they had a little promo unit on the page
54:24SPEAKERthat was like read about Western Digital's RISC-V strategy.
54:27SPEAKERAnd I clicked through and they're like,
54:30SPEAKERfrom what I understood,
54:30SPEAKERthey appear to be implementing drive controllers
54:32SPEAKERon the drives in RISC-V now,
54:33SPEAKERlike just as little, they're a little bespoke chips
54:37SPEAKERthat go on the circuit board on a hard drive.
54:39SPEAKER- I mean, there's always been drive control,
54:41SPEAKERlike the drive controllers in the drive
54:42SPEAKERare much smarter now than they were.
54:43SPEAKER- No, no, no, I know that, that's what I'm saying.
54:44SPEAKERNow they are using this open source instruction set
54:47SPEAKERto do that and like seeing a vendor of that size
54:50SPEAKERtalking about using it in their products seemed pretty cool.
54:53SPEAKERI want to follow up on it.
54:54SPEAKERLike apparently Intel is looking at it pretty hard.
54:56SPEAKER- I mean, I wonder if there's a royalty,
54:59SPEAKERI assume there's no royalty structure since it's open source.
55:01SPEAKERThat's like, that's Western Digital's motive right there.
55:03SPEAKER- Right, that's my understanding is,
55:05SPEAKERand again, I might be missing something there,
55:07SPEAKERbut it is a topic of study for me.
55:09SPEAKERI'm really curious about it.
55:11SPEAKERDo we want to talk about your NAS real quick
55:13SPEAKERor should we save this for FOSPOD because that's coming?
55:18SPEAKER- This might be a little too esoteric
55:19SPEAKERand me for that show, I'm not sure.
55:22SPEAKER- What are you doing?
55:23SPEAKERWhat have you done, Brad?
55:24SPEAKER- It's in extreme pieces right now.
55:27SPEAKERI don't know if I, I bought new hard drives.
55:31SPEAKERI'm going to, I'm going to do, my drives are four years old.
55:35SPEAKERThey've been making some weird noises
55:36SPEAKERand like taking longer for the heads
55:38SPEAKERto un-park and access data.
55:41SPEAKERIn a way that is starting to un-nerve me.
55:44SPEAKERSo I'm just going to go ahead and get ahead
55:45SPEAKERand get out in front of any potential drive failures
55:48SPEAKERand just like replace the whole pool.
55:51SPEAKER- Once you, once you get to that point,
55:57SPEAKERonce the hard drives start making noise,
55:59SPEAKERyou should assume they're already dead.
56:00SPEAKER- Yes, and so also all the smart data.
56:03SPEAKERGranted, smart is a weird thing.
56:05SPEAKERWe should like do more on-
56:06SPEAKER- That is a good episode idea too.
56:08SPEAKERI'm going to put that down at the end of these notes.
56:10SPEAKER- All of the smart diagnostics read either pre-fail
56:13SPEAKERor old age at this point, literally all of them.
56:16SPEAKER- Yeah, it's time.
56:18SPEAKER- Some of the, some of the reading I've done about smart
56:19SPEAKERmakes it sound like every vendor is different
56:21SPEAKERabout how they report smart stuff
56:23SPEAKERand that you can't necessarily read too much
56:24SPEAKERinto those things, but-
56:26SPEAKER- Look, once I get the, the pre-fail error on a drive,
56:29SPEAKERI, it's, it's, it is to be replaced as soon as possible.
56:34SPEAKER- So that's where I'm at.
56:34SPEAKERThere are enough weird noises and little laggy situations
56:37SPEAKERthat it's just like, you know what?
56:38SPEAKERI'm just not going to risk this.
56:40SPEAKERAnyway, I've still got the drives though.
56:41SPEAKERI've, so I've hooked up the suit.
56:44SPEAKERI'll try to condense this.
56:44SPEAKERI need to hook up 10 hard drives to this micro ATX port
56:48SPEAKERwith 550-
56:49SPEAKER- Why do you need to hook up 10 hard drives?
56:50SPEAKER- So,
56:54SPEAKERyou burn in your hard drives?
56:55SPEAKER- No.
56:56SPEAKER- Okay, I'm, I'm torn right now.
56:59SPEAKER- Why would you burn in your hard drives?
57:00SPEAKER- Some, some, some, some people in the networking
57:02SPEAKERin the NAS channel on our discord are all for it.
57:05SPEAKER- That's absolute madness.
57:07SPEAKER- There's a lot of people like to run a utility
57:09SPEAKERcalled bad blocks.
57:10SPEAKERIt's a Unix, it's like a Linux-based.
57:12SPEAKER- What's, what's the, is the point to find the failure,
57:15SPEAKERthe early failures before you have data on the drives?
57:18SPEAKER- Well, yeah, it just tests the whole disk.
57:19SPEAKERIt just tests the entirety of the disk for any bad-
57:22SPEAKER- How long does it take?
57:23SPEAKER- That's indeterminate.
57:25SPEAKERIt's definitely going to be a long,
57:26SPEAKERprobably multi-day process from what I understand.
57:29SPEAKER- Yeah, that's a no for me, dog.
57:30SPEAKERYou have redundancy on the, on the array,
57:32SPEAKERon the, on the NAS, on the ZFS array, just-
57:34SPEAKER- Oh, I'm good.
57:35SPEAKERI, my, my original pool can lose one drive
57:37SPEAKERand I've also got a full backup externally.
57:39SPEAKERLike that's not a problem.
57:40SPEAKERIt's more, it's more that I was just thinking about like
57:44SPEAKERrunning bad blocks on all the new drives and, you know,
57:46SPEAKERstill having the old pool hooked up at the same time
57:48SPEAKERso I can keep using the NAS.
57:49SPEAKERBut then that's like having to get real creative
57:53SPEAKERwith the, the power cables from the PSU
57:56SPEAKERand utilizing almost every SATA port
57:59SPEAKERand port on the SAS card in this entire machine.
58:03SPEAKERAnd, and there's no room in the case for all this stuff.
58:05SPEAKERSo it's like drive stacked up on top of the case all the-
58:07SPEAKER- Yeah, no, you're, you're, the solution to the problem
58:10SPEAKERthat doesn't exist is worse than the problem
58:11SPEAKERthat doesn't exist.
58:12SPEAKER- You're probably right.
58:13SPEAKERYou're probably right.
58:14SPEAKERBut like, that's the effect of people talking about this
58:16SPEAKERstuff is it introduces enough uncertainty that you're like,
58:19SPEAKERmaybe I should do this.
58:21SPEAKERThere are, there are, there are advocates for this strategy
58:23SPEAKERon our Discord, I will say that.
58:25SPEAKER- Look, I'm, this is an Occam's razor situation for me.
58:27SPEAKERThe, the failure, my failure rate on new drives
58:30SPEAKERover the course of the last 20 years is like 0%, right?
58:34SPEAKER- Yes, but have you stressed those drives enough
58:38SPEAKERto say for sure?
58:39SPEAKER- Well, resilvering the, the new ZFS array onto a new drive
58:43SPEAKERis going to, is going to hit them pretty hard enough
58:45SPEAKERto find early errors is my idea.
58:46SPEAKER- So that's part of this, part of this rebuild
58:48SPEAKERis I think I am moving to a, to striped mirrors
58:51SPEAKERrather than a RAID-Z.
58:53SPEAKER- Well, okay, same, same uptake.
58:54SPEAKERLike you're copying a shitload of data across them though.
58:56SPEAKER- That's, that is, that's one of the advantages of mirrors
58:58SPEAKERis the rebuild is dramatically less disk work
59:01SPEAKERthan rebuilding from parity is.
59:03SPEAKERAnyway, we don't need to get into it.
59:04SPEAKER- Yeah, I, this is, this is firmly in the realm of stuff
59:08SPEAKERthat like my, well, okay, so here's the real,
59:11SPEAKERthe real answer is if you discover a failure
59:13SPEAKERin the first three months,
59:14SPEAKERyou have the old array still available.
59:16SPEAKERYou can plug it in and pull any data
59:18SPEAKERthat's lost off of that, right?
59:20SPEAKERFor the most part.
59:21SPEAKERSo like, what do you, what, what's,
59:23SPEAKERI guess the question is what's the potential downside
59:25SPEAKERif something goes catastrophically wrong?
59:27SPEAKERAnd it seems like it's really low.
59:28SPEAKERSo then why go through the exercise of solving this problem
59:31SPEAKERthat doesn't exist?
59:32SPEAKER- It's pretty low, it's pretty low.
59:33SPEAKERIt's, you know, but like, I mean, it is peace of mind,
59:36SPEAKERbut also you have to ask yourself,
59:38SPEAKERis this just reliability theater?
59:40SPEAKER- Yes.
59:41SPEAKER- Like maybe.
59:42SPEAKER- I think that's where we're at.
59:43SPEAKER- Maybe.
59:43SPEAKER- That's where my vote lies.
59:44SPEAKER- Regardless of whether I run bad blocks or not,
59:47SPEAKERI still need all of the 10 drives hooked up
59:49SPEAKERso I can replicate the data sets
59:51SPEAKERfrom the old pool over to the new one.
59:54SPEAKERSo I still am going to have this Frankenstein's mass
59:56SPEAKERsitting next to me with drives coming out of it all over
59:59SPEAKERfor at least the...
1:00:02SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:00:03SPEAKER- I'm gonna guess that's probably like a 12
1:00:07SPEAKERto 16 hour transfer to replicate the whole thing over.
1:00:11SPEAKERI had to guess.
1:00:12SPEAKER- Probably.
1:00:13SPEAKER- Maybe less, maybe less.
1:00:14SPEAKER- I don't know, how many terabytes, like 12?
1:00:17SPEAKER- Something like that.
1:00:19SPEAKER- Yeah, that's a lot.
1:00:20SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:00:21SPEAKER- It's a buttload of data, Brad.
1:00:22SPEAKER- Yeah, my NAS is a gigantic mess right now.
1:00:26SPEAKERLooking forward to getting it put back together.
1:00:27SPEAKER- Speaking of ill-advised experiments with computing.
1:00:31SPEAKER- Uh-huh.
1:00:33SPEAKERI saw a PC Gamer article the other day about a utility
1:00:36SPEAKERthat lets you synchronize all of the RGB nonsense
1:00:39SPEAKERon your computer with one interface
1:00:43SPEAKERinstead of having to match the colors
1:00:45SPEAKERacross the motherboard interface and the Corsair thing and--
1:00:49SPEAKER- God damn it.
1:00:50SPEAKER- What?
1:00:52SPEAKER- Okay, next topic.
1:00:54SPEAKERSo there's this new egg thing.
1:00:56SPEAKERNo, I'm sorry, okay.
1:00:58SPEAKERWe can continue.
1:01:00SPEAKER- Look, I have aesthetics.
1:01:01SPEAKERI like my stuff to be colored full and shiny.
1:01:04SPEAKERMakes me happy.
1:01:05SPEAKER- When you wrote signal RGB versus RGB sync
1:01:08SPEAKERin this doc as a topic to talk about,
1:01:10SPEAKERI was like, oh, is this like an HDR thing?
1:01:12SPEAKERLike he's trying to synchronize the color space
1:01:14SPEAKERand windows on his desktops, like across monitors?
1:01:16SPEAKERLike that's not worth talking about.
1:01:17SPEAKERI didn't realize what kind of RGB we were talking about.
1:01:20SPEAKER- I am synchronizing the RGB color space
1:01:21SPEAKERacross multiple devices.
1:01:23SPEAKER- Okay, now it's my turn to get mad at you.
1:01:25SPEAKER- Look, okay, so I have this case.
1:01:27SPEAKERIt has a big giant, it has two giant glass windows
1:01:29SPEAKERand it has cool multicolored fans in it.
1:01:32SPEAKERAnd then it has a light strip inside the case.
1:01:35SPEAKERI have a all-in-one water cooler with lights on that.
1:01:41SPEAKERI have memory with lights on that
1:01:42SPEAKERjust 'cause when I had to buy memory last year,
1:01:44SPEAKERthat was the only memory that was in stock.
1:01:46SPEAKER- Wait, when did you go water cooling?
1:01:47SPEAKER- I've had water, I've been water cooling
1:01:48SPEAKERfor 10 years at this point.
1:01:50SPEAKER- Oh, consistently?
1:01:51SPEAKERI didn't know that.
1:01:52SPEAKER- Yeah, like I always do the all-in-ones
1:01:54SPEAKER'cause for a long time it was quiet
1:01:55SPEAKERand now there's quieter air coolers.
1:01:57SPEAKERI still had the all-in-one from the last PC
1:01:59SPEAKERso I just moved to the new one.
1:02:02SPEAKERBut anyway, so there's mouse and keyboard,
1:02:04SPEAKERthere's fans and light strip attached to the case,
1:02:08SPEAKERthere's the all-in-one water cooler,
1:02:10SPEAKERthere's the memory, there's the video card
1:02:12SPEAKER'cause all of the Founders Edition video cards
1:02:14SPEAKERhave RGB addressable lights.
1:02:16SPEAKER- I think I glossed over the part
1:02:17SPEAKERwhere you have RGB memory.
1:02:19SPEAKER- Okay, so when my memory died last year
1:02:22SPEAKERand I had to buy new memory,
1:02:23SPEAKERthere was a hard to buy chips
1:02:25SPEAKERand the only thing that was available at a reasonable price
1:02:27SPEAKERwas the stuff with the sick LEDs on it.
1:02:30SPEAKER- Okay, acceptable.
1:02:31SPEAKER- Yeah, but the problem is the motherboard,
1:02:35SPEAKERoh, and the motherboard had lights too
1:02:36SPEAKER'cause it's just like the price range.
1:02:38SPEAKERThe SKU that I was in happened to have lights on it.
1:02:43SPEAKERSo, five different vendors, five different applications.
1:02:48SPEAKERIf you want everything to be the same color,
1:02:50SPEAKERit's a huge pain in the ass.
1:02:51SPEAKER- Okay, so what we are looking at here
1:02:53SPEAKERis essentially the home assistant of PC RGB.
1:02:56SPEAKERThey're just unifying every vendor's standards
1:02:58SPEAKERinto one umbrella.
1:02:59SPEAKER- Well, so there's two approaches to this,
1:03:01SPEAKERis what I've learned.
1:03:02SPEAKERSo, I saw this PC Gamer article the other day
1:03:03SPEAKERabout RGB sync, which basically means
1:03:06SPEAKERfirst you install all of the vendor applications
1:03:09SPEAKERand then this talks to their individual APIs
1:03:12SPEAKERand controls their lights through them.
1:03:14SPEAKERI found that to not work particularly well
1:03:16SPEAKERand it's just a bandaid for the larger problem,
1:03:20SPEAKERwhich is I don't wanna have 18 different applications
1:03:22SPEAKERcontrolling this stuff on my computer.
1:03:23SPEAKER- Yeah, like janky layers of abstraction on a thing like this
1:03:26SPEAKERnever seems like a good idea.
1:03:28SPEAKER- It's not what you're looking for.
1:03:29SPEAKERThere's this thing called Signal RGB.
1:03:33SPEAKER- P? - Did I put a P here?
1:03:35SPEAKERI think it's RGB. - It says P.
1:03:36SPEAKERI'm guessing it's RGB. - It's B, it's B, I typoed.
1:03:38SPEAKER- Okay.
1:03:40SPEAKER- Signal RGB that talks directly to the hardware.
1:03:45SPEAKERSo, they've just reverse engineered the backend stuff
1:03:48SPEAKERand it means that I turned off IQ and the gigabyte thing
1:03:51SPEAKERand the NZXT thing and the Logitech thing
1:03:55SPEAKERand instead it just detects everything.
1:03:58SPEAKER- That's cool.
1:03:59SPEAKERLike, okay, I'm not a huge fan of PC RGB,
1:04:02SPEAKERbut what you were describing is very cool.
1:04:04SPEAKER- So, here's the coolest part is you can,
1:04:07SPEAKERlike they let you map the placement of the devices.
1:04:12SPEAKERI'm gonna share my screen with you so you can see.
1:04:14SPEAKER- Oh, physically map?
1:04:14SPEAKER- Physically map what it looks like.
1:04:17SPEAKER- Okay, now I'm getting a little excited.
1:04:19SPEAKERThis sounds kinda cool.
1:04:20SPEAKER- Okay, so look at this.
1:04:21SPEAKERSo, this is like the rainbow thing.
1:04:23SPEAKERIt's basically what Brad is seeing
1:04:24SPEAKERis a bunch of squares on a 2D plane
1:04:27SPEAKERand each of the squares is a device.
1:04:29SPEAKERSo, like this is my keyboard,
1:04:31SPEAKERthis is my mouse and mouse pad,
1:04:33SPEAKERthis is the LED strip in the computer,
1:04:35SPEAKERthis is the memory sticks, this is the motherboard.
1:04:39SPEAKERSorry, this is the fans, this is the motherboard.
1:04:41SPEAKERSo, when you look at my desk from five feet away,
1:04:43SPEAKERwhich nobody ever does except for me and it makes me happy,
1:04:46SPEAKERthen I have like a pattern that moves
1:04:48SPEAKERfrom one side of the desk to the other side of the desk
1:04:50SPEAKERand it works with almost everything
1:04:52SPEAKERin the computer right now.
1:04:54SPEAKERI don't think it works with the monitor,
1:04:55SPEAKERbut I don't have the backlight on the monitor,
1:04:56SPEAKERso it doesn't matter.
1:04:57SPEAKER- I am going to say this is an incredibly cool solution
1:05:02SPEAKERfor a problem that I think sucks,
1:05:03SPEAKERbut the solution is rad as hell.
1:05:06SPEAKERLike looking at, it was almost like a CAD program
1:05:08SPEAKERfor the layout of your desktop with the final colors
1:05:13SPEAKERcycling across it, like that's very cool.
1:05:15SPEAKERYou can move the individual devices around
1:05:17SPEAKERso that like the physical orientation
1:05:19SPEAKERand the light orientation lines up perfectly.
1:05:22SPEAKERSo you get like a nice rippling rainbow wave
1:05:24SPEAKERthrough the case as it's doing its render.
1:05:27SPEAKER- That's pretty neat.
1:05:28SPEAKER- It has a monthly charge associated with it,
1:05:30SPEAKERbut the free version seems to do everything
1:05:32SPEAKERthat I want to do, so here we are.
1:05:34SPEAKERAnd I have like five less TSRs running on the computer.
1:05:36SPEAKER- Hey, that's, wait a minute, hang on.
1:05:39SPEAKER- Terminate and stay resident programs.
1:05:40SPEAKER- Are we talking about terminate and stay resident?
1:05:41SPEAKER- Yes, of course.
1:05:42SPEAKER- I don't think I've heard that, actually I take that back
1:05:45SPEAKERbecause I've been dinking around with so much DOS stuff.
1:05:49SPEAKERI think I'd read, I saw a reference to a TSR
1:05:51SPEAKERa couple of days ago, but prior to that,
1:05:52SPEAKERit's been like 20 years since I've heard the term TSR.
1:05:55SPEAKER- System tray applications, so the other cool thing
1:05:58SPEAKERyou can do is you can have it watch your monitor
1:06:00SPEAKERand it will synchronize the lights
1:06:02SPEAKERwith what's going on on the screen.
1:06:03SPEAKER- Wow, wow, okay, all right.
1:06:07SPEAKER- And it'll hook up to hue and other like outside lights too
1:06:10SPEAKERso you can make the whole room, like I could put back
1:06:12SPEAKERsplash lighting on the back of the monitors
1:06:14SPEAKERto splash the walls and make everything match
1:06:17SPEAKERwhat's going on on the screen at any given time,
1:06:18SPEAKERwhich seems like it would be really cool,
1:06:19SPEAKERbut I don't know if I'm gonna go that far.
1:06:21SPEAKER- Sorry, which one was the cool one you're sticking with
1:06:24SPEAKERand which one's the not great one?
1:06:26SPEAKER- Signal RGB is the one that I like.
1:06:28SPEAKER- Okay, that's the one you're talking about
1:06:30SPEAKERwith the layout and everything.
1:06:31SPEAKER- Yeah, RGB sync is the one that seems good.
1:06:35SPEAKERI think it might have Windows 11 problems is my guess,
1:06:37SPEAKERit seems like it's a little janky
1:06:38SPEAKERbecause of Windows 11 stuff.
1:06:40SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, wrappers for anything
1:06:42SPEAKERare always a little questionable,
1:06:44SPEAKERlike anytime you're having to intercept something
1:06:45SPEAKERfrom one thing, translated to something else
1:06:48SPEAKERis a point of failure.
1:06:50SPEAKER- And it does game integrations too,
1:06:52SPEAKERso it'll do the cool,
1:06:54SPEAKERit basically speaks the different languages
1:06:56SPEAKERthat Razer and Logitech and all those different APIs use
1:07:00SPEAKERso that you can get the Terraria interface.
1:07:03SPEAKERI think that requires the paid plan,
1:07:06SPEAKERwhich I'm less interested in for this type of product.
1:07:09SPEAKER- I am now sitting here looking at Signal RGB
1:07:12SPEAKERjust 'cause I think it's cool even though I don't own
1:07:14SPEAKERor want to own any RGB products.
1:07:16SPEAKER- It's time, Brad.
1:07:17SPEAKER- Think of how nice all the light would be
1:07:19SPEAKERon that white wall behind your desk, it would look so cool.
1:07:22SPEAKER- Oh, I've got a light strip.
1:07:23SPEAKER- It would look like hackers, man.
1:07:24SPEAKER- Look, the wall is the one place that I want color.
1:07:27SPEAKERI've got a light strip on the back of my desk
1:07:29SPEAKERto light up the wall in a cool way.
1:07:32SPEAKER- Perfect.
1:07:32SPEAKER- But, you know.
1:07:37SPEAKER- So to know, just to be clear,
1:07:39SPEAKERthis costs $36 a year if you pay for their fancy stuff,
1:07:47SPEAKERwhich I'm, like I said, less interested in.
1:07:49SPEAKER- Yeah, that's not terrible.
1:07:52SPEAKER- So, yeah, that's it.
1:07:54SPEAKERThat's what I got.
1:07:55SPEAKER- All right.
1:07:56SPEAKERWell, well.
1:07:57SPEAKER- This, I was, I was gonna say.
1:07:59SPEAKER- I'm sorry.
1:08:00SPEAKER- No, it's okay, but this was really awkward,
1:08:01SPEAKERbut I was gonna say this all started
1:08:03SPEAKERbecause the LED under the B on my keyboard
1:08:07SPEAKERhas gotten like, it's weak on blue now.
1:08:12SPEAKERI say it's been off, like my default was a nice,
1:08:16SPEAKERpleasant red so that I don't fuck up
1:08:17SPEAKERmy night vision when I'm in here.
1:08:19SPEAKERAnd the, anyway.
1:08:23SPEAKERI had to adjust color schemes to accommodate
1:08:25SPEAKERthis stuck RGB LED, and I'm kind of looking at it
1:08:28SPEAKERthinking, man, I could probably desolder that
1:08:30SPEAKERand put another one on, but I don't know
1:08:32SPEAKERif I wanna get into that.
1:08:33SPEAKERLike, I don't know if that's a lifestyle
1:08:34SPEAKERI'm comfortable with.
1:08:35SPEAKER- This is a level of detail obsession
1:08:37SPEAKERand perfectionism that I can get behind.
1:08:39SPEAKERI strongly encourage you.
1:08:41SPEAKER- It's either that or just replace the keyboard,
1:08:43SPEAKERand it's the stupidest reason ever to replace a keyboard.
1:08:46SPEAKERSo.
1:08:48SPEAKER- Yeah, I get it.
1:08:48SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:08:50SPEAKERYeah, it made me, like, I almost went to the closet
1:08:54SPEAKERand pulled out another keyboard.
1:08:55SPEAKERIt made me so crazy when I realized what was happening.
1:08:57SPEAKERI was like, this is not okay with me.
1:09:00SPEAKERMaybe I'll take an LGB.
1:09:01SPEAKERMaybe I'll take an LED off of another keyboard
1:09:03SPEAKERand replace it, and that might be the way to do it.
1:09:05SPEAKERAnyway. - Now you're talking.
1:09:06SPEAKER- Yeah, but that's where we're at.
1:09:09SPEAKER- Yeah, what a heady and pleasant bouquet of rumors
1:09:13SPEAKERwe have.
1:09:15SPEAKER- I mean, we had a little body horror.
1:09:16SPEAKERWe had a little NAS.
1:09:18SPEAKERWe had a little XLR.
1:09:20SPEAKERI got to yell at you for thinking about
1:09:22SPEAKERtaking a mission critical piece of hardware
1:09:24SPEAKERand replacing a USB plug on it.
1:09:26SPEAKER- I wasn't serious about that.
1:09:28SPEAKER- I, like, you better not have been serious about that.
1:09:31SPEAKER- Look, here's a little podcast secret for you.
1:09:33SPEAKERSometimes you embellish things a little bit for...
1:09:37SPEAKER- What?
1:09:38SPEAKER- Entertainment value.
1:09:39SPEAKER- What?
1:09:40SPEAKER- There's always a kernel of truth at the center.
1:09:41SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:09:42SPEAKER- I know what the kernel of truth
1:09:44SPEAKERat the center of that nugget was.
1:09:46SPEAKER- Hey, we assembled a nice floral potpourri,
1:09:51SPEAKERand I didn't even talk about my MacBook notch.
1:09:54SPEAKER- How are you handling that, by the way?
1:09:56SPEAKER- I installed top-notch, and it's kind of okay.
1:09:59SPEAKERIt's fine.
1:10:00SPEAKERI don't really, I mean, for the record,
1:10:03SPEAKERthe menu bar in macOS should be white or off-white gray.
1:10:07SPEAKERLike, that is the canonical color or shade.
1:10:11SPEAKER- You gotta stop worrying and learn to love the notch, man.
1:10:13SPEAKER- For the, that's what the MacBook menu bar should be.
1:10:17SPEAKERBut instead, I've used top-notch
1:10:18SPEAKERto turn the entire menu bar black.
1:10:20SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:10:21SPEAKER- So you just can't see the notch.
1:10:22SPEAKER- Just look at that, embrace it.
1:10:24SPEAKERLove the notch.
1:10:25SPEAKER- Look, as long as I can't see it, I'm able to tolerate it.
1:10:28SPEAKERIt's just, it was purely an aesthetic consideration.
1:10:30SPEAKERI just don't wanna see it.
1:10:31SPEAKERAnd now that whole bar at the top is a nice uniform black.
1:10:35SPEAKER- Don't you like the edge-to-edge screen, though?
1:10:37SPEAKER- And I can live with it.
1:10:38SPEAKERThat's fine, it's not bad.
1:10:39SPEAKER- Okay, okay.
1:10:40SPEAKER- It's pretty good, it's pretty good.
1:10:42SPEAKER- I haven't had a ton of time to set that machine up yet,
1:10:44SPEAKERso I haven't used it a lot, but.
1:10:45SPEAKER- You know what else is pretty good?
1:10:47SPEAKER- What's that?
1:10:47SPEAKER- Our patrons.
1:10:48SPEAKER- Yeah, they are.
1:10:50SPEAKER- As always, Brad and Will Made at TechPod
1:10:52SPEAKERis 100% listener-supported.
1:10:54SPEAKERWe really appreciate everybody who contributes
1:10:56SPEAKERto the Patreon every month and hangs out in the Discord
1:10:58SPEAKERand is part of the burgeoning TechPod community.
1:11:02SPEAKERIf you would like to find out how to join,
1:11:03SPEAKERyou can go to patreon.com/techpod.
1:11:06SPEAKERAnd for as little as $2 a month,
1:11:07SPEAKERyou will get access to the fabulous TechPod Discord
1:11:12SPEAKERfull of beautiful nerds talking about stuff
1:11:14SPEAKERlike Brad's XLR microphone and I don't know.
1:11:18SPEAKERLast night, there was a really extended conversation
1:11:21SPEAKERabout Tumblr that was fascinating
1:11:24SPEAKER'cause I never engaged with Tumblr really,
1:11:26SPEAKERaside from meme blogs.
1:11:27SPEAKER- Oh, boy.
1:11:28SPEAKER- There's a lot there, it turns out.
1:11:29SPEAKERWho knew?
1:11:30SPEAKER- Uh-huh.
1:11:31SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:11:33SPEAKERBut yeah, it's a great community full of good people,
1:11:35SPEAKERand we would love to have you there.
1:11:36SPEAKERSo it's patreon.com/techpod.
1:11:40SPEAKERBrad, this is the part of the show where we thank
1:11:41SPEAKERour executive producer tier patrons.
1:11:45SPEAKER- Thank you, executive producers, for not firing us.
1:11:47SPEAKER- Yes, thank you, executive producers, for not firing us.
1:11:50SPEAKERThanks to Paddle Creek Games, makers of Fractured Veil.
1:11:52SPEAKERAndrew Slosky, Octothorpe Bunny Crimes.
1:11:56SPEAKERIt's spelled out now, by the way.
1:11:57SPEAKER- Perfect.
1:11:58SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:11:59SPEAKER- Is that like, hang on, some kind of Patreon-ception
1:12:02SPEAKERwhere there's now a dialogue between us
1:12:05SPEAKERand one of our patrons via their username?
1:12:07SPEAKER- Look, I'm starting, I like the Octothorpe so much,
1:12:11SPEAKERI'm thinking about, I'm starting to seed it
1:12:12SPEAKERas a next potential pet name.
1:12:14SPEAKER- Ooh.
1:12:15SPEAKER- Octothorpe would be a good Corgi name, I think.
1:12:17SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a cool word.
1:12:19SPEAKERI just, I had never heard it before.
1:12:20SPEAKERI never heard the pound sign referred to that way,
1:12:22SPEAKERand it's a neat, there's something about it.
1:12:24SPEAKERThere's a nice--
1:12:25SPEAKER- It has a cadence.
1:12:27SPEAKER- Yes.
1:12:28SPEAKER- Yeah, anyway, I think Thorpe as the,
1:12:30SPEAKERwhat you'd actually call the dog.
1:12:31SPEAKER- I'd started to say, would you call them Octo?
1:12:33SPEAKERBut the Thorpe.
1:12:34SPEAKER- Thorpe, Thorpe, you gotta do,
1:12:36SPEAKEROcto is not the right kind of syllables
1:12:38SPEAKERfor dogs to hear, right?
1:12:39SPEAKER- No, no, Thorpe, I'm fine, Thorpe.
1:12:41SPEAKERCorgi named Thorpe is probably wearing glasses,
1:12:44SPEAKERreading glasses, and that dog is an old man
1:12:49SPEAKERright out of the gate.
1:12:50SPEAKER- Yeah, wearing a cardigan, right?
1:12:52SPEAKERIt's a cardigan wearing a cardigan.
1:12:54SPEAKERThe other thing is, you could call it Thor,
1:12:56SPEAKERI think, probably.
1:12:57SPEAKER- Thorpe, okay.
1:12:58SPEAKER- Thorpe's a good Corgi.
1:12:59SPEAKERAnyway, thanks to Octothorpe Bunnycrimes.
1:13:01SPEAKERThanks to Jacob Chappell, Joel Krauska,
1:13:03SPEAKERTwinkle Twinkie, David Allen, and James Kamik.
1:13:05SPEAKERThank you all so much, we appreciate you.
1:13:07SPEAKER- We do.
1:13:07SPEAKER- And thanks to everybody who's a patron or a listener.
1:13:10SPEAKERWe appreciate all of you all.
1:13:11SPEAKERAnd whether you are part of the patron or not,
1:13:14SPEAKERwe love when people tell their friends about the show,
1:13:16SPEAKER'cause it's how people find out about the show,
1:13:17SPEAKERit turns out.
1:13:18SPEAKER- Spread the word.
1:13:19SPEAKER- And if you haven't listened to the first episode
1:13:21SPEAKERof the FOSPOD, you should do that too,
1:13:23SPEAKER'cause we talked to Jim Bailey at length,
1:13:25SPEAKERthe maker of OBS, the Open Broadcaster Software.
1:13:29SPEAKER- Yes, Open Broadcaster Software.
1:13:31SPEAKER- Open Broadcaster Software.
1:13:32SPEAKER- Open Broadcaster Software.
1:13:33SPEAKERI'm telling you, Columbia Broadcasting System
1:13:35SPEAKERhas poisoned our minds.
1:13:37SPEAKER- They really have.
1:13:38SPEAKERI didn't even work for 'em ever.
1:13:39SPEAKER- A century of that acronym.
1:13:43SPEAKER- I didn't realize that C was for Columbia.
1:13:44SPEAKERI thought it was for Central.
1:13:45SPEAKER- Oh, I don't even know which Columbia
1:13:48SPEAKERare we even talking about here.
1:13:49SPEAKER- It's probably the one that Sony owns now, right?
1:13:52SPEAKER- I guess, the movie studios?
1:13:54SPEAKERIs that where it came from?
1:13:55SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:13:55SPEAKER- Oh, I guess maybe you're right.
1:13:56SPEAKER- Columbia Pictures, Columbia Radio.
1:13:58SPEAKERIt's probably all--
1:13:59SPEAKER- Oh yeah, that would make perfect sense.
1:14:01SPEAKER- Probably all spun off of RKO
1:14:02SPEAKERor something ridiculous 50 years ago.
1:14:04SPEAKERAnyway, that'll do it for us this week.
1:14:07SPEAKER- Yeah, thanks for listening.
1:14:08SPEAKER- What a lovely, this is a good conversation, Brad.
1:14:11SPEAKERI really, we should do this more often.
1:14:12SPEAKER- I would love to hear feedback from people.
1:14:15SPEAKERWe are definitely pretty married
1:14:17SPEAKERto the single topic episode format
1:14:19SPEAKERor have been mostly so far,
1:14:20SPEAKERbut if people like these slightly ramblier
1:14:23SPEAKERBrad bag episodes.
1:14:25SPEAKER- Yeah, let us know one way or the other.
1:14:27SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know that we should do this
1:14:28SPEAKERevery single month necessarily,
1:14:30SPEAKERbut I enjoy these bouncy hopping from topic to topic.
1:14:33SPEAKER- Yeah, like I would never have done a whole episode
1:14:35SPEAKERon stupid RGB lights in my computer.
1:14:37SPEAKERIt was fun to talk about it.
1:14:38SPEAKERAnd like same thing for your hard drives
1:14:40SPEAKERand your NAS and your Donkey Hodie-like quest
1:14:44SPEAKERlike 10 drives into that computer.
1:14:46SPEAKER- Or even like the XLR stuff like is,
1:14:48SPEAKERthat was good actionable information,
1:14:50SPEAKERbut I don't know that we could have stretched
1:14:51SPEAKERa whole episode out of that.
1:14:52SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:14:53SPEAKER- Anyway, like, hey, let us know what you like.
1:14:55SPEAKER- Yeah, feedback.
1:14:56SPEAKERWe love feedback.
1:14:57SPEAKERAnyway, you have it.
1:14:58SPEAKERYou can post it to the Discord
1:14:59SPEAKERor you can send us an email to techpod@content.town.
1:15:04SPEAKERSee y'all next week.
1:15:05SPEAKERBye everybody.
1:15:06SPEAKER(upbeat music)
1:15:11SPEAKERDon't stop recording.
1:15:13SPEAKER♪ Don't stop recording ♪
1:15:16SPEAKER- Oh God.
1:15:16SPEAKER(laughing)
1:15:21SPEAKER- Podcast crimes.