247: What's in Your Tray?

00:00SPEAKEROkay, I got a new breakfast thing, Brad.

00:01SPEAKEROoh.

00:03SPEAKERWe're recording this before breakfast,

00:04SPEAKERwhich is a mistake also.

00:05SPEAKERWell, hang on.

00:06SPEAKERYou came in here with a mouthful of cookie.

00:08SPEAKERIt's a breakfast bite, not a cookie, sir.

00:11SPEAKERIt's got chias, it's got seeds,

00:13SPEAKERit's got some sort of binding agent.

00:15SPEAKERI don't know.

00:16SPEAKERThat was not a regulation breakfast.

00:18SPEAKERNo, it's not official breakfast.

00:20SPEAKERBut my official breakfast these days,

00:22SPEAKERI don't do it that often.

00:23SPEAKERBut the grocery store near us has good bagels now,

00:27SPEAKERoccasionally, but not like New York good,

00:30SPEAKERbut pretty good for here.

00:31SPEAKERCalifornia good.

00:32SPEAKERCalifornia good.

00:34SPEAKERAnd I've been doing an egg and cheese bagel

00:38SPEAKERin the morning for breakfast on the reggae.

00:40SPEAKERIt's classic.

00:41SPEAKERI had two things I've done to up this sandwich.

00:45SPEAKERFirst, I finally, after like 10 years of looking at them,

00:48SPEAKERI bought some of those silicone rings

00:49SPEAKERthat you put on the pan to keep the egg in a circle shape,

00:52SPEAKERwhich, look, I'm getting there.

00:54SPEAKERThey're a little tricky.

00:55SPEAKERI don't know why,

00:56SPEAKERbut sometimes the egg runs out of the bottom,

00:57SPEAKERthen you just kind of scoop it up

00:58SPEAKERand chuck it back in the top.

00:59SPEAKERAnd so my eggs are nice and round,

01:01SPEAKERwhich is, I think, an important component of this thing.

01:04SPEAKERYes, egg shaping is a fine art.

01:06SPEAKERAnd also, bonus is that I can have cooked on the outside

01:10SPEAKERand a little runny in the middle,

01:11SPEAKER'cause I like a little bit of a wet egg,

01:13SPEAKERwhich I know is a controversial take.

01:15SPEAKERI don't need to hear about your wet eggs, okay?

01:17SPEAKERI mean, I'm with you.

01:18SPEAKERI runny yolk.

01:19SPEAKERBut I do scramble, just to be clear.

01:21SPEAKERSo I like a moist scramble.

01:23SPEAKERI put some butter in there.

01:25SPEAKERI stir it up, get a little bit of fat in there,

01:26SPEAKERand then, you know, it's delicious.

01:28SPEAKERBut what I started doing is I started toasting the bagels,

01:31SPEAKERand then when the bagel is toasted,

01:33SPEAKERI butter the top piece.

01:35SPEAKERAnd the bottom piece,

01:36SPEAKERI just put a slice of American cheese on it,

01:38SPEAKERleave it in the toaster oven

01:39SPEAKERso it melts down and gets kind of soggy,

01:41SPEAKERand then put the eggs on top of that.

01:42SPEAKERI'm sitting here,

01:44SPEAKERresisting the urge to comment on your cheese choice.

01:47SPEAKERWell, okay, American cheese for a breakfast sandwich

01:50SPEAKERis the right, you can put cheddar on there

01:52SPEAKERif you want, I guess.

01:53SPEAKER- I am of the opinion that there is no right situation

01:56SPEAKERfor American cheese.

01:57SPEAKER- What?

01:58SPEAKER- Let's move on.

01:59SPEAKER- What do you put on a burger?

02:00SPEAKER- Um, ah, it depends on how-

02:00SPEAKER- Do you hate America bread?

02:02SPEAKER- No.

02:03SPEAKER- Okay, sounds like you might.

02:05SPEAKER- It depends on what mood strikes me, let's see.

02:07SPEAKERI mean, a burger could be cheddar,

02:08SPEAKERit could be Swiss, it could be blue.

02:10SPEAKER- I like a Gruyere on a burger.

02:11SPEAKER- If you want to, ooh.

02:13SPEAKER- Yeah.

02:13SPEAKER- You want to get fancy?

02:14SPEAKERMy girlfriend had a burger with brie on it

02:16SPEAKERat a restaurant not long ago.

02:17SPEAKER- I don't think that sounds very good.

02:19SPEAKER- No?

02:20SPEAKER- No, I think brie is going to be too stinky

02:21SPEAKERfor a, like a cream brie maybe.

02:23SPEAKER- Brie's not that, I mean,

02:25SPEAKERblue is stinkier than brie by far.

02:27SPEAKER- Yeah, but blue works, you put blue, some mushrooms,

02:29SPEAKERsome grilled onions on there, that's a berg, right?

02:33SPEAKER- Ranking of cheeses, let's go.

02:35SPEAKER(upbeat music)

02:51SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)

03:03SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod, I'm Will.

03:06SPEAKER- I'm Brad.

03:07SPEAKER- Brad, the reason you put the cheese,

03:09SPEAKERthe revolution on the sandwich is the cheese under the egg

03:12SPEAKERis way better than the cheese on top of the egg.

03:15SPEAKERAnd it took me a long time to figure that out.

03:17SPEAKERYou'd look thoughtful, pensive, even.

03:19SPEAKER- Doesn't that result in molten cheese leaking

03:21SPEAKERthrough the hole in the bottom of the bagel?

03:23SPEAKER- You, it's look, I live a fine line.

03:26SPEAKERI live my life on a fine line, right?

03:28SPEAKERYou don't want to get it too hot.

03:31SPEAKERThat's why I put it in the toaster oven

03:33SPEAKERafter the heat's off.

03:34SPEAKERIt's just enough to kind of flop it down.

03:37SPEAKER- Also, maybe just eat the bagel fast enough

03:39SPEAKERthat the cheese can't leak.

03:41SPEAKER- That's a strong policy as well.

03:43SPEAKERI'm going to say, I figured this out

03:44SPEAKER'cause I'd been making different kinds of muffins,

03:48SPEAKERMcDonald's egg/sausage with muffin style for a while.

03:52SPEAKERAnd I couldn't figure out why they didn't taste right.

03:54SPEAKERAnd it was 'cause I had the order of things

03:56SPEAKERon the sandwich wrong.

03:58SPEAKERAnd McDonald's always puts the cheese on the bottom.

04:00SPEAKER- Oh yeah, the, oh God, was it the McDeluxe?

04:04SPEAKERNo, what was it called?

04:05SPEAKERWhat was the assembly?

04:06SPEAKER- The McDLT?

04:07SPEAKER- Yes, was it the McDLT,

04:09SPEAKERthe assemble your own burger contraption at McDonald's?

04:11SPEAKER- Yeah, that was the McDLT, I believe.

04:13SPEAKER- Maybe they had the hot side hot and the cool side cool.

04:15SPEAKER- Yes. - Double the styrofoam.

04:17SPEAKER- Maybe they were onto something.

04:18SPEAKER- Yeah, so anyway, not talk about sandwiches anymore.

04:21SPEAKERI hope that people listening in their cars

04:23SPEAKERaren't driving through drive-throughs

04:24SPEAKER'cause they're hungry, I apologize.

04:26SPEAKER- I mean, I would talk for an entire hour about sandwiches

04:30SPEAKERif this were a podcast oriented toward sandwiches

04:33SPEAKERand not technology.

04:35SPEAKER- I follow somebody on Blue Sky

04:37SPEAKERwho does like politics commentary,

04:39SPEAKERbut also has a newsletter where she writes about sandwiches,

04:42SPEAKERdifferent kinds of sandwiches every week.

04:43SPEAKERIt's a good newsletter, the sandwich newsletter.

04:47SPEAKER- So this week we have something a little different.

04:48SPEAKERThis was a suggestion from a listener, from a patron.

04:52SPEAKER- Yes.

04:53SPEAKER- They posted this in the episode topic ideas folder

04:57SPEAKERon the Discord where you can go

04:58SPEAKERand post your episode topic suggestions.

05:00SPEAKER- Yes, always a great idea.

05:02SPEAKERPlease, anytime an idea strikes you, you go put it in there.

05:05SPEAKERWe love reading your episode ideas.

05:08SPEAKER- And so once we scrolled up past the 50 people

05:10SPEAKERtalking about Crowdstike in there,

05:12SPEAKERwe got to JediKV who said,

05:14SPEAKER"What would be your personal essential software list

05:17SPEAKER"for any system, not necessarily the best in class,

05:20SPEAKER"but the ones you stand by regardless?"

05:24SPEAKERAnd we looked at that and we were like,

05:25SPEAKERwe've kind of done that before,

05:28SPEAKERbut we were talking about it

05:30SPEAKER'cause it's an interesting idea,

05:32SPEAKERand we got to a framing that we think is good

05:34SPEAKERfor this topic, which is,

05:37SPEAKER"What's the stuff that you have pinned to your taskbar,

05:40SPEAKER"pinned to your start menu in your system tray,

05:44SPEAKER"and maybe on your desktop if you launch software

05:46SPEAKER"after your desktop like some sort of weirdo?"

05:48SPEAKER- Who launches software from a desktop?

05:50SPEAKER- I was hoping you were gonna say you did

05:51SPEAKERso I could give you some grief about it.

05:53SPEAKER- God, no, are you kidding me?

05:53SPEAKER- But you seem like a decent human being, Brad,

05:54SPEAKERso I'll let it slide. - Are you kidding me?

05:55SPEAKERLike I'm a front at any time an installer

05:58SPEAKEReven still creates an application shortcut on the desktop.

06:00SPEAKER- Why do they do that?

06:01SPEAKER- I don't know. - I know.

06:02SPEAKER- That is a literal Windows 95 era holdover.

06:05SPEAKER- I am a clean desktop purist.

06:07SPEAKERI will be until the day I die.

06:08SPEAKERThe first thing I do on a new Windows install

06:10SPEAKERis right-click on the desktop

06:11SPEAKERand turn off the Show All Icons button.

06:13SPEAKER- Oh, well, hang on now.

06:15SPEAKER- Yeah.

06:16SPEAKER- I don't know if you can claim to be a purist

06:17SPEAKERif you are merely hiding the icons.

06:20SPEAKER- Look- - Isn't that akin

06:21SPEAKERto just sweeping all the dirt under the rug?

06:24SPEAKER- What, you'd say that like there's some, wow,

06:26SPEAKERI have a lot of application shortcuts

06:27SPEAKERon my desktop, it turns out.

06:29SPEAKER- Yeah.

06:30SPEAKER- There's nothing wrong with sleeping the dirt under the rug

06:32SPEAKERas long as you never lift the rug up, Brad.

06:33SPEAKERThat's the thing to remember.

06:35SPEAKER- Fair, fair point.

06:36SPEAKER- Because it's like Schrodinger's desktop icons here,

06:39SPEAKERI think, as long as I don't know that they're there,

06:41SPEAKERas long as they're not observed,

06:43SPEAKERthey neither exist nor don't exist.

06:44SPEAKER- Yeah, I have files and folders aplenty on my desktop

06:49SPEAKERwith no application shortcuts.

06:50SPEAKER- Nope, I wanna see that wallpaper.

06:52SPEAKERI want a pretty wallpaper there right now.

06:53SPEAKERI've got a artistic render of Outset Island

06:58SPEAKERfrom Legend of Zelda Wind Waker.

07:00SPEAKER- That sounds nice.

07:01SPEAKER- And because I use a tool that's in my system tray

07:04SPEAKERthat we'll talk about,

07:05SPEAKERit changes from day to night as the day goes on.

07:09SPEAKER- Oh, like Apple style?

07:10SPEAKER- Like Apple style.

07:11SPEAKER- Oh man, that's cool, wow.

07:12SPEAKER- Okay, so yeah, like I think the taskbar system tray

07:16SPEAKERstart menu framing is a good way to distill,

07:19SPEAKERlike here's stuff we use often,

07:20SPEAKERhere's the stuff we can't live without kind of thing.

07:22SPEAKERBut also as you just illustrated,

07:24SPEAKERI hope that you and I, and also people listening to this

07:27SPEAKERwill come away from this with some ideas for some new stuff

07:30SPEAKERthat we did not already know about or use.

07:32SPEAKER- Yeah, hopefully.

07:33SPEAKERAnd hopefully people will send in there

07:35SPEAKERthe stuff that they use too.

07:36SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, yes.

07:37SPEAKERPlease set up the thread for this episode on the Discord

07:41SPEAKERafter this goes up and then share your tips as well.

07:44SPEAKER- And if you're not on the Discord,

07:46SPEAKERyou can hit me on blue sky.

07:47SPEAKERI'm willsmith.fun over there.

07:49SPEAKERAnd I'll collate these for the maybe Q&A episode

07:51SPEAKERnext later this month.

07:52SPEAKER- Yes, I don't wanna put anybody on the spot.

07:55SPEAKERI've got a line on obtaining brad.fun.

07:57SPEAKER- Ooh.

07:58SPEAKER- Speaking of .fun.

07:59SPEAKER- That sounds like expensive .fun.

08:01SPEAKER- I may still get my hands on it yet.

08:03SPEAKERIt was offered to me, let's say.

08:05SPEAKER- You could put yourself up as brad.sucks is nemesis.

08:10SPEAKER- Oh, is there a .sucks?

08:11SPEAKER- Well, brad.sucks is a, I think he's a musician.

08:14SPEAKER- Oh yeah, we've talked about this before.

08:16SPEAKER- Yeah, he's your enemy.

08:17SPEAKERBrad sucks, you rule.

08:19SPEAKER- But there's not a .sucks TLD yet, is there?

08:21SPEAKER- I think he's brad.sucks.net.

08:23SPEAKERI don't, I feel like he's on blue sky.

08:24SPEAKERI feel like I've seen him on blue sky,

08:25SPEAKERbut I don't know if he got brad.sucks.

08:28SPEAKER- Okay, now we're just gonna get derailed

08:30SPEAKERinto talking about domains.

08:31SPEAKERNow I'm going to check and see if .box has launched yet.

08:34SPEAKERI think it has.

08:35SPEAKER- Yeah, that's interesting.

08:36SPEAKER- Which means that I have fully missed getting shoe.box.

08:40SPEAKER- Oh, I'm sorry.

08:41SPEAKER- Anyway, where are we?

08:43SPEAKER- So, okay, so let's start, do we wanna start with taskbar?

08:46SPEAKERI feel like the taskbar is where I put the stuff

08:48SPEAKERthat I touch, like the pin, like I have a handful of things

08:51SPEAKERthat I use all the time and are always running

08:53SPEAKERthat I pin to the taskbar, mostly so I can use those windows

08:57SPEAKERplus the number key shortcuts to launch them

08:58SPEAKERand switch to them.

09:00SPEAKER- Yeah, actually that's, you know, that's a good point.

09:01SPEAKERThat's another thing I hope will come out of this

09:02SPEAKERis there's like kind of a lot of hidden functionality

09:05SPEAKERabout the icons on the taskbar that people may not know.

09:08SPEAKERAnd that's one of them is the window plus number key.

09:11SPEAKERI like those, I use about one through five,

09:14SPEAKERone through four or something like that.

09:15SPEAKER- I use one through four, one through five, yeah.

09:17SPEAKER- Beyond, if you can't like pinky finger

09:19SPEAKERand index finger it, or even actually like thumb

09:22SPEAKERand index finger, it's a little awkward, but anyway.

09:24SPEAKER- For me, if it's not on the left hand, it doesn't read.

09:27SPEAKER- That's it, if I need both hands to hit a number

09:30SPEAKERon the far side of the row, those last five icons

09:33SPEAKERare not getting shortcutted.

09:35SPEAKER- Yeah, so also worth mentioning the things

09:37SPEAKERthat I turn off on the taskbar,

09:38SPEAKERand I bet you and I are the same here.

09:40SPEAKERSearch is off, task view is off, widgets are off.

09:44SPEAKER- Oh yeah. - Co-pilot is off.

09:45SPEAKERI get rid of everything, all I want on the taskbar

09:48SPEAKERis the start menu and applications.

09:51SPEAKER- That's it, like the window, the start button,

09:54SPEAKERwhich is it even still a start button?

09:57SPEAKER- It's called the start button.

09:58SPEAKERIt's just called start, I think now.

09:59SPEAKER- It hasn't said start on it in like how many windows versions?

10:02SPEAKER- If you mouse over it, it says start, yeah.

10:04SPEAKER- Yes, you're right.

10:04SPEAKERAnyway, yes, it's start button, then a bunch of app icons,

10:07SPEAKERand that's it.

10:08SPEAKER- Okay, so from left to right for me,

10:11SPEAKERI have Firefox, then Explorer, then Steam,

10:16SPEAKERthen Discord, then OBS, and then Notion, and that's it.

10:21SPEAKERThat's all I have on my desktop.

10:22SPEAKER- Wow.

10:23SPEAKER- That's all I have on my taskbar.

10:23SPEAKER- That's a Spartan list of icons.

10:26SPEAKER- I like to keep it, you know, I keep it tight.

10:27SPEAKERI'm centered, so it's nice.

10:29SPEAKERSo it's like bundles up in the middle there.

10:30SPEAKER- Okay.

10:32SPEAKER- Firefox, I mean, we've talked about Firefox a lot.

10:34SPEAKERI think you, well, we can talk about this in your section,

10:40SPEAKERI think, judging by, I peeked ahead at your list.

10:44SPEAKERI use a bunch of Firefox extensions

10:47SPEAKERto kind of make it exactly what I want.

10:49SPEAKERI mean, it's not that many, but it's like,

10:51SPEAKERI have the Firefox multi-account container.

10:55SPEAKERI have you block origin.

10:56SPEAKERI have power close, which lets you close tabs by search

11:01SPEAKERwith a search, so I can close all of the Twitter tabs

11:04SPEAKERat once, basically.

11:07SPEAKERAnd then I have one, my one password extension is in there,

11:10SPEAKERwhich we'll talk about in a future bit.

11:12SPEAKERSteam obviously is open all the time

11:15SPEAKER'cause when I was working in games,

11:16SPEAKERI spent a lot of time on Steam.

11:18SPEAKER- Wait, are you a launch steam at login guy?

11:21SPEAKER- I launched Steam and Epic on login

11:23SPEAKERbecause those are where I play most of the games that I play.

11:27SPEAKERI don't like to have to wait for an update to go

11:29SPEAKERwhen I want to play something.

11:31SPEAKER- Fair, although, I mean,

11:33SPEAKERI guess you can customize this behavior,

11:34SPEAKERbut Steam has gotten pretty aggressive

11:36SPEAKERabout delaying updates.

11:38SPEAKER- That's true.

11:39SPEAKER- Like by a matter of days in a lot of cases.

11:40SPEAKERI assume they're probably calculating that

11:43SPEAKERbased on how often you run it.

11:44SPEAKERIs that a safe assumption?

11:45SPEAKER- I believe so, but like you can also,

11:47SPEAKERso for example, when I was working on the Anacrusis,

11:50SPEAKERobviously it's open all the time

11:52SPEAKERbecause the dev builds are delivered via Steam.

11:54SPEAKERSo you can prioritize and say, hey, update this update.

11:58SPEAKERIf you have games that you play regularly,

12:00SPEAKERyou can say, always update this the moment an update.

12:02SPEAKER- Oh, okay, okay.

12:03SPEAKER- Which was really convenient.

12:06SPEAKERAlso, turns out I did a lot of Steam messaging

12:08SPEAKERas a result of the game work.

12:10SPEAKERLike the friends list is pretty important to me.

12:12SPEAKER- Sure, makes sense.

12:14SPEAKER- So yeah, Discord, obviously I have three or four Discords

12:18SPEAKERthat I'm active in all the time.

12:21SPEAKERIt also is kind of replaced Twitter DMs

12:23SPEAKERin a lot of ways, it turns out.

12:24SPEAKER- Sure.

12:25SPEAKER- OBS, I use virtual camera for OBS

12:28SPEAKERso I can take whatever I'm showing.

12:30SPEAKERI can, A, I have a little bit more control

12:33SPEAKERover my camera feed.

12:34SPEAKERLike I do cropping and stuff in OBS

12:36SPEAKERrather than trying to do it in a shitty webcam interface.

12:39SPEAKERI can also do the Nvidia background removal

12:42SPEAKERif I want to have just a black screen behind me or an image.

12:46SPEAKERAnd then also it's kind of nice sometimes

12:48SPEAKERto be able to grab like my virtual camera scene in OBS.

12:52SPEAKERA, I have a specific scene set up for virtual camera in OBS,

12:55SPEAKERwhich I think a lot of people don't know you can do.

12:57SPEAKER- Yeah, I didn't know that.

12:57SPEAKERAnd so there's some tips here that I just,

13:00SPEAKERyou flew me into some weeks ago.

13:03SPEAKER- Yeah, and then I also have it set

13:04SPEAKERso that it automatically launches the virtual camera

13:08SPEAKERinterface without me having to do anything when I launch OBS.

13:11SPEAKERYou do that by tacking dash dash start virtual cam

13:15SPEAKERon the end of the target field

13:17SPEAKERin your OBS shortcut properties.

13:20SPEAKERAnd then it just, it automatically goes in there.

13:22SPEAKERTo set which scene you want, you click on the little gear

13:24SPEAKERnext to the virtual camera button on OBS

13:27SPEAKERand you say, you pick a scene

13:29SPEAKERand then you pick the scene that you want

13:31SPEAKERrather than a source.

13:32SPEAKERAnd then the neat thing about that is you can put other

13:34SPEAKERsources in that scene that you can turn on and off.

13:36SPEAKERSo if you want to show people your desktop

13:38SPEAKERwithout having to use say Zoom or Teams or Google Hangouts

13:45SPEAKERor whatever crappy, their crappy desktop grab,

13:49SPEAKERyou can just switch that on and all of a sudden

13:51SPEAKERyour camera feed is going to be your desktop.

13:53SPEAKER- Right, and you can use all the fairly advanced

13:57SPEAKERlike transform and zoom type cropping type tools

14:00SPEAKERthat OBS has.

14:00SPEAKERYou could like zoom in on your,

14:01SPEAKERon a specific part of your desktop.

14:03SPEAKER- Exactly.

14:04SPEAKER- And make that full frame or whatever.

14:06SPEAKERFor people who don't know, the virtual camera in OBS is,

14:09SPEAKERit exposes an actual camera device to windows.

14:13SPEAKERLike anywhere, you know, Zoom,

14:16SPEAKERanything that uses a camera feed,

14:19SPEAKERanything that uses a webcam,

14:20SPEAKERwhen you go to your device list of cameras

14:22SPEAKERthat are connected, there will be a virtual camera

14:24SPEAKERlisted there and that's whatever OBS is spitting out.

14:27SPEAKERI don't know if, is the ability to specify which scene

14:30SPEAKERyou want the virtual camera to show relatively new?

14:33SPEAKER'Cause I feel like at one point,

14:35SPEAKERat one point it was just whatever was the output of OBS,

14:38SPEAKERlike whatever was like the, you know-

14:40SPEAKER- It was the program.

14:40SPEAKER- Right, it was the program feed.

14:43SPEAKER- Yeah, as long as I've used it, it's had this option,

14:46SPEAKERbut I also was kind of late adopter to virtual,

14:49SPEAKERvirtual, the virtual cam support.

14:51SPEAKER- Yeah, when you told me about all this,

14:52SPEAKER'cause again, I thought you only could do the program feed,

14:55SPEAKERwhich means you can't also be streaming at the same time,

14:57SPEAKERbut once you told me about all that stuff,

15:00SPEAKERI started thinking about running OBS all the time.

15:02SPEAKERDo you just have it set to launch at login?

15:04SPEAKER- I don't have it set to launch a login

15:06SPEAKERbecause it actually, it's one of the things I like about it

15:08SPEAKERis it means I don't accidentally,

15:10SPEAKERsince all of my video utilities use the virtual camera,

15:16SPEAKERit means that I'm not gonna accidentally pipe video out

15:18SPEAKERto anybody if OBS is turned off.

15:20SPEAKER- Right.

15:21SPEAKER- So I have, like if I look at the task bar

15:25SPEAKERand OBS isn't turned on, I know that I'm not,

15:27SPEAKERI don't have video going on anywhere.

15:28SPEAKER- So it's just a safety measure?

15:31SPEAKER- It's a safety measure, yeah.

15:32SPEAKER- So you just open OBS when you need the camera

15:34SPEAKERand then close it when you're done?

15:35SPEAKER- That's exactly it.

15:36SPEAKERThe other thing that's nice about that is OBS,

15:38SPEAKERwhen virtual camera's on,

15:40SPEAKEROBS keeps your computer from going to sleep.

15:42SPEAKERSo it means that if I'm getting up for like 10 minutes

15:46SPEAKERto go do something, I don't want my computer to be asleep

15:47SPEAKERwhen I come back, OBS running will solve that problem for me.

15:50SPEAKER- Okay.

15:51SPEAKER- Yeah, and then the last one is Notion.

15:53SPEAKERI used to use different, I've used different things

15:55SPEAKERover the years for note-taking.

15:57SPEAKERI ended up settling on Notion most recently.

16:00SPEAKERIt's, I'm starting to get some real kind of Evernote vibes

16:03SPEAKERin terms of how they're locking you into the content,

16:05SPEAKERbut they still let you export everything relatively easy

16:08SPEAKERto other, easily to other formats.

16:10SPEAKERI love the kind of Wiki nature of each notes page.

16:14SPEAKERIt seems pretty good.

16:15SPEAKERI think, I think I'm gonna, I'm looking at some other stuff

16:17SPEAKERthat I'm looking at like Obsidian and SimpleNote

16:19SPEAKERand maybe your return to SimpleNote is where we're at.

16:23SPEAKERI don't know.

16:23SPEAKER- I still use SimpleNote, not as much these days,

16:26SPEAKERbut like I didn't, not every, but most of the reviews

16:30SPEAKERI ever wrote for Giant Bomb, for example,

16:31SPEAKERare still sitting there in my SimpleNote account.

16:34SPEAKER- So it's funny.

16:34SPEAKERI use SimpleNote a ton in the early tested days

16:36SPEAKERwhen we were in the basement.

16:37SPEAKERI think maybe based on your recommendation.

16:39SPEAKER- Oh, I was about to say, I probably got it from you.

16:41SPEAKERSo one of us probably learned about it from the other.

16:44SPEAKER- Yeah, we definitely like, I stopped using it in about 2013

16:48SPEAKERbecause it munged up my share folder

16:51SPEAKERand I lost a bunch of data.

16:52SPEAKERAnd I was like, well, that, that the whole point

16:54SPEAKERof a notes app is that I don't have to worry

16:55SPEAKERabout losing data.

16:57SPEAKERNotion, the thing that Notion does

16:59SPEAKERthat it makes me incredibly annoyed

17:01SPEAKERis instead of just updating every time when you launch,

17:05SPEAKERit pops up a full modal that says,

17:07SPEAKER"Hey, do you want to update?"

17:08SPEAKERAnd I don't, it doesn't need to do that.

17:11SPEAKERJust do it on a reboot, on a restart or reboot.

17:13SPEAKERAnyway, and then I also have voice meter macro set up,

17:16SPEAKERbut that's mostly for streaming.

17:17SPEAKERIt lets me pipe mute commands

17:20SPEAKERto the streaming PC when that's on.

17:23SPEAKER- That is one to the six.

17:25SPEAKERThat's only six icons on your taskbar.

17:26SPEAKER- Six icons on my taskbar by default.

17:29SPEAKERI like to, I like to keep things trim.

17:31SPEAKER- Compared to the, I'm just eyeballing here.

17:33SPEAKERRoughly 20, 16, 18.

17:38SPEAKER- 15, 16, 17, yeah, somewhere in there.

17:40SPEAKERWhat do you got, Brad?

17:41SPEAKER- Okay, I'll just read the whole list.

17:43SPEAKER- So we're going to go taskbar, taskbar,

17:45SPEAKERand then tray, tray, and then start menu, start menu.

17:48SPEAKERI think that's the plan.

17:48SPEAKER- So this is my taskbar.

17:50SPEAKERI'll just read everything.

17:50SPEAKERSome of this bears more or less explanation.

17:54SPEAKERChrome, Chromium.

17:57SPEAKER- Okay, Brad, hold on.

17:58SPEAKERBrad, why do you have two browsers?

18:01SPEAKER- Let me read the rest of the list first.

18:02SPEAKER- Okay, okay.

18:05SPEAKER- File Explorer, everything.

18:08SPEAKERThe drive indexing search tool.

18:11SPEAKERWindows Terminal, Steam, Epic Games Store,

18:14SPEAKERand Battle.net, one after the other.

18:16SPEAKERWhatsApp and Signal, and Discord.

18:19SPEAKERThese are all kind of grouped loosely

18:22SPEAKERbased on functionality.

18:24SPEAKEROBS, Audacity, VLC.

18:28SPEAKERMPV.

18:29SPEAKER- Okay, there's some redundancy here I'm seeing.

18:33SPEAKER- Music, I work with a lot of media formats.

18:35SPEAKER- That's true, okay.

18:37SPEAKER- Music Bee, and Fubar 2000.

18:40SPEAKER- What is Music Bee?

18:41SPEAKER- Music Bee is the closest thing.

18:43SPEAKERWe're coming out of order here.

18:44SPEAKER- Okay, okay, okay, okay.

18:45SPEAKEROkay, I'm starting at the beginning.

18:47SPEAKERBrad, why do you have two browsers, man?

18:49SPEAKER- I deal with a lot of Google accounts, okay?

18:51SPEAKER- Yeah, so do I.

18:52SPEAKERI have them all logged into one Firefox instance

18:54SPEAKERand I just click between them when I want to switch.

18:56SPEAKER- Yeah, so I've thought about dealing with other,

18:58SPEAKERor checking out other solutions.

18:59SPEAKERI use Chrome profiles for a long time,

19:01SPEAKERbut I never really liked the way they work.

19:03SPEAKER- The browser profiles?

19:04SPEAKER- Yeah, like the browser level.

19:06SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause you can't have two browsers open

19:08SPEAKERwith different profiles on them,

19:09SPEAKERor at least last time I used it.

19:11SPEAKER- Yeah, it was a solution, but not a great one, let's say.

19:15SPEAKERSo at some point I was like,

19:18SPEAKERit's nice to have like full app separation,

19:20SPEAKEReven when you're like all tabbing,

19:21SPEAKERjust see completely different browsers.

19:23SPEAKERLike yes, it might be a little bit of an extra waste

19:24SPEAKERof resources to run two different browsers at a time,

19:27SPEAKERbut I have 64 gigabytes of RAM

19:29SPEAKERand 40 threads in this machine.

19:32SPEAKERAnd at a certain point, like Chrome, as we've said before,

19:35SPEAKERChrome is the most compatible thing out there, right?

19:38SPEAKERLike everything, like video call software,

19:39SPEAKERall that stuff is tested against Chrome.

19:41SPEAKERAnd if it's gonna work in any browser,

19:43SPEAKERit's gonna work in Chrome.

19:44SPEAKER- Yeah, there's a reason they have like 70% market share

19:46SPEAKERor something, yeah.

19:47SPEAKER- Yes, so at some point I was just like,

19:48SPEAKERwhat if I just go get the Chrome

19:50SPEAKERwithout all the Chrome in it?

19:51SPEAKERYou know, like Chromium is just the development build

19:54SPEAKERof, or it's the kind of core that Chrome is based on,

19:57SPEAKERis my understanding.

19:57SPEAKER- Yeah, without any of the Google sync

19:59SPEAKERand Google specific stuff in.

20:01SPEAKER- Right, and I update it with my package manager in Windows,

20:05SPEAKERso like I don't even have to touch,

20:06SPEAKER'cause you know, they're updating it constantly

20:08SPEAKER'cause it's a development version.

20:11SPEAKERSo I just update it when I update all the other packages

20:13SPEAKERon my system, so it just stays up to date that way.

20:17SPEAKERAnd I only ever open like six things in it.

20:19SPEAKERLike it's basically like Gmail, Slack,

20:22SPEAKERtwo or three other work tools and that's it.

20:24SPEAKERSo it's just a completely separate siloed other browser

20:28SPEAKERjust sitting there where I only have my work stuff open.

20:30SPEAKER- Okay, so let me introduce you to this thing.

20:32SPEAKERHobbs pointed this out in chat a few weeks ago,

20:34SPEAKERbut I've been using it for a while,

20:36SPEAKERcalled Facebook Multi-Account Containers,

20:39SPEAKERsorry, Firefox Multi-Account Containers.

20:41SPEAKERSo Firefox ships with this Facebook container plugin

20:44SPEAKERthat prevents Facebook from interacting with itself

20:48SPEAKERon non-Facebook sites.

20:51SPEAKERSo like the Facebook bugs are missing from all the pages,

20:54SPEAKERwhich is a good thing, it keeps them from tracking you.

20:56SPEAKER- Sure.

20:57SPEAKER- This takes that and lets you do it

20:58SPEAKERon an individual app by app or site by site basis basically.

21:04SPEAKERSo you can keep, you get color coded,

21:07SPEAKERit color codes your tabs and you can have,

21:10SPEAKERthe cookies are separate for each container.

21:13SPEAKERSo like you can have your work container

21:15SPEAKERthat has all of your work logins and it'll be blue

21:18SPEAKERand your banking container can be yellow

21:21SPEAKERand it's all your banking sites and so on and so forth.

21:24SPEAKERIs it, and the nice thing is when you,

21:28SPEAKERinstead of you having to open a container

21:30SPEAKERand then go to the site,

21:31SPEAKERwhen you just type in the site that you're going to,

21:33SPEAKERlike if you say you have,

21:35SPEAKERif you're going to Nextlander's Slack,

21:38SPEAKERwhich has a different sub domain,

21:39SPEAKERit just knows that that's the Nextlander Slack

21:42SPEAKERand opens the right cookie container for you.

21:45SPEAKERIt doesn't work obviously for Gmail unless you're,

21:49SPEAKERI can't remember, I don't think our Gmail accounts,

21:52SPEAKERwork Gmail accounts are still on mail.google I think,

21:55SPEAKERright, yeah.

21:56SPEAKERSo it doesn't work for that,

21:57SPEAKERbut everything else it just kind of works

21:59SPEAKERand it's incredibly powerful

22:01SPEAKERand it means you don't have to have 55 browsers open.

22:05SPEAKER- I only have two, thank you.

22:07SPEAKER- That's okay, I have two browsers open right now too

22:10SPEAKER'cause we use Chrome for Jitsi, but anyway.

22:12SPEAKER- And then again, as I will say until I'm blue in the face,

22:15SPEAKERthat's really the reason that I keep so much Chrome around

22:17SPEAKERis mainly video calls,

22:20SPEAKERlike there just been enough compatibility instances

22:23SPEAKERwhere it was like a guest shows up like,

22:25SPEAKERhey, this video call's not working,

22:26SPEAKERcan't get my camera to recognize or whatever,

22:28SPEAKERlike browser are you in, not Chrome,

22:31SPEAKERhow about trying Chrome and then it just works.

22:33SPEAKER- Yeah, I will say my therapist's video call service,

22:37SPEAKERlike the, hey, I'm a doctor

22:40SPEAKERand I have a video call service thing is a Chrome,

22:43SPEAKERit's only Chrome.

22:45SPEAKER- It's that type of stuff.

22:45SPEAKER- It's always Chrome.

22:46SPEAKER- You know, maybe to illustrate the broader point

22:48SPEAKERof this episode, I do have Firefox installed now

22:50SPEAKERsince you've been extolling its virtues,

22:52SPEAKERI did go grab it, I haven't used a ton of it,

22:54SPEAKERI mean, I used, not like I'm a stranger to Firefox

22:56SPEAKERto be clear, I used Firefox exclusively 15, 18 years ago,

23:01SPEAKERwhatever.

23:02SPEAKER- It was, yeah, it's been a while.

23:03SPEAKER- When it was newish, but--

23:05SPEAKER- Before Chrome existed basically.

23:06SPEAKER- The point is I now have Firefox installed,

23:08SPEAKERI just have not penned it yet,

23:09SPEAKERso maybe I'll get to the point

23:11SPEAKERwhere I'm using it enough to pin it.

23:13SPEAKER- I will say I do keep Chrome installed,

23:16SPEAKERI don't use it, I basically only use it

23:18SPEAKERfor our jitsy calls and talking to my therapist, so.

23:19SPEAKER- Yeah, like I might start going in a direction like that

23:22SPEAKERat some point.

23:23SPEAKER- Okay, File Explorer's pretty self-explanatory.

23:25SPEAKEREverything could not live without it.

23:28SPEAKER- What is it?

23:29SPEAKERSo I stopped using everything 'cause it was slow.

23:31SPEAKER- Okay, so there are things you need to do

23:33SPEAKERto make it not slow.

23:34SPEAKER- Okay, does it involve it not indexing everything

23:38SPEAKERon your computer anymore when you do that?

23:40SPEAKER- Well, no, you do need it to do that.

23:42SPEAKER- Okay.

23:43SPEAKER- So there are two settings, first of all, everything,

23:45SPEAKERvoidtools.com is the website,

23:46SPEAKERwe've talked about it a bunch of times before,

23:48SPEAKERit is a must-have Windows app to me

23:50SPEAKERbecause it indexes everything on all of your drives

23:53SPEAKERand basically builds a quickly searchable database,

23:56SPEAKERso you can just open it and search for any file

23:58SPEAKERon your whole computer and it will basically find it

24:00SPEAKERas you type, like it's that fast.

24:02SPEAKERThe things you need to do in everything to make it very fast

24:04SPEAKERare I think it's two different things.

24:06SPEAKERI could be wrong on this, but I think you need both of these.

24:08SPEAKERThere's an indexing service.

24:11SPEAKERIt can, so I believe it can either index actively

24:14SPEAKERonly while the app is open or you can install the service

24:16SPEAKERthat indexes in the background all the time.

24:18SPEAKER- Yeah, I want the latter, I think, rather than the former.

24:20SPEAKER- Yes, so that's why I run the service.

24:22SPEAKERI mean, you have to go into administrator mode to approve it

24:25SPEAKERbut it's just, all it does is set up a background service

24:27SPEAKERthat handles the indexing transparently.

24:29SPEAKERThe other thing, and I think this is the one

24:31SPEAKERyou might be thinking of, is I believe I also actually

24:34SPEAKERhad to set it to start at Windows login.

24:37SPEAKERSo technically the client is also running at all times,

24:40SPEAKERif I'm not mistaken.

24:41SPEAKER- Oh, so it's just running in the background

24:42SPEAKERand you're popping it up when you hit the shortcut?

24:45SPEAKER- Yes, so it doesn't even show on the taskbar as running,

24:49SPEAKERlike the icon is not underlined as if it's running,

24:52SPEAKERbut if I go, like everything.exe will be running

24:55SPEAKERin my task manager list if I go look, I believe right now.

24:57SPEAKERThe upshot of those two things is that literally

24:59SPEAKERit opens as fast as I can click it

25:01SPEAKERand it searches as fast as I can type.

25:03SPEAKER- Do you run the portable version

25:04SPEAKERor do you run the installed version?

25:06SPEAKER- I think it's the portable version

25:08SPEAKERor I might've actually moved to Scoop.

25:10SPEAKERSo I mentioned earlier, I use a package manager in Windows,

25:13SPEAKERI use Scoop.

25:14SPEAKER- Okay.

25:15SPEAKER- There are a bunch, there's WinGet,

25:16SPEAKERthere's Chocolaty is the classic one.

25:18SPEAKER- Yeah.

25:19SPEAKER- I might've, so I've slowly been transitioning

25:22SPEAKERevery portable app I use in Windows,

25:24SPEAKERI've been transitioning to getting it through Scoop.

25:26SPEAKER- Oh, okay, and does it still save your stuff at your,

25:29SPEAKERdoes Scoop save your versions in a folder someplace

25:32SPEAKERwhere it's relatively portable, settings are portable?

25:34SPEAKER- Scoop is interesting, it's like 90% super cool

25:39SPEAKERthe way it's set up and 10% a little quirky,

25:40SPEAKERbut the nice thing about Scoop is it installs all the apps

25:43SPEAKERinto your home folder, so there's no permissions issues,

25:46SPEAKERyou don't have to approve anything as an administrator.

25:47SPEAKER- Oh, that's nice.

25:48SPEAKER- If you're tired of using Scoop,

25:49SPEAKERyou can just like delete that folder from your home folder

25:52SPEAKERand forget about it and it's done,

25:53SPEAKERthere's no uninstall process.

25:56SPEAKERAnd yes, it uses, so it uses like SIM links basically,

25:59SPEAKERlike junctions, I think they might be called

26:01SPEAKERin Windows parlance, I'm not sure.

26:03SPEAKERIt basically creates a like persistent folder for each app

26:06SPEAKERand then like kind of SIM links the different versions,

26:09SPEAKERlike whatever the current version of the app is,

26:11SPEAKERif that makes sense.

26:12SPEAKER- Yeah, that makes sense.

26:12SPEAKER- Long story short, anything like configuration

26:15SPEAKERthat needs to persist between versions of an app

26:18SPEAKERjust stay in that persistent folder.

26:20SPEAKER- Oh, that's cool.

26:21SPEAKER- Yeah, and so Chromium, I think everything like MPV,

26:25SPEAKERwhich we'll get to like Audacity,

26:27SPEAKERI mean, pretty much anything that I ran portably

26:29SPEAKERwhere I previously I would have to just download a zip file

26:33SPEAKERand unzip it over top of the old one to upgrade it.

26:36SPEAKERNow I just run the one, you know, update all packages.

26:39SPEAKER- Scoop, update all.

26:40SPEAKER- Yes.

26:40SPEAKER- Cool.

26:41SPEAKER- Which is nice, but yeah, if you found everything slow,

26:44SPEAKERI would highly recommend giving it another try

26:47SPEAKERand starting on.

26:48SPEAKER- Service, turn on the service and turn on the launch.

26:51SPEAKER- Yes.

26:52SPEAKER- I'd log in, okay.

26:53SPEAKER- Those, I believe those were the two things I had to do

26:54SPEAKERto make it kind of instant.

26:55SPEAKER'Cause I had the same thing where I'd like,

26:57SPEAKERI wiped and reinstalled Windows at one point

26:59SPEAKERand reinstalled it and was just like, why is this so slow?

27:01SPEAKERThis used to be instantaneous and then.

27:03SPEAKER- That's exactly what happened to me is I had it working.

27:06SPEAKERI built a new machine and I turned it off after about a week

27:10SPEAKER'cause I was annoyed by it.

27:11SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, so you just need to go turn that stuff back on.

27:14SPEAKERWindows Terminal, I find to be pretty great these days.

27:16SPEAKERI mean, obviously if you don't need a terminal program,

27:18SPEAKERthen you don't care, but.

27:19SPEAKER- I don't keep it on my taskbar, but I do use it daily, so.

27:23SPEAKERAnd do you use the updated version

27:24SPEAKERor you just use the one that ships with Windows?

27:27SPEAKER- I'm using, I believe it's the Microsoft Store version.

27:29SPEAKERSo it updates itself.

27:31SPEAKER- Okay.

27:32SPEAKER- I can do the dance of.

27:34SPEAKER- Install the latest PowerShell for new features

27:36SPEAKERand improvements is what I get.

27:38SPEAKER- Yes, I can do the, oh, yes.

27:40SPEAKERSo my PowerShell also updates automatically now.

27:42SPEAKERI'm doing the dance of getting app settings on the icon

27:45SPEAKERto see what version I have.

27:46SPEAKERIt's 1.2.

27:47SPEAKER- Okay.

27:48SPEAKER- It's 1.20, I should say, for Windows Terminal.

27:51SPEAKERI actually just have been looking

27:53SPEAKERat other terminals recently though.

27:55SPEAKER- Oh boy.

27:57SPEAKER- I use iTerm2 on the Mac, which is fine,

27:59SPEAKERbut I've kind of been looking at like Westerm

28:01SPEAKERas a cross-platform terminal people like quite a bit.

28:04SPEAKERIt was written in Rust and uses GPU acceleration.

28:07SPEAKER- Why do you need GPU acceleration for terminal, Brad?

28:09SPEAKER- Make it faster, man.

28:11SPEAKER- Oh my God.

28:12SPEAKER- Drawing large amounts of high res text to the screen

28:14SPEAKERis not as lightweight as you might think.

28:17SPEAKER- Look, I always wanted a Millennium II

28:19SPEAKERback in the 90s as well,

28:21SPEAKERbecause of all that hot text rendering speed,

28:23SPEAKERbut I don't know about GPU acceleration for a terminal.

28:27SPEAKER- I can tell you since Windows Terminal

28:29SPEAKERhas replaced its text renderer twice

28:31SPEAKERin the last like three years,

28:33SPEAKERit makes a significant difference.

28:34SPEAKER- Okay, okay.

28:35SPEAKER- More to the point an inefficient text renderer is bad,

28:39SPEAKERlet's say.

28:40SPEAKER- Okay, fair enough.

28:41SPEAKER- Anyway, that was a lot to say about Windows Terminal,

28:44SPEAKERwhich is fine.

28:45SPEAKER- We're into the game section, I think now.

28:47SPEAKER- Steam, Epic Games Store, Battle.net,

28:48SPEAKERyou know what those are.

28:49SPEAKER- Do you run these all the time

28:50SPEAKERor you leave them just off until you need them?

28:52SPEAKER- Yeah, I just open those when I want to play something.

28:54SPEAKER- Okay.

28:55SPEAKER- WhatsApp, Signal, and Discord, also self-explanatory,

28:57SPEAKERjust to talk to people I know on different things.

29:00SPEAKER- Yeah, it annoys me that,

29:03SPEAKERoh, you know, I have one that I don't have on my list

29:05SPEAKERthat I should put on, holy cow, okay.

29:08SPEAKERIt annoys me that it's become,

29:11SPEAKERthe diaspora of text formats is frustrating,

29:16SPEAKER'cause I used to just use Twitter DMs

29:18SPEAKERfor casual chats with people

29:20SPEAKERthat I'm loosely connected with,

29:22SPEAKERand now I have to have Signal and Discord

29:25SPEAKERand a million different things.

29:26SPEAKER- Yeah, that's just the way of things now.

29:28SPEAKER- Yeah.

29:29SPEAKER- I find, I don't know about you,

29:30SPEAKERI find I kind of don't have a standard,

29:32SPEAKERI just tend to talk to people wherever they are.

29:35SPEAKER- Nope, it is a definite problem, yes, I agree.

29:38SPEAKER- Yeah, OBS, we've already talked about pretty much,

29:41SPEAKERAudacity, digital audio editor

29:43SPEAKERthat I use to edit this podcast, among others.

29:45SPEAKERVLC and MPV, I believe is about the point

29:48SPEAKERthat you were saying you noticed some redundancy.

29:50SPEAKER- Yeah, hey Brad,

29:51SPEAKERwhy do you have two video players installed?

29:54SPEAKER- They're not just video players,

29:56SPEAKERthey play all sorts of media.

29:57SPEAKER- Okay, why do you have two media players installed?

30:00SPEAKER- And in fact, in fact, one of them is better at some things

30:03SPEAKERand the other is better at other things.

30:06SPEAKER- Okay, do tell. - Is that a sufficient answer?

30:09SPEAKER- But I, so-- - I mean, I used VLC

30:11SPEAKERfor 15 plus years, like since VLC was big

30:14SPEAKERand I started using it and it was generally great.

30:17SPEAKERMPV rules though, like MPV does some things

30:20SPEAKERthat VLC cannot or does them better in cases where,

30:23SPEAKERagain, especially where this media stuff is concerned,

30:26SPEAKERa lot of this is informed by my line of work

30:28SPEAKERand specific needs I have around that sort of thing,

30:30SPEAKERwhich most people are not gonna care about.

30:32SPEAKERBut MPV, for example, it's a different media player.

30:35SPEAKERI'm trying to think it's got FFmpeg in it,

30:38SPEAKERI'm trying to think like what underpinnings

30:39SPEAKERit might share with VLC, I think some.

30:42SPEAKER- I guess my question is why,

30:44SPEAKERlike when I want VLC or MPV to launch,

30:46SPEAKERusually I just double click on a media file?

30:48SPEAKER- Well, that's a different thing.

30:49SPEAKERI mean, there are two questions here.

30:50SPEAKERThere are, why do you have two media players?

30:52SPEAKERAnd then there are, why are these both on the taskbar

30:55SPEAKERwhen you probably just double click files to open them,

30:57SPEAKERwhich I do too, like to be clear.

30:59SPEAKERI almost never click these.

31:01SPEAKERIt's just nice to have the option to, like occasionally,

31:05SPEAKERyou know, occasionally I'll just wanna spawn

31:06SPEAKERa blank VLC window and drag like eight music files in there.

31:10SPEAKER- Okay. - You know, as opposed to,

31:11SPEAKER'cause I don't think you can highlight them all.

31:14SPEAKER- You can add them to a playlist, you used to be able to,

31:16SPEAKERbut like also I killed all those shell extensions

31:19SPEAKERfor almost everything I have installed, so.

31:21SPEAKER- Yeah, I can't remember if you can,

31:22SPEAKERor maybe a better way to say it is

31:24SPEAKERthe sort of like highlight multiple files

31:26SPEAKERand right click functionality is not reliable

31:29SPEAKERacross different apps all the time.

31:31SPEAKERNice to be able to just spawn a blank window if you want,

31:33SPEAKERbut there's other stuff,

31:35SPEAKERand this goes beyond these apps that we should talk about

31:37SPEAKERthat are like kind of hidden mechanics around the taskbar.

31:40SPEAKERFor example, if you open VLC,

31:43SPEAKERif you click the icon again on the taskbar,

31:44SPEAKERit's just going to open that window

31:46SPEAKERyou already have open, right?

31:47SPEAKER- Yeah.

31:48SPEAKER- What if you shift click it?

31:50SPEAKER- It opens another window?

31:51SPEAKER- Yeah, now you have two.

31:53SPEAKER- That's a standard Windows thing, isn't it?

31:54SPEAKER- Right, but I don't know how many people know that.

31:56SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, yeah.

31:57SPEAKER- Maybe that's more widespread knowledge than I know.

31:59SPEAKERI don't think I knew that until two or three years ago,

32:01SPEAKERactually, like if you wanna open more instances

32:04SPEAKERof a running app, you can shift click the icon

32:05SPEAKERon the taskbar and open more,

32:08SPEAKERwhich again, like, you know,

32:10SPEAKERlike I do a movie and TV podcast, for example,

32:12SPEAKERthat's a big part of the reason I have multiple media players

32:15SPEAKERbecause like we're doing weird stuff

32:16SPEAKERwhere I might have two videos open side by side

32:18SPEAKERthat I need to compare.

32:19SPEAKEROr, and the biggest thing about MPV,

32:21SPEAKERwell, there's a couple of things,

32:22SPEAKERbut it's basically comes down to speed.

32:24SPEAKERMPV is dramatically faster at letting you step

32:27SPEAKERthrough a video than VLC is.

32:28SPEAKERI mean, it's like no comparison.

32:30SPEAKER- Yeah, that's absolutely, that's why I have MPV installed.

32:33SPEAKERIt's a little bare bones for what I do on the usual.

32:36SPEAKER- Yeah, so that's the other thing

32:37SPEAKERis to really get the most out of MPV,

32:39SPEAKERyou really need to get like dive deep

32:40SPEAKERinto text configuration.

32:42SPEAKERYou spend a lot of time in your input.conf.

32:44SPEAKER- I love my input.conf.

32:46SPEAKER- Because this does come out of the Linux world primarily.

32:49SPEAKERBut once you like set up a much keyboard shortcuts,

32:51SPEAKERI mean, I can fly through like, again,

32:53SPEAKERwe're like, say we're doing a podcast about a given movie.

32:57SPEAKERLike I can absolutely fly through the movies

32:59SPEAKERfrom chapter to chapter.

33:00SPEAKERLike I have different shortcuts set up for like,

33:02SPEAKERyou know, step forward three seconds, five seconds,

33:04SPEAKERa minute, like freeze framing, all that stuff.

33:07SPEAKERLike MPV is just incredibly performant

33:09SPEAKERfor navigating around in media.

33:11SPEAKER- Do people install, do people share their input.conf

33:14SPEAKERon the, on just and wikis?

33:18SPEAKER- Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

33:19SPEAKERIn fact, you can write Lua scripts around MPV

33:22SPEAKERto make it do all kinds of crazy stuff.

33:24SPEAKER- Of course you can.

33:26SPEAKER- MPV is very big in the anime like fan sub community,

33:28SPEAKERfor example, that's where I found out about it from.

33:31SPEAKER'Cause it lets you do a lot of cool stuff

33:32SPEAKERwith subtitles and so forth.

33:34SPEAKER- Anime editor Brad Shoemaker added again.

33:36SPEAKER- That's me, MPV rules.

33:38SPEAKERLike again, it takes some work

33:40SPEAKERto really get the most out of it, but it's pretty awesome.

33:42SPEAKER- I like it, it's worth having on your machine

33:45SPEAKERjust for the fast scrolling, honestly.

33:47SPEAKER- Yeah, yes.

33:49SPEAKER- What about music B and food bar?

33:51SPEAKER- Music B is the closest thing to an iTunes-like setup

33:53SPEAKERI have found in Windows.

33:54SPEAKER- Oh, hello.

33:56SPEAKER- And I have a pretty big local music library on my NAS.

33:59SPEAKERThis is one of the many reasons I mount my network shares

34:02SPEAKERto lettered drives on Windows.

34:04SPEAKER- Yeah, well, we've talked about that.

34:06SPEAKERI'm not gonna get into that.

34:07SPEAKER- 'Cause then I'm able to just tell music B,

34:08SPEAKER"Hey, my music library lives on M colon."

34:12SPEAKERBut it does the kind of iTunes stuff you would expect

34:14SPEAKERof if you do all your tagging in music B,

34:17SPEAKERit'll kind of rename files and folders

34:19SPEAKERto reflect the tags, that whole thing.

34:22SPEAKER- Wow, music B supports Asio's output, that's crazy.

34:25SPEAKER- Yeah, music B is B-E-E, I should say, like the insect.

34:29SPEAKERMusic B-E-E is how it's spelled.

34:32SPEAKERIt's been around forever.

34:33SPEAKERI think this guy's been developing this thing

34:34SPEAKERfor like 20 years or something.

34:37SPEAKERI think there are other alternatives for Windows

34:39SPEAKERthat are probably similar,

34:41SPEAKERbut this one works quite well for me.

34:42SPEAKERIt's got a ton of features.

34:44SPEAKER- Can, it has skins?

34:45SPEAKERCan you make it look like WinAb?

34:47SPEAKER- Probably.

34:48SPEAKER- Oh yeah, these skins are good.

34:49SPEAKEROh man, I'm gonna install this, this is great.

34:51SPEAKER- It's neat.

34:52SPEAKERYou can do a lot of customization with music B as well.

34:55SPEAKERI don't think it has a scripting language,

34:56SPEAKERbut there's a lot of cool stuff you can do with it.

34:59SPEAKEROh, it does have add-on.

35:00SPEAKERI actually never even looked at plugins and visualizers

35:02SPEAKERfor this thing.

35:03SPEAKERMaybe I should spend some time.

35:04SPEAKER- Oh, hell yeah.

35:05SPEAKER- Seeing what kind of plugins for music B exist.

35:07SPEAKER- What are the, hold on, let's look at the visualizers.

35:09SPEAKERLet's see what we got.

35:10SPEAKERThe website's a little slow loading,

35:12SPEAKERso maybe we won't do this.

35:13SPEAKER- Yeah, actually it is, it's quite slow.

35:14SPEAKER- And then FUBAR is just FUBAR.

35:16SPEAKERFUBAR has been FUBAR for as long as FUBAR has existed.

35:20SPEAKER- This has gotten weird lately.

35:22SPEAKERFUBAR 2000 I have exclusively

35:24SPEAKERfor my synthesized video game music library,

35:27SPEAKERbecause until recently it was the place

35:29SPEAKERwhere all the plugin development was happening

35:31SPEAKERfor like playing N64 music, playing SNES,

35:34SPEAKERlike kind of across the board,

35:36SPEAKERyou could get plugins for basically every console out there.

35:39SPEAKER- So is it like MIDI stuff with voice libraries

35:42SPEAKERthat match up with the consoles?

35:43SPEAKER- Yeah, okay.

35:44SPEAKERI don't know if I'll dig through and tell you,

35:45SPEAKERbut my SNES, I have full soundtracks

35:48SPEAKERfor every SNES game ever released,

35:50SPEAKERand it's probably like 20 megabytes or something,

35:53SPEAKER'cause each soundtrack is like 50K work.

35:56SPEAKER- Wait, can you play both SNES sound chips though in FUBAR,

35:59SPEAKERor is it only the good one?

36:01SPEAKER- No, you're thinking about the Genesis that's got the...

36:03SPEAKER- I thought the SNES has different sound chips too.

36:05SPEAKER- No, Genesis is the one

36:06SPEAKERthat has audibly different sound chips.

36:07SPEAKER- Oh, okay, okay.

36:08SPEAKER- I'd have to look.

36:09SPEAKERI don't know what they're using for...

36:11SPEAKERI don't know like the Mr. Genesis Core

36:13SPEAKERlets you pick which synthesizer you want.

36:14SPEAKERI don't know if the FUBAR plugin does.

36:18SPEAKERAnyway, I still use FUBAR.

36:20SPEAKERThere has been some, there's been some,

36:23SPEAKERI think Steam Drama is selling it short,

36:25SPEAKER'cause I think there's been some like kind of malign influence

36:27SPEAKERin the FUBAR 2000 community,

36:29SPEAKERand maybe from the developer of some kind

36:32SPEAKERof less than welcoming behavior, let's say.

36:34SPEAKERI haven't followed up on it too much.

36:36SPEAKERI don't know exactly, but I do know some of the developers

36:40SPEAKERof the video game music plugins for FUBAR have declared

36:43SPEAKERthey will no longer work on those.

36:45SPEAKER- What are your last three played things in FUBAR?

36:48SPEAKER- Oh gosh, I've got, I mean, I can tell you.

36:51SPEAKERI mean, I've had a number of playlists

36:53SPEAKERthat have just been sitting there for like years

36:55SPEAKERat this point that I will go back to occasionally.

36:57SPEAKER- Yeah, no, no, no, but I wanna know what you,

36:58SPEAKERwhat was the last thing you fired up in it?

37:01SPEAKER- Well, let's see, I've closed a bunch of stuff recently.

37:03SPEAKERWave Race 64.

37:04SPEAKER- Hell yeah.

37:05SPEAKER- Pilotwing 64.

37:06SPEAKER- Okay, I don't think I've ever played Pilotwing 64.

37:09SPEAKER- The Famicom Disk System version of Metroid.

37:12SPEAKER- Wow, what's the difference there?

37:13SPEAKERIs it just more, more MIDI?

37:14SPEAKER- It's like one track, it's like one track.

37:15SPEAKERYeah, the Disk System famously has better sound hardware

37:18SPEAKERthan the regular NES, so a lot of Disk System games

37:21SPEAKERhave better music, but in some cases,

37:23SPEAKERlike it's just the title screen music for Metroid

37:26SPEAKERthat's different.

37:28SPEAKERMilitary Madness for the TurboGrafx,

37:31SPEAKERSimCity for the SNES.

37:33SPEAKER- Oh, that's a good one.

37:34SPEAKER- I've got one called Super Metroid Ambient,

37:36SPEAKERwhich is just like kind of the more ambient parts

37:38SPEAKERof Super Metroid.

37:39SPEAKER- Sounds like, like what'd you, you do the,

37:43SPEAKERoh God, I had one of the names of the, Brinstar,

37:46SPEAKERyou got a Brinstar on there?

37:47SPEAKER- No, I don't believe Brinstar is on that list.

37:49SPEAKERIt's like, it's like, it's like Arrival on Criteria

37:52SPEAKERor, we'll have us with the name of the track.

37:55SPEAKERIt's the part where it's raining at the beginning.

37:56SPEAKER- Okay.

37:57SPEAKER- It's the item room.

37:59SPEAKER- This sounds great.

38:00SPEAKER- I've got a playlist for all of the dungeons in Zelda

38:02SPEAKERin Ocarina of Time.

38:04SPEAKER- Hell yeah.

38:05SPEAKER- Anyway.

38:06SPEAKER- Okay, I'm here for this.

38:07SPEAKER- I may be on the hunt for a replacement for FUBAR,

38:09SPEAKERboth because it sounds like the community

38:11SPEAKERmight be not great, and because development has stopped

38:15SPEAKERon a lot of those plugins, but there's no replacement yet

38:17SPEAKERthat I'm aware of.

38:18SPEAKER- Okay, well, post it in the Discord, send it to us

38:20SPEAKERon Blue Sky if you find something.

38:23SPEAKER- Yeah.

38:24SPEAKER- Okay, Systré, this is where stuff gets real for me,

38:27SPEAKER'cause I leave an embarrassing number of things running.

38:29SPEAKER- Oh.

38:30SPEAKER- This is where my signal and WhatsApp live.

38:32SPEAKERI actually have turned off local signal recently

38:35SPEAKERin favor of using Beeper, which is the, and I say that,

38:40SPEAKERhaving had an update this morning that is preventing it

38:43SPEAKERfrom logging in, so I can't open it to really look at it

38:45SPEAKERwhile I'm talking about it, but it basically is

38:47SPEAKERuniversal chat for Twitter, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, signal,

38:55SPEAKERa bunch of the other places, I think,

38:57SPEAKERI can't remember if it's Threads DM or maybe Instagram,

38:59SPEAKERmaybe that's the one that's not supported,

39:00SPEAKERbut basically you can get DMs most of the places

39:03SPEAKERthat DMs live, and you get, you can usually respond there,

39:07SPEAKERit works okay, it's not, it might just be a prompt

39:11SPEAKERthat lets you know you need to go look at this other thing,

39:14SPEAKERbut that's kind of all I want.

39:15SPEAKERI wanna make sure I don't miss messages,

39:16SPEAKERespecially right now when I'm looking for a job

39:18SPEAKERand trying to talk to a bunch of people and stuff like that.

39:20SPEAKER- Sure.

39:21SPEAKER- Beeper were the people that were allowing

39:23SPEAKERthe Apple accounts, right?

39:25SPEAKER- They were doing Apple-- - Without a phone number.

39:27SPEAKER- You could pay them to run a Mac Mini

39:29SPEAKERwith your iMessage logged in, which was a,

39:32SPEAKERso the other knock against Beeper

39:34SPEAKERis it is a little bit of a security,

39:35SPEAKERlike you're a little bit less secure

39:36SPEAKERthan running just signal native.

39:39SPEAKERFor me, the convenience is worth the lack of,

39:41SPEAKERI'm more interested in not missing messages

39:43SPEAKERthan having the secure end-to-end pipeline,

39:46SPEAKER'cause my work doesn't really demand that.

39:47SPEAKER- Right, but they were also, if I'm not mistaken,

39:49SPEAKERthey were the people who also circumvented the need

39:52SPEAKERfor a Mac Mini with your stuff running on it, right?

39:53SPEAKERThey were the ones that-- - Ever so briefly, yeah.

39:55SPEAKER- Like a weekend they found that loophole

39:57SPEAKERthat let you make just, I think it was with a phone number

40:00SPEAKERis what people wanted.

40:01SPEAKER- Yeah, and now they just don't do that at all.

40:03SPEAKER- Right, like that lasted for like three days.

40:05SPEAKER- Yeah.

40:07SPEAKERSo to solve that problem, I use this thing

40:09SPEAKERcalled MS Phone Link, which is part of Windows 11,

40:11SPEAKERI think now.

40:12SPEAKER- Yeah, I've thought about setting that up,

40:14SPEAKERbut it's kind of limited in some ways, but anyway, go on.

40:16SPEAKER- So it's limited in one specific way

40:18SPEAKERin that it lets you know, it notifies you

40:20SPEAKERwhen you have new messages and group chats,

40:22SPEAKERbut you can't respond or interact with those group chats

40:25SPEAKERon the Windows machine.

40:27SPEAKERFor everything else, it connects over Bluetooth

40:30SPEAKERto your PC and on Android, you run an app

40:33SPEAKERand it just connects and syncs everything

40:34SPEAKERbetween Android and the device, it's great.

40:37SPEAKEROn iOS, you connect your phone to the PC with Bluetooth

40:41SPEAKERand then to the phone, your Windows PC shows up

40:44SPEAKERlike a head unit in a car or something like that,

40:46SPEAKERwhere you get notifications, it can sync contacts,

40:48SPEAKERit can sync system notifications, but for the most part,

40:52SPEAKERyou don't, it's a little limited in the interactions.

40:56SPEAKERYou can, for example, if I respond to a text on my phone,

41:00SPEAKERthat response doesn't sync over to the Windows machine.

41:03SPEAKERLike I said, if you get a group text,

41:04SPEAKERyou get a notification, you got a group text,

41:06SPEAKERbut you can't respond to it on the Windows machine,

41:08SPEAKERyou have to pick up the phone and use the phone.

41:10SPEAKER- Is that just for group text?

41:11SPEAKERYou can respond to individual messages from--

41:14SPEAKER- Yeah, it's just for group text and group iMessages,

41:16SPEAKERit doesn't distinguish between the two,

41:19SPEAKERbut for individual texts, you can absolutely just,

41:22SPEAKERit pops up a thing, you can click on it

41:23SPEAKERand you can respond to it right in the phone link app.

41:28SPEAKERIt's, like I said, it's limited in some kind of frustrating

41:31SPEAKERand difficult to, it's difficult to parse how it's limited

41:35SPEAKERwhen you just start using it until you actually sit down

41:37SPEAKERand look at it for a little bit.

41:38SPEAKERIt's incredibly useful 'cause it means

41:40SPEAKERwhen I'm sitting here on my PC with my headphones on

41:44SPEAKERand I get 15 texts from somebody that are important,

41:46SPEAKERI get notifications for them on my PC,

41:48SPEAKERand you can also get system notifications,

41:51SPEAKERso like if you have your doorbell hooked up to it

41:52SPEAKERor something like that,

41:54SPEAKERthen you'll get those notifications as well,

41:56SPEAKERbut you can also, on a MS phone link level,

42:02SPEAKERturn on and off notifications you don't wanna see.

42:05SPEAKERSo, for example, and then the other thing is,

42:09SPEAKERit shows up as a Bluetooth headset to your phone,

42:12SPEAKERso you can pipe calls straight through to your PC

42:15SPEAKERand use your PC mic and speakers or headphone to take calls.

42:19SPEAKERThat is the jankiest part of this whole thing.

42:22SPEAKER- I bet.

42:23SPEAKER- It's not great, but everything else works,

42:26SPEAKERand you can do media playback through that as well,

42:28SPEAKERso if I press play right now, it's gonna play the beeps

42:33SPEAKERthat we use to sync the podcast

42:34SPEAKERand my headphones really loud,

42:35SPEAKERwhich I'm probably not gonna do,

42:36SPEAKERbut anyway, it's a really useful tool.

42:40SPEAKER- To clarify one thing,

42:41SPEAKERyou were using the term text generically,

42:44SPEAKERbut everything you said applies

42:46SPEAKERto both literal text messages and iMessages,

42:48SPEAKERis that right?

42:49SPEAKERSo you can, or more to the point,

42:51SPEAKERcan you can respond to individual iMessages from somebody?

42:54SPEAKER- Yes.

42:55SPEAKER- Oh my God, okay, I have to set this up then.

42:57SPEAKER'Cause that's 98% of my use case.

42:59SPEAKER- That's exactly it.

43:01SPEAKERSo, like I said, I wish you could turn off things

43:03SPEAKERlike the Bluetooth audio sync on a per device basis

43:08SPEAKERthat you can't do, so it means that your phone calls

43:12SPEAKERare gonna ring in your headphones,

43:14SPEAKERjust like they would if you were wearing

43:15SPEAKERa pair of Bluetooth earphones,

43:17SPEAKERor in a car hooked up to a Bluetooth stereo.

43:20SPEAKERBut the benefit of having the notifications

43:23SPEAKERcome through the system is worth the hassle for me.

43:28SPEAKERLet's see, what else?

43:29SPEAKERWe've got Dropbox,

43:30SPEAKERwhich has been an indispensable part of my workflow

43:33SPEAKERfor like 20 years now, it seems like, 15 years.

43:36SPEAKERPowertoys, which we all use.

43:38SPEAKERThe Dropbox, I keep, honestly, I keep using Dropbox

43:41SPEAKERbecause you can right click on any file in your Dropbox

43:43SPEAKERand create a share link that you can send to somebody.

43:46SPEAKERThat is something that is useful on the daily.

43:50SPEAKERPowertoys I have running because I have things

43:51SPEAKERlike the launcher, the alt space bar launcher

43:56SPEAKERrunning all the time.

43:57SPEAKERI do fancy containers.

43:59SPEAKERThere's a couple other things I use there.

44:00SPEAKER- Yeah, I think Powertoys is just about

44:02SPEAKERa universal recommendation at this point.

44:04SPEAKERJust go ahead and install it.

44:05SPEAKERYou'll probably find something in there that you like.

44:08SPEAKER- Yeah, if you can't find something in Powertoys

44:10SPEAKERthat you like, I'd love to hear from you.

44:13SPEAKEROh, the other one is the imagery sizer is real good.

44:17SPEAKER- Yeah.

44:18SPEAKER- Look, there's actually 50 things in.

44:20SPEAKERI'm looking, I'm scrolling through the list.

44:21SPEAKERJust install Powertoys and noodle around

44:23SPEAKERwhether it's really good.

44:24SPEAKER- Yep, yep.

44:25SPEAKER- And Powertoys now lets you turn off things you don't use.

44:28SPEAKERSo you're not loading a bunch of extra stuff

44:30SPEAKERinto memory if you're not using it.

44:32SPEAKER- Oh, I didn't realize that.

44:32SPEAKER- Which is great, yeah.

44:34SPEAKERThat was a fairly recent edition, I think.

44:36SPEAKEROr maybe they just exposed it better now.

44:38SPEAKERSunshine, I keep running as well

44:40SPEAKER'cause I stream often the Steam Link streaming support

44:47SPEAKERto the Steam Deck is a little janky,

44:49SPEAKERespecially for newer titles.

44:50SPEAKERSo for example, Ghost of Tsushima,

44:52SPEAKERwhich I was playing last month,

44:54SPEAKERdidn't stream particularly well on the Steam Link version.

44:57SPEAKERSunshine was absolutely flawless

44:59SPEAKERand it's a fabulous, fabulous piece of software.

45:02SPEAKER- Yeah.

45:03SPEAKER- Wind dynamic desktop.

45:05SPEAKER- Yes, I have Googled it.

45:06SPEAKERI am looking at it now, go on.

45:08SPEAKER- So this is a tool that basically mimics

45:11SPEAKERthe OS X dynamic desktop feature for Windows users.

45:16SPEAKERThey have a whole bunch of packs of art,

45:21SPEAKERphotos, illustrations that change.

45:24SPEAKERBasically it changes the background

45:27SPEAKERthroughout the day as time changes.

45:28SPEAKERIt doesn't blend seamlessly like the OS X one does,

45:32SPEAKERbut it does change usually in a way that you notice

45:35SPEAKERand is very jarring five or six times a day,

45:38SPEAKERdepending on which pack you choose.

45:40SPEAKERI have the Firewatch Watchtower on my top monitor.

45:43SPEAKER- Oh yeah, that's like the prototypical example

45:46SPEAKERof what you would want to use this for.

45:47SPEAKER- Yeah, and then the Outset Island from Wind Waker

45:50SPEAKERon the bottom monitor.

45:52SPEAKERVideo game stuff, it turns out works really well

45:54SPEAKERbecause you can set the camera in one place

45:56SPEAKERand just get multiple images throughout the day.

45:58SPEAKER- Now that you mentioned it, I have looked at this before

46:00SPEAKERand yeah, I think there was like a gallery

46:02SPEAKERof like people were just going ham on every video game

46:05SPEAKERyou can think of with a day-night cycle for this.

46:07SPEAKER- I feel like there's a subreddit specifically for this tool

46:10SPEAKERwhere the people share stuff

46:11SPEAKERthat's not even in the main gallery.

46:12SPEAKER- Yeah, that's cool.

46:14SPEAKER- And it's easy to make your own also

46:15SPEAKER'cause you just basically have to make a bunch of images

46:19SPEAKERat specified intervals and then you put a little bit of a,

46:23SPEAKERI think it's JSON or XML, I can't remember,

46:25SPEAKERthat describes which images go when.

46:27SPEAKER- That's neat, but you said it is basically

46:29SPEAKERjust kind of a hard cut from one to the next?

46:31SPEAKER- It's a smash cut.

46:32SPEAKERIt doesn't do it when games are running.

46:35SPEAKERLike it's smart about when it,

46:37SPEAKERif there's a full screen app going,

46:39SPEAKERit doesn't do it 'cause it assumes you want not,

46:41SPEAKERyou don't wanna hit the system hard during that time.

46:44SPEAKERAnd I think that the wallpaper change over in Windows

46:47SPEAKERfor inexplicable reasons is a little bit of a system hog.

46:50SPEAKER- Yeah.

46:51SPEAKER- But yeah, it's like, I like it enough that I don't,

46:55SPEAKERI haven't turned it off in favor

46:56SPEAKERof just having static wallpaper.

46:58SPEAKER- All right, I might have to give that another look.

47:01SPEAKER- Let's see, what else?

47:02SPEAKERSo password is the password manager I've used for years.

47:05SPEAKERI continue to use it

47:06SPEAKERbecause they haven't had any major problems.

47:09SPEAKERIt does pass keys now,

47:10SPEAKERwhich I kind of don't really see the benefit of,

47:13SPEAKERbut here we are.

47:15SPEAKERWe still need to do a pass key episode.

47:16SPEAKERWe should put that on the list actually.

47:18SPEAKERAnd then the last one is this new Nvidia app.

47:21SPEAKERI installed the default.

47:22SPEAKERSo Nvidia has replaced the GeForce experience with,

47:26SPEAKERI think it's still beta, it might be official now,

47:29SPEAKERbut it's a thing that kind of takes,

47:32SPEAKERthey're consolidating the old Nvidia control panel

47:34SPEAKERthat's been around for 20 years

47:36SPEAKERand the GeForce experience app,

47:38SPEAKERwhich was the thing that would download your drivers

47:39SPEAKERautomatically for you and set settings

47:43SPEAKERso that you have like a decent experience in games,

47:46SPEAKERregardless of what hardware you had.

47:49SPEAKERBut they've added some really neat things to it lately,

47:50SPEAKERincluding the ability to hit temperature

47:54SPEAKERand power targets on your GPU, really.

47:59SPEAKERAnd you can limit perf to a fan speed target.

48:03SPEAKER- Really?

48:04SPEAKER- So if you're concerned about noise,

48:06SPEAKERyou can say, hey,

48:11SPEAKERmake my fan speed never higher than 60% and it'll do that.

48:14SPEAKER- Were you saying that basically replaces MSI Afterburner?

48:18SPEAKER- It replaces MSI Afterburner.

48:19SPEAKERYou could also use fan control

48:20SPEAKERfor the same thing on the GPU side.

48:22SPEAKER- I didn't realize fan control could control all that stuff.

48:26SPEAKERPower and not just,

48:28SPEAKERit doesn't key everything against fan speed.

48:30SPEAKER- So fan control will just do fan speed

48:32SPEAKERand then the thermal throttling will keep the GPU

48:34SPEAKERwhere you want it to be.

48:35SPEAKER- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

48:36SPEAKER- So yeah, that's it.

48:38SPEAKER- But this will let you just by percentage,

48:40SPEAKERlike the way Afterburner does, where you can just say like,

48:42SPEAKERhey, only go to 80% of the total power consumption

48:44SPEAKERof this thing?

48:45SPEAKER- Yes.

48:46SPEAKER- Okay.

48:48SPEAKERI'm jumping the gun a little bit here,

48:49SPEAKERbut I have MSI Afterburner and-

48:52SPEAKER- You shouldn't have to do Afterburner

48:54SPEAKERand fan control necessarily.

48:55SPEAKERI mean, you should have to do, you should have to,

48:58SPEAKERprobably one of these will do all of them.

48:59SPEAKERThermal throttling maybe not be desirable.

49:01SPEAKERThat's a personal choice.

49:03SPEAKER- I see, I see.

49:04SPEAKERI've got currently, I've got Afterburner set to 85% cap

49:07SPEAKERon my 4090.

49:08SPEAKER- Yeah, that seems right.

49:10SPEAKERLike the other way,

49:11SPEAKERthere's a bunch of ways to limit that realistically.

49:13SPEAKERLike the other thing you can do

49:14SPEAKERis set the frame rate limit in games.

49:16SPEAKER- Yeah, I do that too.

49:16SPEAKER- And if you set like 120 Hertz frame rate limit

49:18SPEAKERin your game, you're never gonna get above 80%

49:20SPEAKERon the GPU probably.

49:21SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

49:22SPEAKER- Depending on what resolutions you play.

49:24SPEAKERAnyway, like I had avoided install.

49:26SPEAKERI haven't run GeForce Experience in ages,

49:28SPEAKERbut I had avoided messing with that new Nvidia app.

49:30SPEAKERBut if it's A, if it's out of beta

49:32SPEAKERand B, if it replaces Afterburner,

49:33SPEAKERI might have to go ahead and go for it.

49:35SPEAKER- So I will say, I think,

49:37SPEAKERI don't know if it actually is lighter,

49:39SPEAKERbut it feels way more performant

49:40SPEAKERthan the GeForce Experience app ever has.

49:44SPEAKERAnd it has all of the stuff

49:45SPEAKERthat I used to use the GeForce Experience for.

49:47SPEAKER- Okay.

49:48SPEAKER- I'd also, it also does,

49:50SPEAKERso I like to have things that download things

49:52SPEAKERin the background for me.

49:52SPEAKERI don't have to think about them.

49:54SPEAKERIt will let you, it lets you do automatic drive.

49:58SPEAKERI don't, actually,

49:59SPEAKERI don't think it lets you do automatic driver install.

50:02SPEAKERIt does let you automatically download the drivers

50:04SPEAKERand have them ready for when you want to install them,

50:06SPEAKERwhich is the thing I'm looking for.

50:08SPEAKERAnd I think it's, I think it's out of beta now.

50:12SPEAKERIt looks like it doesn't say beta on the version anymore.

50:15SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm on a page where it still says download beta.

50:17SPEAKER- Yeah.

50:18SPEAKERGenerally speaking, I quite like it.

50:20SPEAKERIt also has access to all of their Nvidia internal apps,

50:24SPEAKERlike the, or the Nvidia created apps

50:26SPEAKERlike Broadcast and Omniverse.

50:29SPEAKERIt doesn't update those for you automatically yet,

50:31SPEAKERwhich is, I'd like to see come soon.

50:33SPEAKER- Cool.

50:34SPEAKER- And that's it for me in this history.

50:35SPEAKER- All right, well, moving on to my tray,

50:37SPEAKERI'll say, I sent you,

50:39SPEAKERwe were comparing screenshots earlier

50:41SPEAKERand you were like, wait,

50:42SPEAKERyou run MSI Afterburner all the time?

50:44SPEAKERAnd it reminded me, you don't have to, right?

50:46SPEAKERLike you set that limit once

50:48SPEAKERand then you don't have to actually start the app

50:50SPEAKERand boot anymore, right?

50:51SPEAKER- Depends on your card, I think, but I don't know for sure.

50:54SPEAKER- Okay, I should look into that.

50:56SPEAKERAnyway, there's that.

50:57SPEAKERWell, a lot of the other standard stuff you mentioned,

50:59SPEAKERlike fan control and Dropbox, ear trumpets.

51:02SPEAKER- I didn't talk about fan control actually.

51:04SPEAKER- Oh, well, we've talked about fan control a lot.

51:06SPEAKERYou should run fan control.

51:07SPEAKER- Fan control's really good.

51:08SPEAKERFan control lives, fan control is not in my tray.

51:12SPEAKERIt's on my bar.

51:13SPEAKERI pull it out so I can see the number on the liquid.

51:16SPEAKER- Interesting.

51:17SPEAKER- Yeah.

51:18SPEAKER- That's right.

51:18SPEAKERI guess you care more about watching that number,

51:21SPEAKERbeing on air cooling and it's kind of just like,

51:23SPEAKERwell, is it noisy?

51:24SPEAKERNo, okay, fine.

51:25SPEAKER- Yeah, so fan control, the one thing that you can,

51:27SPEAKERso fan control does let you control your GPU fan curves too,

51:30SPEAKERif you want.

51:31SPEAKER- Okay, yeah.

51:32SPEAKER- You have to flip that on manually though, I think.

51:34SPEAKER- Yes.

51:35SPEAKEREar trumpets, which we've talked about before.

51:38SPEAKER- I stopped using ear trumpet because I've limited,

51:41SPEAKERI have minimized the amount of changing I have to do

51:43SPEAKERso that I'm basically always on the same input and output now.

51:46SPEAKER- Yeah, ear trumpet's super useful.

51:47SPEAKERI mean, it's another one of those things that I largely use

51:50SPEAKERbecause I have such weird AV requirements, you know,

51:53SPEAKERlike when we're streaming,

51:54SPEAKERI'm like assigning different applications and games

51:57SPEAKERto different audio output devices

51:59SPEAKERand all kinds of stuff like that.

52:00SPEAKERAnd it's good for that sort of thing,

52:01SPEAKERbut it's also kind of good for everybody.

52:02SPEAKERLike just being able to quickly mute

52:04SPEAKERan individual application

52:06SPEAKERor control an individual application's volume at a whim

52:10SPEAKERis incredibly useful for everybody.

52:11SPEAKER- And just in Windows 11, you can do that now,

52:14SPEAKERbut ear trumpet makes it one click instead of like eight,

52:17SPEAKERwhich is the benefit, I think.

52:19SPEAKER- Yeah, I should, I don't know if this is too much detail

52:21SPEAKERfor this episode to get into,

52:23SPEAKERbut there's also the question of which icons

52:27SPEAKERdo you expose all the time in the tray

52:29SPEAKERand which ones are in that little collapsible menu?

52:32SPEAKER- It's only fan control for me.

52:34SPEAKER- That you see all the time?

52:35SPEAKER- Well, and then the network and the speaker

52:38SPEAKERand the microphone if I'm using the microphone.

52:40SPEAKER- Right, yeah, so I have put ear trumpet

52:43SPEAKERin that collapsible menu.

52:45SPEAKERThat might sound so hard to say

52:46SPEAKERbecause like you said,

52:48SPEAKERa fair amount of the ear trumpet functionality,

52:51SPEAKERlike you said, is now being exposed by Windows 11 itself,

52:55SPEAKERbut not 10, like some of that stuff was not there in 10.

52:58SPEAKER- Yeah, well, so the thing I will say,

53:02SPEAKERlike my need for ear trumpet went away

53:04SPEAKERwhen you could right click on the speaker

53:07SPEAKERand go to volume mixer directly from there.

53:09SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, like in fact, you can,

53:11SPEAKERif you just click that, left click it

53:14SPEAKERand hit the button to the right of the volume control

53:18SPEAKERin Windows 11, the select a sound output button.

53:20SPEAKERIf you mouse scroll, mouse wheel down,

53:22SPEAKERyou will just see all your running applications there.

53:24SPEAKER- Oh, I didn't know that.

53:25SPEAKER- You don't even have to open

53:26SPEAKERthe actual control panel volume mixer to mute or change.

53:29SPEAKER- So I just learned a new shortcut

53:31SPEAKERwhen control V opens that panel.

53:34SPEAKER- When control V opens that sound output selector

53:37SPEAKERand that's where you can mouse wheel down.

53:40SPEAKER- Today I learned.

53:41SPEAKER- Yeah, Windows 11's got some nice UI quality of lifestyle.

53:45SPEAKER- I feel like once you turn off all the crap that sucks,

53:48SPEAKERWindows 11's pretty good.

53:51SPEAKER- It's pretty universal truism.

53:53SPEAKER- Yeah, there you go.

53:54SPEAKER- Just remove all the stuff that sucks

53:56SPEAKERthen things are pretty good.

53:57SPEAKER- Yeah, if you get rid of everything that sucks,

53:59SPEAKERlook, if you want some more deep thoughts,

54:01SPEAKERsubscribe to the podcast.

54:02SPEAKER- Yep, I run, I've got Elgato control center running

54:06SPEAKERbecause it integrates the key light with the stream deck.

54:10SPEAKER- So I stopped running that on my desktop

54:12SPEAKERbecause I have that connected to home assistant now

54:14SPEAKERand I just have a scene set up

54:15SPEAKERfor the different lighting settings I want.

54:18SPEAKER- I don't think, I didn't realize the Elgato light stuff

54:20SPEAKERcould integrate with home assistant, but of course they can.

54:22SPEAKER- Everything that has a wifi connection

54:24SPEAKERand has a light on it,

54:24SPEAKERI think you can integrate with home assistant now.

54:26SPEAKER- Yeah, that makes sense.

54:28SPEAKERLast I checked, you had to run control center

54:30SPEAKERto get the stream deck integration to work, but.

54:32SPEAKER- Yeah, but so I have an Elgato home assistant integration

54:38SPEAKERand then I have a stream deck plugin

54:40SPEAKERthat connects to home assistant.

54:41SPEAKERSo I just hit a button and it changes the scene

54:43SPEAKERon home assistant for me.

54:45SPEAKER- I should really hook my stream deck into home assistant.

54:47SPEAKER- It's the stream deck home assistant integration

54:50SPEAKERis really nice for controlling lights and stuff.

54:52SPEAKER- I bet, I bet, I should do that.

54:55SPEAKERThe only other thing I've got in the tray

54:56SPEAKERis auto dark mode X.

54:58SPEAKER- Why, what is auto dark mode X do?

55:00SPEAKER- It's just a very simple little application

55:02SPEAKERthat lets you control the window,

55:04SPEAKERlike the dark light mode aspect of windows.

55:08SPEAKER- Can I make a suggestion here?

55:09SPEAKER- Yes.

55:10SPEAKER- What if you just, you know,

55:12SPEAKERdark mode all the time, baby.

55:14SPEAKER- Ah.

55:15SPEAKER- 24/7.

55:17SPEAKER- I have nothing against it.

55:18SPEAKERI fully understand why people just go 24/7 dark mode.

55:21SPEAKERI can't do it.

55:22SPEAKER- I'm in the windows underground, man.

55:23SPEAKERI'm just always dark mode.

55:25SPEAKER- The underground zone for windows.

55:27SPEAKER- Yeah.

55:28SPEAKER- I still like to have it on light mode during the day.

55:30SPEAKER- Wow.

55:31SPEAKER- Like quite frankly, if Microsoft would just,

55:33SPEAKERand OS X's had this for years,

55:35SPEAKERif they would just build in like timer functionality,

55:37SPEAKERif they would just build in and they've got nightlight.

55:40SPEAKER- Do they not have that, really?

55:41SPEAKER- No, they still do not.

55:43SPEAKERThey've got nightlight, which is the,

55:45SPEAKERis it nightlight on windows and night shift on OS X?

55:47SPEAKERIs that right?

55:47SPEAKERI believe that's right.

55:48SPEAKER- I think that that seems right.

55:49SPEAKER- That's the thing that makes your screen

55:51SPEAKERmore kind of amber warm colors, you know, on a timer,

55:55SPEAKERbut they do not have a timer built in

55:56SPEAKERfor changing from light mode to dark mode.

55:59SPEAKER- That is crazy, how is that not possible?

56:01SPEAKER- It is insane that they haven't,

56:03SPEAKERstill have not built that in after all this time.

56:05SPEAKER- So I did go, look, I went to check on this

56:07SPEAKER'cause I honestly, I can't believe

56:09SPEAKERthat that is not a thing that just happens.

56:12SPEAKERYou can now set your default windows mode

56:14SPEAKERand your default app mode differently

56:16SPEAKERso that windows tells apps to do dark mode or light mode

56:19SPEAKERand windows is in the opposite.

56:21SPEAKER- Yes.

56:22SPEAKER- But yeah, there's no timer, that's crazy.

56:23SPEAKER- Nope, there sure is not.

56:24SPEAKER- That is, wow.

56:25SPEAKER- It's really dumb.

56:27SPEAKERThe other, I'll say the other nice thing

56:28SPEAKERis that thing lets you assign a keyboard shortcut

56:30SPEAKERto changing between light and dark mode.

56:32SPEAKER- Oh, that's nice.

56:33SPEAKER- And then I mapped that keyboard shortcut

56:35SPEAKERto my stream deck so I can just hit a button

56:36SPEAKERon the stream deck to change from light to dark

56:38SPEAKERor back whenever I want.

56:40SPEAKER- I just know it's dark, it's nighttime

56:42SPEAKERwhen outside island gets, starts to see the sun go down.

56:46SPEAKER'Cause when dynamic desktop,

56:47SPEAKERyou put your GPS coordinates in

56:49SPEAKERand then it looks at where you are

56:51SPEAKERand gives you ambient light on your screenshots

56:54SPEAKERbased on ambient light in your outside world.

56:57SPEAKER- That's cool.

56:57SPEAKER- Yeah.

56:58SPEAKER- That's cool, all right.

57:00SPEAKER- Okay.

57:01SPEAKER- Start menus.

57:02SPEAKER- Start menu pins, I don't have very many things here.

57:04SPEAKERThis is from mostly portable apps

57:07SPEAKERand stuff that's annoying to launch for reasons.

57:10SPEAKERSo the list of things that will be installed here over time,

57:13SPEAKERthis is a relatively new install for me in Windows.

57:15SPEAKERSo there's a bunch of portable apps,

57:17SPEAKERstuff like open RGB and fan control.

57:20SPEAKERThere's WAB eject, open RGB runs full-time actually,

57:25SPEAKERand fan controller, both in the Sys tray.

57:27SPEAKERBut if you talk about them here,

57:29SPEAKERbecause the portable apps,

57:30SPEAKERif you don't put them someplace,

57:33SPEAKERthen hitting the Windows key

57:35SPEAKERand typing the name of the application won't launch them.

57:37SPEAKERAnd the way I launch most things

57:39SPEAKERis either by hitting Windows and then typing the name

57:42SPEAKERor doing Alt + Space and typing the name.

57:44SPEAKER- Yep.

57:46SPEAKER- So most of the stuff I use this for

57:49SPEAKERis that category of things.

57:50SPEAKERAnd it's also stuff like Ubisoft Connect,

57:53SPEAKERwhich is the new name for the Uplay app,

57:55SPEAKERwhich is Ubisoft's non-Steam launcher

57:59SPEAKERfor things like Rocksmith,

58:00SPEAKERbecause I play Rocksmith every day.

58:02SPEAKERAnd as a result, I need to launch Ubisoft Connect,

58:05SPEAKERwhich despite being installed on my system for years,

58:08SPEAKERdoesn't have a start menu entry

58:09SPEAKERaside from this pin that I made.

58:11SPEAKERI don't understand that.

58:12SPEAKERWabbit Jack is a mod organizer for,

58:17SPEAKERI think I have this installed for KOTOR maybe, KOTOR 2,

58:20SPEAKERI can't remember.

58:21SPEAKER- Yeah, we talked about it a few months ago, was it?

58:23SPEAKER- Yeah.

58:24SPEAKER- When we did that episode about mod stuff.

58:26SPEAKER- It's a mod manager for old games,

58:29SPEAKERlike early 2000s games, I think mostly, OBS Studio.

58:34SPEAKER- New Vegas is a big example.

58:36SPEAKER- Oh, that's what it was.

58:37SPEAKERIt was New Vegas is what I had it installed for.

58:38SPEAKER- Games of that era that need a ton of mods.

58:41SPEAKERIt's good for that stuff.

58:42SPEAKER- OBS Studio I have there,

58:44SPEAKERand then the Epic Games Launcher I have there.

58:45SPEAKERSo it's funny, I try not to ever click things to launch them.

58:50SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm kind of the same way.

58:52SPEAKERI'm kind of the same way, which is weird.

58:54SPEAKER'Cause I have, I could, one, two, is this 18?

58:58SPEAKERIt's like 22 icons pinned to my start menu,

59:01SPEAKEReven though I rarely click any of them.

59:03SPEAKER- So yeah, for me, they're mostly there

59:04SPEAKERso that the pound hitting start

59:07SPEAKERand typing the name will launch.

59:09SPEAKERThe one exception is the remote desktop connection,

59:11SPEAKERwhich I have a shortcut to launch directly

59:14SPEAKERinto the connection to my streaming PC.

59:17SPEAKER'Cause a few months ago, I was like,

59:19SPEAKERI don't need a monitor hooked up to this.

59:20SPEAKERI never use this monitor.

59:22SPEAKERAnd also the monitor died.

59:24SPEAKERSo it's kind of like,

59:26SPEAKERwe don't need to talk about the order

59:27SPEAKERin which those things happen.

59:28SPEAKER- Sure.

59:28SPEAKER- But yeah, so I have a direct link into the stream PC.

59:35SPEAKER- Yeah, that's awesome.

59:36SPEAKER- Yes, I am all for like,

59:38SPEAKERsince I got this PyKVM and put it on my server,

59:40SPEAKERI'm all for sort of virtualizing the displays

59:43SPEAKERon headless machines.

59:44SPEAKER- Yeah, like the number of times I need a display

59:48SPEAKERon that machine is practically nil.

59:50SPEAKERI have a cable that runs to the second

59:52SPEAKERand put on one of my other monitors

59:53SPEAKERfor those handful of times that I do.

59:56SPEAKERAnd then the rest of the time, I just don't need it.

59:57SPEAKERI should take the old monitor.

59:59SPEAKERWhat I should really do is take the old monitor apart.

1:00:01SPEAKERI'm pretty sure that there's just like a capacitor

1:00:03SPEAKERthat popped on it that I could probably fix up

1:00:05SPEAKERand solve the problem.

1:00:07SPEAKERBut anyway, so that's it for me.

1:00:10SPEAKERThat's all I have.

1:00:11SPEAKERAnd like I said, things will add over time

1:00:13SPEAKERas I add more portable apps and stuff.

1:00:14SPEAKERLike honestly, I should put Notepad++ there

1:00:17SPEAKER'cause that's one that I keep open

1:00:18SPEAKERand I use a portable version of that.

1:00:22SPEAKERThe other stuff that I have installed

1:00:24SPEAKERas portable versions is like, it's funny.

1:00:30SPEAKERPortable apps for me are things that I use infrequently

1:00:32SPEAKERbut need when I need them, I guess.

1:00:37SPEAKERAnd they're in my home folder,

1:00:38SPEAKERnot in my documents folder anymore

1:00:42SPEAKER'cause it's cleverer than I needed to be

1:00:45SPEAKERI think a few years ago.

1:00:46SPEAKERAnyway, what do you got, Brad?

1:00:48SPEAKER- All right, start menu, Affinity Photo.

1:00:51SPEAKER- That's a good one.

1:00:52SPEAKER- For people who don't know, it's basically 99%

1:00:55SPEAKERof what you need in Photoshop

1:00:57SPEAKERother than like complicated PSD rendering.

1:01:01SPEAKER- Yes, I swear by Affinity Photo, I use it weekly.

1:01:05SPEAKERThere are other stuff.

1:01:07SPEAKERI can't remember the names of their other stuff

1:01:08SPEAKERbut they basically have a Photoshop equivalent,

1:01:10SPEAKERan Illustrator equivalent and one other one.

1:01:13SPEAKERWhat is Adobe's--

1:01:13SPEAKER- Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo

1:01:15SPEAKERand I don't ever use the other one.

1:01:18SPEAKERI don't even think I have it installed.

1:01:19SPEAKER- What is Adobe's like desktop publishing?

1:01:22SPEAKER- Oh, InDesign.

1:01:23SPEAKER- Okay, I assume--

1:01:24SPEAKER- That's Designer.

1:01:25SPEAKERDesigner is kind of like shoots the gap

1:01:27SPEAKERbetween Illustrator and InDesign.

1:01:29SPEAKER- Okay, at any rate, they're quite serviceable

1:01:32SPEAKERsort of Adobe equivalents or extremely cheap.

1:01:36SPEAKER- I would say they're one price.

1:01:39SPEAKERThey're not a subscription.

1:01:40SPEAKER- Yeah, you can get a whole bundle

1:01:42SPEAKERor oh yeah, they're not a subscription

1:01:43SPEAKERbut also you can buy them piecemeal

1:01:45SPEAKERbut they also run constant sales on the bundle

1:01:48SPEAKERof all three of them like I'm looking.

1:01:51SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:01:51SPEAKER- The full license for all three of those applications

1:01:55SPEAKERacross Mac, Windows and iOS is $83 right now

1:01:59SPEAKERand then again, that's like lifetime

1:02:00SPEAKERfor all those versions.

1:02:03SPEAKER- Publisher is their InDesign clone.

1:02:05SPEAKER- Okay.

1:02:06SPEAKER- And just for the record, right now everything's half off

1:02:08SPEAKERuntil the 15th so it's 80 bucks for all three.

1:02:11SPEAKER- Yeah, it's 165 normally for all those

1:02:13SPEAKERand there was even a further sale

1:02:14SPEAKERand I got upgrade pricing.

1:02:15SPEAKERI think I got all three of version two for like 60 bucks.

1:02:18SPEAKER- And do you get the iPad versions too if you care about that

1:02:22SPEAKERwhich is nice.

1:02:23SPEAKER- It's kind of a no brainer if you have any kind

1:02:25SPEAKERof like photo editing needs I think

1:02:26SPEAKERand don't wanna deal with Adobe stuff

1:02:28SPEAKERwhich I absolutely do not.

1:02:29SPEAKERI will say this is maybe a little paranoid

1:02:31SPEAKERbut Affinity did just get bought by Canva some weeks ago.

1:02:34SPEAKER- Yeah. - Or months.

1:02:36SPEAKER- I would buy them now while you can.

1:02:38SPEAKER- I was on Affinity photo one

1:02:40SPEAKERand it was basically just fine

1:02:42SPEAKERbut between that sale price of being like 60 bucks to upgrade

1:02:45SPEAKERand the fact that they got bought out kind of felt like,

1:02:49SPEAKERI should probably own the newest version

1:02:51SPEAKERjust in case anything bad happens.

1:02:53SPEAKER- So the one place I will say that they're not great

1:02:56SPEAKERis with complicated PSD,

1:02:59SPEAKERlike giant multi-layer files they have a problem with.

1:03:02SPEAKER- Yes, I have heard from people

1:03:04SPEAKERlike if you have to work with people who use Photoshop

1:03:07SPEAKERand are gonna give you a bunch of Photoshop derived PSDs

1:03:10SPEAKERand stuff that might lead to some headaches.

1:03:12SPEAKER- Yeah, we used complicated PSDs to do marketing files.

1:03:17SPEAKERIf you're making a game you need 55 different versions

1:03:19SPEAKERof the key art at different aspect ratios

1:03:21SPEAKERand with different things

1:03:22SPEAKERand some people can't have gunshots

1:03:24SPEAKERand some people can't have guns

1:03:26SPEAKERand some people can't have text

1:03:27SPEAKERand all this different stuff.

1:03:29SPEAKERSo you make these really complicated PSD files

1:03:32SPEAKERand Affinity, it was much like when you open a contract

1:03:37SPEAKERfrom your lawyer in Google documents and send it back

1:03:40SPEAKERand you jack up all the subheads opening a complicated PSD

1:03:44SPEAKERand then saving it with Affinity is a kind of war crime.

1:03:47SPEAKERSo don't do that.

1:03:48SPEAKER- Yeah, yes.

1:03:51SPEAKERWhat else do I have here?

1:03:52SPEAKERHW info, I guess hardware info is how people say that.

1:03:55SPEAKER- Incredibly useful tool.

1:03:56SPEAKER- Yes, I think there are other equivalents out there

1:03:59SPEAKERlike isn't HW monitor another one hardware monitor?

1:04:02SPEAKER- HW monitor is another one like CPU-Z and GPU-Z

1:04:05SPEAKERbut could both kind of do similar stuff.

1:04:07SPEAKER- Yes, similar wheelhouse but hardware info

1:04:10SPEAKERis the one I happen to use.

1:04:12SPEAKER- It basically lets you look deep into the guts of your PC

1:04:14SPEAKERand what the numbers are at.

1:04:16SPEAKER- Yes, yes, especially let's say when CPUs

1:04:20SPEAKERare in a regular habit of burning themselves

1:04:22SPEAKERto death these days and you need to keep an eye

1:04:24SPEAKERon your voltages and temperatures.

1:04:26SPEAKER- Yeah, it's probably fine though.

1:04:27SPEAKERDon't worry about it.

1:04:27SPEAKER- It's a very nice thing to have.

1:04:29SPEAKERBoy, we had a little eye-opening moment right before this

1:04:34SPEAKERwhen I was just casually mentioning to you like,

1:04:35SPEAKER"Oh, I tried to launch Half-Life Alyx yesterday

1:04:37SPEAKERand it told me I was out of GPU memory

1:04:39SPEAKERfor some weird reason."

1:04:39SPEAKERAnd you were like, "Huh."

1:04:41SPEAKER- That's one of them.

1:04:42SPEAKER- Apparently that's one of the telltale signs

1:04:44SPEAKERof your 13th and 14th gen Intel CPU starting to die

1:04:48SPEAKERor starting to get unstable.

1:04:50SPEAKER- It's the failure that is indicative of a problem.

1:04:53SPEAKEROne of them, yeah.

1:04:54SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, anyway, hardware info, good to have.

1:04:57SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:04:58SPEAKER- Lossless cut, I think I've mentioned before.

1:05:00SPEAKER- Yeah, does this just chop video files

1:05:02SPEAKERinto two separate pieces?

1:05:04SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, it's a little more robust than that.

1:05:06SPEAKERIt's actually, it's just a front end for FFmpeg.

1:05:08SPEAKERYou could do all this from the command line,

1:05:10SPEAKERbut it would be a real pain in the ass.

1:05:11SPEAKER- Yeah, no thanks.

1:05:12SPEAKER- This gives you a full-size preview window

1:05:14SPEAKERand you can keep or shortcut your way through it

1:05:16SPEAKERand set the ins and outs graphically on a timeline.

1:05:20SPEAKER- Oh, that's nice.

1:05:21SPEAKERSo if you have a clip you want to share on social

1:05:23SPEAKERor something from your hot gameplay.

1:05:25SPEAKER- And it's like, it's one of those applications

1:05:27SPEAKERthat is available from the developer's GitHub.

1:05:29SPEAKERIt's like just a portable install.

1:05:31SPEAKERI don't even know if they have an installer version of it.

1:05:33SPEAKERIt's a very lightweight little front end.

1:05:35SPEAKERYou can just go download it and unzip it and run it.

1:05:38SPEAKERYou can set multiple ins and outs on the same file.

1:05:40SPEAKERYou know, I could say like from 1052 to 11, blah, blah,

1:05:44SPEAKERand then go further in the file and do a couple more

1:05:46SPEAKERand then just hit one, hit the export button once

1:05:48SPEAKERand it'll just spit out files of each of those clips.

1:05:51SPEAKER- And that's really cool.

1:05:52SPEAKER- You can tell it to cut on key frames,

1:05:56SPEAKERwhich is what I always do

1:05:58SPEAKERbecause generally cutting on a key frame

1:06:00SPEAKERis gonna give you basically a perfectly accurate cut

1:06:02SPEAKERexactly where you told it to.

1:06:03SPEAKER'Cause if you cut off of a key frame, it's gonna be fuzzy.

1:06:06SPEAKER- The iframes, well, it's not even just fuzzy.

1:06:09SPEAKERSometimes the information's not there and weird stuff happens

1:06:11SPEAKER- Or it'll default to a key frame

1:06:13SPEAKERif you try to tell it to cut in between.

1:06:15SPEAKERI think it'll re-encode for you, but the whole point of,

1:06:19SPEAKERI mean, it's literally called lossless cut.

1:06:20SPEAKERThe whole idea is you're just cutting stuff out

1:06:24SPEAKERvery quickly, right?

1:06:24SPEAKER'Cause it's not re-compressing.

1:06:26SPEAKER- Yeah, that's lovely.

1:06:27SPEAKER'Cause like that's always my fear when I'm doing,

1:06:29SPEAKERwhen I have to chop a video up is that the tool I use

1:06:32SPEAKERwill re-encode it for me.

1:06:33SPEAKER- Yeah, and so you don't have this option

1:06:35SPEAKERfor stuff you download,

1:06:37SPEAKERbut what I've actually started doing is

1:06:38SPEAKERfor everything I record locally.

1:06:40SPEAKERSo my streams, the ramble cast, which we do on video,

1:06:43SPEAKERlike a bunch of stuff like that.

1:06:45SPEAKERI set the key frame interval to 10 frames,

1:06:49SPEAKERmeaning that I get a key frame every sixth of a second.

1:06:52SPEAKERAnd basically that just gives me a ton of viable cut points

1:06:55SPEAKERin the video.

1:06:57SPEAKERThat does lead to the files being dramatically bigger,

1:06:59SPEAKERbut I mean- - Yeah, but that's okay.

1:07:00SPEAKERFor what you're doing, like it doesn't-

1:07:02SPEAKER- Yeah, like I'm recording them.

1:07:03SPEAKERI'm recording them to a two terabyte SSD.

1:07:05SPEAKERIt's not a big, and I don't keep them forever.

1:07:07SPEAKERSo yeah, like granted a longer stream could turn out

1:07:11SPEAKERto be like a 50 gigabyte archive file at a high quality.

1:07:14SPEAKER- Yeah, but also the benefit of that is

1:07:16SPEAKERif you want some screens from that,

1:07:17SPEAKERyou can go out and pull those I-frames out,

1:07:18SPEAKERthe key frames out and you get good quality screens too.

1:07:22SPEAKER- Yeah, but so having key frames that often means

1:07:24SPEAKERI have a ton of options for exactly where to cut

1:07:26SPEAKERand I can just cut the trim,

1:07:27SPEAKERthe front and back off very quickly.

1:07:29SPEAKER- Can you trim audio independently at a different time?

1:07:31SPEAKEROr is it all- - Yes.

1:07:32SPEAKER- Okay, like if you wanna trim a little bit of audio out,

1:07:36SPEAKERbut have video there, can you do that?

1:07:38SPEAKER- Yes, if I understand what you're asking.

1:07:42SPEAKER- Like say I have a video that the audio

1:07:46SPEAKERfrom the previous person talking is crashing

1:07:48SPEAKERinto the start of the action on the video a little bit.

1:07:50SPEAKERYou can chop the first like three seconds of audio out,

1:07:53SPEAKERbut leave the video there.

1:07:54SPEAKERYou'd have to remix those files externally.

1:07:58SPEAKERIt won't, I think you'd have to spit out separate files

1:08:02SPEAKERand recombine them yourself.

1:08:03SPEAKER- Okay.

1:08:04SPEAKER- Like I said, it's pretty lightweight.

1:08:05SPEAKERIt does let you select different audio tracks, for example,

1:08:09SPEAKERand say like cut this segment that I've highlighted

1:08:11SPEAKERwith just the video and track three of the audio

1:08:14SPEAKERor just the audio for that matter.

1:08:16SPEAKERYou can use it just to export audio

1:08:18SPEAKERout of a video file as well.

1:08:20SPEAKER- Yeah, so if you like record your voice

1:08:22SPEAKERand your gameplay audio on OBS and different chat tracks.

1:08:25SPEAKERCool.

1:08:26SPEAKER- It's super useful.

1:08:27SPEAKER- Seems really good.

1:08:27SPEAKER- Yeah, make MKV, which I don't use as much these days,

1:08:30SPEAKERbut it's kind of the standard

1:08:31SPEAKERfor ripping your Blu-rays and UHD discs.

1:08:35SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a really good way to get content off of a disc

1:08:38SPEAKERonto a file that you can use with no copy protection.

1:08:41SPEAKER- Yes, it's just a good thing to have around, you know,

1:08:43SPEAKEReven if you just pull some old DVDs

1:08:46SPEAKERthat you forgot you had and wanna say you find your copy

1:08:48SPEAKERof "Metal Gear Solid 2" the trailer.

1:08:51SPEAKER- Oh yeah.

1:08:51SPEAKER- Maybe the Japan only exclusive release on DVD

1:08:54SPEAKERof the "Metal Gear Solid 2" E3 trailer.

1:08:56SPEAKER- The thing I literally didn't know existed until just now.

1:08:59SPEAKER- Yes, but like, you know, make MKV is useful

1:09:02SPEAKERfor like dumping video off of old discs

1:09:04SPEAKERand stuff like that as well.

1:09:06SPEAKERNo bad plus plus, which I don't use as much as I should,

1:09:08SPEAKERbut it's a great monospace text editor in Windows.

1:09:12SPEAKER- That's what I use these days.

1:09:13SPEAKER- Although if there were something a little more lightweight,

1:09:16SPEAKERa little bit less feature heavy,

1:09:19SPEAKERI might be interested in it.

1:09:20SPEAKER- I'm gonna tell you a secret, since they added tabs

1:09:22SPEAKERto Notepad in Windows in dark mode,

1:09:25SPEAKERI kind of just use Notepad as often as I use Notepad plus plus.

1:09:28SPEAKER- That's kind of where I'm at these days.

1:09:30SPEAKERI use a lot of regular Windows 11 Notepad.

1:09:32SPEAKERI do hate that you, I fucking cannot stand

1:09:35SPEAKERthat you can't turn off the smooth scrolling though.

1:09:37SPEAKER- The one thing I like about Notepad plus plus,

1:09:39SPEAKERand Notepad, the default Notepad tool does this too,

1:09:43SPEAKERbut it is persistent, so your tabs remain between sessions.

1:09:47SPEAKERSo if you close the file, if you close the program,

1:09:50SPEAKERit opens up the same stuff you had opened last time.

1:09:52SPEAKERThat's a setting, I'm sure,

1:09:53SPEAKERbut that's the way I have it set up.

1:09:55SPEAKERSo if I have text files, for example,

1:09:57SPEAKERif I had something like a giant long list of keys to a game,

1:10:03SPEAKERand I needed to keep them open and accessible

1:10:05SPEAKERand refreshed constantly

1:10:06SPEAKERwhen somebody else changes that file,

1:10:08SPEAKERit's a great way to do that.

1:10:10SPEAKERBetter way is probably a spreadsheet though.

1:10:11SPEAKER- Nope, some other stuff here.

1:10:13SPEAKERAnd again, I don't really click any of these almost ever.

1:10:16SPEAKERLike you said, I mostly put these in start menu

1:10:18SPEAKERjust so I can type the name.

1:10:20SPEAKER- Yeah. - And launch them.

1:10:21SPEAKERSo there's other stuff that I don't have pinned

1:10:23SPEAKERthat I also use quite a bit.

1:10:24SPEAKERThis is just what I happen to have pinned.

1:10:26SPEAKEROCCT, which is a very nice robust hardware stress tester

1:10:31SPEAKERfor, you know, test your memory or CPU.

1:10:34SPEAKER- Yep, it turns out it doesn't help

1:10:35SPEAKERwith the Intel 13th and 14th gen problems.

1:10:37SPEAKER- Really? - So it passes reliably.

1:10:38SPEAKER- Interesting, that's good to know.

1:10:40SPEAKER- Sometimes it'll trigger an error in the error log,

1:10:42SPEAKEReven though it passes the OCCT test.

1:10:44SPEAKER- Is it centipinch that people are using

1:10:47SPEAKERto reveal all these problems?

1:10:49SPEAKER- It is different for almost every computer.

1:10:52SPEAKER- Wow, fun.

1:10:54SPEAKER- A bunch of different tools.

1:10:55SPEAKERShader decompile, or shader compiling, pretty reliable.

1:10:59SPEAKERDecompressing sometimes reliable.

1:11:02SPEAKERInstalling your Nvidia drivers will do it

1:11:04SPEAKERfor a lot of people these days.

1:11:05SPEAKER- Interesting, it sounds like I need to just go run

1:11:08SPEAKERa bunch of games and see if I,

1:11:09SPEAKER'cause like I said, I haven't fired up Half-Life Alyx

1:11:12SPEAKERon this machine ever until yesterday

1:11:14SPEAKERand was immediately greeted with that error

1:11:17SPEAKERand I was like, huh.

1:11:18SPEAKER- I feel like Call of Duty and Fortnite

1:11:19SPEAKERare ones that people reliably said.

1:11:21SPEAKER- Fortnite, I feel like Fortnite was like the one, right?

1:11:24SPEAKER- Fortnite was what did it for me.

1:11:25SPEAKERIt's Oodle, anything that uses Oodle

1:11:27SPEAKERfor texture compression or asset compression.

1:11:31SPEAKER- Love personal computers these days.

1:11:36SPEAKERParsec, very useful for screen sharing,

1:11:38SPEAKERplaying games remotely on other people's computers,

1:11:40SPEAKERwhich we use for work quite a bit.

1:11:42SPEAKER- Do you use that for like poor player,

1:11:44SPEAKEReverybody sitting on the same couch type games, or?

1:11:47SPEAKER- I'd say like 95% of the time we're just using Parsec

1:11:50SPEAKERto see what somebody else is playing.

1:11:52SPEAKER- Oh, with low latency?

1:11:53SPEAKER- We almost never use the like controller sharing

1:11:56SPEAKERor local multiplayer stuff, although occasionally.

1:11:59SPEAKERIt's more for just sort of like screen snooping for us.

1:12:02SPEAKER- We did, I used Parsec to set up remote play tests

1:12:04SPEAKERfor The Antichrist when we were doing,

1:12:08SPEAKERbefore the game was out when we wanted to get play tests

1:12:11SPEAKERand didn't want to have people in the office.

1:12:12SPEAKERIt was really good.

1:12:13SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, Parsec is great.

1:12:14SPEAKERI mean, there are some things I could nitpick

1:12:15SPEAKERabout the feature set that I wish were a little better.

1:12:17SPEAKERI really, anybody who works on Parsec is listening to this.

1:12:21SPEAKERThe ability to tell Parsec, hey, only capture audio

1:12:23SPEAKERfrom this specific application would be absolutely huge.

1:12:28SPEAKER- Oh.

1:12:28SPEAKER- Which you can only set it to per device.

1:12:30SPEAKERSo you can tell it which audio output device

1:12:33SPEAKERyou want it to capture,

1:12:34SPEAKERbut it's still gonna get every bit of sound