50: Two Is One, One Is None

00:00SPEAKER(coughing)

00:02SPEAKER- Sound like you've got a frog on your throat, Will.

00:04SPEAKER- Well, it's not a frog.

00:05SPEAKERIt's a small particulate matter, it turns out.

00:08SPEAKER- More of a clog.

00:10SPEAKER- Yeah, well, the good news is the fire stuff,

00:13SPEAKERthe fires around us have receded a little bit.

00:15SPEAKERLike they're getting under control.

00:18SPEAKERThe smoke is less bad.

00:19SPEAKERIt's all going to Chicago and Montana

00:21SPEAKERand places like that now.

00:22SPEAKER- Yeah, have you looked at any of those national maps

00:24SPEAKERof smoke and fire coverage?

00:25SPEAKER'Cause it's kind of like a third of the country.

00:29SPEAKEROr it was at the peak, at least.

00:31SPEAKER- I talked to Fitz the other day

00:33SPEAKERand he said that they were expecting in Chicago

00:36SPEAKERto get our smoke like three days before that.

00:40SPEAKER- That's just gotta be a pure quantity of smoke thing, right?

00:43SPEAKER'Cause I would have thought it would dissipate

00:45SPEAKERlong before it got that far.

00:47SPEAKERSo it must be that thick that it coheres for that far?

00:51SPEAKER- I don't, I can't, I haven't seen pictures.

00:53SPEAKERWe got a couple of letters from people.

00:54SPEAKERSomebody in Montana said they were getting our smoke too.

00:57SPEAKER- My guess is that like bad smoke in Chicago

01:01SPEAKERfrom California fires is like a awesome day right now for us.

01:05SPEAKER- Sure.

01:06SPEAKER- And like our, I think, I can't remember.

01:10SPEAKERMaybe it was Jeff set up in the North Bay.

01:12SPEAKERHis PM 2.5, which is, I can't remember what that number is,

01:16SPEAKERbut it's the number everybody looks at

01:18SPEAKERfor a particular matter, was like in the high 200s,

01:22SPEAKERwhich is-

01:23SPEAKER- I think he said it was over 300 one day.

01:25SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, and that's when you go outside

01:29SPEAKERand start coughing immediately in my experience.

01:31SPEAKERIt's really unpleasant.

01:33SPEAKER- That is half of the AQI, the air quality index.

01:36SPEAKER- Oh yeah, what's the other half?

01:37SPEAKER- It's the PM 2.5 and ozone is the other rating.

01:40SPEAKER- Ah yes, ozone. - That they combine together.

01:41SPEAKERWe've actually been back in the green

01:43SPEAKERfor the first time in like a week.

01:45SPEAKER- So the wonderful thing about Pacifica being on the coast

01:48SPEAKERis that when the fog hits at the end of the day,

01:50SPEAKERusually it takes about an hour for the water droplets

01:52SPEAKERto pull all that stuff out of the air.

01:55SPEAKERAnd we've been lucky enough to open our windows

01:58SPEAKERfor multiple hours each night and air out the house.

02:02SPEAKER- You get that wonderful Bay Area evening reprieve.

02:06SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm at a 36 right now.

02:09SPEAKER- 36?

02:10SPEAKER- 39.

02:10SPEAKER- Damn.

02:11SPEAKER- Yeah, 39, real good.

02:12SPEAKERAnd then because the windows have been open,

02:14SPEAKERour carbon dioxide inside the house

02:16SPEAKERis 440 parts per million.

02:18SPEAKER- Wait, how do you know that?

02:19SPEAKER- I have a sensor.

02:20SPEAKER- What? - Yeah.

02:21SPEAKER- You have your own weather sensor?

02:22SPEAKER- I have multiple weather sensors.

02:24SPEAKERI have an indoor sensor that measures the temperature,

02:27SPEAKERthe barometric pressure, the relative quietness,

02:30SPEAKERthe humidity and the carbon dioxide.

02:32SPEAKERAnd then I have outdoor sensors

02:35SPEAKERthat measure the PM 2.5 number,

02:38SPEAKERthe temperature, the barometric pressure,

02:40SPEAKERthe dew point, the humidity, the accumulated rainfall,

02:45SPEAKERand the speed and gustiness of wind.

02:49SPEAKER- How do you get in on all this action?

02:50SPEAKERDo you have to get certified or something?

02:52SPEAKERAre you a meteorologist now?

02:54SPEAKER- Look, I'm gonna go and tell you,

02:55SPEAKERwhen you become a dad suddenly and you don't wear ties,

02:59SPEAKERFather's Day is challenging.

03:01SPEAKERSo a few years ago, my daughter and wife

03:05SPEAKERbought me a weather station

03:07SPEAKER'cause I had expressed some interest in it.

03:09SPEAKERAnd it has been a very fun,

03:11SPEAKERbut almost completely useless thing to have

03:13SPEAKER'cause it basically just says like what the one

03:16SPEAKERthat's wired to the roof of the school

03:18SPEAKERaround the corner from us says.

03:19SPEAKER- My very own weather station, every man's dream.

03:23SPEAKER- Look, I remember looking in the back of "Boy's Life"

03:25SPEAKERand I was like, "X-ray specs, that's kind of cool.

03:29SPEAKER"A hovercraft, you can turn an old vacuum cleaner

03:32SPEAKER"into a hovercraft, that's great,

03:33SPEAKER"but where am I gonna get an old vacuum cleaner?

03:35SPEAKER"A weather station?

03:36SPEAKER"I would love this."

03:37SPEAKERAnd dad was like, "What good is a weather station gonna do?"

03:42SPEAKERBut now he can't tell me what to do.

03:44SPEAKERI'm my own dad.

03:45SPEAKER- Yeah, you're armed with the power of numbers.

03:49SPEAKER- Yeah, and it's connected to the internet.

03:51SPEAKER- Well, now you gotta throw out the trash.

03:53SPEAKER(upbeat music)

04:19SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)

04:25SPEAKER- Welcome to "Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod."

04:28SPEAKERI'm Will.

04:29SPEAKER- I'm Brad, it's email time.

04:31SPEAKER- You know, it's also something else, Brad.

04:33SPEAKERThis is episode 50.

04:35SPEAKER- Whoa, that's a lot.

04:36SPEAKERThat's not quite a year, but just under.

04:40SPEAKER- No, if we're gonna do a big rebrand or something though,

04:42SPEAKERwe gotta get right on it.

04:43SPEAKER'Cause I feel like the past tense thing

04:47SPEAKERmaybe was a mistake and we got one more chance

04:49SPEAKERto make it right.

04:50SPEAKER- Is this the first time you've said this publicly?

04:51SPEAKERIt's not the first time you've said it privately.

04:53SPEAKER- I can't remember.

04:54SPEAKER- I don't know if you actually floated this idea

04:57SPEAKERin front of the audience before.

04:59SPEAKER- I think it was just to you.

05:00SPEAKER- The idea of changing the name of the podcast has come up.

05:03SPEAKER- Yeah, Brad and Will are making a tech pod.

05:05SPEAKER- Yeah, you know, when you put it that way,

05:07SPEAKERlike the past tense makes it sound

05:08SPEAKERlike it's not happening anymore so much.

05:12SPEAKER- Yeah, that's true.

05:14SPEAKER- Is that your big reasoning?

05:15SPEAKERYou never really gave me much of a pitch for exactly why.

05:18SPEAKER- Look, yeah, that's it.

05:19SPEAKERIs it feels weird to be talking in,

05:21SPEAKERdoing something in the present tense

05:23SPEAKERthat we're discussing in the past tense.

05:25SPEAKER- I don't know that either of us

05:26SPEAKERwere ever particularly happy with this name.

05:28SPEAKERIt's just that we couldn't think of anything else.

05:30SPEAKER- I mean, I kind of liked sweatpants tech pod,

05:32SPEAKERbut it's very dumb.

05:34SPEAKERAnd also like I'd never wear anything but sweatpants now.

05:36SPEAKERSo it would be entirely true.

05:38SPEAKER- Also, I don't think that name got spoken or suggested

05:41SPEAKERuntil we had already recorded.

05:43SPEAKERLike that came out on-- - The sweatpants tech pod?

05:45SPEAKER- I think that came out during an episode.

05:47SPEAKERSo we were already doing the podcast.

05:49SPEAKER- That's possible.

05:50SPEAKER- We do have that Twitter though.

05:52SPEAKER- Yeah.

05:53SPEAKER- I think, I don't know, I'm not opposed to it necessarily.

05:56SPEAKER- Let's hear what people think.

05:57SPEAKER- All right. - Let's get some feedback.

05:58SPEAKER- Name our podcast.

05:59SPEAKER- Yeah, help us name this podcast

06:00SPEAKERthat we've been doing for a year almost now.

06:02SPEAKER- Also we own all of your work.

06:04SPEAKER- Yes, we emailed it to ourselves already, it's ours.

06:07SPEAKER- That's right, we can prove it.

06:08SPEAKER- But emails, you said emails.

06:09SPEAKERSo you're saying that people sent electronic communiques

06:14SPEAKERto techpod@content.town.

06:17SPEAKER- I've got way more than I think

06:19SPEAKERwe have time to read actually.

06:20SPEAKER- Yeah, that's always the case.

06:22SPEAKER- There are 19 emails labeled here in this Gmail inbox,

06:25SPEAKERsome of which have two and even three labels on them.

06:28SPEAKER- That's too many labels.

06:30SPEAKER- So we've been nesting labels inside of labels.

06:33SPEAKERIf anybody knows a way to arbitrarily order emails in Gmail,

06:38SPEAKERI would love to know about it.

06:39SPEAKER- I, look, we have to have somebody that listens to this

06:42SPEAKERthat works at Google.

06:43SPEAKERI just, would you tromp over to the Gmail team

06:46SPEAKERand pop your whatever Google Teams thing that you use.

06:52SPEAKERLook, you can't go to their desk, I realize,

06:53SPEAKERbut just send them a note in Google's version of Slack,

06:57SPEAKERwhatever it is they call it, and be like,

06:58SPEAKER"Hey, these guys do this podcast

07:01SPEAKERand they wanna be able to drag the emails

07:02SPEAKERin whatever order you want

07:03SPEAKERinstead of having them reverse sorted by date."

07:06SPEAKERThat's all we want.

07:07SPEAKER- Do you know how much cognitive overhead

07:09SPEAKERthere is associated with trying to figure out

07:11SPEAKERwhich email to read next after the last one,

07:13SPEAKERbecause I can't put them in the order

07:14SPEAKERI would like to read them ahead of time?

07:16SPEAKER- Yeah, no, there's a reason

07:17SPEAKERthat we have to have two people to do the podcast.

07:19SPEAKERI couldn't do that and answer questions at the same time.

07:21SPEAKERThat would be impossible.

07:22SPEAKER- It is just, yes.

07:25SPEAKERAll right, let's dig in here.

07:26SPEAKERI love email week. - What do you got?

07:28SPEAKER- I have to confess, not having to think of a topic

07:32SPEAKERonce a month is, you don't understand the relief

07:35SPEAKERof just knowing what next week's episode is gonna be

07:38SPEAKERand not having to worry about it.

07:40SPEAKER- We should come up with another thing we can do

07:42SPEAKERunlike the other even weeks.

07:45SPEAKER- That sounds like cheating.

07:46SPEAKERI don't think we can get away with that.

07:47SPEAKER- Okay, okay, okay.

07:48SPEAKER- I mean, if we could serialize every other week,

07:51SPEAKERI would be all for it, but I don't know that,

07:54SPEAKERI don't know if we can get away with that one.

07:55SPEAKERAll right, where to start?

07:59SPEAKERWe've got a lot of stuff here.

08:02SPEAKER- Should we talk about disaster stuff?

08:03SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess, sure.

08:05SPEAKERWell, I don't know. - That's fresh.

08:06SPEAKER- It's fresh, it's pretty dark, but.

08:10SPEAKER- You don't wanna start with a showstopper.

08:12SPEAKER- No, I suppose you're right.

08:14SPEAKERAll right, well, you know what?

08:14SPEAKERI'm gonna read my favorite one of these emails

08:17SPEAKERabout evacuation and disaster preparedness first.

08:19SPEAKER- Sorry, everyone else.

08:21SPEAKER- I mean, no, nothing against them.

08:24SPEAKERYou'll see why I like it so much when I read it right now.

08:27SPEAKERIt's from Eric.

08:29SPEAKERI listened to your most recent episode

08:30SPEAKERon disaster preparedness,

08:31SPEAKERand I think you guys forgot to mention cash.

08:34SPEAKER- Yeah, no, we absolutely did.

08:36SPEAKER- Cash is important.

08:37SPEAKER- Really didn't think about cash.

08:39SPEAKER- I like seeds too,

08:40SPEAKERjust in case you need them for the after times.

08:41SPEAKER- Yes, clearly cash does not rule everything around us.

08:45SPEAKER- Also, we forgot water.

08:47SPEAKERWater is important too.

08:48SPEAKER- Yeah, actually, I believe there's also an email

08:50SPEAKERabout water in here that I should pull out as well,

08:53SPEAKERbut it seems like a good opportunity

08:56SPEAKERto just talk about the role of cash in daily life

08:59SPEAKERat this point.

09:00SPEAKERGranted, to be fair, I should preface that by saying,

09:03SPEAKERlike, if you're in a severe disaster situation,

09:05SPEAKERthat's not exactly routine daily life anymore.

09:08SPEAKERSo maybe cash has more importance in that scenario,

09:11SPEAKERbut like day to day,

09:13SPEAKERwhat's your cash life like at this point?

09:17SPEAKER- Mr. Softy comes to town on Tuesday and Thursday.

09:20SPEAKERI usually walk over to the ice cream truck

09:22SPEAKERat least once during that visit,

09:25SPEAKERand I exclusively pay in cash

09:28SPEAKERand leave bringing exactly the amount

09:30SPEAKERthat I know that I will need,

09:32SPEAKERand everything else becomes the tip.

09:33SPEAKERSo I don't have to take any money back from Mr. Softy.

09:36SPEAKER- It's 'cause you don't want to touch things

09:37SPEAKERthat other people have been touching.

09:38SPEAKER- I do not want to touch anything.

09:39SPEAKERI don't even want to touch myself.

09:41SPEAKERI'm gross.

09:41SPEAKER- I saw some research going around

09:44SPEAKERabout hand-washing actually being useful again after--

09:47SPEAKER- There was a super duper good article

09:49SPEAKERin Time Magazine yesterday, or day before,

09:52SPEAKERthat Erin Biba, who is a science journalist

09:55SPEAKERwho used to write for us on Tested

09:57SPEAKERin the Atlantic and all sorts of places.

09:59SPEAKERShe's great. - She's great on Twitter, yeah.

10:02SPEAKER- She's a good Twitter follow,

10:03SPEAKERand she shared this, said the science is vetted.

10:08SPEAKERLike, it was basically a roundup

10:10SPEAKERof ways you can catch the 'rona,

10:13SPEAKERand it is worth reading.

10:16SPEAKERI will make sure I put the link in the show notes,

10:18SPEAKER'cause everybody should read it.

10:20SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause it felt like there was a period

10:22SPEAKERfor the last few months where they talked

10:24SPEAKERlike surface transmission was not really a concern, so.

10:27SPEAKER- I mean, the TLDR on surface transmission

10:29SPEAKERis that it is a low percentage

10:31SPEAKERcompared to like aerosolized droplets and stuff like that.

10:37SPEAKERI mean, that's it.

10:38SPEAKERBut it's possible, but unlikely.

10:39SPEAKER- Not no chance, though.

10:41SPEAKER- Yeah, not no chance.

10:42SPEAKER- Okay, that's good to know.

10:42SPEAKER- You have to mess up.

10:44SPEAKER- Yeah.

10:45SPEAKERYeah, I don't know, like what is a,

10:48SPEAKERwhat's a good like cash stockpile for your bug-out bag?

10:52SPEAKER- I don't know if I want to say that on a podcast.

10:55SPEAKER- Yeah, maybe not.

10:56SPEAKERI mean, I have enough money that I could pay cash

11:01SPEAKERfor enough gas to get me--

11:04SPEAKER- Clear of the disaster.

11:06SPEAKER- A thousand miles, let's say.

11:08SPEAKERProbably with at least one car and maybe two.

11:10SPEAKER- Yeah, of course you gotta eat on the way as well.

11:13SPEAKER- Yeah.

11:14SPEAKER- Of course, hopefully you're gonna have

11:15SPEAKERsome food of some nature.

11:16SPEAKER- Probably gonna bring some food, yeah.

11:18SPEAKERI mean, we talked about this

11:21SPEAKERwhen we did the coronavirus episode,

11:23SPEAKERbut the weird thing about that

11:25SPEAKERis like all the other disasters that we've ever prepared for

11:28SPEAKERare ones that like you drive 200 miles and you're good.

11:30SPEAKERYou get a hurricane, you get an earthquake,

11:32SPEAKERyou drive a few hours, you're fine.

11:34SPEAKERWith that, you can't drive, you can't outdrive it,

11:37SPEAKERand that kind of changed my perspective

11:39SPEAKERon a lot of that stuff.

11:39SPEAKER- Sure, yeah.

11:42SPEAKER- But yeah, I always keep a few.

11:43SPEAKERI mean, I do keep a few, you know,

11:47SPEAKERthousand dollars worth of cash probably around.

11:49SPEAKER- Wow, that's way more than I would have suggested,

11:51SPEAKERbut do what you're comfortable with, I guess.

11:54SPEAKER- ATM won't work, right?

11:56SPEAKER- Yeah, that's fair.

11:58SPEAKERAs you know, as a follow-up to the soup wallet fiasco,

12:02SPEAKERI was looking around- - How's the wallet,

12:04SPEAKERby the way? - Looking around

12:05SPEAKERthe wallets a little bit.

12:06SPEAKERIt's kind of, it's amazing how many wallets

12:08SPEAKERtreat cash as an afterthought at this point, you know?

12:12SPEAKERA lot of them are- - On the day-to-day,

12:13SPEAKERI never carry cash.

12:14SPEAKER- Really? Okay.

12:16SPEAKER- Almost never.

12:18SPEAKERI would be subject to vagrancy laws

12:20SPEAKERin places where they still have vagrancy laws.

12:22SPEAKER- All right.

12:23SPEAKER- Yeah, I like to have 30, 40 bucks on me

12:26SPEAKERif I can at least, just in case, but, you know.

12:30SPEAKER- Fair.

12:31SPEAKER- But yeah, like, you know, a lot of wallet designs

12:32SPEAKERout there are pretty much purely built around cards

12:35SPEAKERand stuff at this point, so.

12:36SPEAKER- I think I might have a 20 wedged into the center,

12:39SPEAKERlike between my driver's license and my insurance card.

12:42SPEAKER- Okay, all right. - Yeah.

12:43SPEAKER- That'll get you somewhere.

12:45SPEAKER- Like, I can get a cab- - Probably to a bus

12:47SPEAKERto someplace my Clipper card will work probably.

12:49SPEAKER- Sure.

12:52SPEAKER- There's another email for me.

12:53SPEAKER- What's your cash hoard at the house?

12:55SPEAKERYou got, where you got it, is it in like cookie jar?

12:58SPEAKERWhat's your, can I get an exact location, please?

13:01SPEAKER- Oh, okay.

13:02SPEAKER- Are you trying to bait me here?

13:03SPEAKER- I'm just, I'm curious.

13:05SPEAKERIt's an honest question.

13:07SPEAKER- Actually, I don't have that much right now

13:09SPEAKER'cause I was slowly spending it down

13:10SPEAKER'cause it was just too convenient to reach for it

13:13SPEAKERwhen I needed it, but probably not as hidden as it should be.

13:18SPEAKERWould you hide it in the building?

13:19SPEAKERWould you hide it in like, I don't know,

13:22SPEAKERventilation duct or secret compartment of some kind?

13:27SPEAKERWould you trust that?

13:30SPEAKER- Probably not. - Yeah.

13:32SPEAKER- I have a place.

13:33SPEAKER- Okay, oh, huh, all right.

13:35SPEAKER- Yeah.

13:36SPEAKER- Oh, you do have a,

13:37SPEAKERwe did talk about your crawl space last week.

13:39SPEAKER- I mean, that's not accessible, it's not in there,

13:41SPEAKERbut it's someplace where I can get to it quickly,

13:44SPEAKERbut it's safe.

13:45SPEAKER- Okay, fair enough.

13:46SPEAKERAll right, next email is from Zach.

13:50SPEAKEROne thing you didn't mention was extra fuel.

13:52SPEAKER- Oh.

13:53SPEAKER- I've lived my whole life in the suburbs

13:55SPEAKERsouth of Houston and have evacuated twice.

13:58SPEAKERFuel was always a problem.

13:59SPEAKERDuring the current evacuation around Laura,

14:01SPEAKERpeople in Houston are waiting 45 minutes or more to fuel up.

14:06SPEAKERPeople will get stuck on the side of the road without fuel.

14:08SPEAKERYou can store several gallons in the red tanks

14:11SPEAKERwith fuel stabilizer, and it's good for a year.

14:14SPEAKERI didn't know that was a thing.

14:15SPEAKERI didn't know that it was not stable otherwise.

14:19SPEAKER- Yeah, if you haven't filled up your car

14:22SPEAKERsince the quarantine started,

14:23SPEAKERprobably it's time to think about running that gas out

14:26SPEAKERand replacing it.

14:27SPEAKER- Yikes.

14:29SPEAKER- The, this is a good tip, usually,

14:34SPEAKERso we have a rule here that once we get below half a tank,

14:36SPEAKERwe usually fill up since we're in an earthquake zone.

14:39SPEAKERSo we always have one car with at least half a tank of gas.

14:42SPEAKER- Man, that is very well prepared.

14:44SPEAKER- Maybe I'm a secret prepper.

14:45SPEAKERMaybe I just didn't realize this.

14:47SPEAKER- I'm like a sensible prepper, though.

14:49SPEAKER- But yeah, like if I get below a quarter of a tank,

14:51SPEAKERI start getting anxious here,

14:52SPEAKERand a quarter of a tank for me is about 100 miles.

14:54SPEAKERSo 85 miles, so it's enough to get reasonably far.

14:59SPEAKER- Yeah.

14:59SPEAKER- But yeah, gas, I know I had friends

15:01SPEAKERwho had to evacuate from Katrina,

15:03SPEAKERand they stopped and helped people who,

15:08SPEAKERor some of them probably got,

15:09SPEAKERran out of gas on the side of the road and were hosed.

15:12SPEAKER- Yeah.

15:13SPEAKER- So that's a good tip.

15:14SPEAKER- He finishes by just saying,

15:16SPEAKERyou can store several gallons of the red tanks

15:18SPEAKERwith fuel stabilizer, and it's good for a year.

15:19SPEAKERI know a lot of people will once fill their cans up

15:23SPEAKERat the start of hurricane season,

15:24SPEAKERand then in the fall, empty those into a vehicle,

15:26SPEAKERand wait until next season.

15:28SPEAKER- It's a good call.

15:29SPEAKER- Yeah.

15:30SPEAKER- That is, and the fuel stabilizer,

15:32SPEAKERyou can get it like any auto parts store,

15:33SPEAKERlike AutoZone or Reagan or whatever your local brand is.

15:36SPEAKER- Yes.

15:38SPEAKERWas that it for, oh, gosh, no.

15:40SPEAKERWe've got a whole bunch of disaster preparedness here.

15:45SPEAKERHow about, oh yeah, here's the water episode,

15:50SPEAKERor episode email from Jimmy.

15:54SPEAKER- This is Jimmy.

15:55SPEAKER- Yes, this is in fact a Jimmy writing about water.

16:00SPEAKERThis might not be as important in an evacuation

16:02SPEAKERsince you're probably heading to some known place,

16:05SPEAKERbut it is good to have water on hand

16:07SPEAKERor have some idea how to produce drinkable water.

16:11SPEAKERMy neighbor likes the two pass method

16:12SPEAKERwhere he uses a mesh to filter out most contaminants

16:15SPEAKERand then uses strong UV light

16:17SPEAKERto kill any lingering bacteria.

16:19SPEAKERI mainly stick with the Sawyer microfilters,

16:22SPEAKERbut I do have three other methods.

16:24SPEAKERIf my family has to drink dodgy water,

16:26SPEAKERI'll be running it through as many methods

16:28SPEAKERof filtering as I can.

16:30SPEAKEREven a small bottle of iodine tablets

16:32SPEAKERwould be better than nothing to have in a kit.

16:35SPEAKERThere's a company called BlueCan.

16:37SPEAKERDid we, we might've mentioned that?

16:39SPEAKER- I haven't heard of that, I had never heard of it before.

16:41SPEAKER- This sounds familiar, but excuse me.

16:44SPEAKERThere is a company called BlueCan

16:45SPEAKERthat supposedly produces 12 cans of water

16:47SPEAKERwith a 50 year shelf life.

16:50SPEAKERI carry a well-protected 24 in the trunk of my car.

16:54SPEAKERI'm waiting for the five year mark

16:56SPEAKERbefore I pop one open to give it a taste test.

16:59SPEAKERThe saying that goes two is one, one is none,

17:03SPEAKERI first heard in prepping forums.

17:06SPEAKERSo I have at least three methods of doing something

17:09SPEAKERbecause one or even two methods can fail

17:11SPEAKERjust as with data backups.

17:14SPEAKER- I like this a lot, it speaks to me.

17:18SPEAKERI'm curious about the 50 year old water.

17:21SPEAKER- Let me be a little less curious about that one, but.

17:24SPEAKER- I want to say Vinny introduced me to the filter

17:28SPEAKERthen blast with UV strategy for water cleaning

17:32SPEAKERwhen we were camping once a long time ago.

17:34SPEAKER- Okay.

17:36SPEAKER- And it worked well, the water,

17:37SPEAKERI drank straight ass lake water and it was fine.

17:40SPEAKERIt tasted good.

17:41SPEAKER- Man, those amoebas, you got to watch out.

17:42SPEAKERJust don't get it up your nose.

17:44SPEAKER- Look, he put it through the filter

17:45SPEAKERand then he did the UV thing.

17:47SPEAKERHe was like, this is fine.

17:48SPEAKERYou try this and then let us know

17:49SPEAKERif you feel weird after a couple of hours.

17:51SPEAKER- Great, can you drink?

17:52SPEAKERI assume you can drink the amoebas,

17:54SPEAKERyou just can't snort them?

17:56SPEAKER- In order to get the brain amoebas,

17:57SPEAKERyou have to pretty much power flush your sinuses

17:59SPEAKERwith lake or pond water is my understanding.

18:01SPEAKERSo you have to do like a front somersault and not blow out.

18:04SPEAKER- Oh boy, let's move on.

18:07SPEAKER- It's a good idea.

18:08SPEAKER- To something cheerier?

18:10SPEAKERThese are not cheery though at all.

18:13SPEAKER- This is a real,

18:14SPEAKERmaybe this was a bad idea to start with this stuff.

18:15SPEAKER- Let me find the one, hang on,

18:17SPEAKERlet me just search here real fast.

18:18SPEAKERFind the one about getting hit by a bus.

18:21SPEAKERHere it is.

18:24SPEAKERSo from Brian, maybe this will be the last one of these.

18:26SPEAKER- Yeah, I think that's a good idea.

18:28SPEAKER- From Brian, you've talked about your backups,

18:29SPEAKERbut how do you, well,

18:30SPEAKERthis is sort of half disaster preparedness,

18:32SPEAKERhalf kind of data retention type stuff.

18:36SPEAKERYou've talked about your backups,

18:37SPEAKERbut how do you ensure your wife or other loved ones

18:39SPEAKERare able to retrieve and decrypt, if applicable,

18:42SPEAKERyour information if you or you and your wife

18:45SPEAKERget hit by a bus?

18:47SPEAKERI worry about my wife having to figure out

18:49SPEAKERhow to retrieve photos of her and our kids

18:51SPEAKERif I kick the bucket or grandparents or siblings

18:53SPEAKERif we both kick the bucket together.

18:55SPEAKER- It's real upbeat questions.

18:58SPEAKERSo the password manager that we use in my family

19:03SPEAKERprovides a fall over basically,

19:08SPEAKERso that you can access somebody else's account

19:11SPEAKERon the family plan, but it doesn't do it silently.

19:15SPEAKERSo it will remove, it will change my,

19:19SPEAKERif she accesses mine, I'll know.

19:22SPEAKERI'll get a message that basically says,

19:24SPEAKER"Hey, somebody has access to your account.

19:25SPEAKERYou gotta do this and this and this."

19:27SPEAKERAnd it's specifically for that use case.

19:28SPEAKERLike if something happens to me

19:30SPEAKERand I'm not able to give her access to the account

19:33SPEAKERor give her the password, then she'll be able to fall over.

19:36SPEAKERSo I don't have to share it with her.

19:37SPEAKERI don't have to give unfettered access

19:42SPEAKERto my passwords, to my private stuff.

19:45SPEAKERBut in case of an emergency, she can access that.

19:48SPEAKERAnd all of the stuff that we're talking about

19:50SPEAKERin this case lives there.

19:52SPEAKERSo things like logins for insurance

19:56SPEAKERand healthcare and banks and business papers

20:00SPEAKERand all of that lives inside the password manager.

20:03SPEAKER- But to be clear,

20:03SPEAKERthat is just a courtesy notification to you.

20:05SPEAKERI assume it just goes through for her.

20:07SPEAKER- I think it's actually an encryption type thing.

20:10SPEAKERI think in order, I think what happens is

20:13SPEAKERit jacks up the password so that my old password

20:16SPEAKERwill not work when she does that.

20:20SPEAKERBut I haven't actually tried it,

20:22SPEAKERwhich is probably a mistake.

20:23SPEAKERWe should probably do that just to see what happens.

20:28SPEAKER- Two is one, one is none.

20:31SPEAKERKeep it in mind.

20:32SPEAKER- You're gonna make that the name of this episode,

20:33SPEAKERaren't you? - What's your mantra?

20:34SPEAKERYeah, I had a different episode title in mind,

20:35SPEAKERbut I think that has to take it.

20:39SPEAKER- Hold on, we might get an unsavory element if we do that.

20:41SPEAKER- You think?

20:42SPEAKER- We might get the proper crowd.

20:44SPEAKER- Just think of it as odd outreach to new audiences.

20:47SPEAKER- Okay.

20:47SPEAKER(laughing)

20:50SPEAKER- All right.

20:51SPEAKER- Next week, malicious.

20:53SPEAKER- Oh boy, man, let's not.

20:55SPEAKER- Yeah, too real, sorry.

20:58SPEAKER- I didn't think of this email

20:59SPEAKERas related to disaster preparedness,

21:01SPEAKERbut you said it kind of is,

21:03SPEAKERso I'm curious to hear your angle on this,

21:04SPEAKERbut this one is from Mati, I guess.

21:08SPEAKERI hope I'm pronouncing that right, from Finland.

21:10SPEAKER- Oh yeah, yeah.

21:13SPEAKER- Since you've been talking about Gopher a lot lately,

21:16SPEAKERyou should know- - Have we ever?

21:17SPEAKER- Yeah, no, man, we're all about that Gopher over here.

21:20SPEAKERYou should know that there's a new protocol out there

21:22SPEAKERcalled Gemiini.

21:23SPEAKERYou can think of it as a beefed up Gopher

21:26SPEAKERor a very stripped down worldwide web.

21:29SPEAKERAs someone who was too young

21:30SPEAKERto experience the early Gopher and web,

21:33SPEAKERI first got on the internet in the early 2000s,

21:36SPEAKERbut who is getting extremely bummed out by the modern web,

21:40SPEAKERGemiini feels really comfy.

21:42SPEAKERNo ads, no tracking, no JavaScript,

21:44SPEAKERjust a bunch of interesting people writing their gem logs,

21:48SPEAKERas opposed to web logs and other text-based content.

21:52SPEAKERAnd then he, we'll put this in the show notes,

21:54SPEAKERbut he includes the official website for this protocol

21:58SPEAKERis gemini.circumlunar.space.

22:02SPEAKER- That's a pretty good URL. - Which is an incredible

22:04SPEAKERaddress, circumlunar, C-I-R-C-U-M-L-U-N-A-R,

22:11SPEAKERwe will put it in the show notes,

22:13SPEAKERgemini.circumlunar.space.

22:16SPEAKER- So this one kind of goes with the one that,

22:20SPEAKERI was gonna say Tatum, but it's Ted sent in.

22:23SPEAKER- We'll get to that, maybe we should read that next.

22:26SPEAKER- Yeah, this is really cool.

22:27SPEAKERAnd I think, so the thing that's occurred that,

22:31SPEAKERwe'll just read the next one next.

22:33SPEAKERI think that's really cool,

22:34SPEAKERI think everybody should check it out.

22:35SPEAKERI spent some time on it this afternoon,

22:36SPEAKERit's weird and neat, and I might set up a gemini node.

22:39SPEAKER- Oh? - I think that's, yes, hello.

22:41SPEAKER- How does it, I mean, could you answer

22:44SPEAKERhow it differs from Gopher?

22:45SPEAKERAre you that deep in that you can, that you know?

22:48SPEAKER- It just seemed like it was maybe a little bit more.

22:59SPEAKER- Actually, I'm skimming the fact here.

23:03SPEAKERIt's a protocol in the traditional client server

23:05SPEAKERrequest response paradigm,

23:07SPEAKERand is built on mature standardized technology,

23:09SPEAKERlike URIs, MIME media types, and TLS.

23:12SPEAKERSo it sounds like maybe it's Gopher-esque,

23:14SPEAKERbut with more modern standards underneath it.

23:17SPEAKER- Yeah, and I may not be the right person to describe this,

23:20SPEAKER'cause when I clicked on the link,

23:22SPEAKERit opened my Gopher client,

23:23SPEAKERwhich also I have a Gopher client.

23:25SPEAKER- Awesome.

23:27SPEAKER- So yeah, I don't know how it differs,

23:30SPEAKERbut if you can run it on a,

23:32SPEAKERit may just be that it's easier to run

23:33SPEAKERon a modern infrastructure is the big thing,

23:35SPEAKERbut I don't know for sure.

23:36SPEAKER- That's cool.

23:39SPEAKEROkay, yeah.

23:41SPEAKER- This page that I'm on now says,

23:42SPEAKERwelcome to the SDF public access UNIX system,

23:45SPEAKERestablished 1987.

23:47SPEAKER- That's great.

23:48SPEAKER- Yeah, that's cool.

23:49SPEAKER- That's what I, old ass UNIX stuff

23:51SPEAKERis all I want to mess around with these days.

23:53SPEAKER- Yeah, that's the internet I crave.

23:55SPEAKER- I am gonna go check that out for sure.

23:57SPEAKERAll right, yeah, as you said,

23:59SPEAKERthis next email comes from user Ted.

24:02SPEAKER- Yeah, Ted.

24:04SPEAKER- Who says, I just got my ham radio license

24:07SPEAKERbecause I live in Northern California

24:09SPEAKERwhere there is a better than average chance

24:11SPEAKERI will be without power,

24:12SPEAKERand potentially trying to escape a fire at the same time.

24:17SPEAKERIt seemed like a reasonable way

24:18SPEAKERto channel my existential fears

24:20SPEAKERinto something potentially useful.

24:22SPEAKERAnyway, during the course,

24:24SPEAKERthey talk about using the ham network repeaters

24:26SPEAKERfor data transfer.

24:28SPEAKERThis is not just software defined radio stuff,

24:30SPEAKERbut actually transferring data

24:32SPEAKERover the 70 centimeter UHF ham radio band.

24:36SPEAKERIt got me thinking about how useful it might be

24:37SPEAKERto have a network of battery

24:39SPEAKERor solar powered Raspberry Pi like devices

24:41SPEAKERin a mesh that could provide data

24:44SPEAKERif you didn't have access to data

24:45SPEAKERbecause mobile tower batteries went down

24:47SPEAKERlike they did last year during fire season in California.

24:50SPEAKERHow viable do you think it would be

24:52SPEAKERto build an over the air text-only network

24:54SPEAKERof low power devices available for emergency access?

24:58SPEAKERAnd then he mentions, I have found a project.

25:01SPEAKERLet's see, I didn't click through to this.

25:04SPEAKEROh, well, it's on spectrum.iee.org.

25:08SPEAKERSo, you know, it's serious.

25:11SPEAKER- That's an actual spec, yeah.

25:12SPEAKER- Yes, I have found this project using IPV4

25:15SPEAKERaround this at 500 kilobytes per second.

25:18SPEAKEROr I wonder if that's actually kilobits per second.

25:21SPEAKERGeez, that's pretty rudimentary.

25:24SPEAKERThen there's HamNet in Europe.

25:25SPEAKERPlus there is, I don't know how to pronounce this acronym.

25:28SPEAKER- Arden would be my guess.

25:29SPEAKER- Arden, A-R-E-D-N, would be cool to standardize

25:33SPEAKERon a set of protocols and have people start setting these up.

25:36SPEAKERLook forward to your thoughts.

25:37SPEAKERThat is, I didn't know you could do that.

25:39SPEAKERWell, of course you can, it's a transmission.

25:41SPEAKERSo of course you can send digital information

25:43SPEAKERrather than analog audio, right?

25:44SPEAKERBut that's still cool as hell.

25:45SPEAKERI had never thought about that.

25:46SPEAKER- Yeah, so this, like I was in one of the areas

25:49SPEAKERthat the cell towers went down

25:51SPEAKERwhen the power was out for fire season last year,

25:53SPEAKERbecause the batteries are good for about 48 hours.

25:56SPEAKERAnd this is a fascinating idea to me.

25:59SPEAKERIt reminds me a lot of Sean Bonner's SafeCast thing.

26:03SPEAKERSo he's one of the people who's been working on that.

26:06SPEAKERAnd the SafeCast nodes are basically these little,

26:08SPEAKERit's like a box the size of an old '80s Walkman.

26:11SPEAKERThat's waterproof.

26:12SPEAKERIt's like a clear plastic box.

26:14SPEAKERAnd then there's a bunch of circuit boards in there

26:15SPEAKERand there's a bunch of sensors for like air quality

26:17SPEAKERand radiation and things like that.

26:19SPEAKERAnd he, they started working on that after Fukushima

26:23SPEAKERbecause they're like, there wasn't a monitoring network

26:26SPEAKERfor the kinds of things that you cared about,

26:29SPEAKERlike radiation, particulate matter and stuff like that

26:31SPEAKERafter that kind of disaster.

26:33SPEAKERBut this is taking it one step.

26:35SPEAKERThis idea is, I was talking to Ted the other day

26:39SPEAKERand this came up. - Oh, you know him?

26:41SPEAKER- Oh, it's a weird coincidence.

26:42SPEAKER- You know Ted?

26:43SPEAKER- I know, look, everybody knows Ted, user Ted.

26:48SPEAKERSo user Ted and I were talking and he was like,

26:51SPEAKERwhy isn't there like a mesh node network

26:53SPEAKERfor that you could set up on your towers

26:58SPEAKERrelatively inexpensively, hook a small solar panel up to it

27:00SPEAKERand just let that thing run and either get data to it

27:04SPEAKERvia like ham radio.

27:08SPEAKERAnd then, but then the trick is you also have

27:11SPEAKERto have wifi modules so that people can like walk over

27:14SPEAKERto the tower and get information when like the radio's down.

27:20SPEAKERAnd I saw this, the Gemini thing that came in from Maddie

27:28SPEAKERand was like, oh, these two things go great together, right?

27:30SPEAKER- Sure, yeah.

27:31SPEAKER- Why don't we build, why don't we as a community,

27:34SPEAKERwe have a bunch of wonderful nerds out there.

27:36SPEAKERLet's do this, let's build something that lives on a Pi,

27:40SPEAKERuses these low power unlicensed radio spectrums,

27:42SPEAKERwhether it's 900 megahertz or 70 millimeter

27:44SPEAKERor whatever it is, I can't remember what the frequency

27:48SPEAKERTed said, but like you don't need a massive amount

27:51SPEAKERof throughput for this to work.

27:52SPEAKER- Yeah, especially with the text-based protocol.

27:56SPEAKER- But at the same time, it would be incredibly useful

27:59SPEAKERto have a way for somebody that has internet

28:02SPEAKERon like one side of town or that has information

28:06SPEAKERfrom let's talk to the fire department and says,

28:08SPEAKERhey, you know, the fires are 10 miles south

28:11SPEAKERand then you can just walk out to the phone pole

28:13SPEAKERat the end of the corner and get the update

28:15SPEAKERon what's going on without having to like listen

28:18SPEAKERfor 15 hours in the radio for them to update

28:20SPEAKERyour particular small area or whatever.

28:23SPEAKERLike there's an opportunity for local information

28:25SPEAKERthat is infrastructure proof and doesn't require

28:30SPEAKERoutside power, doesn't require outside communication.

28:32SPEAKERThat's really interesting and weird, I think.

28:34SPEAKER- Man, I'm sitting here like feeling these kind of warm,

28:36SPEAKERfuzzy feelings about the idea of, not that I'm capable

28:39SPEAKERof it, but of the idea of putting a project

28:41SPEAKERlike that together and actually building a standard

28:43SPEAKERand a kind of community-driven system

28:46SPEAKERthat could actually benefit people like that.

28:47SPEAKERThat sounds super cool.

28:50SPEAKER- Yeah, I think so too.

28:51SPEAKER- And now I hope somebody on Discord picks this idea up

28:54SPEAKERand runs with it because I would love,

28:58SPEAKERI would love for there to be a communal open source project

29:00SPEAKERdriven by our community so I could, just so I could watch

29:02SPEAKERthe channel devoted to it as people argued over

29:06SPEAKERhow to standardize it and like what direction to go in

29:08SPEAKERand that would be highly entertaining.

29:10SPEAKER- This brings me to the new spinoff project

29:13SPEAKERthat we're announcing at the end of our first year

29:15SPEAKERcalled Scene Drama.

29:17SPEAKERIt's a scholarly look at, no, we were talking about stuff

29:21SPEAKERin the Discord today and somebody was talking

29:24SPEAKERabout Scene Drama and the mechanical switch key space.

29:26SPEAKER- I have to go read that.

29:27SPEAKER- And I was like, shit, we could do a whole podcast,

29:30SPEAKERit's a whole like series of podcasts, it's just like

29:32SPEAKERthe Scene Drama and all the, like the BSD Scene Drama,

29:36SPEAKERthe keyboard Scene Drama, anyway.

29:38SPEAKER- Totally.

29:42SPEAKER- But yeah, I think this is something,

29:44SPEAKERlike if you look at what happened in Iowa last month

29:47SPEAKERor last week, I guess, seems like a month ago.

29:49SPEAKER- This is still ongoing is my understanding.

29:51SPEAKER- Yeah, like the power has been out for two weeks now,

29:54SPEAKERthere's no internet, being able to get updates

29:57SPEAKERfrom authorities and community members

30:00SPEAKERand having like a bare-ass text message board

30:03SPEAKERfor posting hopefully things that are more useful

30:07SPEAKERthan what's on Nextdoor would be really nice.

30:10SPEAKERAnd if you build a phone app that lets you grab that stuff,

30:12SPEAKERthen more power, you know, that sounds cool.

30:14SPEAKER- Also, God help the people on the Gulf coaster,

30:17SPEAKERis that roughly where those hurricanes are barreling down on?

30:21SPEAKER- So Marco landed as a tropical storm

30:23SPEAKERand Laura seems to be gaining strength

30:25SPEAKERand is gonna land between New Orleans and Houston,

30:28SPEAKERit seems like, which is bad.

30:30SPEAKER- Seems like potentially a majority of the nation

30:34SPEAKERis gonna be dealing with the aftermath

30:35SPEAKERof natural disasters very soon.

30:38SPEAKER- Yeah, the West is burning, the East is flooded,

30:40SPEAKERthe South is flooded, and the East is about to get

30:43SPEAKERall the rain that came from Marco.

30:44SPEAKERSo yeah, it's a great weather month right now.

30:47SPEAKER- State of Iowa is still flat from--

30:49SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, Iowa's always flat in fairness.

30:52SPEAKER- You know what I mean, more flat.

30:53SPEAKER43% of crops lost, I think, was from the Dureco,

30:57SPEAKERwhich is how you're supposed to pronounce that.

30:59SPEAKER- Yes, actually we got an email about that, didn't we?

31:02SPEAKER- We got multiples.

31:03SPEAKER(laughing)

31:04SPEAKERPeople in Iowa were upset at my pronunciation

31:06SPEAKERof that last week, so they were nice.

31:09SPEAKERIt wasn't, nobody was mean, but let's see.

31:12SPEAKERIt's a German word, apparently.

31:13SPEAKER- Yes, I would not have, that is probably the last language

31:16SPEAKERI would have thought that belonged to.

31:19SPEAKER- I didn't realize there were CHs in German,

31:20SPEAKERbut the more you know.

31:21SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess I should have.

31:23SPEAKER- You didn't flag this one, but should I read this one

31:25SPEAKERabout the Dureco and fiber?

31:28SPEAKER- Yeah.

31:29SPEAKER- So, okay.

31:30SPEAKERI haven't screened this one.

31:31SPEAKER- I thought it was good, it was about municipal fiber.

31:33SPEAKER- I haven't screened this one, so I don't know.

31:34SPEAKERIt didn't make it into the--

31:36SPEAKER- In our research about places to potentially move,

31:40SPEAKERthere is a lot of municipal and electrical co-op fiber

31:43SPEAKERin places that are very rural.

31:45SPEAKER- Oh, that's great to hear.

31:47SPEAKER- Yeah.

31:48SPEAKER- Like, are we at the point where I can just admit this

31:50SPEAKERopenly and not be embarrassed by it, that like,

31:52SPEAKERI don't want to move anywhere that doesn't have fiber

31:53SPEAKERat this point?

31:54SPEAKER- Oh, it's like, I would maybe move someplace that has

31:58SPEAKERgig cable, but I'd have to really think about it a lot.

32:03SPEAKER- Yeah.

32:05SPEAKERWe should, maybe a big can of worms to open.

32:09SPEAKERWe should maybe think about doing like networking

32:12SPEAKERabove gigabits as an episode sometime soon.

32:16SPEAKER- Man, no one's ever going to need more than a gigabit,

32:18SPEAKERBrad.

32:19SPEAKER- I'm starting to look into that stuff a little bit.

32:21SPEAKERQNAP just announced a consumer grade network switch

32:25SPEAKERthat does 2.5 GBE.

32:29SPEAKER- That's not 10 gigabit or bust.

32:31SPEAKER- Well, so that's the thing, you know, it's like 10 gigabit

32:33SPEAKERhas been around as a spec for God, how long,

32:36SPEAKER15 years or something?

32:37SPEAKER- Longer than that, yeah.

32:38SPEAKER- But it hasn't proliferated in the consumer space, you know,

32:41SPEAKERand all of a sudden, like they're,

32:42SPEAKERI guess they're motherboard shipping

32:43SPEAKERwith 2.5 gigabit ports on them.

32:45SPEAKERAnd now they're now like $100 switches

32:48SPEAKERare starting to come out,

32:49SPEAKERwhich is like getting into the territory of like,

32:50SPEAKERyeah, I'll just buy one of those, sure.

32:52SPEAKER- Well, and also SSDs are fast enough.

32:54SPEAKER- Yes.

32:55SPEAKER- Like they can actually feed a faster

32:56SPEAKERthan one gigabit connection now.

32:58SPEAKER- So I've got, I've got an NVME drive in my FreeNAS machine

33:00SPEAKERas it's where my jails live.

33:02SPEAKERAnd it's also just like as a scratch drive

33:03SPEAKERcause it's terabyte.

33:04SPEAKERSo it's like a nice place to like, oh, if I need to,

33:07SPEAKERI need to export a like 50 gig video file

33:09SPEAKERinstead of writing it back to the same storage pool,

33:11SPEAKERI'll export it to that scratch drive.

33:13SPEAKERYou know, it's just faster not reading and writing

33:15SPEAKERon the same drives at the same, anyway,

33:17SPEAKERbut you're totally right.

33:17SPEAKERLike how much, how fast can you read from a PCI-E3 SSD,

33:23SPEAKERlike a couple of gigabytes a second or something?

33:28SPEAKER- It's a lot.

33:29SPEAKERI don't remember off the top of my head.

33:30SPEAKER- At some point it feels like a bummer

33:32SPEAKERthat you can only transfer like 100 megabytes a second

33:34SPEAKERover your network when you have a drive

33:35SPEAKERthat fast in your NAS.

33:37SPEAKERSo there is a need for it.

33:40SPEAKER- Yeah, I would say, I mean, look,

33:41SPEAKERI can almost saturate a gigabit on my NAS

33:43SPEAKERwith five drives in the array.

33:45SPEAKERLike it'll go, it'll get real close.

33:48SPEAKER- Yeah, so anyway, that's just a kind of a burgeoning topic

33:52SPEAKERthat seems like it's gonna become more of a thing soon.

33:54SPEAKER- You need to get real into centering fiber, Brad.

33:57SPEAKERThat's the next step.

33:58SPEAKERYou gotta blaze those, you gotta burnish those ends.

34:01SPEAKER- Is that the thing where you like have to like melt it

34:03SPEAKERto terminate it somehow, like bond the fiber together

34:06SPEAKERor something like that?

34:07SPEAKERI barely know what that's about.

34:08SPEAKER- Every time I've ever been in a room

34:10SPEAKERwhere somebody was doing that,

34:10SPEAKERthey looked like they would spend a lot of time practicing

34:12SPEAKERand were really good at it, so.

34:14SPEAKER- The only reason I even know about that

34:15SPEAKERis 'cause we actually talked to Wes

34:17SPEAKERabout this a little bit when he was on a few weeks ago.

34:20SPEAKERI forget the name of one of his coworkers

34:22SPEAKERwho did an article on, I guess it was on PC gamers.

34:25SPEAKER- Oh, it's Twon.

34:26SPEAKERTwon got the gigabit, or the five gigabit or whatever.

34:29SPEAKER- I think it was Twon.

34:30SPEAKERHe got two gigabit service to his house

34:32SPEAKERand how they had to dig up the street

34:33SPEAKERand then they brought the gigantic awful plasma machine,

34:39SPEAKERwhatever it is, the thing that you have to like

34:41SPEAKERburn the fiber together to,

34:43SPEAKERand if you don't align the fiber cables properly

34:45SPEAKERwhen you do it, apparently it's like totally useless

34:47SPEAKERand you have to do it again.

34:49SPEAKERAnyway, all right, I've rambled enough.

34:51SPEAKERI'll just read this email real fast from Patrick.

34:54SPEAKERBest from the cornfields, he says, 'cause he's in Iowa.

34:58SPEAKERI am an Iowa guy with fiber.

34:59SPEAKERLuckily, the area I live in, Dubuque County.

35:04SPEAKER- I'm not gonna try it.

35:06SPEAKER- I'm gonna say Dubuque.

35:07SPEAKER- This is your funeral, man.

35:09SPEAKER- Is my guess.

35:10SPEAKERWas spared the worst of the derecho, derecho, derecho.

35:14SPEAKERI can't, I'm just gonna stop talking, this is too much.

35:16SPEAKER- No, you're fine, you got it, you're owning.

35:19SPEAKER- You mentioned that you know someone in Iowa

35:21SPEAKERwho has had some trouble.

35:22SPEAKERCan you share any more details?

35:23SPEAKERI don't have a lot more details other than

35:25SPEAKERthat it seems like help has been slow in coming.

35:30SPEAKERI haven't heard too much from out there,

35:31SPEAKERbut in Eastern Iowa, there is an electrical co-op

35:34SPEAKERthat set up fiber to be the backbone

35:36SPEAKERof their power stations and decided that they might

35:39SPEAKERas well offer to their power subscribers

35:41SPEAKERthe same option for fiber internet.

35:44SPEAKERCurrently, I subscribe to a 500 up and down for $80

35:47SPEAKERand it's only $10 more to get full gigabit.

35:49SPEAKEROh man, you gotta treat yourself, go for the gig.

35:56SPEAKER- It's pretty good.

35:57SPEAKER- Yes, this is much better than the only other option

35:59SPEAKERin the area, which is MediaCom.

36:01SPEAKERThey are equivalent to Comcast and other horrible

36:03SPEAKERcable giants in their lack of quality service,

36:05SPEAKERlack of quality customer service and misleading advertising

36:08SPEAKERdue to the Direco, MediaCom subscribers lost internet

36:12SPEAKERfor a minimum of three days,

36:14SPEAKEReven in the less affected area where I live

36:16SPEAKERand in the more affected areas, some are still without it.

36:20SPEAKERThe venerable co-op, however, kept the internet on

36:22SPEAKERthroughout for most customers and was quick to restore

36:24SPEAKERservice for those with more substantial damage.

36:27SPEAKERNot quite a municipal internet provider,

36:29SPEAKERbut I am very happy with them.

36:31SPEAKERThat's awesome.

36:32SPEAKER- I mean, that's what the power company did

36:35SPEAKERin my hometown.

36:37SPEAKERThey rolled out dark fiber to connect their power

36:40SPEAKERsubstations and stuff.

36:41SPEAKERAnd then when they had it throughout the whole town,

36:43SPEAKERthey just flipped the switch and were like,

36:44SPEAKER"Hey, by the way, we do internet and TV now."

36:46SPEAKER- At the risk of consuming the rest of this episode,

36:49SPEAKERcan you explain dark fiber?

36:51SPEAKER- Oh, so when they were buying power lines

36:53SPEAKERthat ran down the streets to people's houses,

36:55SPEAKERthey just bought the ones that had fiber bundled on there,

36:59SPEAKERas well as the power cords, the copper.

37:01SPEAKER- So these are discrete power cables,

37:03SPEAKERjust all bundled into the same run is what you're saying?

37:06SPEAKER- Yeah, but as it was explained to me,

37:09SPEAKERit was like a little bit more expensive,

37:11SPEAKERbut not like the cost of doing that, of running fiber

37:14SPEAKERis people going out and running the lines,

37:16SPEAKERnot the actual fiber.

37:19SPEAKERLike the fiber is relatively inexpensive.

37:20SPEAKERSo when they had to replace the lines,

37:24SPEAKERthey just started replacing them with fiber

37:25SPEAKERalready on the line.

37:27SPEAKER- I see.

37:28SPEAKER- And so then when it was time to turn on the fiber,

37:30SPEAKERlike all the expensive shit was done

37:31SPEAKERand they just had to like run wires to people's houses.

37:34SPEAKER- Okay, I was sitting here trying to figure out

37:36SPEAKERlike, how are they running power and fiber on the same line?

37:38SPEAKERBut it's okay, it's just a bundle.

37:40SPEAKER- It's literally a cable with like a fiber component

37:43SPEAKERand a copper component.

37:44SPEAKER- Right, right, right.

37:46SPEAKERAll right, I'm excited about this email.

37:49SPEAKERThis is, I've been waiting for this one.

37:50SPEAKER- I'll be needing one of those.

37:51SPEAKER- I've been waiting for this one.

37:52SPEAKERThis email is insane and I love it.

37:55SPEAKERIt's from Brock.

37:57SPEAKERIt's about FPGAs in broadcast.

38:00SPEAKERSo bear with me on this one, all right?

38:01SPEAKERI'm gonna do my best.

38:02SPEAKER- We gotta do a disclaimer on this one.

38:04SPEAKER- Yeah.

38:05SPEAKER- 'Cause I looked at this one,

38:06SPEAKERand I was like, I made a kind of stink eye.

38:08SPEAKERI was like, I don't know what any of this stuff means.

38:09SPEAKER(laughing)

38:11SPEAKER- Forgive me if I mispronounce any of these acronyms.

38:14SPEAKERShould we just say it up front?

38:15SPEAKERI was gonna mention it at the end,

38:16SPEAKERbut I, reading this email, A, I love this,

38:19SPEAKERbut B, I imagine this is what it sounds like

38:21SPEAKERwhen we talk about very jargon heavy stuff

38:23SPEAKERto people who have no idea or no experience

38:26SPEAKERwith what we're talking about,

38:28SPEAKER'cause this is very much that.

38:30SPEAKERSo this is just stuff that I've-

38:31SPEAKER- It's like Carvac tweet level of density.

38:33SPEAKER- Never come into contact with before,

38:35SPEAKERbut it sounds super cool.

38:37SPEAKERIn a previous episode,

38:38SPEAKERyou guys wondered where else you could find FPGAs hiding.

38:41SPEAKERWell, I work as an engineer for a systems integrator

38:44SPEAKERdesigning and building broadcast facilities,

38:46SPEAKERTV trucks, sports venues, et cetera.

38:49SPEAKERAnd I can tell you that the professional broadcast industry

38:51SPEAKERis full of FPGAs.

38:54SPEAKERPretty much every piece of Procore rack equipment

38:56SPEAKERhas an FPGA or two in them.

38:58SPEAKERUnsurprisingly, low latency hardware emulation

39:01SPEAKERcomes in very handy for video,

39:04SPEAKERespecially now that the broadcast industry

39:06SPEAKERis creeping more and more into the IP video range.

39:09SPEAKERLow latency is key for encoding and decoding video

39:12SPEAKERinto packets for switching over a fabric.

39:14SPEAKERI'm gonna stop there.

39:15SPEAKERDo you know what he means by fabric?

39:16SPEAKER- I was good right up until you said fabric.

39:18SPEAKERAnd then I was like, huh?

39:19SPEAKER- Yes, I fully knew what was going on in this email

39:21SPEAKERuntil we hit fabric.

39:23SPEAKER- Yeah.

39:23SPEAKER- I assume it's probably some kind of super,

39:26SPEAKERsuper high performance network based on-

39:29SPEAKER- I always thought it was when you take fibers

39:30SPEAKERand weave them together in a crisscrossing pattern.

39:33SPEAKERThat was in the old days.

39:35SPEAKER- Oh, okay.

39:36SPEAKER- I mean, talk about horse buggy era.

39:40SPEAKER- Look, sometimes you use a loom.

39:42SPEAKER- Yes.

39:45SPEAKERYes, you've mentioned NDI before

39:47SPEAKERand NDI is kind of the prosumer IP video standard.

39:50SPEAKERBut like Will said, it's limited on bit rate.

39:53SPEAKERThis is where it gets kind of wild to me.

39:55SPEAKERMuch of the high end pro market is going SMPTE 2110,

39:59SPEAKERwhich is a standard that just throws

40:01SPEAKERuncompressed video down bandwidth lanes

40:04SPEAKERof 1.5 gigahertz, three gigahertz, six, even 12 gigahertz

40:08SPEAKERor whatever you need for your resolution and frame rate.

40:10SPEAKERThe data is completely raw.

40:12SPEAKERSo to tell each side what is going on,

40:14SPEAKERyou need an SDP equivalent, which the SMPTE 2110 world

40:21SPEAKERis NMOS, that's N-M-O-S.

40:24SPEAKER- Okay.

40:25SPEAKER- I assume that's how you say that, NMOS.

40:26SPEAKER- I mean, you say CMOS, C-M-O-S, why not?

40:29SPEAKERNMOS allows devices to be discoverable automatically

40:32SPEAKERby the main video switch and assign it a multicast address

40:35SPEAKERand endpoint control so it can virtually be plug and play.

40:39SPEAKERThese switches are either built into a video router

40:42SPEAKERby the manufacturer or they can be a COTS solution,

40:45SPEAKERwhich is consumer off the shelf from a company like Arista

40:48SPEAKERwith a management application layer

40:51SPEAKERfrom a broadcast company over top.

40:53SPEAKERUsually the port speeds are between 25 gigabit

40:56SPEAKERand a hundred gigabit.

40:57SPEAKER- Holy crap.

40:58SPEAKER- Depending on needs, then those are parsed out

41:00SPEAKERacross the plant using fanned out fibers and splice panels.

41:05SPEAKERDo you have older baseband SDI gear you want to use

41:08SPEAKERwith new SMPTE 2110 IP builds?

41:11SPEAKERNo problem.

41:12SPEAKERYou wrap the SDI signals using a gateway device

41:15SPEAKERthat uses tons of FPGA power to flip and encode the signals.

41:19SPEAKERThis can also be done for NDI applications as well

41:22SPEAKERwith different devices.

41:25SPEAKERLots of info there, I know,

41:27SPEAKERbut the world of broadcast tech

41:28SPEAKERis extremely fascinating right now

41:29SPEAKERand I could talk about this stuff for hours.

41:31SPEAKER- That is buck wild.

41:32SPEAKER- It is super crazy.

41:33SPEAKER- Like they're just take, wow.

41:35SPEAKERSo this is using some sort of high end.

41:36SPEAKERSo are they running this over like SDI

41:39SPEAKERthat just has infinite bandwidth

41:41SPEAKERbecause it's a giant fat thick piece of copper?

41:43SPEAKER- I don't know.

41:45SPEAKER- That's a good question.

41:46SPEAKER- We need to, maybe we need to find somebody.

41:48SPEAKERWe need to find out.

41:49SPEAKERMaybe broadcast technology expert.

41:51SPEAKERMaybe we just do an episode.

41:53SPEAKER- Brock sounds like he qualifies.

41:54SPEAKERMaybe we should just get him on here.

41:55SPEAKER- Let's see what kind of microphone he has.

41:56SPEAKERMaybe see if he knows how to work a microphone.

41:59SPEAKER- That's wild to me to hear

42:01SPEAKERbecause I was always under the impression

42:02SPEAKERthat uncompressed, like fully raw uncompressed video

42:05SPEAKERwas just prohibitive to work with.

42:06SPEAKERLike it just wasn't realistic.

42:08SPEAKER- So maybe not anymore.

42:09SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess. - Life finds a way, Brad.

42:10SPEAKER- I guess so.

42:12SPEAKERThat stuff's crazy.

42:14SPEAKER- Yeah, like just to be clear, an NDI stream,

42:17SPEAKERa 1080p NDI stream is like 50 or 100 megabits

42:21SPEAKERdepending on what kind of,

42:23SPEAKERlike what the software thinks you can handle.

42:25SPEAKERSo 25 gigabits is like just bonkers.

42:30SPEAKER- Bananas, that's super crazy.

42:32SPEAKERI've seen some people on the discord recently

42:36SPEAKERsaying that NDI is not the most reliable for them.

42:39SPEAKERLike even though it's only like 100 megabits stream,

42:41SPEAKERlike even on a gigabit network,

42:42SPEAKERyou can't necessarily rely on it,

42:44SPEAKERnot choking here and there.

42:45SPEAKER- If you need it to be reliable,

42:48SPEAKERyou need to do point to point for each end point

42:52SPEAKERor at least put it on a separate network

42:54SPEAKERaway from your normal network stuff.

42:56SPEAKER- Sure. - Yeah.

42:58SPEAKER- Which, granted not-- - But it's definitely

43:00SPEAKERnot the best thing out there for even,

43:02SPEAKERlike there's better options for home use even,

43:04SPEAKERI think these days. - Like what?

43:07SPEAKER- SMPTE 2110. - Oh, shoot, okay.

43:10SPEAKERYeah, let me just run a 25 gigabit link

43:12SPEAKERstraight between my PC and my NAS

43:14SPEAKERand I'll be good to go. (laughs)

43:15SPEAKER- Yeah, you need to get a bunch of FPGAs first.

43:17SPEAKERYou're gonna have to do that.

43:18SPEAKER- Sold.

43:20SPEAKERLet's see here.

43:22SPEAKERI'm gonna do a few unitaskers.

43:26SPEAKER- Yeah, sure. - Is now the time?

43:28SPEAKER- Yeah, we can do some unit,

43:29SPEAKERwe got a bunch of good unitaskers.

43:30SPEAKERWe had to kind of whittle it down some.

43:32SPEAKER- Yes, we did.

43:34SPEAKERHow about, I'm gonna start with a signal from Tom.

43:41SPEAKERI'm just here to tell you that I just bought two sets

43:44SPEAKERof roller blade wheels for the office chairs I have at home

43:47SPEAKERand they are awesome.

43:48SPEAKERThey handle transitioning over,

43:50SPEAKERwe talked about this, right?

43:51SPEAKERDid that come up on that end?

43:52SPEAKER- You were enthusiastic about that and I questioned.

43:55SPEAKER- They handle transitioning over different surfaces

43:57SPEAKERand over thresholds really well.

43:59SPEAKERThey are silent and never lock up

44:02SPEAKERso they never leave gouging marks on your floor.

44:05SPEAKERIf you have hardwood and have a floor protector,

44:07SPEAKERyou can toss that big sheet of plastic in the trash

44:10SPEAKERbecause these things are never going to lock up

44:12SPEAKERand dig in like cheap plastic casters.

44:15SPEAKERYou have to be careful though.

44:16SPEAKERMy wife has a standard office chair

44:17SPEAKERand I have an Ikea Marcus,

44:20SPEAKERby far the best chair I've ever put my ass in.

44:23SPEAKERHis language, not mine.

44:25SPEAKERTurns out Ikea uses a different size post for their casters

44:28SPEAKERso you have to make sure you get the roller blades

44:29SPEAKERthat say works with Ikea on them.

44:32SPEAKERThey're a little expensive,

44:33SPEAKERbut these things are going to outlast the chairs I have.

44:36SPEAKERSo that sounds great.

44:38SPEAKER- It sounds pretty good.

44:39SPEAKERI looked at Amazon after this

44:41SPEAKERand I was like, I had my finger hovered over the buy button.

44:43SPEAKERI was like, I don't know about this

44:46SPEAKER'cause I didn't really recognize any of the companies.

44:48SPEAKERSo maybe people, if people have done this

44:50SPEAKERand have recommendations,

44:51SPEAKERI would like a brand recommendation maybe.

44:54SPEAKER- Yeah, dude, I feel like that is a whole episode.

44:56SPEAKERIn fact, we should probably do this as an episode,

44:58SPEAKERbut like the process of buying a seemingly simple item

45:02SPEAKERon Amazon or similar online retail at this point

45:04SPEAKERis such a nightmare.

45:06SPEAKER- Like generic is kind of dead in a bad way.

45:09SPEAKER- Right, like I need a new lamp,

45:12SPEAKERjust a basic ass adjustable,

45:14SPEAKERlike a gooseneck type desk lamp, you know?

45:16SPEAKERI want something I can bend and kind of point around the room

45:18SPEAKERsince I have to live stream from here now.

45:20SPEAKERAnd sometimes you want to control your lighting a little bit.

45:22SPEAKER- You should get a ring light, man.

45:24SPEAKER- No, no, this is for like the back corner of the room.

45:27SPEAKERIt's something I can kind of back light with a little bit,

45:29SPEAKERbut I've been on Amazon for days trying to find a lamp.

45:33SPEAKERI already bought one,

45:34SPEAKERwhich seemed like it was going to be nice and do the job.

45:37SPEAKERAnd it got here and the plastic base was so cheap

45:40SPEAKERand flimsy and light

45:41SPEAKERthat it literally would not hold the lamp up.

45:44SPEAKERIt's an adjustable lamp that can't be adjusted

45:46SPEAKERbecause it will tip over

45:47SPEAKERbecause there is no weight in the base whatsoever.

45:49SPEAKER- Yeah, it sounds great.

45:50SPEAKER- 'Cause the base seems like it's made out of like 40 cents

45:52SPEAKERof cheap plastic.

45:54SPEAKERSo that went back,

45:55SPEAKERbut like there are no name brands on Amazon

46:01SPEAKERfor lamps of that nature.

46:02SPEAKERLike where are the decent like mid range products anymore?

46:06SPEAKER- I would go to like IKEA or Target or something

46:08SPEAKERto look for that stuff

46:09SPEAKERand it's not really an option right now.

46:10SPEAKER- Right, that's part of it.

46:11SPEAKERI checked Target, they actually don't have much right now.

46:14SPEAKERLike that's the other thing is like the Amazonification

46:17SPEAKERof other online retail,

46:19SPEAKERlike everything from like Newegg to Walmart to you name it,

46:23SPEAKERI think Target's doing it too now.

46:24SPEAKERLike they've all adopted that model

46:25SPEAKERof like hosting third-party sellers

46:27SPEAKERin their kind of standard storefront or inventory system.

46:30SPEAKERYou know what I mean?

46:31SPEAKER- I'm shaking my head.

46:32SPEAKER- It just becomes impossible to like parse quality

46:35SPEAKERand figure out what's decent

46:36SPEAKERand like if you're going to buy some cheap junk

46:38SPEAKERlike I did unknowingly, like it's just.

46:41SPEAKER- Well, so, okay, let's break this down into three.

46:45SPEAKERMy light solution is to buy just a normal light

46:49SPEAKERthat you can put a normal light bulb in

46:50SPEAKERand then get a smart bulb

46:52SPEAKERthat you can control the temperature of the light

46:54SPEAKERand the brightness.

46:56SPEAKER- Yeah.

46:57SPEAKER- That's worked really well for me.

46:59SPEAKERI just.

47:00SPEAKER- I just want a lamp that isn't gonna fall over

47:01SPEAKERand or burn my house down.

47:03SPEAKER- I, my other question about the roller blade wheels is,

47:07SPEAKERare they gonna get caught?

47:09SPEAKERLike I hate it when cables get tangled up in wheels

47:12SPEAKERas a VR developer.

47:13SPEAKERSo I always have cables around

47:15SPEAKERand if I roll over one of those cables,

47:16SPEAKERit's like a hundred dollar mistake if I jack up the cable.

47:20SPEAKERSo yeah, like I want cables.

47:23SPEAKERI want cable safe wheels more than I want high speed

47:26SPEAKERor bump clearance.

47:27SPEAKERSo yeah.

47:30SPEAKER- That would be good to know.

47:32SPEAKERBut yeah, you're right.

47:32SPEAKERThere are seemingly endless brands of these on Amazon

47:36SPEAKERand granted, I bet half of them are all made by the same

47:39SPEAKERfactory.

47:40SPEAKER- Yeah.

47:41SPEAKER- And even that is hard to tell.

47:42SPEAKER- Can I get like some skateboard trucks

47:44SPEAKERand put one of those on each of the,

47:46SPEAKEReach of the wheels and like have a,

47:48SPEAKERyeah, have a skateboard chair.

47:49SPEAKER- That sounds, that sounds pretty good.

47:50SPEAKERThat'd be cool.

47:52SPEAKERThe only thing stopping me from ordering those wheels

47:54SPEAKERat this point is that I probably shouldn't put them

47:56SPEAKERon this 17 going on 18 year old chair.

47:59SPEAKER- You can take them off.

48:00SPEAKER- I know, but I should hold out and treat myself, you know.

48:03SPEAKER- Okay.

48:04SPEAKER- To get the new chair and then get the new wheels.

48:06SPEAKER- That's true.

48:09SPEAKER- Let's see, there's an email from Ash.

48:13SPEAKERLast Christmas, Santa brought my five-year-old

48:16SPEAKERa Hot Wheels track, which required four D cell batteries

48:18SPEAKERto run the motor.

48:20SPEAKERThe batteries lasted about 30 minutes before losing

48:22SPEAKERthe power required to propel the cars around the track.

48:25SPEAKERThis quickly became expensive.

48:27SPEAKERSo instead I went to Amazon and bought this

48:29SPEAKERand he links a variable voltage power adapter.

48:33SPEAKERThe great thing about this adapter is you can specify

48:35SPEAKERthe voltage output from three volts to 12

48:38SPEAKERby rotating a dial on the adapter.

48:41SPEAKERIt comes with eight interchangeable tips

48:42SPEAKERthat fit most devices, including a tip that let me

48:45SPEAKERconnect the Hot Wheels motor wires directly to the adapter.

48:48SPEAKERThis beats spending $10 an hour on batteries.

48:52SPEAKERPlus as a bonus, if you crank up the voltage,

48:54SPEAKERyou can send the Hot Wheels flying across the room.

48:56SPEAKER- I love this.

48:57SPEAKERI love this so much.

48:58SPEAKER- Yeah, that's pretty good.

49:00SPEAKERI've never seen something like this before.

49:02SPEAKER- Oh, you never had one of these?

49:03SPEAKER- No.

49:04SPEAKER- No, I'm talking about the adapter, not the Hot Wheels.

49:06SPEAKER- Yeah, no, we had, we always had these.

49:08SPEAKERLike we've had, I've had these in my life.

49:10SPEAKERYou used to go to Radio Shack and buy these.

49:11SPEAKERYou'd get a, you'd get a, just a bog standard,

49:15SPEAKERlike AC/DC, a DC transformer.

49:18SPEAKERAnd then it would have 50 million little tips

49:20SPEAKERthat you would immediately lose the first time you used it.

49:22SPEAKER- Sure.

49:23SPEAKER- And then you'd have to- - And it was adjustable?

49:25SPEAKER- Well, they, so they see the little,

49:27SPEAKERthere's an array of like tips on the side.

49:30SPEAKERAnd like there, there was one for like, you know,

49:33SPEAKERthere was one that was like a three volt,

49:34SPEAKERtwo amp with an internal pole and all that.

49:37SPEAKERI've never seen one of these bricks that you have a knob

49:39SPEAKERthat you can adjust the, adjust the output.

49:41SPEAKERThat's the cool thing.

49:42SPEAKER- That's what I meant, yeah.

49:43SPEAKERThat's, I've never seen that either.

49:45SPEAKERIt's just kind of-

49:45SPEAKER- And then if you want to do something really risky,

49:47SPEAKERthis one comes with a, with screw terminals.

49:50SPEAKERSo you can just bare wire some,

49:53SPEAKERjam some bare wires in there and then send them down

49:55SPEAKERand hook whatever the hell you want up to it.

49:57SPEAKERI think this is great.

49:58SPEAKER- Brett and Will made a tech pod.

49:59SPEAKERIt's not liable for any damage incurred

50:01SPEAKERbased on purchasing recommendations aired on this podcast.

50:04SPEAKER- Reading email does not indicate endorsement.

50:06SPEAKER- Yeah, please be, please be careful.

50:09SPEAKER- That said, yeah, if you're going to do this

50:11SPEAKERand use this thing,

50:11SPEAKERmake sure you understand what the internal pole

50:13SPEAKERand the external pole on your DC adapter is.

50:16SPEAKER'Cause if you, like some of the plugs

50:19SPEAKERare physically compatible with other plugs.

50:21SPEAKERAnd if you plug the negative into the-

50:23SPEAKER- Yeah, the polarity.

50:24SPEAKER- Yeah, the polarity.

50:25SPEAKERIf you plug the negative into the positive,

50:27SPEAKERthe smoke that makes your thing work will go out

50:30SPEAKERand it will be bad, so.

50:34SPEAKER- Practice care with this sort of thing.

50:37SPEAKER- Yeah, but I like the idea of like rocket power

50:39SPEAKERto Hot Wheels, that sounds awesome.

50:41SPEAKER- That is pretty good.

50:42SPEAKER- It's also incredibly shitty

50:44SPEAKERthat Hot Wheels would sell a fucking thing.

50:46SPEAKERLike I assume Duracell or something

50:48SPEAKERprobably pays money to Mattel

50:49SPEAKERso that Hot Wheels keeps shipping things

50:51SPEAKERthat eat D cell batteries.

50:53SPEAKERBut that is lame.

50:54SPEAKER- Like everything else, it's probably a racket.

50:56SPEAKER- Yeah.

50:59SPEAKER- Let's see, this email comes in from a,

51:03SPEAKERI started to say friend of the site, Pat Bear,

51:05SPEAKERbut I guess it's more like friend of the pod.

51:08SPEAKER- Yeah, he's a pod friend.

51:09SPEAKER- Do we say that?

51:10SPEAKER- Sure.

51:11SPEAKER- Friend of the podcast?

51:13SPEAKER- Yes, noted reader.

51:16SPEAKER- I'm still not sure how I feel

51:17SPEAKERabout using the word pod in a sincere manner, but.

51:21SPEAKER- I don't, well, okay.

51:22SPEAKERThat's a conversation for another rebranding conversation.

51:25SPEAKER- It's just where the world is at these days.

51:27SPEAKERI guess it is right there in the name, isn't it?

51:30SPEAKERYeah, so Pat wrote in just a short email.

51:34SPEAKERJust got caught up on the podcast.

51:35SPEAKERHere's a couple of my favorite pieces of hardware.

51:38SPEAKER- Here are a few of his favorite things.

51:40SPEAKER- Yes, and I know Pat has a lot of theater

51:44SPEAKERkind of gear experience, you know,

51:46SPEAKERworking with theater and so forth.

51:47SPEAKER- If you want to get really good at learning

51:49SPEAKERhow to make stuff with whatever you have on hand,

51:52SPEAKERhang out with stage techs at theaters.

51:54SPEAKER- I bet.

51:55SPEAKER- 'Cause like those and the people who make props

51:57SPEAKERare the most industrious,

51:59SPEAKERI will build something out of nothing people.

52:01SPEAKER- I can't imagine.

52:03SPEAKERThat's probably all,

52:04SPEAKERthat's gotta be like most of what that job is, right?

52:05SPEAKERIs just like, I could figure out how to make

52:07SPEAKERthis kind of mechanical situation happen

52:09SPEAKERwith whatever I can find in 30 minutes.

52:11SPEAKER- MacGyver.

52:12SPEAKER- Right.

52:13SPEAKER- Yeah, they're all MacGyvers.

52:14SPEAKER- Wow, that sounds fun actually.

52:16SPEAKERLet's see, camera clamp.

52:19SPEAKERI use this to attach my webcam

52:21SPEAKERto the top of my dual monitor stand.

52:22SPEAKERI've also clamped this onto a mic stand

52:25SPEAKERwhen I needed to set up a camera

52:27SPEAKERin a tight area where I couldn't fit a tripod.

52:29SPEAKERAnd it is a like pretty rugged looking industrial

52:33SPEAKERsort of clamp with two, three different ways to adjust it.

52:38SPEAKER- Yeah, so these things are great.

52:41SPEAKERIt's basically like often they're sold

52:44SPEAKERas like universal camera mounts.

52:46SPEAKERI use them, I found these the first time

52:50SPEAKERbecause I needed a way to attach Vive lighthouses

52:52SPEAKERto some light stands or to like a pipe

52:54SPEAKERin somebody's office or something.

52:56SPEAKERAnd they're fantastic.

52:57SPEAKERI'm using two of them and like a 18 inch

53:01SPEAKERor 12 inch rod with one quarter inch female

53:04SPEAKERand one and one quarter inch male on the other end

53:07SPEAKERto make like an armature rig for my webcam,

53:10SPEAKERfor my GoPro that I use when I'm streaming.

53:12SPEAKERAnd it works great, highly recommended.

53:14SPEAKER- Looking at the shape of the grip on this thing,

53:16SPEAKERare these are mainly made to be mounted on poles?

53:18SPEAKERIs that right?

53:19SPEAKER- Yeah, I think the intended use is probably

53:22SPEAKERto hang them on the side of like a light pole or a tripod

53:24SPEAKERif you want a light, or if you want something

53:27SPEAKERto go on a tripod that is not going on the main mount

53:31SPEAKERon the top of the tripod.

53:32SPEAKER- Like what I mean is because it's got a rounded shape

53:34SPEAKERto the grip, like you probably wouldn't hold

53:37SPEAKERonto a flat surface like a vice grip type thing does.

53:40SPEAKER- Yeah, it depends on which one you get,

53:43SPEAKERbut the ones like I have some of the ones like Pat linked,

53:46SPEAKERI also have a couple of metal ones

53:47SPEAKERthat I use for heavier duty stuff,

53:49SPEAKERincluding my wind meter out in the backyard,

53:52SPEAKERwhich is on a pole on the top of the house.

53:55SPEAKERAnd it'll bite on something flat.

53:58SPEAKERThey'll bite on something flat for sure.

54:00SPEAKER- Okay, that's good to know.

54:01SPEAKER- Like a bookshelf or something like that.

54:02SPEAKER- Okay, I've got some stuff like this on the way

54:04SPEAKERfrom the latest kind of quarterly budget buy at work.

54:10SPEAKERNicer camera. - Capx.

54:12SPEAKER- Yes, nicer than my shitty old C920 on the way,

54:17SPEAKERbut I've got a clamp very similar to this on the way,

54:19SPEAKERand I was wondering, I was gonna try to mount it

54:20SPEAKERto using one of the multi mounts for the Elgato key light,

54:24SPEAKERwhich is just a very heavy. - Yeah, it'll totally work

54:25SPEAKERfor that. - I knew it would for that,

54:26SPEAKERbut I thought about trying to mount it to my monitor arm

54:30SPEAKERlike he said he's doing with this.

54:32SPEAKER- That's what I've done.

54:33SPEAKER- But because it's not a rounded, pole-like shape,

54:35SPEAKERI was worried this type of grip wouldn't hold onto it,

54:37SPEAKERbut it sounds like maybe that might be worth a shot.

54:38SPEAKER- So the problem with mounting it on the monitor arm

54:41SPEAKERisn't that it won't stay on.

54:42SPEAKERAnd if you have a really girthy monitor arm,

54:45SPEAKERit might not work, but mine is like two and a half inches,

54:49SPEAKERand it barely clamps on.

54:51SPEAKERThe problem I have is that when you adjust the monitor arm,

54:53SPEAKERit jacks up your camera aim every single time.

54:56SPEAKER- Oh, sure.

54:57SPEAKER- So like, you know.

54:58SPEAKER- Yeah, maybe I'll just mount it to the key light,

55:00SPEAKER'cause I mean, if I'm using the camera,

55:02SPEAKERI'm also using the light,

55:03SPEAKERso it might as well just use one contraption.

55:07SPEAKERThe other thing he listed is a flexible arm clamp.

55:10SPEAKERAgain, instead of using a tripod,

55:12SPEAKERI clamp this onto one of the arms of my monitor stand

55:14SPEAKERfor my model kit building streams.

55:16SPEAKERProbably the best purchase I've made for my streams,

55:19SPEAKERand that is a kind of snake-like,

55:21SPEAKERit's like a very flexible bendy sort of mount arm.

55:24SPEAKER- It's like a gooseneck kind of,

55:26SPEAKERlike with a hard, like armature wire inside a thing.

55:32SPEAKERI've given, I have a couple of relatives

55:33SPEAKERthat have chronic pain problems,

55:35SPEAKERand you can get these

55:36SPEAKERthat have like a tablet or phone holder as well.

55:39SPEAKERAnd they use them on their bed

55:42SPEAKERto like hang a Kindle above them,

55:44SPEAKERso they don't have to hold their arms up

55:45SPEAKERwhen they're laying in bed reading at night.

55:47SPEAKERAnd yeah, wonderful, wonderful devices.

55:50SPEAKERAnd they're like 10 bucks.

55:51SPEAKER- Yeah, this one says max load weighed 1.1 pounds, so.

55:56SPEAKER- Yeah.

55:57SPEAKER- Not an amount like a super heavy camera with it, but.

56:00SPEAKER- But like I use, I have one of them on my desk

56:03SPEAKERthat I use when I do like a top-down thing

56:04SPEAKERon a cutting mat or something for a build.

56:07SPEAKERIt's the same exact thing Pat uses it for, I'm sure.

56:10SPEAKER- Sure.

56:11SPEAKER- By the way, if you don't,

56:12SPEAKERyou should check out Pat's Twitch channel.

56:14SPEAKERHe builds model kits and Lego

56:15SPEAKERand does good stuff at twitch.tv/patbear.

56:18SPEAKER- Yeah.

56:20SPEAKERLet's see, should we do one more email?

56:23SPEAKER- Yeah, I got one more in me.

56:25SPEAKERWe got through a lot of these.

56:26SPEAKERI wasn't expecting.

56:28SPEAKER- How about, oh, I lost it.

56:34SPEAKERIs this it?

56:36SPEAKEROh, let's just do a good old PC email.

56:38SPEAKER- We have two good PC emails.

56:39SPEAKERThe Josh Fink one is good too, I think.

56:42SPEAKER- Yeah, that's the one I was gonna read,

56:43SPEAKER'cause we have potentially sounds like new hardware.

56:47SPEAKER- Shit, I just said his last name,

56:48SPEAKERbut he didn't say not to say his name, so.

56:51SPEAKER- Cross our fingers.

56:52SPEAKER- Yeah.

56:53SPEAKER- Hope it's okay.

56:54SPEAKERYeah, since there's hardware announcements

56:56SPEAKERpotentially nigh on the horizon.

57:00SPEAKER- Oh, really?

57:01SPEAKEROh, you don't say?

57:02SPEAKER- Maybe, it's the word on the street out there.

57:04SPEAKER- Nvidia's been doing a different day of their GPU history

57:08SPEAKERfor the last 20 years, for the last 20 days.

57:11SPEAKERAnd--

57:12SPEAKER- What could they be building up to?

57:13SPEAKER- It's, I don't know.

57:16SPEAKERI think they have a stream this first, I don't know.

57:18SPEAKER- Josh from Colorado.

57:21SPEAKERHow often do you rebuild your gaming PC?

57:23SPEAKERI have an i7 6700K with a GTX 1070

57:27SPEAKERand have been contemplating when to upgrade.

57:30SPEAKERWhat pushes you over the edge and gets you to upgrade?

57:32SPEAKERWhat are you currently running?

57:34SPEAKERSome extra info to keep the actual question short.

57:36SPEAKERI'm running a 1080p 144 Hertz monitor,

57:39SPEAKERbut I don't get the full 144 frames per second.

57:43SPEAKERI should probably buy a new GPU when those come out,

57:45SPEAKERbut I don't know if my CPU or GPU is the true bottleneck.

57:50SPEAKERWell, big, big picture question first for you.

57:53SPEAKERI mean, like I've never been in the position

57:55SPEAKERwhere PC companies were sending me a bunch of hardware,

57:58SPEAKERso I've always bought all my PC stuff.

58:00SPEAKERSo like, let's say that,

58:01SPEAKERlet's exclude that phase of your life and say like--

58:05SPEAKER- The getting free hardware constantly phase?

58:07SPEAKER- Yes, like--

58:10SPEAKER- Yeah.

58:11SPEAKER- Do you have a barometer or like for me,

58:13SPEAKERthere's just kind of like this nebulous upgrade itch

58:17SPEAKERthat starts kicking in after a while.

58:20SPEAKERAnd that used to--

58:21SPEAKER- Yeah.

58:24SPEAKER- Like that used to, back in the day that ran on like a,

58:26SPEAKERwhat, 18 months, two year cycle or something,

58:28SPEAKERwhich got very expensive, you know?

58:31SPEAKERBut it's much longer now.

58:34SPEAKER- Yeah, like it was really nice when I left tested

58:37SPEAKERand suddenly didn't have to use my main computer at home

58:40SPEAKERas like a way to test stuff.

58:41SPEAKER- Yeah, that would be like really lousy.

58:44SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause it was always,

58:46SPEAKERthat's kind of like at maximum PC,

58:48SPEAKERI was always bringing stuff home to get more like data points

58:52SPEAKERon like what it was like in an actual working like,

58:57SPEAKER'cause like having test bed machines in the lab was great

58:59SPEAKER'cause we could wipe them really easily.

59:00SPEAKERWe had shared images.

59:02SPEAKERIt was really easy to do testing,

59:04SPEAKERbut you kind of didn't get to see what something worked,

59:06SPEAKERhow it worked like in a crufted up actual used machine.

59:11SPEAKERSo it's been really nice the last few years

59:14SPEAKERnot having to constantly open the computer

59:17SPEAKERand like having the computer closed for long enough

59:20SPEAKERfor there to be dust in there.

59:21SPEAKERThat's a new thing in my life.

59:24SPEAKER- It's the small things.

59:25SPEAKER- I mean, I know this is sound,

59:27SPEAKERI sound like a total asshole here.

59:34SPEAKERSo since I left Max, since I left tested,

59:37SPEAKERI built a PC right before I left

59:39SPEAKERthat I'd bought the hardware for.

59:41SPEAKERAnd that was a hexa core 60, 5,800, maybe 48.

59:47SPEAKERIt was a Broadwell hexa core.

59:50SPEAKER- Okay.

59:50SPEAKER- That machine, that CPU had some problems

59:54SPEAKERand just out of warranty it died because it wasn't,

1:00:00SPEAKERlook, the pump in my all-in-one water cooler crapped out

1:00:03SPEAKERand I didn't know, and it ran really, really hot

1:00:06SPEAKERfor a long time before it finally crapped out.

1:00:09SPEAKERAnyway, I replaced that.

1:00:12SPEAKERThat was in probably 2016, like end of 2016.

1:00:16SPEAKERAnd then I just upgraded that machine this year

1:00:19SPEAKERbecause I participated in some Intel gaming tournament

1:00:24SPEAKERand they sent me a CPU as a result of that.

1:00:28SPEAKERSo I'm running an i9-9900K and a 2080 Ti right now.

1:00:34SPEAKERWith 32 gigs of RAM and a couple SSDs,

1:00:39SPEAKERa couple of NVME SSDs.

1:00:40SPEAKER- Okay.

1:00:41SPEAKER- And a big giant, like eight terabyte regular hard drive.

1:00:44SPEAKER- Yeah, for whatever reason,

1:00:46SPEAKERI feel like I'm on about a five-year cycle at this point.

1:00:49SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:00:50SPEAKER- Like thinking back the last couple of machines,

1:00:52SPEAKERlike in 2010, I built an i7-860, I believe.

1:00:56SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:00:57SPEAKER- Which was the, gosh, was that a quad core?

1:00:59SPEAKERI forget.

1:01:00SPEAKER- That would have been an early quad core,

1:01:02SPEAKERor a late tool core, I can't remember.

1:01:03SPEAKER- Yes, used that for five years,

1:01:06SPEAKERbuilt a 6700K in like late 2015, early 2016.

1:01:12SPEAKEREnded up putting a 7700K into that same machine

1:01:15SPEAKERdown the line 'cause I needed the other CPU

1:01:18SPEAKERfor something else and that's what I'm still on

1:01:20SPEAKERat this point.

1:01:21SPEAKER7700K in a 1080, not a Ti, just a plain old GTX 1080

1:01:27SPEAKERwith 16 gig of RAM.

1:01:29SPEAKERSo I'm feeling the upgrade itch.

1:01:30SPEAKERLike I'm basically-

1:01:32SPEAKER- Do you feel like things are not running,

1:01:34SPEAKERlike have you hit stuff that doesn't run right

1:01:36SPEAKERon the 1080?

1:01:37SPEAKER- Not at all.

1:01:38SPEAKER- Yeah, see that's the thing.

1:01:39SPEAKER- You mean games-wise?

1:01:40SPEAKERLike kind of maybe, like nothing runs poorly,

1:01:44SPEAKERbut there's some stuff that could run better, you know?

1:01:47SPEAKERLike I'm certainly not like in agony,

1:01:50SPEAKERyou know, I'm not dealing with any like 40 frames per second

1:01:53SPEAKERtype situations or anything like that.

1:01:54SPEAKERLike there are spots certainly where getting

1:01:57SPEAKERinto Minecraft shaders was probably the most taxing thing

1:02:01SPEAKERI've done on that card in a while.

1:02:03SPEAKER- Noted 2010 graphical powerhouse Minecraft.

1:02:08SPEAKER- Yeah, some of those shaders look pretty damn good, man.

1:02:10SPEAKER- Crisis of its generation.

1:02:12SPEAKER- Yes, but yeah, it's less, especially on the CPU end,

1:02:16SPEAKERit's less that I feel like I'm hitting any kind of wall

1:02:18SPEAKERas so much as just like, it's been a while.

1:02:21SPEAKERThere's way better stuff out there these days.

1:02:24SPEAKERYou know, it might be nice to, yeah.

1:02:27SPEAKER- My, I mean, my general strategy has always been,

1:02:31SPEAKERif it's not, if it's working, don't mess with it.

1:02:33SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:02:34SPEAKER- And, you know, buy a CPU and motherboard

1:02:38SPEAKERand put enough that are going to last

1:02:40SPEAKERfor as long as, five years is a good target,

1:02:44SPEAKERI think for the core kind of components.

1:02:46SPEAKERAnd then like plan to do a midlife GPU upgrade.

1:02:52SPEAKER- That sounds right.

1:02:53SPEAKER- And you'll be in pretty good shape

1:02:55SPEAKERis kind of the way I look at it.

1:02:57SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:02:59SPEAKERSo him being on a 6700K, you feel like he's kind of due?

1:03:02SPEAKERI feel like-

1:03:03SPEAKER- I feel like that's probably, that's right on the border.

1:03:05SPEAKER'Cause 6700K is the min spec for a VR machine.

1:03:09SPEAKER- Right.

1:03:10SPEAKER- When Oculus and Valve or HTC launched the like,

1:03:14SPEAKERhey, make your games run at this and you're going to be CPU.

1:03:17SPEAKERIf you, like, if you buy a 3080 or a 3070,

1:03:20SPEAKERI don't know anything about those GPUs.

1:03:24SPEAKERBut what I know about, if you put a 2070 or 2080

1:03:28SPEAKERin that machine right now, you would 100% be CPU bound.

1:03:30SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:03:31SPEAKERSo this is just my gut feeling, but I would guess,

1:03:35SPEAKERlet's say mid, late next year,

1:03:37SPEAKERonce games that are designed for the PS5 and Series X

1:03:42SPEAKERstart getting ported to PC,

1:03:43SPEAKERyou'll probably start feeling it even more on the CPU.

1:03:46SPEAKER- I would think so.

1:03:47SPEAKERI mean, I think we're like console,

1:03:51SPEAKERit's always dangerous to buy into the first generation,

1:03:54SPEAKERthe generation that lands the same year the consoles land.

1:03:56SPEAKER'Cause sometimes new stuff takes a little while

1:03:58SPEAKERto trickle down.

1:03:59SPEAKERI feel like with the way modern games work

1:04:03SPEAKERand the way the kind of render scaling works

1:04:05SPEAKERon a lot of games automatically.

1:04:07SPEAKERSo you can kind of set the target frame rate

1:04:09SPEAKERand resolution you want,

1:04:10SPEAKERand then it'll do the internal resolution

1:04:12SPEAKERat whatever it needs to to make the game run.

1:04:14SPEAKERI feel like you can have a pretty good experience

1:04:17SPEAKERon almost anything.

1:04:18SPEAKERLike my laptop, which is a 1060,

1:04:21SPEAKERplays stuff at a resolution I would play on a laptop,

1:04:24SPEAKERshockingly well.

1:04:24SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, obviously that's just good business sense

1:04:26SPEAKERjust to make sure your game runs on as much

1:04:28SPEAKERor as wide a range as possible.

1:04:30SPEAKERBut I would guess most people listening to this podcast

1:04:33SPEAKERwant to be on the higher end of the range

1:04:35SPEAKERfor quality performance.

1:04:37SPEAKER- The 144 Hertz monitor is a little bit of a crinkle,

1:04:40SPEAKERa kink in the plan because you do need a,

1:04:45SPEAKERyou're looking at two point something times

1:04:47SPEAKERthe amount of frames per second that you're trying to draw.

1:04:51SPEAKERAnd that is gonna require more horsepower,

1:04:53SPEAKERbut at 1080p it's like,

1:04:56SPEAKERthe choices are you're gonna play 4K games

1:04:58SPEAKERat a lower frame rate,

1:04:59SPEAKERor you're gonna play 1080p games at 1080p

1:05:02SPEAKERat a higher frame rate.

1:05:03SPEAKERAnd my personal preference is that single player stuff

1:05:07SPEAKERI usually play at the higher resolution,

1:05:10SPEAKERand multiplayer stuff I usually play the higher frame rate.

1:05:13SPEAKER- Sure, so.

1:05:14SPEAKER- I think there's, it remains to be seen,

1:05:18SPEAKERthings could always change,

1:05:19SPEAKERbut I don't see a situation where I don't transition

1:05:22SPEAKERto AMD for my next machine, at this point.

1:05:25SPEAKER- I mean, I just did the 9900K,

1:05:27SPEAKERor I probably would have done a Ryzen machine this year.

1:05:30SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, it's getting really hard to argue

1:05:33SPEAKERwith that value proposition.

1:05:35SPEAKER- Yeah, the only reason Intel makes sense

1:05:37SPEAKERis if you're not paying for hardware.

1:05:39SPEAKER- Yes.

1:05:40SPEAKER- At the high end, especially.

1:05:41SPEAKER- Yes, all right, that's it for emails.

1:05:44SPEAKERWe got through, like you said, more of those than I expected.

1:05:48SPEAKER- Yeah, we really hammered through them.

1:05:50SPEAKER- The bummers at the beginning were--

1:05:52SPEAKER(laughing)

1:05:53SPEAKER- Were to go but up.

1:05:55SPEAKER- Look, we brought that on ourselves.

1:05:56SPEAKER- Talking about buses and meeting spouses and so forth.

1:06:00SPEAKER- Do you know now what time we're at,

1:06:04SPEAKERwhat time of the podcast we're in?

1:06:06SPEAKER- I don't.

1:06:07SPEAKER- It's one of my favorite times,

1:06:08SPEAKERit's when we thank the patrons who make the podcast possible.

1:06:11SPEAKER- It's the best part of the, yeah,

1:06:11SPEAKERwe wouldn't be here without them.

1:06:13SPEAKER- And some things have happened.

1:06:15SPEAKER- Oh?

1:06:17SPEAKER- Well first off, we have to shout out Julian,

1:06:21SPEAKERwho is Julian Wheels in the Discord,

1:06:24SPEAKERwho sent an email in last week and was like,

1:06:26SPEAKER"Hey," maybe two weeks ago now.

1:06:28SPEAKERHe's like, "Hey, I would like to,

1:06:32SPEAKERlike I've been experimenting

1:06:33SPEAKERwith this transcript generation stuff

1:06:34SPEAKERand I think you guys should have transcripts

1:06:36SPEAKERfor your podcast.

1:06:37SPEAKERWill you send me some split audio files

1:06:40SPEAKERso I can like noodle around with this

1:06:42SPEAKERand see if we can figure out a way to do it

1:06:43SPEAKERthat's not gonna cost a fortune

1:06:44SPEAKERand will deliver decent results?"

1:06:47SPEAKERSo for last week, there is a transcript for episode 49

1:06:53SPEAKERand if people like that and are into it,

1:06:55SPEAKERplease let us know so we will figure out a way

1:06:57SPEAKERto A, pay Julian for his time and efforts,

1:06:59SPEAKERor at least make sure he isn't losing money

1:07:02SPEAKERand we'll keep doing it 'cause I think it's a good thing.

1:07:05SPEAKERI've never done a podcast with a transcript before

1:07:07SPEAKERand we're set up to do it here, which is nice.

1:07:10SPEAKER- Yeah, that's awesome.

1:07:12SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:07:13SPEAKER- Thank you, yeah, thank you so much

1:07:13SPEAKERfor your time and effort.

1:07:14SPEAKER- I missed that stuff, is that actually out on the server?

1:07:17SPEAKER- It's out now, yeah.

1:07:18SPEAKERI posted it this morning, I finally figured out

1:07:20SPEAKERhow to post it to our podcast host.

1:07:23SPEAKER- I had one of those days where I was so busy

1:07:24SPEAKERI didn't really have time to look at the server

1:07:26SPEAKERand those always feel like bad days

1:07:28SPEAKER'cause I wanna keep up with everything

1:07:30SPEAKERthat's going on in there and if I turn off

1:07:32SPEAKERthat information valve, I start feeling

1:07:34SPEAKERlike something is amiss, you know?

1:07:36SPEAKER- I like to dip in and dip out at like,

1:07:39SPEAKEReven if it's just a few minutes at lunchtime,

1:07:41SPEAKERI'm in there reading, but it's, we are,

1:07:45SPEAKERfor people who ask, for people who are wondering,

1:07:49SPEAKERthe "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

1:07:52SPEAKERkind of book club goal, we're at,

1:07:57SPEAKERwhen I looked before the start of the show,

1:07:58SPEAKERwe were at 968 patrons, so we're closing in,

1:08:03SPEAKER32 to go, I think.

1:08:06SPEAKER- We have the magic number, is that my cue

1:08:07SPEAKERto start reading, that's not our cue

1:08:09SPEAKERto record the episode, right?

1:08:11SPEAKER- I figure we're gonna give people a heads up

1:08:12SPEAKERwhen we hit the number and then if we dip back below,

1:08:15SPEAKERwe'll just pull the carrot back away, right?

1:08:18SPEAKER- I don't wanna, I'm getting flashbacks

1:08:20SPEAKERfrom college of trying to cram an entire book.

1:08:23SPEAKER- You're gonna, look, you can just watch the movie,

1:08:27SPEAKERit'll be fine, nobody'll know, they're all exactly the same.

1:08:30SPEAKER- I'll get a head start on it.

1:08:32SPEAKER- Yeah, but yeah, I wanna thank our patrons.

1:08:36SPEAKERSo thanks to our executive producer level patrons,

1:08:40SPEAKERAndrew Cotton, David Allen and Jacob Chappell.

1:08:42SPEAKERAnd also thank you to our associate level,

1:08:45SPEAKERassociate producer level patrons,

1:08:47SPEAKERArthur Gies, CJ Rebita, Dan Brockman,

1:08:51SPEAKERDave Woullian, Graham Banks, Jad Rita, Sam Buck,

1:08:56SPEAKERSam Buck rather, not Sam Bunk, that's a different person.

1:09:00SPEAKERThe Bunny Fiend really loves the bunnies.

1:09:02SPEAKER- Yes.

1:09:03SPEAKER- And Thomas Shay, so thank you all so much.

1:09:06SPEAKER- Yes, thank you.

1:09:07SPEAKER- If you would like to find out how you can support the pod,

1:09:10SPEAKERfor two bucks a month, you can get access to the Discord,

1:09:13SPEAKERwhich is an incredible resource full of wonderful people.

1:09:18SPEAKERAnd at five bucks a month,

1:09:19SPEAKERyou get our monthly patron episodes,

1:09:20SPEAKERwhich we're gonna record sometime in the next couple of days

1:09:22SPEAKERwhen I get my home assistant server running

1:09:26SPEAKERand I have something to talk about that isn't just failure.

1:09:29SPEAKER- I don't know.

1:09:30SPEAKER- I think I'm almost there, I think I'm real close.

1:09:32SPEAKER- Yeah, I was trying to think of something nice to say

1:09:34SPEAKERabout home automation and it was coming up blank

1:09:36SPEAKER'cause I've had my own issues sort of late.

1:09:38SPEAKER- Here's the, I have something nice

1:09:40SPEAKERto say about home automation.

1:09:42SPEAKERIn the old days, when we were talking about

1:09:44SPEAKERlike X10 home automation,

1:09:45SPEAKERit just didn't work no matter what you did.

1:09:48SPEAKER- At least it was predictable.

1:09:49SPEAKER- Yeah, nothing you could do would make it work.

1:09:55SPEAKERNow, in 2020, with standards and a bunch of other things,

1:10:01SPEAKERthe difference is that now it does actually work,

1:10:09SPEAKERbut setting it up requires heroic measures

1:10:11SPEAKERif you want it to work right.

1:10:12SPEAKER- Yeah, so also I found occasionally

1:10:15SPEAKERit just works and then it doesn't.

1:10:18SPEAKER- So the good stuff, once you get it working,

1:10:20SPEAKERI have not had that.

1:10:21SPEAKERLike once you get the stuff that uses Z-Wave and Zigbee

1:10:24SPEAKERand like hubs and all that stuff working,

1:10:26SPEAKERonce you get it configured and working, it's pretty solid.

1:10:29SPEAKER- This was, well, I should save it,

1:10:30SPEAKERbut this was using Homebridge

1:10:32SPEAKERto add some Casa devices to Apple Home.

1:10:36SPEAKER- Oh no.

1:10:36SPEAKER- Which was fine. - I use Homebridge.

1:10:38SPEAKER- Right up until, what's that?

1:10:39SPEAKERYou're not a fan?

1:10:40SPEAKER- No, I use Homebridge, it's great.

1:10:41SPEAKERI've never had any problems.

1:10:43SPEAKERMy instance of Homebridge has been running faithfully

1:10:45SPEAKERfor like three years now

1:10:46SPEAKERwithout me having looked at it at all.

1:10:47SPEAKER- I suspect that the problem is not Homebridge,

1:10:50SPEAKERbut rather Apple Home.

1:10:51SPEAKER- Oh, that's possible.

1:10:52SPEAKER- I think, that's my guess.

1:10:55SPEAKERI did, well, we'll talk about it.

1:10:56SPEAKER- Yeah, this is a future topic,

1:10:58SPEAKERbut thanks for listening, everybody,

1:11:00SPEAKERand we will see you all next week, I guess.

1:11:04SPEAKER(upbeat music)