Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► Are my levels good? Levels levels?

00:00:01 ◼   ► Levels levels.

00:00:02 ◼   ► Okay. But are they good? Are the levels good?

00:00:04 ◼   ► I don't know man. Look, it never is immediate.

00:00:08 ◼   ► What do you mean?

00:00:08 ◼   ► The problem is never immediate. I have to wait for you to settle in.

00:00:11 ◼   ► Stop moving the desk.

00:00:14 ◼   ► Desk doesn't move. Well I mean the desk does move up and down,

00:00:17 ◼   ► but I've got a boom arm so that's not a problem anymore.

00:00:19 ◼   ► I've been meaning to ask you about your office.

00:00:22 ◼   ► Uh, what do you mean?

00:00:27 ◼   ► Well I've had it as a note in my in my personal private

00:00:31 ◼   ► Cortex Notes that you made reference to many episodes ago now about

00:00:38 ◼   ► resetting up the office you painted it blue and that you were

00:00:43 ◼   ► finding desks and stuff and I just wondered

00:00:47 ◼   ► if that has settled. Well I mean I thought it had but then I've

00:00:54 ◼   ► I've also decided I need to rearrange everything again, but it's sort of...

00:00:59 ◼   ► So that was horrifically unsuccessful then.

00:01:01 ◼   ► No, it's success.

00:01:03 ◼   ► No, no.

00:01:04 ◼   ► How dare you?

00:01:05 ◼   ► It was successful because we're closer to, you know, an ultimate perfection

00:01:10 ◼   ► here, but you know, not, not there yet.

00:01:12 ◼   ► But I also need, I need to check levels, levels with you, because in addition to

00:01:16 ◼   ► moving around desk stuff all the time, I've also have different audio recording

00:01:21 ◼   ► stuff every time and so this is why I just wanted to make sure.

00:01:25 ◼   ► Why would you have different audio recording stuff every time?

00:01:28 ◼   ► Well because you're always trying out new things.

00:01:31 ◼   ► No!

00:01:31 ◼   ► You tell me to buy stuff and I was like okay I get the boom arm and that's new.

00:01:35 ◼   ► Right.

00:01:36 ◼   ► And...

00:01:36 ◼   ► What else is new?

00:01:37 ◼   ► You know you complain about that I have the second recorder and so you know I do stuff

00:01:42 ◼   ► differently then to try to satisfy you and you know just make everything sound good.

00:01:47 ◼   ► So just look you got different equipment sometimes you don't know how it sounds and that's why I

00:01:51 ◼   ► I wanted to check out that the levels are good.

00:01:53 ◼   ► - What I don't like is the way that you

00:01:55 ◼   ► purposefully obscure all the facts that I want.

00:01:59 ◼   ► So you say, "Oh, I'm doing things differently."

00:02:04 ◼   ► And I say, "What are you doing differently?"

00:02:06 ◼   ► And then you say a bunch of stuff that I already know,

00:02:09 ◼   ► like, and you say, "Oh, I get the recorder

00:02:12 ◼   ► "and I do that differently," you know,

00:02:13 ◼   ► and then just move on.

00:02:15 ◼   ► When you know that the piece of information I want

00:02:17 ◼   ► is if you're doing something different

00:02:18 ◼   ► with the actual recording,

00:02:20 ◼   ► I wanna know that part.

00:02:22 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, no, stuff's different with the actual recording.

00:02:25 ◼   ► Of course, that's different for sure.

00:02:26 ◼   ► So, well, I mean, I'm still using my,

00:02:29 ◼   ► I've got my trusty, which what is it called here?

00:02:31 ◼   ► Let me, here, let me pick up all the delicately

00:02:33 ◼   ► connected stuff so I can read the names of it again.

00:02:35 ◼   ► So, all right, so I'm still using my Rode A1

00:02:40 ◼   ► or AL-1, AL-1 interface that I know you love so much

00:02:45 ◼   ► because it was recommended to me

00:02:46 ◼   ► as an excellent recording travel interface.

00:02:50 ◼   ► So yes, I love it, it's great.

00:02:52 ◼   ► I've got that, that's still going into the computer,

00:02:55 ◼   ► that's good.

00:02:56 ◼   ► But the thing that you didn't like where I was,

00:02:58 ◼   ► oh, I had like a separate backup recorder.

00:03:01 ◼   ► So now what I'm doing is I've got a splitter

00:03:06 ◼   ► going from the XLR cable from the microphone

00:03:10 ◼   ► that splits my audio going to the L1 Rode recorder,

00:03:15 ◼   ► which goes to the computer.

00:03:17 ◼   ► And then the other half of the splitter

00:03:19 ◼   ► is going toward a Zoom F6 recorder that I got.

00:03:24 ◼   ► And so that is now the backup,

00:03:27 ◼   ► because my understanding is,

00:03:30 ◼   ► if I mess up the levels levels,

00:03:33 ◼   ► so that I'm peaking or that I'm too quiet,

00:03:35 ◼   ► the backup recording from the F6,

00:03:38 ◼   ► it's got more bits in it,

00:03:39 ◼   ► so I should be able to always salvage that.

00:03:42 ◼   ► - What?

00:03:43 ◼   ► What did you just say?

00:03:45 ◼   ► - There's more bits,

00:03:46 ◼   ► there's more bits in the F6 Zoom recorder.

00:03:49 ◼   ► It's more bit color depth, you know, like in an image where it's 10 bit versus 8 bit.

00:03:54 ◼   ► I know what you're saying, right?

00:03:56 ◼   ► Okay, good, because I don't know what I'm saying.

00:03:58 ◼   ► Well, okay, I know you are saying a thing that exists, maybe that helps you,

00:04:03 ◼   ► but my point is, like, even though I don't know if the 32-bit float recording is beneficial,

00:04:09 ◼   ► if your levels are wrong there, they're still wrong.

00:04:14 ◼   ► If you're too loud, you're too loud, like, that's unsalvageable, you know?

00:04:21 ◼   ► No, I think it's fine. I think it's fine. I think that's what the F6 does.

00:04:24 ◼   ► I don't really know this equipment and I'm looking at it, and as I'm looking at it,

00:04:28 ◼   ► thinking, "This is way too complicated for you, and I don't know what led you to this."

00:04:34 ◼   ► Okay, so look, I just, I can't make you happy, Myke. You don't like my L1 recorder because it's

00:04:41 ◼   ► too simple and you don't like the f6 because it's too complicated.

00:04:45 ◼   ► You deserve credit, okay? You deserve some credit in that you have finally created the

00:04:52 ◼   ► bones of a backup recorder that I'm happy with. The idea of taking your microphone and splitting

00:04:59 ◼   ► it, which is something I didn't even know you could do, so that does make me a little nervous,

00:05:04 ◼   ► but nevertheless, as a system, if you demand to use two hardware recorders for your backup,

00:05:12 ◼   ► taking the actual microphone is good because usually you're just like,

00:05:16 ◼   ► "Oh, I've got a microphone under a book in the corner and that's what I'll use," right?

00:05:21 ◼   ► Which is pointless. So that, I will give you the credit for that.

00:05:26 ◼   ► But now I want to come back to, I'm looking at this Zoom F6 product page

00:05:30 ◼   ► And I don't know why you have this very specific piece of hardware where literally every single

00:05:37 ◼   ► image on their product page is sound people on shooting sets using this.

00:05:42 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I mean, it has six XLR inputs so that if I invite six people over to my house,

00:05:50 ◼   ► which has literally never happened, I could record each of them on a separate setup.

00:05:54 ◼   ► Right, but again, Zoom do other products that are much more user-friendly that also have

00:05:59 ◼   ► 6 or 4 or however many XLR inputs you want. They're field recorders.

00:06:06 ◼   ► As I'm talking, as I was just laughing there, I'm looking at the F6 recorder and I can't

00:06:09 ◼   ► tell if I'm peaking or not on it, I don't know.

00:06:11 ◼   ► You see what I'm saying? Who told you to buy the F6?

00:06:17 ◼   ► Well, 'cause, like, I told me to buy it, but so I'm looking at it now…

00:06:20 ◼   ► How did you find that?

00:06:22 ◼   ► But there's two places where it's displaying the input.

00:06:27 ◼   ► I don't know how to explain this.

00:06:29 ◼   ► You've got like two meters?

00:06:30 ◼   ► Yeah, there's two meters.

00:06:31 ◼   ► Like I'm recording on channel 4.

00:06:34 ◼   ► And it shows channel 4.

00:06:36 ◼   ► Why would you choose 4?

00:06:37 ◼   ► Would you just, look, can we just move past that?

00:06:40 ◼   ► Don't worry about it.

00:06:41 ◼   ► I'm recording on channel 4.

00:06:42 ◼   ► And the channel 4 little line is going up to like minus 12, which I think is what you're

00:06:47 ◼   ► supposed to aim for.

00:06:49 ◼   ► I really hate everything that has to do with audio or like, oh, what's the how does the volume work?

00:06:53 ◼   ► Oh volume goes from minus 48 to zero.

00:06:55 ◼   ► Right, but you see what I like about the hardware that I use is it shows me this in lights.

00:07:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:01 ◼   ► Green, amber, red.

00:07:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:04 ◼   ► Does this have those?

00:07:05 ◼   ► No, but the Rode L1 has green.

00:07:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:09 ◼   ► Like when I'm talking now it's green.

00:07:10 ◼   ► Sure.

00:07:11 ◼   ► And if I laugh it goes yellow.

00:07:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:12 ◼   ► And then if it's too loud, it's red.

00:07:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I got it.

00:07:15 ◼   ► So why do you now have something that's giving you minus 12?

00:07:18 ◼   ► No, it shows a, I don't know, isn't that what you're supposed to aim for?

00:07:25 ◼   ► Finally got that!

00:07:27 ◼   ► Okay, so listen, listen, you're derailing the point.

00:07:32 ◼   ► So when I'm talking to the microphone now, because also I know Myke, you want me to talk right into the microphone.

00:07:38 ◼   ► Right into the microphone.

00:07:40 ◼   ► That's a good idea.

00:07:43 ◼   ► I didn't notice this before we started recording, but...

00:07:47 ◼   ► So the channel 4 thing seems to be going to -12,

00:07:51 ◼   ► but then there's also a left and right and a line

00:07:55 ◼   ► indicator, and those seem to be going into

00:07:59 ◼   ► red territory if I laugh. And I don't know which is the...

00:08:03 ◼   ► Maybe this is what it has to do with the extra bits,

00:08:07 ◼   ► that the 4 channel is the extra bits channel and the left and right channel is like the traditional recording,

00:08:11 ◼   ► so that if it was the traditional recording,

00:08:13 ◼   ► it would be peaked.

00:08:14 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:08:15 ◼   ► I don't know how it works.

00:08:15 ◼   ► I'll listen to it later and I'm sure it'll be great.

00:08:17 ◼   ► - When we are done today,

00:08:18 ◼   ► can you just send me the audio that comes from that thing?

00:08:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, sure.

00:08:23 ◼   ► - I'm just intrigued.

00:08:24 ◼   ► So again, I wanna ask another question.

00:08:26 ◼   ► Is this the first time you've used this?

00:08:28 ◼   ► - No, it isn't the first time I've used it.

00:08:31 ◼   ► It's almost the first time I've used it.

00:08:33 ◼   ► - I turned it on once.

00:08:35 ◼   ► - No, no, I was, I did a test,

00:08:39 ◼   ► the little stuff that I did where I read some of the Halloween stories, I tested this interface,

00:08:47 ◼   ► this little split-up thing I tested with that. Myke, do you think I would test a brand new

00:08:52 ◼   ► audio configuration for a live recording of Cortex? Of course I would, but I didn't

00:08:58 ◼   ► do it this time. I tried it before with something else.

00:09:03 ◼   ► I still don't know why you have the F6 though.

00:09:07 ◼   ► This is the thing I can't work out.

00:09:10 ◼   ► It has more bits.

00:09:11 ◼   ► There's more bits in the audio recording.

00:09:14 ◼   ► So you don't have to think about peaks or like, here's, here's like, I don't,

00:09:18 ◼   ► I don't like, I don't like having to worry about all the extra details.

00:09:22 ◼   ► Right?

00:09:22 ◼   ► So it's, it's why I like the Rode L1, cause it's nice and simple.

00:09:25 ◼   ► And then the F6, right.

00:09:28 ◼   ► Or is it H6?

00:09:29 ◼   ► No, yeah, it's the F6.

00:09:30 ◼   ► The F6 I was reading about it and it's like, "Oh, this one has more bits, so you don't

00:09:34 ◼   ► ever have to care about the gain.

00:09:36 ◼   ► Just plug in the thing and don't ever worry about the gain and it'll be fine.

00:09:39 ◼   ► The bits will save you."

00:09:40 ◼   ► So I was like, "Great!

00:09:42 ◼   ► That's what I want.

00:09:43 ◼   ► I don't want to have to worry about something."

00:09:44 ◼   ► I mean, if that's true, it sounds great.

00:09:46 ◼   ► I'm not saying it's not true.

00:09:47 ◼   ► I've just never looked into the bits before.

00:09:51 ◼   ► I'm not saying it's true either because I didn't test it in any kind of rigorous way.

00:09:55 ◼   ► I just got it and plugged it in and I'm just... believing.

00:09:59 ◼   ► And I'll send you the file and you'll be the one who gets to discover whether or not it's real.

00:10:06 ◼   ► But, so, I did run into a problem which I don't quite understand though,

00:10:11 ◼   ► which is, I think splitting the audio has made my microphone way quieter.

00:10:16 ◼   ► So I had to buy one of those, like, cloud lifter things that boosts the volume.

00:10:22 ◼   ► Oh, I don't know if you had to do that.

00:10:24 ◼   ► Did you check if you had Phantom Power turned on?

00:10:27 ◼   ► Okay, so Phantom Power thing...

00:10:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:33 ◼   ► I was playing around with Phantom Power a bunch,

00:10:35 ◼   ► but basically, yeah, it seems like, I don't know, splitting the microphone made the microphone way quieter.

00:10:40 ◼   ► That makes sense though.

00:10:41 ◼   ► Why?

00:10:42 ◼   ► Because is half the volume going down one?

00:10:44 ◼   ► Yeah, it's an analogue signal.

00:10:45 ◼   ► Oh god, I guess it is literally an analogue signal, isn't it?

00:10:48 ◼   ► Okay, alright, that does make more sense though.

00:10:51 ◼   ► I forget that these XLR cables are actually analogue signals.

00:10:55 ◼   ► Yeah, we just put them into digital converters basically.

00:10:58 ◼   ► This is one of these facts I love, it's the headphone jack.

00:11:02 ◼   ► I want to say the headphone jack was invented in like 1880.

00:11:07 ◼   ► It's some ridiculously old convention that the standard size headphone jack is.

00:11:12 ◼   ► It's like Nintendo, right? It's from the 1800s.

00:11:14 ◼   ► The headphone jack used to make playing cards.

00:11:16 ◼   ► Yes, that's exactly right. That's how that works.

00:11:19 ◼   ► 1877.

00:11:21 ◼   ► 1877 is the headphone jack?

00:11:23 ◼   ► Yep.

00:11:24 ◼   ► Yeah, see there you go.

00:11:25 ◼   ► Okay, all right, well then that makes sense.

00:11:27 ◼   ► So I wasn't crazy to realize I need one of these little,

00:11:30 ◼   ► I still don't know how it works or what it does,

00:11:32 ◼   ► but one of these magic boxes

00:11:33 ◼   ► that makes the microphone louder.

00:11:34 ◼   ► So that is new.

00:11:36 ◼   ► That's new this time for the first time.

00:11:38 ◼   ► I didn't use that when I was doing the test recording

00:11:40 ◼   ► for the short stories that I read.

00:11:42 ◼   ► So anyway, that's why I wanted to know

00:11:45 ◼   ► if the level sounded fine to you

00:11:47 ◼   ► because it's a slightly new setup

00:11:49 ◼   ► and I think it's fine.

00:11:50 ◼   ► - It took us 10 minutes for me to find out

00:11:53 ◼   ► what you'd really done.

00:11:55 ◼   ► 'Cause the cloud lifter is the thing

00:11:57 ◼   ► I'm the most concerned about.

00:11:59 ◼   ► - What could go wrong?

00:12:00 ◼   ► I mean, I sound good, right?

00:12:01 ◼   ► It did seem a little noisy when I first put it on though.

00:12:04 ◼   ► - There have been many times where we are talking

00:12:07 ◼   ► and you sound fine, but the file that you provide to me

00:12:11 ◼   ► of our recording, not fine.

00:12:14 ◼   ► Well, everybody already knows by now if it wasn't fine,

00:12:18 ◼   ► so it's not my problem anymore.

00:12:21 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:12:25 ◼   ► [Ding]

00:12:26 ◼   ► Anyway, how you doing Myke?

00:12:28 ◼   ► I'm back in lockdown, well we both are, but I would assume not only my life really changed that much.

00:12:34 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:12:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean I did hear that we're back in lockdown.

00:12:40 ◼   ► This piece of information came to me through the grapevine.

00:12:44 ◼   ► I was actually talking to my parents and they were like, "Oh, I heard we heard lockdown is in the UK.

00:12:50 ◼   ► "What's going on? What are the new rules? What do you have to do?"

00:12:53 ◼   ► My response was, "Oh, I don't know. I can't leave my house anyway.

00:12:57 ◼   ► I don't have any idea what I'm supposed to be doing or not be doing."

00:13:00 ◼   ► So I know that there is lockdown, but I don't know...

00:13:04 ◼   ► I legitimately have no idea what the deets are for this lockdown.

00:13:08 ◼   ► So please, please inform me what are people allowed to do or not allowed to do

00:13:12 ◼   ► and how has that impacted your life?

00:13:14 ◼   ► - I'm not gonna answer that question. - Why?

00:13:17 ◼   ► Because it's not important for the show, right?

00:13:20 ◼   ► Like, oh, okay, you could go outside,

00:13:22 ◼   ► but only one of a per--

00:13:23 ◼   ► Like, it's not--

00:13:24 ◼   ► - No, but see, the pertinent thing is,

00:13:26 ◼   ► I do really like how the lockdown rules seem to change

00:13:29 ◼   ► in weird and small ways constantly,

00:13:32 ◼   ► which mostly makes it very hard for people to comply.

00:13:35 ◼   ► But how are things in your life, Myke?

00:13:38 ◼   ► - The way it's affected me now is I'm at home.

00:13:41 ◼   ► I'm at home right now.

00:13:42 ◼   ► - Oh, okay, so you are not recording from Mega Studio?

00:13:46 ◼   ► - No.

00:13:47 ◼   ► Hmm. Okay. Are you not allowed to go to mega studio?

00:13:50 ◼   ► Unlike the first lockdown, the building is open.

00:13:54 ◼   ► Okay. Okay.

00:13:55 ◼   ► I feel like you're not answering my question there though.

00:13:57 ◼   ► The building is open.

00:13:58 ◼   ► No, no, I'm gonna get to it.

00:13:59 ◼   ► But I wanted to just lay that out.

00:14:02 ◼   ► It was like the last time I had no choice, right?

00:14:06 ◼   ► But also last time I hadn't started recording from there.

00:14:10 ◼   ► Right.

00:14:10 ◼   ► Now I've had a few months of being there every day,

00:14:13 ◼   ► doing all my shows from there.

00:14:15 ◼   ► and this time they have decided not to close the building.

00:14:19 ◼   ► The building is open, there are less people there of course.

00:14:22 ◼   ► But I have decided that I will record

00:14:31 ◼   ► all of my shows from home because I can.

00:14:35 ◼   ► - Okay. - This was the reason

00:14:36 ◼   ► I left all the gear here, right?

00:14:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is the scenario

00:14:39 ◼   ► that you were concerned about, right?

00:14:40 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Like you can't move

00:14:41 ◼   ► everything into the office. - Exactly.

00:14:42 ◼   ► - For this exact moment, which has now occurred.

00:14:45 ◼   ► What I thought would happen didn't exactly happen and like I thought that they would say like "from tomorrow"

00:14:50 ◼   ► But like, you know, it was multiple days from announcing to it happening

00:14:54 ◼   ► So I had multiple days of like trying to work out do I need to bring anything and all that kind of stuff

00:15:01 ◼   ► And effectively what I am doing is I'm

00:15:06 ◼   ► Over the lockdown period going to be going into the studio once or twice a week

00:15:12 ◼   ► Okay to do things that I can only do there one of those things is twitch streaming. So that's something I'm doing

00:15:19 ◼   ► Well, I am there but I also have just equipment and various things that are at the studio only that I didn't bring home

00:15:27 ◼   ► So I'm going in and also, you know, I do want to go in and make sure everything is okay, right?

00:15:34 ◼   ► And just making sure that things are all good at the studio

00:15:39 ◼   ► What do you mean by everything is okay?

00:15:41 ◼   ► Like you haven't been burglarized?

00:15:43 ◼   ► Is that what you mean?

00:15:44 ◼   ► - No, I mean, we have an alarm system for that,

00:15:46 ◼   ► but it's kind of just like,

00:15:48 ◼   ► I have so much stuff there now, like equipment.

00:15:52 ◼   ► And I just want, I will feel better going in

00:15:55 ◼   ► and just being like, we're all good here, right?

00:15:58 ◼   ► You know?

00:15:59 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:16:00 ◼   ► Like I don't wanna go there

00:16:01 ◼   ► and find that there's been a leak, right?

00:16:03 ◼   ► - Okay, okay. - You know what I mean?

00:16:04 ◼   ► Like I have like value in that building now.

00:16:08 ◼   ► So I don't want to just leave it for six weeks and come back and just make sure everything's good.

00:16:14 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:16:15 ◼   ► Yes, I just enjoy the mental image that you painted here where you...

00:16:20 ◼   ► How's everyone doing?

00:16:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I want to go to the office and check that we're all good here and Myke is talking to the room

00:16:27 ◼   ► and all of the various electronic devices are responding like,

00:16:30 ◼   ► "Oh, hey Myke, how you been? Yes, we're doing great. Thanks. Everything's perfectly fine."

00:16:35 ◼   ► Look, if a Toy Story situation does occur at my studio,

00:16:39 ◼   ► I do want to be there to experience it.

00:16:41 ◼   ► - Right, of course.

00:16:42 ◼   ► - And then the other big thing is,

00:16:44 ◼   ► it's personally for my mental wellbeing,

00:16:49 ◼   ► I wanna be able to go and spend time there

00:16:50 ◼   ► because I really value my time there.

00:16:53 ◼   ► And I have noticed that now being back at home all the time

00:16:57 ◼   ► is more difficult for me

00:16:59 ◼   ► because I'm used to not being at home all the time again.

00:17:02 ◼   ► So because the first time it was difficult,

00:17:06 ◼   ► but now it's like a different level of difficult

00:17:08 ◼   ► and everyone's dealing with their own stuff, right?

00:17:10 ◼   ► And I just wanna state, right?

00:17:14 ◼   ► Like I know that there are many people

00:17:15 ◼   ► that have it way worse off than I do right now

00:17:18 ◼   ► and in different lockdown situations and stuff like that.

00:17:23 ◼   ► But just for me personally and how I am doing,

00:17:26 ◼   ► I am finding it more difficult now to be back at home again

00:17:31 ◼   ► because I was getting really into that flow

00:17:35 ◼   ► of traveling to the studio, spending my time there.

00:17:39 ◼   ► I felt really productive there.

00:17:41 ◼   ► And I was getting stuff taken care of, coming home,

00:17:44 ◼   ► and I was enjoying that split of home and office.

00:17:49 ◼   ► And now it kind of has all felt like

00:17:51 ◼   ► it's all melded back in together again.

00:17:53 ◼   ► And I don't feel as productive.

00:17:55 ◼   ► Because if I'm at the studio and I have a bit of downtime,

00:17:58 ◼   ► I occupy myself with some kind of project.

00:18:01 ◼   ► - Right.

00:18:02 ◼   ► - But that's not the same at home.

00:18:05 ◼   ► They don't have those projects.

00:18:07 ◼   ► There's no space for activities, right?

00:18:09 ◼   ► Which is what I have at the studio.

00:18:11 ◼   ► And so, you know, the transition has been pretty harsh.

00:18:16 ◼   ► Luckily I've had a very busy week this week.

00:18:21 ◼   ► Yeah, Taylor and the last week sucked.

00:18:23 ◼   ► This week has been much better.

00:18:26 ◼   ► I've had a lot of stuff to occupy my time.

00:18:29 ◼   ► so it's been more manageable.

00:18:32 ◼   ► But I just made the decision that once or twice a week,

00:18:36 ◼   ► I'm gonna go and spend the day at the studio,

00:18:38 ◼   ► do some things there, and then come back home again.

00:18:42 ◼   ► - So it's the re-collapse of the separate spaces

00:18:45 ◼   ► that you're finding much harder this time.

00:18:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause I'd gotten used to it and loved it, you know?

00:18:50 ◼   ► And then I had to pull it all back again.

00:18:54 ◼   ► It's like a bit of whiplash, really.

00:18:55 ◼   ► you were able to get a taste of what it is that you wanted, which is, "Oh, I have the separate spaces,"

00:19:03 ◼   ► which was always the goal with your current domicile that that office was going to be temporary.

00:19:09 ◼   ► Like, you got a taste of, you know, we all went on the long journey with you of finding your office space,

00:19:16 ◼   ► and you've set up Mega Studio, and I guess it is a little bit like, "Oh, you got a present,"

00:19:23 ◼   ► but then it was taken away and that hurts more deeply than not having had it in the first place.

00:19:30 ◼   ► Yes, that is exactly it. So yeah, I'm just, you know, I'm transitioning back. It's like,

00:19:36 ◼   ► I'm recording, we're recording this at a time when I'm feeling it the most, you know, like,

00:19:42 ◼   ► I would expect that I'm probably gonna have a bit of a lull and I'll be okay in the middle and then

00:19:46 ◼   ► towards the end I'll be like anxious to get back there again. And also at the time that we're

00:19:52 ◼   ► recording this, I haven't been back yet.

00:19:54 ◼   ► Ah, okay, so you haven't been back since the new lockdown started?

00:19:58 ◼   ► No, no, so you know, it's just like, it's just difficult, you know? It's just a shame because

00:20:03 ◼   ► I was really in the flow, I was really enjoying it, I was loving that, like I was saying,

00:20:08 ◼   ► like having that space, that separation. So it just kind of like, it's a bit like, "Oh man."

00:20:14 ◼   ► But I, look, I could go there every day if I wanted to, as soon as my studio is open.

00:20:20 ◼   ► my travel is as good as it ever has been, right?

00:20:23 ◼   ► As I've mentioned before, my path to getting to the studio is

00:20:28 ◼   ► very socially distanced, but I just felt like I want to

00:20:35 ◼   ► live in the spirit of the law here, you know? Like we're being told to stay

00:20:42 ◼   ► at home, so I'll do that, you know?

00:20:46 ◼   ► in total fairness, if the rules are you shouldn't go into work unless you absolutely have to,

00:20:53 ◼   ► you don't absolutely have to go into work. You can work from home, which is what you're

00:20:59 ◼   ► doing right now. And that is the idea that it's a lot of people making decisions on the

00:21:05 ◼   ► margins that, you know, none of them individually have a huge effect, but collectively they

00:21:11 ◼   ► all increase the chance of spread even if all of those travels are individually socially

00:21:17 ◼   ► distanced. So that does make sense. That does make sense that you would stay at home because

00:21:22 ◼   ► that is the correct thing to do following the lockdown rules. But yeah, I also can easily

00:21:30 ◼   ► imagine that for a lot of people the timing of this is also, you know, it's we're in that

00:21:41 ◼   ► time of year where the sun just disappears from the UK and I think that's that's always

00:21:48 ◼   ► like an extra little kick in the shins for for this time. It's like, oh we had the daylight

00:21:55 ◼   ► savings time change and so suddenly the sun is going down at 4 30 in the afternoon and

00:22:01 ◼   ► also you know you're supposed to stay inside all the time and it's like that's that is

00:22:06 ◼   ► that is like a one-two it's like a one-two punch that's not super helpful.

00:22:10 ◼   ► Yeah it's like already a time of year when people are starting to be like "aww man"

00:22:14 ◼   ► and then it's like "aww man" you know.

00:22:18 ◼   ► Genuinely shocking and horrifying every time this this time of year when it's like "oh

00:22:23 ◼   ► No more sun for you in the evening.

00:22:25 ◼   ► You start getting sleepy at 4pm and you're like,

00:22:28 ◼   ► oh no, wait a minute.

00:22:29 ◼   ► This is a long time to go before bedtime.

00:22:31 ◼   ► - This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Team History,

00:22:36 ◼   ► a podcast that tells the stories of teams

00:22:38 ◼   ► who work together in new and unexpected ways

00:22:41 ◼   ► to achieve remarkable things.

00:22:44 ◼   ► Every episode of Team History tells a story

00:22:46 ◼   ► and in each of these stories,

00:22:47 ◼   ► you're gonna find practical lessons

00:22:49 ◼   ► for your team and your business.

00:22:51 ◼   ► This season, the show travels deep into underwater caves

00:22:54 ◼   ► of Northern Thailand to discover how divers, medics,

00:22:57 ◼   ► soldiers, and volunteers freed a group of trapped teenagers.

00:23:01 ◼   ► It explains how a world-renowned watch company

00:23:03 ◼   ► pitted their two factories against each other

00:23:06 ◼   ► in an attempt to become the best watchmaker in the world,

00:23:08 ◼   ► and also finds out how Iceland went from having

00:23:11 ◼   ► one of the highest COVID-19 death rates in Scandinavia

00:23:14 ◼   ► to discovering an interesting example

00:23:16 ◼   ► of how to deal with the virus.

00:23:18 ◼   ► You can discover stories that entertain,

00:23:20 ◼   ► that are packed with business cases you can actually use.

00:23:23 ◼   ► Season two of Teamistry is out now

00:23:25 ◼   ► and it's hosted by award-winning documentary filmmaker

00:23:27 ◼   ► Gabriella Coppethwaite, the director of Blackfish.

00:23:31 ◼   ► I listened to an episode which is all about

00:23:33 ◼   ► an application called Wildbook.

00:23:35 ◼   ► This helps conservators and researchers

00:23:37 ◼   ► keep track of wild animals like whale sharks and zebras

00:23:40 ◼   ► using AI analysis of imagery.

00:23:43 ◼   ► So super fascinating stuff that is actually helping

00:23:45 ◼   ► track these animals which is great for conservation efforts

00:23:48 ◼   ► and also for helping us understand a little bit more about the world around us.

00:23:52 ◼   ► And Teamistry really shows that teamwork comes in many, many forms.

00:23:57 ◼   ► It's not just about office work by any stretch of the imagination,

00:24:00 ◼   ► but no matter what type of project you do in, whether it's working on a pitch

00:24:04 ◼   ► or a proposal or trying to track whale sharks,

00:24:07 ◼   ► the same kind of problems are the things that we all face.

00:24:10 ◼   ► Stuff like dealing with team distribution, data management, communication,

00:24:14 ◼   ► all of that stuff is explored in these episodes.

00:24:17 ◼   ► So go search for Teamistry anywhere that you listen to podcasts so you can find the link

00:24:21 ◼   ► in the show notes. Our thanks to Teamistry for their support of this show and Relay FM.

00:24:26 ◼   ► Many cortexes accurately recognized that your mysterious face mask from our last episode was

00:24:33 ◼   ► the Tom Bihn version 3 face mask. Yes, thank you to everyone for doing the crowdsourcing on that one

00:24:43 ◼   ► to find out which mask was the one that I had ordered and then was not able to trace

00:24:49 ◼   ► down like an idiot. So I was very glad to know which mask it is that I liked. And just

00:24:55 ◼   ► around that time when I happened to go back and check because I also wanted to order more,

00:25:00 ◼   ► I see that they have a they have another iteration of this mask which I have ordered. So I'm

00:25:05 ◼   ► looking forward to checking out the next version.

00:25:09 ◼   ► So I bought one of the ones you currently have, the version 3 one.

00:25:15 ◼   ► And I don't think I like it very much.

00:25:19 ◼   ► Interesting why?

00:25:20 ◼   ► So there's a couple of reasons.

00:25:22 ◼   ► One the material is very stiff.

00:25:26 ◼   ► And it feels like, so I am a little bit more intrigued about the new one that Tom Binn's

00:25:30 ◼   ► making the version 4 because it's made of flannel which I could imagine will be softer.

00:25:37 ◼   ► What I don't like is how fiddly the ear adjustment thing is.

00:25:42 ◼   ► No that's the best part of it.

00:25:43 ◼   ► No I know that's why you like it.

00:25:46 ◼   ► Like as soon as I put it on I was like oh I know why Grey likes this but I don't like

00:25:51 ◼   ► it.

00:25:52 ◼   ► So it's a cool feature in that it's very adjustable and it also has this like string that goes

00:25:57 ◼   ► around the back of your neck so you can take the mask off and it hangs in front of you.

00:26:04 ◼   ► But I do not take my mask off when I'm outside.

00:26:09 ◼   ► When I put it on to go outside and I leave it on until I'm back inside again, which

00:26:14 ◼   ► I know is a thing that not a lot of people do.

00:26:17 ◼   ► Like if you're out in the street and there's no one around, would you keep the mask on?

00:26:22 ◼   ► If the street is empty and the mask is on, was the mask ever on at all?

00:26:28 ◼   ► Yeah, I know.

00:26:29 ◼   ► Something like that.

00:26:30 ◼   ► I'm with you.

00:26:31 ◼   ► I'm with you on this one though.

00:26:32 ◼   ► If I put the mask on, I just tend to leave the mask on.

00:26:36 ◼   ► I don't tend to take it on and off a bunch.

00:26:38 ◼   ► See, because I just figured you liked it because it had that feature,

00:26:41 ◼   ► because that seems like one of the main features of this mask

00:26:44 ◼   ► is the fact that you could take it off and it would hang in front of you.

00:26:47 ◼   ► No, I never use that. I literally never use that feature.

00:26:50 ◼   ► I actually didn't even realize for a while that's what the extra string was for.

00:26:54 ◼   ► I thought that extra string was just a side effect of adjusting the fit on your ears.

00:26:58 ◼   ► Yeah, you see, because what I don't like, I don't like the fiddliness

00:27:01 ◼   ► is that like every time I put this mask on, I have to readjust it.

00:27:04 ◼   ► And that annoys me.

00:27:06 ◼   ► That is every time.

00:27:08 ◼   ► Like it's always like off on one side.

00:27:11 ◼   ► Yeah, but you're not putting it on and off a lot, right?

00:27:13 ◼   ► That's the whole thing.

00:27:14 ◼   ► You, you, you put it on, you cinch it, make it the right size

00:27:17 ◼   ► so it fits on your ears.

00:27:18 ◼   ► It actually covers your whole face.

00:27:20 ◼   ► Like all these masks for ants, which barely cover your face at all.

00:27:23 ◼   ► And if you try to talk.

00:27:24 ◼   ► That is a good part of it is big.

00:27:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:26 ◼   ► It's nice and big.

00:27:27 ◼   ► And the version four looks like it's even bigger.

00:27:29 ◼   ► Very happy.

00:27:29 ◼   ► I'm very happy.

00:27:30 ◼   ► But see the thing for me though is when I go out, if I'm going to the studio, I am

00:27:35 ◼   ► taking on and off the mask multiple times a day, right?

00:27:39 ◼   ► Because I'll wear it to go to the studio, if I go out from the studio I'll put it

00:27:44 ◼   ► on again.

00:27:45 ◼   ► So like, it's just, I don't like that every time I put it on, even if it was just every

00:27:49 ◼   ► day that I have to adjust it.

00:27:51 ◼   ► It's not, that's not for me, I don't think.

00:27:54 ◼   ► But I do want to know what you think of the version 4 one, because the fabric does look

00:27:59 ◼   ► really nice.

00:28:00 ◼   ► So, yeah, no, it looks good.

00:28:04 ◼   ► It looks like it's a big mask that actually covers your whole face properly.

00:28:07 ◼   ► That's just my main thing is that all the other masks, I just, I felt like they were

00:28:11 ◼   ► constantly falling off my face or not really, not really covering me.

00:28:14 ◼   ► So that's, that's the main thing with this.

00:28:16 ◼   ► And it's also why I'm very glad that the cortex has figured out which mask I bought so that

00:28:20 ◼   ► I could buy some more.

00:28:22 ◼   ► But yeah, I'm very happy with it.

00:28:24 ◼   ► And they're also talking in the version 4 one about doing war for glasses fogging.

00:28:30 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:28:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:32 ◼   ► Which is always an annoyance for me.

00:28:35 ◼   ► Wait.

00:28:36 ◼   ► Do your actual glasses fog?

00:28:37 ◼   ► Or do you mean sunglasses?

00:28:39 ◼   ► No, my glasses.

00:28:40 ◼   ► Huh.

00:28:41 ◼   ► How does that happen?

00:28:42 ◼   ► What do you mean?

00:28:43 ◼   ► That's weird.

00:28:44 ◼   ► Why?

00:28:45 ◼   ► Why is this weird?

00:28:48 ◼   ► I only have this problem if I'm wearing sunglasses.

00:28:50 ◼   ► Right.

00:28:51 ◼   ► glasses, your glasses glasses are smaller than mine.

00:28:54 ◼   ► Are they?

00:28:55 ◼   ► I guess they are.

00:28:56 ◼   ► I have large glasses, right?

00:28:58 ◼   ► So like they will be more, I guess, similar in shape to your sunglasses.

00:29:02 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:29:04 ◼   ► How are they trying to solve the glasses fogging problem?

00:29:07 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:29:08 ◼   ► Which is technology.

00:29:09 ◼   ► Which is probably one of the biggest unexpected problems facing the world in

00:29:13 ◼   ► 2020.

00:29:13 ◼   ► Like, hey, glasses fogging when you wear masks suddenly is like on the top 10 list

00:29:19 ◼   ► of problems that civilization is trying to deal with.

00:29:22 ◼   ► Like, no one would have predicted that a year ago.

00:29:24 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:29:25 ◼   ► - Oh, they're doing something with the nose bridge,

00:29:29 ◼   ► which apparently is better, that there's no seam in it

00:29:32 ◼   ► in the actual bridge of the nose, which they say.

00:29:34 ◼   ► But I don't know.

00:29:36 ◼   ► At this point though, I've tried multiple face masks

00:29:38 ◼   ► that tell me that they won't fog my glasses,

00:29:41 ◼   ► and they all do.

00:29:42 ◼   ► - And they all do.

00:29:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I think I've found my favorites.

00:29:46 ◼   ► - Okay, what's your favorite?

00:29:47 ◼   ► Well, one is a follow up, the atoms masks came and I really liked those.

00:29:51 ◼   ► It's like, I liked those more than the Adidas ones.

00:29:53 ◼   ► Okay.

00:29:54 ◼   ► Um, so for that type of mask, that like the spongy material,

00:29:59 ◼   ► whoever you would call it, I liked that a lot, but Adina was looking in witch

00:30:03 ◼   ► magazine, if you don't know what witch is, I think there's a thing in America

00:30:07 ◼   ► called consumer reports.

00:30:09 ◼   ► I was like, you said witch in a way that felt like I should know what it is.

00:30:12 ◼   ► And I just, I just reflected.

00:30:12 ◼   ► You know what witch magazine is.

00:30:13 ◼   ► We've had this conversation before, haven't we?

00:30:17 ◼   ► - If we have, I totally don't remember.

00:30:18 ◼   ► - It's like the old school wire cutter, right?

00:30:22 ◼   ► - We did have this conversation, okay.

00:30:24 ◼   ► - And she found these masks by a company called,

00:30:28 ◼   ► I don't know, it's AnyQI, I guess.

00:30:30 ◼   ► And they're available in a bunch of supermarkets

00:30:32 ◼   ► and stuff here.

00:30:33 ◼   ► They're just fantastic.

00:30:35 ◼   ► They're so good.

00:30:36 ◼   ► They're big.

00:30:38 ◼   ► They're like one of the bigger masks that I've found

00:30:40 ◼   ► covers my whole face, including my beard.

00:30:44 ◼   ► The material is thick but really breathable.

00:30:48 ◼   ► And they're just very, very comfortable.

00:30:51 ◼   ► And these are easily my favorites.

00:30:54 ◼   ► And there's like, here they're 15 pounds for three of them,

00:30:58 ◼   ► which also felt pretty good compared to some

00:31:00 ◼   ► of the other prices that I've paid for decent face masks.

00:31:03 ◼   ► So as a long, I figure this is gonna keep coming up,

00:31:07 ◼   ► but these are currently my favorites.

00:31:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I'll give them a try.

00:31:11 ◼   ► I'll just see what they're like.

00:31:13 ◼   ► Even if you had them as like emergency masks, you know, like, "Oh, I've run out and I need

00:31:18 ◼   ► time," because there's, you know, they're pretty, I think they're pretty good value.

00:31:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:22 ◼   ► The only thing that I would dock the Tom Bihn masks for is that I do feel like they're not

00:31:28 ◼   ► the most breathable mask.

00:31:30 ◼   ► Every once in a while I do, I do feel a little bit like, "Oh, I hope I don't asphyxiate to

00:31:34 ◼   ► death while wearing this mask and walking briskly."

00:31:37 ◼   ► That's what I meant about like the thickness or like the rigidness of the material, which

00:31:43 ◼   ► is why I liked the Adidas ones and the Athens ones because they were very breathable. And

00:31:48 ◼   ► I know that there is like a prob—like, when you think about "breathable" and what

00:31:53 ◼   ► the masks are for, like, I get the weird, like, oxymoron in there, but nevertheless,

00:31:59 ◼   ► I—it's, you know. But the—

00:32:02 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:32:03 ◼   ► Yeah, but yeah. But nevertheless, this is—this is something that we need to solve, right?

00:32:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:08 ◼   ► A mask that was perfectly sculpted to your face and made out of lead would guarantee that no germ particles got through.

00:32:16 ◼   ► But that's not the only thing that we're trying to optimize for here.

00:32:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I like these ones. I recommend you try them because they're very available here in the UK, so I recommend you try them.

00:32:26 ◼   ► Okay, I'll give them a try. Thank you.

00:32:28 ◼   ► We should just keep doing this forever.

00:32:30 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:32:33 ◼   ► Myke, we'll know when the coronavirus is over because there's never any more mask recommendations on the show.

00:32:40 ◼   ► That's when we'll know it's done.

00:32:41 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:32:42 ◼   ► I still feel like I'm going to be a relatively frequent mask person.

00:32:48 ◼   ► You think it's gonna stick around?

00:32:50 ◼   ► I don't know if it's going to stick around, but I think it's gonna stick around for Myke Hurley.

00:32:54 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:32:58 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:33:00 ◼   ► I hope there are many people like you, Myke.

00:33:02 ◼   ► I don't think there's a lot of downside.

00:33:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:05 ◼   ► And there's only upside.

00:33:07 ◼   ► Get sick less.

00:33:09 ◼   ► Awesome, all right.

00:33:09 ◼   ► And I like wearing them.

00:33:12 ◼   ► So, you know, like if I'm traveling especially, I'll wear them.

00:33:18 ◼   ► You know, like if I'm just popping to Tesco's in the future, I probably won't.

00:33:22 ◼   ► But if I'm going somewhere for a while and I know I'm going to be interacting with a bunch of people

00:33:27 ◼   ► in confined spaces, I don't see there being any harm in it at all.

00:33:33 ◼   ► And I understand some people do find it uncomfortable

00:33:38 ◼   ► or would prefer to not wear them, but I'm not one of those people.

00:33:41 ◼   ► I hope there are enough people who are like you because I agree.

00:33:48 ◼   ► I would like to do this, but I do think that there becomes just

00:33:56 ◼   ► social awkwardness and difficulty if the number of people who wear masks drops below a certain

00:34:02 ◼   ► percentage of the population, right? Like, if I'm going to an airport in the future,

00:34:07 ◼   ► if 5% of the people there are wearing masks, great, then there's no problem. But if you're

00:34:12 ◼   ► the only person who wants to wear a mask in an airport, I think it just becomes weird and you

00:34:18 ◼   ► just draw a lot of attention to yourself and social awkwardness and right it's it's not good.

00:34:27 ◼   ► So I'm hoping like it doesn't drop below five percent let's say of it's unusual but not

00:34:33 ◼   ► remarkable is is the the optimal level that I'd kind of want to hit with this but I I don't have

00:34:41 ◼   ► have a lot of faith in masks sticking around. Unless clothing manufacturing companies can

00:34:50 ◼   ► convince everyone that this is just a new piece of fashion that everyone needs to have

00:34:55 ◼   ► and so they can keep selling them, like maybe that'll work.

00:34:59 ◼   ► Also, like, when I have a mask that I like, I think they look cool. Like, you know, I

00:35:05 ◼   ► I see it as like, yeah, this is, I think this is fashionable.

00:35:08 ◼   ► Hmmm.

00:35:09 ◼   ► And so I can imagine that being an accessory for people for all.

00:35:13 ◼   ► I can't get on board with that.

00:35:14 ◼   ► I mean, human fashions are weird, but I don't know.

00:35:18 ◼   ► I have a hard time imagining the mask sticking around as a fashion item.

00:35:23 ◼   ► Man that's just, you know, every now and then you get prime grey quotes.

00:35:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:35:29 ◼   ► "Human fashions are weird."

00:35:33 ◼   ► Definitely one of them.

00:35:34 ◼   ► But they are weird.

00:35:35 ◼   ► I don't disagree, but I would not phrase it that way. Human fashions. Speaking of which,

00:35:42 ◼   ► Cortexmerch.com. Cortexmerch.com. Human fashions for sale.

00:35:48 ◼   ► Human fashions on sale now. Genuinely my favourite thing that we have produced in the clothing

00:35:56 ◼   ► realm has been the subtlety. Which if you are new or you are forgotten is a t-shirt,

00:36:05 ◼   ► a very lovely t-shirt with a tasteful, classy, embroidered cortex logo on it. And I think

00:36:13 ◼   ► it looks really great, looks great in any situation, and it's an item of clothing that

00:36:17 ◼   ► I wear frequently. I have been wearing the sweater version, which we debuted later on,

00:36:22 ◼   ► very frequently recently actually, and something that I would wear most days while at Mega Studio

00:36:29 ◼   ► is the subtle sweater. And I thought to myself, "We've only ever done this in blue, it looks like

00:36:36 ◼   ► I wear the same sweater every day." Even though I own like five of them. And I thought to myself,

00:36:44 ◼   ► Why haven't we done more colors? So more colors! You can now buy at cortexmerch.com

00:36:52 ◼   ► the subtle tee and subtle sweater in the traditional blue but now a black option and a red

00:37:00 ◼   ► burgundy option depending on whether you go for the t-shirt or the sweater itself. The embroidery

00:37:08 ◼   ► is blue on all of them and we worked with our friends at Cotton Bureau on choosing very

00:37:13 ◼   ► particular colors that we thought the blue stitching looked tasteful on and I think we've

00:37:18 ◼   ► done it and I am really excited to order a bunch more sweaters in a bunch more colors.

00:37:22 ◼   ► So yeah go check it out right now at cortexmerch.com.

00:37:27 ◼   ► Oh also there's still the last stock of version one of the theme system journal on sale at $15.

00:37:34 ◼   ► We do not have many left now but there are still some there so if you want to pick one up along

00:37:39 ◼   ► or Soto Sweata, you can do that.

00:37:41 ◼   ► There's not many left, and once they're gone,

00:37:43 ◼   ► they are gone, and that version is never coming back.

00:37:47 ◼   ► So if you still want to pick one up at a good deal,

00:37:49 ◼   ► you can do that.

00:37:51 ◼   ► CortexMarch.com.

00:37:54 ◼   ► - Dot com.

00:37:54 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:37:56 ◼   ► I'm not sure, sometimes I'm not sure

00:37:57 ◼   ► if you're going to do the dot com now, Myke.

00:38:00 ◼   ► I don't know how that works.

00:38:01 ◼   ► - I left that one particularly long to throw you off.

00:38:03 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

00:38:04 ◼   ► - And I came in just at the right moment.

00:38:06 ◼   ► - Okay, you just wanted to cut me off,

00:38:08 ◼   ► that's what that was.

00:38:08 ◼   ► That's what that was.

00:38:10 ◼   ► Alright, mission accomplished.

00:38:12 ◼   ► As I was getting ready for the show today,

00:38:16 ◼   ► I thought to myself, "This isn't an episode

00:38:20 ◼   ► out of time." No, why would you think it was? But we are recording it

00:38:24 ◼   ► at such a point that it kind of feels like it. Why? I don't understand that at all.

00:38:28 ◼   ► So as we are recording this episode,

00:38:32 ◼   ► my iPhone is due to arrive tomorrow.

00:38:36 ◼   ► We will not release the episode until next week.

00:38:40 ◼   ► Okay.

00:38:41 ◼   ► When there's also going to be new max, which we'll talk about in a little bit.

00:38:46 ◼   ► And we're in between them being announced and released.

00:38:49 ◼   ► And our next couple of episodes are going to be special episodes.

00:38:56 ◼   ► So you can't really follow up on these products, I don't think, in the main show at least.

00:39:05 ◼   ► Maybe we'll talk about them a little bit in more text. I'm not promising that but it's possible.

00:39:10 ◼   ► So I figured I wanted to touch on both new iPhones and new Macs just to see if you've made decisions

00:39:17 ◼   ► and get your opinions. But see what I mean? It feels weird because it's like if we did it on the

00:39:22 ◼   ► next episode, if we were making purchases we'd have all the stuff. But... Right, but our next two

00:39:29 ◼   ► episodes are blocked out. It's not gonna happen. Not gonna happen. Okay, I see what you mean, yeah.

00:39:34 ◼   ► So it's like this weird, I want to just talk about them for a little bit, but it has got this kind of

00:39:39 ◼   ► weird feeling of like it's probably the worst time to talk about these things.

00:39:43 ◼   ► Yeah it's more like an episode before time.

00:39:47 ◼   ► It's the episode that time forgot.

00:39:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:39:51 ◼   ► So did you order an iPhone?

00:39:57 ◼   ► Myke, I believe last time I discussed the loop that I was stuck in.

00:40:02 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:40:03 ◼   ► Where I was going round and round, then round and round.

00:40:06 ◼   ► And I thought perhaps discussing that conundrum on the show might help.

00:40:12 ◼   ► You know how sometimes when you're thinking about something, it really helps to

00:40:16 ◼   ► say it out loud to another person and you can come to this realization of like, "Oh,

00:40:20 ◼   ► while I'm explaining this to someone else, the decision becomes obvious."

00:40:25 ◼   ► But this decision did not become obvious when I was talking about it last time on Cortex.

00:40:30 ◼   ► And I saw there were many comments along the same lines in the Reddit after the show,

00:40:37 ◼   ► which I knew were inevitably coming, where people were like,

00:40:40 ◼   ► "Oh, but doesn't Gray know that one phone is none phone? Why not get both phones?"

00:40:45 ◼   ► And while I did appreciate the spirit in which those comments were made,

00:40:54 ◼   ► I feel like they don't get to the heart of the actual problem, which is, yes, that is a fun idea,

00:41:00 ◼   ► but it's a fun idea that just introduces way more problems than it's worth. You don't want to have

00:41:04 ◼   ► to be deciding which phone are you taking out for the day. Like, what a nightmarish way to live your life.

00:41:10 ◼   ► Yeah, the multi-phone lifestyle, I feel like it adds a lot more complications than multi-iPad does.

00:41:17 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not helpful in most scenarios.

00:41:22 ◼   ► And it's particularly not helpful if one of the primary differences between the phones

00:41:27 ◼   ► is that there's a camera difference,

00:41:30 ◼   ► so that what you're actually having to make a decision about is,

00:41:34 ◼   ► "Oh, I'm going out for the day, will I want to take photos on this outing?"

00:41:40 ◼   ► Like, "Well, I don't know, because I can't see into the future.

00:41:43 ◼   ► I don't know if something really interesting is going to happen,

00:41:46 ◼   ► and then I want the better camera, right?

00:41:48 ◼   ► What a nightmare.

00:41:49 ◼   ► Like you can only then introduce the possibility of regret

00:41:53 ◼   ► every day that you step outside your house

00:41:55 ◼   ► if you take the quote wrong phone.

00:41:57 ◼   ► But I just wanted to address the many, many comments

00:42:01 ◼   ► where people are like, "Greg's gonna get two phones."

00:42:03 ◼   ► No, he won't.

00:42:04 ◼   ► He's not gonna get two phones.

00:42:05 ◼   ► But yes, I spent literally days continuing to cycle around

00:42:10 ◼   ► and it's just very unlike me.

00:42:14 ◼   ► I can usually break out of these little loops, but I was completely unable to do it.

00:42:19 ◼   ► But eventually, eventually, I settled on ordering a phone, and I ordered the big phone.

00:42:29 ◼   ► I ordered the Max.

00:42:31 ◼   ► What now?

00:42:33 ◼   ► What do you think about this, Myke?

00:42:35 ◼   ► Do you think that was the correct decision, or do you think that was not the correct decision?

00:42:38 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:42:41 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:42:42 ◼   ► So we were thinking, "Oh okay, it has a new camera, the camera is better, right?"

00:42:51 ◼   ► And that was the reason to get the phone.

00:42:54 ◼   ► Now the reviews of the phone, by and large, are saying, "Yeah, the camera is better."

00:43:02 ◼   ► But it is not dramatically better.

00:43:07 ◼   ► are improvements for sure especially in low light scenarios all stuff that makes sense and that you

00:43:13 ◼   ► know the idea if you want to have the best camera this is the one because it is a little bit better

00:43:22 ◼   ► if you were basing your decision and you were like ah i'm not sure if i want the big phone

00:43:31 ◼   ► but i do want the best camera i think this is a little bit trickier but if you're like me where

00:43:37 ◼   ► where it's like I'm always getting the big phone,

00:43:40 ◼   ► then it's great, I have a bonus,

00:43:42 ◼   ► the camera's a little bit better, right?

00:43:43 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:43:44 ◼   ► - But if you were basing your decision

00:43:47 ◼   ► on I'm getting the big phone,

00:43:50 ◼   ► it's a little trickier when the camera is not 87% better

00:43:55 ◼   ► when the sensor's 87% bigger, you know?

00:43:58 ◼   ► Now like, I'm always gonna want big phone,

00:44:01 ◼   ► big phone, big screen, bigger screen, beautiful phone,

00:44:05 ◼   ► big camera, good camera.

00:44:06 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:44:08 ◼   ► That was fantastic. That was like iPhone slam poetry review. That's what you just did there.

00:44:17 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:44:19 ◼   ► Big screen, big phone, better phone. Then you take a drag on your cigarette.

00:44:24 ◼   ► And then a bongo.

00:44:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:44:26 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:44:28 ◼   ► So yeah, I don't know. I don't know for you. I really don't know.

00:44:31 ◼   ► I don't know for me either. And yeah, so I ordered it because I thought

00:44:35 ◼   ► my reasoning was, I need to know.

00:44:39 ◼   ► Right, so I'll just put in the order for the big phone.

00:44:43 ◼   ► But yes, the initial reviews have come out and people are saying that

00:44:47 ◼   ► the camera is better, it's not significantly better.

00:44:51 ◼   ► The one thing that I'm still waiting for, I just haven't seen enough reviews of it yet, is

00:44:55 ◼   ► most people are talking about photos, and it's like, yeah, I do care

00:44:59 ◼   ► about photos, but I'm actually way more concerned about the video

00:45:03 ◼   ► quality and I haven't seen a lot of great reviews comparing the video quality of one

00:45:09 ◼   ► to the other.

00:45:10 ◼   ► So that's still a little bit of an open question.

00:45:12 ◼   ► But I figured I'll try the big phone because then if I decide that I don't want it and

00:45:20 ◼   ► I return it, at least I will have the assurance of knowing.

00:45:24 ◼   ► It feels like it would be an easier decision to leave the big phone than leave the small

00:45:30 ◼   ► phone.

00:45:31 ◼   ► Yes, yes, yes.

00:45:34 ◼   ► I think, yeah, what you're trying to do

00:45:35 ◼   ► is like minimize future regret, right?

00:45:39 ◼   ► Whereas if I buy the medium phone straight away,

00:45:43 ◼   ► you're basically guaranteeing

00:45:44 ◼   ► that there's always going to be a small amount of,

00:45:47 ◼   ► but what if, regret.

00:45:49 ◼   ► So I'm trying to minimize that.

00:45:51 ◼   ► But I was so uncertain and so frustrated

00:45:54 ◼   ► that what I've actually done is I had an old iPhone X Max,

00:45:59 ◼   ► X Max lying around the house and I downgraded my current phone to that phone to try to pre-get

00:46:10 ◼   ► used to the big size.

00:46:12 ◼   ► Warming up.

00:46:13 ◼   ► Yeah, that's exactly it.

00:46:14 ◼   ► I figured, here's what I want to do.

00:46:17 ◼   ► When the phone does arrive, I'm not completely shocked by how large it is.

00:46:23 ◼   ► It can just be, "Oh, it's a tiny bit larger than the phone that I'm currently using, and

00:46:28 ◼   ► it has the nice flat sides.

00:46:30 ◼   ► - I'm not doing this now to try and be like,

00:46:33 ◼   ► "Oh, you can't get it right," but I'm just asking you.

00:46:36 ◼   ► You're using a 10S Max, not a 10, right?

00:46:39 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:46:41 ◼   ► - Well, 'cause the 10S Max is bigger than the 10.

00:46:44 ◼   ► 'Cause you said X Max, which didn't exist.

00:46:50 ◼   ► So it was one size of the 10.

00:46:52 ◼   ► The 10S had two sizes.

00:46:54 ◼   ► - God damn it, look, who can remember?

00:46:56 ◼   ► I can't remember.

00:46:57 ◼   ► It's just because the reason I want to know is because if you're using a 10, if you are

00:47:00 ◼   ► using a 10, which I don't think you are, but if you are, it's going to be a massive jump

00:47:04 ◼   ► up to the 12 Pro Max in size.

00:47:07 ◼   ► No, I mean, look, it's a phone with a notch that's big.

00:47:10 ◼   ► That's what I'm using.

00:47:11 ◼   ► Okay, then I'm pretty confident in using a 10s Max.

00:47:15 ◼   ► And I'm really not trying to be like, "Oh, Greg, look at the names for it."

00:47:18 ◼   ► It's just wanting to like, because if you're setting yourself up with a 10, it's still

00:47:22 ◼   ► not good enough, you know?

00:47:24 ◼   ► What do you think I've done over here, Myke?

00:47:26 ◼   ► Like I loaded my phone onto my old mini and I thought that it was the big one.

00:47:29 ◼   ► What do you think I'm doing?

00:47:30 ◼   ► No, no, no.

00:47:31 ◼   ► It's just the 10, the 10 was bigger, but it's not max kind of sizes.

00:47:37 ◼   ► That's like regular 12 size.

00:47:41 ◼   ► You know?

00:47:42 ◼   ► Okay, well here, I know that I wasn't that far off because I loaded my phone onto an

00:47:47 ◼   ► old big one to try to get used to it.

00:47:49 ◼   ► And then Apple, in their annoying benevolence to deal with their own logistic problems,

00:47:56 ◼   ► did send me the case that I ordered for the phone three weeks ahead of whenever I'm

00:48:01 ◼   ► gonna get the actual phone.

00:48:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I have mine here too.

00:48:04 ◼   ► - So the case has arrived and the case is not that much bigger than the actual phone

00:48:10 ◼   ► that I'm using.

00:48:11 ◼   ► - How big is the camera cutout?

00:48:13 ◼   ► - The camera cutout is enormous.

00:48:14 ◼   ► - It's ginormous.

00:48:15 ◼   ► - It's huge.

00:48:16 ◼   ► I put my camera phone in it and I was like, "Oh my god, it's like twice the size!"

00:48:22 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, it's a very big camera cutout. Which also, there is a little part of me which is just

00:48:29 ◼   ► wondering if some of the initial reviews that the photos aren't that much better. The fact the camera

00:48:36 ◼   ► cutout is significantly bigger, it makes me wonder if there are just some software tweaks that are

00:48:42 ◼   ► coming down the line that haven't been implemented yet.

00:48:45 ◼   ► Like, who knows?

00:48:46 ◼   ► I find it weird that it's like,

00:48:48 ◼   ► oh, if the camera, the photos don't seem obviously better,

00:48:53 ◼   ► but they did go to the trouble of manufacturing

00:48:56 ◼   ► a physical larger camera casing,

00:48:58 ◼   ► which I just wasn't expecting.

00:48:59 ◼   ► I don't know, I just find that interesting.

00:49:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, all of the stuff, everything's bigger.

00:49:03 ◼   ► That's the thing, right?

00:49:04 ◼   ► Like, the lenses are bigger, the sensor's bigger,

00:49:06 ◼   ► like everything's bigger,

00:49:07 ◼   ► and this was something that kind of didn't come across

00:49:11 ◼   ► until reviewers started getting the devices.

00:49:14 ◼   ► I mean, so there are interesting quirks, right?

00:49:17 ◼   ► Where night mode comes on less often.

00:49:20 ◼   ► You know, there's little things like that

00:49:23 ◼   ► where it's like, "Hmm, okay, this is interesting."

00:49:25 ◼   ► And I'm keen to see when Apple creates their RAW format

00:49:30 ◼   ► and when that comes out to the world, the pro RAW thing,

00:49:34 ◼   ► what are the differences like there, if any?

00:49:38 ◼   ► I'm keen.

00:49:39 ◼   ► But like for me, I want the best camera.

00:49:40 ◼   ► It's just something that I want.

00:49:43 ◼   ► It's my camera.

00:49:44 ◼   ► Um, and so I will happily keep with the, with the phone that I like

00:49:49 ◼   ► for that camera anyway, right.

00:49:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:51 ◼   ► And you are also lucky because since you also just had the assurance of your

00:49:56 ◼   ► decision, you were able to place an order at a reasonable time.

00:49:59 ◼   ► And so you're getting your phone tomorrow.

00:50:01 ◼   ► Whereas my indecision cost me weeks of shipping deadlines.

00:50:05 ◼   ► So maybe this was the best time to talk about it, because maybe we'll talk about the phone

00:50:10 ◼   ► when you get yours next in 2021.

00:50:13 ◼   ► Yeah, it may well be that we can record two more episodes of Cortex before I actually

00:50:18 ◼   ► get the phone, because I was just going back and forth.

00:50:21 ◼   ► Oh, big phone, little phone, medium phone.

00:50:24 ◼   ► Hmm, in an endless circle.

00:50:27 ◼   ► So I'm happy you're getting your phone tomorrow.

00:50:29 ◼   ► I'll be very curious to see what you think of it.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Yeah, that mini seems really mini.

00:50:34 ◼   ► many for me obviously but well yeah no you're you're a big phone boy this episode of cortex is

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00:52:15 ◼   ► So we just had the M1, the Apple Silicon announcement.

00:52:20 ◼   ► New Mac Pro, new Mac Mini.

00:52:23 ◼   ► Yes.

00:52:25 ◼   ► What do you think of this?

00:52:27 ◼   ► Did you watch the event?

00:52:28 ◼   ► - Even though you were very good, Myke,

00:52:30 ◼   ► and you reminded me, I completely forgot about the event

00:52:33 ◼   ► until the next day.

00:52:35 ◼   ► I'm sorry.

00:52:36 ◼   ► - You don't have to apologize to me, it's fine.

00:52:39 ◼   ► - I just felt like you were being diligent.

00:52:41 ◼   ► You're like, "Don't forget, there's an Apple event."

00:52:44 ◼   ► And I was like, "Oh, don't worry, I remember."

00:52:45 ◼   ► And then I forgot.

00:52:46 ◼   ► So I didn't watch the actual thing.

00:52:49 ◼   ► I intended to watch it,

00:52:53 ◼   ► but of course, once it had broadcast, as usual,

00:52:56 ◼   ► I was like, oh, I just want to see like, what are the actual products?

00:52:58 ◼   ► And it's just an odd lineup of products.

00:53:05 ◼   ► And so I ended up just trying to find out some, some more details about it and

00:53:09 ◼   ► quickly came to the conclusion that like, I don't actually need to watch this event

00:53:14 ◼   ► because I don't think there's more information in here than I'm, I'm finding

00:53:20 ◼   ► about these Macs, so I'm, I'm coming at it from a slightly odd perspective.

00:53:26 ◼   ► A very weird perspective, but yes.

00:53:28 ◼   ► Well, what I mean is, when I was googling around, I'm quickly seeing like, "Oh, okay,

00:53:33 ◼   ► here are the Bezos charts that people who were trying to find out more information were

00:53:37 ◼   ► screenshotting and being like, 'What the hell does this mean?'"

00:53:39 ◼   ► And it's like, "Okay, if this is the best people can do, if I watch it, I'm not going

00:53:42 ◼   ► to figure out more stuff."

00:53:44 ◼   ► Unlike the iPhone event where it's like, "I want to hear very carefully what they're saying

00:53:48 ◼   ► about the cameras."

00:53:49 ◼   ► So it was just a different kind of thing.

00:53:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I can understand that to a point.

00:53:53 ◼   ► And I think a lot of the really interesting stuff about these products is once they start

00:53:58 ◼   ► landing in people's hands and seeing what people can actually do with them.

00:54:02 ◼   ► So I don't know, my initial impression is they seem like very much like transition machines.

00:54:13 ◼   ► Would you agree with that?

00:54:14 ◼   ► Well they definitely are because they look exactly the same as the products they replace,

00:54:21 ◼   ► just have some changes to the internals. Any Apple historian will tell you this is exactly

00:54:27 ◼   ► what they did when they moved to Intel. The first round of products were just the same

00:54:32 ◼   ► product that they were already selling of a new chip inside of it. And it is most likely

00:54:37 ◼   ► that the next set of Macs, which will come out maybe sometime in the spring, will be

00:54:43 ◼   ► the first to look any different. So the iMac, for example, is very, very likely to be the

00:54:51 ◼   ► first Mac to get a new design, and that computer will not have an M1 in it. I'm almost convinced

00:55:00 ◼   ► of that.

00:55:01 ◼   ► >> You mean you think it will have a different Apple produced chip?

00:55:04 ◼   ► >> Yes. It will have either something maybe an M2 or an M1X or something like that. And

00:55:10 ◼   ► there are various interesting reasons why that would be the case. And once you start

00:55:16 ◼   ► understanding these reasons and getting to talk to people. I mean, I've had the

00:55:21 ◼   ► chance to interview some executives at Apple again, people that worked on these

00:55:25 ◼   ► chips. It's when we released this, so I have an interview coming out tomorrow, so

00:55:30 ◼   ► Tuesday on a show called Upgrade. I'll put a link in the show notes if people

00:55:33 ◼   ► want to check it out. Basically the M1 chip fits in these three products, which

00:55:40 ◼   ► is why we have them, because they have, the M1 chip has some limitations to it.

00:55:45 ◼   ► But these limitations are perfect for the MacBook Air, the Entry Mac Mini and the Entry

00:55:52 ◼   ► MacBook Pro.

00:55:54 ◼   ► And these limitations seem to be they can have two USB 4 ports.

00:55:59 ◼   ► USB 4 by the way includes Thunderbolt.

00:56:02 ◼   ► It really took me a while to get my head around this.

00:56:05 ◼   ► It's the same connector but it's USB 4 slash Thunderbolt because the USB 4 spec

00:56:11 ◼   ► includes everything from the bulk of do.

00:56:13 ◼   ► Which does mean, Gray, that as we move to USB 4, things will become easier, because

00:56:19 ◼   ► you won't have to decide if it's USB-C or Thunderbolt anymore.

00:56:22 ◼   ► Because if it's USB 4, it can do all of it.

00:56:26 ◼   ► Yes, yes, fantastic.

00:56:28 ◼   ► We had too many standards now, but don't worry, the new standard will unify all the old standards.

00:56:32 ◼   ► And I'm sure USB 5 will add some new capabilities for you down the line.

00:56:37 ◼   ► And then the other thing is maximum 16 gigabytes of what is now called unified memory, but

00:56:44 ◼   ► that is RAM.

00:56:45 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:56:46 ◼   ► That's interesting to hear you say that, and you got this from the interview that you did

00:56:51 ◼   ► on upgrade, is that what you're saying?

00:56:52 ◼   ► That that's where this is coming from?

00:56:53 ◼   ► Some of this information came from the interview, some information is gleaned, and some comes

00:56:59 ◼   ► from other places.

00:57:00 ◼   ► Right, some comes from other places.

00:57:02 ◼   ► Okay.

00:57:03 ◼   ► All right, well that makes perfect sense then, because looking at this, I think the reason

00:57:06 ◼   ► why it strikes me as just a bit "uh-huh" is that fact that, you know, the 13-inch laptop

00:57:13 ◼   ► is the laptop that I'm always the most interested in, like that's the one that I want, and they

00:57:17 ◼   ► always have had sort of two tiers of the 13-inch, and it's just quite striking that they only

00:57:25 ◼   ► updated the low tier of the 13-inch.

00:57:28 ◼   ► - Yep, because they couldn't put four Thunderbolt ports in it.

00:57:32 ◼   ► Right, okay, that makes sense. If they couldn't do four USB-C4/Thunderbolt ports.

00:57:39 ◼   ► No, no, no, no, just USB 4, you're gonna have to say C because now you're confusing it.

00:57:43 ◼   ► But yes, sure.

00:57:44 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:57:45 ◼   ► But this is why you can still buy the Intel MacBook Pro.

00:57:50 ◼   ► Right, right. Okay, that's interesting.

00:57:53 ◼   ► So you can still buy the Intel MacBook Pro, you can still buy the Intel Mac Mini,

00:57:57 ◼   ► you cannot buy an Intel MacBook Air because the M1 has been able to completely replace

00:58:03 ◼   ► all of the functionality of the MacBook Air line.

00:58:05 ◼   ► Right, okay, okay.

00:58:08 ◼   ► Because you couldn't get more than two ports on a MacBook Air.

00:58:11 ◼   ► I mean the one thing that it has lost out is I think you could do more than 16 gigabytes of RAM.

00:58:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:17 ◼   ► But I'm really interested to see, so one of the things I'm still struggling to get my head around

00:58:22 ◼   ► is this idea of unified system memory because it's quite complicated but we don't really

00:58:30 ◼   ► think about RAM in the same way anymore because this memory pool can be used by the CPU and by

00:58:39 ◼   ► graphics, right? It's all the same. Nothing has to be copied and passed through the system. It's just

00:58:44 ◼   ► all there to be taken from, which apparently gives you lots of efficiency gains. This is the thing

00:58:50 ◼   ► that I'm really intrigued about is like, does 16 gigabytes of unified memory feel like 16

00:58:57 ◼   ► gigabytes of RAM? Or does it feel like something else? And that's what I'm really intrigued to try

00:59:02 ◼   ► out. Yeah, I think from my initial reading around, this is one thing I thought straight away is,

00:59:09 ◼   ► I will totally give Apple the benefit of the doubt on this one. Yes. That the 16 gigs of RAM

00:59:14 ◼   ► perfectly makes sense. As soon as, because when I first saw it was a limitation, I was like,

00:59:18 ◼   ► what the hell, 16 gigs, you gotta be crazy.

00:59:21 ◼   ► But then when I was like, wait, oh, they built it into the CPU.

00:59:24 ◼   ► It's like, oh, okay.

00:59:26 ◼   ► This is a very Apple thing to do.

00:59:27 ◼   ► And, and, and I know like a lot of nerds go crazy because Apple

00:59:32 ◼   ► doesn't like to talk about specs.

00:59:34 ◼   ► But this is one area where Apple has a lot of crazy advantages in making the

00:59:44 ◼   ► parts of their system work together so that the specs are less relevant. And I will totally

00:59:52 ◼   ► give them credit here. And it's, for me, the thing about these machines that I'm most curious

00:59:58 ◼   ► about and, like, just this morning it seems like some of the benchmarks are coming out,

01:00:03 ◼   ► which we can talk about in a second, but –

01:00:05 ◼   ► They shouldn't, but they are.

01:00:06 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, this is the – whatever that website is where they're like, "Oh,

01:00:11 ◼   ► Yes, thank you.

01:00:12 ◼   ► Where we could see people are benchmarking their machines on our website and we

01:00:17 ◼   ► didn't sign any non-disclosure agreement.

01:00:18 ◼   ► So the thing that I'm really interested in to see like once the embargo's lift or

01:00:24 ◼   ► once people start testing stuff is.

01:00:25 ◼   ► So just like with the phone, my only concern each year is, is the camera better?

01:00:32 ◼   ► I have a similar thing with the computers and in particular with the laptops, which

01:00:38 ◼   ► is I want to know about final cut performance.

01:00:43 ◼   ► Like this is the only piece of information that I'm interested

01:00:46 ◼   ► in about your new machines.

01:00:47 ◼   ► And this is one of these cases where I just think specs don't

01:00:53 ◼   ► actually tell you anything.

01:00:55 ◼   ► And it's why, when we were talking about the Mac Pro, when it came out

01:00:58 ◼   ► a couple of years ago, I was like, Apple is totally gunning for being

01:01:04 ◼   ► the company that supplies all of the solutions for the entertainment industry

01:01:10 ◼   ► as a whole, and it was because like, oh, in that Mac Pro, they built in like

01:01:15 ◼   ► special graphics cards that only handle rendering Final Cut files.

01:01:21 ◼   ► And it's like, whoa, okay.

01:01:23 ◼   ► You know, that's a huge deal.

01:01:25 ◼   ► And so I just, I look at this computer and I think Final Cut is one of those

01:01:32 ◼   ► products where it's like, okay, Apple makes the product itself.

01:01:36 ◼   ► I think this is an area that they care a lot about.

01:01:39 ◼   ► They're also making the Silicon chips that Final Cut is running on, on the

01:01:45 ◼   ► laptop, and I just, I feel like whatever benchmarks are saying, I want to see

01:01:51 ◼   ► like, how does Final Cut perform?

01:01:53 ◼   ► And it's a, it's one of these areas where I think they might have a lot more gains

01:01:57 ◼   ► than it, than it seems like just by looking at the raw numbers, and I do

01:02:01 ◼   ► think people who are freaking out about small amounts of RAM are like, "I don't know, I'm

01:02:05 ◼   ► gonna give Apple the benefit of the doubt on this one with their chip and the integration."

01:02:09 ◼   ► I think the integration counts for a lot more than people think it does, but I don't know.

01:02:16 ◼   ► Again, we're talking at a really undeterminate time right now. I can't wait to see people

01:02:22 ◼   ► testing these new chips with Final Cut, Render, and processing time.

01:02:27 ◼   ► That's the stuff I'm more interested about than the raw numbers that Geekbench produces,

01:02:32 ◼   ► but they are still interesting for context because they're so weird and we'll touch on them in a

01:02:37 ◼   ► second, but during the presentation Apple did call out faster render times in Final Cut.

01:02:43 ◼   ► Yeah, interesting.

01:02:44 ◼   ► I mean, the comparison that they did is that it was six times faster, but this, you know,

01:02:49 ◼   ► they were doing it on a very specifically spec Mac Mini is the small print to it,

01:02:56 ◼   ► but I would expect that you would see better performance.

01:02:59 ◼   ► I would be very confident to put some money down that you would see better performance on a MacBook

01:03:06 ◼   ► Air with an M1 chip in Final Cut than you get on your... Do you have a 16-inch MacBook Pro?

01:03:11 ◼   ► Yeah, that's probably my fastest laptop, yeah.

01:03:14 ◼   ► Yeah, and I bet you'll get better performance because

01:03:17 ◼   ► the MacBook Air in Geekbench scores higher than the 16-inch MacBook Pro.

01:03:23 ◼   ► Okay. Now, wait, when you say the MacBook Air, is that because the benchmarks have leaked out for the MacBook Air as opposed to the 13 Pro?

01:03:31 ◼   ► Or are we just saying, like, this is the same CPU and so you're using it interchangeably?

01:03:34 ◼   ► They've leaked out for everything, but they're very similar for Geekbench scores.

01:03:40 ◼   ► There's a good reason for that, because, you know, the MacBook Pro and the Mac Mini have fans in them.

01:03:45 ◼   ► So when you're doing things like rendering, they are going to be better over that sustained period of time,

01:03:49 ◼   ► because the thermal throttling won't kick in if there's going to be any, and right now

01:03:54 ◼   ► we don't know what that's like, because Geekbench won't give you those kinds of results.

01:03:59 ◼   ► I bring up the MacBook Air just because it's funny to say.

01:04:01 ◼   ► Oh, okay, it's funny to say. Yeah, no, the MacBook Air is not a great machine to always do renderings.

01:04:08 ◼   ► No, and they took the fan out of this one, great, I don't know if you knew that.

01:04:11 ◼   ► Okay, interesting, no, I didn't know that.

01:04:13 ◼   ► Because they don't need it, which makes sense, right? Like, the fan isn't needed anymore because

01:04:17 ◼   ► thing is so efficient. So they've taken it out and now it's silent and then it also gives them a point

01:04:24 ◼   ► of contention between the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro because otherwise in many ways they

01:04:29 ◼   ► are functionally the same now. So they put a fan in it and it will sustain a tough workload for longer.

01:04:37 ◼   ► Yeah, sustainability totally matters. I've definitely tried to render stuff on low-end

01:04:42 ◼   ► laptops and you start to see the battery drain because you can't even pull power fast enough.

01:04:47 ◼   ► That was always the thing with the MacBook, right? You try and render something on Final Cut and

01:04:51 ◼   ► not even plug it in, it would keep its charge.

01:04:54 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like, uh-oh, which is gonna run out first. Like, am I gonna get to the end of this

01:04:58 ◼   ► render or is this battery gonna drop to nothing? But it's interesting because even if they said,

01:05:03 ◼   ► if they say on stage O, render times are six times faster, and then the reality for my particular

01:05:08 ◼   ► situation is, oh, it's only twice as fast. It's like, twice as fast totally matters. Like,

01:05:14 ◼   ► Like I have, I have had even this is just like a dumb example, but just for the

01:05:18 ◼   ► little Halloween stories that I read, like I really wanted to upload them on

01:05:21 ◼   ► Halloween and I had to rerender them a couple of times for reasons that don't

01:05:25 ◼   ► matter. And I just made it within 30 minutes of the end of Halloween by the

01:05:31 ◼   ► end of the day. And it's like, those render times really matter sometimes when

01:05:35 ◼   ► like you want to upload something on a particular day and like twice as fast as

01:05:39 ◼   ► a no brainer business decision to be like worth it sold.

01:05:43 ◼   ► So that's very interesting to hear.

01:05:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, so how high these machines end up being

01:05:50 ◼   ► for processor single core stuff, I mean, it's interesting.

01:05:54 ◼   ► And if it is the highest or if it's way up there,

01:05:58 ◼   ► that's great, but there's more to the story than that.

01:06:01 ◼   ► But the reason people are mentioning this as even a thing

01:06:05 ◼   ► of like, oh, if you take all of Apple's computers,

01:06:08 ◼   ► the MacBook Air is only lower in benchmarks

01:06:12 ◼   ► then the iMac Pro and the Mac Pro are the only thing sitting above it.

01:06:16 ◼   ► It's bananas, right? This is the entry-level laptop.

01:06:20 ◼   ► That is crazy. That is really crazy.

01:06:22 ◼   ► Right? And so the reason people are pointing it out, the reason we're talking about it,

01:06:26 ◼   ► I never talk about Geekbench scores because they don't really mean anything to me.

01:06:30 ◼   ► But I will talk about them if they're interesting anomalies, and this is that.

01:06:36 ◼   ► And I think what it says is the future of the Mac platform is very different now to what we have

01:06:45 ◼   ► seen in the past where it is conceivable that Apple will be producing the most powerful computers

01:06:53 ◼   ► within this two-year time frame. And that is really weird to think about. Like, what is the

01:07:00 ◼   ► Mac Pro going to be capable of when they move it to this architecture?

01:07:05 ◼   ► >> Yeah, I am extraordinarily happy that Apple's doing their own silicon stuff.

01:07:10 ◼   ► And it does feel like, you know, you had your year of positivity, you know, when everyone

01:07:16 ◼   ► was really grumpy about everything that was going on, particularly in Mac land.

01:07:20 ◼   ► And it does feel like there was this time when we were walking through the valley of the shadow

01:07:26 ◼   ► of death for Mac. And we've been out of there for a little while. The transition to Apple

01:07:33 ◼   ► Silicon really feels like, ah, now I have the rod and the staff for like the future

01:07:37 ◼   ► of what this is going to be. And it is really interesting to see where this goes.

01:07:45 ◼   ► - This machine costs $999, right?

01:07:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's absurd.

01:07:49 ◼   ► And it will outperform a machine that starts at $2,400.

01:07:57 ◼   ► Right, right.

01:07:59 ◼   ► That's quite a thing.

01:08:00 ◼   ► The Mac Pro is not a machine for me for a bunch of reasons.

01:08:05 ◼   ► I'm not interested in it, but like, goddamn am I going to be interested to see when they finally revise that thing for their own silicon chips.

01:08:15 ◼   ► What kind of crazy cray supercomputer are they going to be selling?

01:08:21 ◼   ► It's going to be really interesting to get there.

01:08:24 ◼   ► There is a rumor that they are working on a smaller Mac Pro

01:08:29 ◼   ► as potentially a secondary machine in that line.

01:08:34 ◼   ► Like a little trashcan-sized cylinder?

01:08:38 ◼   ► Like that sort of smaller kind of thing?

01:08:41 ◼   ► I would expect it would look like the current one but smaller and that seems like a fascinating

01:08:49 ◼   ► computer right? Yeah maybe. Yeah I have no idea what this architecture is going to scale up to

01:08:56 ◼   ► or how they're going to produce the desktop machines like what they're going to be capable of

01:09:05 ◼   ► But what they have shown so far is an incredibly intriguing start.

01:09:10 ◼   ► So are you going to get one?

01:09:13 ◼   ► I have ordered a MacBook Pro, yeah.

01:09:15 ◼   ► Okay, so you ordered the 13-inch MacBook Pro?

01:09:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:19 ◼   ► What did you... did you fully spec it out? What did you do?

01:09:23 ◼   ► Well, there isn't really much you could do to fully spec them out these days.

01:09:26 ◼   ► I did go with 16 gigabytes of RAM and a terabyte of storage.

01:09:29 ◼   ► Okay.

01:09:30 ◼   ► I think the most more I could do was just go to two terabytes of storage.

01:09:34 ◼   ► there isn't really, when it comes to speccing them out now, there's not much you can do.

01:09:38 ◼   ► I haven't looked at the configurator, so okay.

01:09:41 ◼   ► Yeah, you can choose 16 gigabytes of RAM, or there are four storage options, that's it.

01:09:46 ◼   ► That's what you can do now.

01:09:47 ◼   ► Oh, okay, right. Well, Apple's really getting in their efficiencies then with the total

01:09:51 ◼   ► number of SKUs that they can produce, that's interesting. So what do you think the role is

01:09:56 ◼   ► for that machine for you? Like, where do you see it fitting in in like the ecosystem of

01:10:01 ◼   ► products that you use?

01:10:03 ◼   ► If you remember, when I was setting up Mega Studio, the plan was always to record from a laptop,

01:10:11 ◼   ► and that it would be the same laptop that I would take with me when travelling. That was the original idea.

01:10:16 ◼   ► Okay.

01:10:17 ◼   ► That is what I expect this machine will be for, but for the time being, like when I go back to the studio,

01:10:24 ◼   ► it will be the machine that I use for recording editing in theory.

01:10:29 ◼   ► I do not want to record on Big Sur right now.

01:10:33 ◼   ► So I'm happy to actually have this time period where I will use it as my main Mac.

01:10:42 ◼   ► I want to try it for editing just because that's where the power is, but I don't want

01:10:47 ◼   ► to trust it to recording because as well a lot of the software that I do use for recording

01:10:51 ◼   ► has been shaky during the betas and is now like, they're like, "It's good, but we wouldn't

01:10:57 ◼   ► Even less and we wouldn't trust everything to this

01:11:01 ◼   ► because Big Sur changed a bunch of stuff, right?

01:11:03 ◼   ► So I will use logic and so my plan right now is I will,

01:11:07 ◼   ► even while at home, while I wanna be talking about this thing

01:11:10 ◼   ► is I will record my shows using my iMac Pro,

01:11:13 ◼   ► but then move over to the MacBook Pro to edit them

01:11:17 ◼   ► so I can see what that's all about.

01:11:19 ◼   ► - Okay. - So that's kind of my feeling

01:11:22 ◼   ► and also I will wanna try this as like my main computer

01:11:25 ◼   ► because I want to see what iOS apps on this thing are all about, right?

01:11:30 ◼   ► Because that's what this will be able to do.

01:11:31 ◼   ► It will be able to run iOS apps as well.

01:11:33 ◼   ► I totally forgot about that whole integration.

01:11:35 ◼   ► So I'm, I'm really keen of like, well, how close to only computer can this

01:11:41 ◼   ► computer be for me? Right. Right. Hmm.

01:11:44 ◼   ► If you're worried about recording on big Sur, you should get a splitter,

01:11:51 ◼   ► a lifter and you can record to a Zoom F6 as well with more bits in the audio for you.

01:11:59 ◼   ► Just that's my pro tip to you.

01:12:03 ◼   ► As one audio pro to another, that's my top tip recommendation for what you should do.

01:12:10 ◼   ► Just make sure you get the levels right.

01:12:11 ◼   ► You want to have those levels leveled.

01:12:14 ◼   ► If the levels are not leveled, there's no point in the levels.

01:12:18 ◼   ► So you're telling me I shouldn't update my recording with you computer to Big Sur just

01:12:23 ◼   ► yet?

01:12:24 ◼   ► Right, you would not recommend that?

01:12:25 ◼   ► I would prefer not.

01:12:26 ◼   ► Okay.

01:12:27 ◼   ► You let me know when I can do that then.

01:12:28 ◼   ► You tell me.

01:12:29 ◼   ► And I may or may not wait for your recommendation, but I'd still like to know when you give

01:12:32 ◼   ► me the go ahead.

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01:14:13 ◼   ► So on our next episode, I mean, we'd spoken about having the next two episodes pretty much locked

01:14:19 ◼   ► out. We're going to be doing our state of the apps for 2021. So that's just something for people to

01:14:25 ◼   ► look out for and to look forward to. It's an episode that's going to take a lot of prep work

01:14:30 ◼   ► between now and then. And the way that I'm going to prep is by listening to last year's.

01:14:35 ◼   ► I recommend any diehard Cortex-ness to do that along with me, I suppose, but that's

01:14:41 ◼   ► how I like to prep that way so I know exactly what I'm reflecting on from year over year.

01:14:46 ◼   ► But I do think we would finish out today's episode with some Ask Cortex questions because

01:14:50 ◼   ► we haven't done some.

01:14:51 ◼   ► Ooh, Ask Cortex.

01:14:52 ◼   ► We haven't done any for a while.

01:14:53 ◼   ► Yeah, it's been a while since Ask Cortex.

01:14:54 ◼   ► Let's see, what do we have in our Ask Cortex list here on the shared documents?

01:14:59 ◼   ► Hemi asks, "Do you strictly track your time during holiday or rest periods, particularly

01:15:05 ◼   ► if you're away from home?"

01:15:07 ◼   ► No.

01:15:08 ◼   ► No.

01:15:09 ◼   ► I tend not to do that.

01:15:12 ◼   ► I don't really.

01:15:15 ◼   ► It's a slightly funny question because now I'm reaching back into the depths of my memory

01:15:19 ◼   ► of like, "Holidays away from home.

01:15:22 ◼   ► Yes.

01:15:23 ◼   ► Yes."

01:15:24 ◼   ► That was the thing.

01:15:25 ◼   ► I did add the phrase "rest period" into this question.

01:15:27 ◼   ► Well, but you are a all the time tracker, right?

01:15:31 ◼   ► Where I am just a work tracker,

01:15:33 ◼   ► but you are an all the time tracker, right?

01:15:36 ◼   ► So you're tracking everything.

01:15:38 ◼   ► - Yes, I mean, this is the thing.

01:15:40 ◼   ► Like, yeah, we have this difference here.

01:15:43 ◼   ► But again, like I think the key feature for me

01:15:46 ◼   ► for time tracking is not that I'm tracking time all the time

01:15:50 ◼   ► it's that the time tracking is much more

01:15:53 ◼   ► about mindfully using time.

01:15:56 ◼   ► And so if it's a holiday, this is just a thing that I care way less about, right?

01:16:01 ◼   ► Like it doesn't, it doesn't really matter in the same way that like, when a video

01:16:07 ◼   ► goes up, you know, I almost always have to take a couple of days off afterward.

01:16:11 ◼   ► Cause it's just totally exhausting.

01:16:13 ◼   ► And it's extremely unlikely that I'm even going to start a timer in those

01:16:16 ◼   ► couple of days off because it's like, who cares?

01:16:20 ◼   ► It doesn't matter.

01:16:20 ◼   ► The like, I'm just nothing, nothing's happening here.

01:16:23 ◼   ► So,

01:16:24 ◼   ► So there is a limit there in that sense.

01:16:27 ◼   ► You're not, you don't just like,

01:16:29 ◼   ► 'cause I know you have unintentional time,

01:16:32 ◼   ► I think is a thing that you track.

01:16:33 ◼   ► - Yes, yes. - So you wouldn't just turn

01:16:35 ◼   ► the unintentional timer on for three days then?

01:16:37 ◼   ► - No, because the, no, again,

01:16:39 ◼   ► I feel like you never understand.

01:16:40 ◼   ► The unintentional timer is very straightforward,

01:16:41 ◼   ► but if you don't understand it at all.

01:16:43 ◼   ► - If it's not straightforward, I would get it.

01:16:45 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:16:46 ◼   ► - The unintentional timer, you know, again,

01:16:48 ◼   ► the color of unintentionally is black.

01:16:51 ◼   ► It's like a black stain on the day.

01:16:52 ◼   ► - Oh, it's a thing you don't want.

01:16:54 ◼   ► You don't want it.

01:16:55 ◼   ► So you don't have a rest timer then?

01:16:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't.

01:17:01 ◼   ► I did experiment for a little while with a timer that was just like,

01:17:04 ◼   ► free time, but I thought like, who cares?

01:17:08 ◼   ► I don't care about this.

01:17:09 ◼   ► This is also because I just don't tend to look back at the data.

01:17:13 ◼   ► The feeling is more like, you know,

01:17:17 ◼   ► "Oh, I uploaded a video yesterday.

01:17:19 ◼   ► I know from long experience I'm going to get absolutely nothing done today.

01:17:22 ◼   ► I'm not even going to try. I just need to be like a sloth who's not accomplishing much."

01:17:30 ◼   ► And so then the whole idea of time tracking for that day just is completely irrelevant.

01:17:34 ◼   ► It doesn't matter. You know, holidays away from home, it's always the same thing of like,

01:17:39 ◼   ► "Oh, I'm visiting family." It very quickly devolves into a situation where it's like,

01:17:46 ◼   ► "Yes, but if I'm actually just taking some days off, this doesn't matter."

01:17:50 ◼   ► If I'm trying to mix like work and a holiday then it's a slightly different thing because

01:17:54 ◼   ► now I do want to be much more intentional about the time.

01:17:57 ◼   ► You see that's different for me.

01:17:59 ◼   ► If I'm away, if I'm traveling, even if I'm on vacation and I'm doing some work or if

01:18:04 ◼   ► I'm on a work trip I stop tracking during that time.

01:18:07 ◼   ► Wait a minute, wait, you track all of your work unless you're working on vacation?

01:18:12 ◼   ► That doesn't make any sense.

01:18:13 ◼   ► It makes perfect sense for me.

01:18:15 ◼   ► How does it make, I don't understand.

01:18:16 ◼   ► But you want to time track your work.

01:18:17 ◼   ► Why aren't you time tracking your work?

01:18:19 ◼   ► Because it's not normal work.

01:18:21 ◼   ► Oh, okay, you only try and track normal work.

01:18:23 ◼   ► Yeah, like, because as well, like, if I'm on vacation, especially when I'm working,

01:18:28 ◼   ► it is incredibly minimal, like not even worth tracking it because it's like a couple of

01:18:32 ◼   ► minutes here or there.

01:18:34 ◼   ► Ah, okay.

01:18:35 ◼   ► If I'm not in my usual environment, I do not track my time.

01:18:40 ◼   ► Because the variables are too strong for me.

01:18:43 ◼   ► What do you mean by the variables?

01:18:44 ◼   ► Well, the ways in which I'm working are so peculiar.

01:18:49 ◼   ► The devices that I'm using, the tools that I'm using, the reason that I'm working, it's all weird.

01:18:57 ◼   ► If I was on a work trip, conversations are more like work than they normally would be, but I don't track those usually.

01:19:06 ◼   ► It's just a completely different mindset for me, so I will just abandon it for that time period.

01:19:13 ◼   ► Okay, that makes sense. I mean, this also introduces the problem of, I think I used to have this a little bit earlier when I was newer to time tracking,

01:19:22 ◼   ► which I gave up very quickly. I was trying to track travel time. I thought this would be an interesting category.

01:19:30 ◼   ► And then, but then you immediately run into the problem of like, oh, but wait a minute, travel time overlaps with a hundred other things.

01:19:39 ◼   ► It's like, this is a very hard category of thing

01:19:42 ◼   ► to even think about.

01:19:43 ◼   ► And it's just like very quickly,

01:19:45 ◼   ► to totally got rid of the idea of tracking travel time

01:19:50 ◼   ► as any kind of meaningful metric.

01:19:52 ◼   ► - This does actually lead into another question

01:19:54 ◼   ► we got from Carter, who asks,

01:19:56 ◼   ► "How do you track tasks that fall into two categories?"

01:20:00 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, don't do that is my suggestion.

01:20:07 ◼   ► I mean, look, this is the thing of folders versus tags, right?

01:20:12 ◼   ► If you need something to exist in two places,

01:20:19 ◼   ► this is why we have tags.

01:20:22 ◼   ► But the problem with tags is you have to be very careful

01:20:26 ◼   ► about your tagging system,

01:20:27 ◼   ► and it's very easy to run into weird situations

01:20:30 ◼   ► that you haven't thought about.

01:20:31 ◼   ► But I feel like there must be some kind of mathematical proof

01:20:36 ◼   ► about information sorting that like there's only two solutions and it's called folders

01:20:41 ◼   ► and tags of if you want things to exist in one place or another place. But I mean I think

01:20:47 ◼   ► my my general advice would be just don't that there's almost always a way to just track

01:20:55 ◼   ► something as the one thing that you care about more maybe might be the way that I would put

01:21:02 ◼   ► it.

01:21:03 ◼   ► instance is surely something is predominant. Right, if you're doing two things at once,

01:21:10 ◼   ► surely you're doing one thing more than the other thing? Pick that thing.

01:21:14 ◼   ► Yeah, like you're on an airplane and you're writing a script for a video. Primarily you're

01:21:20 ◼   ► writing a script for a video and secondarily you're on an airplane. Or I think like,

01:21:26 ◼   ► "Oh, I'm listening to an audiobook and I'm also exercising." It's like, I should

01:21:31 ◼   ► get the credit for the exercise, not the credit for the audiobook, right? That's sort of the

01:21:36 ◼   ► way I think about it. But again, I might not be the best person to ask for this because

01:21:41 ◼   ► I just, I do not care about the record of the time tracking. I just care entirely about,

01:21:48 ◼   ► look at me, I'm pressing a button that says I'm exercising now, so I better really exercise

01:21:54 ◼   ► now. That's how the time tracking works for me.

01:21:57 ◼   ► Fuzan asks, "Have either of you added more smart devices

01:22:00 ◼   ► "to your home since the pandemic started?"

01:22:03 ◼   ► - I don't know about you, Myke.

01:22:04 ◼   ► I find the whole smart home thing

01:22:09 ◼   ► much more frustrating than it feels like it should be.

01:22:11 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:22:12 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:22:13 ◼   ► - Do you agree with me on this?

01:22:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:22:15 ◼   ► And I've made it so much worse for myself.

01:22:18 ◼   ► - What do you mean?

01:22:21 ◼   ► Have you made it so much worse for yourself?

01:22:23 ◼   ► - Are you familiar with Homebridge?

01:22:25 ◼   ► - Vaguely.

01:22:27 ◼   ► - It is a service app thing.

01:22:32 ◼   ► - Oh, is this to get like non HomeKit devices

01:22:38 ◼   ► to talk to HomeKit?

01:22:39 ◼   ► Is that what this is? - Yes.

01:22:40 ◼   ► You can run this on a server or on a Raspberry Pi.

01:22:44 ◼   ► - Oh God, okay. - Or easy to run

01:22:45 ◼   ► on a Raspberry Pi.

01:22:46 ◼   ► And it basically is community driven

01:22:51 ◼   ► where a bunch of people write scripts

01:22:55 ◼   ► that control the different APIs and services.

01:22:57 ◼   ► - You've got so many red flag words here, Myke.

01:22:58 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:22:59 ◼   ► - That you can then--

01:23:00 ◼   ► - Red flags everywhere.

01:23:02 ◼   ► - Trick home kit into seeing devices

01:23:06 ◼   ► that do not natively support home kit.

01:23:08 ◼   ► - Oh great, this sounds like it's perfect.

01:23:10 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:23:11 ◼   ► - I know many people that run this at home.

01:23:14 ◼   ► I would not run it at home because what I don't want at home

01:23:17 ◼   ► is to be dealing with troubleshooting,

01:23:21 ◼   ► but I am running it at the studio.

01:23:24 ◼   ► Okay.

01:23:25 ◼   ► And it's great when it works and it's terrible when it doesn't.

01:23:29 ◼   ► Like what kind of stuff do you have on this?

01:23:31 ◼   ► What are you talking about?

01:23:32 ◼   ► So I have a Dyson fan.

01:23:33 ◼   ► Okay.

01:23:34 ◼   ► And I have a Ring security system.

01:23:37 ◼   ► And also Elgato key lights for streaming, like streaming lights for video.

01:23:44 ◼   ► Those three products I have running through Homebridge so I see them in HomeKit at the

01:23:50 ◼   ► studio.

01:23:51 ◼   ► Before I left, before I locked up the studio last, the home bridge stopped working and

01:23:57 ◼   ► I don't know why, which is the thing I knew was going to happen, right?

01:24:02 ◼   ► Because if you are doing something that you shouldn't be doing with devices, any update

01:24:08 ◼   ► to any of them will kill all of it.

01:24:10 ◼   ► And I knew this was going to be a case, which is why I wouldn't do it at home, but I wanted

01:24:15 ◼   ► to tinker with this.

01:24:17 ◼   ► It just felt like a fun little project to like, if I have some time I can play around

01:24:22 ◼   ► with, but decided that like, I wouldn't buy any products with the intention that they

01:24:27 ◼   ► would only be run this way.

01:24:29 ◼   ► You know, like the security system and the fan, they have their own apps and I use them

01:24:34 ◼   ► through the own apps as well.

01:24:36 ◼   ► But it's nice that I can also have them in the home app when it works.

01:24:40 ◼   ► And Homebridge when it works is magical, right?

01:24:43 ◼   ► is I get to see these things in HomeKit

01:24:47 ◼   ► and I can set them up and use them perfectly and easily

01:24:50 ◼   ► and it's great.

01:24:51 ◼   ► But when it doesn't work, it's really annoying.

01:24:55 ◼   ► I look forward to the future when all of these things

01:24:58 ◼   ► will talk better together and there is like,

01:25:01 ◼   ► all of the big technology companies have agreed

01:25:03 ◼   ► that they will work to communicate with each other now.

01:25:08 ◼   ► I don't know if you're aware of this,

01:25:09 ◼   ► it's called the Connected Home Over IP Initiative.

01:25:13 ◼   ► or something. So I look forward to that future. But yeah, I have added more HomeKit-like stuff

01:25:19 ◼   ► as well. Like I bought a smart switch, a HomeKit-enabled smart switch for some stuff at the studio.

01:25:27 ◼   ► I've been tinkering around a bit a little bit more as a project, but I've really wished

01:25:32 ◼   ► that this stuff was just better than it is. Because there's so much promise to these types

01:25:37 ◼   ► of things, but the idea of having to pick specific products so they work in the system

01:25:43 ◼   ► you've chosen is really annoying.

01:25:45 ◼   ► And I just want all of these things to work together and I do hope that that is a thing

01:25:50 ◼   ► that will happen.

01:25:51 ◼   ► Yeah, 100% the promise of the smart home is not being delivered and the flakiness is hugely

01:26:00 ◼   ► frustrating of like devices appearing or disappearing on the network.

01:26:05 ◼   ► "Oh, lights are on the network half the time and then they're not on the network half the

01:26:10 ◼   ► time and interoperability is really frustrating."

01:26:13 ◼   ► Just, it doesn't quite count as the pandemic, but just before the pandemic, we had to get

01:26:18 ◼   ► the boiler replaced and for totally uninteresting reasons, it ended up that we needed to get

01:26:23 ◼   ► a Google Nest device as the thermostat.

01:26:27 ◼   ► And it's like, "Ugh, god damn it.

01:26:29 ◼   ► Like here's a thing, it doesn't want to talk to anything else.

01:26:32 ◼   ► It's got its own ideas of what the temperature should be, and it's like, I deeply resent

01:26:37 ◼   ► this Google nest in my house that's constantly fighting with me about what the temperature

01:26:41 ◼   ► should be.

01:26:42 ◼   ► Like, I just, yeah, just the home automation stuff feels like it needs a lot more time

01:26:49 ◼   ► to be ironed out to not be frustrating and to work the way it feels like it should.

01:26:55 ◼   ► How did I lose my mouse?

01:26:57 ◼   ► Oh, there it is.

01:26:59 ◼   ► Sorry.

01:27:00 ◼   ► under a little pile of cheese.

01:27:02 ◼   ► - (laughs) Of course you would.

01:27:03 ◼   ► Where else would the mouse go?

01:27:05 ◼   ► - That's not even a joke.

01:27:06 ◼   ► I've been trying to quietly eat these baby bell cheeses.

01:27:11 ◼   ► - Ah.

01:27:12 ◼   ► - I lost the mouse behind a little pile

01:27:14 ◼   ► of the unwrapped baby bells.

01:27:15 ◼   ► You haven't even noticed

01:27:18 ◼   ► 'cause I've been eating them so quietly

01:27:19 ◼   ► during recording. - That's good.

01:27:21 ◼   ► I'm really happy I haven't heard you eating it

01:27:23 ◼   ► like while we're talking, because that is terrible.

01:27:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've been sneaky. (laughs)

01:27:29 ◼   ► Don't eat and record a podcast at the same time.

01:27:32 ◼   ► No. Like I'm doing right now.

01:27:33 ◼   ► Oh, stop it.

01:27:34 ◼   ► I'm gonna cut it out.

01:27:35 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:27:37 ◼   ► Right?

01:27:38 ◼   ► Like I'll bleep it.

01:27:38 ◼   ► Like I'll just bleep you for like 20 seconds at a time.

01:27:42 ◼   ► No one wants to hear you eat.

01:27:43 ◼   ► You can put it in Moretex.

01:27:44 ◼   ► It's like extra content for Moretex.

01:27:46 ◼   ► Well, like you want people to pay to hear you eat.

01:27:49 ◼   ► I don't know what people want.

01:27:50 ◼   ► I don't think they want that.

01:27:51 ◼   ► This isn't the best way to sell our longer

01:27:55 ◼   ► and ad-free versions of Cortex that you can get

01:27:58 ◼   ► get more text.com where we do have better content than gray eating.

01:28:03 ◼   ► I can promise you with that.

01:28:04 ◼   ► I make no such promises.

01:28:08 ◼   ► No, I will promise it.

01:28:10 ◼   ► I will promise it.

01:28:11 ◼   ► The content is better and more engaging and interesting.

01:28:15 ◼   ► The additional content that more Texans get by going to get more text.com and

01:28:19 ◼   ► signing up for $5 a month, they get better content than listening to gray eat.

01:28:26 ◼   ► There's a question here which I'll answer because it ties back right to the very beginning when you were asking me about my office

01:28:33 ◼   ► which is Justin asking, "My desk is a rat's nest of cables and chargers for various devices. How do you keep your cables organized and presentable?"

01:28:42 ◼   ► And the answer is I don't and I'm sad about it.

01:28:46 ◼   ► Cable management is so goddamn hard to do, right?

01:28:51 ◼   ► I buy all this stuff which is supposed to do it.

01:28:56 ◼   ► It doesn't though.

01:28:57 ◼   ► And nothing ever works.

01:28:58 ◼   ► No, it never works.

01:28:59 ◼   ► The cables are everywhere all the time.

01:29:01 ◼   ► The closest I come is just make all of the wires go off the back of the desk.

01:29:07 ◼   ► And let me tell you, when you introduce standing desk into cable management, forget it.

01:29:16 ◼   ► It's awful.

01:29:17 ◼   ► I am genuinely constantly sad about it.

01:29:20 ◼   ► Like the, like even, even now when I feel like I'm about as good as I can possibly be,

01:29:25 ◼   ► the number of wires on my desk now is, is still way too many.

01:29:31 ◼   ► It's like, I've got these XLR cables here.

01:29:33 ◼   ► I've got the cable for the wireless charger for the phone.

01:29:38 ◼   ► I've got a little cable for an led light.

01:29:40 ◼   ► There's the cable for the power for the computer.

01:29:42 ◼   ► And it's like, it's just so much.

01:29:45 ◼   ► so much I got one of these, fantastic purchase, I got one of those little things that keeps

01:29:50 ◼   ► your coffee warm that's like a heated pad to put your coffee cup on which I really like.

01:29:54 ◼   ► You didn't get the mug right? It was like a thing?

01:29:56 ◼   ► No no no, not the mug thing. The mug thing I think is a total gimmick. I just needed

01:30:01 ◼   ► something where like the surface keeps warm.

01:30:03 ◼   ► It's basically just a Qi charger then.

01:30:05 ◼   ► Yeah exactly, it's just a Qi charger.

01:30:08 ◼   ► It's just a really inefficient wireless charger.

01:30:10 ◼   ► Yeah, it was like, I got one of those, but guess what?

01:30:13 ◼   ► Whenever you're dealing with heat and electricity, you need a really thick cable.

01:30:17 ◼   ► And so it's like, okay, so I've got a thick cable from this thing.

01:30:20 ◼   ► And then I've got also the controller that makes the standing

01:30:23 ◼   ► desk go up and down and that needs a wire.

01:30:25 ◼   ► And it's like, and all of these wires need to connect to something and also have

01:30:29 ◼   ► enough slack for the desk to go up and down.

01:30:32 ◼   ► And the real killer for me is, okay, this would be solvable.

01:30:38 ◼   ► Except for the fact that frequently enough, something changes.

01:30:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:30:44 ◼   ► And the moment you have one thing change, if you've perfectly arranged

01:30:50 ◼   ► all of your cables, you have to start over.

01:30:53 ◼   ► So the truth is under my desk in the back, there's just a, there is just

01:30:57 ◼   ► a horrific apocalypse of cables.

01:31:00 ◼   ► And I just basically leave it as it is like the closest I come is with those

01:31:08 ◼   ► with those little Velcro ties to just try to shorten up the wire.

01:31:12 ◼   ► But I like, when I see those beautiful pictures of people in their cable

01:31:17 ◼   ► management, I always feel like I wish I was a better person.

01:31:20 ◼   ► No work is done at those desks.

01:31:23 ◼   ► Great.

01:31:23 ◼   ► Right.

01:31:24 ◼   ► No, no work is done at the cable managed desks.

01:31:27 ◼   ► Is that what you think?

01:31:29 ◼   ► That is what I think.

01:31:30 ◼   ► I would like to believe that, but I don't believe that.

01:31:32 ◼   ► The cables have been managed to take the nice pictures.

01:31:36 ◼   ► And then it's just disaster.

01:31:38 ◼   ► Okay. So you're, you're in the same boat as me. Is that what you're saying?

01:31:43 ◼   ► I try really hard, but all it is is just the same amount of cables.

01:31:50 ◼   ► They just have Velcro ties on them now.

01:31:52 ◼   ► I've added, if anything.

01:31:55 ◼   ► I know like one of the ways that people say to do it is like you mount a surge

01:32:00 ◼   ► protector to the desk and then you plug everything into that. And it's like,

01:32:04 ◼   ► I get it and I tried doing stuff like that, but then all it is is just lots of coils of

01:32:09 ◼   ► cables.

01:32:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:32:11 ◼   ► You know?

01:32:12 ◼   ► And I don't know if that's better.

01:32:14 ◼   ► And then, yeah, I try so hard with it and it just, it never works.

01:32:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:32:21 ◼   ► The one thing I will say that I've done that is, I feel like is necessary, especially if

01:32:26 ◼   ► you have a standing desk, is I searched around on Amazon forever to find one.

01:32:31 ◼   ► I found one of these super long array of plugs.

01:32:36 ◼   ► It was like 20 plugs in a row, like one of these extension cords that's meant for like

01:32:42 ◼   ► an industrial solution.

01:32:44 ◼   ► It's like, okay, I'm going to measure the width of the desk and I'm going to find the

01:32:47 ◼   ► longest one of these that I can.

01:32:50 ◼   ► So under my desk, I've got 20 plug spaces.

01:32:52 ◼   ► And how did you attach it to the desk?

01:32:55 ◼   ► So luckily the one that I bought had metal on the edges that you could use a screwdriver

01:33:03 ◼   ► to physically bolt it to the underside of the desk.

01:33:07 ◼   ► And I did that and so I tried to plug most things into there.

01:33:14 ◼   ► So it will go up and down, you don't have to worry about something unplugging, which

01:33:17 ◼   ► I have had happen to me.

01:33:18 ◼   ► Yeah, so that thing will go up and down and that carries a lot of the things that are

01:33:25 ◼   ► plugged in.

01:33:26 ◼   ► But this again is like anytime you're dealing with a real world situation it just gets too

01:33:30 ◼   ► complicated too fast because, "Oh, I also have surge protectors and the uninterrupted

01:33:36 ◼   ► power supply thing."

01:33:37 ◼   ► It's like, yes, but only so much power can be drawn on the battery backups that it's

01:33:44 ◼   ► actually useful if the power goes out.

01:33:45 ◼   ► And this is like, "Oh, okay. So I can't run everything through this, and now, like, again, the system starts to fall apart very fast.

01:33:53 ◼   ► You can't overload this one battery."

01:33:55 ◼   ► And it's just, it's incredibly frustrating, but that has helped by bolting a million plugs onto the back of the desk.

01:34:03 ◼   ► But again, you still run into this problem where, like, the XLR cable that is built into the microphone stand, the boom arm that I'm using,

01:34:13 ◼   ► It's like, but this XLR cable, I don't know why they gave me an XLR cable that's like 20 meters

01:34:18 ◼   ► long. That's the built-in one, right? And so now I've got just like a ton of extra wire. Where does

01:34:23 ◼   ► this go? I'll just throw it over the back of the desk like all of it. So it's, you, I just find

01:34:31 ◼   ► it's one of these things that you have to live with. That trying to make this perfect

01:34:38 ◼   ► is way too much effort for not enough payoff, even though I am constantly sad.

01:34:45 ◼   ► And I also just don't know if it's my office, but I am every time I go under

01:34:50 ◼   ► my desk, absolutely shocked at the sheer number of things that have to be plugged

01:34:57 ◼   ► in, like it just adds up so fast the moment you're doing anything professionally.

01:35:03 ◼   ► It's like, oh, okay.

01:35:05 ◼   ► I mean, looking under my desk, it's awful.

01:35:08 ◼   ► Right, but also, like, what's under there?

01:35:10 ◼   ► Oh, there's time machine drives under there.

01:35:12 ◼   ► There's a gigantic data storage machine under there.

01:35:15 ◼   ► Like, you have additional stuff.

01:35:17 ◼   ► Like, I've got an eGPU over here.

01:35:20 ◼   ► It's like way too many things.

01:35:22 ◼   ► So anyway, I'm always sad.

01:35:25 ◼   ► I'm glad to know that you're in the same boat, though.

01:35:29 ◼   ► I kind of expected that you'd have

01:35:30 ◼   ► a really tidy setup over there.

01:35:32 ◼   ► - I tried.

01:35:34 ◼   ► - Then you gave up.

01:35:35 ◼   ► really have, and I keep trying, and it just doesn't, I can't get it to work.

01:35:41 ◼   ► One of the bigger problems for me is like, I go, "Alright, when it's all set, I'll try

01:35:45 ◼   ► to redo it all."

01:35:47 ◼   ► But I feel like, as you say, things get added.

01:35:50 ◼   ► And then I have to undo everything.

01:35:52 ◼   ► In the sorts of professional setups that we have, the turnover of equipment is annoyingly

01:35:57 ◼   ► high.

01:35:58 ◼   ► Especially if you keep buying new things, huh, Gray?

01:36:01 ◼   ► You keep buying new field recorders.

01:36:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, for your XLR cable splitters, for sure.

01:36:05 ◼   ► Or your podcast co-host tells you

01:36:08 ◼   ► you need to get a boom arm,

01:36:09 ◼   ► you can't just use this standing desk, it's so great.

01:36:11 ◼   ► Now I've got a 20 meter XLR cable

01:36:13 ◼   ► that I didn't wanna have before, but here it is.

01:36:15 ◼   ► - Well, the boom arm does have cable management built into it

01:36:18 ◼   ► which I do like.

01:36:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, but not enough, not enough on the back end.

01:36:23 ◼   ► But so anyway, that's the answer to your question.

01:36:26 ◼   ► No, sorry.

01:36:28 ◼   ► - Which I'm sure has made so many of you

01:36:30 ◼   ► feel so much better.

01:36:31 ◼   ► Yeah, I can feel all of the superior comments and photos of cable manager situations coming

01:36:39 ◼   ► into the Reddit as we speak.

01:36:41 ◼   ► Yeah, and I won't believe what any of them.

01:36:45 ◼   ► Don't forget, just for two weeks you can get a subtle tee and subtle sweater at cortexmerch.com.

01:36:51 ◼   ► These things are awesome, functional and beautiful.

01:36:53 ◼   ► Do not miss out.

01:36:56 ◼   ► Cortexmerch.com.

01:36:57 ◼   ► Well that was a fossil.

01:37:00 ◼   ► I wanted to jump in.

01:37:01 ◼   ► I wasn't gonna let you mess around with me this time.

01:37:03 ◼   ► Ah, no see I was leaving that one open for you.

01:37:05 ◼   ► I don't know anymore, Myke.

01:37:07 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]