Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► Grey, I have joined the Roomba lifestyle.

00:00:03 ◼   ► Hey! Oh good!

00:00:05 ◼   ► I feel like we've spoken about Roomba on this show.

00:00:09 ◼   ► I'm sure that we have had this conversation before.

00:00:12 ◼   ► I'm disappointed in you Myke. You don't remember?

00:00:14 ◼   ► That I was promoting the Roomba lifestyle a while back?

00:00:17 ◼   ► No, you see, I know I have spoken to you about Roomba.

00:00:21 ◼   ► I just can't remember if we have spoken about Roomba on Cortex.

00:00:26 ◼   ► - Right, this is the problem where what is in the show,

00:00:31 ◼   ► what is part of our two hour chit chat run up to the show

00:00:36 ◼   ► or one hour post show chit chat, right?

00:00:39 ◼   ► - Oh, I found it now.

00:00:40 ◼   ► - Which bits of those made it into the show, yes.

00:00:42 ◼   ► - It was episode 67.

00:00:45 ◼   ► - I talked about getting a Roomba

00:00:47 ◼   ► and I think in that conversation,

00:00:50 ◼   ► it eventually morphed into a metaphor for having employees.

00:00:54 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

00:00:54 ◼   ► - This is how that conversation went.

00:00:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, I remember that, I was really uncomfortable with that.

00:00:59 ◼   ► - Myke, I don't know why you're uncomfortable

00:01:01 ◼   ► with a metaphor that treats employees

00:01:03 ◼   ► as though they are mindless automaton doing what you wish.

00:01:07 ◼   ► I don't understand why that would make you uncomfortable.

00:01:09 ◼   ► But that's how that conversation went.

00:01:11 ◼   ► But so I'm very happy that apparently that seeped

00:01:14 ◼   ► into your subconscious and you decided to get a Roomba.

00:01:19 ◼   ► - It's Prime Day, man.

00:01:20 ◼   ► It's 30% off on Prime Day.

00:01:23 ◼   ► - Oh, well, I mean, 30% off,

00:01:25 ◼   ► depending on what Roomba you got, that is a serious chunk of change off of a Roomba.

00:01:29 ◼   ► I think I got the same one as you, the 960?

00:01:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

00:01:33 ◼   ► That's the one that was in our show notes for that episode, right?

00:01:36 ◼   ► I've just looked at it now, the Roomba 960.

00:01:39 ◼   ► And it has an app and we can hook it into the Echo, which I really like,

00:01:43 ◼   ► so I can just be like, "Hey Echo, tell the Roomba to start cleaning."

00:01:47 ◼   ► And it goes like doo doo, and off it goes.

00:01:50 ◼   ► Out into the world.

00:01:51 ◼   ► - I don't have an Amazon Echo.

00:01:54 ◼   ► I don't have that in my house.

00:01:55 ◼   ► I do have the HomePod,

00:01:57 ◼   ► and unfortunately Roomba is not built in

00:02:00 ◼   ► with HomeKit support.

00:02:02 ◼   ► I did try to follow Jason Snell's instructions

00:02:06 ◼   ► about how to set up this HomeBridge thing,

00:02:08 ◼   ► and I got 99% of the way there

00:02:11 ◼   ► in that I had this IP address and password for the Roomba.

00:02:15 ◼   ► And I was like, but I was just about to go the final step,

00:02:18 ◼   ► and then I had one of those moments

00:02:20 ◼   ► where I always think it is so important to know yourself.

00:02:25 ◼   ► And I was thinking, I thought,

00:02:27 ◼   ► Gray, think about this for a moment.

00:02:30 ◼   ► You're setting up this system on a laptop in your closet

00:02:35 ◼   ► that's supposed to act as this homebridge setup thing

00:02:39 ◼   ► forever, like, are you going to maintain this?

00:02:41 ◼   ► Are you going to want to tinker around with this

00:02:44 ◼   ► when it inevitably doesn't quite work?

00:02:46 ◼   ► Is that really what's going to happen?

00:02:48 ◼   ► And I said to myself, "No, of course not.

00:02:50 ◼   ► I don't ever want to have to think about this again,

00:02:52 ◼   ► and I inevitably will have to think about it again."

00:02:55 ◼   ► So I stopped meters before the finish line

00:02:59 ◼   ► of trying to get it set up so that I could tell the HomePod

00:03:01 ◼   ► to make the Roomba go.

00:03:02 ◼   ► So unfortunately, I don't have voice control of my Roomba,

00:03:05 ◼   ► and there are certainly times when I would want that.

00:03:07 ◼   ► So I'm a little bit envious of your Alexa skill ability

00:03:12 ◼   ► with the Roomba, but I don't really trust Amazon

00:03:14 ◼   ► in my house that much, so there will be no Alexas here.

00:03:17 ◼   ► I don't want to get into that conversation today.

00:03:19 ◼   ► There is stuff you could do with IFTTT with the Roomba,

00:03:21 ◼   ► but that's still not gonna give you the voice access

00:03:24 ◼   ► that you require yet.

00:03:25 ◼   ► Who knows, right?

00:03:26 ◼   ► We'll talk about Siri shortcuts later.

00:03:28 ◼   ► Maybe if we're lucky, IFTTT will find a way

00:03:30 ◼   ► to work with Siri shortcuts,

00:03:32 ◼   ► and then you'll be able to do it.

00:03:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was poking around in IFTTT for a while,

00:03:36 ◼   ► and the main thing that I would want to do,

00:03:39 ◼   ► which it seemed like there's no way to do it,

00:03:40 ◼   ► is set up a rule where if I leave the house,

00:03:44 ◼   ► and my wife leaves the house,

00:03:47 ◼   ► then have the Roomba go.

00:03:49 ◼   ► It's like, oh, you want two conditions,

00:03:51 ◼   ► you can go straight to hell on if this, then that.

00:03:55 ◼   ► It's not if this and this, then that, no.

00:03:57 ◼   ► It's just if this, then that.

00:03:59 ◼   ► - You actually can do two conditions now

00:04:01 ◼   ► with this new tool that they have,

00:04:04 ◼   ► but I think it's still not gonna work

00:04:05 ◼   ► for two independent people.

00:04:07 ◼   ► I think that's too much.

00:04:08 ◼   ► - There's no way that's gonna happen.

00:04:09 ◼   ► - Can you even imagine the horrors that would occur

00:04:12 ◼   ► if you could trigger an action

00:04:14 ◼   ► based upon somebody else's location?

00:04:16 ◼   ► I don't think anything could possibly go wrong with that.

00:04:18 ◼   ► - No, that seems fine.

00:04:19 ◼   ► - It didn't stop me from sitting down

00:04:20 ◼   ► and thinking about it for a while thinking,

00:04:22 ◼   ► is there anything I can do

00:04:24 ◼   ► where my wife's change in location triggers something else

00:04:29 ◼   ► that then if this, then that can read?

00:04:33 ◼   ► As I was just kept wondering,

00:04:35 ◼   ► I kept trying to think that through

00:04:36 ◼   ► and there was nothing I could figure out

00:04:37 ◼   ► that wouldn't require some sort of action on my wife's part.

00:04:40 ◼   ► And then that defeats the whole purpose

00:04:42 ◼   ► of the pleasing automation of the Roomba.

00:04:45 ◼   ► And so I had to give up on that eventually.

00:04:47 ◼   ► And we just have a regular schedule for our Roomba

00:04:49 ◼   ► to go out and vacuum the flat.

00:04:51 ◼   ► - We haven't set up a schedule yet.

00:04:53 ◼   ► I think we're still kind of trying to work out

00:04:55 ◼   ► when's the best time.

00:04:56 ◼   ► So I'll tell you two things.

00:04:58 ◼   ► Actually, it's one thing that means both results.

00:05:02 ◼   ► I kind of think of the Roomba as like an animal.

00:05:06 ◼   ► It's like a little pet that we have at home.

00:05:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, of course.

00:05:10 ◼   ► Obviously.

00:05:11 ◼   ► Because it is unbearably cute, in my opinion, because it makes its little songs, makes its

00:05:17 ◼   ► little sounds that it does when it starts and when it ends. But also, it kind of bumps

00:05:22 ◼   ► into everything lightly. And I find that so hilarious as it's, you know, moving around

00:05:27 ◼   ► the house and it bumps into something and it moves around and it bumps into something

00:05:31 ◼   ► else. It's kind of that is also very cute to me. And then the same thing is both cute

00:05:36 ◼   ► and annoying. Our Roomba gets trapped in rooms because what it's doing is we open the doors

00:05:43 ◼   ► and we have door stops on the doors, right? It's finding the door, it's turning, and it's

00:05:48 ◼   ► cleaning along the edge of the door, taking the doorstop with it, closing the door.

00:05:53 ◼   ► 20 minutes later, I'm like, where's the Roomba? Oh, the Roomba's been in the dark in the bathroom

00:05:59 ◼   ► for 20 minutes, thoroughly cleaning the bathroom is what it's been doing.

00:06:04 ◼   ► That's very sad.

00:06:05 ◼   ► So we're currently, we're still trying, we're trying to find some new doorstops that are

00:06:08 ◼   ► a little bit stronger, and I think we may have found what we were looking for.

00:06:12 ◼   ► We got this one on Amazon, but more testing must occur.

00:06:16 ◼   ► It is impossible not to anthropomorphize the Roomba, because it is, it gives off the impression

00:06:26 ◼   ► of trying really hard in the vacuuming.

00:06:32 ◼   ► That's the key thing.

00:06:33 ◼   ► You get this feeling like Roomba is really trying.

00:06:38 ◼   ► And he does a great job.

00:06:40 ◼   ► Not a perfect job, but you know, he has problems, he's very limited, he has no arms or crab-like

00:06:46 ◼   ► pincers with which to manipulate anything.

00:06:49 ◼   ► He's just a little circle.

00:06:50 ◼   ► But like boy is he really giving it his go.

00:06:54 ◼   ► And there's something about the motion of it, or even when the Roomba finds a spot that

00:06:59 ◼   ► that is unusually dirty the way it ramps up the vacuum.

00:07:02 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh yeah, I really gotta scrub this spot."

00:07:05 ◼   ► - We haven't come across that yet.

00:07:06 ◼   ► Like, it was in the app, it's like dirt events.

00:07:09 ◼   ► I'm like, "What is a dirt event?"

00:07:10 ◼   ► And I looked it up, I was like, "Oh."

00:07:12 ◼   ► So like, maybe if we dropped like a pack of rice

00:07:14 ◼   ► and then just sent the Roomba out to clean,

00:07:16 ◼   ► it would like, "Oh, okay, he's gonna get the rice for us."

00:07:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, or for, let's say, as a theoretical example,

00:07:22 ◼   ► a dog makes a big mess with its food bowl, right?

00:07:25 ◼   ► Like, that's a dirt event.

00:07:27 ◼   ► And like, that's-- - Okay.

00:07:28 ◼   ► Then the Roomba's like, "Okay, there's some serious business

00:07:30 ◼   ► over here, like there's tons of food crumbs

00:07:33 ◼   ► all over the place."

00:07:34 ◼   ► It'll ramp up the little motor,

00:07:35 ◼   ► and it just feels like it's really giving it

00:07:38 ◼   ► some elbow grease at that spot of what it's trying to clean.

00:07:41 ◼   ► And yes, it is just adorable

00:07:43 ◼   ► and impossible not to anthropomorphize.

00:07:45 ◼   ► And the thing that really gets me,

00:07:47 ◼   ► and also I cannot believe how well it works.

00:07:51 ◼   ► Okay, so the way we set up our Roomba is we have a couch

00:07:57 ◼   ► that is elevated in our main room,

00:07:59 ◼   ► and there's enough space under the couch for the Roomba to go.

00:08:02 ◼   ► So I decided this is where the Roomba is going to live,

00:08:05 ◼   ► is under the couch in the main room.

00:08:08 ◼   ► So this way, it's out of sight all the time.

00:08:10 ◼   ► And then it just pops out from under the couch

00:08:13 ◼   ► and goes about its business.

00:08:15 ◼   ► And it never doesn't make me feel like Jean-Baptiste

00:08:19 ◼   ► de Manuel Zorg when this little robot

00:08:21 ◼   ► just pops out from nowhere and starts cleaning the floor.

00:08:24 ◼   ► Like, every time, it just feels that way.

00:08:26 ◼   ► But anyway, as the Roomba goes and does its business,

00:08:29 ◼   ► it'll end up, say, on the way other side of the house

00:08:33 ◼   ► through a zigzag pattern, out one room, down the hall,

00:08:36 ◼   ► and in another room.

00:08:37 ◼   ► And when it either decides that the job is done,

00:08:40 ◼   ► or as happens, it needs to go back to charge up

00:08:43 ◼   ► to finish the job, I cannot believe how well

00:08:47 ◼   ► it can turn around and decide,

00:08:50 ◼   ► "Oh, I've gotta go find my charger.

00:08:52 ◼   ► "I've gotta go back to the charger."

00:08:54 ◼   ► And when I see it clearly doing its little beeline

00:08:57 ◼   ► down the hallway to then turn into the main room

00:08:59 ◼   ► and go right under the couch, I swear to God,

00:09:02 ◼   ► it's the cutest thing I've ever seen.

00:09:03 ◼   ► - It's like, "I'm ready!

00:09:05 ◼   ► "Start from that now!"

00:09:06 ◼   ► And then off he goes.

00:09:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's adorable.

00:09:10 ◼   ► Roombas, they're almost worth it

00:09:13 ◼   ► because even if they didn't vacuum

00:09:15 ◼   ► just for how cute they are.

00:09:16 ◼   ► - The first time we set it off,

00:09:17 ◼   ► we were both just chasing it.

00:09:19 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:09:20 ◼   ► Right?

00:09:21 ◼   ► Like, "Where's he gonna go?

00:09:22 ◼   ► "What's he gonna do?"

00:09:23 ◼   ► The one thing I wished it could do, and I find this a real shame that you can't do this,

00:09:28 ◼   ► and I'm really hoping, I know this isn't the case, but I tell you this, and you're like,

00:09:31 ◼   ► "Oh, of course you can," is say, "Remember, go clean the kitchen."

00:09:34 ◼   ► Mmm.

00:09:36 ◼   ► I really wished that it was possible, because it generates maps, and I feel like it would

00:09:42 ◼   ► be amazing if I could take the map that it generates, zone off each area, and then ask

00:09:49 ◼   ► to go clean an area because sometimes I just need it to clean the kitchen. It's all I need

00:09:55 ◼   ► and like you can pick it up and put it down but that feels so dumb right because I have this robot

00:10:00 ◼   ► right so I don't pick up and put down the robot I may as well at that point go and get the vacuum

00:10:05 ◼   ► that we have and just go over it myself. Yeah that to me was in our first conversation we had about

00:10:10 ◼   ► the Roomba was a thing I was pushing up against the way I was thinking people people Roomba wrong

00:10:15 ◼   ► that they're treating it like it's a little vacuum cleaner.

00:10:18 ◼   ► And I totally agree.

00:10:19 ◼   ► If you find yourself in a position

00:10:20 ◼   ► where you're picking up the Roomba,

00:10:22 ◼   ► and then you are taking out those little cylinders

00:10:25 ◼   ► that you can use to block it off with infrared,

00:10:28 ◼   ► and you're blocking off,

00:10:30 ◼   ► you should just vacuum at that point.

00:10:32 ◼   ► That's not how the Roomba is supposed to be used.

00:10:35 ◼   ► You're doing it, you're getting all the disadvantages

00:10:38 ◼   ► of the Roomba isn't a perfect vacuum cleaner,

00:10:40 ◼   ► and none of the advantages of it is an autonomous

00:10:44 ◼   ► vacuum cleaner if you're like setting it up in a room.

00:10:47 ◼   ► That feature never occurred to me,

00:10:48 ◼   ► but that would be really cool if on those little maps,

00:10:51 ◼   ► 'cause it clearly learns the basic gist

00:10:54 ◼   ► of what your house looks like over time.

00:10:56 ◼   ► - I feel like it's not though.

00:10:58 ◼   ► I feel like we think it is.

00:11:00 ◼   ► Every single time the Roomba is learning a new route,

00:11:04 ◼   ► like every time it goes out, it's just going again,

00:11:07 ◼   ► because it doesn't ever change,

00:11:10 ◼   ► 'cause I feel like if it learned,

00:11:11 ◼   ► it would stop bumping into stuff, but it doesn't.

00:11:13 ◼   ► Like every single time all it's ever trying to do is go as far as it can

00:11:18 ◼   ► forward and it just does it.

00:11:20 ◼   ► But we think that it's learning because the map is the same every time,

00:11:23 ◼   ► but that's because our houses don't change.

00:11:25 ◼   ► Like because if it was learning anything, then you would be able to say,

00:11:29 ◼   ► like open up a map, press on it and the Roomba would go there.

00:11:33 ◼   ► I think it doesn't have that technology.

00:11:34 ◼   ► All it's doing is relying on its sensors to tell it,

00:11:37 ◼   ► I can't go any further because we've done this, right? Like on its first pass,

00:11:42 ◼   ► It bumps into something and goes past it.

00:11:44 ◼   ► If you move that thing on its second pass,

00:11:45 ◼   ► it will clean that area.

00:11:47 ◼   ► 'Cause it didn't actually learn,

00:11:49 ◼   ► it just didn't bump into anything that time.

00:11:51 ◼   ► - Maybe you're right.

00:11:52 ◼   ► I feel like it's just the impressiveness

00:11:54 ◼   ► of the return to base from a far away location

00:11:57 ◼   ► always surprises me.

00:11:58 ◼   ► And I guess that has fooled me into thinking

00:12:01 ◼   ► it knows the house better than it really does.

00:12:05 ◼   ► - I think all it does is it knows the route

00:12:06 ◼   ► it's just taken since it left.

00:12:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe.

00:12:10 ◼   ► I know I have on occasion had to move it and it can still find its way back, but I think

00:12:16 ◼   ► you're right.

00:12:17 ◼   ► I think listening to you describe it, it is just learning the house anew every time.

00:12:20 ◼   ► And then it's just making a best guess on this run about where must it be now and then

00:12:27 ◼   ► therefore where must the base be, even if it's been moved in between those two.

00:12:31 ◼   ► We do use the little kind of beacon-y thing that it has that shoots out this infrared

00:12:37 ◼   ► to stop it going in a certain area because it kept pulling out or just bumping into our

00:12:43 ◼   ► internet cable and at a certain point we'd be like "the internet's down" "oh Roomba"

00:12:50 ◼   ► "you did it again" so we have to use that thing around where our modem is because otherwise

00:12:54 ◼   ► it just bumps into it and pulls it like just does enough doesn't pull the cable out of

00:12:58 ◼   ► the wall but it was doing just enough that it would trip the internet every time.

00:13:02 ◼   ► I've had to use one of those beacons because they have a mode which is great, which is

00:13:08 ◼   ► probably what you did where it puts out like a little cone of protection, like it's a

00:13:12 ◼   ► don't come within whatever it is, three feet of this beacon.

00:13:16 ◼   ► And I've had to use that actually at the entrance to the recording monolith that I'm

00:13:22 ◼   ► in right now because...

00:13:24 ◼   ► - The voice.

00:13:25 ◼   ► - No, no, no.

00:13:26 ◼   ► Not because of the reason that you would think, because I would be very happy to have the

00:13:31 ◼   ► the Roomba come into the recording monolith and give it a little sweep.

00:13:35 ◼   ► Now, the reason I have to use it is because there is a doggo who, when the Roomba is active,

00:13:43 ◼   ► uses the monolith as a safe space.

00:13:46 ◼   ► So, I put one of the beacons at the entrance to the recording monolith so that the sanctity

00:13:53 ◼   ► of the safe space is not broken by the entrance of a Roomba.

00:13:57 ◼   ► And it's sort of adorable to see it come up to this black recording area and then be like,

00:14:02 ◼   ► "Oop, I'm not allowed in there!" and seeing a pair of doggo eyes looking out from the darkness

00:14:08 ◼   ► at the Roomba cautiously. I completely understand why an animal would be scared of the Roomba,

00:14:13 ◼   ► because typically moving things, you know, you can... animals can put up a front against them

00:14:20 ◼   ► and it might learn, right? To not go near it, but the Roomba will never stop. Yeah, the Roomba will

00:14:26 ◼   ► go until it bumps in, and I have seen more than one dog and Roomba collision.

00:14:31 ◼   ► It will keep advancing on the animal!

00:14:35 ◼   ► If I could put in a feature request, it would be "do image recognition on what is a pet

00:14:40 ◼   ► with its little front-facing camera", because yes, I have seen more than- like, the Roomba

00:14:44 ◼   ► is pretty gentle. There are not any worries about actual injury, unless you had like a

00:14:50 ◼   ► newborn kitten or something, like then I would keep an eye on it. But for, let's say, a

00:14:55 ◼   ► pretty solid, smallish dog. The Roomba is just going to bump up against them, but it

00:15:00 ◼   ► still feels like, "Oh, poor doggo, this Roomba is not going to learn that you aren't

00:15:06 ◼   ► a table or anything." It just never is.

00:15:09 ◼   ► The Roomba is like the real alpha. Because it just will never quit. It will never quit.

00:15:16 ◼   ► Yeah, that's why you have to use a little beacon to create a safe space from the Roomba.

00:15:22 ◼   ► I'm glad you got it.

00:15:24 ◼   ► I feel like when we recorded that first show,

00:15:26 ◼   ► I just had inarticulate joy at having a Roomba.

00:15:30 ◼   ► It's partly 'cause to me, I don't know.

00:15:33 ◼   ► There's something about the Roomba that,

00:15:38 ◼   ► like so few technologies,

00:15:40 ◼   ► I feel like it just really delivers on the promise

00:15:45 ◼   ► of automation and a better future in this unambiguous way.

00:15:50 ◼   ► And that's, it's one of the reasons that I just, I just love it so much.

00:15:55 ◼   ► Cause it's like, it just cleans the house.

00:15:58 ◼   ► I don't have to be involved in any way.

00:16:02 ◼   ► Like it, you know, it just, it just does what it does.

00:16:04 ◼   ► The house always to my surprise is obviously visually

00:16:09 ◼   ► cleaner after the Roomba has run.

00:16:11 ◼   ► Like you just don't notice the little bits of dust and dirt that get on

00:16:15 ◼   ► the floor, but they're there.

00:16:16 ◼   ► And it's just great.

00:16:18 ◼   ► Like, I don't know.

00:16:18 ◼   ► There's something about it that that is just like,

00:16:21 ◼   ► it does what it does, it gets totally out of the way,

00:16:25 ◼   ► there's never really any problems with it,

00:16:28 ◼   ► and it just works.

00:16:29 ◼   ► Whereas, like lots of other,

00:16:32 ◼   ► particularly house automation stuff,

00:16:33 ◼   ► because I've been trying to really up my game

00:16:36 ◼   ► with house automation, and a lot of it is like,

00:16:41 ◼   ► it's great, and I like it,

00:16:43 ◼   ► and it's better than the alternative,

00:16:45 ◼   ► but it flakes out enough to be annoying,

00:16:49 ◼   ► or you run into these weird things

00:16:51 ◼   ► like the lights in the house

00:16:53 ◼   ► clearly seem to want to listen to instructions

00:16:55 ◼   ► from my wife less than instructions from me.

00:16:58 ◼   ► - What I like about it and why I think it's better

00:17:00 ◼   ► and more ideal is automation

00:17:03 ◼   ► than a lot of the stuff we use is,

00:17:05 ◼   ► the Roomba can actually be performing a productive task

00:17:10 ◼   ► when I am not around.

00:17:12 ◼   ► where pretty much every other home automation,

00:17:16 ◼   ► we call home automation product,

00:17:18 ◼   ► is performing tasks that I could perform,

00:17:22 ◼   ► but just slightly more conveniently, right?

00:17:25 ◼   ► Like I turn on my lights in my voice

00:17:27 ◼   ► rather than pressing the switch,

00:17:28 ◼   ► or my lights can be any color,

00:17:30 ◼   ► or I can unlock my door using my phone rather than a key.

00:17:34 ◼   ► Like it's not really doing automation,

00:17:37 ◼   ► it's like home convenience, like technology convenience,

00:17:40 ◼   ► but the Roomba is true automation

00:17:42 ◼   ► in that I can set a schedule for it to go,

00:17:45 ◼   ► but the other thing is it is performing a task

00:17:48 ◼   ► that is a time saving because it can happen

00:17:52 ◼   ► when I'm not there and reduces my requirement

00:17:55 ◼   ► to perform an action.

00:17:57 ◼   ► I don't need to clean the house today.

00:17:59 ◼   ► The Roomba can do it when I'm doing something else

00:18:02 ◼   ► somewhere else.

00:18:03 ◼   ► That's what I like about it.

00:18:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's a good point.

00:18:07 ◼   ► 'Cause I was just trying to think about

00:18:08 ◼   ► what other technologies make me feel this way.

00:18:11 ◼   ► And actually the one that was just popping up in my head is,

00:18:14 ◼   ► it's not a home automation thing,

00:18:16 ◼   ► but using Hazel on the Mac.

00:18:19 ◼   ► And like I was mentioning,

00:18:21 ◼   ► I have this laptop that's just set up in the closet.

00:18:23 ◼   ► And one of the main things it does

00:18:25 ◼   ► is I set up all my Hazel rules on there.

00:18:29 ◼   ► So Hazel is watching folders in Dropbox

00:18:32 ◼   ► for things to happen and then like renaming

00:18:34 ◼   ► and sorting stuff for me.

00:18:35 ◼   ► And that's the same feeling like,

00:18:38 ◼   ► oh, I can take a couple of gigabytes of video,

00:18:41 ◼   ► drop them in this folder and I know that I walk away

00:18:45 ◼   ► and as it sinks over the next hour,

00:18:46 ◼   ► like Hazel will just take care of renaming and sorting

00:18:50 ◼   ► and basically tagging these things for me in a way

00:18:53 ◼   ► and I just never have to think about it.

00:18:54 ◼   ► And when I come back, it's just all done

00:18:56 ◼   ► in this finalized folder.

00:18:58 ◼   ► So yeah, maybe that's what it is.

00:18:59 ◼   ► It's the like, it's the automation that does something

00:19:03 ◼   ► when I'm not there and without any interaction from me

00:19:07 ◼   ► that feels like it's truly delivering

00:19:09 ◼   ► on what you want automation to be and how it improves your life.

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00:20:32 ◼   ► There's no frame, there's nothing around it. I want to focus on these images so

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00:21:30 ◼   ► of this show and relay FM.

00:21:32 ◼   ► Myke.

00:21:35 ◼   ► Yep.

00:21:35 ◼   ► I have some follow up for the show about my favorite thing.

00:21:42 ◼   ► The USBC spec.

00:21:48 ◼   ► I just, you know, I had this whole thing where I was trying to set up my charging situation

00:21:54 ◼   ► and I thought I would use USB-C. And I eventually gave up and I thought, "No, I'm just going

00:21:58 ◼   ► to go back to USB-A and I have a nice little charging setup now."

00:22:03 ◼   ► And I thought I kind of obviated the need for USB-C in my life, but I just, just two

00:22:12 ◼   ► two days ago went through perhaps the most frustrating USB-C experience a human could

00:22:21 ◼   ► go through.

00:22:23 ◼   ► So let me let me paint this picture.

00:22:27 ◼   ► There are four devices that I want to connect to each other.

00:22:33 ◼   ► I have device number one, a MacBook Pro device.

00:22:38 ◼   ► Place number two, an external LG monitor, which runs on USB-C.

00:22:44 ◼   ► The Apple one? Like the one that Apple worked with OG with? That one?

00:22:47 ◼   ► Yeah, that Apple, yeah, that Apple LG one.

00:22:50 ◼   ► I feel like that's important to state, right, that like, it is the one that's supposed to

00:22:54 ◼   ► work.

00:22:55 ◼   ► Right, yes. It's the one that's supposed to work. Oh boy, it is supposed to work, isn't

00:23:01 ◼   ► it?

00:23:02 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:23:03 ◼   ► have

00:23:27 ◼   ► sound what's that sound like why did you buy that I don't understand what that's for well

00:23:33 ◼   ► I mean if you're gonna be no driving a virtual truck across a landscape an external GPU is

00:23:42 ◼   ► a thing that helps with your sluggish frame rate how much was how much is that black magic

00:23:47 ◼   ► thing I don't I don't remember I think they were selling them in like a two for one deal

00:23:52 ◼   ► or something I don't know I wasn't paying attention a two for one deal who's doing a

00:23:57 ◼   ► Two for one deal.

00:23:58 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:24:00 ◼   ► I split it with some other guy.

00:24:01 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:24:02 ◼   ► It was super cheap.

00:24:03 ◼   ► No, it totally wasn't.

00:24:04 ◼   ► But listen, that's not the point of the story, Myke.

00:24:06 ◼   ► From my point of view, it's just I prefer to buy a PC.

00:24:08 ◼   ► I can really help you.

00:24:09 ◼   ► It would be amazing.

00:24:10 ◼   ► No, no, no.

00:24:11 ◼   ► Look, look, look, look.

00:24:12 ◼   ► Okay, okay.

00:24:13 ◼   ► Sorry, sorry, sorry.

00:24:14 ◼   ► The point of the story is I want to be a Mac gaming streamer.

00:24:16 ◼   ► It's impossible.

00:24:17 ◼   ► I've got to have a sweet, cool setup.

00:24:20 ◼   ► I tried.

00:24:21 ◼   ► It is absolutely impossible.

00:24:23 ◼   ► But no, listen.

00:24:24 ◼   ► with 12 frames per second and if I can crank that up to 20 it's like a 60%

00:24:29 ◼   ► improvement that's all I'm looking for.

00:24:30 ◼   ► Right but then you're still only two-thirds of the bare minimum that people want you to be.

00:24:34 ◼   ► I know, yeah I know what, look I know where people want me to be I'm just like I'm just

00:24:38 ◼   ► trying to deal with the fact that I'm not gonna happen to a whole other

00:24:41 ◼   ► operator, I'm not gonna do this. So anyway listen that's not the point of the story

00:24:44 ◼   ► the point of the story is I'm setting up my home office this is the home office

00:24:49 ◼   ► in my apartment and I thought like, okay,

00:24:54 ◼   ► I have a bunch of pieces of stuff,

00:24:55 ◼   ► I'm gonna put it together, I'm also gonna get this eGPU,

00:24:58 ◼   ► like it can help with speeding up the computer a bit

00:25:00 ◼   ► for some things when I'm at home,

00:25:02 ◼   ► including gaming, blah, blah, blah.

00:25:04 ◼   ► Okay, so that's four things that I wanna connect.

00:25:07 ◼   ► Laptop, monitor, eGPU, hard drive.

00:25:11 ◼   ► I have next to me a box full of USB-C wires.

00:25:16 ◼   ► I spent an entire afternoon going through

00:25:21 ◼   ► this crazy debugging process of trying to figure out

00:25:27 ◼   ► which (beep) wire needs to be plugged into which device

00:25:33 ◼   ► so that all four of them work at maximum capacity.

00:25:38 ◼   ► And the whole thing that set off this crazy chain

00:25:43 ◼   ► is that the eGPU came with this teeny tiny USB-C wire.

00:25:48 ◼   ► It's like six inches long.

00:25:50 ◼   ► I was like, you have got to be kidding me, Blackmagic.

00:25:52 ◼   ► Like this eGPU was going on the floor.

00:25:55 ◼   ► Like I don't need it to sit on my desk,

00:25:56 ◼   ► so I need a longer wire.

00:25:58 ◼   ► - It's 0.5 meters is the cable that it comes with.

00:26:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, like I said, it's basically six inches.

00:26:03 ◼   ► It's comical.

00:26:04 ◼   ► - I have to say, while it's not six inches,

00:26:06 ◼   ► half a meter is too small.

00:26:08 ◼   ► It's too small.

00:26:08 ◼   ► - It's ridiculous.

00:26:10 ◼   ► This was the problem.

00:26:12 ◼   ► So it's like, I need an additional wire.

00:26:14 ◼   ► I've got a box full of wires.

00:26:17 ◼   ► And then somehow I lost track of which wire

00:26:20 ◼   ► was the wire that works with the LG monitor

00:26:23 ◼   ► as I'm going through these things.

00:26:25 ◼   ► And I cannot tell you what a nightmare this was.

00:26:29 ◼   ► This reminded me of, I used to have this job

00:26:33 ◼   ► back in college, which was great.

00:26:36 ◼   ► As far as jobs go, it was great,

00:26:38 ◼   ► but it could be really frustrating.

00:26:39 ◼   ► But it was the job where I learned the concept of

00:26:43 ◼   ► how to debug a system,

00:26:45 ◼   ► which is the piece that doesn't work.

00:26:47 ◼   ► Because my university physics department

00:26:50 ◼   ► had a literal warehouse full of broken computers,

00:26:53 ◼   ► and they're like, "Hey, guess what?

00:26:54 ◼   ► We would like you to make working computers

00:26:56 ◼   ► out of all of these broken computers."

00:26:57 ◼   ► Right, and I was like, "Okay, great.

00:26:59 ◼   ► I'll just sit here for a summer

00:27:00 ◼   ► and slowly try to figure out which parts really don't work

00:27:03 ◼   ► and what burned out and put together

00:27:05 ◼   ► some kind of Franken-system for the department to use

00:27:08 ◼   ► out of whatever happens to work in these things.

00:27:11 ◼   ► But it was really great having to like hundreds of times

00:27:14 ◼   ► go through that process of like,

00:27:15 ◼   ► make sure you only change one thing at a time

00:27:18 ◼   ► and don't be overconfident about all the things

00:27:21 ◼   ► that you can slap together.

00:27:22 ◼   ► So I was doing that, moving these USB-C wires around.

00:27:26 ◼   ► And like I had an Amazon Now order where I'm like,

00:27:30 ◼   ► I need a guy to come to my house right now

00:27:32 ◼   ► with a super expensive USB-C cable

00:27:35 ◼   ► that claims it can do everything

00:27:37 ◼   ► to plug into the Blackmagic thing on the floor

00:27:39 ◼   ► into my MacBook, and it's like this cable arrives,

00:27:42 ◼   ► and I plug it in, and it's like,

00:27:43 ◼   ► somehow this cable doesn't work,

00:27:45 ◼   ► even though it's like 80 freaking pounds.

00:27:48 ◼   ► And if I'm plugging the wrong wires into the monitor,

00:27:52 ◼   ► the USB-C monitor, it's like, it would turn on the LG monitor

00:27:55 ◼   ► but I'd look at it and I'd go, it seems a little blurry.

00:27:58 ◼   ► And then I'm like debugging it, and it's like, oh right,

00:28:00 ◼   ► if I don't have just the right wire plugged in,

00:28:03 ◼   ► the resolution is not as high as it's going to be otherwise,

00:28:07 ◼   ► even though it looks like everything's fine.

00:28:08 ◼   ► I'm like, I cannot tell you how maddening

00:28:11 ◼   ► and frustrating this was,

00:28:13 ◼   ► where I'm going through these boxes

00:28:14 ◼   ► and trying to like guess how many capabilities

00:28:17 ◼   ► the USB-C wire has based on how thick it is, right?

00:28:21 ◼   ► Like, ooh, this one feels like a real thick wire.

00:28:24 ◼   ► Maybe this one is Thunderbolt 3 compatible.

00:28:26 ◼   ► Maybe it isn't cool. - There you go, okay.

00:28:27 ◼   ► - I don't know. - I was waiting

00:28:28 ◼   ► for you to say it.

00:28:29 ◼   ► Right, 'cause the problem you have found yourself in,

00:28:32 ◼   ► and you know this now, right,

00:28:33 ◼   ► but like I'm just summing it up for our listeners.

00:28:36 ◼   ► Sum it up for the listeners.

00:28:37 ◼   ► - You need Thunderbolt 3 cables,

00:28:40 ◼   ► which are USB-C cables that have some additional

00:28:43 ◼   ► capabilities because that's what you require

00:28:46 ◼   ► to drive all this powerful graphics stuff.

00:28:48 ◼   ► Like the cable that came with your Blackmagic

00:28:52 ◼   ► was a Thunderbolt 3 USB-C cable.

00:28:55 ◼   ► You had a box of USB-C cables,

00:28:57 ◼   ► 'cause that's what comes with everything else.

00:28:59 ◼   ► USB-C cables do not have all of the power

00:29:02 ◼   ► or the chips in the cable that's required

00:29:04 ◼   ► to do everything that Thunderbolt 3 needs,

00:29:07 ◼   ► which means, very unfortunately, the cable fits.

00:29:11 ◼   ► It will kind of work, which makes it worse, I think,

00:29:14 ◼   ► than if it didn't work at all.

00:29:16 ◼   ► For a lot of things, it will kind of work,

00:29:18 ◼   ► but something will feel kind of broken.

00:29:21 ◼   ► And Thunderbolt 3 cables are very expensive.

00:29:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, the extra frustrating thing here is,

00:29:28 ◼   ► I'm perfectly aware that there's the data transfer bit of it

00:29:32 ◼   ► but there's also the power bit of it.

00:29:34 ◼   ► So at one point, I thought, oh, I have the system working,

00:29:38 ◼   ► but my laptop is just slowly draining over time.

00:29:41 ◼   ► So it's like, oh, okay, whatever wire I have plugged in now

00:29:45 ◼   ► is not quite able to really deliver the 80 watts necessary

00:29:50 ◼   ► for the MacBook or whatever it is.

00:29:52 ◼   ► It was just incredibly frustrating.

00:29:55 ◼   ► I've said it before, but I cannot believe

00:30:01 ◼   ► that these wires are not labeled to specify

00:30:05 ◼   ► what the goddamn wire can do.

00:30:08 ◼   ► Like, tell me how much data can it transfer

00:30:11 ◼   ► and how much power can it transfer?

00:30:14 ◼   ► And the madness of looking at a monitor

00:30:17 ◼   ► and trying to eyeball, am I getting all the pixels

00:30:21 ◼   ► I'm supposed to, like, does this look like 5,000 pixels

00:30:24 ◼   ► or does it not look like 5,000 pixels?

00:30:26 ◼   ► And then you start losing your mind as you're like,

00:30:28 ◼   ► boy, this looks blurry, but maybe this is

00:30:31 ◼   ► what 5,000 pixels look like when my eyeball is one inch away

00:30:34 ◼   ► from the screen because I'm trying to discern

00:30:36 ◼   ► like what the difference is and doing like read-write tests

00:30:39 ◼   ► on a hard drive to see how fast is it actually writing

00:30:42 ◼   ► to this time machine thing.

00:30:43 ◼   ► It was just crazy making, partly it was my own fault

00:30:47 ◼   ► because I did know that in that box of wires,

00:30:49 ◼   ► I'm like, I know some of these wires have Thunderbolt 3.

00:30:52 ◼   ► Like I know they're in here,

00:30:54 ◼   ► I just don't know which ones they are.

00:30:56 ◼   ► It was absolutely maddening.

00:31:00 ◼   ► And the thing that I did not know,

00:31:02 ◼   ► which made me feel like I really resent a choice

00:31:06 ◼   ► that you have made here, Apple, is I assumed

00:31:09 ◼   ► that the Apple cables that I buy for like 100 pounds,

00:31:13 ◼   ► surely I can always rely on those

00:31:17 ◼   ► to be what I need them to be.

00:31:18 ◼   ► And spoiler alert, no, you can't,

00:31:20 ◼   ► even though they're incredibly expensive.

00:31:22 ◼   ► You can't know that like,

00:31:24 ◼   ► oh, as long as I have an Apple USB-C wire, I'm always good.

00:31:27 ◼   ► The answer is no, you're not.

00:31:29 ◼   ► - So some of their USB-C cables are just USB-C cables.

00:31:33 ◼   ► They are not Thunderbolt 3 cables,

00:31:34 ◼   ► which doesn't make any sense considering.

00:31:37 ◼   ► Thunderbolt started off as something that Apple did.

00:31:40 ◼   ► I mean, I think now they work with Intel

00:31:42 ◼   ► and it's open source, but nobody else is using it really.

00:31:45 ◼   ► Everybody else just uses USB-C

00:31:47 ◼   ► and doesn't do everything that Apple wants to try and do.

00:31:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, it is crazy making, but it's like USB-C,

00:31:54 ◼   ► you got me in the mobile situation

00:31:58 ◼   ► when I was out in the world trying to figure out

00:32:00 ◼   ► how to charge all my devices, and you got me again

00:32:03 ◼   ► when I was just sitting here trying to set up an office.

00:32:06 ◼   ► And it's like, I could not believe that I found myself

00:32:09 ◼   ► with this pile of wires next to me,

00:32:11 ◼   ► this promised standard of USB-C thinking,

00:32:15 ◼   ► I would genuinely prefer if the connector shape

00:32:18 ◼   ► was different so that I wouldn't have to waste my time

00:32:21 ◼   ► trying to figure out which of these wires is gonna work.

00:32:24 ◼   ► - That's the way. - Yeah.

00:32:25 ◼   ► It's not convenient to have it be the same shape

00:32:28 ◼   ► if it's effectively a different cable.

00:32:31 ◼   ► It's not helpful.

00:32:32 ◼   ► - What I decided is that the only way this makes sense,

00:32:35 ◼   ► with all the craziness we've had

00:32:38 ◼   ► across all the various different types of cables,

00:32:40 ◼   ► is that the head of the USB-C consortium is the devil.

00:32:45 ◼   ► Like, that's the only thing that makes any sense,

00:32:48 ◼   ► because it's like, "Oh, we're gonna give you a cable."

00:32:50 ◼   ► That, like, the USB-A, it's externally symmetrical,

00:32:54 ◼   ► but internally asymmetrical.

00:32:56 ◼   ► Oh, we're gonna give you micro-USB,

00:32:57 ◼   ► the worst feeling connector in the world

00:33:00 ◼   ► that you can shove into and break the connector very easily.

00:33:03 ◼   ► And they're like, "Oh, we're gonna fix all these problems

00:33:05 ◼   ► with USB-C, but ha ha ha, the wires are all different

00:33:09 ◼   ► and they're not labeled."

00:33:10 ◼   ► So it's like, yeah, that's my conclusion here,

00:33:14 ◼   ► is the devil designs USB-C cables,

00:33:17 ◼   ► and we're never gonna get one

00:33:19 ◼   ► that actually solves all of the problems

00:33:22 ◼   ► because they're intentionally designed to be infuriating in invisible ways.

00:33:28 ◼   ► I feel really bad that this is all happening during the Year of Water.

00:33:32 ◼   ► I know, like, that's, but this is, like, I'm gonna have a really nice home office

00:33:41 ◼   ► set up and in the end it's like I have a box of cables that I want to set on fire.

00:33:45 ◼   ► Like, that was the result of that.

00:33:47 ◼   ► You have gotten to it though, right?

00:33:48 ◼   ► You have it all set now, I'm sure.

00:33:51 ◼   ► I do have it all set, but every day I look at my monitor

00:33:54 ◼   ► and I squint my eyes at it and I think,

00:33:56 ◼   ► am I getting all the pixels?

00:33:57 ◼   ► I don't think I'm getting all the pixels.

00:33:59 ◼   ► But I can't figure out a way to tell

00:34:02 ◼   ► if I'm just getting 80% of the pixels

00:34:04 ◼   ► or if I'm getting 100% of the pixels.

00:34:06 ◼   ► - I have no help for you.

00:34:11 ◼   ► I don't know how you find that out.

00:34:13 ◼   ► You'll probably never know.

00:34:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, all I think of is like,

00:34:17 ◼   ► this monitor, which is super expensive

00:34:19 ◼   ► and it's supposed to be super crisp,

00:34:21 ◼   ► always looks kind of blurry and I don't know if that's the monitor or if that's just the fact that I'm sitting too close to it.

00:34:27 ◼   ► Yeah, if you consider it might be you.

00:34:29 ◼   ► It might be me.

00:34:33 ◼   ► Burn in hell forever, USB-C.

00:34:35 ◼   ► You're useless and I hate you.

00:34:37 ◼   ► Well, we're talking about yearly themes or at least mentioning them.

00:34:41 ◼   ► I feel like I have completed the year of adulting.

00:34:45 ◼   ► I am now a married man.

00:34:46 ◼   ► Congratulations, Myke.

00:34:48 ◼   ► A lot's happened since the last time we spoke.

00:34:49 ◼   ► Yeah, a lot's happened.

00:34:50 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm now married. I feel like that that is enough for the year of adulting.

00:34:55 ◼   ► I feel like I don't have to do anything more to have completed it.

00:34:59 ◼   ► There is a bonus stage.

00:35:00 ◼   ► I was going to say, wasn't there one more?

00:35:01 ◼   ► Wasn't there one more thing on the year of adulting?

00:35:03 ◼   ► I can. It's getting a car, but I consider that a bonus stage because that

00:35:07 ◼   ► that doesn't need to happen this year.

00:35:10 ◼   ► That can happen within the next year.

00:35:11 ◼   ► But like, you know, if I do it great, if I don't, it's not important.

00:35:15 ◼   ► I don't really consider it, to be honest, in all of that.

00:35:18 ◼   ► Like the year of adulting was mostly focused around the wedding,

00:35:21 ◼   ► which has now occurred.

00:35:22 ◼   ► So I have done that.

00:35:24 ◼   ► And it was fantastic.

00:35:25 ◼   ► The wedding was amazing.

00:35:26 ◼   ► We had a great day.

00:35:27 ◼   ► Everything went perfectly.

00:35:28 ◼   ► Our honeymoon was wonderful.

00:35:30 ◼   ► We're very, very happy.

00:35:31 ◼   ► We're both very happy.

00:35:32 ◼   ► Do you feel like more of an adult?

00:35:35 ◼   ► 100%.

00:35:37 ◼   ► Really?

00:35:37 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:35:38 ◼   ► Yeah, the wedding ring, man.

00:35:40 ◼   ► Have you gotten used to it yet?

00:35:41 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm very used to it.

00:35:42 ◼   ► Because I sleep in it.

00:35:43 ◼   ► So I never take it off.

00:35:45 ◼   ► And I figured all I needed to do was do that.

00:35:47 ◼   ► and I would get used to it.

00:35:49 ◼   ► You know, I play with it a lot, you know,

00:35:51 ◼   ► like it's like my new fidget toy, which is great.

00:35:54 ◼   ► Take it off, put it on other fingers,

00:35:56 ◼   ► spin it around to do all sorts of stuff.

00:35:58 ◼   ► - Put it on other fingers, oh.

00:35:59 ◼   ► - Just for funsies, just for funsies.

00:36:01 ◼   ► Just, you know, and that all works.

00:36:03 ◼   ► I haven't got it stuck yet, so that's good.

00:36:05 ◼   ► - Right.

00:36:06 ◼   ► - And I've noticed that the skin on my ring finger

00:36:11 ◼   ► is slightly shinier than the other skin.

00:36:14 ◼   ► - Yep, that's what happens, yep.

00:36:15 ◼   ► - Because that's kind of wearing down

00:36:16 ◼   ► to a fine callus is my expectation there.

00:36:19 ◼   ► - I think of it that the ring is polishing

00:36:23 ◼   ► the section of your hand directly beneath it.

00:36:25 ◼   ► That's what it is.

00:36:27 ◼   ► - Sure, we'll think of it that way.

00:36:29 ◼   ► - That's why it gets shinier.

00:36:31 ◼   ► - And I have an irrational fear of sinks now.

00:36:36 ◼   ► - Why?

00:36:38 ◼   ► - 'Cause I am convinced I'm gonna lose my wedding ring.

00:36:42 ◼   ► - Down the sink?

00:36:43 ◼   ► Like this is a 1950s sitcom kind of thing?

00:36:46 ◼   ► So it's probably better to say,

00:36:47 ◼   ► instead of saying I have a fear of sinks,

00:36:49 ◼   ► that was probably the wrong way to put it,

00:36:50 ◼   ► I am very aware of plug holes now.

00:36:53 ◼   ► - Okay, all right.

00:36:55 ◼   ► - If I'm washing my hands somewhere that I don't know,

00:36:58 ◼   ► I will find myself checking the plug

00:37:01 ◼   ► to make sure that this is not a situation

00:37:03 ◼   ► where I could lose the ring if I'm not paying attention.

00:37:06 ◼   ► Because I find when you use soap,

00:37:08 ◼   ► if things get a bit slippier,

00:37:10 ◼   ► and I'm still pretty aware of the ring

00:37:13 ◼   ► even though I'm used to it,

00:37:14 ◼   ► So like I feel it moving when it moves, right?

00:37:17 ◼   ► Which I expect will probably be a thing

00:37:18 ◼   ► that I will pay less attention to over time.

00:37:21 ◼   ► So I'm constantly convinced that I'm gonna lose it.

00:37:24 ◼   ► So to try and make, you know,

00:37:26 ◼   ► and I feel like one of the easiest places to lose it

00:37:29 ◼   ► is when my hands are covered in slippery, slippery soap.

00:37:33 ◼   ► So that is making me check for plug holes

00:37:37 ◼   ► in places that I visit.

00:37:38 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, two things here.

00:37:40 ◼   ► One, that's why sinks have that little bend in the bottom,

00:37:43 ◼   ► is to catch stuff in them.

00:37:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, but like, if I'm in some public bathroom somewhere.

00:37:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, you just reach under the sink

00:37:50 ◼   ► and you just unscrew that little bend

00:37:53 ◼   ► and you reach right in there.

00:37:55 ◼   ► - And public bathrooms have it completely accessible.

00:37:59 ◼   ► Right, like what about on a plane?

00:38:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, you just pull off the panel directly below the sink

00:38:06 ◼   ► and then the air marshal comes in and tazes you in the back

00:38:10 ◼   ► and then you explain that your ring fell down the sink.

00:38:14 ◼   ► That's how that works on the airplane.

00:38:15 ◼   ► - Then they're all very understanding and helpful.

00:38:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, you'll get your ring back

00:38:20 ◼   ► after they release you from custody.

00:38:22 ◼   ► That's so, you don't really have to worry about that.

00:38:25 ◼   ► But the second thing is,

00:38:27 ◼   ► I would recommend to married couples

00:38:31 ◼   ► that you have a little discussion with your partner

00:38:35 ◼   ► about the concept that it is perfectly fine

00:38:38 ◼   ► to lose a wedding ring.

00:38:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah. - This is not a portent

00:38:45 ◼   ► of the inevitable breakup of your relationship

00:38:48 ◼   ► because that's crazy thinking.

00:38:50 ◼   ► - But it's a bit soon, right?

00:38:52 ◼   ► Again, we know we're gonna lose them.

00:38:54 ◼   ► Eventually somebody's gonna lose them,

00:38:56 ◼   ► especially because I keep finding Adina's wedding ring

00:38:58 ◼   ► around the house.

00:38:59 ◼   ► So she takes it off, she puts it down,

00:39:02 ◼   ► and her ring is like a fly could blow on it

00:39:06 ◼   ► and it would take off forever.

00:39:07 ◼   ► It is the smallest, thinnest piece of metal you've ever seen in your life, right?

00:39:12 ◼   ► Or for example, a Roomba could eat it.

00:39:15 ◼   ► Oh, without a shadow of a doubt.

00:39:16 ◼   ► And we'd never find it in the Roomba staff's compartment because it would never even make it there.

00:39:20 ◼   ► It would get stuck in one of the mechanisms somewhere and it would just become part of the Roomba.

00:39:25 ◼   ► So I fully, I know that she will lose hers.

00:39:29 ◼   ► And again, this is nothing on her, it's more just the ring is so small, right, that it will get lost.

00:39:35 ◼   ► And I know at some point I will lose mine,

00:39:37 ◼   ► but neither of us want it to happen within the first month.

00:39:40 ◼   ► You know?

00:39:41 ◼   ► You wanna leave it a little bit longer than that, I think.

00:39:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, I just, I think it is worth saying out loud

00:39:50 ◼   ► this concept, that it's perfectly fine to lose the ring,

00:39:54 ◼   ► and you expect that you're gonna lose the ring

00:39:56 ◼   ► at some point.

00:39:56 ◼   ► It's worth as a couple saying that to each other.

00:39:59 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:40:00 ◼   ► - So that's all I'm saying, right?

00:40:02 ◼   ► Because you lay the groundwork.

00:40:04 ◼   ► soon as Idina comes home today, I'll look deeply into her eyes and say, "I'm going

00:40:08 ◼   ► to lose this ring."

00:40:09 ◼   ► B: Right, it's an inevitability.

00:40:11 ◼   ► H: But I also have a second ring, because my ring I bought from Amazon for £30. Because

00:40:19 ◼   ► I got tungsten, which is incredibly cheap, it turns out, if you don't go to a jewelry

00:40:26 ◼   ► store because tungsten is not a precious metal, so there's no reason to pay large amounts

00:40:31 ◼   ► of money for it. So I bought two from Amazon because I wasn't sure of the exact color that

00:40:36 ◼   ► I wanted but I liked them both so I have a second ring right here. Adina's ring was custom

00:40:41 ◼   ► made so it's a little bit trickier to replace.

00:40:43 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, that is a little bit trickier to replace. But yeah, no, Tung-Sin is the

00:40:48 ◼   ► best for wedding rings. Looks the coolest.

00:40:51 ◼   ► Makes loud noises.

00:40:52 ◼   ► I was gonna say, as you know, makes loud noises when you're a teacher and you need to slam

00:40:58 ◼   ► limit on the desk to capture attention.

00:41:01 ◼   ► And it's perfect, great material, A++.

00:41:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, I decided I wanted a tungsten ring

00:41:06 ◼   ► when me and you very early on in our working lunches

00:41:10 ◼   ► met for lunch one day and you were explaining a point

00:41:12 ◼   ► whilst banging your hand on the desk

00:41:14 ◼   ► and it was making a very loud noise

00:41:16 ◼   ► and it made your point land extremely firmly

00:41:18 ◼   ► and I decided at that point I wanted one

00:41:20 ◼   ► that made that noise too.

00:41:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, I still think this is a story

00:41:23 ◼   ► that you have made up in your head.

00:41:24 ◼   ► - No, see you think you don't do this,

00:41:26 ◼   ► you still do this every now and then you still do this.

00:41:29 ◼   ► - I don't think that I do this,

00:41:30 ◼   ► but nonetheless I recommend tungsten rings.

00:41:33 ◼   ► They're very cool.

00:41:34 ◼   ► And I'm glad you have one and you will eventually lose it,

00:41:36 ◼   ► but that's okay, that's fine.

00:41:38 ◼   ► Possibly down to sink, maybe on an airplane.

00:41:40 ◼   ► - Yes, but the year of adulting was not my only yearly theme.

00:41:44 ◼   ► I also had the year of branching out.

00:41:47 ◼   ► And one of the things in the year of branching out

00:41:49 ◼   ► is a project that I've been talking about a bunch,

00:41:51 ◼   ► which was more fictional in nature.

00:41:53 ◼   ► - You keep teasing the people, Myke.

00:41:55 ◼   ► - Right, well this is where I'm gonna tell people

00:41:57 ◼   ► to stop asking me because it's not happening this year.

00:42:00 ◼   ► - Oh, okay, okay.

00:42:02 ◼   ► - So what I had previously said was,

00:42:04 ◼   ► if it didn't happen this year,

00:42:06 ◼   ► it wasn't gonna happen at all, right?

00:42:07 ◼   ► That was the thing that I'd said.

00:42:09 ◼   ► But what that was predicated on was the idea

00:42:12 ◼   ► that I would be actively working on it

00:42:13 ◼   ► for long periods of time.

00:42:15 ◼   ► That is not the case.

00:42:16 ◼   ► I have not put any work other than thinking

00:42:21 ◼   ► into this project for months.

00:42:25 ◼   ► So I am officially giving this project back burner status.

00:42:29 ◼   ► So I'm removing the deadline that I'd set for myself,

00:42:34 ◼   ► because the reason I set that deadline was

00:42:36 ◼   ► I thought I would actively work on it,

00:42:38 ◼   ► and if when actively working on it,

00:42:40 ◼   ► I couldn't get it to where I wanted it to be,

00:42:43 ◼   ► then that meant it was time to get rid of it.

00:42:45 ◼   ► But I haven't been working on it

00:42:47 ◼   ► because I've just had too many other things in my life

00:42:50 ◼   ► that have needed my attention.

00:42:52 ◼   ► So I'm deciding to make it long-term

00:42:56 ◼   ► and it may change in a million ways,

00:42:58 ◼   ► but I don't wanna say goodbye to it yet

00:43:02 ◼   ► because I don't feel like I've given it the attention

00:43:04 ◼   ► that I need to give it.

00:43:05 ◼   ► So I'm gonna put it on the back burner for the time being.

00:43:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, these kind of big new projects

00:43:13 ◼   ► are hard to find, it's hard to figure out,

00:43:18 ◼   ► like where does this fit in your working life?

00:43:22 ◼   ► especially when you're self-employed and you're juggling a whole bunch of other stuff.

00:43:27 ◼   ► Maybe even, say, getting married during that year.

00:43:30 ◼   ► I feel like I need almost an external Eureka moment for this,

00:43:35 ◼   ► which I think can happen. It requires a person or a thing.

00:43:39 ◼   ► I know what you're saying here is like,

00:43:40 ◼   ► maybe there is something that comes along that acts as a catalyst.

00:43:45 ◼   ► But the other thing is, because I know some details about this project behind the scenes,

00:43:52 ◼   ► Like this is also the kind of thing that,

00:43:55 ◼   ► I can't conceive of how this would actually work

00:44:00 ◼   ► in your schedule and with your business.

00:44:02 ◼   ► - Yes, exactly.

00:44:03 ◼   ► - But that almost would require like a sabbatical,

00:44:08 ◼   ► for you to say, oh, I'm just gonna take two months

00:44:11 ◼   ► and this is gonna be the thing that I'm gonna focus on.

00:44:13 ◼   ► But that's, in your situation,

00:44:15 ◼   ► that is just a wildly unrealistic thing to do.

00:44:17 ◼   ► - I also don't work that way.

00:44:19 ◼   ► I don't work that way.

00:44:20 ◼   ► Like if I took the time off to work on the project, I would come back having taken the

00:44:24 ◼   ► time off and not gotten far enough along with the project.

00:44:27 ◼   ► I work better under pressure, not better under freedom.

00:44:33 ◼   ► Really the only way this is ever going to work for me is if I get it to the point where

00:44:38 ◼   ► I'm comfortable enough to begin and then begin.

00:44:41 ◼   ► And then the pressure of having begun the project like publicly is what pushes it through

00:44:46 ◼   ► to its completion.

00:44:48 ◼   ► I'm not near that beginning point yet. Like I am, I work way better under deadlines and

00:44:54 ◼   ► crises than I do under free-wheeling time. Right? And that's just how I am. I thrive

00:45:02 ◼   ► in pressure situations, even though, I think I said this on the show before, right? My

00:45:08 ◼   ► My general temperament as a person does not like high pressure stress situations, but

00:45:18 ◼   ► I also work better in them.

00:45:19 ◼   ► It doesn't make any sense to me.

00:45:22 ◼   ► But that's just how I am.

00:45:23 ◼   ► I'm a weird person, right?

00:45:24 ◼   ► But that's just how I am.

00:45:26 ◼   ► I don't think you're alone in that temperament.

00:45:29 ◼   ► There are plenty of people who work better under pressure, know they work better under

00:45:33 ◼   ► pressure, but would never describe themselves as feeling, "Oh boy, I really enjoy this

00:45:39 ◼   ► time when I'm under pressure."

00:45:40 ◼   ► That I don't think you are alone in that.

00:45:44 ◼   ► And again, like so much in life is your ability to know yourself.

00:45:50 ◼   ► And I think it's good that you have decided that this is going to be a back burner

00:45:55 ◼   ► project, and I think it's also good that you're publicly announcing that this shift

00:46:01 ◼   ► has occurred.

00:46:02 ◼   ► I feel like that gives you a clean slate to be open to something like a catalyst at some

00:46:09 ◼   ► point in the future, as opposed to having that niggling feeling in the background like,

00:46:13 ◼   ► "Oh, I should be working on this thing that I said I was going to be working on, and the

00:46:16 ◼   ► year is beginning to come to a close now, and I don't have anything to show for it,

00:46:20 ◼   ► and do I try to rush it, and blah blah blah blah."

00:46:22 ◼   ► So I think this is a good move to publicly announce the backburner status of the project.

00:46:29 ◼   ► And as soon as I did it, as soon as I thought to myself, "This is what's going to happen,"

00:46:34 ◼   ► I had an idea for how I can help push it along when I'm ready.

00:46:37 ◼   ► >> Right.

00:46:38 ◼   ► Oh, there you go.

00:46:39 ◼   ► >> Right?

00:46:40 ◼   ► I think giving myself the freedom to make it less ambitious allowed me to think of some

00:46:44 ◼   ► ways that I think I can get it closer to what I want it to be, but also at the same time

00:46:50 ◼   ► I'm not rushing it.

00:46:51 ◼   ► So it's...

00:46:53 ◼   ► But anyway, so that's kind of where I am with that.

00:46:56 ◼   ► of the reason is because I am currently working on a new project which is not podcast related

00:47:00 ◼   ► it is podcast adjacent and I'm more excited about that right now than I am about the fiction

00:47:09 ◼   ► thing and I also believe it has a better chance of succeeding and that the the success conditions

00:47:18 ◼   ► are way clearer.

00:47:20 ◼   ► Do I know what that project is Myke?

00:47:22 ◼   ► Yes you do know what that project is.

00:47:23 ◼   ► Oh okay cool.

00:47:24 ◼   ► I'll be quiet.

00:47:25 ◼   ► - Right, you good now?

00:47:26 ◼   ► You know what it is?

00:47:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I know.

00:47:28 ◼   ► - Are you following?

00:47:29 ◼   ► Okay.

00:47:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I'm picking up what you're putting down here,

00:47:31 ◼   ► Myke.

00:47:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it also, you know, as with all good projects,

00:47:37 ◼   ► gives me more than, like, what that project will provide

00:47:41 ◼   ► is more than just its output.

00:47:43 ◼   ► This will all become clear at some point in the future.

00:47:46 ◼   ► But, so that is now, if I'm thinking of,

00:47:49 ◼   ► 'cause this fiction thing was always like in my mind,

00:47:53 ◼   ► Like it is to the side of what I do, right?

00:47:58 ◼   ► So it's like, it's related,

00:47:59 ◼   ► but it's almost like my side project.

00:48:02 ◼   ► And this new, this other thing is the same.

00:48:05 ◼   ► It is like a side project,

00:48:07 ◼   ► but still very tied into what I do every day.

00:48:09 ◼   ► So that's kind of where I'm,

00:48:11 ◼   ► so the rest of the year of branching out

00:48:16 ◼   ► will include me seeing if this thing

00:48:19 ◼   ► is gonna go anywhere.

00:48:21 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:48:22 ◼   ► - Right there what you're saying is always the thing about

00:48:24 ◼   ► juggling projects which is hard.

00:48:30 ◼   ► You as the individual are constantly having to reassess

00:48:34 ◼   ► the projects and decide what the priority

00:48:37 ◼   ► of these things are.

00:48:38 ◼   ► Something like the fiction project can be,

00:48:45 ◼   ► that's a project that in particular can be very grand

00:48:49 ◼   ► in your mind, as we've discussed before,

00:48:52 ◼   ► this idea that you have this Venus de Milo in your head,

00:48:55 ◼   ► to what it can possibly be,

00:48:56 ◼   ► which can end up being quite intimidating.

00:48:59 ◼   ► Maybe it's good to take a step back from that,

00:49:02 ◼   ► and then you have another project

00:49:05 ◼   ► which comes along in your mind of like,

00:49:06 ◼   ► oh, this one is clearly more actionable

00:49:10 ◼   ► and has a potentially clearer or more immediate upside

00:49:15 ◼   ► than another project.

00:49:17 ◼   ► you're always having to constantly reassess these things

00:49:20 ◼   ► and think like, where do these projects fit

00:49:22 ◼   ► in the balance of how much time you actually have in a day

00:49:26 ◼   ► to move these various things forward?

00:49:30 ◼   ► And you don't have an infinite amount of time in the day

00:49:34 ◼   ► to move all of the projects forward at once.

00:49:36 ◼   ► You actually have a terrifyingly limited amount of time

00:49:39 ◼   ► to move projects forward, so.

00:49:40 ◼   ► - And nor do I even want to.

00:49:42 ◼   ► I don't want to spend all of the working time

00:49:45 ◼   ► I have available working anyway.

00:49:47 ◼   ► That's not my ideal outcome.

00:49:50 ◼   ► Like I want to be somewhere in the middle.

00:49:53 ◼   ► Like I still want to be able to have the freedom to give myself free time rather

00:49:59 ◼   ► than fill every possible moment with work.

00:50:03 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:50:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:50:04 ◼   ► I think we've, we've discussed that, that many times, but it is, it's always worth

00:50:08 ◼   ► saying is that like having to, having to block off time that's, that's not

00:50:15 ◼   ► and how do you think about that?

00:50:18 ◼   ► When I was saying about juggling the projects,

00:50:20 ◼   ► I was just thinking about that in terms of

00:50:22 ◼   ► the number of hours for work that you have in a day

00:50:25 ◼   ► that are like high quality work,

00:50:28 ◼   ► and like what can you actually move forward in that time,

00:50:30 ◼   ► like outside of the,

00:50:32 ◼   ► and you also need to be a person who has free time

00:50:35 ◼   ► and the ability to do things,

00:50:36 ◼   ► and even just the concept of

00:50:39 ◼   ► if all of your work time is blocked off,

00:50:43 ◼   ► that means you are also closed off

00:50:45 ◼   ► from any future or different projects.

00:50:48 ◼   ► Like that there's something optimal in being unoptimized

00:50:53 ◼   ► to have the flexibility to say like,

00:50:56 ◼   ► oh, perhaps something catalyzes the fiction project.

00:51:01 ◼   ► And then you have this feeling like,

00:51:03 ◼   ► oh, I really know what I want to do with this

00:51:04 ◼   ► and I want to work on it.

00:51:05 ◼   ► But if you've already optimized all of your working time,

00:51:10 ◼   ► like you have no slack in the system

00:51:12 ◼   ► to take on this additional thing if it ever comes up.

00:51:15 ◼   ► So yeah, it's like maximizing hours is a foolish goal

00:51:20 ◼   ► that is often just self-defeating in the long run.

00:51:25 ◼   ► I think this is good.

00:51:26 ◼   ► I think it's a good move, Myke.

00:51:27 ◼   ► And my strong feeling with the yearly themes is

00:51:32 ◼   ► they don't have to be a year.

00:51:34 ◼   ► It's just, that's just a phrase that we use,

00:51:36 ◼   ► but a year, it can be two years.

00:51:39 ◼   ► It can be a lifetime.

00:51:40 ◼   ► They're themes.

00:51:41 ◼   ► They're themes that follow along with you.

00:51:43 ◼   ► - I just don't think that I want my 2019 theme

00:51:48 ◼   ► to also be the year of branching out.

00:51:50 ◼   ► - No, no, it can become a sub-theme,

00:51:53 ◼   ► like a tectonic plate being sublimated

00:51:56 ◼   ► under the one that's coming over it.

00:51:58 ◼   ► It can be underneath, under the surface there.

00:52:00 ◼   ► - The year of backburners.

00:52:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, I feel like that sounds

00:52:05 ◼   ► like a very uninspiring year.

00:52:07 ◼   ► - Everything goes on the backburner for a year.

00:52:09 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:52:10 ◼   ► These four burners, no more.

00:52:13 ◼   ► Back burners only.

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00:54:47 ◼   ► - Myke, we mentioned that you got married.

00:54:50 ◼   ► You went on your honeymoon.

00:54:53 ◼   ► I'm sure you did very many lovely things in Hawaii,

00:54:57 ◼   ► but the thing that I would like to know about for this show

00:55:02 ◼   ► is how did that email system of yours end up working out?

00:55:07 ◼   ► How did the wheel of email treat you in Hawaii?

00:55:13 ◼   ► Was it a success? Was it a total failure?

00:55:16 ◼   ► I'm kind of hoping that you just blew off email the whole time,

00:55:19 ◼   ► but I don't know what to expect of Myke on his honeymoon

00:55:24 ◼   ► and email.

00:55:25 ◼   ► - You know I didn't blow it off for the whole time.

00:55:29 ◼   ► You know that.

00:55:30 ◼   ► - I was hoping, did you really do email?

00:55:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, of course I did.

00:55:35 ◼   ► - Oh, I was really kind of hoping

00:55:36 ◼   ► that you might've gotten to Hawaii

00:55:38 ◼   ► and it would just be like, no email.

00:55:39 ◼   ► - No, see we started this wrong.

00:55:41 ◼   ► We started this wrong because now we're starting

00:55:44 ◼   ► on a download because this is a positive.

00:55:46 ◼   ► This is it.

00:55:47 ◼   ► I consider my email experience to be a resounding success, but now we're starting off of like,

00:55:54 ◼   ► "Oh no, you did it.

00:55:56 ◼   ► I'm so upset."

00:55:57 ◼   ► No, no, no, no.

00:55:58 ◼   ► It was an incredible success.

00:56:00 ◼   ► I worked significantly.

00:56:02 ◼   ► What matters is it was a success for you, not a success for me.

00:56:06 ◼   ► I was just hoping you would have succeeded in the way that I would have wanted to succeed.

00:56:10 ◼   ► No, that's the madness.

00:56:11 ◼   ► I don't even know how you could succeed because you decided to just stop answering email

00:56:16 ◼   ► randomly, right? So like, you know, the success in your mind would be like negative email.

00:56:22 ◼   ► Like, I don't know how it would even occur.

00:56:24 ◼   ► Okay, so tell me what happened.

00:56:28 ◼   ► It was a resounding success. I worked less than I thought I would. If I did 10 minutes a day on

00:56:35 ◼   ► average, I would have been surprised.

00:56:37 ◼   ► Oh, wow, that's great.

00:56:39 ◼   ► It was, I did so little email, I couldn't believe it really, honestly, like how little I actually

00:56:45 ◼   ► had to do. There was one day where I did extra work. This was because I sprained my ankle

00:56:52 ◼   ► and kind of had to stay in bed the whole day. Everything's fine. Nothing was ruined. I just

00:56:56 ◼   ► lost one day. But I actually made a choice to do this because I figured, well, I have

00:57:01 ◼   ► this day, I may as well make my return home easier by picking up some admin work now.

00:57:08 ◼   ► Right. Right. So I don't have to deal with that like home horror, you know, of all these

00:57:14 ◼   ► things that you have to take care of that you haven't done.

00:57:16 ◼   ► So there was one day where I sat out on the balcony and sent some invoices, you know,

00:57:21 ◼   ► and it was perfectly lovely.

00:57:24 ◼   ► I have nothing but good things to say about Spark's email sharing functions.

00:57:28 ◼   ► Oh, interesting.

00:57:29 ◼   ► Okay.

00:57:30 ◼   ► I feel like I really sung its praises on our last episode in talking about why I felt I

00:57:36 ◼   ► could do this, and it worked absolutely perfectly for the intended purpose.

00:57:41 ◼   ► Oh, that's very interesting.

00:57:42 ◼   ► Yeah, because you were really selling it and it's been on my mind as a possible solution

00:57:48 ◼   ► for a few things.

00:57:49 ◼   ► So I'm very interested to hear that it went as well as you were hoping it would.

00:57:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I realized that there was something that I was thinking about doing, which I haven't

00:57:59 ◼   ► yet done and I'm going to do as soon as we're finished today, which is because I'm on their

00:58:02 ◼   ► free plan because there's so few people in the team, there's only two of us, that there

00:58:08 ◼   ► is a free plan that includes it.

00:58:09 ◼   ► I am going to pay for the paid plan now,

00:58:13 ◼   ► even though I don't need to,

00:58:14 ◼   ► because I love the service so much,

00:58:16 ◼   ► I wanna do everything I can to make sure that it remains.

00:58:20 ◼   ► Did you see that Newton email is going away?

00:58:23 ◼   ► - No, no, I didn't see that.

00:58:25 ◼   ► - It's one of the, it's one app,

00:58:25 ◼   ► it used to be called Cloud Magic, now it's called Newton.

00:58:28 ◼   ► - Oh, it was Cloud, right, that's right, Cloud Magic.

00:58:30 ◼   ► That's how I remember it.

00:58:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, the worst, just the worst.

00:58:32 ◼   ► They're shutting down.

00:58:33 ◼   ► They don't really go into detail

00:58:35 ◼   ► other than saying that they believe that in today's world,

00:58:39 ◼   ► charging for emails ultimately unsustainable because there are huge providers that give

00:58:44 ◼   ► it away for free. Which I agree with, which is why I'm going to give Spark some money

00:58:49 ◼   ► because the service is so, so good. So for anybody that needs a recap, in my application

00:58:57 ◼   ► Spark, which is on all of Apple's platforms, it has a new feature where it allows you to

00:59:02 ◼   ► share email with people in a team. So you can take an email message, share it with somebody

00:59:07 ◼   ► and it shows up in their inbox as if it was sent to them, then they can reply to it. It's

00:59:11 ◼   ► wonderful. So what I would get is I'd be getting emails from people, I would share them, and

00:59:17 ◼   ► then my assistant would either deal with them or she would provide me the information that

00:59:20 ◼   ► I needed within a chat, which is contained within the email message that only the two

00:59:25 ◼   ► of us ever see. Wonderful. And it worked fantastically. I was able to send a bunch of stuff when I

00:59:32 ◼   ► woke up, then my assistant would do her things when she woke up, because she's on the other

00:59:36 ◼   ► of the world and then before I would go to bed probably I would just action whatever

00:59:41 ◼   ► needed to be actioned. If I did 10 minutes of work a day I would be surprised. It was

00:59:47 ◼   ► so simple. I mean most of the stuff was just like an email would come in, I would assign

00:59:52 ◼   ► it to her as in the idea of now it's yours to deal with. And I mean we do this anyway

00:59:58 ◼   ► but I figure I don't recognise how much time it saves or aggravation it saves when I'm

01:00:04 ◼   ► also just doing it as part of my daily work, right?

01:00:08 ◼   ► Where like I'm just sending stuff over,

01:00:09 ◼   ► then I'm replying to something,

01:00:10 ◼   ► sending something over, replying to something.

01:00:12 ◼   ► But instead when I'm just opening it up

01:00:14 ◼   ► and basically sending everything over,

01:00:16 ◼   ► I realize kind of the impact that it has

01:00:18 ◼   ► when I also don't have my usual daily tasks to do.

01:00:21 ◼   ► So really, really amazing.

01:00:24 ◼   ► I loved it.

01:00:25 ◼   ► It's a fantastic system.

01:00:27 ◼   ► Luckily, there are many services available

01:00:33 ◼   ► where this kind of stuff happens.

01:00:35 ◼   ► I really like the way that Spark does it.

01:00:37 ◼   ► And I like that it's in an application that I understand how to use.

01:00:41 ◼   ► But if it did had to go away someday like this is

01:00:44 ◼   ► this is not a completely unique thing that they created.

01:00:47 ◼   ► Right. The idea of sharing email like this.

01:00:49 ◼   ► But it is probably the most accessible

01:00:52 ◼   ► for the price that I've found on the market today.

01:00:56 ◼   ► And the features are really good, too.

01:00:58 ◼   ► So that's really good.

01:01:00 ◼   ► I don't mean to put the expectations

01:01:03 ◼   ► of how I would want to spend my time on you.

01:01:05 ◼   ► So I'm very happy that you got your email done

01:01:08 ◼   ► in a super minimal time way.

01:01:10 ◼   ► I'm very happy for you.

01:01:11 ◼   ► If there's a nice place to send some invoices from,

01:01:16 ◼   ► a porch in Hawaii seems like it's a pretty good spot.

01:01:19 ◼   ► - It's about as good as it gets.

01:01:20 ◼   ► - Just do that.

01:01:20 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:01:23 ◼   ► It's not a bad place to put your feet up and say,

01:01:27 ◼   ► "I'm gonna collect some money today.

01:01:28 ◼   ► Let me send out some invoices.

01:01:30 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:01:31 ◼   ► - Or it's one of those things like, look where I am,

01:01:33 ◼   ► I really need to collect some money today.

01:01:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's...

01:01:36 ◼   ► Oh, is Hawaii not incredibly cheap?

01:01:40 ◼   ► Is it an expensive location in the middle of nowhere,

01:01:44 ◼   ► in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?

01:01:46 ◼   ► I'm sure it's very cheap to ship things over there,

01:01:49 ◼   ► including people.

01:01:50 ◼   ► So I've been in a little bit of a consolidation phase

01:01:56 ◼   ► with some of my apps.

01:01:58 ◼   ► - Year of order.

01:01:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, a little bit.

01:02:00 ◼   ► We have mentioned on the show many times

01:02:02 ◼   ► like using different apps for different things.

01:02:06 ◼   ► And there are a couple of points of frustration for me

01:02:10 ◼   ► where I've been using a bunch of different notes apps,

01:02:13 ◼   ► for example, to try to keep track of different stuff.

01:02:16 ◼   ► And this is one area where I'm giving something a try.

01:02:21 ◼   ► I don't know how well this is going to work for me,

01:02:25 ◼   ► but I'm attempting to consolidate all of my notes

01:02:30 ◼   ► into the Notes app and to actually use the Notes app

01:02:35 ◼   ► in the way that Apple clearly wants you to use it,

01:02:38 ◼   ► which is to keep notes and to keep lists of things.

01:02:42 ◼   ► Because I found myself having just too many

01:02:46 ◼   ► different little places where I was like,

01:02:47 ◼   ► "Oh, these kinds of notes go over here,

01:02:49 ◼   ► and those kinds of notes go over there."

01:02:51 ◼   ► And keeping that distinction became less important to me

01:02:56 ◼   ► as I found myself using the iPad less.

01:03:00 ◼   ► So I tried using a bunch of different note systems

01:03:03 ◼   ► for different things and eventually I thought,

01:03:05 ◼   ► you know what, I'm just gonna try actually putting it

01:03:08 ◼   ► all in notes.

01:03:09 ◼   ► And this is one of the areas in which I'm consolidating

01:03:14 ◼   ► some stuff.

01:03:15 ◼   ► And one of the things that actually put me over the edge

01:03:18 ◼   ► for this is I've installed the Mojave beta

01:03:22 ◼   ► on a couple of my computers.

01:03:25 ◼   ► And I totally love that in Mojave in the dark mode,

01:03:30 ◼   ► the Notes app has this black paper now,

01:03:33 ◼   ► which I find kind of hilarious

01:03:35 ◼   ► that they're still keeping the paper themes.

01:03:36 ◼   ► - I think it's absolutely ridiculous.

01:03:39 ◼   ► - I think it's less ridiculous

01:03:40 ◼   ► because I'm the person who commissioned black paper texture

01:03:45 ◼   ► when I had all of those papers made for me

01:03:48 ◼   ► from my iPad. - Oh, so there's a detail

01:03:50 ◼   ► about this paper that you've promised to release.

01:03:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:03:55 ◼   ► - The black paper was one of them,

01:03:56 ◼   ► it's like, "Ooh, I want night mode paper."

01:03:59 ◼   ► And it seemed totally ridiculous to me at the time,

01:04:02 ◼   ► but I thought, "Well, while I'm having this done, why not?

01:04:04 ◼   ► Maybe there's a time in which I want to write white

01:04:07 ◼   ► on a black piece of paper."

01:04:09 ◼   ► Never used it, but you know,

01:04:10 ◼   ► it was there just as an option in case.

01:04:13 ◼   ► And now I think it's hilarious that it's there in notes.

01:04:17 ◼   ► But I always kind of hated on the, like,

01:04:18 ◼   ► I hate the bright white, and so like all of my notes,

01:04:22 ◼   ► it was required to have a dark background.

01:04:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah. - I just didn't want

01:04:25 ◼   ► to look at that stuff. - I wanted dark mode

01:04:26 ◼   ► for notes, I just want them to get rid

01:04:28 ◼   ► of the stupid texture.

01:04:29 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:04:31 ◼   ► - I think the fact that the texture has made it

01:04:33 ◼   ► into black paper indicates that that is never going away.

01:04:35 ◼   ► - It's not going away, yeah, someone had to make it.

01:04:38 ◼   ► - That is, if they were gonna transition things,

01:04:40 ◼   ► they would have transitioned out of it at this point.

01:04:42 ◼   ► But no, that black paper is gonna be there forever.

01:04:45 ◼   ► But so anyway, that's one of the areas

01:04:48 ◼   ► where I'm trying to have fewer places to put things.

01:04:53 ◼   ► And so I'm just trying to use that Notes app.

01:04:56 ◼   ► And so I like, I consolidated out a whole bunch of stuff.

01:05:00 ◼   ► And I don't know if that's gonna work in the long run,

01:05:03 ◼   ► but I don't know, for the past few years,

01:05:05 ◼   ► I've been hearing everybody talk about

01:05:06 ◼   ► how fantastic Notes is and how it's super great.

01:05:08 ◼   ► And I'm the only person who uses it in this disposable way.

01:05:13 ◼   ► So I decided to give that a shot

01:05:15 ◼   ► as a thing that is being consolidated.

01:05:18 ◼   ► But the more exciting consolidation news,

01:05:24 ◼   ► I have consolidated down my many to-do managers

01:05:29 ◼   ► to one to-do manager.

01:05:34 ◼   ► There can be only one,

01:05:38 ◼   ► And the one that has survived is OmniFocus 3.

01:05:43 ◼   ► So now when people see screenshots of my phone,

01:05:47 ◼   ► they will no longer be able to freak out

01:05:49 ◼   ► about why are there four to-do apps on there.

01:05:51 ◼   ► There is now only one to-do app.

01:05:54 ◼   ► And I've been using OmniFocus 3 as my sole place

01:05:57 ◼   ► to keep track of to-dos and projects

01:05:59 ◼   ► since the OmniFocus 3 beta came out.

01:06:04 ◼   ► And I totally love it.

01:06:07 ◼   ► I just absolutely super duper love OmniFocus 3.

01:06:12 ◼   ► And I think if you're someone who's thinking

01:06:17 ◼   ► about trying OmniFocus,

01:06:19 ◼   ► I think this is a really good time to give them a shot

01:06:24 ◼   ► because a bunch of the things that I've complained about

01:06:26 ◼   ► in the past, sort of these holdovers

01:06:29 ◼   ► from the getting things done system,

01:06:31 ◼   ► almost all of them have now been excised from OmniFocus.

01:06:37 ◼   ► and it's much more like a to-do app

01:06:42 ◼   ► that is free from those constraints

01:06:45 ◼   ► and like 10 million times more flexible than it used to be.

01:06:50 ◼   ► So yeah, I'm keeping everything in one spot

01:06:54 ◼   ► in OmniFocus 3 and it's amazing, like.

01:06:57 ◼   ► - Can you give me some examples of why you like it so much?

01:07:00 ◼   ► - Okay, the biggest thing that makes the biggest difference

01:07:06 ◼   ► is they now let you assign tags to every action

01:07:11 ◼   ► in every project.

01:07:13 ◼   ► So before they had this getting things done holdover,

01:07:17 ◼   ► this idea of a context,

01:07:19 ◼   ► and you could only have one context associated with a task,

01:07:24 ◼   ► which was dumb and it was confusing to users

01:07:26 ◼   ► and it was a strange thing and who cares, it's gone now.

01:07:29 ◼   ► When you can put an arbitrary number of tags on any task,

01:07:35 ◼   ► task, it then allows you to filter and sort through those tasks in any way that you want.

01:07:45 ◼   ► And so in addition to those tags, OmniFocus allows you to write essentially an arbitrary

01:07:54 ◼   ► if and or statement that applies across all of those tags.

01:07:59 ◼   ► So you can say like, I want to see all of my tasks that have a due date and are in this folder, or have this tag, but not this tag, right?

01:08:12 ◼   ► And show me just those things.

01:08:14 ◼   ► And like, this is exactly what I have wanted out of a task manager for forever.

01:08:21 ◼   ► And that it's one of the reasons why like, I've been spreading my tasks across different things for years.

01:08:28 ◼   ► because I have so many different kinds of things

01:08:32 ◼   ► that I want to keep track of.

01:08:35 ◼   ► And I find like the number one frustrating thing for me

01:08:39 ◼   ► in any task manager is a task manager

01:08:42 ◼   ► that shows me something that I can't

01:08:45 ◼   ► or don't want to act upon at this moment.

01:08:48 ◼   ► Like I always want to just see what can I do now?

01:08:53 ◼   ► Don't show me stuff that's gonna happen later

01:08:56 ◼   ► or like things where I need to be somewhere else.

01:08:57 ◼   ► I don't wanna see any of that.

01:08:59 ◼   ► I only wanna see the stuff that's now.

01:09:01 ◼   ► And in order to make that a reality,

01:09:03 ◼   ► like a task manager has to be able to

01:09:06 ◼   ► filter to a really precise degree,

01:09:10 ◼   ► and it has to be able to exclude stuff.

01:09:13 ◼   ► And that's what the new version of OmniFocus does.

01:09:16 ◼   ► And that is what is amazing to me, as I can say.

01:09:19 ◼   ► Like, show me just this kind of thing

01:09:23 ◼   ► and ignore absolutely everything else.

01:09:26 ◼   ► As an example, one of the kinds of tasks that I have

01:09:30 ◼   ► are like the little checklist that I have

01:09:33 ◼   ► when I wake up in the morning

01:09:34 ◼   ► and before I go to bed at night,

01:09:36 ◼   ► what I think of as like the boot up and the shutdown things.

01:09:40 ◼   ► Like those are just a bunch of little checklists

01:09:42 ◼   ► of like here's what you do

01:09:42 ◼   ► when you wake up in the morning

01:09:43 ◼   ► and here's what you do at the end of the evening.

01:09:46 ◼   ► And like I don't want to see

01:09:51 ◼   ► the evening shutdown tasks all day long, right?

01:09:56 ◼   ► Like I want to be able to hide those

01:09:58 ◼   ► until it's actually eight o'clock.

01:10:00 ◼   ► And now I'm going to start winding down the rest of the day.

01:10:04 ◼   ► And that's the kind of thing that in the new version

01:10:07 ◼   ► of OmniFocus is super easy to do, to be like,

01:10:09 ◼   ► show me all the work stuff,

01:10:11 ◼   ► but then everything that's tagged as evening shutdown,

01:10:13 ◼   ► like hide that.

01:10:14 ◼   ► I don't want to see that when I'm in working mode.

01:10:16 ◼   ► I'll see that later, but I don't want to see that now.

01:10:20 ◼   ► - Right, so I assume you can take a search

01:10:22 ◼   ► and save it behind UI in the app?

01:10:26 ◼   ► - Yes, that's correct.

01:10:27 ◼   ► So they call them perspectives.

01:10:29 ◼   ► They have these little drag and drop bubbles

01:10:31 ◼   ► that allow you to say like, and or not.

01:10:34 ◼   ► And you can save any one of those searches as a perspective

01:10:39 ◼   ► and you can just tap on it and then it will like

01:10:41 ◼   ► bring up whatever that saved searches.

01:10:44 ◼   ► And it's just, it's incredibly powerful

01:10:46 ◼   ► and they've put in just so many different ways

01:10:49 ◼   ► that you can sort or filter through the different tasks.

01:10:53 ◼   ► It's really absolutely fantastic.

01:10:56 ◼   ► I just love it.

01:10:57 ◼   ► Except for the one thing that I've always complained about,

01:11:01 ◼   ► which is this crazy time zone thing.

01:11:02 ◼   ► - No.

01:11:04 ◼   ► - But I have been promised by OmniFocus that that is coming,

01:11:09 ◼   ► that is going to be fixed in the relatively near future.

01:11:13 ◼   ► So I'm gonna be super happy about that,

01:11:16 ◼   ► but I'm also holding OmniFocus to that promise.

01:11:18 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:11:19 ◼   ► - I'll say if when they fix that,

01:11:21 ◼   ► that's when I might look at it again.

01:11:23 ◼   ► I mean, this is not, you know, I'm not holding you to hostage on the group like

01:11:27 ◼   ► that.

01:11:27 ◼   ► No, that's the hostage star there, Myke.

01:11:29 ◼   ► That's what you're doing.

01:11:30 ◼   ► You know, like, oh no, no, no.

01:11:32 ◼   ► OmniFocus is incredible.

01:11:34 ◼   ► It's, you know, it's, it's overpowered for me and because, but I like everything

01:11:39 ◼   ► that it has, but missing that one feature is it's a really big feature to me that

01:11:43 ◼   ► when I go abroad, cause I travel, when I travel, I travel across the world.

01:11:47 ◼   ► Like the time zone differences are so huge.

01:11:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:11:50 ◼   ► I just, and I never want my tasks to go off

01:11:55 ◼   ► in the local time of home.

01:11:56 ◼   ► I know some people do that, but I never do.

01:11:58 ◼   ► I always want my tasks to go off in the local time

01:12:01 ◼   ► of wherever I am, because for 99% of my tasks,

01:12:05 ◼   ► that works perfectly.

01:12:07 ◼   ► I'm good.

01:12:08 ◼   ► So if they add that feature in,

01:12:12 ◼   ► and I'm pleased to hear that they will,

01:12:13 ◼   ► then I will be able to give it a college try again,

01:12:17 ◼   ► because the problem is it doesn't matter how good

01:12:20 ◼   ► the app is, when I'm traveling,

01:12:23 ◼   ► that is such an annoyance for me.

01:12:25 ◼   ► I have to change all of the times of my tasks.

01:12:28 ◼   ► Any tasks I have when I'm away will trigger

01:12:30 ◼   ► at the wrong time when I get back home again.

01:12:33 ◼   ► That is a nightmare.

01:12:34 ◼   ► If I'm in California and I set a task for 2 p.m.

01:12:40 ◼   ► in three weeks time, it's gonna happen

01:12:44 ◼   ► like 10 p.m. at night when I get back home again.

01:12:46 ◼   ► That doesn't make any sense to me

01:12:48 ◼   ► because I don't think about time in that way.

01:12:52 ◼   ► I think about time as wherever I am.

01:12:54 ◼   ► It's just how I perceive it.

01:12:56 ◼   ► - And this again is, I think this is again a side effect

01:12:58 ◼   ► of like the self-employed person timeframe

01:13:02 ◼   ► that like your timeframe follows you where you go.

01:13:05 ◼   ► You don't have the London office,

01:13:08 ◼   ► which is waiting for you to deliver a thing to them

01:13:11 ◼   ► at 5 p.m. on Friday in London, right?

01:13:14 ◼   ► Where it's like, that's what OmniFocus

01:13:16 ◼   ► is kind of optimizing for,

01:13:17 ◼   ► like that idea that there's a canonical time and place

01:13:19 ◼   ► that you're always referencing.

01:13:21 ◼   ► And if you're self-employed and you're self-employed

01:13:23 ◼   ► and you travel, like you don't care at all.

01:13:25 ◼   ► - I think as well, if you are self-employed and working

01:13:28 ◼   ► and the majority of people that need you

01:13:30 ◼   ► are in the time zones you're traveling to.

01:13:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's true, yeah.

01:13:33 ◼   ► But just to give you an indication of how much I love

01:13:38 ◼   ► the new tagging and sorting features of OmniFocus

01:13:41 ◼   ► and how much I think it has improved the app,

01:13:44 ◼   ► I was willing to put up with that time zone problem

01:13:49 ◼   ► this summer when I traveled, let's see if I can remember,

01:13:55 ◼   ► but I went from London to the East Coast to the West Coast,

01:14:00 ◼   ► back to the East Coast, back to the West Coast,

01:14:05 ◼   ► to Central Time to the East Coast again,

01:14:10 ◼   ► then to Europe time, then back to London.

01:14:13 ◼   ► Like that's, if I'm remembering it off the top of my head,

01:14:16 ◼   ► that's what my travel looked like this past summer.

01:14:19 ◼   ► - Order.

01:14:20 ◼   ► - Every time I did that, I had to rearrange

01:14:24 ◼   ► like 30 little checklist items

01:14:27 ◼   ► for what do I do in the morning

01:14:28 ◼   ► and what do I do in the evening.

01:14:30 ◼   ► It was infuriating, but knowing that the fix was coming,

01:14:34 ◼   ► plus having the current features of the new OmniFocus,

01:14:36 ◼   ► like made it worth doing,

01:14:38 ◼   ► 'cause I was trying to figure out like,

01:14:40 ◼   ► ooh, now how am I gonna actually use this app now?

01:14:42 ◼   ► like let me rethink about how my system is set up.

01:14:45 ◼   ► It made it worth it, but boy was it frustrating.

01:14:48 ◼   ► It was frustrating to move those every time.

01:14:51 ◼   ► But I think for quite a while,

01:14:55 ◼   ► my search and my frustration with to-do apps

01:14:58 ◼   ► is over for a little while.

01:15:01 ◼   ► So I have OmniFocus, I'm super happy with it.

01:15:05 ◼   ► I really like it, I love the searching.

01:15:08 ◼   ► And I think if you wanna give OmniFocus a try,

01:15:11 ◼   ► This is a great version to give it a try with.

01:15:15 ◼   ► There's been one final consolidation,

01:15:16 ◼   ► which I'll just mention quickly.

01:15:17 ◼   ► I have finally been able to move away

01:15:21 ◼   ► from the craziness of having two Apple Watches.

01:15:25 ◼   ► The nighttime/morning Apple Watch

01:15:29 ◼   ► and the evening Apple Watch,

01:15:31 ◼   ► 'cause longtime listeners of the show will know

01:15:34 ◼   ► I was maintaining two Apple Watches

01:15:36 ◼   ► because it was the only way to try

01:15:39 ◼   ► and get notifications to work the way I wanted to,

01:15:43 ◼   ► to have different settings for different times.

01:15:46 ◼   ► And thanks to some of the stuff in the iOS 12 beta,

01:15:51 ◼   ► the way notifications have worked,

01:15:53 ◼   ► I've been able to mostly replicate

01:15:57 ◼   ► what I wanted out of that setup.

01:15:59 ◼   ► And I'm back to just having a single watch

01:16:03 ◼   ► and it feels like all is sane again in the world.

01:16:07 ◼   ► I never really wanted to have two Apple watches,

01:16:10 ◼   ► I was just forced into that situation.

01:16:12 ◼   ► So now I'm back to just one watch.

01:16:14 ◼   ► I'm very happy about it.

01:16:16 ◼   ► And I've also, because I have the one watch,

01:16:18 ◼   ► I've turned on, I can finally turn on that feature

01:16:21 ◼   ► in macOS which lets you unlock your computer

01:16:24 ◼   ► using your watch.

01:16:26 ◼   ► And I know I'm super late to this party,

01:16:28 ◼   ► but boy is that a nice feature

01:16:29 ◼   ► that I have never been able to take advantage of

01:16:31 ◼   ► over these past many years,

01:16:33 ◼   ► because I had more than one watch

01:16:34 ◼   ► and that feature did not work with more than one watch.

01:16:37 ◼   ► So one more consolidation.

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01:18:01 ◼   ► While we're talking about betas, since the last episode,

01:18:05 ◼   ► Apple released a semi-public beta for the Shortcuts app, which is the thing that we

01:18:12 ◼   ► had wished would happen, and it did happen, that during the beta period they would release

01:18:18 ◼   ► the Shortcuts app, which replaces the Workflow app.

01:18:20 ◼   ► Yeah, formerly known as Workflow.

01:18:22 ◼   ► AKA, yeah, formerly known as the artist, formerly known as Workflow.

01:18:27 ◼   ► If you want an overview of the Shortcuts app, I would point people to episode 65 of Canvas

01:18:33 ◼   ► here on Relay FM. There's a great overview from Federico Vittucci and Jason Snow. They

01:18:37 ◼   ► kind of talk about where and why and how the Shortcut set came to be, what it does, what

01:18:43 ◼   ► it lacks.

01:18:44 ◼   ► Yeah, that was a great episode.

01:18:45 ◼   ► So if you want to get a primer on it, I really recommend listening to that. But really, I

01:18:50 ◼   ► kind of wondered what have we been doing with it? We both have access to it. We were both

01:18:53 ◼   ► picked out of the big, I mean, many thousands of people, I'm sure, that signed up. We just

01:18:59 ◼   ► threw her name into the hat and got picked for it.

01:19:02 ◼   ► I mean, I've mostly been poking around.

01:19:07 ◼   ► I really think that a lot of the stuff

01:19:10 ◼   ► that I will be hoping to build will come September time

01:19:14 ◼   ► when a lot of the apps that I use

01:19:17 ◼   ► start offering up functionality more explicitly to Siri

01:19:22 ◼   ► 'cause there's a bunch of stuff you can do right now

01:19:25 ◼   ► but a lot of things don't really work the way you would want

01:19:28 ◼   ► and developers will be able to take advantage of some of the Siri shortcuts

01:19:31 ◼   ► API's to make things a little bit more advanced.

01:19:34 ◼   ► You know, I hope, for example, to be able to resume playback in my podcast app

01:19:40 ◼   ► of choice and stuff like that, which is not the kind of thing that you can do

01:19:43 ◼   ► right now, right?

01:19:44 ◼   ► But it seems like should be available to be able to offer up to the shortcuts app.

01:19:50 ◼   ► So there's some stuff that I've been playing around with.

01:19:52 ◼   ► There are some stuff that I have actually been using every day.

01:19:55 ◼   ► one of them is just setting my morning alarms.

01:19:59 ◼   ► I was so happy when I realized I could do this.

01:20:03 ◼   ► All right.

01:20:04 ◼   ► I am a person who hates going to sleep,

01:20:08 ◼   ► but when I am asleep, I never wanna leave.

01:20:11 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:20:13 ◼   ► Right?

01:20:14 ◼   ► - Okay, yeah.

01:20:17 ◼   ► That sounds like my wife, right?

01:20:19 ◼   ► Okay. - So here's the problem.

01:20:20 ◼   ► Someone who never wants to go to sleep

01:20:22 ◼   ► means they stay awake for too long.

01:20:24 ◼   ► - Right, of course.

01:20:25 ◼   ► - Right, and then if they never want to wake up,

01:20:27 ◼   ► it means one alarm in the morning will not suffice.

01:20:31 ◼   ► - Ah, okay.

01:20:33 ◼   ► - So I set many alarms for myself.

01:20:36 ◼   ► - How many is many? - I may set nine maybe.

01:20:40 ◼   ► - Is that for real, really nine?

01:20:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, sure.

01:20:43 ◼   ► - Like what, five minutes apart from each other?

01:20:45 ◼   ► - Like 10 minutes apart maybe.

01:20:47 ◼   ► - 10 minutes apart, nine alarms, okay, all right.

01:20:50 ◼   ► - I don't know the exact number, but it's a big number,

01:20:52 ◼   ► right, so we'll just say nine.

01:20:54 ◼   ► So I would sit in the morning, at night, every night,

01:20:57 ◼   ► check, check, check, check,

01:20:59 ◼   ► turn in these alarms on, right?

01:21:01 ◼   ► And then in the morning, going in and unchecking

01:21:03 ◼   ► all the alarms that hadn't gone off yet.

01:21:05 ◼   ► Now, I have set up a Siri shortcut,

01:21:09 ◼   ► where I just, I either ask Siri

01:21:11 ◼   ► or I press the button in the widget,

01:21:14 ◼   ► and it just sets all those alarms.

01:21:15 ◼   ► - This is taking advantage of,

01:21:18 ◼   ► 'cause some stuff pops up in the interface

01:21:21 ◼   ► in this weird way, where there's things

01:21:23 ◼   ► that you can explicitly tell it to do that's just built into the Workflow app.

01:21:27 ◼   ► And then it picks up on stuff you've recently done.

01:21:29 ◼   ► Right. This is the thing that it took me a while to realize is if you set an alarm,

01:21:36 ◼   ► it will suggest this as an option. In the Shortcuts app.

01:21:40 ◼   ► Right. In the Shortcuts app. But it won't always be there. So you kind of have to be like,

01:21:46 ◼   ► "Look at what I'm doing." You cannot in the Shortcuts app say,

01:21:50 ◼   ► I want to set an alarm for this time.

01:21:52 ◼   ► Right.

01:21:53 ◼   ► Doesn't work like that.

01:21:54 ◼   ► You have to go into the alarm app,

01:21:56 ◼   ► or it's a clock app, go into alarms, turn on three alarms,

01:21:59 ◼   ► go back to the shortcuts app.

01:22:01 ◼   ► And then when it says Siri suggestions, you tap on that

01:22:03 ◼   ► and it will say clock and it will have the last three alarms that you set.

01:22:06 ◼   ► So you do that a couple of times to get your nine alarms all in.

01:22:09 ◼   ► And then you see a list of alarms for certain times that you cannot change

01:22:14 ◼   ► and you can toggle them on and off.

01:22:16 ◼   ► So that's how that works.

01:22:17 ◼   ► and then when you want to set your other shortcut

01:22:20 ◼   ► to disable the alarms, you have to go in,

01:22:22 ◼   ► disable the alarms, go back into series suggestions

01:22:24 ◼   ► and shortcuts, add them in,

01:22:26 ◼   ► and then you've got your shortcuts, right?

01:22:27 ◼   ► They're done. - Yeah.

01:22:28 ◼   ► - So I now have them.

01:22:29 ◼   ► It takes a while to set up, but they're there,

01:22:30 ◼   ► and I have them. - Yeah.

01:22:31 ◼   ► - It's a little clunky, but I'll take the clunkiness

01:22:33 ◼   ► over the fact that this is incredible and I love it, right?

01:22:36 ◼   ► So I now have these.

01:22:38 ◼   ► - A thing that is clunky to set up,

01:22:40 ◼   ► but then works forever is fine, right?

01:22:43 ◼   ► Like, that's totally fine.

01:22:44 ◼   ► And I ran into this, it's funny,

01:22:47 ◼   ► It's sleep related as well.

01:22:48 ◼   ► I ran into this exact thing when I was setting up a workflow

01:22:52 ◼   ► or sorry, a shortcut that I use for naps

01:22:57 ◼   ► where I wanted to be able to specify,

01:23:01 ◼   ► am I taking a 20 minute power nap

01:23:04 ◼   ► or am I taking a slightly longer, like 40 minute nap,

01:23:07 ◼   ► like one sleep cycle nap?

01:23:09 ◼   ► So I wanted to be able to select like 20 minutes

01:23:11 ◼   ► or 40 minutes for this workflow to run

01:23:14 ◼   ► and then set a timer that's going to be 25 minutes

01:23:19 ◼   ► or it's going to be 45 minutes long.

01:23:21 ◼   ► I was like, how is there no way that I can tell the phone

01:23:26 ◼   ► to set a timer for 25 minutes?

01:23:28 ◼   ► And then I ran into this thing, I'm like, oh, I see.

01:23:31 ◼   ► If I just start a 25 minute timer

01:23:34 ◼   ► a couple of times on the phone,

01:23:37 ◼   ► then the phone will be like,

01:23:38 ◼   ► hey, this is a thing that you're doing a lot.

01:23:40 ◼   ► Do you want to drag this into one of your shortcuts?

01:23:43 ◼   ► like "yes phone I do that's exactly what I want to do" so yeah that's a case where I use the thing

01:23:48 ◼   ► where it's it's watching what you do and trying to learn from that. And whilst this system seems

01:23:54 ◼   ► weird if you're a power user you've got to think about like why they're doing it like this is how

01:23:59 ◼   ► you get regular users to try this stuff out because the system is watching and when it sees you're

01:24:05 ◼   ► doing things a bunch of times it suggests it to you and you're like "hey I do that all the time

01:24:10 ◼   ► I should make a thing for that, right?

01:24:11 ◼   ► And it's like, so that's why I totally get it

01:24:13 ◼   ► and I'm fine with it.

01:24:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree, yeah.

01:24:15 ◼   ► - Like a lot of third party apps will offer this stuff up.

01:24:18 ◼   ► Like, you know, I figure we're in this in-between time

01:24:20 ◼   ► right now where it's, where this is the way

01:24:22 ◼   ► that most of the stuff is being added into the system.

01:24:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, it makes perfect sense to do that way.

01:24:27 ◼   ► And this is almost power user disease

01:24:32 ◼   ► where you wanna dive right into the,

01:24:35 ◼   ► where can I specify a timer of arbitrary time

01:24:38 ◼   ► and like, "Oh, I can't do that."

01:24:40 ◼   ► I think, again, I feel like I've gushed over it already

01:24:45 ◼   ► many times, but this shortcut integration

01:24:48 ◼   ► into the system framework of iOS is just amazing

01:24:53 ◼   ► on many levels, and this ability to watch what you're doing

01:24:57 ◼   ► and suggest things to you, like, man, what a great

01:25:02 ◼   ► and gentle ramp into the idea of automating

01:25:07 ◼   ► for people who may not be familiar with this concept at all.

01:25:10 ◼   ► I think it's done so well.

01:25:13 ◼   ► And even if it seems a bit clunky for the power user,

01:25:17 ◼   ► ultimately, but you can still do it.

01:25:20 ◼   ► It's not preventing you from doing anything.

01:25:22 ◼   ► It's just suggesting stuff in a way

01:25:25 ◼   ► that's a bit more newbie friendly.

01:25:27 ◼   ► But I think it's a great design.

01:25:28 ◼   ► I think it's a really good idea.

01:25:30 ◼   ► And I agree with you that I cannot wait

01:25:33 ◼   ► until more apps start exposing all of the things

01:25:38 ◼   ► that they can do, because it's really going to be

01:25:42 ◼   ► an incredibly powerful system.

01:25:43 ◼   ► Like being part of this beta and getting to see it

01:25:46 ◼   ► in just these baby steps,

01:25:47 ◼   ► like I'm already incredibly impressed with it

01:25:51 ◼   ► and it barely has any third party app functionality,

01:25:56 ◼   ► which is where a ton of the real power is gonna come from.

01:25:59 ◼   ► - And I'm hoping that some third party stuff

01:26:02 ◼   ► will enhance it, some will repair some of the stuff

01:26:04 ◼   ► that's changed, like you can't save folders

01:26:08 ◼   ► to Dropbox anymore, it can only be saved

01:26:11 ◼   ► to a specific folder in iCloud Drive,

01:26:12 ◼   ► which has broken a bunch of stuff for me,

01:26:14 ◼   ► which is why I'm happy that Workflow still exists

01:26:16 ◼   ► for the time being, but I'm hoping that Dropbox

01:26:20 ◼   ► will create their own Siri shortcuts

01:26:22 ◼   ► that will allow you to do this,

01:26:24 ◼   ► so that they will enable that, so fingers crossed there.

01:26:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, that may exist in the future,

01:26:29 ◼   ► but that is also a perfect example

01:26:31 ◼   ► of the thing I mentioned earlier in the show where I have Hazel watching some folders and

01:26:35 ◼   ► it's like, "Hey, Hazel, why don't you watch some of these iCloud folders and if

01:26:39 ◼   ► files show up there, why don't you shuffle them over to this Dropbox folder over here?"

01:26:43 ◼   ► H: I've already thought about like, worse comes to worse, that's what I'll set up,

01:26:47 ◼   ► but I don't want to have to do that. I mean, and honestly, I think that there are also

01:26:50 ◼   ► places where, you know, with a company like Dropbox, a third party could come in and do

01:26:54 ◼   ► this, could create an app that could also do this. But some of the actions that are

01:26:59 ◼   ► are available are wild, like the ability to enable

01:27:02 ◼   ► do not disturb for periods of time that you wish,

01:27:06 ◼   ► or you can turn on low power mode.

01:27:07 ◼   ► There is stuff that is available in the Shortcuts beta

01:27:12 ◼   ► that I never would have expected to see.

01:27:14 ◼   ► - I have to tell you, since you mentioned low power mode,

01:27:16 ◼   ► I have to tell you my favorite thing that I've done

01:27:18 ◼   ► with the Shortcuts app that I'm also, not gonna lie,

01:27:22 ◼   ► super pleased with myself about.

01:27:24 ◼   ► So this is an integration with the good old

01:27:28 ◼   ► Launch Center Pro, right, which disappeared

01:27:31 ◼   ► from my phone for a while, but it was back

01:27:34 ◼   ► because I realized Launch Center Pro has a feature

01:27:38 ◼   ► which if it exists in other apps,

01:27:39 ◼   ► I don't know where to find it,

01:27:40 ◼   ► but Launch Center Pro can watch your location.

01:27:45 ◼   ► And then because it had this old integration

01:27:50 ◼   ► with workflow that still exists,

01:27:53 ◼   ► it can watch your location and trigger a workflow,

01:27:57 ◼   ► but it does work with shortcuts,

01:27:59 ◼   ► if you know how to change the URL scheme.

01:28:01 ◼   ► It will trigger a shortcut based on your location.

01:28:06 ◼   ► And so what I set up is I drew a geofence

01:28:11 ◼   ► that covers the area that is essentially

01:28:17 ◼   ► my daily operations, like walking around in London.

01:28:21 ◼   ► What is the circle that includes my office

01:28:26 ◼   ► and the local supermarkets that I go to

01:28:28 ◼   ► and like the little park where I walk the dog

01:28:31 ◼   ► and it's like, what is the areas

01:28:33 ◼   ► where I spend 99% of my time?

01:28:35 ◼   ► And draw a circle around those.

01:28:37 ◼   ► If I leave that circle,

01:28:39 ◼   ► trigger a workflow that will turn on low power mode.

01:28:45 ◼   ► Now, unfortunately, it can't do it automatically,

01:28:51 ◼   ► but it just pops up an alert on my phone.

01:28:54 ◼   ► And if I press that alert, it triggers the shortcut

01:28:57 ◼   ► and it turns on low power mode automatically.

01:29:00 ◼   ► And boy, do I love this because that's the time

01:29:03 ◼   ► where it's like, if I leave my normal area of operations,

01:29:06 ◼   ► I'm probably going somewhere for a while

01:29:09 ◼   ► and I just wanna put the phone in low power mode

01:29:12 ◼   ► in preparation of maybe I'm gonna be gone all day

01:29:14 ◼   ► and I just haven't thought about it.

01:29:16 ◼   ► And I just love that and I still feel like every time

01:29:19 ◼   ► I take an Uber out of my radius and that pops up reminding me

01:29:24 ◼   ► to turn on low power mode and then I hit the button

01:29:26 ◼   ► and it just automatically does it.

01:29:27 ◼   ► I don't need to dig around in the settings

01:29:29 ◼   ► or I don't even need to pull down control center.

01:29:31 ◼   ► It just does it.

01:29:33 ◼   ► It feels like magic every time and I totally love it.

01:29:37 ◼   ► - I guess in the same vein using Launch Center Pro

01:29:39 ◼   ► you could set up scheduled things.

01:29:42 ◼   ► So it would pop up at a certain time on a certain day

01:29:45 ◼   ► and you just press a button and it will run the shortcut.

01:29:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:29:48 ◼   ► There's a lot of, I don't have any other

01:29:51 ◼   ► geo-fenced ones right now, but it's been on the back

01:29:55 ◼   ► of my mind of thinking about what can I do,

01:30:00 ◼   ► say, when I get to the office?

01:30:02 ◼   ► And that's a geo-fenced kind of thing.

01:30:05 ◼   ► I'm in the office now, there's almost certainly

01:30:07 ◼   ► little things that I just want to kick off

01:30:08 ◼   ► to have the environment ready for me.

01:30:12 ◼   ► It just seems like there's a lot of

01:30:14 ◼   ► interesting possibilities here.

01:30:16 ◼   ► And even just this little simple one of turn on

01:30:19 ◼   ► low power mode when I leave my normal area of operations,

01:30:21 ◼   ► I totally love it.

01:30:23 ◼   ► And it's only possible because they're integrated

01:30:26 ◼   ► with the system.

01:30:28 ◼   ► - One thing that I'm really excited to do

01:30:30 ◼   ► is to build what I'm thinking of morning

01:30:35 ◼   ► and evening routines.

01:30:36 ◼   ► And I'm seeing a lot of people playing around

01:30:39 ◼   ► with this sort of stuff.

01:30:40 ◼   ► And it's like these huge shortcuts that you can set

01:30:45 ◼   ► that will do things in the morning and the evening.

01:30:48 ◼   ► So my morning, like my enabling and disabling alarms, right, is part of this.

01:30:53 ◼   ► Because you can run shortcuts within shortcuts.

01:30:56 ◼   ► Yes.

01:30:57 ◼   ► It's so powerful.

01:30:58 ◼   ► So like right now I'm building an evening routine.

01:31:01 ◼   ► So this will become very useful when this all ships, because I'll be

01:31:05 ◼   ► able to get my HomePod to do this.

01:31:07 ◼   ► So I'll be able to say to the HomePod, it'll be like, HomePod,

01:31:10 ◼   ► good evening, or like bedtime or something like that.

01:31:14 ◼   ► And what I've set up right now is with a little bit of help from Federico,

01:31:17 ◼   ► some regular expressions to check what the day is.

01:31:19 ◼   ► And if the subsequent day will be like a work day.

01:31:23 ◼   ► Oh, right. OK, yeah.

01:31:25 ◼   ► I have an if statement using some regex and a bunch of amazing stuff

01:31:30 ◼   ► that he helped me build.

01:31:31 ◼   ► And now I feel like I have a good understanding of

01:31:33 ◼   ► to if if the next day will be a work day, run my morning alarms.

01:31:38 ◼   ► Then once that's taken care of, once the statement is closed,

01:31:42 ◼   ► they then run my nighttime scene that I created in HomeKit,

01:31:46 ◼   ► which turns off the lights everywhere in the house except the bedroom where it turns those on so we go to bed.

01:31:51 ◼   ► Right, so we go into the bedroom and the lights are on dim

01:31:54 ◼   ► and then eventually I will set other stuff in here as well.

01:31:57 ◼   ► So like turn on do not disturb on my phone.

01:32:00 ◼   ► Well, and like a bunch of things that you can add in to create these really large shortcuts and like I expect to do a

01:32:06 ◼   ► morning one where it like I'm trying to build it now where I have Siri read to me what my appointments are today.

01:32:13 ◼   ► Ideally, I would love to know, like, it could just tell me how many emails or give me some

01:32:17 ◼   ► like subject lines of emails that I've received overnight.

01:32:20 ◼   ► Ask me if I want to play my most recent podcast or whatever.

01:32:23 ◼   ► Like I could maybe resume that.

01:32:25 ◼   ► Say to me like, oh, hey, would you like to send a message to your mum?

01:32:29 ◼   ► What do you want to say to her this morning?

01:32:31 ◼   ► Like stuff like that.

01:32:32 ◼   ► And all of these things feel like they're possible with just the right amount of work to

01:32:37 ◼   ► put into them. And I'm very excited about building stuff like this because this is going

01:32:43 ◼   ► to give me a lot of what I want Siri to do. Like, I don't necessarily want Siri to be

01:32:49 ◼   ► smart, I just want it to be smart in the things I want it to be smart about. And a great way

01:32:54 ◼   ► to do that is for me to program it in this way. And I'm really excited. I was apprehensive

01:33:02 ◼   ► of the beta, like what is it really going to unearth? And I, for me personally, have

01:33:09 ◼   ► lost one thing and I genuinely believe that that one thing will be fixed come

01:33:15 ◼   ► September by somebody else. Everything else I could I've got way more than I

01:33:20 ◼   ► expected and I always enjoyed using workflow and tinkering around with

01:33:25 ◼   ► workflow but I really believe the shortcuts is going to be an incredibly

01:33:30 ◼   ► important part of the way that I get work done because it's gonna be

01:33:34 ◼   ► basically everywhere, and in theory can control basically anything.

01:33:38 ◼   ► Yeah, it's incredible. And I do think we always have that, I don't know, anxiety about

01:33:47 ◼   ► this thing looks amazing, but what are going to be the limitations that we're not expecting when

01:33:53 ◼   ► we actually get it into our hands? And you just never know because your mind starts running off

01:33:58 ◼   ► with, "Oh, I'm going to be able to do everything." And then you're like, "Oh, it's much more limited

01:34:02 ◼   ► than I thought. But man, like shortcuts has been just everything workflow was and more.

01:34:09 ◼   ► And it's the same thing. I found one thing that didn't work for me. And after a quick DM to

01:34:17 ◼   ► Tichi, he told me the little workaround. I was like, "Oh, I used to pull the text from a Dropbox

01:34:22 ◼   ► file and it doesn't look like I can do that anymore." He's like, "Okay, here's what you need

01:34:25 ◼   ► to do. Just like do these three things and then you're fine." I'm like, "Oh, great. All my OmniFocus

01:34:29 ◼   ► 'cause templates work again, thank you.

01:34:31 ◼   ► So like just one incredibly minor thing was lost

01:34:33 ◼   ► and so much has been gained.

01:34:35 ◼   ► It's really impressive and I was wondering,

01:34:38 ◼   ► like I wish I had the statistics on it,

01:34:41 ◼   ► but I think it is not an exaggeration to say

01:34:44 ◼   ► that my use of Siri has increased 10,000%

01:34:49 ◼   ► with the addition of shortcuts.

01:34:53 ◼   ► And it's partly because I have been slowly converting

01:34:58 ◼   ► all of my toggle launches into Siri commands.

01:35:03 ◼   ► And I cannot like, I'm not a person,

01:35:05 ◼   ► like I still find that there's a little bit of a resistance

01:35:09 ◼   ► to giving the commands out loud.

01:35:12 ◼   ► Like I still find it like this little bit

01:35:14 ◼   ► of a mental burden to talk, but man, man,

01:35:18 ◼   ► do I love setting the time tracker using Siri.

01:35:23 ◼   ► It's so good.

01:35:24 ◼   ► - So what if you've been like setting

01:35:26 ◼   ► a bunch of individual shortcuts for different timers.

01:35:30 ◼   ► I plan to do this.

01:35:31 ◼   ► I'm gonna have like 60, but like whatever.

01:35:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's, I was trying to think,

01:35:36 ◼   ► is there a way to do this by kicking off a little shortcut

01:35:39 ◼   ► within a shortcut?

01:35:40 ◼   ► And the answer was like, it doesn't really save you any time.

01:35:43 ◼   ► But yeah, basically what I've been doing is

01:35:46 ◼   ► anytime I'm about to start a timer,

01:35:48 ◼   ► I try to do it with voice.

01:35:49 ◼   ► And if I don't have the voice thing built,

01:35:52 ◼   ► I'll just quickly change the few things that I need to

01:35:55 ◼   ► for that one timer, right?

01:35:57 ◼   ► So like I've replaced like 90%

01:36:01 ◼   ► of my most frequently used timers.

01:36:04 ◼   ► And of course there's a long tail on that

01:36:06 ◼   ► of like what else are the things that need to be converted?

01:36:09 ◼   ► But yeah, I've built individual little workflows

01:36:12 ◼   ► and we were talking in the last episode

01:36:14 ◼   ► about having to figure out what a syntax is.

01:36:17 ◼   ► And I quickly realized that Siri gets super confused

01:36:20 ◼   ► if you're tracking time and you say something like,

01:36:22 ◼   ► "Hey, Siri, start the Cortex timer."

01:36:25 ◼   ► and Siri's like, "I don't understand what cortex,

01:36:27 ◼   ► "how long do you want the timer to set for?"

01:36:29 ◼   ► I was like, "No, I don't want your timer,

01:36:31 ◼   ► "I wanna start this."

01:36:32 ◼   ► So I've ended up using the syntax track string,

01:36:37 ◼   ► so I'll say like, "Hey, Siri, track cortex."

01:36:42 ◼   ► Like track is the word that works the best in my mind

01:36:45 ◼   ► for what am I trying to do,

01:36:46 ◼   ► and then I have the word for like,

01:36:47 ◼   ► which timer is it supposed to kick off?

01:36:49 ◼   ► Because if you're using the word timer,

01:36:51 ◼   ► Siri gets super confused lots of times

01:36:53 ◼   ► about what is it that you're attempting to accomplish.

01:36:56 ◼   ► But I just, I love it.

01:36:58 ◼   ► I totally love being able to start the timer with Siri.

01:37:02 ◼   ► It's fantastic.

01:37:04 ◼   ► It even has me doing the thing

01:37:06 ◼   ► which I've just never used before,

01:37:07 ◼   ► but the AirPods double tap to invoke Siri,

01:37:12 ◼   ► which I hate and I think is an uncomfortable gesture,

01:37:16 ◼   ► but man, is it great sometimes when I'm out and about

01:37:20 ◼   ► and suddenly the context change of what am I doing

01:37:23 ◼   ► And it's like, to just like, doot doot,

01:37:26 ◼   ► tap on the ear to get Siri to talk to you

01:37:30 ◼   ► and start the timer to switch the context

01:37:32 ◼   ► of what I'm up to.

01:37:33 ◼   ► I love it, it's so great.

01:37:35 ◼   ► But it really is a case, like I have used Siri

01:37:40 ◼   ► more in the past two months with the beta

01:37:43 ◼   ► than I think I have used in the entire existence of Siri

01:37:46 ◼   ► up until this point.

01:37:48 ◼   ► There is no way that statement isn't true.

01:37:53 ◼   ► So it's like, "Hey Apple, if you wanted us to use Siri more, this works!"

01:37:58 ◼   ► Your Siri stats have to be amazing, at least for some set of users, including me.

01:38:04 ◼   ► Important announcement, Cortex listeners. It is that time of year again.

01:38:09 ◼   ► It is Relay FM membership month, because we are in the wonderful month of August.

01:38:14 ◼   ► And what that means is, of course, we have another amazing crossover with Upgrade,

01:38:21 ◼   ► where we have the Snellatron return for a text adventure.

01:38:25 ◼   ► And we will, of course, be playing a trailer at the end of this episode

01:38:29 ◼   ► for the much desired from the both of us Space Station game.

01:38:34 ◼   ► We are going to space and we have a job to do.

01:38:38 ◼   ► And you're going to hear at the end of this episode.

01:38:40 ◼   ► So stick around so you can hear what you'll be getting

01:38:42 ◼   ► if you are a relay FM member.

01:38:45 ◼   ► If you are not a relay FM member, let me tell you why you should be

01:38:49 ◼   ► Relay FM memberships start at just $5 a month.

01:38:52 ◼   ► And if you sign up to be a member, you'll get access to a bunch of members

01:38:56 ◼   ► only content, which includes a monthly behind the scenes newsletter,

01:39:00 ◼   ► wonderful 5K desktop wallpapers of Relay FM show artwork,

01:39:04 ◼   ► and also a monthly Relay FM host crossover show where a couple of Relay FM

01:39:09 ◼   ► hosts will get together and talk about a topic which means something to the two of them.

01:39:13 ◼   ► And as well as all of that, of course, you get access to a feed

01:39:17 ◼   ► which is full of bonus episodes of relay FM shows throughout August and September,

01:39:22 ◼   ► including ours and all of the other bonuses that will happen across the network

01:39:26 ◼   ► and all of the ones that have ever happened.

01:39:29 ◼   ► So as I said, this will be our third text adventure that we've played together.

01:39:33 ◼   ► So if you want to hear me and Gray in the wild west,

01:39:35 ◼   ► if you want to hear me and Gray in a spooky manner

01:39:38 ◼   ► and now me and Gray in a space adventure, you'll be able to do that.

01:39:44 ◼   ► Now the Space Station text adventure will be publishing on the 17th of August is when

01:39:51 ◼   ► that's going to be going up.

01:39:52 ◼   ► But whether you sign up before, on that day or after or any time you will have access

01:39:57 ◼   ► to that episode.

01:39:59 ◼   ► So if you want to show your support for this show go to relay.fm/cortex and you'll be able

01:40:04 ◼   ► to find buttons there to sign up to be a member or you can find out more by going to relay.fm/membership.

01:40:11 ◼   ► Now there is one important note that I do need to mention this time.

01:40:14 ◼   ► So for this year, we have changed the URL of the feed that we use for that bonus content.

01:40:20 ◼   ► If you are an active Relay FM member, you're a current paying member,

01:40:24 ◼   ► you will have gotten an email about that.

01:40:25 ◼   ► So if you haven't changed the feed over, check your email.

01:40:29 ◼   ► If you have previously cancelled your membership

01:40:31 ◼   ► or you think you're a member and don't see that email,

01:40:34 ◼   ► it means your membership may have lapsed and you'll need to sign up again

01:40:38 ◼   ► to get the new feed to get yourself this text adventure.

01:40:43 ◼   ► So if you sign up, thank you so much.

01:40:45 ◼   ► We really, really appreciate your support.

01:40:48 ◼   ► And again, you can go to relay.fm/cortex

01:40:51 ◼   ► and you can sign up to support this show right there.

01:40:53 ◼   ► But what you're probably waiting for right now

01:40:55 ◼   ► is to hear the trailer.

01:40:56 ◼   ► So enjoy Space Station and we'll see you soon.

01:41:00 ◼   ► - We were told the Space Station was too difficult for us.

01:41:06 ◼   ► Was it or was it not?

01:41:08 ◼   ► You'll be the judge.

01:41:10 ◼   ► Thanks for listening.

01:41:11 ◼   ► - Gray, Myke, welcome to Space Station.

01:41:16 ◼   ► You wake up inside the cramped confines