0:00:00Ten episodes in and I still just don't know what to do.
0:00:04To start the show?
0:00:05To start the show.
0:00:06You always feel awkward about it.
0:00:07Well now you're turning it into a tiny segment which is Myke awkwardly tries to start the show.
0:00:12You complain about the schedules.
0:00:13Mm-hmm.
0:00:14And this is what I complain about.
0:00:15I just don't know what to do with it.
0:00:17The best part is I do nothing to help you.
0:00:20No, you make it worse.
0:00:22Yeah, I just sit here and I wait and go, Myke's gonna start the show.
0:00:25Let me see what he does.
0:00:26And then I say something and you just go "Oh, trying to start the show are you?"
0:00:30Yeah, I draw attention to it, which makes it worse.
0:00:34And so this is what we do now.
0:00:36I see you have a line in our document which you've placed before the follow-up section
0:00:42that you seem to have a video game recommendation.
0:00:45Yeah, I put it at the top there because you seem to be in charge of all the show notes.
0:00:48I don't want to mess up all your beautiful little show notes.
0:00:51So if I ever write anything, I'm just going to put it at the top and you can put it wherever you want.
0:00:55There's one thing I have learned, Myke, which is that if you're doing a show which is vaguely
0:01:00about work and being self-employed, the thing people really want to hear about is video
0:01:05games.
0:01:06It certainly seems that way, because any time we mention it, the Reddit becomes full of
0:01:12video game stuff.
0:01:14So I was looking for feedback on mind maps, and I do have one little part, but there was
0:01:19nothing in the Reddit, right?
0:01:20But did we hear about video games again?
0:01:22Yes, we did.
0:01:24Yes.
0:01:25to draw from this is that people who are self-employed, they have a lot of time for video games maybe.
0:01:31And it's something that interests them. So I thought, oh, I guess let me mention something then.
0:01:36Which is, when I was just editing the last episode of Hello Internet, which went up yesterday
0:01:42after a big editing marathon, I was looking for something else to play
0:01:47and you may be a little young for this, Myke. But did you ever play a game called Dungeon Keeper as a kid?
0:01:53No.
0:01:54Yeah, see that's what I figured because I forget, you're, how old are you?
0:01:58You're like 25?
0:01:59Is that right?
0:02:00I'm 27 I think.
0:02:02This is the thing, I don't know how old I am most of the time.
0:02:06To the point that once I said how old I was on a show and someone wrote in to tell me
0:02:10that I was wrong and tell me my correct age.
0:02:13Nice.
0:02:14Nicely done there.
0:02:15Yep.
0:02:16Genius!
0:02:17Yeah, so you would have been a little, a little, a little young for Dungeon Keeper but it
0:02:22It was a game that had kind of a cult following back in maybe the 90s or so.
0:02:27But it is yet another game that follows the tragic story called
0:02:32Electronic Arts buys a promising video game company, promises to make a sequel,
0:02:37and then does it for years and eventually spits out a horrible pile of poo that nobody likes.
0:02:42Considering I'm doing the editing, I will at this point say they just go and f*ck everything up.
0:02:47f*ck it all up. They do. They really do. At the Electronic Arts corporate offices it should say
0:02:54Electronic Arts and then right below it on a banner it should say something like
0:02:58Crusher of Dreams. It's just they're just terrible and they just love to buy up talent and then
0:03:04squander squander that talent. But Dungeon Keeper was another one of these things where people were
0:03:10really excited for the third game in the series and nothing eventually happened except pooping
0:03:16out a horrible free-to-play "actually you need to buy a thousand in-app purchases"
0:03:21thing for the iPad a little while ago.
0:03:24But just like with Cities Skylines, where someone else finally took up the mantle for
0:03:29SimCity because Electronic Arts wasn't going to do it and they built an amazing spiritual
0:03:35successor to SimCity better than anything else, which is of course the Cities Skylines,
0:03:39there's a team that has put together the true successor to Dungeon Keeper, which is now
0:03:45called War for the Overworld. I only mentioned it as a recommendation because it originally
0:03:51came out many years ago, but it was just like a buggy mess that was unplayable. But I remembered
0:03:58that I had purchased early access to it on Steam and I thought, "Oh, let me give it
0:04:02another try!" And I had several enjoyable hours kind of wandering down the nostalgia
0:04:07factor of playing this game from my childhood, which is now very good and is definitely worth
0:04:13checking out if you ever played Dungeon Keeper when you were a kid.
0:04:16So this is one of my recommendations.
0:04:18I want to make a recommendation as well.
0:04:20Yeah?
0:04:20For a PlayStation game.
0:04:21Called Rocket League.
0:04:23It's amazing.
0:04:24It's this little game.
0:04:26It's like one of those things, it's just this little game made by a studio that I'd never heard of before
0:04:32that just captures the hearts and minds of people and it just takes off.
0:04:37So you basically, you control a kind of life-size remote control car.
0:04:45Like they look like remote control cars, they move like remote control cars.
0:04:48And basically you're playing football with remote control cars.
0:04:52There is this huge ball and there's teams and you just have to try and score it.
0:04:57And you can jump the cars, flip the cars, they have rocket packs on them so you can boost them.
0:05:02And it is incredible fun.
0:05:04I do not enjoy sports. I tend to not really enjoy sports games. This one is just totally different
0:05:09and if you have a PlayStation you should own Rocket League because it is fantastic and they have
0:05:14You can play against AI or you can play online
0:05:17Which I really like they have both because there's way too many console games these days that just put everything as more online multiplayer
0:05:24Which is not typically how I like to play
0:05:26Yeah, I get frustrated by that as well. If you buy a game, it's like oh only multiplayer online. Oh forget it
0:05:33Yeah, it's not mine, it's not my bag, I just don't like it.
0:05:36Going back to the PC games for a moment, how do you play them?
0:05:41What do you use for input methods?
0:05:44Well, with Dungeon Keeper I'm still using my Wacom tablet as the primary input method because
0:05:48Oh, interesting.
0:05:49Really, when I'm playing the game I'm really doing the first and the third edit of Hello Internet
0:05:56which are both edits where I can be doing something else at the same time
0:06:00Because I'm actually wanting to be able to do stuff on the podcast, I'll still use the pen.
0:06:05And it is very usable for certain kinds of games.
0:06:09You could never play, like, a first-person shooter with it.
0:06:12You could never play something like Doom with a pen very well.
0:06:16I will now hear from everybody who plays Doom with a pen.
0:06:19But for something like Dungeon Keeper, which is a top-down, moving characters around,
0:06:25Starcraft-style game, a pen tablet is a very usable input method.
0:06:30I was just thinking, because I haven't explained what the game is at all, but you build a dungeon,
0:06:34you play the bad guy, you build a dungeon and heroes are trying to invade your dungeon, so they kind of flip around the traditional story.
0:06:39It's not like one of these games like, for example, Starcraft, where you have to constantly micromanage each individual troop.
0:06:45You can do very little directly, which I think is an interesting gameplay mechanism that makes you absolutely loathe your minions.
0:06:54because you feel like "Just do the thing that I want you to do!"
0:06:57But you can only issue these very broad commands, like "Everybody go over here!"
0:07:01You can't control things directly, and so when I'm working I actually need games like that
0:07:06where I don't require 100% of my attention and I can flip away from them for a few moments
0:07:11and make a few cuts or delete something and then flip back and continue to play them.
0:07:15I might look at this one.
0:07:16Because of this frustrating mechanic, I'm not sure that people who've never played the original ones
0:07:21would actually like this.
0:07:23If you've heard of Dungeon Keeper and you loved it as a kid, you should totally play this.
0:07:27But I'm not 100% sure that I could recommend it just
0:07:31as a game in the abstract. You stick with your prison architect and burning
0:07:35everything to the ground. - I'm building a beautiful prison right now. - Oh right, of course, because you turned
0:07:39off the losing part of the game. - Really is very, very, very beautiful.
0:07:43I might actually work on it more whilst editing this show. - There we go.
0:07:47- And it will be fantastic. - Okay, so now let's do the real show.
0:07:51Yeah, let's do some follow up.
0:07:53So C-HDO on the Reddit suggested an app that you might be interested in called
0:07:59Altanote, which is an Evernote replacement for the Mac.
0:08:02It isn't a different service.
0:08:04It is just another app for Evernote on the Mac,
0:08:08which is built to take out a lot of the cruft that they add in
0:08:12and actually make the app nicer.
0:08:14Oh, I see. I see.
0:08:16So it's like it's like a tweet bot for Evernote.
0:08:19- Exactly, because it's difficult to explain,
0:08:21because when you say it's a replacement,
0:08:23it makes it sound like a different service.
0:08:25But this is actually just an app that looks way nicer
0:08:30to be used for Evernote, but it's just on the Mac.
0:08:33- Yeah, it does look like it's much nicer.
0:08:36- Yeah. - I might give that a try.
0:08:38- I think you should,
0:08:39because I don't know how much you use it on the Mac.
0:08:41I assume enough.
0:08:42- The answer is as little as possible and enough.
0:08:45- See, my thing when I look at something like this
0:08:47is I just know that if I was to start using this,
0:08:50I would want it everywhere.
0:08:52- Right, yeah, that's part of the frustration.
0:08:54- You know, and that makes me sad.
0:08:55Oh, they are making it though.
0:08:57They're making Altanote for iOS.
0:08:58They've got right down the bottom,
0:09:00sign up to our newsletter,
0:09:01be the first to know about Altanote for iOS.
0:09:03- I would definitely give something like that a try
0:09:05because one of my biggest complaints with Evernote is,
0:09:09okay, so I throw all this stuff into Evernote
0:09:11and I have a default folder called inbox
0:09:14so that I can just throw everything in there
0:09:16and I don't have to try to pre-sort it,
0:09:18it makes it easier to just be able to throw things in
0:09:21to remove a little bit of resistance.
0:09:23But that does mean that every once in a while
0:09:25I have to go through my inbox and sort all of the stuff
0:09:28that I've collected into which topic folder
0:09:31is it going to go into.
0:09:32This is exactly the kind of activity
0:09:34that I would love to do, say, while sitting on the couch
0:09:38and my wife is watching some TV show
0:09:39and I'm there and I'm paying attention
0:09:42but I also wanna do a little something,
0:09:43like this seems like, oh, the perfect kind of work
0:09:45to just organize something like that.
0:09:47I would take out my iPad to do that on Evernote,
0:09:50except that why they do this, who knows?
0:09:52But it takes so many taps to take an item
0:09:57and put it in a folder.
0:09:58And it just blows my mind,
0:09:59like isn't this the primary purpose of your thing,
0:10:02is for sorting and collecting stuff?
0:10:05Why do I have to click on the note,
0:10:08click on the information box,
0:10:09click on where the folders go,
0:10:11then scroll down to select the folder that I want,
0:10:13click on the folder and then click OK.
0:10:15It's like a hundred taps to put something in a folder.
0:10:18So I just don't do it on my iPad,
0:10:21even though that is obviously the ideal place
0:10:23to do that kind of work.
0:10:24It's hugely frustrating.
0:10:25So if Alternote makes an iOS version,
0:10:28I will definitely check it out
0:10:29because at least from the little video here,
0:10:31it looked pretty good for Mac.
0:10:32- They have a dark mode.
0:10:34- I noticed that right away.
0:10:35That's extremely important to me.
0:10:37- Ticking all your boxes here.
0:10:38Version two, apparently for the Mac,
0:10:40is gonna have full markdown support.
0:10:42- Sold.
0:10:43- Yep, that sounds like a winner.
0:10:45- Yeah, this is definitely,
0:10:46this definitely looks like a winner.
0:10:48- I mentioned we didn't have a lot of follow up on mind maps
0:10:51but we did get follow up from one person,
0:10:53Adina, my girlfriend, who I spoke about in the show.
0:10:56She provided me with very detailed follow up
0:10:58via iMessage yesterday on her way home from work
0:11:01she was listening.
0:11:02So I would like to provide her reasoning for mind maps.
0:11:05Because at the moment she is the only person
0:11:09on site for mind maps.
0:11:10Was she trying to sell you on mind maps?
0:11:13- No, she's just telling me why she likes them.
0:11:15- Okay.
0:11:16- So she says, "I need mind maps to organize the information
0:11:19that I find out for my job in a way that makes sense to me,
0:11:22rather than how someone else has structured it
0:11:24that makes sense to them.
0:11:25Mind maps help me simplify findings and rationales
0:11:28and also helps me remember them.
0:11:30So no matter what question I get from someone on a project,
0:11:33I can go to that specific location on the mind map
0:11:36to find the information to answer that question."
0:11:38So the way that I see this is like,
0:11:39So she draws out these mind maps and it's like, okay,
0:11:42I think about this, which leads me to this,
0:11:43which leads me to this.
0:11:44So somebody asks her a question later,
0:11:46she can see the thinking that informed the decision,
0:11:48which is interesting.
0:11:50And she also, she wanted to say that her,
0:11:52the way that she does these types of mind maps
0:11:54don't look like regular mind maps,
0:11:56where one idea is in the center
0:11:58and everything branches out from it.
0:12:00She says that doesn't make sense to her.
0:12:01And then she went on this rant also
0:12:03against mind mapping people to say,
0:12:05how do you organize your ideas?
0:12:07Why do you just throw them on paper?
0:12:09You just draw more branches and it's crazy.
0:12:11So she does her own style of mind mapping
0:12:14and I can see the thinking behind it,
0:12:16like drawing out these diagrams
0:12:18to try and display the way that you're thinking.
0:12:22And if your brain works like that, it's great.
0:12:24But it seems like on the whole,
0:12:26Cortex listeners don't seem to have mind mapping brains.
0:12:29- Could you get an example mind map from her?
0:12:31Because it sounds like she doesn't like mind maps either
0:12:34and she's actually doing something else.
0:12:36I feel like we need to see what she's doing.
0:12:37I can try because I don't know what she can share but I'll see if I can get something
0:12:43and if I can then great if not maybe I'll ask her to do something for me and we can
0:12:48put it in the show notes.
0:12:49I don't know how much we can do to have a show because she might get in trouble for
0:12:54that but we'll work it out.
0:12:55That's fine it's worth it for the show though isn't it?
0:12:57Oh definitely I mean you know what's her job isn't really as important as this show of
0:13:01course so you know priorities.
0:13:05I have said nothing about that, you just said that sentence.
0:13:09Well I can listen to how that sounded and I can remove it if I need to.
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0:15:50[BEEP]
0:15:51Getting audiobooks into overcast.
0:15:54There is a lot of stuff here, Gray.
0:15:56So referring to last week where you were removing--
0:16:00you were very upset about the audible icon changing to orange,
0:16:04and it was completely throwing off the feng shui of your home screen design.
0:16:08I realized, listening back to that episode,
0:16:10that it did sound a little crazy that I was having this problem with the fact
0:16:14that it was orange.
0:16:15But at the same time listening to that I thought, no, but it really is a problem.
0:16:18I just, yeah, that orange is just terrible.
0:16:22So it did have to go.
0:16:23So I have a bunch of follow up items and other suggestions.
0:16:28So we spoke about last week the Dropbox to Hufduffer Workflow with the Workflow app.
0:16:33Turns out doesn't work for DRM files as you discovered.
0:16:37So I have a bunch of other suggestions for you.
0:16:40Lucas sent over something that he created to create a private audiobook podcast
0:16:45feed using Dropbox and it's a script that he made. I didn't test this because
0:16:51I'm too scared and confused to run scripts. It's just not something that I
0:16:54understand. I've upset everybody but it's just not a thing that I've ever really
0:16:58spent much time with so I assume it works. I like that you are open and
0:17:02honest about that. Yeah it's just never something that I've spent any time with.
0:17:06I don't know any type of programming language, nothing. Scripts equals
0:17:11scary for Myke.
0:17:16Yes, terrifying.
0:17:18Absolutely terrifying.
0:17:19So I'm guessing then that you were unsuccessful
0:17:21in attempting to remove any DRM from the audio,
0:17:25from the audible files.
0:17:30I can neither confirm nor deny my attempts
0:17:32at doing such a thing.
0:17:34All I am providing you, Gray, is just some suggestions.
0:17:36Right.
0:17:39I will also, right now, either confirm nor deny
0:17:38that such a thing is possible and say for the record now that if I ever make any comments about doing such a thing in the future,
0:17:43that they are entirely theoretical conversations that are being had.
0:17:50Exactly.
0:17:54Just, you know, speculating about what might or might not happen.
0:17:55But I can also say that I have some thoughts about smart speed as it relates to audio books.
0:17:59Oh, interesting.
0:18:04Theoretical thoughts, I suppose.
0:18:04- Right, yeah.
0:18:05- Tyler suggested something called JustCast.
0:18:07It's a service that allows you to create a podcast feed
0:18:10using Dropbox, but everything happens automatically.
0:18:13So this is kind of like the service version
0:18:15of what Luke has made.
0:18:17You can sign up for it.
0:18:18It is a service that you can pay for if you want to.
0:18:22There's a couple of different tiers for it.
0:18:25You just create a Dropbox folder
0:18:27you associate with this little app,
0:18:29and then everything that you put into this Dropbox folder
0:18:32gets added to the RSS feed.
0:18:33so you can subscribe to it in other services.
0:18:36Of course, these aren't just for audiobooks
0:18:39that may or may not have copyright protections,
0:18:41can be anything, maybe some stuff that you find,
0:18:43maybe you just wanna create your own podcast feed,
0:18:45you can do that.
0:18:46There is another service called Podmash
0:18:48that CosmicServant suggested on Reddit,
0:18:51which looks to be a private alternative to HuffDuffer.
0:18:53So it basically gives you a login and it's private,
0:18:58the feed is private rather than a HuffDuffer
0:19:00where everything is public.
0:19:02The other solution to all of this is just to create a RSS feed using a service provider like Libsyn or Simplecast,
0:19:10like how you would normally create a podcast and just create the feeds.
0:19:13But the problem with doing stuff like this is you are making, you're putting those feeds potentially into the Internet.
0:19:18You can keep them private, but people could eventually find them.
0:19:21Yeah. I'm realizing, though, it never even crossed my mind to use Libsyn, which might be one of the simplest answers for how to do this.
0:19:29It's just like, oh, I'm busy making podcasts.
0:19:32And then I also have this problem of,
0:19:33boy, I wish I had a podcast feed for this thing.
0:19:35It never occurred to me,
0:19:36like maybe we can put these two together.
0:19:38- You would be surprised how long I was reading the feedback
0:19:42and putting this into the document
0:19:43before that occurred to me.
0:19:45- Right, like we are both professional podcasters
0:19:47who are in need of a podcast
0:19:48and we didn't know how to do it.
0:19:50- How would you even make one of these?
0:19:52- Yeah, I don't know why my brain went to,
0:19:55can I write a script that would take a drop?
0:19:57like I like to recreate the whole thing myself.
0:19:59So Libsyn actually sounds like a, like a,
0:20:02at least a simple way to do the thing that I naturally started with the hardest
0:20:07possible way to do the thing.
0:20:09So you also, I used, you tweeted out a picture,
0:20:13which is of your home screen. This was a couple of days ago, uh,
0:20:17where you have removed both audible and Apple music from the home screen.
0:20:22So we are in complete change again. How do you feel right now? Are you okay?
0:20:27Yeah, I'm feeling much better about this because...
0:20:32There's more balance in the orange again.
0:20:34There's more balance in the orange. Yeah, there's some things that I still don't like.
0:20:39I brought out the settings app to the main screen, as I speculated last time I might,
0:20:44which is nice, you can put that anywhere.
0:20:46I've had to move things around a little bit more since the last time I took that screenshot,
0:20:51but overall I'm relatively happy because, yes, I made the decision that two things
0:20:56things were going to get demoted to the other folder.
0:21:01And it was Apple Music and Audible for very different reasons.
0:21:04Audible because of their terrible color.
0:21:07Orange, which I have to say I liked.
0:21:09I have gotten a bunch of feedback from people using other Amazon services and it looks like Amazon has gone with orange for all of their icons.
0:21:12But the audible icon orange clashes with the other oranges that Amazon has selected for their other services.
0:21:24So if you look at a whole bunch of Amazon icons,
0:21:26the Audible one is the only one that just looks different
0:21:29and like it doesn't belong.
0:21:30So it's not just me,
0:21:32other people were complaining about this as well,
0:21:33that if you're all in on Amazon,
0:21:35the Audible one sticks out like an ugly duck.
0:21:38But so yes, I got rid of that one.
0:21:40And I have, 'cause I think we mentioned it
0:21:43on one of the earlier shows
0:21:44that I was going to give Apple Music a try
0:21:47and hope that Apple Music was solving
0:21:48all of my various music problems.
0:21:51and I have been giving it a go since it came out,
0:21:54but the end result is that I hate Apple Music
0:21:57and I don't like anything about it
0:21:59and it's been causing huge battery drains on my phone
0:22:04because for some crazy reason,
0:22:07I want to actually have music on my phone
0:22:09and Apple Music seems to disagree with me.
0:22:11No matter how much I try to get it to download stuff,
0:22:14it just doesn't and it throws up error messages
0:22:17all the time of, oh, we can't actually download this,
0:22:20just constantly but it's still working in the background and it's just like I
0:22:24feel like I'm fighting with it the whole time and it's also optimized towards old
0:22:30style radio and like there's nothing about it that I find pleasing so I feel
0:22:34like you know what the hell with this I'm just burning my whole music
0:22:36collection down to the ground and I'm just gonna start over with Spotify
0:22:39that's that's my conclusion.
0:22:41I've been seeing that you've been having issues I
0:22:43have absolutely no advice for it because it just looks like a horrifically
0:22:48annoying thing. It does surprise me because I can't personally tolerate that
0:22:52color green that Spotify chose when they changed to that. Just not even green
0:22:58green. Like I don't even know what that is. It's like they should create some
0:23:00sort of new color class to describe what that thing is. I don't know why they did
0:23:05that. It's like they're trying to burn into the screens or something. It's
0:23:08just a color I cannot abide by. I feel like you in this scenario but that
0:23:13Spotify color makes me very uncomfortable.
0:23:18See, this again I think is our age difference here,
0:23:22because I grew up on computers that were just two colors,
0:23:25horrible greens and black backgrounds,
0:23:28and so that always feels like, "Oh, it's like going home again."
0:23:31Any kind of green on black color scheme I'm always a big fan of,
0:23:33because that's what I grew up with with computers.
0:23:38So I am not bothered by the green of Spotify,
0:23:40even though I can see that many people would be just as bothered by it
0:23:41as I am by the orange of Audible.
0:23:44But again, I had another idea this morning when I was putting the show together.
0:23:48And I created something for you.
0:23:51It's a workflow action
0:23:54that you can add to your home screen
0:23:57which will open the Audible app
0:24:00and you can choose whatever icon you want.
0:24:02Oh, I know. I've used these services before. Is it
0:24:05Iconify? Or are you just using the workflow app to do it?
0:24:08I just created a workflow in the workflow app.
0:24:13And so you press the icon, it opens the workflow app
0:24:16for a second, and then it opens the Audible app.
0:24:19I used to actually do that with a dedicated app
0:24:22for Also Audible, because they used to have some other
0:24:25really hideous icon that I couldn't stand a long time ago,
0:24:28and I made a custom icon that I used on my desktop for that.
0:24:32But then they moved to an acceptable icon.
0:24:36But I also just don't like the fact that when you use the custom icons,
0:24:36because it has to do the bloop bloop of opening up two things. Maybe that'll be better
0:24:40when I put iOS 9 on my phone, because it seems a lot faster, but
0:24:44I don't like the two app open thing, so I'm going to pass on that
0:24:48for the time being. Yeah, it definitely looks nicer on iOS 9, because I'm
0:24:52running it on my phone right now. Yeah, but just a discussion
0:24:56in general, not of any files that have DRM on them,
0:25:00but we can just have a general discussion about listening to audiobooks
0:25:04in Overcast. Yeah, audiobooks that you made. Yeah, audiobooks that I have
0:25:09recorded. Yeah, I have recorded some public domain material in audiobook
0:25:14format. But you just need to keep it in a private RSS feed because you're doing
0:25:19accents and stuff and you don't want people to hear them. Exactly, reading to myself and then I
0:25:24listen to it again. So yes, we can have a general discussion about audiobooks in
0:25:27Overcast because I like also being able to consolidate something so that now
0:25:34I have a single icon which is overcast for spoken material so it's not necessarily divided into
0:25:42two different icons and I can now again for books that I have made for myself and not books that I
0:25:48have gotten from anywhere else I have a playlist in overcast which is just for audiobooks so that
0:25:57when I open up overcast it's like okay I have my three standard playlists and one of them is now
0:26:01audiobooks so I can listen to audiobooks there. And I like that, I like just having
0:26:05the one place to go for spoken material. So even if Audible were to come out with
0:26:10a much better looking icon, I think it would forever remain in the other folder.
0:26:14Like I will use it to browse for audiobooks, but I'm not necessarily going
0:26:18to have it on on front and center because now Overcast is my place for
0:26:22spoken material. The only thing I will say is that listening to audiobooks with
0:26:28the Smart Speed feature, which is the whole reason that I use Overcast,
0:26:32is a strange experience because
0:26:36I think when Marco, the guy who makes Overcast,
0:26:40was testing out Smart Speed, he was listening to
0:26:44podcasts and deciding how much of the space should be taken out
0:26:48between words or between sentences.
0:26:52And when I'm using Smart Speed with podcasts, I almost never even
0:26:56notice if it's on. Sometimes I'll have to look and say, "Do I even have smart speed on?"
0:27:00because it shortens it, but it shortens it in a very natural
0:27:04way. But when you're listening to an audiobook,
0:27:08audiobook narrators are speaking in a
0:27:12very different cadence. It's not a conversation.
0:27:16And a couple of the audiobooks I have listened to
0:27:20it has the feeling of, "Man, I know smart speed is on
0:27:24because it feels like they're talking very, very fast.
0:27:28So that's just my personal experience,
0:27:30is it feels like the knob or the calibration
0:27:33on smart speed with audiobooks is way high
0:27:37because audiobook narrators have much bigger spaces
0:27:40between their words and much bigger spaces
0:27:42between their sentences.
0:27:44So it feels like I have it on maybe one and a half X
0:27:48instead of just one X.
0:27:49So I think I'm still going to use it,
0:27:51but it is taking a little more getting used
0:27:54to than I thought listening to audiobooks with Smart Speed.
0:27:58Audiobooks that I've recorded, of course.
0:28:00Yeah, I have listened to an audiobook in Overcast, and
0:28:04it was a very different sounding experience.
0:28:07Okay, so it's not just me. I'm not being crazy here.
0:28:09It sounds strange because it's just one person.
0:28:12Mmm, maybe that's what it is.
0:28:13And so it just sounds strange because you would expect
0:28:17that person to take a break at some point, but they never do.
0:28:21Yeah, that's true.
0:28:23although I have to say, one of my absolute pet peeves is—I almost don't want to say this out loud,
0:28:29because when people hear me say it, they won't—they will—they will not be able to help but tune into it,
0:28:34but I'm still going to ruin some of people listening's experiences. I hate it in audiobooks
0:28:39when the audio engineers leave in the narrator taking a breath. I am reading a sentence.
0:28:45This is the second sentence that I'm now reading. This is the third sentence. And it's like, "Gah!
0:28:52God damn it, right? Like why didn't you take that out?
0:28:55Whenever I do narration, like prerecorded narration I've done for shows in the past,
0:29:02I do remove that. I remove the breath.
0:29:05Because it's infuriating.
0:29:07Yeah.
0:29:08It's absolutely infuriating.
0:29:09But I think you might be on to-
0:29:11I just heard you breathe.
0:29:12Now you're gonna hear me breathe every time.
0:29:15Because we're all sacks of meat that have to take in oxygen, otherwise it doesn't work.
0:29:20But, exactly.
0:29:25But I think you might be right
0:29:29that the smart speed sounds weird
0:29:31when it's just a single person continuously talking,
0:29:33because you are expecting that break and it never comes.
0:29:37I think that might be what it is.
0:29:40By the way, I'm still going to try it out
0:29:42and I want to get used to it.
0:29:44But it's one of these things where you think in advance,
0:29:46"Oh, I'll definitely like this thing,"
0:29:45and then you try it and you go, "Ooh, it's not quite what I was imagining."
0:29:49I know Marco will never do it because he has an Apple-like
0:29:53take on adding options into any of his software, but this is the one
0:29:57time I feel like, "Man, I really wish I could dial back SmartSpeed a little bit
0:30:01on this playlist." But that's the kind of option he will never add
0:30:05to Overcast, even though I might want it.
0:30:09Yeah, because I don't even know what that is. Like, how do you mean dial it back?
0:30:13but I want it on, I just want it in the middle of off and on.
0:30:18My understanding is he has it calibrated to do something like remove 40% of the silence
0:30:23whenever there is silence.
0:30:24And so I feel like, ooh, I'd want to dial that back on an audiobook to maybe 15% or
0:30:2820%, speed it up a little, but not all the way.
0:30:32Because it does also just drive me crazy how slow people, especially nonfiction narrators
0:30:36sometimes talk in audiobooks.
0:30:37Anyway, that's enough of that.
0:30:39Do you have any thoughts on Alphabet?
0:30:43Have you even seen this? Do you even know what I'm talking about?
0:30:46Myke, I am on top of the news all the time.
0:30:49Yeah?
0:30:49I'm a news junkie. I follow everything.
0:30:53Actually, I did hear about the alphabet thing.
0:30:55If you didn't hear about this, I was gonna be like really surprised about this.
0:31:00So this is for anybody that doesn't know.
0:31:02Google is kind of breaking up their operations a little bit.
0:31:07No, that's not even the way to describe it.
0:31:09That's a terrible way to describe it.
0:31:10I don't even know anything about this story and I wouldn't say that at all.
0:31:13They're forming an umbrella corporation which owns Google.
0:31:18It's not Google breaking up into a bunch of little companies.
0:31:21Well, but a lot of subsidiaries of Google are now leaving the Google umbrella and going into the Alphabet umbrella.
0:31:26So they won't be related to Google anymore, like they used to be.
0:31:29Right, but Google used to be acting as the umbrella corporation for all the stuff that they bought.
0:31:34And now they're just saying, "We're going to actually have a real umbrella corporation called Alphabet."
0:31:39- Alphabet. - Okay.
0:31:40- I was just terribly rude to you there.
0:31:42(both laughing)
0:31:45- I don't know what you're talking about.
0:31:47So Alphabet now owns Google, the new Google,
0:31:50which has less parts in it.
0:31:52So Alphabet has now taken and owns companies like Nest,
0:31:57which was owned by Google, is now owned by Alphabet,
0:32:00and is separate from Google.
0:32:02I find it very peculiar that YouTube is still owned
0:32:04by Google, even though YouTube has its own CEO anyway.
0:32:08That is something my brain can't completely wrap around.
0:32:11But yeah, I just wondered, is there anything in this that interests you?
0:32:16I just, when I heard about it,
0:32:20I first thought it was some kind of joke. People were like "Oh, Google's been renamed as
0:32:24Alphabet."
0:32:24Even when I read the stuff on their blog and looked at the website, it felt like a joke initially.
0:32:29Because it's so strange. It didn't seem real
0:32:33at first. But yes, the process I also think is funny is that Google
0:32:37created this little company called Alphabet,
0:32:42and then Alphabet bought back Google,
0:32:45is the way they have to do these things.
0:32:47It's very funny.
0:32:49That's hilarious.
0:32:49We're going to create a company which is going to buy us.
0:32:51Exactly.
0:32:55What money is it buying us with?
0:32:57Oh, the money we gave it to buy us with.
0:32:58Our money.
0:33:00Yeah, it's all very strange.
0:33:04But I haven't--
0:33:05I've only just looked into the barest bit of this,
0:33:05because of course I was curious about does this affect me with YouTube or anything, so that's why I looked into it a little bit.
0:33:11I think it's actually a kind of simple and brilliant idea, in the same way that the Google search engine was just very simple and worked well.
0:33:20So I give this a big thumbs up. I think this is a good way to do things,
0:33:25to not have all of their various projects feel like they are tied to the Google brand.
0:33:33So it's not Google self-driving cars and Google everything.
0:33:38This, I think, allows them to do the company version of what I think people should do,
0:33:43which is have lots of little experiments, many of which are unrelated to each other,
0:33:48and to see what works out well.
0:33:53So I'm a big fan of this.
0:33:55And I also think it's pretty clear from the fact that they bought, what is it?
0:33:57It's abc.xyz as their domain name,
0:34:00that they don't have any intentions of pushing Alphabet as the brand.
0:34:06I don't think you're going to see anything on the Google homepage, which is "Google brought to you by Alphabet."
0:34:11I think it looks like it really is acting as a holding company that then buys up or creates all of their various experiments.
0:34:19I believe that I did see them say somewhere that Alphabet is not a consumer-facing company.
0:34:24While I do think it's a good idea, the alphabet and the whole G is for Google, N is for Nest,
0:34:32S is for Shinehart Wig Company, this whole thing that they seem to be doing, it does
0:34:37feel a little bit like the villainous corporation in A Dystopian Future, where it's like, "Look
0:34:44at how happy we are, but everything is actually terrifying because B is for Boston Dynamics."
0:34:49The robot murdering company.
0:34:53Yeah, exactly. Boston Dynamics, absolutely terrifying,
0:34:57but the inevitable future of humanity.
0:34:59Creates robot dogs that can fall over and stand up,
0:35:02which is one of the most horrible things you will ever see.
0:35:05Yeah. Yeah. Or I mean, that's their old stuff.
0:35:09You should see their new humanoid stuff. It's like,
0:35:11it's like kill it with fire is the reaction to seeing some of their humanoid
0:35:15robots. But, so yeah,
0:35:18I, that's the bottom line. I think it's a good idea. I think it's a nice, clean,
0:35:23simple idea that allows Google to do stuff that doesn't end up tarnishing
0:35:28Google's own brand when their projects don't work out.
0:35:31Because I think that's just a natural thing that happens to companies.
0:35:35You feel like, Oh, Google tries all these things and then they kill all these
0:35:37things. They have no focus. And I've,
0:35:40I've even said similar things about Amazon. I feel like, Oh,
0:35:43Amazon does all this crazy stuff and none of it works out.
0:35:45Even though I think that's actually a good strategy, but,
0:35:48But with a company, I think it helps to dissociate yourself from a lot of your experiments.
0:35:54So it doesn't feel like, "Oh, you're always doing all these things that don't work out."
0:35:58Because most things don't work out, but you only care about the things that do.
0:36:02It also helps Alphabet, when they buy companies like Nest,
0:36:08for it not to seem like they're just trying to collect all of your data, whether they are or not.
0:36:12But when it was Google doing it, people would tarnish it with this idea that,
0:36:17"Oh, now they're gonna control your home temperature
0:36:20"to try and sell you air conditioning units."
0:36:22Like, you know, there was this like fear that people had
0:36:25that I think this might help alleviate
0:36:27if the companies are a bit more separate.
0:36:29- When I was in Hawaii, I actually stayed in a place
0:36:31that had a Nest thermostat in it.
0:36:33And the fact that it is connected to Google
0:36:37and is part of Google, it made me feel creepier
0:36:39about the Nest thermostat.
0:36:41It's like, "Oh, right, there's a camera
0:36:43"in the Nest thermostat."
0:36:44and the company that owns the place that we're staying in
0:36:48can look through the camera,
0:36:50but it's also all tied in with Google services.
0:36:52It was a little bit weird,
0:36:56and I was very aware of that Nest thermostat
0:36:59in the main area where we're staying.
0:37:01It's like the little HAL 9000 on the wall.
0:37:05- Do they have cameras in?
0:37:06I don't think they have cameras in.
0:37:07- The newer versions have a little camera in them.
0:37:09- They make a camera called the Nest Cam.
0:37:11- Oh yeah?
0:37:12which is different to the Nest Thermostat.
0:37:17- Maybe I am getting confused, but I'm pretty sure.
0:37:19- I think you are.
0:37:22- Nest.
0:37:23- Googling.
0:37:24It has an infrared sensor.
0:37:25- Okay, so it has an infrared sensor,
0:37:28but it doesn't have an actual camera.
0:37:29- Doesn't have a camera that somebody could see you through.
0:37:30- Yeah, okay.
0:37:32- I'm glad we got to the bottom of that.
0:37:33- Disassociating the things works with what we've just been
0:37:35talking about with this confusion over whether the Nest
0:37:38has a camera in it, because I feel like I just assume Google
0:37:38is the kind of company that would be like, "Yeah, put cameras in it."
0:37:43Whereas if Nest was some separate feeling company, it'd be like, "Oh,
0:37:47the neat little thermostat, isn't that great?"
0:37:51Like they used to be when they originally were around before Google bought them.
0:37:54Yeah, exactly. I would have never given it a second thought that, "Oh,
0:37:57is there a camera in the Nest thermostat?" But now Google owns it and my brain just assumes,
0:38:00"Oh yeah, it's spying on me and listening to me and sending everything into Google."
0:38:04and Google's gonna make sure that the next time
0:38:06I'm seeing an ad it's for exactly the thing
0:38:09that my wife and I were talking about
0:38:10in the main room of the house.
0:38:12- You don't want that.
0:38:13You don't want that kind of thing
0:38:14pulling you around. - No, I don't want that.
0:38:15No.
0:38:16- Last week we spoke about script writing.
0:38:18- Mm-hmm.
0:38:19- And the kind of, what goes in
0:38:21before you start creating the video.
0:38:23So today I actually wanna talk a little bit
0:38:26about animating and assembling your YouTube videos.
0:38:31- Okay.
0:38:32So you have a quite distinctive animation style, I think,
0:38:37with your little stick figure gray and stuff like that.
0:38:41I mean, it didn't necessarily start off that way,
0:38:44but you developed it over time.
0:38:46But from the very first kind of gray explains video,
0:38:50there was always animation.
0:38:51It was always animated in some description.
0:38:54Why did you decide to go with animation
0:38:57and not just like film yourself
0:38:58in front of a whiteboard talking?
0:39:00I did animation on the screen for two reasons.
0:39:04The first is that I was just very familiar,
0:39:06as we discussed last time,
0:39:07with making presentations in this style for classrooms.
0:39:12And so never when I was making a presentation
0:39:17for a classroom setting did I film me talking to camera
0:39:22as part of that presentation,
0:39:23because that would be insanity,
0:39:25because I would be in the room giving the presentation.
0:39:28So I had no experience filming myself,
0:39:32and it would have been a totally different thing to do,
0:39:37to try to figure out lighting.
0:39:40It was just entirely out of my abilities at that time.
0:39:46The other reason is that right from the start,
0:39:49I did want to keep my face off of my YouTube channel,
0:39:54because I did have a couple other little videos
0:39:56that I did before the UK one,
0:39:58which really kick things off.
0:40:00And in all of those videos,
0:40:02my face is not on camera as well.
0:40:04And the reasoning for that is because
0:40:08I was still employed at that time in various schools.
0:40:13And I wanted to, as much as possible,
0:40:16keep a distance between my employment
0:40:21and my projects on the side.
0:40:23Now, of course, that distance couldn't be complete.
0:40:27like I'm still using my actual name,
0:40:29like that's the name of my YouTube channel,
0:40:32but I thought that keeping the face off
0:40:33was just a little bit more distance
0:40:37so that maybe if a student happened to see one of my videos,
0:40:40it would be less likely they would actually realize
0:40:43it was me in the video if they're not seeing me.
0:40:46So yeah, I just, I wanted to keep things apart.
0:40:50I mean, maybe this is a bit of a story for another time,
0:40:52but the short version is that I left schools twice under circumstances where I was trying
0:41:00to become self-employed.
0:41:02And the first time didn't work out, but the second time did, which was YouTube.
0:41:06But in both cases, the people at my schools had no idea that I was working on side projects.
0:41:13I never mentioned it to anybody.
0:41:15I never brought it up as a topic of conversation that I did things on the side.
0:41:19I just would not ever want anyone at work to know that because if people at your place of employment
0:41:30know that you want to be independent and to do things on your own, at best that makes them start
0:41:38treating you like a non-entity who has no future at this place. That's the best possible outcome.
0:41:45And the worst outcome is that you have a target on your head
0:41:49as someone who can potentially cause problems for the institution.
0:41:55And so that's why I kept it silent, and my advice to anybody who's really trying to do this
0:42:03is don't tell anybody at your work about how you want to be a self-employed person.
0:42:09just think you can only do that if and when you already have a pretty solid
0:42:14plan in place for leaving but even the second time when I was doing YouTube
0:42:19when my income was enough that I could safely leave teaching I still didn't
0:42:23tell anybody at my work why I was quitting it was just like oh I'm just
0:42:27quitting because I just didn't want to connect it at all but yeah yeah I mean I
0:42:31don't know you what did you cuz I I know that you were doing your podcasting
0:42:37thing you were in a similar position like you had a somewhat public career
0:42:40yep that you were doing while you're at your big corporate job but
0:42:43me i'm just realizing i should have asked you this first did you tell people
0:42:47at your work like have i just pooped all over what you
0:42:50did while you were at your company well slightly different so
0:42:55part when i first started doing what i do part of
0:42:59um the employment rules at my company is it if you want to start a business of
0:43:05of your own whilst you're under the employment,
0:43:08you have to have it approved by a senior manager.
0:43:12- Oh, interesting.
0:43:12- Because I work, so this is when I worked
0:43:16in branch banking, so I worked in a bank branch.
0:43:20I kind of worked my way up to a branch manager,
0:43:22but this was before that point when I was kind of like
0:43:24a senior member of a team.
0:43:26Because there's so much money around, right,
0:43:28you're actually dealing with real money.
0:43:31If you have a business on the side,
0:43:33It's a really great way to hide the money you're stealing.
0:43:37- Oh, right, of course, of course.
0:43:39- So you have to be deemed as,
0:43:41as much as somebody can be a trustworthy individual,
0:43:44because I learned over my time, you can't trust anyone.
0:43:48- Oh, yes, is that Myke's advice on life?
0:43:50Don't trust anyone.
0:43:52- When there's cash around.
0:43:53When cash is just lying around,
0:43:56you may think that someone's a friend
0:43:58and you can trust them,
0:44:00but then you find out that they were stealing money.
0:44:02Like, so there's this big taboo around it,
0:44:05but my boss was very gracious.
0:44:08She understood my situation and was happy to agree
0:44:11that it was all okay.
0:44:13And then I tried to keep it to myself as much as possible.
0:44:19The secret was out, but I never shared any details.
0:44:25I didn't tell anybody where to find my stuff.
0:44:28- Exactly.
0:44:29Like I just kept it all to myself.
0:44:33But then, when I wanted to get out of the branch stuff
0:44:36and move into my marketing role,
0:44:39I had to use my on the side stuff
0:44:42as a reason why I would be good at marketing.
0:44:45So the secret was completely out,
0:44:47there was nothing I could do about it.
0:44:49Because I had to like have interviews
0:44:51with multiple managers where I could show them
0:44:53the types of things that I do
0:44:54and why I think that would make me
0:44:55a good marketing candidate.
0:44:57So then they knew about it and they spoke about it
0:44:59and everyone knew about it.
0:45:01And luckily in the scenario that I was in,
0:45:05everyone was kind of cool about it
0:45:07and anytime anybody ever spoke about it,
0:45:09they were actually just interested.
0:45:11But I still, I never brought it up.
0:45:15And I agree with you completely,
0:45:17for as much as you can keep it to yourself,
0:45:19keep it to yourself because there is no upside.
0:45:22Like literally no upside.
0:45:25Because as you say, you either,
0:45:27anytime you speak up about something,
0:45:28you get labeled as a troublemaker because you don't care.
0:45:32If there's layoffs and stuff,
0:45:34you can be put to the top of that list.
0:45:37- Yep.
0:45:38- And one of the things that you'll find out
0:45:39when you're starting to start a self-employed career
0:45:42is that your current employment
0:45:43becomes the way that you fund that.
0:45:46And if you don't have that anymore,
0:45:48you can't achieve the goals that you want.
0:45:50- Oh yeah, yeah, without a doubt.
0:45:52- It like becomes the vehicle which enables the side projects.
0:45:57I mean, I would never tell my employers this, but I viewed, particularly in the later years,
0:46:06my teaching as exactly that, of this is what is financially supporting me while I am attempting
0:46:13to bootstrap my actual career that I want.
0:46:17If you say that, you're just in trouble at work, so that's why you have to keep that
0:46:22stuff to yourself.
0:46:23course if you're doing something publicly on the internet there's always going to be a limit to that
0:46:30like there's there are ways that people can find out what you're up to but yeah just try to minimize
0:46:35it as as much as possible so yeah going back to it that's that's why i didn't have my face in the
0:46:40video was was partly just thinking about anything i can do to make it less clear that this is me
0:46:46is something that I want to, I definitely want to do.
0:46:51But yeah, I mean, I was really kind of amazed because
0:46:55I was still doing YouTube at my last school for about a year and a half,
0:47:01and at that stage I was getting videos with hundreds of thousands or maybe
0:47:05millions of views, and I did know that a couple of students
0:47:08knew about it, but as far as I could tell, no one on the
0:47:12teaching staff ever knew, for which I was always hugely
0:47:16relieved but I was also just worried about the day when this conversation comes up with a manager at some point of like
0:47:22Oh, what's this thing that you're doing with YouTube? They ask innocently but actually have already watched all of your videos
0:47:28Exactly, right or they want to know they want to know why but they're going to pretend like they don't know anything about it. It's
0:47:35managers in some ways are weirdly deluded about the corporate structure and about how things actually work at companies, but
0:47:44But many managers would still be aware that lots of their employees, if they could become
0:47:51self-employed, would do so.
0:47:54So a manager may know this in their mind, but it's still different once it comes out
0:48:00in the open.
0:48:02That you in particular are a person who is in acting plans that may have you leave the
0:48:08company at some day.
0:48:09And yeah, that's why I said it.
0:48:11At best they treat you like an indifferent person who has no future there.
0:48:14And at worst you're at the top of all of the lists for getting booted out of
0:48:18there. So that's why anybody with side projects, keep them quiet.
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0:50:59So you remained, and you continued to have the style of animation, which was you would
0:51:06display things on the screen to highlight what you were talking about.
0:51:09But when did the grey stick figure character come in to play, and why did you choose to
0:51:15do this?
0:51:16I'm looking through the videos, and I can't actually remember which was the first one,
0:51:21but I think I may have had a dozen or so videos before I ever had a little stick figure me
0:51:26on screen.
0:51:28I really wish I could remember offhand where it was. I think it might have been the 2012
0:51:32video, the 2012 in the end of the world might have been one of the first ones where I have
0:51:36the stick figure me appear. Yeah, so the earlier videos were almost entirely picture slideshows,
0:51:45where it's just pictures, pictures, pictures that I'm putting up on the screen. But there's
0:51:51a limit to how much you can do with pictures, because people think it's the reverse. People
0:51:56think that the pictures must be really easy and the drawings must be really time consuming.
0:52:02And it's actually the reverse, because trying to find the exact picture that you want to
0:52:07have on the screen at a particular moment is very, very hard.
0:52:13You think like, "Oh, there's a million pictures of Las Vegas," for example.
0:52:17But when I'm talking about something, I want a picture with a particular look.
0:52:24And so I eventually learned over time that if I can just draw stuff, even if the drawings
0:52:29aren't very good, I can still have it convey exactly what I want, instead of trying to
0:52:36filter through hundreds of pictures about a topic and find the couple that can work
0:52:42with what I'm saying.
0:52:43So I think that's why, as time has gone on, my videos have, on average, become much less
0:52:51photographs and way more drawings because I can make the drawings what I want them to be.
0:52:56Do you have like a way that you describe the style?
0:53:00Uh it's CGP Grey style.
0:53:03Do you like do you really think of it that way? Like if you see other videos now,
0:53:07as I've seen it, videos that look like yours, like do you consider that the style that you created?
0:53:13Well...
0:53:19It's okay to say yes.
0:53:21The answer is no, because I didn't create and I don't own the idea of,
0:53:26"Oh, it's PowerPoint with a bunch of pictures."
0:53:28But it's a weird situation where I do come across videos that sometimes very explicitly
0:53:37say that they're trying to copy my style. And that's always just a little weird to see.
0:53:46It's a strange thing to come across,
0:53:49but I don't own doing just pictures.
0:53:53But it's very funny 'cause I sometimes see people say,
0:53:56like, oh, there's all of these videos
0:53:58that are in this style on Reddit,
0:54:00they'll have a little discussion.
0:54:01And then the person eventually realizes
0:54:03that they've actually just seen all of my videos,
0:54:05but they were thinking they were all done
0:54:06by different people doing them all in the same style,
0:54:10which is a funny thing to realize because, yeah.
0:54:13I've seen that conversation happen a few times on Reddit
0:54:15where someone's like, oh man, all these guys sound the same.
0:54:18And someone will link to them all of my various videos and they'll go, oh,
0:54:21they sound the same because it's the same guy. I didn't even know. But I, I,
0:54:25I think, you know, there's,
0:54:26there's always some kind of line about what is similar,
0:54:31what is too similar and what is not. I mean,
0:54:33I've said before that one of the things that really made me think, oh,
0:54:36I can do a little slide presentation online was Yahtzee who
0:54:41does zero punctuation videos. Do you know Yahtzee?
0:54:45I do, yeah.
0:54:46Yeah.
0:54:47So he does these video game reviews, but he's doing a fast talking style and he has very,
0:54:55very simple animations up on screen and I've always really liked his videos.
0:55:00Even if you don't play any of the games, his video reviews of them are entertaining in
0:55:05and of themselves.
0:55:07And it was watching his stuff that made me think, "Oh, you don't have to be on camera
0:55:15and you don't have to have great visuals if the thing that you're talking about is
0:55:20being talked about in an interesting way."
0:55:23So I would say that his videos are very influential on the start of my own videos.
0:55:31But I would also say that I'm not copying Yahtzee's style, and I'm also not doing
0:55:36a thing where I'm saying, "Oh, I too am going to be a video game reviewer," right?
0:55:40I'm doing something in a very different area. But there's
0:55:44definitely an influence there. I can see the influence in the stick figure
0:55:47characters, but I would say that I think that your
0:55:50videos are more much more complex than Yazzi's videos.
0:55:55The animations that I do now are more complex
0:55:59than the animations that he does, but what I mean is it was more just
0:56:03seeing that I don't have animation skills, I don't have any drawing skills,
0:56:08but Yahtzee was a great example of how that's not really relevant. Nobody
0:56:13cares that Yahtzee's animation skills are very little because it doesn't
0:56:18matter to the enjoyment of those videos. They're excellent videos regardless
0:56:22of the animation skill. I want to talk about the tools and software that you
0:56:27use, but I think that there's a step before that, which is the planning of the
0:56:30animation, do you storyboard it?
0:56:33Okay, sort of. So here's what happens.
0:56:37When I'm writing the script, for the first, let's say, 50%
0:56:41of the drafts that I'm doing, I'm just trying to get something that is
0:56:45vaguely coherent and readable to any human being
0:56:50from the gigantic mess that we talked about last time.
0:56:53But once it gets into this stage where I can
0:56:57read it out loud in a single session, I start thinking very consciously about
0:57:04what is going to be on the screen when I'm saying each of these things.
0:57:10So the second half of the draft, that is very much in my mind, and when I'm writing it
0:57:15I almost have like a little image in my brain about what's going to be on the screen.
0:57:21Because if you write a script without thinking what's going to be on the screen
0:57:26you are going to be in a serious amount of trouble when you actually go to try to animate that thing.
0:57:32It's very, very easy to get yourself into phrasings of sentences that are totally fine
0:57:39if you're reading them in a book or an article, but that do not work at all
0:57:43if it's going to be going with an animation.
0:57:47So I'm trying to work on the script, keeping that in mind.
0:57:52But when it gets very very close to the end, and I think okay, I'm a few drafts away
0:57:57one of the things that I will do is
0:58:00It's not a storyboard because when a traditional storyboard is a rough sketch of what's going to be on the screen
0:58:06Instead what I do is on the computer
0:58:10I'll have the script on one side of the screen and then I'll still open up my good old friend keynote
0:58:15have it on the other side of the screen and
0:58:20I'll go through the script paragraph by paragraph,
0:58:24and I'll put a slide or two or three for each paragraph,
0:58:29and I will write a brief sentence about what is going to be on the screen at this point in the script.
0:58:35Now, the reason I do that is because it's very easy to trick yourself into thinking,
0:58:44"Oh, I've got this." I have in my mind something that's going to be on the screen at every single moment.
0:58:49single moment, but I force myself to write it down for each paragraph because
0:58:54I will sometimes catch out little sections where I realize, "Oh, I actually
0:58:59don't have any idea what's going to be on the screen for these three sentences."
0:59:04And three sentences is an eternity in an animation, like you have to have
0:59:08something that relates to what you're talking about then. So that's why I do
0:59:13this thing with Keynote where I force myself to write it down in words what's
0:59:17going to be on the screen. You know, this is going to be a fort with a couple of stick
0:59:24figures in it, this is going to be a king holding his crown and it falls off. Just very,
0:59:29very brief descriptions. But I don't draw anything because, again, I have no artistic
0:59:35skills so I have no ability to create a sketch. I only have the ability to create exactly
0:59:41what I make. That is the best that I can do and it is also the worst that I can do. I
0:59:46have no in-between skills. So that's why I write it out in little words,
0:59:50to have an idea about what's going to be where.
0:59:54When you started off, what tools were you using?
0:59:58I assume you probably didn't start with Wacom. I assume that there are software tools
1:00:02that you use now, which maybe didn't exist or you didn't know about. How did you
1:00:06even begin? I might have had a Wacom
1:00:10at the time, because I've always had some problems with
1:00:14RSI. I think ever since college I've always been switching various input methods.
1:00:19Sometimes I use trackballs, sometimes I use Wacom tablets, sometimes I use a regular mouse.
1:00:23I switch it up so that I'm not always using the same thing all the time for every single thing.
1:00:28So I might have had the pen tablet. But in terms of software,
1:00:33Keynote, almost entirely like we described last time,
1:00:38and then audio-wise I used GarageBand to just record it
1:00:43on my iMac.
1:00:47GarageBand was totally fine, because it was
1:00:51free, and it was on my Mac, and I could just use it, and it was relatively simple.
1:00:55And then I used iMovie to put the two things together.
1:00:59The audio track from GarageBand, and then the
1:01:03video track from Keynote. So I could play a keynote
1:01:07on the screen, and I was recording what was happening on the screen and putting those two things together
1:01:11and iMovie, and that's how I was syncing up the video to the audio.
1:01:15What I love about that is that all of the
1:01:19tools that you used are tools that are now available
1:01:23for free with any Mac. I think about this all the time
1:01:27and it's one of the things I really like about YouTube. I mean, I just like it
1:01:31about the world in general now, which is that there are no gatekeepers
1:01:35and the tools to do things
1:01:39are at your hands. They might not be the best tools.
1:01:43Like, I wouldn't use iMovie and GarageBand today.
1:01:47But they're free, and they're there, and if you put
1:01:51time into them, you can learn them and do amazing things.
1:01:55And you can just... You know, people always talk about, "Oh, don't you think it's
1:01:59harder to start a career on YouTube now than it was years ago?"
1:02:03And my answer is, "No, I don't actually think it's any harder to start
1:02:07now than it was years ago. I sometimes think people use that as an excuse not to start.
1:02:13It's like, "Oh, well, everything that could ever exist exists now." I was like, "No, it doesn't."
1:02:17If you think you can make something that is good, you have free tools, almost certainly,
1:02:23on any computer that you own, and you can just make a YouTube account tomorrow. And then,
1:02:29if your video is good, you submit it to Reddit, and it can be on the front page of Reddit in 12
1:02:34hours. It's an amazing, amazing world that we live in. And I think to
1:02:40make a video like I make 30 years ago would take millions of
1:02:45dollars in equipment and broadcasting rights and all kinds of crazy things.
1:02:50It's an amazing world, Myke. It really is. It is, I agree completely. That's
1:02:55why I find it so fascinating to hear that you began with... you're basically
1:03:00hacking together tools to work the way that you want.
1:03:03I didn't even know and I still don't know,
1:03:06can you export a Keynote as like a movie file?
1:03:08Is that how you did that?
1:03:10- I don't think Keynote had it at the time.
1:03:13I know that now you can export a Keynote
1:03:16as a QuickTime file, but I think at the time
1:03:19I had to record the screen to actually grab it.
1:03:22- See, that's so awesome,
1:03:23'cause you were hacking it together.
1:03:24And I love that, 'cause that's the attitude, I think,
1:03:28which is so awesome about this kind of stuff.
1:03:30You just had this idea, you were like,
1:03:32well, how can I do this?
1:03:33Well, I know how to use these four pieces of software.
1:03:36I'm sure I can kind of sticky tape it all together
1:03:39and spit out a video which millions and millions
1:03:43of people have now seen.
1:03:45- That UK one, made with iMovie,
1:03:47is now at seven and a half million views.
1:03:50- Yeah.
1:03:51- Which is just crazy.
1:03:52- That changed your life.
1:03:52- It totally did.
1:03:54I feel very fortunate to be an adult person
1:03:57in a time when the tools are available and the gatekeepers are gone for many things.
1:04:02And you can just try stuff.
1:04:06It was a thing that with some of my more able students,
1:04:10I was always trying to impress this point upon them. If they would say things like,
1:04:14"Oh, I want to be a video game designer," or "I want to be a writer."
1:04:18It's like, just start right now. I know you're in high school,
1:04:23and I know that you think you need to go to college and learn about this stuff,
1:04:26but trust me, you don't.
1:04:28You don't need to do that.
1:04:30You can just get started now.
1:04:32And nobody cares how old you are
1:04:36if you write a good article.
1:04:37Like it's not relevant.
1:04:39Or you can go download Xcode right now
1:04:42and start messing around with computer programming.
1:04:44And I just felt sometimes my students had this notion of,
1:04:48"Oh, someone needs to give me permission to do this thing,
1:04:51or I need to be formally trained to do this thing."
1:04:53It's like, you don't, you don't.
1:04:54It's there for the taking.
1:04:57You do not need to be ordained by the keeper of creativity.
1:05:02Yeah. Or just any kind of production.
1:05:06Like it's just out there for so many jobs in so many fields.
1:05:11And you know,
1:05:12I mean like being a YouTube creator is a kind of career now in the way that it
1:05:16was not so much when I first started. But it's the same. Like nobody,
1:05:19there was no YouTube university that I went to for degrees.
1:05:24it's just making things and then you kind of fall into it
1:05:27and that's why i think there's so many things like that in the world if you're
1:05:30interested in something pursue it and and maybe
1:05:33something will come out of it and maybe it won't but but just you know give it
1:05:36a try but yeah i i'm not sure i was ever
1:05:39entirely successful at convincing any 17 or 18 year olds to do a thing that they
1:05:43wouldn't have have done anyway but i was but when i like i said you know
1:05:48a few of my more able students when they'd say things like
1:05:50I want to be a writer. It's like, do you have a blog? And I'm like, oh no, I don't have a blog.
1:05:54Like, make a blog right now. Like, you know, go make a blog and just start writing stuff and go for it.
1:06:01Yep. I've had, I had that exact same conversation with my brother a couple of years ago. He would
1:06:05love to be a sports journalist and he was looking at trying to write for magazines or he was
1:06:13applying for things with the BBC, like for internships, and I was like, okay, do you have a web address?
1:06:18Like, where is your blog?
1:06:20- That would be my first question too, yeah.
1:06:22- Exactly, I set him up with a Squarespace account,
1:06:25bought him a domain on hover, ding ding,
1:06:27and I just set him up, I was like, just do this,
1:06:29just write this stuff.
1:06:31And he's got some little bits and bobs from it now,
1:06:33because when he applies to places,
1:06:35and this is so important if you wanna do this kind of thing,
1:06:38even if you wanna be in the world
1:06:40where you have an actual job, right,
1:06:42but you want it to be a creative kind of thing,
1:06:44show you can do it.
1:06:46Like, that is so important,
1:06:48because then when he was applying to these places, everybody asks, "Give me examples of your work."
1:06:53And it's so much better if you can say, "Oh, I do it already. I'm not writing something for you right now.
1:06:59Take a look at the stuff I do every week."
1:07:03Exactly.
1:07:05Anyway, let's get back down off our soapboxes for a moment.
1:07:06What software do you use now?
1:07:11Over the years, I transitioned from iMovie and GarageBand and Keynote as the primary tools that I was using.
1:07:16Now I use the most techy of the programs, is I use a program called Inkscape for almost everything that I draw.
1:07:24And Inkscape is a vector drawing program.
1:07:29I started with ages ago because I had some familiarity from Linux, which it originally grew out of,
1:07:34and it's a free open source program, and that's what I use for the drawings.
1:07:41crazy fast in Inkscape. Like I can draw up something just very very fast with that.
1:07:49Whereas if you try to draw a stick figure in Keynote, I hope you have a couple hours.
1:07:54Because it's actually really fiddly to do. Whereas if you're using a program that is actually designed for drawing,
1:07:59it's way faster. So I quite like Inkscape. I do sometimes think about switching away from it,
1:08:04but it is very well suited to my purposes at this moment.
1:08:08What would you look at something like Illustrator or something like that?
1:08:12I'm always just surveying the field because I know that
1:08:15I happen to just land on Inkscape because at the time I had no money.
1:08:20Yeah, no I get it. So that's why I originally used it because it was free
1:08:24and open source
1:08:24and I always just feel like oh maybe I should be using Illustrator
1:08:28or on the opposite end I'm
1:08:31I always have my eye on OmniGraffle as a possible alternative
1:08:35primarily because OmniGraffle would allow me to do some animations on my iPad, which is something I might be interested in
1:08:41if Apple comes out with a bigger iPad and nice stylus. Hint hint, Apple. Tim Cook, you listening?
1:08:48Editing on my iPad is something that is attractive to me, presuming that I have the right tools eventually.
1:08:54But I stick with Inkscape because I'm so fast and because I know how to use it so well.
1:08:59Any particular video is never the video that I feel like, "Oh, let me try doing something with Illustrator now,"
1:09:05and vastly multiplying the amount of time it's going to take.
1:09:10So I may end up using Inkscape for the rest of my career, even if I'm always interested in what other alternatives exist.
1:09:14It took me a long time to switch to Logic.
1:09:22That's where I was going next, is that I also use Logic for the audio.
1:09:25And that switch took me way too long to do.
1:09:29And I was using GarageBand right up until
1:09:33when the Hello Internet podcast came out, because when I was thinking about doing that podcast with Brady,
1:09:37I thought, "Okay, if I'm going to be working with hours and
1:09:41hours of audio, this is the point at which it now makes
1:09:45sense to learn Logic, and then I would also get the benefit of if I've learned
1:09:49Logic for the podcast, I can use Logic for the audio for the
1:09:53videos and that was a difficult transition but boy has it paid off like
1:10:00man am I a lot faster in logic I mean the the whole audio portion of making
1:10:06those YouTube videos used to be a really big deal it used to be like a couple
1:10:10days of many many takes and lots of fiddling around with editing and trying
1:10:15to get it just right and now man I can bang out the audio for one of my YouTube
1:10:20videos in a couple hours in the morning. I don't even think about it. Like I don't even plan about it.
1:10:24And that is without a doubt 100% attributable to biting the bullet and learning how to use Logic.
1:10:32I was really breaking GarageBand.
1:10:34Oh yeah, I bet. If you were doing real podcasts in GarageBand, it is not designed for that.
1:10:39No, and I, my thing was just because Logic, the jump from GarageBand to Logic is one of the
1:10:44biggest technical jumps I've ever made. It is, you may as well be going from
1:10:50audio to video, like, because it just none of it makes any sense. Like, it really is
1:10:56a huge thing to learn if you've never tried to learn it before, because Logic
1:11:01is not made for what we use it for. Like, it's made for music production.
1:11:06Yeah, I will mention a slight conflict of interest here because Linda is a sometimes
1:11:10Hello Internet Sponsor. But I really wish someone at Linda would make a Logic for Podcasters tutorial.
1:11:19Because I was always looking at the various tutorials on how to use Logic, and it was...
1:11:24They're always just designed for music. They're coming from a music perspective.
1:11:28And I just want someone to make a two-hour course on "Here's everything you need to know about Logic for Podcasters."
1:11:34because I've cobbled it together myself, but I still feel like, man, I would really like to see someone who knows what they're doing really go through it.
1:11:45So we use Logic because it has a lot of the features that we want, but it's not made for that.
1:11:53But we can kind of cobble together enough of what we need to make a podcast that sounds good.
1:11:58Now we can talk about stories about walking uphill both ways.
1:12:01I used to record and edit podcasts on an 11-inch MacBook Air.
1:12:05I am at my parents' house, obviously, and I am using the
1:12:0915-inch Mac Pro, which normally lives in my office.
1:12:13I brought it with me. That's the one piece of equipment I will move. I don't have a redundant
1:12:17computer. I'll bring the computer with me. But when I was trying to edit
1:12:21the last episode of Hello Internet, I've gotten really used to my big Retina
1:12:25iMac, and I opened up the Hello Internet file on this computer and I was like,
1:12:29"This is barbaric!"
1:12:31How did I ever edit anything on this tiny, gorgeous 15-inch Retina screen?
1:12:38I was like, "This is unusable!"
1:12:40I was really shocked at how much of a difference it made.
1:12:43You get so used to extra screen real estate very fast.
1:12:48Just reminding myself, you know you used to also use an 11-inch non-Retina screen,
1:12:53and you just get used to the better tools very, very quickly.
1:12:57It's weird, isn't it? It's weird. Because I still feel like I struggle as much as I did then.
1:13:02But obviously I'm not.
1:13:07Could you give me that thing right now and I'll just quit.
1:13:12There's the hedonistic treadmill where you get used to more and more comfy lifestyles
1:13:17as you go up in civilization and you get used to it very fast and you just start assuming like
1:13:22"Of course central heating is just the norm!"
1:13:24It's like, no, it's not the norm at all, even if you thought it was amazing the first time you had it.
1:13:28And I think there's something like that for productivity tools.
1:13:32That when you upgrade to your new productivity tools and they make a difference, you go,
1:13:36"Wow, this makes a huge difference!" And you're really aware of it for about a week,
1:13:39and then you just treat that as the new normal as well.
1:13:41The final new tool that I use now is Final Cut X
1:13:45for putting together the animations from Inkscape
1:13:49and the audio from Logic. So that's the
1:13:53final piece that I use. And again, that also made a huge difference.
1:13:57Because I can't remember why, but I do remember it
1:14:01used to be hugely stressful trying to edit the movies
1:14:05together in iMovie because...
1:14:09I wish I could remember the details, but for some reason I could never go back
1:14:13that if I edited the first 30 seconds of something
1:14:17I had to just leave that as it was.
1:14:22If I went back and tried to make changes,
1:14:24it messed up everything.
1:14:26And so it was just hugely stressful
1:14:29trying to make sure that each 10-second segment
1:14:32was perfect before I moved on.
1:14:34And now with Final Cut, I'm just constantly changing stuff
1:14:37in the beginning, or like, "You know what?
1:14:40I'm gonna make a last-minute change to this audio."
1:14:42Bloop.
1:14:44Cut that little segment out, switch things in,
1:14:42or adding new animations if I discover I have a little bit of time.
1:14:46So now I'm just like reckless with making changes all over the place.
1:14:50And again, it's from using a professional tool that allows me to do that.
1:14:54I decided to make the change when Apple did their big redesign of Final Cut X.
1:14:58Many, many people in the industry complained about that big changeover, but I thought,
1:15:02"Wow, opportunity for me!" Apple burned it all to the ground and started over.
1:15:06And I was like, "Yes! I am one of those people who is now just getting into this industry."
1:15:10industry and I'm very happy that they got rid of however the old Final Cut
1:15:14worked and so I like I've never known anything else.
1:15:17Syncing together the audio in the video I can do so quickly now that it almost
1:15:22feels too fast because I feel like oh I really like working with Final Cut X.
1:15:26I wish this part of it took longer but I can actually do it in you know maybe
1:15:31under an hour at most when I have everything all set to go.
1:15:35I have to say because people will be upset I think it's 10.
1:15:39I think it is.
1:15:40- I don't care.
1:15:40- I know you don't.
1:15:41But I know you don't care, I really know that.
1:15:44But people will complain to me if I don't say this.
1:15:47So I have to say it, and so then people at least know
1:15:51that I am telling you that it is 10
1:15:53and you can call it X if you like.
1:15:55Because I believe that that is your choice
1:15:57because it's actually not the 10th version.
1:15:59And this is a whole big thing that I was a proponent
1:16:01for X in the beginning.
1:16:03Because they went from like seven to 10.
1:16:07Just making sense. - Exactly.
1:16:08which they also did for Logic Pro,
1:16:10and that was when I moved over for the exact same reasons.
1:16:12They took it from a horrible interface
1:16:14to an interface that made sense,
1:16:15so it pushed me into doing it.
1:16:17- Yep, just like the next version of Apple software is,
1:16:21I believe it's OS X Snowseminy.
1:16:23Is that the next version that's coming out?
1:16:24Is that what you call it?
1:16:25- I'm not even going, I'm just leaving that as it is.
1:16:28That's just gonna stay like that.
1:16:29- Perfect.
1:16:30(beep)
1:16:31- This week's episode of Cortex is also brought to you
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1:19:24Squarespace, build it beautiful.
1:19:26Explain something to me though, like, so does Inkscape create the animations
1:19:30or do you create the individual pictures that you then put into Final Cut to create an animation with?
1:19:35My videos actually have far, far fewer animations than people think they do.
1:19:41Because what I'm actually doing is, for almost everything,
1:19:45I am using slide transitions
1:19:49between different drawings to make it look as though
1:19:53I have animated something. So the vast majority
1:19:57of my "animations" are actually
1:20:01slide wipes or dissolves between
1:20:05different drawings that I have done that give the appearance of an animation
1:20:09without actually doing an animation.
1:20:13Okay, so it's like a trick of the eye, I guess.
1:20:15It really is, it's a trick of the eye, and if you look at the videos, you can see it once I mention that it's there.
1:20:22And for me, that's very, very easy to do, because what I end up doing is I have some notion of what should the final state of this little sequence in the video be,
1:20:33And so I create the final state, and when I have that drawing
1:20:37it's very easy in Inkscape to duplicate it and then make the changes backwards
1:20:42to what the initial state is, and then I'm doing wipes or dissolves between each of those different drawings
1:20:48if you see what I mean there. So I do the final picture where everything is on the screen
1:20:53and then I duplicate it and go one back and I say "Okay, I'm going to remove this character
1:20:58move this character because I want them to come onto the screen
1:21:01and then that's just a wipe that's happening in some cases.
1:21:04Or in Final Cut as well, you can have slides move around
1:21:09and so very often when things are moving, I'm doing that in Final Cut, saying
1:21:13here is, like when I move, say for example, all the little country girls that I have, I move them around
1:21:18I will have a transparent PNG that has the country girl on it
1:21:25and in Final Cut you can tell it, like, move this image from the top left to the bottom right.
1:21:30So that's where the animations are mostly happening, is actually in Final Cut.
1:21:35X.
1:21:37I'm interested in the Wacom tablet.
1:21:42Yeah, you seem fascinated by this. It's just a pen tablet, Myke.
1:21:47No, but I've never used one, you see.
1:21:49That's why you're fascinated. You should get one and then immediately realize how intuitive and boring it is.
1:21:54There is one setting though, if you're going to use a pen tablet,
1:21:57which is very difficult to get used to at first, but ultimately pays off,
1:22:02which is you have two options for how do you want it to work.
1:22:07And one option is called "Pen Mode" and one option is called "Mouse Mode".
1:22:14Now most people want to try using it in mouse mode, which is
1:22:18when you think about when you're using a regular mouse, the mouse
1:22:22pointer has acceleration. So if you move the mouse very quickly,
1:22:26the pointer will go all the way to the edge of the screen, and it'll
1:22:30slam into the edge of the screen, but you haven't moved your hand that much, you've only moved your hand a little bit.
1:22:34So a mouse is actually almost like
1:22:38an acceleration device, but what you want to switch it
1:22:42to is make sure that the pen tablet is in what's called "pen mode".
1:22:46I'm just picking up my pen now. I don't know why I'm picking up my pen now, because
1:22:50because you can't see me, and neither can the listeners,
1:22:52but I felt like I needed to do my hand when I explained this.
1:22:55So when the Wacom tablet is in pen mode,
1:22:58if you take the pen and put it anywhere on the tablet,
1:23:03the pointer on the screen will jump exactly
1:23:07to that location on the screen.
1:23:09So if I take the pen and I put it down
1:23:11in the top left corner of the pen tablet,
1:23:14the pointer immediately jumps to the top left.
1:23:17And if you do that, it allows your brain
1:23:19to get a physical sense of like you're moving a pen
1:23:24on a physical piece of paper,
1:23:26and it lets you kind of jump around the screen
1:23:29instead of doing the thing that you do with a mouse,
1:23:31which is trying to accelerate toward
1:23:33the place that you want to go.
1:23:35It's a weird feeling at first,
1:23:37but it's definitely the way to use it in the long run.
1:23:40Does that make sense?
1:23:43- I think it is difficult to fully understand it
1:23:45without having one.
1:23:47Bottom line, when you buy a pen tablet,
1:23:49make sure you put it in pen mode, people.
1:23:51You'll freak out at first,
1:23:52but you'll love it in the long run.
1:23:54- Okay, I'm looking at these on Amazon now.
1:23:57- Okay.
1:23:58- And I found one here.
1:23:59The number one bestseller
1:24:01is the Wacom Intuos Pen Graphics Tablet.
1:24:05- You're just doing online shopping now, Myke?
1:24:07- I'm looking, I'm looking.
1:24:09You got me interested in this, like as a way,
1:24:11it might be a nice way to edit shows, I think.
1:24:14So one of my favorite things from your videos
1:24:17is the jokes that you tell with the animations.
1:24:20So these can be little timing things
1:24:22or little subtle references to things.
1:24:26That's the kind of stuff that I like the most.
1:24:28How much of the actual entertainment of the videos
1:24:31do you think lives in the animation?
1:24:34- I can't answer that question
1:24:35because I have a very hard time when I'm making the videos,
1:24:40perceiving them as entertaining.
1:24:44I think the best way to explain this is,
1:24:46my wife often likes to see the videos before they go live, and so if I
1:24:50it works out with timing and if she's home, I'll show her the videos before they go up
1:24:54and we always have the exact same conversation every time
1:24:58which is, I get the video ready for her, and then I look at her
1:25:02very seriously and I say, "Okay, you can watch this, but you need to understand
1:25:06this isn't a funny one. There's nothing funny in this one
1:25:10it's just a regular video." And she goes
1:25:14"Okay, because she doesn't believe me, and she shouldn't, because she will watch it and then she'll laugh at various parts,
1:25:21so she'll think something is funny."
1:25:23And I'm always surprised at where she laughs.
1:25:28Like, I have a hard time perceiving in advance that people will find anything in the video funny.
1:25:34So if you're asking about where do I put jokes in deliberately, the answer is I don't really know.
1:25:41Like after I see her watch the video then I can think like oh, yeah, I guess that was kind of funny
1:25:46But I don't it doesn't seem that way when I make it
1:25:50it just seems like oh, I'm trying to make it make a little video explaining a thing and
1:25:53I'm just talking and explaining the thing one of my very favorite things from any of your videos is
1:26:00A little joke in the most recent look then not the Confederate flag video
1:26:06We're talking about the dimensions before we are talking about florida and they put up the wall and then is it like the rest of america like kind of the america like girls she's kind of slides in the knife.
1:26:19Yeah it's a giant america girl slides in with the gun drawn.
1:26:24That's it. I just love it. It just really makes me laugh every time I see it.
1:26:29Because it's just this funny little moment where you're saying something,
1:26:32it's like, "Oh, you know, and they..." but that didn't work out.
1:26:35And there's just this gun sliding in from the side of the screen.
1:26:38I like stuff like that.
1:26:40You mentioned that one last time, and that's a perfect example of
1:26:43it seemed to me when you were talking about it that you found it funny,
1:26:46and I noted that when we recorded last time.
1:26:48I go, "Oh, Myke thought that was funny. How interesting."
1:26:51But from my perspective, when I made that little segment,
1:26:54the point was not to have it be funny. When I was writing that, I was thinking,
1:27:00"I don't want to spend the words to say that the United States
1:27:04sent in their military and took over this tiny country that barely existed."
1:27:08I was just trying to think of a way to convey these two things
1:27:12very fast, that this country existed and then obviously the United States
1:27:16military just rolled right over them like it was nothing. And so I
1:27:21So I thought, "Oh, okay, the best way to show that is to just have a ridiculously outsized United States girl come on screen."
1:27:29And it would just be obvious that she would crush them.
1:27:32So that's my thought process when I was making it.
1:27:35But it did not occur to me that anybody would find that funny.
1:27:37I was just thinking, "This is a way to express an idea very quickly so I don't have to say it so that the video just keeps moving on."
1:27:45The references are a very different thing.
1:27:48I like putting in the little references because I have always liked watching movies and television shows that benefit from rewatching.
1:27:59You get more out of them the second time that you watch.
1:28:01And so I love putting in lots of little things on the screen that people can look for on a second watch-through.
1:28:09But that's mainly because I like watching stuff like that.
1:28:12I think of some of the old Monty Python movies where there's just stuff in the background
1:28:16that when you've watched them a bunch of times you can notice that there's a little thing happening there
1:28:21or there's some reference to something that is not even remotely the focus of what's happening on the screen
1:28:25it just feels like "oh the set designer just wanted to put this thing in there"
1:28:29and so I like doing that in the videos and that's why I do them
1:28:31Would you say that you enjoy the animating process?
1:28:35Oh no, no
1:28:36Oh really?
1:28:37It's so boring, it's so boring
1:28:41It's very tedious, it's very long, it's very boring.
1:28:45The animation is by far and away my least favourite part of making the videos.
1:28:49Oh that's interesting. Because it takes the longest, does it? Longer than the script writing?
1:28:53No, no, it's by far and away shorter than the script writing.
1:28:57But it feels longer because I always do it all at once.
1:29:01So it's two or three or four solid days, depending on how long the video is,
1:29:05of just I get up and I sit down at my computer and I'm animating until I go to sleep
1:29:09sleep and then I do it again until it's done. So it just feels like this enormous
1:29:15burden even if the actual total number of hours is much less than the script
1:29:19writing. Does it take a long time to render like the actual final export does that
1:29:24take a lot of time? It did when I had a tiny very slow computer I'll tell you
1:29:30that. I remember having to plan to render the video at least the day before
1:29:39before I actually ever wanted it to go up.
1:29:43Because I think on my original computer it took something like six hours to render stuff.
1:29:47But that was mainly a function of how old my computer was, because I just
1:29:52could not afford a newer one. But yeah, I remember that it would just take absolutely forever to render stuff.
1:29:56And then I was also on a terribly, terribly slow internet connection, so it was an all-day process to render
1:30:03and to actually upload the file as well. It could never do that in a single day.
1:30:07Whereas now that I can afford an actual real piece
1:30:12of professional business equipment to work on,
1:30:15I think those things render out now in 15 minutes,
1:30:17maybe 20 minutes.
1:30:20It's a big difference.
1:30:21Yeah, it is a really big difference,
1:30:23because it also allows me to do some of the things
1:30:25that I've talked about before of rendering something,
1:30:27being able to show it to some people
1:30:31and then make some last minute changes and re-render it
1:30:33and still get it up on the same day.
1:30:34That makes a big, big difference in being able to do that kind of stuff.
1:30:38That being said, I know the rendering process has increased
1:30:42lately, because since I do everything as a vector
1:30:46drawing, it's very easy for me to increase the resolution of the videos.
1:30:50So that as YouTube has rolled
1:30:54out HD and then 2K and 4K support
1:30:58and now 4K at 60 frames per second support, I always
1:31:02I always just make my videos at the maximum of whatever I can.
1:31:05Which is kind of crazy when you think about it, that there's a stick figure on screen
1:31:08but I am rendering it at 4K 60 frames a second.
1:31:12But I feel like, why not? I just have to flip a button in my Inkscape
1:31:16to say how big do I want the resolution to be.
1:31:19And it's another button in Final Cut Pro to say, oh, export this at 60 frames a second
1:31:24rather than exporting it at 30 frames a second.
1:31:27It's very easy for me to do, but I end up with gigantic files now that take a long time to actually upload to YouTube.
1:31:34And they take a long time for YouTube to process.
1:31:36So that part of it is taking a little bit longer than it used to.
1:31:39So we've spoken a lot about the animation, but there are some videos and there are some elements of some videos
1:31:45in which you use stock photography, or you've got like "Humans need not apply"
1:31:50where it's all like stock video and stuff like that.
1:31:53What makes you want to look at something like that, and then how do you go about finding that type of media?
1:32:01Okay, so there's a process that has happened here, if you look at the videos over time.
1:32:07In the beginning, I used almost entirely Creative Commons images,
1:32:15which is very time-intensive to find the right images, and also to make sure that I'm giving credit
1:32:21to the people who created them. Again, for the listeners,
1:32:25Creative Commons means that someone is posting the image on the internet,
1:32:29but they can specify in advance the ways under which it can be used.
1:32:33So they can say, "Yes, you can use this image
1:32:37for commercial purposes, and you can modify it
1:32:40as long as you give me credit." And back in the day, not anymore. Flickr
1:32:46made it very easy to search for Creative Commons images,
1:32:49so I was always just using Flickr to go through and try to find appropriate pictures
1:32:53that had the right licenses on them that I could use.
1:32:56But as I said, that was very time-intensive, so I eventually switched to
1:33:01doing the drawings, because that took less time and I could get exactly what I want.
1:33:06But recently I have been using more stock image,
1:33:10and quite frankly that is in no small part because of the Patreon support for the videos.
1:33:15the videos, because actually paying for professional high-definition stock is surprisingly expensive.
1:33:25Very often there's something like 400 slides, maybe half of which could possibly be an image,
1:33:32and it would be negative profitability on those things if I was just using the YouTube
1:33:37advertising revenue to cover it.
1:33:39So "the humans need not apply" is a perfect example of.
1:33:43the crowdfunding, I would never have made that video because that thing was just ungodly
1:33:50expensive in terms of "I want to license all of this stock imagery." And because I'm a
1:33:55crazy person and because I'm thinking about this video years down the line, I want to
1:34:01license the highest quality version of every single piece of footage that you have. I forget
1:34:08exactly what it was but I broke a record with that Las Vegas video because in the
1:34:13beginning of the Las Vegas video there are two clips in the first five seconds
1:34:17that are each 4k and 60 frames per second and it cost me a thousand dollars
1:34:23for that five seconds right in the beginning of the Las Vegas video.
1:34:27When you said it was expensive I thought you were like just you know overplaying
1:34:32it to sound you know like it's always really expensive that's why I don't do a
1:34:36lot of it. The Patreon support helps, like you know, so it feels like it balances out.
1:34:40But no, you need that money. That is crazy. A thousand dollars.
1:34:46Yeah, I mean again, that was the highest, which is why I mention it. And I think it's in no small
1:34:53part because those two opening shots, they were each obviously shot on a drone, which was probably
1:34:58being flown illegally over Las Vegas to get that footage. Or a helicopter. Yeah, or maybe a
1:35:04a helicopter. But yeah, both of those, like I said, I wanted them at 4K and 60 frames per second.
1:35:10If you want the 480p version, you can probably get that stuff for 20 bucks. But if you want the
1:35:19high quality versions, they crank up the price very fast. And also, the other thing that makes
1:35:24it very expensive is many stock agencies adjust the price based on the expected audience.
1:35:28Of course.
1:35:29And so when I have to fill in something like, "Oh, I expect it's going to have a million views,"
1:35:35the price often goes up. And there have been some pieces of footage that I do want,
1:35:39but even I've had to say, "You know what? I cannot spend $2,000 on a single piece of stock footage for a two-second clip in a video,
1:35:48because this wants that amount if it's going to go out to millions of people."
1:35:53It's just wasteful.
1:35:55Yeah, at a certain point it doesn't make any sense. The Las Vegas one, I was willing to spend it because I wanted a very impressive opening right at the start.
1:36:03But I definitely used less stock later in the video than I might otherwise have because at a certain point the calculation starts to not make any sense.
1:36:12That's interesting to me because when I did my marketing stuff, we used agencies but every now and then we did an email or a piece of postal marketing in-house just for time purposes.
1:36:24But part of that, if it was my campaign,
1:36:27is I would need to find an image.
1:36:29And I'm not kidding, sometimes I would spend eight hours
1:36:32finding one image for an email.
1:36:34- It's surprising how many images you will come across
1:36:36that are close to what you need,
1:36:38but they're not actually what you need.
1:36:40- Do you know what makes it harder?
1:36:41- What? - Brand guidelines.
1:36:43(both laughing)
1:36:45I can't just choose the image I like,
1:36:47it has to be the image that I like,
1:36:49that my boss likes, that my boss's boss likes,
1:36:52and the person who wrote the brand guidelines five years ago
1:36:54would agree with. Yeah, exactly. I totally get it. Like if you have something in
1:36:59your mind that you want to put in the video but because you're not an artist
1:37:05sometimes the only way to get it is to find this type of imagery. Yeah and this
1:37:11is actually a good point to clear up a little point that I
1:37:17misspoke where I said I do all the animations myself and someone brought up
1:37:22the three videos that I have done with Knut,
1:37:26the artist that I've worked with who helped me with
1:37:28the single transferable vote video
1:37:30and the two Lord of the Rings videos.
1:37:32When I say the animations, what I'm thinking in my mind
1:37:35is this assembly process at the end and drawing stuff,
1:37:39but the way it worked with Knut was,
1:37:43he was very patient, is--
1:37:45- Having worked with you now for a couple of months,
1:37:51I can't even imagine what that process must have been like because it took us a very long time
1:38:00to agree on the artwork. Oh Myke, Myke we agreed on that artwork so fast from my perspective. So
1:38:07that's what I assume right is that that took comparatively to all of the other stuff I've done
1:38:12in the past way longer. But I know that that one little thing there is probably a minuscule
1:38:20amount of like back and forth compared to what that you must go through when you're creating
1:38:26this artwork for the videos. So with Knut I was giving him lists of, for example, for the voting
1:38:34videos, like here are the animals that I want and he was coming back with various suggestions and we
1:38:40we would talk through it and develop like, "Okay, I like this direction, I don't like this direction, this is good."
1:38:44And a similar thing with the Lord of the Rings one.
1:38:46The Lord of the Rings one was a huge amount of work,
1:38:49for which I am eternally grateful how much time he spent on that.
1:38:51The impression I got was it really absorbed his life for quite a while.
1:38:55In the end, when we would decide on, "Okay, this is the final thing,"
1:39:00when I say I'm doing the animations, I'm taking the assets that he has created,
1:39:06and then I'm the one who's arranging all of those things.
1:39:09So Knut is not laying out how are they going to be on the screen,
1:39:13he's providing me with the characters. So that's why I still in my mind think
1:39:17"Oh, I'm doing the animation," but the Lord of the Rings one was definitely
1:39:21a case where I realized right away my art skills were not adequate
1:39:25for being able to do that video, because there are just too many characters
1:39:29that need to be differentiated immediately, like I need to bring someone on board
1:39:33to help me with this. And so that's the way that I have done it.
1:39:37But people ask, they go like,
1:39:39"Oh, you seem to hate the animations.
1:39:41You complain about them on Twitter all the time.
1:39:43Why don't you get someone to help you?"
1:39:47And I can work with an artist like Knut in this way
1:39:52where they're providing me assets
1:39:54that I am then arranging on the screen
1:39:56in the way that I want.
1:39:58But my limited experience with trying to hire someone
1:40:00to just straight up do the animations
1:40:02has always been disastrous.
1:40:05just a total disaster, and not worth it.
1:40:08It takes way more time to try to explain what I want
1:40:12and always get back results that I am just ultimately unhappy with
1:40:16than it is to just do it myself over a long weekend.
1:40:20So that's why I do the animations, even though I don't really like them,
1:40:23and they seem like something that could be outsourced,
1:40:26but my experience says they can't be.
1:40:30And I guess for compare and contrast here,
1:40:33if you think about the animations that are done for Hello Internet,
1:40:38the ones that are done by Dovski,
1:40:43that totally works from my perspective,
1:40:46because I don't have any idea what Dovski is going to make.
1:40:48He just emails me and says,
1:40:52"Here's the audio clips that I want to use.
1:40:55Are all of these okay?" And I say, "Yes," almost every single time.
1:40:57And then I give to him total creative control.
1:41:01I say, "You just do whatever you want because you produce amazing work."
1:41:05And that's a totally different scenario from
1:41:08"I have been working on a script for six weeks and I have a very clear idea of what exactly needs to be on the screen at every second."
1:41:16And in that circumstance, it's almost impossible to delegate in an effective way to another person.
1:41:21But with Dovski, I have no expectation for what he's going to do with the Hello Internet Animated.
1:41:27And so that works.
1:41:30When you're delegating to someone, if you can just give them total control, that works.
1:41:36I could never create a Hello Internet animated in the way that he does.
1:41:41That is his skill, and I have no skills in that area.
1:41:45Those videos really are amazing.
1:41:47I love those videos.
1:41:49He does a good job.
1:41:50He makes Brady and I look very good and very funny.
1:41:54Shall we address the situation, the elephant in the room?
1:41:57What's the elephant in the room?
1:41:58- Well, we're at episode 10 now.
1:42:00- Yeah, I'm done.
1:42:02This has been great.
1:42:02- Okay, see you later.
1:42:03(laughing)
1:42:05- Of course, we've actually talked about this ahead of time.
1:42:07I mean, really, the big problem from my perspective
1:42:09is that if we end it here, it's terribly unsatisfying
1:42:12because you opened the very first show
1:42:14telling people that I put sleep on my calendar.
1:42:17- Yep.
1:42:18- And we haven't even addressed that.
1:42:21- That would have been in this episode
1:42:23if I knew we weren't going on.
1:42:25(laughing)
1:42:26Yes, but I also told you that we can't talk about calendars or schedules, because I have been off calendar and schedule for like a month now.
1:42:31So I said, "Oh no, it's a verboten topic. We have to pass over it."
1:42:40My feeling is I'll agree to do some more, Myke.
1:42:44I don't know how many more.
1:42:48I don't know how long this will last, but you still have a list of things that you want to go through with me.
1:42:49And I think you make the show very easy for me.
1:42:54I get to show up and I talk and then I leave
1:42:57all of the heavy lifting to you.
1:42:59- Which is just how I like it.
1:43:01- Which is just how I like it.
1:43:02- And that's why we work so great together.
1:43:05But we are making some changes though.
1:43:10Now we've had our time, we've learned some things
1:43:12from the past 10 episodes and we're gonna make some changes.
1:43:15So we're gonna go to every two weeks
1:43:18rather than every week.
1:43:19The plan is to still stick to a schedule
1:43:23So it will be every second Friday there will be a show.
1:43:26- You and your schedules.
1:43:28- And we're also changing the hashtag.
1:43:30We're not doing any Ask Grey today
1:43:31because we kind of run out of time.
1:43:33But we're gonna change the hashtag going forward
1:43:35for feedback and questions and follow up to Ask Cortex.
1:43:38- I think Ask Cortex makes more sense
1:43:41and I've even seen people just use Ask Cortex
1:43:44because the show is you and me talking about stuff.
1:43:48And I definitely did want it to be every other week
1:43:53because I have found every week just absolutely exhausting.
1:43:55I don't know how you do all of the podcasts that you do, Myke.
1:43:59You are on three, four podcasts a day and I'm looking here like,
1:44:04Oh man, every week I just did one.
1:44:07And then on the weeks when there happens to be a hello internet and a cortex,
1:44:10I feel like my whole work life is falling apart.
1:44:13I can't do these two things together.
1:44:15The thing is though,
1:44:16like for every other podcast that I do and or every other podcast I've ever been
1:44:21involved with, they do not take as much work as the shows that you do take.
1:44:26Mm-hmm. Why? Because I'm fussy?
1:44:28I heard you mention earlier the first and third edit of Hello Internet.
1:44:33Right. Nobody does that, Gray!
1:44:35I do three edits of the show. I don't understand...
1:44:39It's just more work. But in the same vein, for us to get this show to a standard that we both like,
1:44:45it takes a bit more work than the shows that I usually do as well.
1:44:48It's actually work that I'm happy to do,
1:44:50'cause I really love the finished product.
1:44:52- I'm glad you did.
1:44:53- So to make that sustainable,
1:44:54we're just gonna do it every two weeks,
1:44:57it's gonna continue,
1:44:58and there's gonna be much more Cortex forever.
1:45:01- No, it's not forever.
1:45:03- Cortex forever.
1:45:04- No.
1:45:05- We're not putting a limit on it, so it can be forever.
1:45:08- See, you just, I feel like I give you an inch
1:45:11and you take a forever.
1:45:13- Yeah.
1:45:13(laughing)
1:45:15- I've agreed to do some more episodes,
1:45:18some unspecified number of episodes and you're like, oh boy, eternity.
1:45:23This is not what I have said.
1:45:25Eternity is as possible as five at this point because there is no limit.
1:45:30No, not as possible. It is not even remotely as possible.
1:45:33At the very least we will both die and like, and then it will be over.
1:45:39You speak for yourself in that scenario.
1:45:41So we will be back in a couple of weeks time. Don't forget feedback,
1:45:45follow up questions for Ask Cortex.
1:45:46Yeah, so we will talk again in two weeks.
1:45:51We will indeed.