From Hijacking Audio to Embracing Open Source

Transcript

Michael: [0:00] Next time they do a remote, I'm going to, uh, capture the recording with audio hijack, that's kind of what made me go set it up and I'm like, Hey, I should schedule this to record so I don't forget. And then I'll have it. So my question for you is, uh, how do you use scheduling and audio hijack?

Damashe: [0:18] I haven't even looked at it. So it's actually pretty straightforward. I haven't set up a schedule in a while, so I don't know if anything, I actually haven't set up a schedule since version 4 came out. But I assume given that it was very accessible for me to set it up in version 3 that hasn't changed in version 4. But essentially you add the schedule and what you're gonna do and that's where when you have that recording block and it has the URL for it to open that's where you're gonna drop in that URL where you want it to go. Now the only problem that you could potentially run into is if the stream doesn't to automatically start playing when you open up the page.

Michael: [0:56] Can it load a PLS file from a URL or do I need to load that in VLC because that's what I use to play my PLS files or do you know?

Damashe: [1:06] I don't know. I was going to say you may be able to drop in the direct link that starts the stream playing and that may work. I will play around with that or alternatively, set up instead of using the URL, just have it open VLC and have VLC load the stream and just have it record from VLC.

Michael: [1:31] Can you record a schedule? You can schedule VLC to open up and then audio hijack or do you know?

Damashe: [1:38] Yeah, so you can, when you're setting up a schedule, if you're using an app, you can have it open that app. So when the session starts, everything that you have set up in that session is going to trigger, right? So if you're recording from an application and you set the application as the, So you're, you're setting up your, your source, right? The record block is just going to record whatever you're passing into it. So you're setting up your source block. Uh, so if you choose application and you choose VLC, you can, uh, it will open up VLC if VLC is not open.

Michael: [2:04] Okay. That's the important thing. So if VLC is not open, it'll open that application at that scheduled time.

Damashe: [2:09] Yeah.

Michael: [2:10] Sweet. Well, I will add this to my non-existent follow-up file to say this is how it went, but it goes in, it goes into do as man.

Damashe: [2:19] I don't know if I made a se- there's a section for follow-up. There it is. Those sections don't show up in, uh, Fantastico, by the way.

Michael: [2:26] They don't show up when you're arrowing through Todoist either, like with your up and down arrow key.

Damashe: [2:32] Yeah, yeah.

Michael: [2:33] But, you know, they're there.

Damashe: [2:35] Yeah, I know that I know that. Well, I know they're there now because I went and looked into do is right and just navigated normally into do is that was able to see this. But yeah, they also don't show up when you're airing through to do is to either. But what I'm saying with Fantastico and looking at the list for technically working, there are no delineated sections, even though I know they exist.

Michael: [2:57] So I am horrible about to do is and I see finish enrollment for Andrew's summer camp, I can go complete that now because that's finally been paid and done. But that just tells me I need to go in and start looking at to do list more. I don't.

Damashe: [3:11] What's so what's going on with your reminders, though, because you started out when you wiped your phone doing reminders and then you had the home pod. So I was like, well, maybe you'll start doing more with reminders because you can address those for the home pod as well.

Michael: [3:26] So I'm still using reminders periodically. So if Mallory tells me, Hey, can you remind me about this? Or, Hey, I need to be here on this day. I will drop that into reminders. I just quickly throw it in there and then it reminds me. Or if it's an appointment, I'm using fantastic Cal for that. Um, that's about it. Like if I don't use, I have a commitment issues. I think we've all known that forever because like I have reminders in reminders And when Marty puts reminders in reminders, 85% of the time I see them, the problem that I have with reminders, and maybe I need to figure this out and, and change it is I got to a point where I needed to remind myself to look at reminders because I wasn't actually looking at the reminders. So Marty went and set up two reminders on my reminders list that we have with him. One at 7am at one at 4pm. And you can see where this is going. This says, check your reminders. It worked for about a week, week and a half. Now, whenever I see reminders, notifications, I'm just like, clear, clear, clear, clear, clear.

Damashe: [4:32] Yeah, that, and that's one of the reasons I really try to curate what apps can send me notifications because I am extremely guilty of that notification blindness, where it's like, after a while, I just don't look at it. And often it's because of, and I wish, I'm hopeful for when we get to a point with mobile operating systems in general, and Google may be better at this with Android, I don't know, but sometimes being more contextual when you notify me, like if I have a to-do list task or reminders, because I've tried it in both and I suffer from the same issue, if I'm in the middle of washing dishes and I get a notification from to-do list that says, you know, look into OSC, and it's like, And we got time to do that right now.

[5:23] And it'll either get dismissed right then or more likely what's gonna happen is the next time I unlock my phone to, you know, adjust the pod, pick a different podcast to play or something while I'm still cleaning up, it's now gone, right? I mean, it's still a notification center, but from my perspective, it's gone. And I've forgotten about it. And when I'm done washing dishes, it's not going to pop back up in my brain. It'd be like, oh yeah, remember you were gonna do this thing. So more contextual in this around it. And I understand like do as an app do DUE for people listening DUE Is the app that you can configure?

[6:02] To Constantly nag you if you don't complete a reminder you have a you have several I mean, it's very configurable The time frame that is gonna nag you and how long and all of that. I Personally don't like the app. I don't remember why I don't like it. I just remember not liking it. I tried it But I feel like I kind of need something like that that's a little bit more contextual. Developing the habit of looking at my reminders list or to-do list sticks for a while, and life gets in the way, right? For people listening this past Friday, I was in Talladega for an event. Or an event. Like there's nothing that was going to pop up on my notifications that was going to yank my attention away from what I needed to be doing for AT guys at that time, unless it was my server went down. And even then I finished, you know, putting in an order for someone that was standing in front of me, placing an order before I went to go deal with that.

Michael: [7:00] So- But you've tailored those notifications to make that something that you don't really have to think about when you're in that situation.

Damashe: [7:06] Right.

Michael: [7:07] Is that based on focus modes or?

Damashe: [7:09] Nope, so for push, so for any server site now notifications or server notifications, I send all of those to push over some kind of way.

[7:20] Either using a pushover email address. If that's the only way that the service that I may be using. So let me back up a bit. So for people not familiar, pushover is a notification services application available on every platform that I can think of. And there are several ways that you can have notifications arrive or get pushed to the app. Some services, some web services have integrations with them, including IFTTT and Zapier have integrations as well. So I started out initially monitoring sites that I host or have any involvement with using Fathom, which is the analytic service that I use for tracking. Website visits, because it's anonymized. I have no idea who visits the site. I can just tell people, hey, 27 people visited your site this week, and 13 visited last week, which are some of the numbers I see or have seen. Sometimes it's higher. But they also offer a monitoring service. And all they're doing is just checking the website. Like they're probably just doing a ping job on the backend. Like if they get a 200 response, okay, it's up. If they get anything other than that, then it's down. And they will send you an email.

[8:37] So instead of me having that go to my email inbox where I know I'm not gonna see it, I use a email address for pushover that if an email comes into that address, the body of the email gets sent to me as a notification.

[8:50] And I use a, and there's different levels of notification alerts with Pushover. Pushbullet is another service out there that does this. There's a new one that people have been talking about for iOS that lets you put a web app on your home screen and can send push notifications to. I paid for Pushover years ago, not really interested in trying out anything different unless there is a compelling reason for me to do so. So if you have some recommendations why I should look at something else, let me know. But if it just does the same stuff as pushover, not interested, because I'm satisfied with where I'm at. But there are several different levels of alerts. So you can have just a basic alert and it pops up and whatever, goes away. You can have things delivered silently. I'm not really sure why, but there's a reason, I guess. But there's also priorities. The highest priority is when I set a site. When a site goes down, that is a high priority alert. And the way that that works is when the notification first comes in. So I got one of these on Friday, like I was actually in the middle of checking or getting ready to start checking out a customer. So I actually had an option to defer.

[9:53] Finishing this, you know going through with this purchase for this customer versus quickly going over and getting the server to reboot itself So things will come back up because I know what the problem was I went ahead and checked out the customer because that's what I was there for Now with this notification being high priority it comes in and if I don't Interact with that notification and acknowledge it it is going to keep sending notifications and there's again you can schedule the time frame So it can be every 30 seconds without acknowledgment every 60 seconds, whatever like you have some some flexibility there and how many you know, how Much time has to pass without you acknowledging the notification before it sends you another one but because it if I don't Acknowledge it and you have to either open up the notification or if you flick up to more flick down to more double-tap you have The button there that says acknowledge that lets it know. Okay. I saw this stop notifying me But until I do that It's gonna keep sending notifications. I have a set to send them to me every minute because if a site is down I Need to know about it. And if I don't acknowledge that notification for whatever reason that's something I can't allow to slip, right?

[11:03] Or if I happen to be sleep, which happened one night, too I was asleep and it kept buzzing and buzzing and buzzing until you don't me It was like your watch keeps vibrating me. It was like, oh and I woke up and I looked I was like I'm like, go fix it. But that's the point, right? I have to be able to get that up because I don't, you know, this isn't a thing I can just blow off and be like, oh, well, you know, it'll be all right, you know, nah. People can come after me if I don't keep their sights up.

[11:30] I like that process of being able to say this specific type of notification or notification from this particular service or using this specific, you know, custom email address for a pushover, make it high priority. So it keeps bugging me until I, one, acknowledge to push over, and I'm not gonna do that thing where it's like, and if Todoist did this, I would probably get a lot more stuff checked off, at least, I don't wanna say done, because a lot of times I do the thing and don't think about going back to check it off. Like that's another problem, right? And that leads to clutter, because you go in and you look to see what's in Todoist, and it's like, oh, all this stuff. And then you check off a bunch of stuff, and then at that point you're like, well, I feel like I've done a lot today, I'm done.

Michael: [12:13] I hit my daily goal, let's move on now.

Damashe: [12:16] Moving on, moving on. But that is the thing that I really appreciate about having pushover, and I have it set up for a couple other things, but that's one of the things I appreciate is that I can set something to be high priority, so it's going to keep nagging me until I acknowledge it, so it's not even, oh, I went and fixed the problem, so I don't have to worry about it, nope. It's gonna keep buzzing my phone or my watch or whatever until I say acknowledge, like I've dealt with it, please stop, the madness.

Michael: [12:42] And it can get annoying. And is that how do works? Is it kind of keeps buzzing you and reminding you of stuff like that? Because I so I will check that out. I will follow up with do because it isn't set up. I'm going to go download it and actually have it have it be my reminder to check off things into do list and do it maybe every evening or every other evening. See if I can figure that out and set that up. Because another thing is, I want to look into a tool like pushover. If you follow me on mastodon, pay on it, a mute dot community, you would know that I have officially declared as of yesterday that I absolutely hate email because I hate email. Like I hate email, but there's important things that come into email that need to a either be taken care of or dealt with, or B that need my attention in some way, like need me to reply or something. So maybe what I could do is start setting up some filters in Gmail. That says, Hey, if you get an email from Rick, uh, ACB media, or Hey, if you get an email from Jeff, uh, forward these emails to these pushover or this pushover, a notification email or an alternative tool, maybe I'll look at those other ones. Then, uh, I will actually look at them. And then when I command a delete all of my email every week, I deleted a thousand emails yesterday.

[13:58] I'm going to look at a sandbox. I promise one of these days, but then I'll at least have notifications to say, Hey, you need to go find that email from Jeff. That's the only reason I have no problem with doing a command a delete on my email is because I know if something comes up or someone says, Hey, did you get those show notes for that episode published? Oh, shoot. No, I did not. But I can go, I can still go search for it because it's not all the way. It's not gone forever.

Damashe: [14:22] Right. And that is a major advantage to having Gmail, especially because the default for Gmail, even when you delete an email, is that it just goes into the all mail folder versus actually going into the trash folder, which is an entirely different thing.

[14:41] For those of you who may be using a different email service and you did not go into the mail settings to configure what happens when you delete a message, does it go to trash, does it to go to archive or whatever.

[14:52] One way that you could also do what Michael is doing is Command A and then do.

[14:58] Command Control A, which will archive your messages. So it will move all of those messages to your archive folder, as opposed to Command Delete, which may for you send it to the trash if you're not using Gmail. Gmail's native default, even in the web interface, if you delete a message, really is for it to go to the all mail folder. Like you have to do some very specific intentional things to trash a message in Gmail, which is good in some ways It is it set expectations that I can always search for email. All right, like I have a ridiculous amount of email Saved so I'm like seven gigs and I think well email say but now that's you know from back 2008 2009 or something Email and I've imported email from several different accounts over the years So but I can always go search up something if I need to and that is a beautiful thing about email like you I truly despise email I really wish that there were a and I've tried several different systems over the years like for a while I was having specific emails filtered and sent to a slack email address I think slack is says disabled that or discontinued that for free customers. I don't remember But then Slack also got junky as hell, so I stopped doing it. I like the idea of using pushover for that, and that may be a thing that I do for ensuring that important emails get sent to me directly.

[16:25] One thing that I know for sure that I will be doing over the coming months is rebuilding out my support ticketing system with FreeScout, and I'm going to start filtering people's email that our customers especially into that system and the reason is because I I don't want to. Miss a customer email in the midst of the other junk that you know stacks up my email There's an email right now that you know it's not as important as a customer email But it would be nice if I replied to this person That's sitting there that I haven't gotten to and the reason I haven't gotten to is because when I initially when Mike told mr. Email from Steven What Mike told me about I was like, oh, okay. I see it I don't have time to you know answer it right now So I didn't even open it because it's like I don't have time to answer it and maybe keeping it unread means next time I see it I'm like, oh I didn't reply to this because if I open it and then it doesn't say unread anymore. I'm like, well, no And sometimes I filter email just by what's unread so I can get through and make sure I haven't missed anything the problem with this methodology is though email Stevens email, for example, it's probably about the 75th or 80th email down on my inbox now.

Michael: [17:45] Yep, I get it, I get it. So when you do command a delete because you get frustrated with email you may miss Stephen's email.

Damashe: [17:53] Uh-huh, so same box is something I want to try. Well actually I'm gonna use Michael as a canary and let him go do it and then he'll tell me if he likes it if I should actually go back and look at it. I have used same box before both of us have. I think we Talked about sandbox in our early episode about episode one.

Michael: [18:12] We talked about sandbox.

Damashe: [18:13] Was it managing that inbound?

Michael: [18:14] Yeah, that was the first episode Was the first time we played with sandbox.

Damashe: [18:19] It looks like like April I think or whatever it was somewhere on there And it's a decent it was decent then I think the reason I stopped using is I'm like, well, you know I don't get a lot of email I had kind of gotten things under control a little bit at least I thought I had set up filters for moving receipts into my receipts folder All of that sort of stuff. So I left it alone because you know, I mean I was also, you know Seriously, I just moved to Tuscaloosa.

Michael: [18:46] I think when I February 17th is when we published out of 2017 so...

Damashe: [18:51] I think I just moved to Tuscaloosa when I counseled and it's like man like, you know The move all of this like cutting costs is basically why I saying boss went away like not the same boss turned out to be a terrible Service is like nope just cutting costs around here And since then it's like I try to be very intentional when I sign up for what I know is going to be a subscription Service I'm more app and there's a tip for anybody's trying to get money out of me I am very quick to sometimes purchase things that maybe if I gave it more thought I would say no to to if it's a one-time purchase. If I'm signing up for a subscription, I'll start projecting out, I'll put on my business owner's hat for real, and it's like, well, you know, this is gonna cost, you know, $5 a month, well, over the course of a year, it's gonna cost me this, and do I really need it that bad?

Michael: [19:39] Would I pay that amount of money right now for this?

Damashe: [19:42] Right.

Michael: [19:44] And a lot of times the answer is no.

Damashe: [19:46] That's the other thing too, I try to more, when I know I need something, I will try to pay for it for a year. So I'm not currently dealing, you know constantly dealing with the monthly Subscription fees I try to I don't do everything like that because sometimes it's just too expensive I still need it, but it's you know, can't afford to hit them all for a year right now So we'll do it monthly because I need that service, you know, I'm currently paying for My sink account monthly Where's the first year because when I started the business and I first paid for sink I paid for it for a year And that was great until that bill came around again, and I was looking at my bank account I was looking at other commitments, and I was like so we're gonna switch this to monthly for right now We might go back yearly soon Yearly when we can but we're gonna switch to monthly because I need it because it is my primary cloud service But That 240 wasn't looking at me I could have paid it, but then I would have been you know I'd have really been hounding people who sometimes pay invoices, you know a few days late like hey. Hey, can you pay that invoice early? Hey you can you pay up for like maybe three months? Let's let's try a quarterly approach it because I would have been hurting so you know had to make that decision But we'll see how signing box works. I want to back up for a second and go back to clean email Okay How and what happened because you signed up for when we record last week?

Michael: [21:11] Yep. Yep signed up for it It did the processing that it needed to. It sent me a report that said, Hey, you need to go through and you need to do this. So I sat down on the couch with my phone and I'm like, I'm going to do this from the phone. I went through and I started double tapping on things. And then I really still got like 90 more of these to go do to sort. I don't want to go through and sort is, do I want to get this? Do you want to keep this in my inbox? Do you want to move it out? Do I want to keep getting these messages? There was three choices and I forget what they were that you could pick. Um, and so I did not go through all of my email and that's one of the reason I was looking at same boxes because it's more of a, It's more of an automated filing. Yeah, it's like a sledgehammer though, because until it gets comfortable with your email and knows what you like and what you don't, you need to consciously check both your inbox and your at same later email. So you can move messages around so that the tool becomes more understanding of the content that you wanna keep in your inbox and not. And to me, because I'm already working in my email, I think that's gonna be a little bit more of a sustainable thing for me is, you know, going in and moving messages around and trying to remember to check out same later or whatever it is. We'll see.

Damashe: [22:23] So, it's a reminder to check your same later folder once a week. Well, actually, though, if I remember correctly with same box.

Michael: [22:30] It'll email you and remind you.

Damashe: [22:32] Yeah, I think it will send you an email like once a week or something to check your at same later, especially when you first get started. I think it will kind of gently remind you to go look to see if you need to refile some of the emails that it is filing over there. But it is a very good service. But it is kind of like a sledgehammer, like they're a little bit more surgical. They will attempt to, or in most cases, move people that it finds you have previously emailed with tend to hit your inbox, not go to saying later. But a lot of these newsletters will go to. I think they do have a at saying news folder you can activate. That will kind of capture a lot of the newsletter stuff. Just generic marketing crap will end up in saying later, if somebody emails you for the first time and you have not really communicated with said person before, they may end up in saying later. But it does keep your inbox a little clean.

Michael: [23:25] So that's good, but here's honestly the one feature that I am looking for. Same black hole. I'm tired of taking emails and going through them thinking unsubscribe. I can just move in for those who don't know what you can do is you can move emails to the same at same black hole. And then any emails from Demasi, actually, I wouldn't move from there because I definitely missed stuff, but any emails from the person who sent the email to you would then just skip your saying later and it would skip your inbox and it just goes into that same black hole to me, I think that's what has me super excited about it. Because run that for two, three, four weeks. And I will realize very quickly how many emails I'm no longer getting because you can select multiple messages and a lot of times- Just same black hole them. Yep, a lot of times it's the same thing. Like I'm selecting 20, 30 messages a day and deleting them. Why am I not same black holing them? And you know what? If I think that it's going to be a struggle and I'm thinking about this right now to VO shift M choose move to folder, same black hole. Maybe what I should do is change my delete key to automatically do that. I won't because then I'll move something there accidentally.

Damashe: [24:36] So I'll give you a Mac mail tip. I don't think this works on iOS, but I haven't tried it either. But on the Mac, and it's been this way for years, and it's honestly how I used to file, and how I still file receipts that don't hit my filter automatically for receipts. Because some people send things and say, your invoice has been completed or whatever, right? and I have to move that manually over. If you add a folder from your email account to the favorites bar, and I should do a video on how you do this.

Michael: [25:10] But if you- A new content.

Damashe: [25:12] If you add a folder to your favorites bar, it now has a shortcut for you using, and hold on, cause I actually have to do it. Okay, let's do this. Okay, so command, control, and then a number. And you have to figure out which number your folder is. Now, command and a number will move you to that folder. So like command five for me right now moves me to my receipts folder. Whoa. I do not know that if I'm looking at an email in my inbox and I need to move it to my receipts for the command ctrl 5 Moves that email instantly to that folder or whatever you have selected, you know So if you have multiple messages selected it will also you know Do the same thing and now that email from sweet water about how to clean your how to take care of your microphones and receipts We're gonna undo because it doesn't belong there But that is how I get it So what you could do is add the same black hole folder or saying later whichever folders you you're gonna be consistently moving stuff to to Train same box add them to your favorites. All you have to do is hit command control Whatever the corresponding corresponding number is and now that's done Okay, so yeah We will definitely follow up a same box because that is a definition of a quick tip folks There you go, because I do it all the time and I don't think I've ever told Michael about that ever in life Nope, not even privately.

Michael: [26:34] Nope.

Damashe: [26:35] Nope Yeah, I've been doing that for so long I don't even remember when I started doing but because oftentimes you and by default you have to go do some cleanup here That's why I said I'll do a video on or do a you know, do a walkthrough of how to do this I will show you how to clean out the things that you don't want in your favorites because by default it puts every inbox For each account that you have on that favorites So for me, yep, so for me quickly jumping around now command one will show me all mail That's all the inboxes smashed together. I don't really look at that view all that often Honestly, I don't even know why I still there. I should probably get rid of that one Command two takes me to my bedrock email command three takes me to the 80 guys inbox Command four puts me in VIPs, which I honestly don't use the VIPs inbox At all or folder at all to look at email I use VIP strictly so that I can manage mail notifications so I don't get a notification from mail on iOS or Mac, unless it's from a VIP.

[27:42] Unless I go in and do that thing on iOS where I say hey Notify me about any replies to this thread or whatever, which I haven't done in a while But if Michael sends me an email I instantly get a notification unless I'm in a focus mode that has male notifications disabled I will get a notification and I don't have a ton of VIPs, but I have a few because if those people email me Nine times out of ten.

Michael: [28:05] I probably should look at it Unless Michael's just forwarding you a newsletter, which happens every once in a while, not too often.

Damashe: [28:13] The funny thing is that because of how I set up, and I did this to myself, it's not anything you did, because of me setting up your yourownpay.com emails that go out to be from Michael at yourownpay.com, that also triggers the VIP notifications. So yeah, if I'm up in the middle of the night when Updraft does a backup. Oh, I get a notification that says Europe has been backed up successfully, I don't have time right now. I'm up at three o'clock in the morning is not to fix this.

Michael: [28:48] It's to do something else This is why I love this show I have Favorites here and I have never collapsed them quick tip If you did not know vo backslash the key directly above the enter key will let you expand or collapse things very quickly. So I've never collapsed my favorites and or went through because for me it's inside of favorites all mailboxes and then drafts and well that's actually not the order it is all inboxes VIPs flagged all drafts I use none of those so I am excited for this content for you to show me how to reorganize this because I just go into my inbox and go to the next inbox I go the next inbox the mail app seems to be pretty powerful be interesting see what happens after tomorrow.

Damashe: [29:33] Yeah. Yeah, man. WWDC is coming up. We're not making any predictions. We're not talking about any of that. Not doing any of none of it.

Michael: [29:41] None of it. On a positive note though, I've been playing.

Damashe: [29:43] I will say, I will say, it is going to be interesting if... No mention of any kind of VR, AR, whatever are if no reality device whatsoever is mentioned in this keynote.

Michael: [30:01] You think someone just leaked this screenshot that makes people think, Reality OS, just because it's in a screenshot doesn't actually mean it's there, people.

Damashe: [30:11] So at this point, I would say most leaks that you get like that one, I haven't heard about that one, but I don't, I try not, I try to ignore all this stuff anyway, but if it's leaking now, it probably is gonna be there. But at the same time, Apple has shown itself to sometimes still have a sense of humor. So I could entirely see Craig saying, yeah, we're gonna put this up on the CDN early so people think that we accidentally put this up there early and then we're not even talking about that thing tomorrow. We're just trolling people, right? I could see, they're probably not doing that, right? If I were able to make a decision, I would absolutely do it. I would, because it would be so fun for me. And so you should listen to Connected from this week if you haven't. They're doing their Ricky's Pigs, which is still interesting. Wait, are you still Connected Pro? Did you go back and connect to Connected Pro?

Michael: [31:04] I have not yet, but I will if I need to.

Damashe: [31:07] Man, listen, so the Connected Pro version of the show this week was very funny. It was hilarious. You really gotta hear that.

Michael: [31:15] If I pay for it, I will listen to it. And so I need to go pay for it. Maybe, yeah, we could talk about podcasts and how podcasts listening hung. Anyways, go on.

Damashe: [31:25] But one of the things in the main show that everybody can listen to is they were going through their picks for WWDC, which they do for every Apple event coming up, which is always interesting to see what people, you know, what they're thinking about. But one of the things that they talked about, I kind of forgot where I was going with that one, I've got. My mom jumped on the pre-show so what happened in the pre-show is They were trying to Stephen was trying to explain to them what photo stream was because Apple has announced that they're killing photo stream, right? You probably don't remember that it was a thing I forgot that it was a thing and I definitely didn't know it was still active But it was you know a thing I I'm not gonna try to explain it but anyway, he was trying to explain it to Mike and and Federico, and they kept saying, what does that mean? Well, how does that work? While he's trying to explain it, he was like, will you stop asking questions so I can finish this play to get? He was like, well, we're not really understanding what any of this really means. He was like, because it was a beep feature anyway. I don't, he could have said several words there. Man, Mike, I've never heard Mike Hurley laugh so hard in my life. He was like, oh man, he's so angry, he cursed.

Michael: [32:38] Oh, man, I got it. It's the entertainment that makes it worth paying for that. That's awesome.

Damashe: [32:45] Yep. And I don't get to hear ads either, which surprisingly is weird. Like I really have enjoyed like, I can't pay for every podcast that I listen to. Because I listened to too many. But the ones that I am paying for, that I listen to that don't have ads anymore. It is amazing how much of a difference that makes in the quality of the show. Because I'm gonna say pretty much all of them, I think, with the exception of the Twit stuff. Twit's only seven bucks a month for all of their stuff. Twit, you know where the ads are gonna be because Leo still has his radio background. He still has that habit of leading into the ad. But all of the other shows, like Connected Pro, DT&S, well DT&S just used to drop in, that was all. Acast as at the beginning. I don't hear those anymore.

Michael: [33:34] I get to hear good day internet or when he transitions from the quick hits to The main story. Yes Yeah, sometimes so yep.

Damashe: [33:40] They yep. Yep. Yep. Sometimes they would be inserted there and I was like, oh man That's actually what pushed me over the edge to be honest Yeah, you constantly telling me to do it kept it on my mind But when they dropped a insert in right there one day, it's like nope.

Michael: [33:57] I'm done can't do it And you never know, is it a 15, 30, 45 second or 60 second spot? So you can't set your, I don't think he's ever gone over 60, but yeah, you can't just skip that.

Damashe: [34:09] And I don't think he has any control over those either though, right? Because they're ACAS based ads.

Michael: [34:15] So they're dynamically inserted into the content.

Damashe: [34:17] Yeah, so I had a couple of episodes kind of back to back where they dropped ads in as he was transitioning from the quick hits into, you know, whatever kind of main topic that was gonna be discussed right there, and they're so horrible with these dynamically inserted ads. They cut people off at very strange times sometimes, or when they come back, it's like you've missed about two seconds of what was being said in the recording. Like, it is dynamically inserted ads. I understand why they're a thing. They're horrible.

Michael: [34:48] And they could be better.

Damashe: [34:52] They can be handled better, so you're right. Let me clarify that. The way that most people do them, or the way that most of the dynamic insertion services work is horrendous. At least match the volume. It could be done better. And I have heard some that were done well, but I've heard a lot that were, you interrupt a person in the middle of a sentence, right? He's like, that's not a time to drop an ad. Like you know wait to their changing topics or at least nobody's talking for like two seconds Then you insert that but it's it's it's it could be better I understand why it's important because if I'm here on the east, you know, East Coast or in the southeast part of the United States There's no point in giving me a local being able to give me a local ad about The Toyota dealership having a sale makes perfect sense. Mike doesn't need to hear that on DTN s in Oregon Hell is he gonna do with a Toyota sale in Alabama? Like that's that's that's ridiculous So I understand why dynamically inserted ads have become a thing But man, like most ad tech is done so horribly wrong, but that's what pushed me over the edge for DTNS Was that?

Michael: [36:06] Speaking of dynamic ads before we talked about you and your home pod I'm going to dynamically insert an ad I produced and I'm kind of proud of of. And it's Marty and I, so hopefully you'll hear this. Otherwise, it'll just be picked up in the recording.

CLips: [36:18] Hey all, Marty here. I wanted to invite you to our live call every Tuesday, 1 p.m. East, 10 a.m. West in the ACB community. If you want to listen live, you can tune in on ACB Media 5 or bring your questions live. Check us out in Clubhouse or visit acb.community.

Michael: [36:38] To get more information about how you can join the zoom calls the replays are also shared on your favorite podcast platform search for unmute present now something different than what other people are is we can talk a little bit about how you produce that because it's the same music all the way through but it's 15 seconds on each side and one of them is the full music and then if you listen the music itself, um, is a different take, but it's the same track and that's only 15 seconds long itself too. And I got those from Andre Louis Short's collection.

Damashe: [37:15] Oh man, you shouldn't have said Andre Louis, man. You shouldn't have said it. I think the dog likes, I think Dakota likes Andre Louis stuff, man.

Michael: [37:23] No, no, he just wanted to let me know Mallory came in. I almost had him quiet the entire time, and then he got it right there at that end. I almost had it.

Damashe: [37:35] So I'm gonna pick this apart from a 10. So good at, like, generally just overall, very good. I like that. That was well done. I have a question, though. Why? Your audio sounds slightly better than Marty's Huh, I had not picked up on that.

Michael: [37:52] Okay, so I wonder what that is Is it more fuller that you heard or what would you say?

Damashe: [37:57] Yes better So you sound fuller than Marty does it would almost so if I was gonna give a simple explanation of this I would say it sounds like you used the the broadcast effects chain on your voice and you didn't do it to Marty?

Michael: [38:13] That's probably exactly what happened. Cause I do tend to use the broadcast chain on my voice all the time. Now, what I will say is I'm learning about more Reaper skills in a production, in a radio production environment. And so I'm going to start learning how to customize that broadcast chain, but that's probably what happened is I forgot to put that on his track.

Damashe: [38:36] And to be clear, for Marty listening to this, he doesn't sound bad. It's just when you came in and started talking, so you sounded the exact same way that you sound right now, almost to the point that like, if you would've just played that, or if I would've just walked in on this, kind of, I would've thought you were just talking right now, like on clean feed to me. Whereas Marty sounded more like, he didn't sound bad. He just didn't sound as...

Michael: [39:05] He didn't have that lower end to his voice.

Damashe: [39:08] Right. It's like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's. That makes a difference.

Michael: [39:11] It does.

Damashe: [39:12] It does. You, you sounded much more present in my ears. You weren't louder than he was. And it wasn't anything like that. It's like, most people would probably say you sounded louder. You didn't actually sound louder than Marty. It's just like, we had a fuller range of your voice than we did of Marty's.

Michael: [39:29] Yeah. So we will, we will work on some editing and come join us live on Tuesdays if you didn't catch it.

Damashe: [39:36] Well, good at man. I like that. That was very well done.

Michael: [39:39] We're gonna start doing more ads for different shows. So you and I need to put together some technically working ad content. And then we're also gonna work on that unmute be heard tagline. You recorded some stuff for Marty recorded some stuff I need to need to get some other recordings from it, Yeah, fun stuff. Learning about Reaper is my weekend or my, yeah, my weekend projects that I do on Saturday and Sunday is learn new stuff in Reaper. So you got something new Demasi.

Damashe: [40:09] I did. I have a HomePod Mini, courtesy of Michael Babcock, which also did cost me a 99 bucks. Thanks Mike.

Michael: [40:18] Apple, you should be paying me a commission.

Damashe: [40:20] Really? Really? Just saying. So cuz we've been out for how long and you haven't bought one yet So Mike sent me one of the whole pot mini that he purchased Secondhand and I set it up and you know I had to go read like how do I reset this because it wasn't doing anything when I first plug it up Reset it and got it set up and I added added it is now in the office in the home app sitting on my desk. And I played with it for a little bit. I did a phone call to call Tia from it just to like see how that sounded. She was out somewhere and I needed to ask her something. Anyway, I was like, oh, I'll use the HomePod, see how that works.

[41:04] I opened this gesture, so this box actually arrived from Mike on Thursday. I was already out of Tuscaloosa and in Talladega actually when the box arrived. I did have Tia's dad come by and pick it up so it wasn't just sitting out, which is good because we got back in the airport and it rained Friday morning. My carport was floated and so that box would have been floating And probably saturated and so through by the time but anyway, he picked up the box for me. So he bought it by yesterday morning I Didn't get around to setting it up until sometime in the afternoon and by the time me and Mike were figuring out that we or I figured out and was talking to Mike about recording and moving our recording time to today, which is Sunday, I had already bought another one.

Michael: [41:53] You're welcome, Apple.

Damashe: [41:55] And like Mike said, they've been, I mean, this is the HomePod Mini. It's not the new HomePod, it's HomePod Mini, which has been out for a while. I have not bought one up until this point, but I bought one yesterday.

Michael: [42:05] What pushed you over that?

Damashe: [42:08] So it was a couple of things, honestly. One, I could actually, seeing how big it was and how it, being able to hear how it worked and all of that, I was like, okay, this is cool. I did always want to get one, I just hadn't bought any yet. And then, you know, seeing how simple it was to do some of the things with it, because when I set up my phone this time, I don't have a high assistant setup on the phone unless it's unlocked. Like, I have to actually hold down the button to get it to work. I don't have that working in the headphones. If anybody's curious, I'll probably explain that at some point later. Just write it off to paranoia, right? And we'll call it done. So...

[42:55] Was like man, this is cool. I'm probably gonna keep this one back here though Which means Tia won't really get to experience it because I want to play with it, you know more But I was like, oh man, this thing is cool I'm gonna get another one now the other thing that made me buy it Yesterday as opposed to waiting is I also had been intending on trying out the pay in for with Apple and I needed to get some air attached because I think I'm gonna have to put a suitcase on a bit under the plane I have not found a I Have not found a suitcase that is carry on size that I can put a week's worth of clothes and For sure that is also a price that I am willing to pay right now And I have some very specific requirements. One, it has to have four wheels that roll. That's the thing. And also prefer to be a hard shell versus a soft suitcase.

Michael: [43:52] I will send you a link, sir. I didn't realize you were looking for a hard shell. And Mallory, I think we have a link for them or we bought them locally, but we have some that will fit in the overheads. They're a little bit longer than like a normal size, but they're still in that range for the overheads. And so they've never kicked them off and they fit a week's worth of clothes, one side will zip up. So what I do is I put like dirty clothes in one side and then the other side is where I keep my clean clothes. So the zip up side is where I put the dirty clothes so that way I can keep those separate while I'm at convention.

Damashe: [44:24] Thank you, sir. Yeah, send me that link or- And it has four wheels. Excellent, yeah. So send me that link or if you did buy them locally, tell Mallory I have a jar of seasoning for her in the box that's coming. Can she go find something similar online for me, please? There you go. And I was actually gonna put out a call Anybody on I know Michael I need to go back and look at Michael Dois's post on Mastodon I think he mentioned the suitcase. He may have mentioned a backpack Sure, I don't remember about the suitcase Yeah But I was gonna put out a call like if anybody has a recommendation for such a suitcase that will fit in the carry-on Let me know the one that I initially bought Tia picked it up from Walmart. It would fit I think I could probably stuff a week's worth of clothes in it, but there's that problem of once they're dirty Where do I put them when I'm coming back right because you know, there's it always pack a little extra Because you know one I will be the blind convention and I'm sorry if this upsets anybody, but I'm gonna be the blind Commission I'm blind Sometimes I knock stuff over and I need to change clothes or a blind person Other than me knock something over and I need to go change clothes.

Michael: [45:33] See I never thought about that. Thank you Mallory probably would have brought that to my attention, but you're right. Like, I think last year I may have packed one extra pair of clothes. I'm going to pack two this time.

Damashe: [45:45] And I and you know it and listen like it happens even if it's not a blind person But now we're at a convention with a bunch of blind people Yeah People just trying to say hello and shake your hand and they didn't know a cup was there cuz I maybe didn't even know the Cup was there. No, I got you know, coca-cola in my lap. Like yeah, this is fun So there's the and I always over pack like always pack a little bit extra just in case that happens this comes this is partially habit from having someone spill something on me and and having to wear what was supposed to be next day's outfit that day and Paying the hotel to clean some clothes for me like yeah It's much easier to pack a couple of extra sets of clothes than it is to you know Pay the hotel to clean an outfit for you Let me tell you it's not cheap.

Michael: [46:28] So air tags in a home pod mini. Yep air tags in a home pod mini Are you gonna so stereo pair or put one in the front and keep one in the back? Are you gonna do kind of both?

Damashe: [46:39] So initially what I'm gonna do is put one in the front. I told to you last night So I'm gonna try this one when it gets here and put it in the kitchen I'm basically giving that up so dash here, of course in short term I will probably do a stereo pair just to see what it sounds like like, but I've already told her that this blue HomePod mini I ordered is gonna be hers. I'm gonna initially put it in the kitchen Alongside the Google home hub to see how that goes Because she's like I don't know what to do with her I can well you just talk to it and so we'll see how that how that works out Which one do you talk to more and then we can figure out which one we're gonna keep there I think you're gonna buy another one or you're gonna buy a big home pod I think maybe not before camp invention, but I think it's gonna be very shortly after oh, yeah It will cuz it's not born. I'm gonna put these in to put them in the kids room I like the ability so the handoff of audio for me has been seamless with the home I'm any since I've had it set up like that. That is nice being able to pass something there and then also bring it back Yes, it's been extremely like I like that that that's kind of what pushed me over the edges like that and the fact that oh I can call people but if T is using it It's gonna recognize her and she can call somebody from her contact list or you know, whatever, you know I had stuff to remind us all of that kind of stuff But also I wanted to try the pay-in-four thing with Apple just to see what it was actually.

[48:00] Pretty straightforward It shows up. It showed up for me in the wallet app. So I started there because I had seen it previously Went in and went through the steps to to you know, see if I was gonna be approved They approved me for up to $400 only, you know used about 220 of that for this purchase and and I timed it so that each time I get paid from JJ, the day after that, I should be making a payment of $54 and some change to Apple, and we'll see how it goes. I wanna see how that works. It's every two weeks, so it's not, like I told her, like I would never use this to buy a computer or anything that was terribly expensive, but a couple of hundred bucks, easy enough to do. I'm not out that 200 bucks right away.

[48:48] And I get the air tag so She can use their tasks because Tia mentioned to me that she wanted an air tag Or she had been thinking about air tags because she wants to buy a new case for her Beach Fit pros And the case she's looking at has a spot for air tags so she could find her case Because the current Beach Fit pros Do not have the feature that the current air pod pros have which is or air pods Where there's five my built into the case Okay, that's frustrating. I don't well, so the current beats fit pros came out before the Before they started produce. Yeah, like they've been out for about two years might be three years going on three years I thought they just released brand new beats fit or is that those are beats? That's a different line Oh, that's a beat studio buds something. Yeah, it gets confusing with the beats very quickly These, I think the ones that they just released do have Find My built into them.

[49:49] But yeah, these Beats Fit Pros are the one that came out in 2021.

[49:57] November 2021 is when it came out. So it was before Apple had released any home, I mean, at home AirPod products with Find My built into the case, Which on us another note this whole find my your device and you left a device behind is really janky Sometimes it's useful. Sometimes it's really janky. So I can't wait till you get the convention with air tags So here's an example, right when I went to Georgia at the beginning of the year for a funeral, right? Left my mom's house left the laptop at her house perfectly fine It told me hey, you've left, you know, whatever I named the laptop, you know, it was last seen at this location It's like, okay cool You know I now understand why a lot of people were complaining about the fact it should be easier to mark this as a safe location or Market temporarily as a safe location, which is the important thing like when I'm at a hotel or visiting somewhere Airbnb, whatever I should be able to say for the next week, don't remind me if I leave this. Mmm, or something like there should be some granularity there because that gets annoying, but here's the really annoying thing We are at this event Friday, right and we leave again the car We've got everything already packed up and we're on the road about 15 minutes outside of Talladega on the way back to Tuscaloosa I get a notification that says your air pod pros are no longer detected with you. We think you left them They're in my pocket.

Michael: [51:27] Yep.

Damashe: [51:28] Yep, or is into my ear hearing this message, right?

Michael: [51:31] You're playing this through the air pods that you say I left you're telling me. I don't have yeah Yeah, but and this has happened a lot to me My other favorite one that I get is come on Apple. You know, I'm married to Mallory You know, we often travel together. I have went in and disabled it, but I would think that it would be I Get why they want to tell people and maybe I am overthinking this because I'm thinking about where it would be useful But my thought was I if you're in my family, why are you telling me that you're traveling with me? But I guess that makes sense because if there's some domestic violence issues, then maybe that is good to be aware of with the air tag.

Damashe: [52:06] So it tells you like Mallory's air tag is traveling with you. Yes.

Michael: [52:09] Yes. Yeah. See, I would think you can disable that with that specific air tag. You can say, don't remind me in the future or whatever. So that is doable. But in the beginning, is it why are you telling me this? And then I realized a couple of seconds ago why it's probably telling me that because that is important to be aware of in some instances.

Damashe: [52:28] Yeah, that's one of those that like, it can be annoying for me or you to have that happen. But I think this is one of those scenarios where I kind of err on the side of caution with them as well, because again, it could be a domestic abuse situation. Yes, you're in the Apple family with this person, but it's because they control everything in your life. For the most part, so it would be good to know that while you're, you know, trying to surreptitiously go get some help that this person is tracking you with air tag, I can I can see that that part I can in the ability to go say, Hey, don't remind me about this again is great. All right, so that's that's good. But telling me that I'd left a pair of earbuds that I'm literally listening to you tell me I left a pair of earbuds through like that That is it. It has happened way more than one time you It's been happening since they added the feature on it doesn't happen enough that I'm like, you know I'm ready to turn off the feature because you know, once you do you're gonna actually leave something behind Probably leave them somewhere. Uh-huh. It's like I left my AirPods in that hotel in Houston And now there's no way for me to get them because I'm home So pros and cons number one when you get to the hotel leave the air tag in there.

Michael: [53:41] Yes, you're in your in your suitcase Yes, you're gonna get notified of the fact that you left it every time you leave But that's okay because when you're going back you don't have to count rooms Demasi Just watch the air tag and as you get closer You know when you're there, and if you're curious you can ping it and if your hearing is even somewhat decent You should be able to hear the air tag and to make sure it's the right room if they don't have Braille I like that that is a good idea.

Damashe: [54:07] See that's a good hack. That is a very good hack I like that I was picturing myself running around the airport with a Airport worker like well, sir. Let's find your bag like look look at this screen, and then just follow it to find out where it is, instead of us standing here just waiting for a suitcase to come down that kind of looks like mine with a thing on it. So yeah, that is a good tip. Any tips on the HomePod that I should try? I have not run any shortcuts from it, but I honestly don't have any setup that would make sense to run from the HomePod at the moment either. So that is gonna push me back into shortcuts for sure, is being able to run things from the HomePod.

Michael: [54:50] There is a command, and I'm going to look it up here in a moment, that will give you a daily briefing, and I think that might be it. That will tell you your news and you can configure it. You can also tell it to I'm sorry, it's to it says ask Siri to tell you a personalized briefing and what that will do. And then this was available in iOS 14. It looks like but it will let you configure kind of like what you could do with the a lady, but you never have one of those or with Google and just give it, you know, tell it. Hey, I want to know my weather. I want to know this information. I want to know these news articles and if I have any calendar events, so So that's kind of cool. Your shortcuts and focus modes will probably start to work together. I need to start doing, I need to go in and set up some shortcuts to mute the Sonos system too. But I think that'll be something. The other thing to think about with the HomePods, especially when you start getting more of them is you'll have the intercom feature. So you can just send messages throughout the house, which is kind of cool too.

Damashe: [55:56] Oh yeah, I'm waiting on that. That's kind of the other reason I bought that one too. I was like, I gotta try this out so I can just sit back here and be like, Hey, hey, I'm about to start record telling it now.

Michael: [56:03] Now I will say that the, and I just realized, and I'm going to add, I'm probably going to keep it, but I just said, I will say probably like five times this episode. That's ridiculous. Anyways, in addition, you can also airplay to the, uh, home pod. So I did that a lot, um, from the computer. It's not the most seamless process though. So when you get a time, go play with the airplay interface specifically in safari and see if you can find your home pod because to me they just all say NS name, I believe is what it is, uh, for all the airplay devices while I'm trying to airplane safari and that's kind of annoying apple. So good luck.

Damashe: [56:41] I will play with that. I'm, I'm going to be honest with you. The way that I would have tried to do that first though, would have been just go to sound source and be like, okay, I want to send all the safaris audio to the home pod. That doesn't work.

Michael: [56:51] Home pod does not show up in sound source. That's when you need a tool like airfoil because you're using airplay.

Damashe: [56:57] Because it'll show my earbuds.

Michael: [56:59] Does it show your earbuds? Yes, but they're Bluetooth to the computer. Yeah, that is hardware or Bluetooth devices, not airplay devices.

Damashe: [57:08] Gotcha.

Michael: [57:10] But yes, that is the first thing I did too. Okay, so it's not just you. That's what got me to go download air airfoil. Yeah. To play with it.

Damashe: [57:21] That will probably get me to buy her for you at some point, too, because the ability to connect to all these Bluetooth devices in HomePods and kind of in sync play audio would be cool.

Michael: [57:37] Home Assistant might be a solution, too, since you do have the Google Hub and the HomePods. That might be a tool to play with to connect everything to.

Damashe: [57:46] Yep, so Home Assistant is a project that is slated for late July for me to really start working on building that out with this Raspberry Pi, but I do have the Pi in reserve for that specific use case of running Home Assistant. And the reason I personally picked Home Assistant over the other options out there like Home Bridge is that Home Assistant seems to, one, offer some more integrations than Home Bridge does. One of those integrations with Home Assistant is to work with the Ubiquiti stuff as well, which is a journey that I have settled on where I'm going, I think, for the most part is really just kind of waiting on this router to come back in stock is what I'm waiting for.

Michael: [58:34] I'm not going to go buy a, I was thinking, huh, should I buy, should I go upgrade some of this Ubiquiti equipment that I have and send to Mosty this router and go from there. But I don't know. That's a lot of money. I did not know that Ubiquiti would. So like what type of integrations do you get? Do you know with Home Assistant and Ubiquiti?

Damashe: [58:55] Uh, I don't. Well, so I can tell you some of them. I haven't looked at all of them. Like a couple that kind of pointed it out to me where I was just browsing around at some point looking at different stuff about Home Assistant and Homebridge and somebody mentioning why they were using Home Assistant said because it allows them to bring the ubiquity cameras that they have into home into the home app right so they can see those cameras along with their circle view or whatever doorbell they had or something but they had ubiquity security cameras put up outside their place so they're like it lets me bring those in and there's a couple other things I haven't really looked at all the integrations Home Home Assistant just to me seems like it, just from the research that I've done, seems to to be more open and has more integrations for general stuff outside of. Let me back up for a second. So my understanding is somebody listening knows different. You can reach out to us on Mastodon. Doug. I do respond to Mastodon, folks. Or Doug, just call me.

[59:59] But from my perception of it, HomeBridge was designed with the intent of, here are some products that I want to bring into the Home app specifically. Whereas Home Assistant is, here's a platform that will let you bring stuff into home if you're a Apple Home user or will let you integrate with the Alexa stuff if you're an Alexa user that may not have direct integration or Google, right? Having a Google Home that I don't think is ever going to leave my house until it just stops working, and I'll probably have to buy another one. I want the ability for me to be able to talk to Siri or control stuff from my devices on Apple, but not, you also allow Apple, I mean, also allow Tia or the kids once they, because Lincoln is going to be the one to do it, to control certain things, control things in the home from the Google Home as well. And that may work with Homebridge, but I haven't really I've gotten the impression that the integration is better for that type of setup with Home Assistant.

Michael: [1:00:58] Yeah. And let's say, let's say Mia, let's say Mia doesn't want to talk to the smart speakers, but she'd rather use a dashboard on an iPad, Home Assistant gives you that flexibility as well. So I think it's the best of all worlds for who wants to interact with the home however you want to. Maybe you want to do voice, someone wants to do touch, it doesn't matter how you want to do it.

Damashe: [1:01:24] Yeah, and that's the other thing too, is because at some point I'm gonna have to upgrade their iPad minis, or upgrade their iPad, upgrade them to new iPads, where there's new minis or airs, I don't know yet, but they're gonna get new iPads at some point. My thing is there's two iPad minis sitting around. I may trade one of them into Apple. I may trade both of them in by the time I get around to doing it, who knows? But my thought was I'll probably keep at least one of them and, put it up on the wall as a dashboard screen for Home Assistant, right? And then I can control things from there, have a widget for that on the screen, just constantly there, just keep it plugged in until it, you know, dies completely. We will have a so that's the reason, right? It's like Home Assistant seems to be built more for you want to automate your smart home. You want to do stuff with a smart home set up. And we're giving you all these different ways of doing it. Where again home bridge the whole purpose that home bridge seems to exist is that it's talking home for Apple Not just generally your home And there's also that possibility So there's a thing and this takes us right into that thing from last week that we didn't get to which is open sourcing Whatever I said becoming more open source or something. I forget what I wrote. I'm not looking at the list because nothing on the list has been discussed at this point as far as I know.

Michael: [1:02:45] Becoming more open source with software.

Damashe: [1:02:47] Yeah, there we go. That's what I wrote. So what I was meaning with that and what I wanted to discuss is like I am consciously now making more of an attempt to make decisions about the software that I use being more cross-platform even though I don't have any intentions at the moment of saying getting off of Mac OS and going to Windows for example or leaving iOS to go to Android. I want the flexibility to be there as much as possible when it makes sense. I'm not gonna make you know what I would consider to be foolish decisions for cross-platform capability but where possible I want to start looking at more openness because there does exist a universe and I may be in that universe where Apple does a horrific thing and I'm like, you know what, man, I'm done. Like, I'll just deal with the frustrations of Android, but I gotta go, like, I can't do it. You know, I'll keep my Mac Mini so I can run, you know, Audio Hijack and stuff, but other than that, I'm all the way in on Windows or all the way in on Linux. You know, I got a little Linux laptop and it's awesome. But I want that flexibility. And I'd looked around at a lot of the stuff I'm using and I've kind of unconsciously done it, but it's because the software is good. Like, Reaper is a good example of this, right? I could switch over to Logic because I own Logic already on the Mac. I could switch to Logic and start trying to learn to edit in Logic. I'm not.

[1:04:13] One, because Logic is really hostile to podcasters. Just saying. You can do stuff in there, but they're really hostile to podcasters. And Reaper works. And the nice thing is Reaper works on multiple platforms. So if I have to go to Windows, I still have the exact same interface. The only adjustments I really need to make is, you know, thinking about the combination of keys that I press for certain things are going to be a little different, but not that much different.

[1:04:43] Similarly, you know, right now I'm tied into Fantastical, which is only available on Apple platforms. That's not such a big deal because my calendar can be accessed from anywhere. I'm not tied into Apple's calendars, however. I mean, I am with my family account, but I could very quickly get out of that if I needed to. Or email, like email is just, you know, everywhere. Thinking about looking at tools like Home Assistant, right? I don't want to necessarily marry myself all the way to Apple's Home because there could come a time where it doesn't make sense to keep doing that. And I don't want to have to unravel a bunch of stuff with HomeBridge at some point because I set it up Apple-focused. And I don't want to lock in, who knows when my kids are going to end up using Locker Room. could end up having to get them Chromebooks because that's what the school is giving them. Or because I have to buy two computers right now for two kids and hey, Chromebooks are cheaper. We're going this route. I'd love to give both of you a MacBook Air, but yeah.

Michael: [1:05:42] We'll work on that. We'll get there.

Damashe: [1:05:44] We'll get there. We'll get there at some point, but so that that's the thing. And honestly, like while it may be counterintuitive to a lot of people, that is one of the reasons that I still like my Mac over any other computing platform is because it is more and it's not nearly as open as it was on Intel because we haven't gotten all the virtualization stuff there yet but it's getting there but one of the reasons I picked it I like the Mac over you know just don't thinking about Rogami but like they help they help keep me here so Apple you should probably be paying them some money too in addition to giving Michael a cut of this home pod purchase But the fact that on Windows, and this is my selling point for the Mac when I went to rehab in 2013 and basically sold the purchasing of a Mac to them for me, was I have more flexibility. I have Mac OS, I can run Windows, I can run Linux on here if I needed to. Whether that's virtualized or on the Intel systems, boot camping it or completely wiping it and just making it a Windows machine. Like you had the flexibility and we still have that now. I can run Windows on here, I can run Linux on here. I haven't installed it yet, but I'm going to do that. And that's with Parallels, which is a paid application. But the virtualization stuff is coming along slowly for Apple Silicon. And if you look back to the Intel days, it took a while. that wasn't an incident.

[1:07:10] That wasn't an instant process to happen either, you know parallels and VMware got there a lot faster Free tools like virtual box and some of the other stuff that that is around wine, which is a very popular intel emulation software You know It took them years to get to a point where a lot of people were using that stuff because they had to build it Up and apple silicon is a completely new dynamic when it comes to chips. So it's going to take a while for that virtualization to mature as much as it is on Intel, but it's getting there and I can see the progress happening outside of just parallels and VMware. So even though it seems counterintuitive that I'm choosing, I continue to continue using a Mac and I like the Mac because I feel like it gives me the most flexibility. I cannot run macOS on Windows. I can't really run Linux on Windows. Yes, I know about the Linux subsystem. I also know it's kind of garbage at some points.

[1:08:13] Whereas, you know, virtualizing, now VMware Player for Windows would allow you to run a Linux box, I think, still. But you can't run macOS on Windows. So, just trying to be more- Best of both worlds. Best of all worlds. Of all worlds, yeah, there you go. And I'm just trying to be more intentional. When I started using new software, like I have a strew going down the pathway of say using, there's a great, pretty good app actually called WinWorks. I think it's still available. Rosemary Orchard now develops that application. And all of this is just because of the application. Think Calendly, think Acurity, very much like those. But it's just available on iPhone as far as I know. I mean, people get a web link to book with you what your management of it is gonna be from your iOS device. I don't know if it runs on the Mac now or not because I hadn't looked at it since Apple Silicon came out.

[1:09:10] And I kind of made a decision back then too, like, well, what happens if I ever leave Apple or what happens if I'm in a scenario where I don't have access to my iPhone but I need to deal with this situation? If I'm going to use a service, I would prefer for it to be a web-based service as opposed to a Mac or iPhone-based application only works in this environment because there are plenty of scenarios where I don't have access to those devices what do I do so I'm trying to be more intentional about that like making those decisions when it comes to picking up something new or switching to something else that is gonna give me the flexibility to work off of any platform because I'm still probably gonna buy that little stick Windows computer is on point.

Michael: [1:09:56] Good. Well, I am excited to see where that goes because I'm, I've been watching this, uh, open source guy on YouTube that tries to find for small business owners, open source alternatives for the, the tools that keep his business and his life running. And so that's kind of gotten me down the path of, of looking at them and, you know, relying on one tool can sometimes be frustrating recently. And I just saw this in to do it. So I'm going to transition here. You heard me tell you about me using a couple of different tools to reset an Android phone because talkback wasn't turned on.

[1:10:37] Uh, so I have been on the be my eyes beta for a couple of weeks now, and I used in combination with be my eyes and seeing AI and IRA, uh, a, a, I was able to put those tools together and reset a phone. So full transparency, this pixel did not have a pin number and it didn't require a password when I went to reset it. I think that would have made this process a lot more difficult, but I used, uh, be my eyes to capture a quick image of what the screen looked like, and it gave me a general idea, not the most reliable in some instances at this point, just saying I understand why it's still in beta, because if it gave me the results that It gave me this morning. Uh, I could see it being very problematic for some people. So I can't talk more about that, but I did realize quickly that I needed something to give me instant text feedback and that's where seeing AI came in. So I was able to use seeing AI and do what I thought, because, you know, as a talkback user, one finger gestures or two finger gestures, I'm like, I think I just use one finger and scroll it up. That's how it should work in my mind.

[1:11:45] And that is how it worked. And I use seeing AI to be able to see that. And then I got to the point, so I was able to get into the settings because well, I was able to get to the screen with the settings on it and I tapped on YouTube, which was below settings, but I was able to tell that it was YouTube because seeing AI on my iPhone started reading things that sounded like YouTube. And so I swiped up from the bottom tapped on the, or I slide slid my finger up from where I assumed the doc was because I was able to spatially, uh, realize where that was. Then I slid my finger up a third time until seeing AI eventually told me settings. And then I called Ira and I said, Hey, can you help guide my finger to where I need to go? And then I was able to tell them what I was able, what I was looking for. And they were able to able to help guide my finger. Now, Apple has released...

[1:12:34] News about new functionality coming to light our devices in the magnification application and One of those includes the ability to point at text on a touch screen and then touch that text When it reads what you're pointing at that could be very useful and I could really see ways that that could help in these instances right now having to take a picture send that picture off to a a service and then have that service come back doesn't give me enough information, but I will say, and then Demosi can ask questions or we can transition to something else. I will say one way that I did get around that is I took pictures of some text on a touch screen and said, what text is my finger above? And it did give me that information. It's a very slow and clunky process, but that could be a way to get that information as well.

Damashe: [1:13:25] So that is, and we talked about this when you did it, and I said, Dylan, that is an excellent use of all of the tools that you kind of have access to to get something accomplished. And I told you I was gonna do something similar with seeing AI and a combination of that and probably Aira to get a Android phone into a state where I could flash it and put an alternative ROM on it. This is, you know, my Pixel, I'm not damaging anybody else's stuff. There's more and I tell you I There's a app and I'm right now blanking on the name of it that was recently released It was $9.99.

Michael: [1:14:08] When I got it out of the App Store and it Does a similar thing to what Apple has a house I did Okay I will I will share the name with people in a second because I talked about it on the Kelly and Romeo segment this last Monday and I heard about it and I'm like that looks interesting.

Damashe: [1:14:24] So you've played with it Yep, I play with it a bit. I need to play with it a little bit more. Yeah, so I did play with it. What I tried with it initially was something that I thought was a good use case for it, which was I went over to the air fryer and I pointed it at the air fryer and I pointed my finger at, you know, put my finger at something. I was like, that is, I forget what button I was touching, but I was like, oh, Oh, okay, this does kind of work. I need to, and here's the thing for people listening, that I sometimes struggle with, and I have to just kind of be more systematic about it, is when I'm testing an app like this, it's like, oh, it's supposed to do this. I have to put myself in a scenario where I need to use it or come up with a scenario where like, let me walk through how I would do this if this was the situation. And that's what I need to do with this app to really test it. I honestly forgot I had it on the phone I would have tried it while I was at the event this weekend in Talladega. Did see a Keurig machine for the first time when I was in Talladega. Oh you did Yeah, I mean first time I've seen one that I could have used it yeah, yeah, okay, it's like huh, I don't know about this No, that coffee is like it's not gonna put enough coffee in my cup, man. I think it's too small I don't know. I need a I need to XL Keurig or something I don't know why I'm saying that word.

[1:15:52] There was not anything touch screen there for me to attempt to use other than the soda machine. But I could have tried it like in the elevator, like had I been thinking about it, I would have tried it out on the elevators just to see, it did have Braille everywhere in there. But Talladega is one of those places that is very blind aware because the school for the blind, that's where the school for the blind is in Alabama. So as well as a school for the deaf, so they're very accessibility aware They're more so than any other place. I did a lot of places you may go Everything there is kind of walkable Brother small town, but the hotel was pretty nice had braille everywhere. The only thing they did not do is put any sort of indicator on the Key cards for the rooms and they have the ones where you still have to slide it in the right way for it to unlock your door. Oh, okay. So that was a that was a that was a thing. You know, rotate the car. Nope, nope, nope. I finally did figure out, you know, from the way that we do things, you know, it's like, Oh, this side is very, very smooth. This side feels like it has a little more tackiness to it. That tacky side needs to be up. So at least it cut down on the number of times I had to flip the card around.

Michael: [1:17:10] Now, it would be nice if you could unlock it with your door. The app that we were talking about, I was kind of distracted because I've really kind of screwed up my drafts. I have drafts and trash and I have drafts and all and I have drafts and inbox and I need to figure all that out. But the name of the app is echo batics b a t i x.

Damashe: [1:17:32] And it's all so hold on. Let me let me know. I gotta look because it doesn't sound like the app I downloaded.

Michael: [1:17:38] Oh, this is the one that Doug shared. It's a choco bettix. I don't know how to pronounce what it says. I will message this to you and tell you what it calls it here.

Damashe: [1:17:48] Oh, oh, that's it. I just forgot the name of it. Echo batics, echo batics.

Michael: [1:17:55] There you go. See, see, you can you got a better way of pronouncing it. That was my that could have been my fault, too.

Damashe: [1:18:01] I mean, I just I just told a voice over the way voiceover just said it.

Michael: [1:18:07] So I think in it, see, I'm like, yeah, voiceover, right? reasons. Yeah, so ecobot bad X is a good app that I need to check out because I haven't paid for it.

Damashe: [1:18:17] So yeah, it is a paid up front app. That's one to me downside. I feel like they should have probably done it in our purchase with a trial so you could see if it was going to work for you before you have to shell out to 10 bucks because we have all seen apps like well, not necessarily like that, but you know apps that are designed to do specific things and they of fall down on the job when it comes to doing it, but at least they're free or free with an in-app, you know, purchase or subscription. For example, there's a bill identifier app that I tried out that is free and it has an in-app subscription. I kind of understand why there's an in-app subscription because the first thing I was like, why do I need to pay a subscription for an app to to identify money. But they also add some additional features. And really I can use it probably without having to ever pay for it to recognize smaller bills. But they're doing a thing where they're also, and I understand that outside the US things are a lot different. So identifying money from different currencies it can do, that's a part of the pro version. So you get to pick one currency that you wanted to identify for free and you can keep using it for that. I think they may also cut you off at higher bills. So like it'll do ones, fives, tens, and twenties, but it won't tell me what a 50 or 100 is right now for free. Don't have too many of those passing through my hands nowadays, so who cares? Yeah, yeah.

[1:19:39] But they also offer conversion rates as well. So if I was looking at some euros and I was paying for it, I was looking at euros and it told me this is a 50 euro note I could also have it right there and tell me what the conversion rate, so how much is this worth in US dollars. So I can kind of see what they're charging for. And listen, Looktel disappeared and it was a one-time purchase. And that was the best money identifier I've ever seen in my life. Looktel Money Reader, for those of you who remember.

Michael: [1:20:08] So yeah, that's the experiment that I did with resetting the Pixel and using multiple apps, but got the job done. And it was a encouraging feeling, because I'm like, huh, I did not use a screen reader and I just reset a device. That's kind of cool.

Damashe: [1:20:24] That is awesome, man. That is awesome. And if anybody has feedback on echo bandits, because you're using it or got any questions, reach out to us and let us know because I will be testing it more definitely going to test and play with it at our convention this year in Houston because I won't have the betas running on my device and also my device does not have LiDAR. So don't get any of the Apple stuff.

Michael: [1:20:47] So you're not doing betas, huh? Interesting.

Damashe: [1:20:50] Man, I'm not traveling with a beta dude. Like I can't do it.

Michael: [1:20:54] I will see how things look. I say I'm not going to, but we'll see. I do have a spare phone here, so I might actually just do it on the spare phone. But the spare phone is my camera, so I don't know.

Damashe: [1:21:06] I would imagine the camera would still work, though.

Michael: [1:21:08] I imagine it will, too. And if worse comes worse, then that just means I gotta get this TV out here, because the only reason I'm not using the wireless camera isn't because of wireless issues, it's because I don't have a screen hooked up to get the QR code scan so I can hook my phone up.

Damashe: [1:21:23] Ah, yeah, I forgot about that part. So, yeah. But yeah, I imagine Camo would work. And having a spare phone, like my intent when I do purchase another iPhone, I've kind of settled down a little bit. I'm gonna buy Tia a new phone when the 14 Pro, well, no, wait, what are we going to?

Michael: [1:21:41] 15.

Damashe: [1:21:43] She'll get hers first, for sure. I may or may not get mine right away. I will upgrade to it, especially if it has USB-C, but probably not right away. But I'm also going up to a pro phone this time for the LiDAR, unless they put it in a cheaper phone.

Michael: [1:21:58] What if they put LiDAR on the lower end?

Damashe: [1:22:00] Well, see, that's the thing, right? If they put it in the cheaper phone and just standard iPhone 15, that may change my- Upgrade process. My upgrade plans a little bit. She's still gonna get the pro max phone regardless so and she's on a 12 pro max So it's time for her to upgrade as much as getting hers first. I'm on a 13 for me to upgrade I'm on a 13 mini. So, you know, I'm not as far back as she is And I also have her trail plow And I will also have her 12 pro max to play with because if I'm not mistaken that one does have light are in it maybe more advanced than the newer phones, but hey, it gives me something to play with. And then I will also have a spare phone. So my intent when I actually upgrade my phone is to, I'm going to definitely keep her 12 Pro Max because the cameras in there, there's three of them and they are pretty excellent from what I hear from people. So that can always be my camera if I need a camera, as well as a test device.

[1:23:04] I don't know if I'm gonna keep my mini around or not. Part of me, for nostalgia reasons, would like to keep it. It's funny for me to say nostalgia reasons related to me, but being honest, this is a very nice phone. I don't think Apple's ever gonna make another one. And just having it, I'm not gonna start a whole collection. Like, I'm not trying to collect all of the iPhones from all the years, but I do really like this form factor as a phone. I would love for them to honestly make this phone size be the new S.E. when they do another S.E.

Michael: [1:23:33] I haven't seen the mini. So I've seen the SE, but...

Damashe: [1:23:37] Yeah, so the SE is still basically the iPhone 8 or 7 or 6 or whatever, that's the 8 size. Based on the 8 size. Yeah, but the 8 was just an iteration over the 6, basically. So that's where the SE is as of right now. The mini is a little smaller. The screen on the mini is bigger than the SE, but the phone itself is smaller because there's no home button, right? So you don't have that big chin and big forehead on it, you know, the upper and lower space that doesn't have anything. But this is a 5.4 inch screen versus a 4.7 inch screen in the current SE generation. And if they, even if they wanna keep the cost down and not pay all the money out for, net it costs for the components for Face ID, be a perfect time to put Touch ID in a power button and bring the Mini back as the SE. You already got the casing made for it, Apple. You can very easily make this happen with the next, you know, version of the SE phone.

Michael: [1:24:37] Well, maybe they'll announce tomorrow a new SE phone and we'll... Nope. I know.

Damashe: [1:24:43] Nope.

Michael: [1:24:44] But we will have a recap because I'm going to be talking about this. It sounds like all week for what's going on tomorrow. I'm sure you'll be talking about it for WWDC. We'll see if one of us has put a beta on their phones by next time we record, which will either be Friday or Saturday. Yeah.

Damashe: [1:25:02] Yeah, probably put it on the iPad probably not the phone.

Michael: [1:25:05] I'm gonna put it on my main Mac cuz I'm stupid like that Well Maybe I'll put it in a parallels machine. Actually, I wonder if that'll be doable.

Damashe: [1:25:15] I wonder if that would work, huh? We will that I might try I'm gonna put it on the on the on any of the primary computers though, directly, because one Rogamiba stuff will start working.

Michael: [1:25:27] Yeah, that's why I was wondering. Parallels might be the answer.

Damashe: [1:25:30] Parallels might be a huh. And it may, and I'll wait to see what happens after, you know, State of the Union, which is the developer conference, because at that point, a lot of developers will have to start putting betas on their devices. I've gotten mixed responses or information over the past couple of years and also haven't paid that close of attention to it because I wasn't going to do it anyway. But it still may be possible to do what I have done on Intel max before which is just create a new.

[1:26:00] AP of s volume and installed on that it did install on that so I can just kind of do boot like boot into the beta When I want to boot into the beta now that doesn't the one reason I don't do that is because one year people were having issues where It wasn't respecting the separation So like installing the beta is still trying to reach into your regular data for this gives a little doubt in the weeds for people But currently at the moment the way Mac OS works there's two volumes you look at it and you see one volume if you're looking around your finder, but in Actuality there are two volumes that have been merged together. There's a data volume. You'll see it in this utility There's your data volume which has your data user data That's the part that's editable and there's a read-only volume that contains macOS system files One year I can't remember which year was but one year has been a couple years ago ago, people tried this to do the little dual boot thing, like, oh, I just got to add a new APFS container to install Mac OS on that. Well, install Mac OS beta into that container. It did not create a new data volume, though. So it started messing with your currently running data volume. So now it confused the heck out of everybody's systems, is what I heard. So I haven't tried it.

[1:27:12] Another reason that I don't, and I may try it in parallels if that turns out to be possible for me, because the problem with dual booting into a beta is I'm never gonna boot into the beta unless somebody's like, hey, will you try this on the beta? Then I'll do it. But I won't do it just traditionally to really work on it like that.

[1:27:32] The iPad for me might get the beta for for iPad always 17 Fairly quickly though. I do need to go set up.

Michael: [1:27:40] We'll see what they announce and if you want to Know what we end up installing beta's on I will share on mastodon Demasi probably won't but I will How can they follow us on mastodon Demasi?

Damashe: [1:27:53] Oh Cheryl Macedon. Okay. Are you using Mona man?

Michael: [1:27:57] I am loving Mona I discovered today that you that that the split view works which means if you open someone's timeline in a split view the top part is that person's timeline and then the bottom half of Your screen is the rest of the Mona app so you can go explore Mona But have that person's timeline or a followed hashtag at the top of your screen so you can always see it right there Wait, wait, wait, hold on back, up Say this again So if you have Mona open and I'm gonna open it right now because I'm gonna use so is this on iOS or Mac OS? What I am telling you about is on iOS. It is available on Mac OS. I haven't done it. But if you go into Mona, you have an option to go up to Actions, and then in Actions, there is a Divide View option. If you double-tap on Divide View, it brings that timeline or that view that you've chosen Actions on and enable Divide View, and it pins it to the top of your screen. So the top half is that timeline, the bottom half, you can go configure your settings, go look at different timelines, different tabs, and that bottom half changes. And then when you want to disable it, I just learned that you hit the actions button in the top right corner and it says disable divided view and then. On Mac OS, I'm using Windows inside of Mona, so you can have a hashtag windows open and then control gray back or command grave accent or use the windows chooser.

Damashe: [1:29:22] Ah, OK. All right. So I'm installing Mona right now.

Michael: [1:29:28] All right, Ivory, you're to me that it's those that complexity. And then here's the other thing that I accidentally discovered today that I thought was just a Mona thing. But if you go into settings and then you go down to actions and then you go down to default gestures, you can actually set. So if you three finger flick to the right, it'll activate your default flick to the right gesture, which for me right now is favorite. So I don't even have to mess with the rotor. I can just do that three finger flick to the right to do that, because how I discovered that, how I discovered that is I thought, how do I get between these two different sections in the app? And I didn't realize that the top stayed the same in the bottom changes. So, yeah, I love Mona.

Damashe: [1:30:09] So to answer your question, though, I'm not using Mono at the moment, but I will be before the end of day because that's cool. And I've kind of at this point done all that I'm going to do with Ivory. I can tell people that Ivory is a pretty good app. I am really I'm surprised, but I'm pleasantly surprised at how how well tap bots handle accessibility here. There are a couple of little things that they need to fix, and I may or may not get around to telling them about them. Well, if they listen to the show they can hear about them right now. Yeah, so one problem is it's difficult to get to, so let's say Michael. Which this is happening. So I figured it out. So Mike post a post on Macedon. He mentions me in it Which gives me a notification. All right, so I tap on it and I go and I'm looking at Mike's post I can see that people have replied, but I can't easily Get to the replies if that makes sense.

Michael: [1:31:05] Yeah, so you can't see the conversation.

Damashe: [1:31:07] You could see there's a conversation Yes, but it's not as easy to get to it Whereas with Matt with with Mona like I already know how to do that because just in the short time that I beta tested Mona like I know how it works and I've always kind of had the intent of going back to Mona I just figured since I ended up accidentally paying for tap boxes ivory I should spend enough time with it to get comfortable I'm gonna say what Marty's I'm gonna say this and I got this from Marty so and I like the way to Marty put it and I think I may have said this before on the show when I said I was gonna spend time with ivory ivory is for the person who just wants a a good mastodon client that is accessible. Like I have not really encountered any accessibility issues with the app. They've made some design decisions I don't necessarily agree with, but accessibility-wise, I'm very impressed. I would recommend it to people. If you just want a simple, it's gonna work, right? You're not looking for configurations, you're not looking for all this advanced layout and doing all this weird stuff that you can do with Mono. I've reached perfect for that. I would highly recommend it for that purpose. Good on them for the accessibility. Cause it would stick for me if Mona was not an option right now. Like I wouldn't be looking around for other clients after having used ivory.

[1:32:29] If there was no Mona right now on, you know, one already looked at Mona before Ivory even came out because Mona had their beta out open for me very quickly because I was a spring user. And I do like the features of Mona over the way that Ivory works. But that is just not an accessibility thing. That is a, you know, layout. A feature thing. Yes, a feature thing in the way that they choose to, you know, display information. Like it's kind of like whether you choose to use Apple Mail on the Mac or you choose, Whether you choose Apple mail on a platform where you choose outlook, right? It's not Email still works the same way it does is like how did they lay out the app? What can I do in here? I can do more here or there, right? So I will be going back to Mona, but ivory thumbs up for me. I will give it that sweet For sure before we end today, though I'm gonna end on the thing Michael told me yesterday that we should start with which is Mike what's going on man? Mike says figured out he's in much worse shape than he thought he was So either you attempted to do something that you thought should be easy and it was more difficult than you thought it was gonna be Or you went to the doctor and they told you a bunch of stuff So was not the doctor, but I did try to move Hold on one sec.

Michael: [1:33:40] He's an asshole. He does that all the time about this time of day, too Anyways, I don't know if you heard it, but there's a car that is very loud. Oh, no, I didn't pick it up I did so we're kind of cleaning up doing our late spring early summer cleaning and I went outside and decided to tackle one of the honeydew projects that Mallory's had and that is move the pool to the place where we need to go and discard the stuff because it's it's It's it's time and so I went in there and you know was pulling the pull down and moving stuff around and then I I picked up the pool and just kind of threw it where it needed to go and, you know, just was working and getting stuff done. And to me, I'm like, just fine. Everything's good. Well, then I went inside to get cleaned up and I got super lightheaded and wasn't sure, you know, what was going on. And it made me a little uncomfortable. And I texted Mal, or I told Mal when I called her and I think I texted you too. I'm like, yeah, I'm a little bit more out of shape than I thought I was. So maybe I need to start looking at some of these workout apps or start paying attention to Apple Fitness a little more something because something's got to change. I found that out pretty quick yesterday.

Damashe: [1:34:50] Apple Fitness. I've tried Apple Fitness. It's OK for the type of workouts I want to do, at least in the beginning, like they were not there's not enough description there for me. We recently had a... Sale going on at 80 guys and during the month of May actually wasn't a sales just a promotion During the month of May any purchase you made during the month of May at 80 guys We'll get you a 30-day trial as opposed to I think it's 14 days of revision fitness now I don't know if I bought something in May or not, but I'm gonna I'm gonna take employee privilege and probably still get my 30 days and try out revision to see how well it works and spend some time with it and come back and talk to people about it because I have right now, I need to start back working out. This is the thing that I need to start doing to get in shape. I don't want to go pay for a gym membership because I feel like logistics of getting there when I want to and getting back and all of that is gonna be difficult. Another solution that I have recommended on our previous show, has not come up on Technically Working, I don't think, is a FitBot, and FitBot is an app that's on iOS and Android.

[1:36:11] Accessibility is okay, you can use it. But what they do is they start out by taking you through a tutorial and explain, you kind of tell them what are you looking to do? Like, are you just trying to get in better shape? Are you trying to do strength training? Are you trying to know a couple of different options there? You pick those options, go through the wizard, and then it starts to tailor workouts based off what you're trying to accomplish. And as you do the workouts, they're tailoring the next day's workout or whenever your next workout is based off what you previously did. So if you're doing a workout every day and you wanna work out every day for 30 minutes, for example, if they have you do a lot of upper body stuff on Monday, you're gonna focus more on core and lower body on Tuesday because they know because you completed the workout on Monday that you did a lot of arm stuff yesterday. So you might want to give your arms a break. So they factor in the real world recuperation of your muscles when you're working them out. I will say that, one, I haven't opened it in a couple of months, hence the reason I said need to start by working out.

[1:37:13] It does have videos to display how to do a workout, but it also has written descriptions of how to do some of the workouts, or do all of the workouts, actually. And where this came in handy for me is like one of the exercises they told me to do were do 10 supermans, and I was like, I have no idea what a superman is. But the explanation that was written in text, which is one of the reasons that I renewed it this year in January, February, whenever it came up, It's because of that, it's not their fault I'm not using it. It's cheaper than a gym membership would cost me for a year. And those descriptions are good, and they still remain there. So I learned how to do a Superman, which is basically you lay on your stomach, and you stretch your arms out, and stretch your legs out, and then you're gonna lift your lower leg and your upper arms up, so that you're kinda arching your back while laying flat, right? Like that's basically what it is. I had no idea what that meant, though, when they were like, do a Superman. I was like, I don't know what that is. Do I jump off of something? I don't, what if I do it?

[1:38:17] But I'm really interested in revision, so I'm going to spend some time with that. I did actually set up an account for myself because I was helping out a customer from AT Guys figure out if it was them or if it was revision having problems delivering their emails. Turns out it was the customer. So, I will spend some time with Revision myself to see if it fits what I need for workouts. Now, it could turn out that it doesn't fit what I need, but we'll see. And Revision, for those listening, is an application, and Mike may have a better explanation of it than I have at the moment, because I tend not to retain a lot of details like that. I'm getting old. I got gray hair, people, leave me alone. Get off my lawn.

Michael: [1:39:03] ReVision is an accessible, it's an application that provides accessible workouts. It's available on iOS and you can download the, and Android and the web, and you can download the iOS app to the Mac if you want as well.

Damashe: [1:39:15] Excellent, most excellent. So we'll be checking that out, both of us, because we both probably should be working out.

Michael: [1:39:21] You know, we've been talking about getting interviews on, same.

Damashe: [1:39:25] Ah, yeah, we should do that. We should, we'll add him to the list of people.

Michael: [1:39:32] If you're listening, you may be getting an email from us, whoever you are, because we're going to try some new things at the show too.

Damashe: [1:39:40] Yeah, we're going to start interviewing some people about how they work or what was the driving thing behind their business. You know, a lot of what drives me and Michael is testing out stuff and doing things and figuring out what works and doesn't work. But we'd like to hear from we want to hear from other people. That's why we encourage people to reach out. The engagement for us has been much better, I think, on Macedon than it was on Twitter with the DM series. Now, we may have lost a lot of people with the DM series because of the how does Desiree put it? The F-bombs.

Michael: [1:40:11] Yes, yes, yes. I think that could have been discouraging. I think our numbers are they're not growing as fast as they are on other shows that I'm a part of, but they are growing steadily, which is positive. And we really appreciate that. Uh, and that's what. Puts that, you know, we, we sit down and record for about two hours and then I edit for an hour or two hours. So four hours, I think it was a show.

Damashe: [1:40:32] Also think we're a little bit more focused and I think people may get more enjoyed. I mean, tell us why you're, I'm not going to sit here and guess at it. Tell us why you like listening. If you're on mastodon, we should, we will get some other feedback or you can email TW at, uh, you're on bay.com. That, that, that, that still works. As well tell us why you're listening or what you like about the show or what you don't like about the show We're always open to because I have gotten some feedback that we are going a little long, which yes We acknowledge that feedback, but what is it a little long? I mean, it's a little long to you though Like we never said the show is gonna be 45 minutes and that's what we're gonna stick to we never said that. No Yeah, and it's a show that I'm on so It's going to be long, it's just the way it works. I don't like trying to squeeze my conversation into, oh, we got to make it in 30 minutes. This is not that show. We didn't say that.

Michael: [1:41:24] Go listen to Double Tap if you want something structured like that or Kelly and Romeo if you want a two-hour show or any other radio style show. This is a podcast. It can be as flexible as we want it. Sometimes they're 90 minutes. Sometimes they're three hours. What? Better not. I'm not editing that week. You get to edit that Demasi.

Damashe: [1:41:44] We're live to tape then But as we're technically working see we almost forgot a thing I'm glad Mike Mike said what he said I don't remember what he said But he said what he said that reminded me that we had not done the thing we said we were gonna do which is again hey, we want to thank the Person that subscribed to the tip jar right now. We still just have one so, you know next person We'll make a big deal about you too, but we want to thank the individual that I subscribe to the tip jar We appreciate you. We appreciate all of you that listen. We are seriously open to the feedback. I know I sound like I'm not there are some things I'm not gonna change just because you don't like it, but We are open to feedback about the show Tell us what you like what you don't like and if we can do something about it And it makes sense to make a change we will do so so we are interested in your feedback. Please provide that I do like the engagement that we've been seeing on on Mastodon, started following Doug on Mastodon because he mentioned something about something you said about something and I was in the post. I was like, oh, there's Doug.

Michael: [1:42:48] He gave us the answer to clean.email.

Damashe: [1:42:49] Oh yeah, yeah. Oh, see, that's the other thing. You're like, well, don't wait until you get to the end of the show before you submit your feedback. That was funny, you're like, oh yeah, we did find it. I was like, oh, Doug was listening and then he just stopped. Probably pause I was like let me go tell these idiots what yeah the service was I'm done listening to this show and then about 20 minutes later Mike was like it's cleaned out emails I go yeah that's it but in all seriousness thank you for listening we will be putting together a pre-recorded episode for the week of the first week of July so a show will publish on that Monday it will be prerecorded so we won't be live because we will both be at convention. We're going to maybe incorporate some of our conventions at some of our adventures at convention into a future show if it works out that way not making any promises.

Michael: [1:43:51] We'll see what happens.

Damashe: [1:43:52] Yeah, we'll see what happens. Uh, I originally came up with the idea of let's let's do a show And and just record stuff from but I know how crazy that can get and we may or may not have the ability to do that So we're not promising it but if we can figure out a way to record say a good interview with someone or Just an experience that.

[1:44:12] We're having showing how we handled things at convention. Uh for at guys we'll do so Or if there's someone at convention you have questions for again.

[1:44:21] It goes back to that feedback Let us know and we can see what we can do No promises made but we will be at both NFB and ACB So that's also a good tip if you are.

[1:44:30] Or a good suggestion if you have something that you would like for us to check Out that convention reach out to us Mastodon honestly, I know not everybody's on there that listens to the show But Mastodon is gonna be the best way to get my attention for sure because I get notifications and I see them And I go read what the person wrote and sometimes I reply I sometimes don't really have anything to say and Assume that if you mention me on mastodon I saw your post and I may not have a response because there's not really a response Required like I didn't need to tell Doug. Hey, man, we got it And Mike already thanked him for listening to the show. So what was I gonna say? I'm just gonna add extra electrons to the air for no reason But assume that I saw it if it does require answering you don't get an answer then you can assume that I didn't see it But if Michael has answered your question, or if you just said hey great show and Mike replies and says thanks for listening I'm gonna take that at well the way that I treat that is like Michael is speaking for both of us at that point cuz I will say the exact same thing like thank you for listening. We appreciate it Yeah, and that's why you did that a couple times on Twitter, and I didn't follow up to my coach I see already thank them for listening But assume that I saw it because I do get notifications and I do let those come through unless I'm in a focus mode But I will see them because Mastodon for me is Low traffic. I don't get notifications when people post all the gear notifications when you mentioned me, so That's nice like that.

[1:45:58] Check out Mona if you're into tinkering With your Mastodon client. It is great. It's on Mac OS and iOS almost at Windows That would be great if it was but it's not Or check out ivory. I hear ivory also has a beta out for the Mac. I have not looked at that I probably won't to be honest Unless we get a request from someone to look at it And I'll go take a look at it because I do have it so I don't have to pay for it But I'll check out ivory if you just want a simple And when I say simple I mean like there's not a bunch of knobs and dials and stuff to fiddle with you know consider it considering our backgrounds here consider the difference in buying a audio interface like the Vocaster versus buying the Soundcraft. So if you're looking for more of a plug-and-play solution, Ivory is definitely there. If you want the flexibility to do almost darn near anything you can think of doing to your layout and actions and customizations, Mono would be the client for you.

Michael: [1:46:59] And now sounds.

Damashe: [1:47:00] Yeah, whatever.

Michael: [1:47:01] Yeah, yeah, that was my point too.

Damashe: [1:47:02] Anyway, you can find him on Mastodon. If you go to michael.urlpay.com, that will redirect you. Right now, I will fix this, probably before the show publishes, but right now it redirects you to where Michael used to be on Mastodon, but there's a link on that page that will take you where he is now, which I think is really cool that it did that like that. I think I missed Michael's message when he told me that's what it did to mine. Me, I'm Demasi, D-A-M-A-S-H-E.yourownpay.com. We'll redirect you to where I am on Mastodon as well, or just michael at unmute.community, and damasi at unmute.community.

Michael: [1:47:46] Actually, no, it's payon at unmute.community.

Damashe: [1:47:48] And damasi at unmute.community. You are right. Yep. Payon at unmute.community, or damasi at unmute.community. If you're just trying to get directly there because you're already inside of Mona or Ivory and you're just like, I'm not going back out to Safari to find you. Hey, reach out to us on Massadon. Here's a final request for the audience. Reach out if you are an Android user and you have found a good Masternode client for Android.

Michael: [1:48:15] Ooh, good call. Yes, because I know there are some out there. So we want to know what you're using because I should use Master on the Pixel a little more.

Damashe: [1:48:23] Yeah, that is my intent. So let us know if you have found something good or have a good recommendation, or even if you've heard of it, if you're not using it yourself, but you've heard about it from somebody else and it's accessible on Android, let us know. Until next week, thank you for listening.

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