Technically Working - EP3

Transcript

Damashe: [0:00] I also forgot that when you open clean feed, which is good. Maybe next week I will play with Oxygen and do the hosting for the beat because I completely wasn't thinking that, oh yeah, why it's got a push record just because we're in here doesn't mean it's automatically recording. Hey, can I get that as a feature request clean feed? Like give me an option.

Michael: [0:18] See what now, now that you've set it on the recording, I will just start the recording when you come in. I figure just in case there's stuff we need to talk about that I won't start the recording until you're in. I know.

Damashe: [0:28] Cause see, we're editing. So we just cut it are we though I mean you can always edit out the stuff that doesn't need to go in the show So We want double tap this week yeah, we were on double tap this week We did not publish a technically working episode for well.

Michael: [0:48] We weren't on technique. How do you want to explain that?

Damashe: [0:53] That's trying to be all clever about it didn't work out So we were all double tap this week with Steven and Sean and We also just published a walkthrough of launch bar on In the feed for this week's or this past week's last week's episode was just a walkthrough for me of launch bar Which we kind of discussed a little bit on double tap on Thursday's episode So if you haven't checked that out, give it a listen Also, if you haven't checked out double tap just in general give it a listen I promise it really is a tech show.

Michael: [1:27] They'll get to it eventually. And you always learn something new. That's what I'm, I'm coming to the conclusion, I don't know Demasi, I struggle with this. Everyone's like, oh, you're so smart, you're good. And then I go listen to some things like Double Tap and I'm always learning something new. Maybe that's what makes me appear smart in other people's eyes, is I'm always learning something new.

Damashe: [1:49] I think it's that and it's the retaining of the information that I think, I don't know, man, because people, I don't know, man, because people say that to me all the time, I'm like, man, I know absolutely nothing. Like, I'm still trying to, I feel like I'm still playing catch up, like so much stuff has changed, so much new things are out here, one of which I want to talk to you about. You've been using the Levin Labs quite a bit.

Michael: [2:14] I have and let's talk about that because yesterday I published an unmute episode. Did you listen to that one? I. Hmm. If we publish these on Mondays, I'm publishing contents Mondays, Tuesdays, and Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, right? Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and I am working on trying to get, I need some help with this. I need to start asking for help, but I need some help with these, uh, blind shell, shell phone shows, cause I want to, I have enough content that I could do 12 weeks, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. So then that would mean that I'm publishing content Sunday through Saturday, uh, with, Oh, wow. That's ridiculous. Anyways, what's some of the other content that we're working on with eye accessibility and.

Damashe: [3:01] Other stuff fun that doesn't count the stuff that you don't actually push publish on either, right?

Michael: [3:07] Like what I'm gonna show you in this episode, I'm not gonna go publish it itself, but it'll come to it But let's talk about 11 labs and then remind me that I wanted to show you something new that I think you're really gonna like on the Mac and I'm kind of excited that you didn't listen to the audio so I get your initial reaction and Before we get into it when we were Talking about recording I was going to tell you if you didn't know, because the clips is on its own track. If we react, we can either leave those in or take them out. And when I was listening, when, when we were with Steven and they were using the clips and I'm like, oh, I better not say anything better go on mute. I didn't think about the fact that it's on a different track. Thank you. Multi-track editing.

[3:44] So yesterday I used 11 labs to put together a couple of stories from the tech VI list, which is a mailing list that shares tech stories, typically the whole article with a link to the original source, which I really appreciate that. And, uh, it allows me to, or it gave me an opportunity to grab, I think I did six or seven articles and then I threw them into 11 labs, which for those who don't know is a service that allows you to provide it text and that text will then be translated into a very high quality voice of your choice. And what I did with the unmute presents episode for Thursday is I gave it some music, thanks to Andre Louis and his shorts collection for that. And then I put the, um, voices in and I did a intro voice that intro the episode. I did the stories in full, and then I did the outro voice. And did you hear that one yet? at DeLossie.

Damashe: [4:43] I have not had a chance to listen to that yet.

Michael: [4:45] See, I thought you listened to it and you had questions for me about it there.

Damashe: [4:50] No, not yet. I will get to it. I do have it queued up, but I haven't had a time. Yeah, I get that. Today has been one of those days, man. It has been one of those. I have been technically working all day long without a break. But yeah, I still thought the idea was fascinating, and I am going to give it a listen because I think there's something there that we can build upon. If nothing else, just giving people audio alternatives to email newsletters.

[5:20] Like, you know, you still subscribe to the newsletter, but maybe now there's a new option that says, want to receive this by audio, or that's just a link in the newsletter. It's like, you know, want to subscribe to the audio RSS feed. Like, there's some potential options there. And I know a lot of people that are both blind and sighted, so there's not even a blindness specific situation I know a lot of people that surprisingly to me when I first started hearing them say it use Something like a voice stream reader great app love that app We we should we should really do a deep dive on that at some point, but I do really love voice stream reader, Haven't been using as much on the Mac although. I am a sucker because I've been paying for it. I'm not a sucker I'm supporting my developer Honestly, that's the reason I'm paying for the Mac version because I do want to support it. But I bought, and here's the reason for me at least, and I'm not trying to guilt anybody into doing this. I'm doing it simply because I pay for voice stream reader.

[6:20] When it first came out, like when it was first released. And I think I got it on like a launch sale or something and paid $4.99 for it. 10 years later. 10 years later, I am still, this is still one of the apps that like everybody has one of these, everybody has these apps where you set up a new device and something's not on there and you don't realize it's not on there until you go to use it out of habit and you're like, oh crap, I didn't install that, right? One password I've kind of gotten past that, I always install that because I can't get into a lot of other stuff without that. However, when I set up a new iPhone or new iPad, oftentimes, or from wiping one to, you know, start fresh, oftentimes I will forget Voice Dream Reader until I'm looking at a PDF on the web. Kind of like the one I sent Michael.

[7:07] And I don't know if we can call her a friend of the show. We'll say our personal, our close personal friend Desiree. I don't know if she listens to the show, so we can't call you a friend of the show yet, Desiree. You should provide some feedback. You listen yeah, and then we can do that, but our personal friend I sent you and her an even a text message I message in our group thread about a week week and a half ago to the NSA out of all people national security agencies Recommendations for security your home network and some more stuff That's not the name of the PDF, but like things like that that I find around around the web I I quickly will pop those right into VoiceStream Reader because they're very long and I'd rather be able to listen to them as though I'm listening to an audio book or a podcast. So to bring this all the way back around to the point that I started with, I've talked to a lot of sighted people that use VoiceStream Reader or similar apps that are also on the iPhone or iOS to listen to longer form articles like that. Instead of sitting there reading them on their phone, they get it into an app or use the features that some sites are now building in to say, read this article aloud to me and put their phone down and carry on doing something else productive, even if it's washing dishes, they gotta be washed. And listen to the audio. So I think this 11 Labs thing could be something like that that we could start to use to enhance the newsletter experience for a lot of people.

Michael: [8:35] Yeah, I wanna explore that further because I bet there's something you could do with tools we can use to combine the email sending service we use and 11 Labs with, or together, so they can play nice with each other.

Damashe: [8:47] I just thought about that as I was saying, like, huh, there may be some ways to hook those two things up, because there's an API for this and there's an API for that. So they should be able to talk, right? Let's make that happen. We'll figure that out.

Michael: [8:57] Or, would you like to give us your phone number so we can send you a voice? No, I'm not getting into that. I'm not getting into that. Demasi!

Damashe: [9:05] Ha ha ha ha ha.

Michael: [9:07] So Demasi, I learned about a tool today that I think you might like and I'm gonna play it up quick.

Damashe: [9:12] Hold on, hold on. So before we stray too far down the path of requesting people's phone numbers and having them send them to us, before we started recording, you played a little clip in to make sure that it worked before we started recording. And I really want to know what is it sometimes that I need to just do? Do like yeah I'm hooked already like man so what is the thing what was that recording it's pretty you can open it up intro it for the listeners and or in me because I have not heard this even though Michael sent it to me earlier I have not heard it so intro it for us and then let me hear this audio because I really want to know what I sometimes need to do because it's probably true so sometimes you need to do this and I'll let the audio intro itself in a moment But if you're listening to the podcast and you're like myself and Demasi and you're just listening with one earbud I say grab that other one.

Michael: [10:08] Go go take a moment. Hit the pause button. Go grab that other one Give me three minutes of your time and we'll get to mossy's reaction as we go through this sometimes you Just need to quickly find out am I in the middle of the camera frame or?

Clips: [10:24] Are people just looking at my background and not looking at me? For the longest time I told people about the Can You See Me app. This is a Windows app that allows you to quickly see if you're in center frame. I didn't have a tool on the Mac until, well, I learned about it this morning. Thanks Steven for the suggestion that I just spell and ran with. Anyways, I've configured my centered head application a little bit different than it is by default. By default, it's a bit more verbose, but here's where I am using the app after verifying with IRA that they could see me and I was centered in frame. And as I was editing this, I realized I forgot to tell you where to get it. You can get the Can You See Me app if you're a Windows user at canyouseeme.app. That's canyouseeme.app. And you can get the Centered Head app in the App Store. If you hit Command-O on Centered Head. Open Centered Head. Centered Head window. I have it set up so VoiceOver will say the name of the app. And then after a second or two, you'll hear.

[11:38] And this is a tone representing where my face is in focus right now. I need to turn my head to the left. You hear how that high pitch that tells me that I'm looking at the camera center. So I should probably turn my chair a little bit. So that's a little bit more comfortable. And look, I can actually make those adjustments if I want to. Now, if I'm looking over to my left, it can't see me. Right now there's no sound. It can't see me because I'm looking way over to my left. But as I turn my head to the right and I start going into focus, you hear it gradually get louder. Well, higher pitch, I mean, not louder. And then right here, I'm in the center of the view of my camera. And then as I look towards my right... This is my favorite one. No one can see me. Or can you see me? Like, what does that mean? Does that mean you can only see my left ear? Anyways, so this is kind of cool. If you want to, you can, uh, use Aira to call someone to see if you're center. But if you just really need to know it'd be really cool if we could set this up with a shortcut of some sort.

[13:03] This has been a Payone Media production, thanks to Andre Louie and his shorts collection for the music used in this audio.

Michael: [13:13] So two questions for you. Number one, what do you think about it? And number two, what do you think of the production?

Damashe: [13:22] Moz search centered dash head, Moz installed this random string of stuff here.

Michael: [13:29] And then it said, you can't do this.

Damashe: [13:31] Internal server error.

Michael: [13:32] Money. Nope.

Damashe: [13:34] It said, Oh, that's maybe why I got the internal server. Yeah.

Michael: [13:37] Okay. 99 cents. So it's not free 99 cents, but I didn't even think about it. I just bought it. I'm like, if that works the way I expected it to, I'm going to go buy it. And I'm glad I did by default. It's going to be very verbose and it's going to talk to you with your default system voice. If you hit command comma, you can go in and change those settings by default. It will not show you on screen your face. You need to check that box in the preferences, but it's 100% accessible well worth the 99. Oh, son of a...

Damashe: [14:03] So, damn it.

Michael: [14:03] We'll leave that one in there. You know what the problem is?

Damashe: [14:11] What? Hold on. Let me let me hit the button again.

Michael: [14:23] Is it not going to work for you?

Damashe: [14:27] Sensor head can't be installed on Mac OS HD because Mac OS 13 or later is required.

Michael: [14:37] Hey, Demasi, when are you gonna come to Ventura?

Damashe: [14:39] Man...

Michael: [14:40] If we can talk about my setup if you want, this setup I think is the best way to go.

Damashe: [14:46] This is, uh, this is super aggravating. I'm not happy about that.

Michael: [14:50] What was the other thing you, oh, oh, yeah, that other thing.

Damashe: [14:54] RIM. Well, we can talk about it.

Michael: [14:55] Yeah.

Damashe: [14:56] We can say the words. We can, you know, we can talk about it, blog about it, do whatever we want to. Just remind people that RIM for Mac OS or Remote Incident Manager, which we also spoke about on DoubleTap this week is in beta. And me and Michael have been testing it out on Mac OS as have several other people. It's not generally available yet. It still is in beta, and they're only looking for people that are looking to be controller. So, yeah, go check it out if you're interested. But yeah, that also requires Mac OS Ventura, which is something I hope that they work their way backward to maybe even if I and I would accept this. I wouldn't be super gratified by it, but I would accept it if I can only control a computer from Ventura, but I do need the ability, I think, to control something on Mac OS 12 or 11 at, minimum because a lot of people are like me and have not upgraded to Ventura yet.

Michael: [15:52] I think 12 I get if they can't support 11, but at least 12 because yeah, like you, there's a lot of people who hear stories from us and they're like, no, we ain't doing that. that.

Damashe: [16:02] I ain't doing it yet. I ain't doing it. Listen, when big news publications put out this is the Vista of Mac OS like that, that freezes a lot of people in place who used to be Windows users. So I think also if they support 12.11, I'm just guessing off the top of my head here, I don't know this, but I assume that if they can do 12.11 would also kind of come along for free. I don't think there were a ton of underlying like permission and configuration changes between those two versions as there were in Ventura, I could be wrong.

Michael: [16:36] So however tell me about your setup and what you're doing because you have been on Ventura Since you switched over to the I can't remember if you were on it on the m2 air or not I'm one air, I was on it because that's when we discovered the issue So I went up to Ventura as soon as I could I just jumped both feet first said all right I think actually yeah, cuz I upgraded Mallory's m1 air before I got it to Ventura So I forced her to go up there without doing any research. Just said, Oh, that's going to work just fine for you. You don't use accessibility. You'll be fine. Anyways. So that means that when I got the M1, I got Ventura as well. And so ever since I switched over, that's what I've been using for me right now. I'm on a, and I can talk about it now. Cause I didn't know if he listens to the podcast, Nicholas, if you listen to the podcast, let me know. Otherwise don't let me know. And you might hear secrets anyways. So Nicholas got the M1 as a birthday present, which means I got a Mac mini that was supposed to be Mallory's office computer, but thanks to DeMossi's assistance and suggestions, it is now my main computer and she's using an M2 Air for right now. And this Mac mini is running with eight gigabytes of- So the 15 inch comes out.

[17:56] Yeah, I know, I know. I'm not gonna edit that out, But I wish I could just edit that suggestion out of my brain, because now that it's in my brain, it's going to happen anyways, so I'm on the M two mini really liking it, I haven't been getting some, some Ram, uh, full memory issues that I was getting with the Mac book air, but as I was saying that I just realized that's probably cause I don't have clean my Mac X installed. So I wouldn't get there, uh, air messages. So I have parallels on the Mac menu right now installed windows 11, got that all set up yesterday and right now I'm using Zendesk, which is a tool we use for work and doing phone calls in Zendesk in Windows. With a virtual device, so my brain's a little broken I'm using a virtual device called microphone that grabs channel 5 out of the vocaster and Sends it as an input into Mac OS and then in parallels.

Damashe: [18:51] I say use the D wait I don't you're using microphone that grabs audio channel 5 audio which is for those of you with vocasters are looking at the vocaster that is the the host microphone channel, whether you have the single one or the dual one, channel five is gonna be the first microphone input. You're using microphone to send audio from Windows into Mac OS? No, no, I'm- Okay, that's why I stopped you, cause you said to send audio into Mac OS, and I was like, wait, that don't sound right.

Michael: [19:22] No, from my microphone, my microphone goes in through channel five into Mac OS. And then when I'm in Windows, Windows picks up the default audio input device on Mac OS. So it's picking up my microphone. If I command tab into loopback and I say, hey, add VLC to this device, instantly it adds VLC to the mix. So I can use- Oh, okay, I see what you mean.

Damashe: [19:44] I thought you were talking about an app. So you made a virtual device called microphone in loopback, gotcha.

Michael: [19:51] And that's my default system audio.

Damashe: [19:53] Nice, okay.

Michael: [19:54] So I don't have the, someone's gonna hear the music that I'm listening to right now when I'm live in an environment or something.

Damashe: [20:01] Right, right. That's the same thing I did. I thought you were talking about, I was like, oh, there's an app call. So here's what I thought you were saying, and I'll let you finish the explanation. So I have done the same thing with Loopback. I don't remember if I told you that idea or not.

Michael: [20:15] You did, that's how I got the idea.

Damashe: [20:17] I have a similar device. I called my host one, because I do have the Vocaster 2. Is that why it's called 2? Ah, okay. Because that's two hosts. Oh, okay, see, I'm really professional. I know what I'm doing with my equipment, man. I promise you I do. But so I made mine called Host One, but when you said, you said I use a microphone to, and I was like oh, so he's grabbing, so the audio subsystem may be a little weird between the virtual machine and Mac OS, so there's a Windows app that's pulling audio from the Mac, is what I thought you were saying. But what you're saying is you just have your microphone virtual loopback device as the input for Windows. Gotcha. All right.

Michael: [21:03] And so that lets me control my audio on the Mac side. It is very, it's the smoothest experience I've ever had hitting command tab to get from a virtual machine back into parallels. Now I do need to go in and do some more configuration on parallels because I think there's some things I can change right now. I've found that I have to VO shift space when I get into the parallels window for focus to get drug to, um, the actual virtual machine. However, just before we started recording, I tried just hitting Windows D, which.

[21:36] I'm not even going to go over keyboards with people because it's going to break some minds. Um, but I tried hitting windows D to be able to, uh, get to the desktop and it actually works. So that, I mean, windows M worked windows D did not. That's what I was going to say. And so that might be a better solution. So I don't have to do the VO shift space to get into it. But once I'm in parallels, I can, I have on my desktop, all of my desktop files. So if I put something on the desktop on the Mac, it's going to show up on the desktop on windows. There's an app that says files on Mac. And if I choose that, then it brings me to my home directory on the Mac. If I go to run and I need to get, and this is my specific configuration. I'll tell you how I think it works. I have not done any research on this, but if I need to get to my external drive, I go to run and I type X colon and I hit enter. And it takes me to my external drive that I've plugged into the Mac mini, which by the way, I have a two terabyte, two or four. I don't remember. It's a baby one compared to some people. It's a couple of terabytes though, connected to the Mac mini. So if I go to X colon that opens windows explorer with that drive open. If I go to Y colon, that takes me to my iCloud drive so I can get anything from my iCloud drive and it's open in file explorer and if I go to Z colon that takes me to my home directory so I can set up shortcuts. I think what's happening is it starts with your home directory at Z and and then just works backwards and assigns it a drive letter.

Damashe: [23:03] Ah, and that may be because it has the ability to have you plug in a drive that's only seen by Windows as opposed to, or Windows would grab that first and they would start, Windows itself would start at, you know, probably not A, probably like C or E or something, yeah, so it would start there and then work its way forward, so hopefully you wouldn't run into a collision, because if you got that many drives plugged in, then, you know.

Michael: [23:25] Just go get a Windows computer then.

Damashe: [23:29] I don't know. Maybe you need to run a server or something. I wouldn't know what you would do in that scenario.

Michael: [23:34] But it's really nice because I can be running and then I discovered something accidentally. I don't know if every app shows up in it. But I will tell you that, uh, if you're grabbing system audio and you're recording with audio hijack, audio hijack will record it. That means you can actually grab parallels specifically in record audio. You might be able to grab a specific application within parallels if you open it, um, and then grab that audio because, which is interesting if you open, so for example, when you open Microsoft edge, right, it voiceover, because they're two different voices. We'll say Microsoft edge parallels opened or something like new window or something like that.

Damashe: [24:16] Okay.

Michael: [24:17] So, uh, Mac OS is seeing the new windows that are opening in the background. The other thing is, is I typed in search, uh, or I typed in to, where was I? My brain's a little broken. I think, I think it was launch bar. No, no. Uh, I typed in VLC in the search field and it brought up VLC Mac app. And when I hit enter that opened VLC on the Mac, but it told me it was a Mac app. And the other thing is, is I was able to hit command space while in windows and search for an action in launch bar. But as I was telling Demasi or someone else, I don't remember because my windows files are integrated directly with Mac iOS. That means they're indexed by launch bar, which means anything I save in windows is findable on Mac iOS, uh, in launch bar. Because your documents are saved in your documents. And if you download a file in Windows, that file is downloaded to your downloads folder on Mac OS So then hazel can run automations on that as well All right So Michael has now solved the problem of how do I get launch bar and audio?

Damashe: [25:21] Hijack and all of this stuff on what are the equivalents for this on Windows?

Michael: [25:24] I'll tell you get a Apple Silicon Mac get parallels and I Can't take the full credit Steven's the one who actually inspired me to actually try it with vo CR Honestly, I knew about parallels. I knew about VOCR.

Damashe: [25:38] I never put the two of them together Well, I mean the impression for a long for a long time. I don't think any of the interface to parallels was accessible with With voiceover though and that seems to now be down to a point where the setup process is not accessible to voiceover Which is where VOCR comes in And we're gonna have to find I have not done this. I will do this over the weekend I think you have just now inspired me. Number one, I'm gonna go ahead and update my computer to Ventura, because listen, I need that app. Like I absolutely gotta have it.

Michael: [26:16] And it does work with remote cameras too. You can pick what camera you want to use the preferences.

Damashe: [26:21] Yeah, I need that app It would be nice if I had rim access on my MacBook Air because it means I wouldn't have to jump over to the mini in order to do that Especially when I'm testing well testing while I'm testing is fine My expectation is that at some point I'm going to end up paying for this because it'll be released and I'll have to you know Start giving some money over there Which is fine because it also solves a lot of problems for me as a consultant and dealing with other people I'm excited to do consulting work on technology again in there for a while.

Michael: [26:56] I I dreaded it I'm like, yeah, this is gonna be difficult and now I'm like, hey bring it on.

Damashe: [27:01] Let's let's get your stuff Listen, listen, so I was all hyped up I had already pushed a button on I had already pushed a button on my keyboard to switch over to controlling the Mac mini with The Bluetooth keyboard today because somebody was like, oh I need to fix this thing my Windows keys because the function keys are being media keys right now and I'm gonna go back to being regular F keys. And I was like, okay, so how does that process normally work for you? What do you normally do to make that change? I'm already already I've opened up RIM like I'm ready to go man and I have to use Aira because I have to go to the BIOS and I was like, oh crap. Well hold on let me Google this real quick. Acer change function keys to standard function keys from media keys and everything that very quickly came up for me was like, go to the BIOS. And I was like, well, dang, I don't get to use my RAM today.

Michael: [27:49] So Demasi and listeners, next time, because it is available to everyone, go to chat.bing.com and ask Bing what to use or what you could do that didn't involve the BIOS.

Damashe: [28:01] Yeah, so the reason I didn't dig any deeper than that, I would not have thought to use Bing. Yeah, me neither. Me neither. But the reason I did not bother, because the first three results that came up, one was a forum post on the Acer forums, one was somebody's article about a specific computer, and the third one was just a general way of changing your function keys in Windows, seemed to all initially reference to BIOS. There are some computers that you can do it as we can on Mac OS from within the control panel or settings interface. My expectation with Acer, which is very low to be honest, is that the only way you're probably gonna be able to do that is in the BIOS. So I didn't dig beyond that. Had it been like a Lenovo, I would have did a little bit more digging around maybe to see if there was a way to do it in the interface. I do know that this is possible in Windows, but given that the way Windows works, oftentimes manufacturers will override what may be available in Windows natively and you have to do it their way. I remember the days of the Realtek audio driver that would drive me insane. So I stopped.

Michael: [29:06] Sometimes you can do FN escape for listeners and that sometimes will work I've heard but not on every computer.

Damashe: [29:14] Yeah and that's and see here do they still sell these now I gotta go Google it.

Michael: [29:18] Oh no what are we Googling? What really blew my mind though with this whole parallel setup is though. It's not, I don't, if you're, if you're new to the Mac or you're a new compute, newer computer user and not comfortable with it, don't do parallels. It's it's not, it's a very easy setup process, but unless you can wrap your mind around things, um, your. Your mileage may vary. So let me give you a quick rundown. When I first connect this keyboard and bear with me through this and Demasi may have questions. When I first connected this keyboard, the key layout was control FN command option space.

[29:57] And that threw me off forever because I'm used to hitting command option, uh, or control option, control command. Hold on. Now I've got to do it. Control command S for example, to perform a action inside of a, uh, web browser. So I'm used to hitting what would have been control option S on the current layout. So I went into macOS and there's some audio somewhere around that. I can send it to someone or reach out if you have questions, if you need help with this, but I went in and I swapped the position of the option in command keys. So now my keyboard is control FN option command space, and that works great. And now when I get into windows, the command key is my windows key and the option key is my alt key. So I can hit command tab and that works just fine. And then slide my thumb because in windows that's interpreting it as windows tab, um, and then slide my thumb over to the options key, which is really the command key and tab. And that will allow me to alt tab through windows. So there's some little things that you have to kind of adjust your brain to work for, for me. I don't have a problem with it because I expected behavior like that, but I don't want someone new to the Mac or new listening to this saying, Oh, I'm going to go do this. Uh, maybe not the best idea at first. I mean, what are your thoughts?

Damashe: [31:27] Yeah, I definitely agree. And I've said this from the first time that I switched to the Mac. And even when I was kind of partially free-willing consulting with people that were using the Mac or helping people out with the Mac, which is how I learned a lot of it before I owned one, is if you're switching to the Mac and you've just come over here, number one, if you haven't bought one yet and you're still on Windows, think about what it is you're doing, how much you want to invest time in learning how to do something. Do not do what I saw a lot of people do in the early...

[31:59] The early teens I would say 2009 up through 2012 2013 where they were like oh, I'm gonna buy a Mac because I can run Windows on the Mac and Their fallback solution for any problems was to instantly try to jump into Windows Because if you're running a virtual machine as Michael has said like that is not going to be the most friendly Experience right away for you. If you are going to struggle with using Mac OS because you're now using to host, you're using two native operating systems, one hosted inside of another. And sometimes things can get weird. I had some very, very, very strange experiences with VMware back in the days. And you just gotta be able to get yourself out of those. And there's no boot camp here either at this point for Mac OS. So yeah, don't jump into it if you're new to the Mac and you're trying to supplement your Mac learning through Windows. Either hold on to your Windows computer so that you have that there for that efficiency or for that workspace that you need to be in until you're more comfortable with the Mac or just really sit down and focus and learn the Mac is the best thing I can give you because you know don't buy a Mac today because they're so fast and oh I like this style and yada yada yada and all I can just get parallels and it'll work or I could just get VMware and it'll work. One, 91 of those two applications I just mentioned is gonna be 99 cent, right?

[33:22] They're not cheap to get into if you're gonna do it. And two, they do add a lot more complexity to using the Mac.

Michael: [33:31] But they give you the best of both worlds, and that's what I'm excited about. They do, they do. We'll follow up on this. DeMossi needs to get Parallels installed, and I'm interested, how long has it been since you really used a Windows computer?

Damashe: [33:46] Oh man, so this is a two-part answer.

Michael: [33:49] Okay.

Damashe: [33:52] So it's probably been at least four years since I actually used a Windows computer. Gotcha. And on top of that, it was Windows 7 still. So I haven't really, other than virtually via talking to someone on the phone and walking them through where I expect things to still be found in Windows because underneath everything still XP. I haven't used Windows 10 or Windows 11. So this whole experience for me going to Windows is going to be new and shiny, maybe.

Michael: [34:26] Yes, yes. Oh, I can't wait for you to try Zen Desk Out in Windows. Oh, I'm excited. It was like coming home.

Damashe: [34:34] So I will be getting this set up over the weekend. I am going to most likely go ahead and upgrade to Monterey or go back up to Monterey. Yeah, Ventura. Wish I was going with Monterey. Monterey's nice. It's comfortable over here. I will most likely go up to Ventura, go back up to Ventura first before I install Parallels. And then get all of that set up because, one, I really want this... I saw this audio title too, like Center Head. I was like, what the hell is Mike doing?

Michael: [35:08] I gave it away in the title of it too. What did I call it? Center Head Can You See Me Now?

Damashe: [35:13] Yep, that is what it was called, but I was like, I have, that didn't tell me anything because I hadn't heard about this app yet.

Michael: [35:19] But it told you everything.

Damashe: [35:22] It did, it did. But I wasn't thinking about the Can You See Me app. Like I really wasn't, because that app has kind of been erased from my memory at this point because it didn't seem like it was coming to the Mac and it's like, well, I've gotten comfortable just calling up Ira. So I have been using Aira to confirm that I was in shot before joining a video meeting of any sort of doing any sort of content that required me to be on camera. So having sensor head will be amazing. So that that along with the fact that it'll give me realm even though it's still in beta. I repeat, RIM is still in beta, Remote Incident Manager is still in beta. But it'll give me that on my laptop, which means if I'm traveling or moving around, I have like kind of all of the pieces that I need. I can make sure I'm in camera shot with my iPhone when I set that up with Camo. I can, you know, remote connect to people's computer. I'll have Windows running in parallel. So that'll be amazing. So that even if Realm for some reason doesn't work in this particular instance, maybe I can jump over to Windows. And Mike has really got me excited about the Zendesk on Windows.

Michael: [36:39] Yeah. And if it wasn't for the face and we were meeting with our representatives, uh, today and for ACB leadership, and I wanted to be the, you know, strange one out and actually be on video and then come to find out there's one other person on video, but that's besides the point. Anyways, if it wasn't for that app and that's what got me to go spend a dollar without even thinking about it, you could just install parallels and then use Ram inside of parallels to connect to other computers.

Damashe: [37:07] That is something that did occur to me when I bought Parallels a couple of weeks ago, and I'm going to find it or see if I can find it. That might be a thing to do. Throw and let Michael off the top of his head can remember which episode it was. I will search the website first. It probably didn't come up because I used to crap on a bunch of apps on the DM series. Remember that show? But I do believe there's one where I said, I'll never buy Parallels until they make it completely accessible. And so, yeah, if I can find that clip, we'll play it in next week when I tell you that I've actually set up Parallels and how awesome it is. Because I did say that and, you know, I'm pretty sure I said it on the show. I know I've said it to Michael several times.

Michael: [37:49] This is why we need ChatGPT API to work and Whisper API. Because then I could just send them all of the episodes.

Damashe: [37:56] So that's what I'm going to do if I can't find it. So if I can't find it by searching, which I doubt I will, because I don't think we ever link to Parallels, because I think I told my ears no way in hell I'm linking to their crap, especially if I don't use it, I will download our, well I know, I have a good starting point, so I don't have to actually grab all of them. Probably be somewhere after 40 going forward, so not necessarily all of them. And just throw them at Whisper over the next week, and it probably shouldn't take that long, but throw them at Whisper on the Mac Mini and get transcripts out and then just do a transcript search.

Michael: [38:32] Or if you could use RAM, you could go spin up like a top of the line Mac Studio app. See, that's what has me excited, is once you can get that stuff set up, then we can be on an equal playing field with sighted IT people and go spin up a server or do something like that.

Damashe: [38:49] Go drop a Windows server in the cloud or a Mac mini in the cloud or a Mac Studio.

Michael: [38:54] I need 120 gigs of RAM for this real quick project that yeah, I'll probably pay 50 bucks, 60 bucks for an hour's worth of work, but you know what? That's gonna get it done, and that avoids me from having to go pay five, six, $7,000.

Damashe: [39:05] Uh-huh, yep, and that is a reason, that is one of the main reasons that I was so excited about it too, and I'm always articulating the customer support because I find myself, even with people that are fairly comfortable with figuring out stuff, time would go a whole lot quicker if I could just connect and solve their problem, but yeah, that's the other side of it too, is AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, if you're really into. You're really into that kind of pain, you know, go ahead. But being able to spin up a Windows computer in the cloud, that is much more powerful than anything I have here, or a Mac, because there's Mac Stadium, and I think they do daily tickets, and then there's also AWS, which you're into AWS for a day, I think, but I think a day on AWS may be somewhere around like 40 to 60 bucks, but for something like what you just said, you know, that solves a huge problem. Think about remote connections for live streaming as well. Like instead of having to hog up my bandwidth and my computer resources, hey, I just tore up a cloud thing and we run this convention for three days over the weekend using the Mac Mini in the cloud with all of the tools or Mac Studio if they have those in the cloud. That would be so nice. Michael asked me a while ago if I had another topic and I was like, but I think I was just trying to get Mark to shut up so I could remember where the hell I left off at.

Michael: [40:33] And then I got distracted to go look for where you mentioned parallels and start with DM64. It looks like that came up in a transcript when I was doing transcripts through Amazon. So that's an advantage of transcripts.

Damashe: [40:45] That is an advantage of doing transcripts.

Michael: [40:48] Accessibility can give you, because now I was able to search your own page. It'd be cool if I go to Bing and I could say, hey Bing, find this, But I don't have transcripts of all the episodes, but I think. Even just machine transcripts. I don't, I'd like some opinions on this. I don't think we have an email, but, um, even some, I think, I don't know, did we set one up? But, but machine transcripts to me is better than not having anything. That's almost like audio description. I would love the fact that, and, and doing voiceover work, of course, I'm not like, I don't want a TTS all the time, but I would love the fact to have audio description on some content that maybe I've never had it for on the past, even if that means a TTS is there, because, you know, when you bring it back to how we started the episode, look at things like 11 labs, you can actually create some natural sounding voices that allow people to hear the audio description and more audio description be created. And here's something I'm not hearing talked about yet, but I think it's coming down the road with GPT four, where you can send it multiple images at a time. What's to say there isn't scripts being automatically generated for audio description with videos? So we definitely want to fact-check some of these.

Damashe: [42:04] That is another step I think that we're going to see to at some point with somebody's system or solution. Probably chat GPT, honestly. Open AI I think will get there first. Unless one of the image generating systems, but they seem to be more focused on image generating and their training and all that. So I think open AI will be there first. It's sending in a, you know, being able to drop a video in and then getting it to describe what is in that video. And again, it may require a little editing and I for sure am not trying to put anybody that professionally records audio description out of business, but just as with the Books that are now available in Apple books that are being read by high very high quality in some cases very convincing high quality TTS's It's not gonna shut down audible and it's not gonna put people who record for audible out of business or lose their jobs What it does is it means a lower budget film or a lower budget movie in the case of video, audio descriptions automatically being generated or in the case of the audiobooks, people who publish books that don't have the money to pay for a good narrator or good audiobook reader or Audible's not interested in doing business with them, like they still can have their book out there in more formats, it's more accessible to more people.

Michael: [43:26] And not only that, but when you have audio description, for example, and someone messes up a script, maybe he came in from the right instead of the left. And that might be important for an action shot that comes up later on in the film or in the TV series. Going back and fixing that doesn't mean you have to call in the voiceover artist to come back in and pay them for an hour's worth of work to re-record that section because the script got messed up. You can use things like 11 labs and just dub in that as well. And I think it's interesting how work can become augmented with AI and AI to me is not artificial intelligence. I'm sticking with it's augmented intelligence.

Damashe: [44:08] I like that.

Michael: [44:09] Now tell me augmented starts with an A cause I've done that before. Yeah. And then realize it starts with a O, you know? Hold on, let me, let me. But I like that. the saying augmented reality, because you are, you're really augmenting your augmented intelligence.

Damashe: [44:28] It doesn't flow as well as artificial intelligence, but it doesn't but you know, you've been hearing artificial intelligence for probably damn near your whole life, dude.

Michael: [44:38] Yep.

Damashe: [44:40] Aha, see, yep, there we go, somebody said it somewhere. So augmented, I'm going with it, augmented starts with a. AUG something.

[44:51] Yeah, I definitely agree though. I think that using AI can help augment a lot of stuff. I mean, again, going back to that show that we used to do, we talked about this as, what is it, mid-journey and the other one, stable diffusion, were being announced and what we were picking up from listening to shows like DTNS and other tech shows and reading different articles that a lot of artists, while, here's the thing, it's kind of like the situation we face as blind people, right? Oftentimes, something will get created or somebody will want to defend the blind person, right? And we're cool with whatever they think the issue is. We don't have a problem with somebody trying to be helpful has a problem, right? I saw a lot of this with the image generation tools that came out is that people were offended or defensive on behalf of graphic artists when a lot of them were saying, oh no, this is gonna give me a great starting point for a lot of stuff. So it cuts down on the, or it's gonna solve the problem when I got something due in like 48 hours and I'm just still sitting here staring at a blank canvas like this helps get me unblocked.

[46:05] So I think one we're gonna adopt your phrase that is not a official phrase of technically working and if you use anything other than augmented AI we will shamelessly talk about you on the show. So there's that but augmented.

Michael: [46:22] Augmented intelligence.

Damashe: [46:23] I think is going to be a great help if people use it wisely. Like don't look at it as a way of getting rid of jobs because again, listen, you can pay. We all, well not all of us, but some of us will go do some DIY projects around the house but if you really need to redo your entire plumbing, if you're not a professional plumber, you go pay a professional.

Michael: [46:47] I like how you brought that up. the handle on our toilet yesterday, like snapped off. I may have kind of hit it a little hard because it was stuck under that little ball thing that floats to tell it that it has full, right? So that's stuck. And so I may have hit a little hard and it snapped off. And I went to pull it out and Mallory got home and then went and bought a new handle, right? We'll replace that. That's not a problem. Just undo that bolt, get it swapped out, watch a little YouTube if you're not sure what to do. Now if, let's say, a pipe went out, or when we had a root growing through one of our pipes, I wasn't gonna watch YouTube to figure that out.

Damashe: [47:27] Nope, call in the professionals. I think the same sort of principles apply when it comes to creative work as well. Like these augmented tools can help people out or help resolve minor little quirks. Like your example of somebody's audio description of a movie or scene, they got the script handed to them wrong, so therefore they read it wrong. Well, instead of paying that person for a whole nother hour or time or whatever, you know, it takes 10 minutes to, you know, dub their voice in. And people agreeing to that, I think, would help, again, greatly. Because we, as those of us who appreciate audio, blind or sighted, regardless of whether you have a disability or not, or whether you recognize having a disability or not, those of us who appreciate audio will be able to tell the difference. In a augmented voice versus the real person's voice for quite some time to come, I believe.

[48:23] But having that augment means, hey, you didn't just yank this person out of their new gig they're working on to fix something that they recorded for you six months ago either, right? So there's that aspect of it. So looking forward to it. We'll be following up on the 11 Labs, things that we play around with. I will find a clip to drop into the show next week showing what a jerk I can be. well, not a jerk. I will find a clip dropping into the show next week of me having to eat my words about parallels probably because everything I have heard from Michael and Steven has been tremendously encouraging, encouraging.

[49:02] Thank you. I was looking for a word there. So start follow up on that.

Michael: [49:08] Start with dm 64 talking. What do we call this? It with DM64, I think I already told you this, Talking podcasts with kitchen distractions.

Damashe: [49:21] Hmm, huh? Oh, yeah, I think we talked about some inaccessible.

Michael: [49:23] That was January of 21 That was an interesting episode.

Damashe: [49:27] I think yeah. Hey, you should go listen to that too after you listen to this if you haven't That was the point We did I do remember that episode though. We talked about some so my I think you had some new stuff in the kitchen that you were using and I'm trying to remember was it the air fire or the instapot or something? I don't know go listen people and tell us what we talked about cuz I ain't going to listen.

Michael: [49:55] That's not No, we were talking about JJ's barbecue cast that where they were talking about new hard or they were reviewing hardware for the 2020 Thanksgiving episode and Yeah, I don't think I got anything new but maybe I did. I don't know I didn't look all the way through the transcript. There's a transcript there if you need it That's how I got on this Yep, and transcripts are great.

Damashe: [50:18] And again that that that random thing just proves what a lot of us in in the industry have been saying for a while, which is if you think about Accessibility in the beginning like accessibility doesn't always just help a person that needs that, Accommodation definitely helps them but also helps other people right Michael started doing transcripts because you want to be more friendly to those that or hearing impaired was the reason that really drove him to kind of do that not so that he could go back and search his content later and figure out what episode Demasi said something stupid on but hey look here we are today.

Michael: [50:55] And where we started this conversation with and then we can wrap it up after this is you, The transcripts I have are not perfect. Now, if you want to come in and you want to sponsor us and pay for a human to go in and do transcripts, I'm willing to discuss that with you. Send me an email. Let's chat. But right now, because it is at the point where I would say it is 75, 80% accurate. Someone's able to figure out the concept of what we're talking about in our show, based on the automated transcripts that can be generated, and it doesn't cost us anything extra than what I'm already paying to produce the show. And I think that's important to be aware of and to talk to people about because content can be made more accessible and now it's not an arm and a leg like it used to be in order to make it inclusive for all.

Damashe: [51:47] Miles Davis It is a thing. We're not talking rocket science over here. We're not talking any federal, we're not talking anything that as much as I really want you to keep listening to our show and tell your friends to, share the show around, Let everybody know this is a great show, but nothing about our show is has ever been as important that we need to pay for a Person to create the transcripts out-of-pocket for us now as Michael said if you want to sponsor the show and help facilitate that we'll be happy to Explore that path, but at the end of the day like we're just talking about technology right now if this was a court hearing Obviously you pay somebody that is a professional at doing it and that takes us right back to where we where we kind of started out with 11 labs and where we ended up at with augmented intelligence. Doesn't necessarily have to take away jobs. It just augments and allows more people to get involved in things that otherwise would cost way more money than they have to spend on it.

Michael: [52:42] Yeah. So if you find our content useful, you find it entertaining, or you just want to hear Demasi's voice more, because apparently he sounds like your favorite deity, Feel free to say subscribed in a world, I'll grab that clip and I'll throw some reverb on it and we'll see what it sounds like. That's for you, wasn't it Sean that wanted that? Oh.

Damashe: [53:08] Steven.

Michael: [53:08] Steven, there you go.

Damashe: [53:10] In a world where Steven and Sean decided to do a podcast.

Michael: [53:14] Ooh, ooh, see what you should do is you should go to Bing and make, and now that you have access to it, and make Bing create something and then read that. Like tell it, keep it under 50 words or something and then read that and then we can play that in too.

Damashe: [53:27] Oh man, see now you're trying to put Rob out of work.

Michael: [53:29] Come on, man. I did send them their phone number because apparently they couldn't remember it for a while. That's all I got. Find me on Mastodon or Twitter. I check in and out of Twitter. More Mastodon, but you know.

Damashe: [53:45] Oh, speaking of Twitter, yeah. So I'm on Mastodon. Listen, the easiest way for me to tell you to get there is go to Damase, D-A-M-A-S-H-E.yourownpay.com, and that'll get you to wherever I am on Mastodon. And I say that because I may move, who knows. Same thing for Michael. He's Michael. Well, I know he hasn't moved, but he could move. Here's the thing though, this is why I did this too, is because if we move, we don't have to go back and black all, man, people listen to the old episodes, they don't know how to get there. Nope, go to michael.urlpay.com and that'll take you to Michael on Macedon. I'm still, I still see Twitter if you mention me. I'll put it to you that way. Because I got mentioned when Steven posted the show, hey, look, my push cut shortcut that I never turned off, hey, it still works.

Michael: [54:29] I didn't get mentioned, so I didn't even, oh man.

Damashe: [54:32] You did get mentioned.

Michael: [54:33] Oh, well, I got mentioned, I didn't get notified, yeah.

Damashe: [54:35] Ah, well, see, I got notified.

Michael: [54:37] Ah, so I gotta go post that on Mastodon.

Damashe: [54:39] Take that Twitter and your no third party applications. Yeah, what are you gonna do about that?

Michael: [54:44] I just got distracted. This is the day and age we live in. I have a larger market, but local radio station playing in my headphones right now, right? Listen to top 40 music, just something in the background. They have their drive home Show on right now and it was a artist that's on the top 40 that said hey This is so-and-so artist and you're listening to DJ's name And I'm like, do they have the budget for that or did they go to 11 labs? You know, it's mixed with the music so I'm like, you know, maybe So go to the mossy dot your own pay calm.

Damashe: [55:22] That'll get me on master done. Nice. Send me a message I got two mastodon apps installed on my phone at the moment. So one of them should notify me people are talking to me And Michael has found some interesting things on mastodon. So I'm gonna start poking around a bit more to Yeah, man Also Michael what's that that web client? Oh Michaels at Michael dot Jerome pay calm will get you to him on mastodon Yeah, there we go. Pinafore that cool web client Yep, and we'll look at that in the show notes.

Michael: [55:53] What's that tool called that you can make an app with?

Damashe: [55:56] There is... Neither of them in Setapp. So because you're using Setapp, you have actually access to two of them. One uses WebKit as its engine. That's Unite. That is in Setapp. that happened in the one that uses Chrome as its engine, or Chromium as its engine, is called, oh man, I wish you hadn't asked me about it now, because I forget. We'll put it in the show notes, though. You can go to yourownpay.com slash TW slash, what episode is this, three? Nope, yeah, no, that's not gonna get you there, is it?

Michael: [56:37] No, just yourownpay.com slash TW will get you the latest episodes.

Damashe: [56:40] There we go.

Michael: [56:41] Remember, past year was looking out for yourself, and then you're used to adding a number, Yeah, you're on a comm slash TW.

Damashe: [56:47] I'm thinking about what I'm trying to do right now, which we ain't gotten there yet So you're on pay comm slash TW will get you to the show notes for this episode as well as all of our episodes and we will let you know the name of that app and I'm still blanking but you're not is the one that uses Safari's webkit and So if the web page works finding unite then that would work fine Cause I want to build a pinnafore. Yeah, if it works fine in Safari, it'll work in Unite. If something works better in Chrome, you want to use this other app that again, will be in the show notes. Hold on, I'm going to find, I can't, I can't.

Michael: [57:24] But just go to the show notes, click on the get set app, support Demasi a little bit and check these apps out and go from there. So let's wrap it up.

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