Navigating Mental Health and Medication for Weight Management

It’s Not Escapism, It’s Rest

[00:00:00] Introduction and Bird Talk

[00:00:00] Jeff: Hey everybody, this is the Overtired podcast. Hopefully you already know that because you clicked to listen and it’s not on some sort of like autoplay situation, but if it is, hi, surprise, it’s me, I’m Jeff. Uh, I’m here with, with Christina Warren and I’m here with Brett Terpstra and I also have a lot of birds outside my window and I refuse to take measures To block them out, because I think we all, we all need it.

[00:00:31] Jeff: I’m coming with the birds. I

[00:00:33] Brett: not hearing any birds,

[00:00:34] Jeff: Oh, damn. I hear him through my microphone. It’s lovely.

[00:00:37] Brett: that, you got that very directional mic, I uh, I

[00:00:41] Mosquitoes and Immunity

[00:00:41] Jeff: Can you hear the, can you hear the mosquitoes? Cause holy shit. Uh, anyway, yeah, really bad up here. I don’t know why,

[00:00:47] Brett: Yeah, it’s not bad. I live in the same state as Jeff, uh, in far, like two hours south of Jeff. And I gotta say, like, I was just thinking yesterday, there are surprisingly few mosquitoes here.[00:01:00]

[00:01:00] Brett: They all went north.

[00:01:01] Jeff: Brett Terpstra lives in amazing, in a region that has the best name ever. I think you live in the Driftless region, right? And, and isn’t the Driftless region known for a lack of mosquitoes?

[00:01:12] Brett: I actually don’t know if that’s true or false.

[00:01:15] Jeff: mostly just known

[00:01:16] Brett: neither confirm nor deny.

[00:01:18] Jeff: Okay, fine. Fine.

[00:01:20] Brett: So, uh, there, the weird thing is there was a period of about five years where I was immune to mosquitoes. I would, I would be at like a, an outdoor gathering and everyone would be complaining about mosquitoes and zero of them would even land on me.

[00:01:37] Brett: And if they did, they wouldn’t bite.

[00:01:39] Jeff: Okay, I’m gonna make

[00:01:40] Brett: I was just impervious,

[00:01:42] Jeff: gonna make light of something that I am against making light of, but I have a feeling in this friendship in this podcast that’ll work. Was it because you were sweating heroin?

[00:01:49] Brett: no. No, I’m not I can’t rem there was something going on in my life. There was, like, I was eating something regularly, and I can’t remember what I [00:02:00] decided the, the, the X factor was on that. Um, it was during a period of sobriety. It was neither alcohol nor heroin.

[00:02:10] Jeff: it was because of whatever you were detoxing.

[00:02:12] Brett: Yeah, maybe, who knows. It, it ended though. I get mosquito bites now.

[00:02:17] Jeff: Wait, hold on. What if DEET is short for detox?

[00:02:22] Brett: I think it’s short for delirium tremors. Delir yeah,

[00:02:27] Jeff: All right.

[00:02:28] Christina: I’m sorry that you lost your mosquito immunity because I, I definitely, uh, I’m very allergic to so many bugs and, and, um, also pollen and also like the sun and, uh, like every type of like tree and grass blade and whatnot, but mosquitoes. really, really like me. They always have bugs in general. So if there’s anything out there, like with some sort of stinger, like it will find me and, and it will, it will bite me.

[00:02:55] Christina: Um, I got bit by something in New York once on [00:03:00] my, um, I was, I was wearing the jeans that had holes in them and I was at, at, um, uh, dinner with, with a friend of mine and, We were, you know, outdoors, but there were like mosquito lamps and whatnot, and she wasn’t bit. And I was, not only was I bit like through my, um, jeans, like, so like my knee wound up swelling up, but I got bit like on my ring finger and they almost had to cut my rings off.

[00:03:22] Christina: Um, they fortunately didn’t. They were able to give me like a shot of something so they could get my rings off. But like, it was one of those things where like, I had to like, get like a pretty serious antibiotic because they were like, yeah, we’re worried about how infected this could potentially be. And it’s only been like.

[00:03:36] Christina: Twelve hours since you were bit, um. And like, you’re, you’re, you’re, yeah,

[00:03:41] Indoor Cat Life

[00:03:41] Brett: should go outside.

[00:03:43] Christina: you’re not wrong. I mean, this is what I’ve been, I’ve been arguing that for

[00:03:46] Brett: you’re an indoor cat.

[00:03:48] Christina: I am absolutely an indoor cat. 1000%, 1000%.

[00:03:52] Jeff: even one that paws at the windows.

[00:03:54] Christina: No, no, no, no. I mean, honestly, it’s like, you know, give me like the, you know, the blue light therapy stuff to simulate, [00:04:00] um, you know, sunlight, um, But yeah, uh, I’m, I’m definitely an indoor cat.

[00:04:06] Christina: Um, I, I mean, I usually would call myself an indoor kid because that was, you know, uh, a, a joke on, on reality. But honestly, I like indoor cat better. I’m, I’m going to call my, that’s when we call myself now. I’m like, Oh no, I’m an indoor cat. We don’t, we don’t do that.

[00:04:19] Brett: We don’t get tics. I hate tics.

[00:04:23] Mental Health Corner

[00:04:23] Brett: Anyway, let’s do, uh, let’s do a, a constrained mental health corner.

[00:04:28] Christina: sounds good.

[00:04:29] Brett: I can kick off. I, uh, I’m sleeping well. Um, I got, I got the, I got the gabapentin up to like, what is it? 1, 800 milligrams? Um, which is like max dose, but it works. I sleep well. I wake up refreshed. Um, and it’s not making me drowsy all day.

[00:04:51] Brett: And I, I get in for a sleep study in July.

[00:04:56] Christina: Nice.

[00:04:57] Brett: So maybe I can find a way [00:05:00] to sleep without a huge dose of nerve blocking drugs.

[00:05:05] Weight Loss and Medication

[00:05:05] Brett: But I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but I started Wagovi. It’s like Ozempac. It’s like, it’s a different, it’s a very similar drug to Ozempac for weight loss. Yes.

[00:05:20] Christina: Now, I have a question for you. Does Oracle’s health insurance cover this? Okay, that’s really good to know because Apple and Microsoft and also GitHub do not. Unless you have, unless you’ve been diagnosed with diabetes, like, and have been issued it, they don’t cover any of those drugs. And it’s frustrating because They claim both companies, because I’ve talked to people, um, the reason I know about this is because somebody, um, at Apple, um, mentioned this to me and then I looked into it at Microsoft slash GitHub, even though we have different insurance policies, the same is for this.

[00:05:55] Christina: And I found out that even they’re claiming, Oh, well, the science just [00:06:00] isn’t there yet, which fuck you. Yes, it is. It’s been there for like a decade. It’s been there for a very long time. And when you think about like, it’s just that they don’t want to pay 25 grand a year or whatever it is. for everybody to get them.

[00:06:11] Christina: But I’m like, think about how much more money you would save if people who could benefit from this stuff significantly have like lower cholesterol and like better heart. Um, you know, um, uh, you know, like, like, um, lower blood pressure and like their, their hearts are healthier and all kinds of other benefits that come from some of this stuff.

[00:06:31] Christina: So that’s really good to know that, that Oracle covers it because that I can use. In my potentially, my potential crusade that me as a person who will likely never have to be on these drugs, I almost feel like that makes me the perfect person to be like the public face, like to yell at HR and, and like, be like, no, why is this not covered?

[00:06:54] Christina: You know? My health insurance. Sorry, go on.

[00:06:57] Brett: I want to be careful because, [00:07:00] like, health and obesity are, um, widely misunderstood, even in the medical community. There are plenty of people who are obese and have diabetes. Yeah. Yeah. Great health. Um, it’s just

[00:07:14] Christina: and they’re playing at people who don’t.

[00:07:16] Brett: sure, sure. Um,

[00:07:18] Jeff: obese who have

[00:07:19] Christina: Agreed.

[00:07:20] Jeff: I’m not, I’m not

[00:07:21] Christina: no, I know, but, but, but I’m just saying like, like, look, like, like putting, put, put, putting like the, the, the, the political aspect of it aside, there are very real health benefits that some people, not everyone, but some people can benefit from if they reduce their weight. Like it’s, it, it, that, that’s not, that’s not a controversial thing.

[00:07:37] Christina: That’s actually fact.

[00:07:38] Brett: so I’m gonna, I’m not gonna argue this. Um, I have, my weight has really affected my mental health. Um, and so my doctor agreed to put me on it. And I have, I’ve been on it for three months now. It costs me 25 bucks a month. Um, which is considering [00:08:00] like without insurance, it’s a couple grand a month.

[00:08:03] Christina: like, it’s like, it’s like 2000 at

[00:08:05] Brett: Yeah, um, so I’ve been on it for three or four months now, and you slowly up your dosage, and I haven’t seen any weight loss yet, but here’s the interesting thing, and this is, this is a known side effect, uh, it reduces impulsive and compulsive behaviors.

[00:08:27] Jeff: ha!

[00:08:28] Brett: And I, for a long time, have had a wee bit of a drinking problem. Uh, for a couple of years now, I’ve been, I’ve been drinking a bit much. And, um, and like my desire to drink is pretty much gone. Gone at this point. Like I, I can enjoy, I can enjoy like a glass of wine with dinner. That’s nice. But

[00:08:51] Christina: But you, but you

[00:08:52] Brett: whiskey, whiskey in the afternoon, which was like a favorite thing of mine.

[00:08:57] Brett: Um, not a favorite thing, but it [00:09:00] was a habit. Um, it’s like, I just, I don’t. I don’t do it anymore. And I don’t even think about it until like evening rolls around. I’m like, Hey, wow. I haven’t drank any whiskey today. So at for 25 bucks a month, even if that’s the only benefit I get from it, I’m, I’m pretty happy.

[00:09:20] Brett: I would love to lose a little weight. That would, that would be good for me, but also I’m working on just kind of accepting that this is what my, I, I get exercise. I eat very healthy. Um, my doctor looked at my diet and the only thing he could think to change was to like reduce oil. Like I use like a tablespoon of olive oil to cook some potatoes, you know?

[00:09:46] Brett: Um, I’m vegan otherwise. Uh, I mean, that is vegan. It’s just. I don’t

[00:09:54] Jeff: now I need an education.

[00:09:55] Brett: I don’t use dairy based oils and I don’t want to cook [00:10:00] without oil. I know it’s a thing. Like there’s a whole, there’s a whole mood. Well, it’s, and it’s hard, like everything sticks to your pan. Nothing cooks evenly without a little bit of fat.

[00:10:11] Brett: And I also, I don’t believe that fat in a diet is. is unhealthy. Like, you need fat. You, your body, your brain works on fat. Like fat, fat and salt, like we were raised to believe these were horrible health, health affecting, uh, uh, elements, and they’re really not. And so I, I disregarded my doctor on the oil thing.

[00:10:39] Brett: It’s not like I’m drinking bottles of oil or anything, so Anyway,

[00:10:44] Christina: well, and, and no, and the thing is though, like, honestly, I would think that probably based on what you’ve said, like the, what your diet is, there’s either like a metabolic reason, like why maybe you’ve had a hard time losing weight or whatnot, or honestly, and here’s the real thing, it is the [00:11:00] alcohol, right?

[00:11:00] Christina: Like that’s actually

[00:11:01] Brett: not, it’s not, I’ve quit for two years and not lost a pound.

[00:11:05] Christina: huh.

[00:11:06] Brett: It, alcohol, just quitting alcohol has no effect on my weight. This is, my, my body went from 180 to 230 in a, like a, uh, one to two month period. Like it just, it just changed. With no changes in my lifestyle, it just changed. It went back to what it was 10 years prior before I lost weight.

[00:11:31] Christina: Right. Before you got into yoga and everything.

[00:11:34] Brett: like even that, like I got into yoga because I lost weight and had more energy. I didn’t really do anything to lose the weight. I started walking a couple miles a day, uh, but like as I lost weight, I had more energy and so I started running and then I kept losing weight, but like my body just changes.

[00:11:57] Brett: It’s kind of like stasis weight. And right [00:12:00] now, at the weight I’m at, I can, for a week, I can not exercise, I can eat shitty, and I don’t gain weight. I, I just, this is just the weight it wants to be. And I’m hoping the W’Gobi will get me to a place where I’m more, you know, Like, I don’t even like to go out. I feel very self conscious, like just, uh, just hanging out.

[00:12:22] Brett: There’s no way, like, I go to queer dance night and there’s no way I’m getting on the dance floor. I feel like such a, like, weirdo with a, cause all my weight is in my belly. Um, like I don’t gain, like, I have a great ass. My legs look amazing. Um, I just have

[00:12:41] Jeff: actually, he’s showing us his ass

[00:12:42] Christina: We are,

[00:12:43] Jeff: right. It’s really, it’s just nice is what I would say.

[00:12:46] Christina: I was gonna say, I was gonna say the queer dance night crew like really needs to see Bratz Ass.

[00:12:52] Jeff: Yeah. You think about chaps? You ever think about chaps?

[00:12:57] Brett: If you had to, in two words, [00:13:00] how would you describe my ass as you look at it?

[00:13:02] Jeff: Oh, right now? Um, I would describe it as, uh, well, it’s funny because the word bodacious comes to mind, but I think I’m looking for a different

[00:13:11] Christina: well, Bootylicious

[00:13:13] Jeff: Bootylicious, that’s it. It’s my brain was just, yeah, bootylicious was what I

[00:13:18] Brett: that. Thank you. I’ll put, I’ll put, I’ll put my pants back up now. Um, so that’s, that’s kind of my mental health corner. I will, I will hand it off now.

[00:13:26] Jeff: Mental Health Corner ends with you

[00:13:27] Christina: keep us posted on, keep us posted on this, because I’m interested in how it works for you. Because I know that for a lot of people, like, as much, I think some of the discourse, like, I understand if the discourse around these drugs is to be used in any way to shame people who don’t want to take them for whatever reasons, or whatnot, like, how that can be negative.

[00:13:48] Christina: But, I’m interested in it. I, I think that some of the discourse has been really overblown and is, it really overlooks the, the very real, um, uh, medical benefits, again, not just, you know, like physical well [00:14:00] being, uh, but from a mental health perspective, like, you know, you, your things can be, can, whether they should be or shouldn’t be is important.

[00:14:08] Christina: To me, completely beside the point, like how we look and how it has a direct, like, correlation with how we feel. So, um, keep us posted on this cause I’m, I’m, I’m happy, um, to, I’m happy for you. I hope that this, this, um, you know, can be, um, encouraging. Um, and, and I think if the, Interesting thing there is that if it also helps with some of like the more addictive tendencies, um, or compulsive tendencies, like that’s actually an interesting potential augmentation, you know, like for these sorts of drugs, if you think about it, right?

[00:14:39] Christina: Like,

[00:14:39] Brett: The problem is as soon as you stop taking it, All of those behaviors come back, like, and, and same with weight loss. Like as soon as you, if you ever, if your insurance changes and they won’t cover it anymore and you can’t afford a couple grand out of pocket, which who can like, that’s, that’s nuts.

[00:14:57] Christina: No, it is

[00:14:58] Brett: and then everything comes [00:15:00] back.

[00:15:00] Brett: So it’s, it’s an experiment while it lasts,

[00:15:03] Christina: totally. Although I will say, like, I think that the more, um, that people start to, you know, go on these drugs more because they’re, again, like the, it’s what annoys me about like my company’s response is that they’re like, Oh, well we, you know, don’t have, you know, the, the, the data.

[00:15:18] Christina: And I’m like, no, the science is actually incredibly solid here. It’s like 20 years worth. Like it’s, it’s actually, it’s, it’s incredibly solid. And so this is one of those things that, look, maybe not everybody needs to take this. Forever. And maybe that, you know, there can be changes at some point where that’s not possible, but plenty of people have to take supplements or have to take, you know, heart pills or, you know, antidepressants or other things all the time.

[00:15:40] Christina: I’m just hopeful that as more and more of this becomes like more, um, destigmatized, which it is. is a good thing that I’ve noticed even in the last year, like the stigma around this has gone down. Um, although it still exists in some places, which is why I’m probably gonna have to be the vocal person to speak up in like my company matters, even though [00:16:00] like I’m probably never going to be someone who takes a drug like this.

[00:16:04] Christina: Um, I’m hoping as it becomes more destigmatized and whatnot, that it is just going to become one of those things where like the prices will come down. Um, regardless

[00:16:14] Brett: generics will

[00:16:15] Christina: generics, precise, precisely, right? Yeah. So, you know, hopefully it won’t be a bad thing.

[00:16:21] Cat Update

[00:16:21] Brett: can I give you a quick cat update before I end my mental health corner?

[00:16:24] Christina: Yes, of course.

[00:16:25] Brett: Um, so my, my cat, nobody, which we’ve had for a few years now, she will jump up on my desk and very carefully walk around my cords and wires every once in a while, she decides to nest into like a bundle of cables and she’ll unplug some shit, but Generally, as long as she’s, as long, she will occasionally like look for things on my desk that move and then like slowly push them to the edge until they fall off.

[00:16:57] Brett: Um, but that’s like the extent of trouble she [00:17:00] causes. Our new cats, Richard and Morris. Richard has taken to hanging out on my desk, but he is not a cat. Just a bulldozer, like, to get on my desk, he hits the trackpad and the keyboard, has sent multiple messages to people by doing so, just bulldozes my desk, knocks, he’s broken multiple coffee mugs, he is a terror, and I’m not a fan of Richard, that’s my update.

[00:17:30] Jeff: Put him on. Put Richard on. Let’s, let’s see what’s going on with Richard. Let’s have a couple,

[00:17:34] Brett: Richard is absent,

[00:17:36] Jeff: Is that because I saw Richard run off a minute ago?

[00:17:40] Brett: Bod’s right here. You can’t see her, but anyway. Alright, who’s up?

[00:17:49] Jeff: Christina, you ready?

[00:17:50] Christina: Yeah, I’ll go.

[00:17:51] Christina’s Busy Week

[00:17:51] Christina: Um, so I had a, I had a really insanely busy week last week, which is why we didn’t have a show. Um, because I was doing Microsoft build [00:18:00] stuff, uh, and I, including talking to a few people from Oracle, uh, who I’m sure Brett doesn’t know, um, all about, uh, the various partnership between, uh, Azure and, and, um, uh, Oracle, uh,

[00:18:12] Brett: Oh, I didn’t even know we had that.

[00:18:14] Christina: Yeah, apparently some partnership launched like in October where you can now run like Oracle, Oracle ACI. Is that what it’s called?

[00:18:23] Brett: OCI?

[00:18:23] Christina: OCI, um, on Azure. Um, and so I, I talked to some people about that. Um, uh, contact your account managers is, was the real takeaway if you wanted to be part of that, um, which, which is hysterical that, that, that was, I think the, the hardest part of the partnership from what I understood was like getting all the, the, the, the account managers and things like that, like on the same.

[00:18:44] Christina: Page because the idea is basically that if you have like a, an Oracle database, but you also are using multi cloud or want to use Azure for some stuff, you can now have it hosted. I think either on some Oracle servers or Azure servers, but yet you can run Azure services on top of it. I don’t know. [00:19:00] Anyway, I talked to Oracle people.

[00:19:01] Christina: That, that’s, that’s a, and I was like, I know someone at Oracle.

[00:19:04] Jeff: health check in.

[00:19:04] Christina: That is my, I talked to someone at Oracle. No, my mental health check in was just like, I had like an insanely, insanely busy week. Um, and I’m, I’ve kind of recovered from that. But, um, that is, as much as I’m like a extrovert, like there’s still something incredibly draining about like being on for, or two.

[00:19:23] Christina: I don’t know, I had like five 13 hour days, 13 hour plus days, like 13 hours of like the minimum in a row. And that was just like, that was a lot. So, but I survived. I

[00:19:36] Brett: anything go terribly wrong? That’s what I’m curious about.

[00:19:39] Christina: No, not at all. Not at all. Um, you

[00:19:41] Brett: you’re a trooper. You get shit done.

[00:19:45] Christina: I’m gonna try. Um, but, uh, yeah, no. So just, uh, that’s my, my kind of general update. I’m still, I, I’m envious of your sleeping ability cause I am definitely struggling sleeping.

[00:19:59] Christina: Like I [00:20:00] went to bed, I think at, at 5 a. m. this morning and, uh, 5 or 6, and then I was up by Like 8. 45 or 9. 15. So

[00:20:11] Brett: enough sleep.

[00:20:12] Christina: it’s not, it’s not. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some more this weekend, but we’ll, we’ll see.

[00:20:16] Brett: get, do you get a little break now after that hellish, grueling week?

[00:20:21] Christina: uh, kind of, but now like it’s summer dev conference season. So, um, like, uh, WWDC is in two weeks now. I’m going to be in San Jose for that. Um, just hanging out with some folks. And then I’m going to be ironically back in San Francisco, like a week after that, like at the end of June. Um, for, uh, for a workshop, um, at, at some AI conference that I, I found out about, um, this week.

[00:20:49] Christina: I was asked to do it and I, I’m now, I’ve, the problem is I’m happy to do the workshop, but it’s like three hours. Huh. Um, I don’t think I have to do the whole three hours. I think that somebody else can do like an hour and a [00:21:00] half and I can do an hour and a half, but now I have to come up with, an hour and a half workshop.

[00:21:05] Christina: And that’s, that’s going to take, um, a lot of time.

[00:21:09] Brett: yeah. Jeez.

[00:21:12] Jeff: Woof.

[00:21:13] Christina: So yeah. So that’s me. Yeah. But things are up, but things are going up. Things are certainly better than like where I was a year ago. So, um, that, that, that, that’s good. So, um, I keep like reminding myself that it was like a year ago, like you were like actively not wanting to exist anymore and about to embark on the medication from hell, like.

[00:21:35] Christina: So, you know, small victories. Um,

[00:21:39] Jeff: Small, small, big victories.

[00:21:41] Christina: big victories. Yeah, so, um, I, I, um, uh, this really doesn’t fit into the mental health corner, but just as a brief follow up. Um, uh, I, I fucked up by buying the laptop that I bought when I bought it. Just back to Microsoft Build, because the new ARM Uh, machines that, that are new Qualcomm, like, [00:22:00] processor stuff that it was announced last week.

[00:22:02] Christina: These Copilot Plus PCs, um, they look really, really good. Like, I’m gonna obviously wait for the final, like, reviews and stuff to come out, but they look really, really good. And I’m like, damn it. Why did I buy the laptop that I bought? Um, too late now, but, uh, I mean, I might wind up selling it or something, but who knows?

[00:22:21] Christina: But like, uh, uh, That’s just a little bit of follow up for anybody who cares about Christina’s alternative, um, device slash operating system saga. Um, Qualcomm does have a, Qualcomm does have a dev kit though, actually, which is similar to like a Mac Mini. It’s 800 bucks or 900 bucks, I think it’s 900, but it comes with 32 gigs of RAM and like a super fast processor and, um, good storage and then a lot of connectivity and it looks like a Mac Mini.

[00:22:47] Christina: So, that’s it. actually a fairly reasonable, um, solution for people who might want to do like on, on device AI stuff, um, or, or Windows on ARM stuff. So I might pick one of those, but we’ll see. But [00:23:00] anyway, that’s it. I’m, I’m done.

[00:23:02] Jeff: Awesome.

[00:23:04] TV Shows and CGI Rants

[00:23:04] Jeff: I, it’s funny, I’m like, trying to figure out, I, I don’t feel like, I feel like I have like, um, heavy stuff, not heavy, like hard stuff, but just like, and, and then light stuff and I think I’m gonna go with the light stuff, which is that, I have, I don’t even know if this is, this has its shadow side, I’m, I, I know, but, um, I’ve been just like, Taking like, uh, like my kind of lunch break in the middle of the day or in the afternoon or late at night and watching, just going through like mostly limited series TV shows.

[00:23:38] Jeff: And, um, God, it’s been a right, it’s been the right time in my life to just get lost in stories. And, uh, and it’s been lovely. And even like we’ve had a lot of rain, so I can kind of lay on this couch we have that I love. And, uh, and just like, there’s a breeze and it’s raining and watching my stories. And, uh, it’s the most lovely thing.

[00:23:55] Jeff: It’s great. Oh man, I’ve blown through so much. Like, it’s not even [00:24:00] stuff I loved, all of it, but I watched The Regime, which I loved, with Kate Winslet. It’s fucking insane. I really recommend that to see her performance, because it’s basically like, it’s got a real veep quality to it. Like, there’s a point at which she’s like, Oh God, it smells like a pig’s urethra in here.

[00:24:15] Jeff: Um, I guess a lot of that kind of,

[00:24:17] Christina: that wasn’t, that was actually a pretty good impression.

[00:24:20] Jeff: a point at which she’s like, off you fuck. And there’s like some great. Like, she’s amazing. It’s a totally fucked up show. I watched that. I watched Masters of the Air, which like, I didn’t love as a character show, but I just found it fascinating to kind of like, imagine my way into being a kid who’s flying a bomber in World War II.

[00:24:37] Jeff: And you have like, you know, whatever crazy ass chance of surviving any given mission, not to mention the fact that we shouldn’t have been, uh, bombing in those, the ways that we were most of the time, uh, it’s a separate, separate issue. But the problem is who played Elvis in the Elvis movie? Um,

[00:24:52] Christina: Um, uh, Austin, uh, uh, Austin, um, was his face. Yeah.

[00:24:57] Jeff: So he’s, he plays like the main character, but [00:25:00] it’s, I don’t know if he was fucking filming Elvis as he filmed this, but I could not stay in the movie because every time he’d come on he was like, yeah, no, we’re going to find it, it’s going to be fine, we’re going to fly this mission and we’re all just going to be fine.

[00:25:11] Jeff: And it was like so incredible how he did not shed Elvis, either that or he just is that person. Um, what else? I’m watching Dark Matter. Dark Matter. Uh, on, on Apple TV, and, and I love that, and then I finished one other one, I can’t remember even the name, but uh, anyway, just going through them, and like, I kind of love limited series, they aren’t all limited series, most of those are.

[00:25:31] Jeff: Um, I just love that feeling like when it’s over, you’re not like, Oh fuck, I gotta wait two years. It’s just a nice satisfying feeling like when you close the book at the end of reading. Um, so yeah, that’s been, that’s been nice to do. Uh, it relates,

[00:25:45] Christina: Unless it’s big Little lies and then they’re like, oh, it’s limited series. Oh

[00:25:48] Jeff: I never watched. Yeah.

[00:25:49] Christina: The first season is actually incredible. The second season, not as good, um, even though they had Meryl Streep. Honestly, because, like, the author of the book had to, like, write the script.

[00:25:59] Christina: Like, [00:26:00] no one was expecting to do it again. It’s just, it was such a huge success. They were like, oh, we have to make more of this. Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off.

[00:26:06] Jeff: No. Oh, and the other one I watched, what is it called? It’s the Apple TV show with Colin Farrell. that takes a really ridiculous turn in the last three episodes, but he’s basically like a, uh, like L. A. noir type character. And I loved, I love watching detectives more than I love watching journalists in movies, but I like it for the same reason.

[00:26:26] Jeff: Um, and he is, I loved his style of being a detective. It was like, I loved it almost like close to how much I loved Columbo, but I wouldn’t compare the two because Columbo is just a massive, incredible thing that, that was created,

[00:26:41] Brett: what was the Colin Farrell one called?

[00:26:43] Jeff: what’s it called? It’s recent, uh, it’s, Colin Farrell, and also the woman that was in The Wire, who was a cop in The Wire for a season out on the, out on the docks.

[00:26:55] Jeff: I hope somebody’s searching it because I’m being

[00:26:57] Brett: I’m looking right now.

[00:26:59] Jeff: But first of all, Colin [00:27:00] Farrell, um, Sugar, yeah. Yeah, I loved it. I hated the turn it took, but I loved it. Um, and Colin Farrell also just has features that are like my brother. And so I, I like watching him, but anyway, that’s all.

[00:27:13] Jeff: That was nice. But it leads me to on our, on our sort of agenda here in our, in our show notes, uh, I had one really stupid thing I wanted to say, and it fits right in with this. And I just seem to say it out loud. Cause my kids are just tired of hearing me observe shit like this. I fucking hate CGI headlights So like I’m picturing, I was watching the regime and it happened in Masters of the Year too, where it’s like an overhead shot and there are cars driving, but like the headlights are obviously CGI and, and it looks so dumb. It almost looks half the time, like they’re disconnected and it’s making you guys, making me crazy, pulls me outta the story.

[00:27:48] Jeff: I’ll tell you what it does.

[00:27:49] Brett: I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve never noticed this before.

[00:27:53] Jeff: You know what you want to talk about, Christina? Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, it’s just fucking, I can’t stop seeing it. And it’s probably not even always real, [00:28:00] but it makes me crazy. That’s all. I really,

[00:28:03] Brett: now I’m going to

[00:28:04] Jeff: I felt like this was a safe space and I

[00:28:05] Christina: No, it totally is. I, it doesn’t, those don’t bother me as much, but there are some things like that that have the same effect where like

[00:28:11] Jeff: smoke, breath,

[00:28:13] Christina: Smoke

[00:28:13] Jeff: all of that too.

[00:28:14] Christina: is one of those that, that bothers me. Breath, breath, um, you don’t see as much. Um, although when you see it, it’s almost always like painted in, um,

[00:28:23] Jeff: And it’s like the mouth is here, but why is it

[00:28:25] Christina: Right. Totally. And you’re like, you’re like, I understand that.

[00:28:29] Jeff: a Minnesotan.

[00:28:30] Christina: Well, I was gonna say, I was like, I understand that you’re filming this in Atlanta where it is never cold enough to actually capture someone’s breath. However, you know, you’re trying to like look like you’re, you know, so much, so much colder, but, um, I, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it on this show or not, but, uh, it’s not a limited series, although, um, I guess it’ll come back next year, um, who knows how long you’ll have to wait, but I think it still fits kind of that vibe or whatnot.

[00:28:56] Raving About Fallout on Amazon

[00:28:56] Christina: Fallout on Amazon, absolutely,

[00:28:58] Jeff: next for me.

[00:28:59] Christina: absolutely the [00:29:00] best show I’ve seen this year, probably like in a couple years. Like, even if you’ve never played the games, um, I think that you’ll like it, but like, I, I loved the games and I was really concerned that they were going to fuck up the tone of that show, uh, because the, the tone is crucial to the whole

[00:29:13] Jeff: Oh my

[00:29:14] Christina: not.

[00:29:14] Christina: And they nailed it on every fucking level. The casting is fantastic. They, they kind of, to your point about the CGI stuff, like they used some of that, but a lot of what they did was actually like practical effects.

[00:29:26] Jeff: Yeah, that’s great.

[00:29:27] Christina: like they, they went to certain locations, you know, to get some of the expansive, like they went to Nairobi or something, I think, to, to shoot.

[00:29:35] Christina: Some of the stuff to kind of like look like like the the wasteland and kind of like, you know a desert and You know, they did more practical effects For other things too. So I I think you’ll like it. It’s really really good.

[00:29:50] Jeff: Awesome. That’s great. I want to, I want to watch it so bad. I have an ambient experience of Fallout because both of my boys played it a ton, and I just loved hearing it being played. [00:30:00] Obviously the music, but also just everything. The music’s unbelievable. It’s just,

[00:30:04] Christina: hmm. And yeah, and they nailed it. It was one of those things I was really, I was optimistic, especially when I saw their installation at South by Southwest, which was a really, really good installation. Like they recreated like the wasteland and they kind of had like a carnival sort of experience and they had actors hired to kind of play, you know, denizens, um, you know, in, in, in the TV show, um, and, uh, kind of, kind of world.

[00:30:27] Christina: And, um, I, I was impressed enough with how that was because it was a really, clearly a very expensive installation and it was something that, that worked really well, but I was like, okay, if they put enough into this, the thought, the thought just for this, I’m hopeful, especially, you know, after we’ve seen some of the previews that the show will be good, but then Amazon did stupid shit.

[00:30:47] Christina: Like they kept changing the release date. They wound up, you know, moving it up a few days. And then they released all the episodes at once. And so that makes you think, okay, well, are they trying to burn this off? And no, they weren’t. The reviews were universally [00:31:00] like incredibly positive. Um, and then which, which like, you know, people were comparing it, you know, to, to the Last of Us.

[00:31:06] Christina: And I

[00:31:08] Jeff: God, which I haven’t watched.

[00:31:10] Christina: is great and and but that’s a much easier thing to adapt in my opinion because that has that was a that was a Game that was basically designed like a prestige TV series. Whereas Fallout because it’s self determined They had to create whole new characters But to still live kind of in that universe and so and then you have to nail the tone The tone is a much harder thing to nail in Fallout.

[00:31:29] Christina: And so the stakes in my opinion were a lot higher But I was hopeful I was like, okay Well, the Westworld people are behind this and and like, you know You Um, the, the actors they got involved were good and I was hopeful, but you never know, right? Like video game adaptations are usually awful.

[00:31:44] Jeff: Or, you know, you know that it’s a good chance it’s going to suck.

[00:31:48] Christina: And, and in this case, and then when they drop it all at once, you’re like, okay, well, do you not believe in this?

[00:31:52] Christina: And then no, it was fantastic. And it’s like broken all kinds of Amazon records and they’ve already renewed it for a second season. But I, the only thing [00:32:00] I think that Amazon fucked up with that was they’d released it like week to week. Like, I think that a lot more conversation would have built about it.

[00:32:07] Christina: So anyway.

[00:32:09] Jeff: Yeah. Oh, which,

[00:32:11] Brett: That’s Richard. He’s knocking shit over.

[00:32:14] Jeff: Awesome. Yeah.

[00:32:16] Brett: not hang up this call.

[00:32:17] The Magic of TV Shows and Audiobooks

[00:32:17] Jeff: So much TV. I love it. I, it really relaxes me. I mean, when it, when it does, when it does

[00:32:23] Brett: I like, yeah, the, so the idea of like, rain and stories, like that is, that’s a, that’s a real happy place for me. I open

[00:32:32] Christina: Yeah, I love that.

[00:32:33] Brett: listen to a soft rain while I get, uh, uh, lost, I guess is, I think the word you use, just to get lost in a story. And, and, and those limited run TV series tend to be really well written and like a well written

[00:32:52] Jeff: They’re the ones you want to go on.

[00:32:54] Brett: Yeah, well, it’s like I get part of me is like the film critic [00:33:00] appreciating like, oh, that was really well written and part of me is just like Enveloped in this story and I love that.

[00:33:07] Jeff: Especially from the, to wrap the mental health part of that up, uh, especially when you’re stuck in your own stories. To like, get into somebody else’s is a huge relief.

[00:33:17] Christina: Yes.

[00:33:17] Brett: I fall asleep at night listening to audiobooks, and it usually involves a lot of reading. It, it, well, I like it. I like

[00:33:26] Christina: mean, I like it too. I’m saying, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, but go on.

[00:33:29] Brett: Well, I’m really into this author Jeremy Robinson right now, and I have literally read, uh, 20 to 30 of his books. The dude writes a book, like, every three months.

[00:33:41] Brett: And he is ADHD and his, he comes up with fucking stories and premises that I find myself trying to explain what’s happening in a story to Elle and just realizing how absolutely bonkers it is. Um, and I love the [00:34:00] way the guy’s brain works. So I fall asleep listening to his stories. It leads to fuck up fucked up dreams, but it gets me out of my own head.

[00:34:09] Brett: Um, just like. And, and I rewind, like every morning I rewind to the point where I fell asleep because I don’t want to miss anything. Um, but yeah, like stories get me out of my own stories.

[00:34:21] Jeff: in the, and in the right context, it’s not escapism, it’s rest, you know? Like, for me at least.

[00:34:27] Christina: No, I, I totally agree because like, all of us on this pod, I mean, this was one of kind of the genesis for, for the original iteration of Overtired a decade ago, um, was, uh, which I think actually happened like in June of 2014, if I recall correctly, Brett.

[00:34:46] Brett: I don’t do dates.

[00:34:48] Christina: well, yeah. ’cause we were at WDC, but anyway, um, um, but like, it is that like our brains don’t shut off.

[00:34:56] Christina: At least mine doesn’t. And so getting lost in someone else’s [00:35:00] story, to your point, like I, I, I kind of love that, like, is kind of a way in some ways of, of, at least for me anyway, like shutting off my brain, right? I can focus on this. You know, fictional story or a historical novel or whatever, I can focus on this other thing and not have to think about all the other stuff, um, that, that my brain won’t shut up about.

[00:35:20] Christina: Um, I mean, honestly, that’s probably now, now that I’m verbalizing this, that was probably part of my, um, uh, Attraction to journalism to a certain extent, in addition to it being very good for, like, an ADHD person, it’s also one of those things where you can compartmentalize and can kind of, you know, focus on this thing that, like, doesn’t directly, sometimes it does directly affect you, but many times, like, it doesn’t, right?

[00:35:40] Christina: So it’s like, okay, I can, I can be in this world, you know, reading about this stuff or listen, you know, listening to an audiobook or watching a TV show, and I can get lost in that instead of All the, the, the, you know, nascent, like, the never ending discussion of my brain.

[00:35:56] Jeff: For sure. For sure.

[00:35:58] Brett: I, uh, I, I put a [00:36:00] link to Jeremy Robinson’s, uh, kind of, Website, Beware of Monsters. So if you’re looking, if you’re looking for bonkers, sci fi, bonkers, fantasy, uh, he’s all over Audible. Like you’ll never run out of stories if you just want some crazy shit to fall asleep to. Um, Okay, okay. Alright, we are, what, halfway through?

[00:36:25] GitHub Repo Frustrations at Oracle

[00:36:25] Brett: Um, I got one stupid thing I want to bitch about.

[00:36:28] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:36:29] Christina: Yeah,

[00:36:29] Brett: So, so I run the GitHub organization for DevRel at Oracle, and we have always, we, like, we fought long and hard to get a, a relaxed security license. For our DevRel repos so that every repo didn’t have to go through a whole, a whole list of like legal and corp arch and approvals left and right, which you do need to get onto the [00:37:00] main Oracle.

[00:37:01] Brett: If you want to build a repo, but our repos were just, they’re like sample code, they’re examples, they’re short, Like some of them are just readme files that they want to publish without going through like a content management system. Um, so we tried to keep it super lightweight. Uh, we have a whole securities procedure called OSSA Lite.

[00:37:21] Brett: Um, and it was working great. Until, uh, this week we got assigned, we now have to go through this Jira ticket. You have to clone this Jira ticket to request a new repo. And this Jira ticket has 13 sub tickets, including Legal Authorization, Corp Arch Approval, Export Compliance Approval. And like everyone who wants to request a repo, it used to be a 15 minute process.

[00:37:54] Brett: Um, I would ask them a series of questions to ensure that they fit our [00:38:00] requirements for a Category 3 repo. I would make the repo, assign them as maintainers, done. Now, it is a 1 2 week process. From 15 minutes to two weeks to get a new repo. And it, it sucks. Uh, I hate it, but also it turns out like Corp Arch was considering shutting us down because we were operating as like a rogue, a rogue GitHub organization within Oracle.

[00:38:29] Brett: So this was, this was a necessary step to, to maintain our, to maintain our like independent. Yeah.

[00:38:37] Christina: Right. Like, and for you to be able to not be shut down, but man, what a pain in the ass.

[00:38:42] Brett: My manager, not my manager, but my like, my M6, like my manager’s manager, um, asked me to research what companies like Microsoft have as far as like, repo creation requirements, and I don’t, I, [00:39:00] that’s not your area, Christina,

[00:39:01] Christina: It’s not, but I can, I can find out. I don’t know what all is public. Um, let me find out actually what is public in terms of the Microsoft stuff. For GitHub, it’s, it’s, it’s, Look, it’s GitHub, so it’s the, the requirements are going to be different than other

[00:39:14] Brett: yeah, I want

[00:39:15] Christina: um, we, there is a process, but I think it comes through the open source programs office.

[00:39:20] Christina: I, let me see how much is public, so what I can share with you, um, because there is a process, um, and, and I, they built some actually pretty good automated tooling around some of that stuff too, because Microsoft, um, and this predates the GitHub acquisition by like years and years. There are still a couple of, um, things that might be in, in some other places, but for the most part, like most of the company code is on GitHub.

[00:39:44] Christina: And so they have fairly automated like processes in terms of, and obviously lots of

[00:39:50] Brett: it made total sense when Microsoft bought GitHub. I’m like, they’re, they’re good citizens of GitHub. I had high hopes and it, it, they haven’t failed me yet.

[00:39:59] Christina: [00:40:00] Knock on wood, man. Knock on

[00:40:01] Brett: All right. That was my one stupid thing. What do you guys want to talk about?

[00:40:05] Spotify’s Car Thing Controversy

[00:40:05] Christina: Can I bitch about something real quick? Okay, so,

[00:40:09] Jeff: thing corner.

[00:40:10] Christina: okay, so, so, months, months and months ago, we talked about how I bought the, the car thing from Spotify. Um, which, uh, is, was this, uh, thing that they, at one point they sold it for 90. I think I got it for 20 or 30, um, when they discontinued it. Um, And basically it was just this, uh, this thing that you could connect to your car or, um, I used it connected to a computer through like a USB C cable, but it also had like a mounting system and basically would pair to your phone and act as like a, a controller for, um, Spotify.

[00:40:43] Christina: Um, and it was pretty cool. Designed for cars that, that didn’t have, you know, like in car systems and whatnot, and it didn’t have a touchscreen, but like the, the display was really, um, high quality and it had a really nice little kind of, uh, scroll, um, wheel where you could kind of, uh, control, you know, volume and, and change playlists and things like that.

[00:40:59] Christina: [00:41:00] Really great design. Anyway, um, they discontinued it and I got mine cheap and I was like, Oh, I can, I’ll connect this to my desk. And, and granted there are other apps I can use as a Spotify controller. It’s super fluid in some ways, but it was a fun little toy. Well, Spotify has decided that they are going to, um, end of life at in December, and they’re not going to open source anything with it.

[00:41:20] Christina: They’re just going to break everybody’s devices. They’re just gonna break, they’re just gonna break everybody’s devices and now there’s been enough, there’s been enough of an outcry that, um, I guess some people can get refunds if they email them or whatever, um, and there might even be a class action suit around it.

[00:41:36] Christina: But it’s just so frustrating because There’s, they’re claiming, Spotify’s claiming, Oh, we want, you know, to cut, I guess, our support burden or whatnot. But I’m like, A, you didn’t sell that many of these things to the point that you had to close them out for a third of the price. And most people who bought these things were enthusiasts.

[00:41:53] Christina: And I understand that open sourcing things is, uh, you know, uh, a difficult task. And like, I’m not saying that, like, [00:42:00] I necessarily even expect it. Expect them to do that. Although it would certainly be nice. Um, but um, I think and I don’t have any proof of this. This is just my own like Independent conspiracy theory.

[00:42:13] Christina: I think I know why they’re doing this. And, and, and if this is the reason, this makes me even more angry. So Spotify recently introduced a new font. Um, it’s very similar to the font that they were paying for

[00:42:24] Jeff: expect it to go there. Okay.

[00:42:25] Christina: Okay. No, no, well, hear me out. Well, hear me out. Okay. So they, they, they introduced a new, a new font that they own.

[00:42:31] Christina: They previously had been licensing a font that someone else made. And because of, uh, all the places they exist on web and other stuff, their licensing fees, I bet were. Extraordinary because I don’t think they had a perpetual agreement. I think that it was one of those things where they were probably having to pay like per device, per API, whatever.

[00:42:47] Christina: Anyway, they, they designed and they, they said as much like when they did their big outline document of like why they created their own typeface. I think because this thing, you know, is older, um, because it’s from a couple of years ago, [00:43:00] they don’t want to obviously introduce the engineering resources to like issue an update to, you know, update like the, the firmware or anything else on it.

[00:43:08] Christina: So, but they also probably don’t want to have to pay the licensing. For any of these things that are still in use. So my theory is, and again, this is unproven. I could be completely full of shit. And if you work at Spotify and know, please let me know, um, on Macedon, or you can email me, Christina at Christina.

[00:43:23] Christina: is. I will keep it confidential. Um, uh, like, unless you say that. You know, sources close to the situation can say. Anyway, I’m just curious. If I’m wrong, though, I’m happy to correct the record. But I have a feeling that they’re doing this just because they don’t want to pay some font licensing bullshit and like, fuck you, Spotify.

[00:43:39] Christina: Like, genuinely, like, this was a fun little toy and for the people who actually do use it in their cars, which is not me, you’ve now, like, made their listening experience significantly worse. Um, they, uh, yeah, they sent me an email last week that says, we’re reaching out to get, um, uh, out to you, giving your use of our Carthing product.

[00:43:58] Christina: As we shared, Spotify has made the [00:44:00] difficult decision to discontinue Carthing on December 9th, 2024. This was not a decision we made lightly, and we want to ensure that you have the right place to reach out if you have any questions, our customer support team can reach through the link below, and if I contact them, apparently I can get my 30 back, but like, fuck off,

[00:44:17] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:44:18] Christina: like what a shitty move.

[00:44:20] Christina: Anyway, that’s my bitching. Uh

[00:44:22] Brett: I,

[00:44:23] Jeff: this conspiracy theory. I’m putting, I put links to both Circular, their old font, which they were licensing, and their new font, which has the really stupid name Spotify Mix.

[00:44:32] Christina: Yes. Yes!

[00:44:34] Jeff: not what you call a font. That’s what you call a Spotify Mix.

[00:44:37] Brett: um, my, I, I’m going to renew my, my Spotify, bitch. Um,

[00:44:43] Jeff: Hey, you know what we’re doing? InGraftitude.

[00:44:46] Brett: yeah, yes, yes. So I don’t, I, there is a long thread on the Spotify support site about this. Um, and I’ve talked about it before.

[00:44:57] Christina: b b b but you’re a, you’re a crashing thing, right?[00:45:00]

[00:45:00] Brett: Well, it’s not crashing. It just, if I play Spotify from my Mac on Sonoma about every 15 seconds, it drops out audio for about four seconds. Um, five seconds since we’re, since we’re, we’re estimating here, but like it makes it impossible to listen through Spotify on my

[00:45:22] Jeff: Oh, same. I have the same problem and on the HomePod.

[00:45:25] Brett: And what I end up doing is I play Spotify on my phone and then I set the speaker to my Mac and it works fine. And then I can control Spotify from my Mac, but it’s playing via my phone. And it is, it is a workaround. It’s a pain in the ass. Um, sometimes I just use Bluetooth connectivity because I get a better audio signal that way.

[00:45:48] Brett: Um, But, and sometimes I push it to the echo that’s connected to my, uh, max sound system through a, uh, complete, [00:46:00] complete six. Anyway, I have a lot of options. I will say, um, I recently added a. Klipsch, uh, R 100 SW 10 inch subwoofer to my max audio, and you combine that with all of my dancing lights and it is the perfect, um, uh, overstimulation.

[00:46:26] Brett: When, when my ADHD is craving stimulation, I now can like, vibrate the room while all of the lights in the room dance to the music and it is fuckin nuts.

[00:46:39] Jeff: Nice.

[00:46:39] Christina: it.

[00:46:41] Brett: But I can’t do it with Spotify on my Mac. I gotta do it from my phone. And Spotify is not responding. This thread has been going since early 2020, or late 2023.

[00:46:54] Brett: And they have not responded. They have not Uh, Offered, Any Solutions.[00:47:00]

[00:47:00] Jeff: Dude, they were working on that font.

[00:47:01] Brett: Sure, sure, you got, you got priorities, right? But, I’m, I’m not alone. This is happening to multiple people. I’ve done all the things. Uninstall, reinstall, clear caches, lower bit rates. Like, I’ve done everything. And, it’s just, it’s so fucking

[00:47:19] Jeff: It just needs a wash.

[00:47:21] Brett: Maybe, I should try it on my, um, laptop.

[00:47:26] Jeff: Can I, um, can I make a proposal? My proposal without you voting is, um, is that I do an ingraftitude, which bridges into graftitude.

[00:47:34] Brett: Sure, sure,

[00:47:36] Jeff: Okay, here comes my ingraftitude. So, uh, for the, the business, I’m part of the collaborative. We have like all of the software, obviously we’re a business, um, that we use and all of these subscriptions and apps and services, and I’ve been going through all of them, um, to just kind of audit our permissions and, and just kind of look at logs and see how we’re using them or if we’re using them, but also make sure that it’s like, we’re [00:48:00] using it the right way.

[00:48:00] Jeff: And, and maybe we want like the higher plan or whatever it is. Right. I. This work is so slow because nobody has figured out a good way to handle user permissions, moving to two factor authentication, or any kind of PASCY or anything like that. It’s the wild fucking West, because obviously. And I just wish someone out there had some best practices.

[00:48:25] Jeff: I don’t know how you create them, but I. God damn, have not found a single interface where I’m like, well, that’s well laid out. I, I feel like I’ve, I know I’ve done all the right things right now and I can move on. It’s more like, well, let me fucking click here. It’s like when you, every time I get a new iPhone, I just click through every single setting and, and realize, holy fuck, look at all this shit you can do.

[00:48:47] Jeff: But it’s like 20. Fucking clicks in. It was like that for every one of these. It took me so many hours. I’m not done. It’s like, it’s insane. So anyway, that’s my ingraftitude that no one’s getting that right.

[00:48:58] Brett: my favorite thing about [00:49:00] iOS settings is that Apple looked at that fucking mess and said, let’s bring that to the Mac. And in Sonoma, they made the settings as convoluted as they are on iOS. And yeah, that’s,

[00:49:14] Jeff: And they change. I think they changed some of the, like the way the global prefs are written. So it’s even harder to do some of the things that you used to be able to do from the command line to kind of set your global preferences. I think some of that changed because when I was setting up a computer a few months ago, I found some of those things that had always worked don’t work anymore.

[00:49:32] Jeff: Is that true?

[00:49:33] Brett: in the process of developing Bunch, it used to be a simple Boolean to turn notifications or like, um, do not disturb on and off. It was a simple Boolean, uh, defaults command. Now you have to read a dictionary, a binary dictionary from preferences, decode it, change a flag, recode it and apply it, uh, like three levels [00:50:00] deep.

[00:50:00] Brett: Okay. in a preference setting, in like a preference dictionary, and it is, um, super hacky to do something that used to be like one simple terminal command. Um, and now, and part of it’s because they added all of the, what are they called, the different do not disturb modes. Um,

[00:50:20] Jeff: are awesome.

[00:50:21] Brett: yeah, they’re cool. Uh,

[00:50:23] Jeff: I have an amazing one that just lets in my family when I want. I love that.

[00:50:27] Brett: it had to get more complex, but now the, the real way to do that is using shortcuts instead of terminal commands and shortcuts, shortcuts is cool.

[00:50:39] Brett: No complaints.

[00:50:40] Jeff: Yeah, I have a complaint. I mean, shortcuts is, it’s like, okay, now I’m fucking bloop bloop, rather than shook a dook a dook a.

[00:50:48] Brett: Yeah, I mean, I, I recently made a shortcut for converting NB Alt RTF files into Markdown for [00:51:00] importing into something like NB Ultra or Obsidian, um, because NB Alt is dying. Uh, there are a lot of people who can no longer run it and, and vUltra is still in fucking beta. Um, private beta, no less. I, we really should just make it public.

[00:51:16] Brett: But, um, anyway, so I wrote this to, to help save, you know, some, some older users notes. And it made me realize shortcuts is. If you want to do anything more complex than like turn on this do not disturb mode, what are they called? There’s a, I’m forgetting the word for like the profiles in there, but, um, but yeah, like Shortcuts is not easy to work with.

[00:51:44] Brett: Um, I don’t, I honestly, Automator, I just, I only ever used it to run shell scripts. Um, and that was, it was great for that. And, and shortcuts can do that, uh, even better.

[00:51:58] Jeff: Shortcuts are amazing. [00:52:00] And for me, it feels like the difference between, uh, working with a static site or trying to put something good in Squarespace. That’s like how, you know, like that’s kind of how it feels. And I just get annoyed

[00:52:10] Brett: Oh, that’s actually, that’s a perfect analogy.

[00:52:13] Jeff: yeah, yeah.

[00:52:15] Brett: Okay.

[00:52:15] Graptitude: Celebrating Tech Tools

[00:52:15] Brett: So we gotta, we gotta do Graptitude. Jeff has to take off in seven minutes.

[00:52:19] Christina: Great. I’ve got one. Um, we, we, okay. So mine is, uh, is, is Kino, which is, uh, a new, uh, video app from the, uh, Halide. I think that’s how you say it, folks, uh, Ben and Sebastian, um, who, uh, who make, uh, Halide is one of the best, um, uh, camera apps for iOS

[00:52:36] Brett: I’m going to go with Halide.

[00:52:38] Christina: Halide. Okay. I have no idea. And I’ve said it wrong before.

[00:52:41] Christina: I, I, I thought that it was pronounced a different way and I was trying to remember how Ben pronounced it. So we’ll say that Halide. Um, but anyway, uh, if you go to, uh, lux. camera, I think already the price has gone up to 20. Um, it was 10 for its first couple of days in release, but it’s a, it’s a one off purchase, but [00:53:00] basically they, um, it’s a, if you do any sort of like pro video stuff, basically lets you.

[00:53:07] Christina: It’s very similar in some ways to the Blackmagic app, uh, Blackmagic camera app, except this has a lot of pre built in like filters for, for color grading and things like that so that you don’t have to be a pro to do it. You can do it kind of in camera, so you can record things in Apple log. I’ve got some of the newer. It has all and apply certain effects automatically and instantly grade things. Um, and it also has a bunch of other really great, um, features and, and like, you can open various LUT files and things like that. Um, so, uh, it, it has a feature called, um, um, um, It’s an auto motion where it’ll basically choose the best, the best exposure setting, like for whatever motion blur, um, it’s, it’s accomplishing and it’s doing that, uh, without using AI or computational photography, um, uh, uh, they, they say on their, on their site, like it’s a practical [00:54:00] effect, which, which I appreciate, but, um, anyway, it’s, I haven’t had a chance to really go in depth with it, uh, but especially if you have one of the newer iPhones.

[00:54:10] Christina: Um, and, and you’re interested in, in like a pro app, especially since like Filmic, when Filmic died and did its, you know, uh, well, yeah, it died cause it sold to that company that bought Evernote and, and buys things just to, to ruin it. Um, Filmic was a really great app for many, many, many years. And, um, now, uh, Kino is an option and, uh, I, I, I don’t know, uh, Seb and, and Ben are fantastic people.

[00:54:36] Christina: And, um, I’m, uh, love to support indie devs and, um, as a 1. 0, like, I know that they had to rush to get this out and stuff, but, um, and, and it’s hard as hell for them to do a lot of the things that they do because of how the camera APIs work and because of the various Different cameras across different devices.

[00:54:55] Christina: So even if you don’t have one of the newer phones, um, you can still use this app. But [00:55:00] obviously the, the newer phones can take advantage of some of the features even better. But, uh, yeah, Keno is my pick. I, I, I’m, uh, it’s like we talk a lot and joke a lot about like pro apps, you know, for like iOS or iPadOS.

[00:55:13] Christina: This is actually one of those apps is actually like a fucking pro app for, for your phone. So,

[00:55:17] Brett: looks very cool.

[00:55:18] Christina: yeah.

[00:55:19] Brett: All right. Um, my pick, I’m going to keep it short, is Fish, the friendly interactive shell. Um, I switched, I was a long time Bash user. When macOS switched to Zshell, Zsh as its, uh, default. Um, shell, I, I tried getting into z She and Z Shell is very cool. There’s a lot you can do, but at the same time, I started hearing about Phish.

[00:55:45] Brett: So I gave it a shot. It was a bit of a, um,

[00:55:50] Christina: Learning curve?

[00:55:51] Brett: yeah, there was a, there was a, a shock to it. Um, but once you get used to it, like the scripting is. So much easier and [00:56:00] smarter than Bash or z Shell scripting, um, a more natural language and less symbolic. Um, the completions are fucking

[00:56:11] Christina: completions are great.

[00:56:13] Brett: It tell, it, it remembers completions per directory.

[00:56:16] Brett: So when you change into a project and you type the first letter of a command, you usually run on that project, it’ll offer you a completion for that project, not your last command that started with that letter. Um, and you can. You can just hit the right arrow and accept a command and, uh, the syntax highlighting of your, your, your command line is like, as you type, uh, if it’s a valid command, it turns green and then it, it syntax highlights all of your options and everything.

[00:56:46] Brett: The completions are like auto generated from man pages. It can complete. Just about any command and like I type ssh and it will complete anything in my config file [00:57:00] any uh alias that I’ve set up and Yeah, it’s it’s awesome and I recommend it um That’s my that’s my gratitude.

[00:57:11] Jeff: Awesome.

[00:57:12] Christina: That’s great. Um, I’ve tried Fish. It’s been a while, but, but I, I remember liking it. Now, um, I think you might’ve told me how I could do this, but remind me, like if I, if I need to run a Bash script or,

[00:57:23] Brett: Oh, yeah you as long as

[00:57:25] Christina: that.

[00:57:26] Brett: As long as it has a hashbang at the top, it’ll just load it in that shell. Like, I run bash scripts in Phish all the time.

[00:57:33] Christina: Okay.

[00:57:35] Jeff: Awesome. I know. I remember when you really got into Phish and you were just writing shit for it all the fucking time. I was like, I want to do Phish. And I’m like, you know, I’ve, I’ve tried to follow Brett in the past down these threads and I find I should just maybe pause. Uh, cause I’m not Brett.

[00:57:51] Christina: will say, um, I, I’m looking at their, their homepage now, um, for the first time in a long time and I don’t know if it’s always been this way. Uh, maybe it has, but, um, the fact that they use Comic [00:58:00] Sans as the

[00:58:00] Brett: I know, I know.

[00:58:02] Christina: Honestly, it’s actually great.

[00:58:06] Brett: Yo, um, Yeah, their documentation is amazing. Uh, they have, if you run the help command, it’ll load up, uh, the documentation in your web browser. Um, you can also add it as a dash doc set. Um, yeah, it’s their documentation is great. Their homepage is fucking ridiculous, but.

[00:58:29] Jeff: is ridiculous. Brett, did you ever, tell me you wrote some things somehow for, for making it easy to create custom dash doc sets.

[00:58:38] Brett: yeah, I made

[00:58:39] Jeff: did? I knew it. I just did one for the first time and I was like, this is insane, Brett has to have fixed

[00:58:45] Brett: yeah, you can just, I, you can just write DocSets in Markdown.

[00:58:50] Jeff: That’s your deal?

[00:58:51] Brett: yeah, and my tool, well, it uses a gem that was published by Capelli or whatever. [00:59:00] Um, he, he made a, a gem that, uh, creates DocSets from a Uh, basically a Ruby document. Uh, it’s, uh, uh, what do you call it? When you write your own language, an ASDSL, domain specific language.

[00:59:17] Brett: Um, so it’s a very simple syntax, but I made one that converts from Markdown to that simple syntax and then uses the gem to create a

[00:59:27] Jeff: I didn’t even want to search it because I wanted to ask you here. I love that. So my graftitude, well, one is just that when you said Kino, I initially, I immediately thought of Kinopio, which is the, it’s the most delightful little, uh, browser based mind mapping app. It’s adorable and, and it’s wonderful. And I just want to just remind the whole world that it exists.

[00:59:48] Jeff: Um, and then, uh, and then the other piece is like, so this is so silly, like my link in the show notes is to a thing from 2006, but it’s a feature in Firefox. That I’ve never actually encountered [01:00:00] or noticed, which is that when you create a bookmark and you go in to edit it, you can create a keyword that just calls that bookmark in the address line.

[01:00:07] Jeff: I never fucking saw it until this week and I was just like, my whole life has changed.

[01:00:13] Brett: and for sites you go to regularly, you can make your keyword just one letter. So if I type O and hit enter, it goes to overtiredpod. com.

[01:00:23] Jeff: great. Great.

[01:00:25] Brett: if I type C and hit enter, it loads up my, uh, local, uh, Synology, uh, admin. Yeah.

[01:00:34] Jeff: I love it. Yeah. So anyway, that’s like, it’s such a stupid little thing, but it’s funny how features can escape you or me, maybe at least for ever. Cause again, I just linked to something from 2006. That’s like, how cool are custom keywords? Anyway, always

[01:00:51] Brett: right. Jeff, we’re getting you out of here on time, more or less.

[01:00:55] Jeff: Yeah. Great.

[01:00:56] Brett: I love

[01:00:56] Jeff: great to talk to y’all. Yeah. I’ll be

[01:00:58] Brett: some sleep.

[01:00:59] Christina: Get some sleep [01:01:00] everybody.

[01:01:00] Jeff: Get some sleep. Bye.