411: Bad At Being Good At Computers

Bad At Being Good At Computers

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[00:00:03] Welcome and Introductions

[00:00:03] Brett: Hey, it’s Overtired. You’re here. It’s like two weeks in a row for us. That’s, that’s a, that’s a record as of recently. I’m Brett Terpstra. I’m here with Christina Warren and Jeff Severins Gunsel. Welcome to the show, guys.

[00:00:19] Jeff: Thank you! It’s really great to be here. Thank you for having me.

[00:00:22] Brett: Yeah, yeah, welcome. Welcome.

[00:00:25] Merchandise Announcement

[00:00:25] Brett: Um, so right off the bat, I want to mention because I’ve forgotten for the last two episodes that we now have merch. And Uh, it’s sel it’s sold through Sellfy and the easiest way to get there is to go to bit. ly slash ot merch. Um, that’s a special short URL I made just for you.

[00:00:50] Brett: Uh, there will be a link in the show notes. Uh, you can get a A Get Some Sleep Jeff tote, you can get an overtired pillow, [00:01:00] you can buy all the t shirts, there’s a, there’s a university, an overtired university logo, um, it, it, take a look, it’s fun, it’s fun stuff, you can get any of the designs, which there are only a few right now, and I made them, uh, Kind of all on one day.

[00:01:17] Brett: Uh, so I need to, I need to revisit, come up with some better designs, but like the straight up logo,

[00:01:24] Jeff: It’s fun.

[00:01:25] Brett: um, all of the, all of the, uh, weird, weird patterns I’ve made, you can get them on t shirts. Um, Baseball shirts, hoodies, tank tops, pillows, coffee mugs, uh, tote bags.

[00:01:41] Jeff: There’s a thong, but the print is so small that you can’t quite read it, but

[00:01:45] Brett: There’s a thong. I didn’t even realize there was a thong. I, I should probably remove that because none of our designs would fit on a thong.

[00:01:52] Jeff: yeah, no, I thought the font was way

[00:01:54] Brett: Also, I wouldn’t want to see that.

[00:01:56] Christina: Yeah, I wouldn’t either, although

[00:01:58] Jeff: would not get some [00:02:00] sleep.

[00:02:00] Christina: so no, somebody did want to send me, I don’t remember what this was now, because it was gross. It was creepy. Somebody sent me something that was printed on a thong from one of these sites for, for some random thing. And so I, I received it in the mail and I was like, This is underwear I’m never gonna wear.

[00:02:14] Christina: I, I, I know, like, I, I, I know the intention behind this or whatever it was. It was that you thought this was funny and you thought that, like, I’d be the type of person who would, like, not be offended by it. And I wasn’t offended by it, to be clear, but I was still, like, I’m still not putting this on my body.

[00:02:29] Christina: I’m still not putting this, you know, up my ass. Like, this is not happening.

[00:02:33] Brett: How many times have I said

[00:02:35] Jeff: Yeah,

[00:02:36] Christina: I mean, I was gonna

[00:02:37] Jeff: how I judge all objects.

[00:02:39] Christina: Right.

[00:02:39] Brett: I put this up my

[00:02:40] Jeff: put that up my ass.

[00:02:43] Christina: This episode is sponsored today. Bye.

[00:02:45] Brett: the Tesla truck. I would not put that up my ass.

[00:02:48] Jeff: We both went for Tesla right away. How did we get so

[00:02:50] Christina: That’s so funny. That’s hysterical.

[00:02:54] Brett: Um.

[00:02:55] Mental Health Corner

[00:02:55] Brett: Yeah, so, uh, quick, uh, mental health check [00:03:00] in, um, I guess I always kick it off these days. Um, mine’s pretty short, I, I miss Manic Episodes, I have been stable for, Jesus, like a year now, and And I kind of missed the rush of like creativity and productivity I get with a manic episode. But that being said, I’ve created some stuff in the last year that is pretty, um, creative.

[00:03:32] Brett: And I, I think I write better code when I’m stable and well, it’s weird because when I’m manic, I’ll like find a new design pattern for like, for, for code and I will be like, all right, I’m going to learn this new pattern by writing an entire app using it and, and I’ll just do it and like, I learned stuff really fast that way, but when I’m stable, I work with patterns I know well.

[00:03:59] Brett: [00:04:00] And. And I write solid code that’s easily maintainable and, uh, probably better. I think I mostly miss the general, uh, feeling like I’m always on cocaine. Feeling that I get from a manic episode, but I consider changing my meds to like back to like Focalin, which always triggered manic episodes for me. Um, but I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t know how to explain that to my psychiatrist.

[00:04:32] Brett: I would, I would like to be less stable,

[00:04:34] Christina: Hi, I would like to be high, please. I would like, I would like, I would like to, I would like to trigger manic episode. I don’t think there’s a way you can, you can, like, stay, No, I, I don’t think there’s way you can be honest and say like, what you want there without him, like very understandably being like, absolutely not.

[00:04:51] Christina: Um, yeah,

[00:04:52] Brett: Yeah. I

[00:04:53] Jeff: I mean, you could do the Sunday morning coming down version, where you also get the medications you need to shut it off, which don’t [00:05:00] exist.

[00:05:00] Brett: Um, yeah. So anyway, that’s my mental health check in. Otherwise I’m good.

[00:05:05] Jeff: Nice. Uh, I can go. I don’t, I also have, I’m not, yeah, I’m not even sure what, what. To say, I’ve actually, I’ve just been kind of, things have been moving so fast that I, when I stopped to think about what I’d say, I was like, I don’t even know. I’m doing fine making it, but it’s like a lot happening. So probably I’m lacking a little bit of spaciousness.

[00:05:26] Jeff: Although I have to say, I have to say, I, I have, I have returned to something that I stopped for a long time, which is very short. Naps in the middle of the day. So just before recording, I’ve been working all morning and in meetings and stuff, and it was just like, Oh God. And so I went down with like 20 minutes left before we started recording.

[00:05:45] Jeff: And for 15 minutes, I I’m capable of just like falling almost immediately into a sleep and like just getting the chemicals released and getting calm. And so if I do 15 or 20 minutes and I get up, it is. Such an improvement in my, [00:06:00] um, mental state. And so maybe that’s my check in is I did one of those before coming in here and I think I am a totally different presence because of it.

[00:06:07] Brett: I slept, I slept 20 minutes. I got up five minutes before I logged into Riverside. I do that. I, I, I think I’ve always done that

[00:06:16] Jeff: Yeah. I used to, I did it.

[00:06:17] Brett: when I’m manic and I just can’t sleep.

[00:06:19] Jeff: I it’s only in the last year that I stopped doing it. I’ve done it forever. Um, so it’s just nice to return to that and be like, Oh, I love that. Uh, so yeah, that’s me, I guess.

[00:06:29] Brett: very refreshing. How you doing Christina?

[00:06:34] WWDC Plans and Reflections

[00:06:34] Christina: I’m doing good. Um, I’m gonna be going to ww DC next week. Um, well, okay. I’m not, like, apple did not give me a, a ticket. Um, they, they will not allow me. Um, I’m, yeah. At the spaceship. Um, I, uh, I guess I’m not, um, on their influencer list anymore. Uh, no. I, I, I wouldn’t expect to be. It’s fine. Um, but, um. A lot of other people are going to be in town, and so I’m going to be just uh, staying with them, a friend, [00:07:00] and then just kind of hanging out, um, and seeing people.

[00:07:02] Christina: And so I’m really excited about that, because this is like one of the times of years where we get to see all of our people, whether you’re

[00:07:08] Brett: that’s what we used to do it with 2L. We used to go and we, we didn’t have, we, we couldn’t get in. We, do you remember the keynote before they started way before, like the days of streaming and we would send. A bug, like inside and we would sit outside with a pair of headphones and like, and like live blog the keynote

[00:07:32] Christina: Yep.

[00:07:32] Brett: and it was, and the wifi was shit.

[00:07:35] Brett: So

[00:07:35] Christina: The Wi Fi was

[00:07:36] Brett: dropping out.

[00:07:37] Christina: God, I remember, I remember at one event that I was at one year, I think it was the iPhone 4 event. I don’t remember what it was, but I remember Steve Jobs screaming at everyone to turn off their Wi Fi because it was messing up with the demos. And I, I did not turn my Wi Fi

[00:07:52] Jeff: We don’t work for you, motherfucker.

[00:07:54] Christina: no, that’s how I was.

[00:07:55] Christina: I was like, I was like, thank you for inviting me, Apple, and thanks for making this a [00:08:00] thing. I am absolutely not turning my Wi Fi off under no circumstances. I was like, I’m live blogging because that’s the only reason I’m able to be here, is because I think it was at Mashable at the time, but I’ll never forget that I’m like yelling at everybody to like turn their Wi Fi off, and I was like, yeah, I get it.

[00:08:14] Christina: Um, No.

[00:08:16] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:08:17] Brett: Moscone just did not have the capacity for that, for an, for an event of that caliber, uh, with that many nerds, everyone with a laptop. Everyone, you know, trying to like manically blog about what was happening.

[00:08:35] Christina: in fairness to Moscone, I mean, like, literally, Twitter didn’t have the capacity. Like, Twitter used to go down during WWDC things. Like, Twitter would go down, like, reliably. Um, to the point that, like, we would always have, like, a post prepared. And so, uh, it was one of those things where I was just like, I was like, yeah, no, I, I, I understand.

[00:08:55] Christina: This is not going to be a thing that, uh, um, you [00:09:00] Anyway, um, memories. But yeah, so I’ll be at DubDub, which will be really fun. But, um, I won’t be at DubDub, but I’ll, but I’ll, but I’ll be in the area. So that’s, that’s kind of my, my heads up.

[00:09:10] Workshop Preparation Stress

[00:09:10] Christina: Um, I, I, with, I was informed, I will also, this is the only thing that’s a little annoying.

[00:09:15] Christina: So I’ll be in San Jose for like a week and that’ll be great. And then I’ll be back home for like a week and then I have to go back to San Francisco for like a week. Um, because I thought, I thought, I thought that I was going for, well, it’s just. I thought I was going to be going in for like one or two days, um, for, for an event.

[00:09:36] Christina: And then it turned out to be a much bigger thing. Um, the, the, the, the team that asked me, like it, it winds up being a much, much bigger thing than it was. And so I also have to come up with potentially three hours. I’m hoping that it’s only 90 minutes, but it’s potentially three hours of workshop content for something that’ll be happening in two and a half weeks.

[00:09:57] Christina: So wish me luck on that.

[00:09:59] Jeff: [00:10:00] Wow, yeah, good luck.

[00:10:01] Brett: Oracle always asks me if I want to do workshops, but no, I. I have avoided it thus far. I bet you’re better at it than I am.

[00:10:12] Christina: I’m not, I mean, I don’t, I don’t mind doing them. The thing here is I’m like, I don’t know if I have enough content. Like when they first told me, they’re like, Oh, well you can break it to power where you want. And I was like, yeah, I’m going to have to, cause I don’t have a three hour workshop in me. Like I’m not a teacher, you know what I mean?

[00:10:24] Christina: Like, that’s, that’s a lot. And honestly, that’s, that’s a lot even for the audience, right? Like, I don’t know anybody who really wants to be in there for that long. Like. I certainly don’t. So I’m splitting this up with some, uh, with a guy and we have some other content, but no, but this has just been a thing where I’m like, I’m like, how much content do I have?

[00:10:40] Christina: Right. And then you always have to think about like, okay, well how much is this is going to be like set up on the, you know, the getting started aspect and the troubleshooting and the other aspect, you know? So there’s. There’s stuff you have to build into that too. That’s always the hard thing about these events.

[00:10:53] Christina: Like it’s one thing if you can kind of set the expectation that everybody is going to come and they’re going to have like a GitHub account that is not [00:11:00] brand new. When it is, that can cause problems. And then I have to escalate things and I can, but you know, that is an issue. And then, you know, having to get coupons for things to work and then just making sure like, okay, but then how much content do we really have?

[00:11:12] Christina: And, and are the demos all going to work? And I don’t know, I’m stressing out about that a little bit, to be honest. So my mental health corner. I’m excited about, uh, seeing people next week and hanging out. And I’m also a little bit stressed about the thing that I have coming up on the 25th because, um, you know, it’s just, again, stuff that was sort of dropped in my, my lap and I’m like, I’m going to be able to be good and it’s going to be good and I’m happy to do it.

[00:11:37] Christina: Um, it’s just, uh, it’s just more than, um, I was expecting and, and frankly, what I was like initially told, and that’s not my team’s fault at all. Like they’re amazing. This kind of caught everybody off guard. Um, but those are the things that happen sometimes and these are the only areas just to, I guess, take it back to Mental Health Corner for a little bit and kind of our show, like I, I think a lot about the fact that. [00:12:00] Okay, how do I frame this? I, I think I oftentimes think about my ADHD and my depression and like my other, you know, like, uh, uh, neurodivergent, uh, features. And, and I think about like the negative impact that it has had on my life. Uh, and, and there are definitely, Many, many negative aspects and I, and I wouldn’t, um, ever say like, Oh, it’s my secret weapon or this or that.

[00:12:25] Christina: Cause like, fuck you. If I had the ability to just be completely normal, like have my brain work as it’s supposed to, I would take that in a second. Right. Maybe I wouldn’t be as creative. Maybe I would lose some other je stuff. Who’s to say, but I would absolutely prefer to not be ADHD.

[00:12:40] ADHD and Deadline Management

[00:12:40] Christina: Having said that, the only way that I think that I can cope with things like finding out that something that you thought was going to be a 15 minute talk and maybe some booth duties turning into something that might be three hours long about, you know, uh, topics that you have, how well versed I am in them, I’ll, I’ll be ready in, in two [00:13:00] weeks, but like, we’re not there yet is I think like, Being ADHD.

[00:13:04] Christina: Like, I, I think that is definitely a, an area where I can 100 percent say that if I was somebody who did not have my brain, I’d be way more stressed about this. But this is kind of, if anything, like the time when like, to your point about manic episodes brought, like, I certainly, I’ve never had a manic episode and I don’t know what that would be like, but there is like a certain high that I can get when like, okay, it’s crunch time.

[00:13:24] Christina: Like, I have like deadline, you know, high, you know what I mean? When you’re like, okay, we have to make this work. It’s everybody, everything’s coming together really hot and we got to

[00:13:32] Brett: ADHD time to shine.

[00:13:35] Christina: Totally, totally. And it is. And so that’s, that’s kind of a, it’s a good reminder in some cases. We’re like, yeah, this is a debilitating thing and it’s not great.

[00:13:44] Christina: A lot of the times, um, Um, and we make it work and we have to make things work around ourselves and find ways to do things, but there are times, like you said, like the ADHD time to shine and, you know, deadlines were like that, you know, journalism in general was like that, but also things like finding out, [00:14:00] okay, you know, Can you just pull a three hour workshop out of your ass? Yes. Yes, I can. You know?

[00:14:08] Brett: My, uh, my performance review is next week. And when I was going through the like goal system where you have to like input your goals and everything, um, I realized that all of my accomplishments for the last quarter were assignments that were given to me with like a two hour, They’re like, Hey, we need you to fix this.

[00:14:31] Brett: Hey, here’s, uh, here’s 10 minutes of shitty video. Can you turn this into a polished two minute, uh, presentation, like with exciting video and, and that, yeah, that’s my time to shine. I’ve got two hours and I’ve got a bunch of just crap to work with and I have to make it. I had to make it pretty and make it fun and make it exciting.

[00:14:53] Brett: And yeah, um, you give me a, I had to write a four part [00:15:00] series on the command line interface for OCI. And I worked on it for like two months because there was no deadline. They’re just like, we think this would be a cool article. And I just kept like, kind of plugging away at it. But if someone had been like, we need this tomorrow, shit, I’d have been done.

[00:15:18] Brett: Yeah.

[00:15:18] Christina: Well, no, it’s funny. I have to tell people that all the time. And like, and in terms of like, how to work with me. And in some cases I feel bad because You know, um, I, I can’t be more responsible and adult and, and have better time management and whatnot. But I, I am always pretty strict with people.

[00:15:35] Christina: I’m like, no, you need to give me a hard deadline. Like we need to, or we need to schedule time to do stuff. And it can’t be soft because if it’s soft, I will push. I know I can, and I will. I will never have anything done two weeks in advance ever. That’s just not, um, how, uh, my, my brain works, at least not, not at this stage of my life.

[00:15:51] Christina: Before, like before I became ADHD, and I’ve talked about this before, I really do feel like there was like a. Genuine, something happened where my brain [00:16:00] swaps. I was actually usually fairly proactive, but even then I wasn’t one of those things where I was like done way in advance. But now like I’ve gotten pretty good to the point where it’s like, no, it’s going to be right up to the deadline.

[00:16:11] Christina: So if you give me any opportunity to push, like if you make it open ended, it’s not going to get done is actually the real thing that’s going to happen. It’s not going to get done. So I have to be pretty direct with people for my own expectations and for theirs to be like, okay, even if we need to move it.

[00:16:27] Christina: Pass this, like you have to give me an actual deadline, um, and it has to be like consequences. It can’t be one of those things like, oh, it’d be great if I had it on Thursday. Okay, well, then that could be Friday, right? Like that’s how I read that, right? When I say it would be really great if I could have this Thursday, I’m going, cool, so I can get this to you on Friday and it won’t be a problem.

[00:16:45] Christina: But if you’re like, no, I need to have this Tuesday or else, okay, you’re, you’re going to get it probably a minute before the due date, but like, that’s when you’ll get it.

[00:16:53] Brett: Yeah, I have always, I pre, up until this year, I have always said arbitrary deadlines. Like if [00:17:00] someone gives me a hard deadline and I know it’s bullshit,

[00:17:02] Christina: Mm hmm,

[00:17:03] Brett: I know that they’re like in the, like the whole startup mentality is all about, like, we need this in two weeks, but there’s no, there’s no damage to the company.

[00:17:13] Brett: There’s no. They just made up a deadline to apply pressure and my brain rebels against that. But in the last year, I’ve gotten better about setting my own deadlines and adding a sense of urgency to it. And I usually set my personal deadline two days before whatever deadline I’m given. Um, and, and that never used to work for me.

[00:17:38] Brett: That never used to work. I

[00:17:40] Christina: was going to say, did you do anything different to change that? Cause I do struggle with that. Like I can set my own deadline too, but, but it’s much, it’s usually much more realistic. Like it’s, it’s almost never early.

[00:17:50] Brett: I gamified it to some extent, like if I get this done two days early, I get to do X, you know, for the next two days. [00:18:00] Um, because, and I won’t turn the project in until it’s actually due. Um, and I’ll take that time to fuck off and do whatever I want. Um, so there’s kind of a reward, I gamify it, but other than that, no, I just suddenly

[00:18:14] Christina: You

[00:18:14] Brett: Was able to like, was able to like, accept my own arbitrary deadlines.

[00:18:20] Christina: No, that’s good. Yeah. I, I usually, I wish I could, I wish I could set my own arbitrary deadlines like earlier than they need to be. Cause in what really happens is that like, although you know what I have, I think I’ve gotten better with that. Um, in terms of waking up for certain things, like I’ve gotten much better at least on, um, timelines.

[00:18:36] Christina: Like I’m. I’m never, I’m rarely early. Um, and, and if I am early is usually, um, uh, because of, of luck. But I, I have gotten better about becoming more on time, at least for some things. And again, it’s one of those things, if I know I can be late to something, I will be. But if you tell me, and this is why I always tell people, I’m like, no, if you have a hard deadline on something, like you need to let me know, because if I’m just open to be like, Oh, we have this hour [00:19:00] long window, But I’m thinking like, it’s, you know, we can go 15 minutes afterwards if that’s, you know, what happens, then like, I’m going to come in kind of my normal time.

[00:19:08] Christina: But if you’ve got other things going on, I know I should respect your time more, but I don’t, I wish that I did, but I don’t. So like, I need to like be told, but if I know like, okay. But I’ve gotten better, like uh, Microsoft Build stuff was actually a good experience because I was on, other than the first day for rehearsals where I was five or six minutes late and that was not even my fault, like all the other days I was there, if not exactly on time, like five minutes early and I was like, shit, like you actually left your house exactly when you needed to leave your house, uh, which almost never happens.

[00:19:39] Christina: So I don’t know.

[00:19:40] Brett: I am, I am like, it’s super important to me to be on time for things to the extent that for like the hour before I have to leave, all I think about is I have to leave by this time if I want to get there five minutes early and I am, I am crazy punctual for an [00:20:00] ADHD person. Um, like it’s just. I don’t know why it’s so important to me, but a chiropractor appointment, uh, uh, uh, coffee with a friend, like whatever it is, like I’m always five minutes early.

[00:20:16] Brett: I get the table, you know, I check in, whatever. And I’m, I’m just my whole life. I’ve been bizarrely punctual.

[00:20:24] Christina: That’s, that’s great. I, I’ve always been like, now my sister, we call it Kelly time and we know that she runs at a completely different time zone and like, and hers is probably a little bit ADHD, but mostly it’s narcissism. And, um, and so we, we know that like her thing is just like you, she will tell you a certain time and you need to expect about an hour and a half to two hours beyond that.

[00:20:45] Christina: So you even have to give her a different time. Um, because she will, And, and I don’t know if she does the thing where, like, I don’t know if she, like, cogently knows, like, what the actual time is, and then gives herself that buffer, like, I don’t know if she, she reverse engineers it, or not. I, I [00:21:00] tend to think not, but like, we, we have learned, like, Especially if, like, if we’re meeting someplace at a restaurant, she’s usually okay, although not always.

[00:21:09] Christina: Um, but, like, if she’s coming over to my parents house or something, like, we know we have to give, like, a different expectation of, of when timing is. Um, with me, I’m never that late because it, it will be, like, an hour and a half or two hours. Like, it’s, it’s not a, you know, five or, or a 15 minute thing, but I’m usually habitually about five minutes late, um, to things, you know?

[00:21:28] Brett: Um, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.

[00:21:31] PSA and Upcoming Events

[00:21:31] Brett: So, um, I would like to make a PSA. Before we move on, um,

[00:21:37] Jeff: Okay.

[00:21:38] Brett: of the show, Aaron Dawson has, has a band called Genital Shame and,

[00:21:45] Christina: great name.

[00:21:46] Brett: and they will be playing at, um, it’s called A Queer Ritual, Palmers Pride Party 2024. It is Saturday, June 29th in Minneapolis. I don’t know if there are other [00:22:00] shows related to this, but in Minneapolis on June 29th at 4 p.

[00:22:04] Brett: m. at Palmers. Bar patio if you’re in the area. Um, I will be at that show. Jeff might even be at that show. Um, and if not Jeff, then some metalhead friend I can find. This will be all experimental metal and industrial and they’re like eight bands on the ticket, um, including one called. Abscheid, that is a sub genre less metal ensemble that creates sounds to connect your head to your gut, which out of all of these descriptions is one of my favorites.

[00:22:43] Brett: Genital Shame is also good. But, um, there’s one that’s a five piece extreme metal band. And I don’t, I assume that’s two guitars and a separate vocalist, but I have no idea what all the, what the five pieces are. That’s a [00:23:00] lot. That’s a lot of pieces for a metal band.

[00:23:03] Christina: is, but I love this. And also like General Shame is such a great name. I wish that if I wasn’t in genuinely, I mean, that’s like, if I, if I’d known, like, if I wasn’t going to be like, uh, in San Francisco, literally right then, um, I, I would have loved to have like, come to Minneapolis for, for, and seen this, that would have been cool.

[00:23:21] Brett: We would have welcomed you to Minneapolis some other time then.

[00:23:24] Christina: Some other time.

[00:23:27] Brett: And it will be an outdoor show for the most part, a little bit indoors, but yeah, I’m excited to go. I’m going to spend the night in Minneapolis, see how many people I can see in a 24 hour period.

[00:23:41] Christina: I love it. I love it.

[00:23:42] Keyboard Talk

[00:23:42] Christina: Um, when you said you were going to do a PSA, I thought that you were going to talk to, uh, give us a PSA about like why, um, you shouldn’t buy 58 key keyboards. Um, Uh, which,

[00:23:53] Brett: That could be our, that can be our next topic.

[00:23:55] Christina: I was gonna say, maybe it should be, cause, cause, uh, cause we were talking a little bit about some of your, your, um, your [00:24:00] keyboard, um, uh, entrees, uh, last episode.

[00:24:05] Brett: so I finished putting together a lily58 keyboard and as I put it together I realized things like the single quote and double quote key don’t fit on the main layout and so you have to create a layer with, you know, like a key to trigger the layer and then uh, You have to have a, you have to have shift assigned on that layer so you can get both single quote and double quote out of it, unless you want to assign those to separate keys, but then you have to learn the, you have to like learn the muscle memory for the separate keys.

[00:24:42] Brett: And it is, I, the, the keyboard I’m using, the controllers I have use a variant of like QMK, uh, key, key mapping. And, uh, it’s, yeah, it’s through, uh, I’m using an app called [00:25:00] Vial, V I A L,

[00:25:02] Christina: Yeah. So, so, so, uh, I know the girl who makes Via, which is what Vial is based on.

[00:25:06] Brett: Yeah, that’s cool. It is very, it’s very complex compared to like the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard Agent which is much easier to configure and now has, you know, eight layers just like this does. We’re gonna see, I’m gonna see what I can do. They make, they make, um, Uh, what do you call it? Um, shit. They make keys, key switches and keycaps that give you a curve upwards.

[00:25:42] Brett: on the keyboard and there’s a word for this and I can’t remember but I’m considering because right now I just have a flat ortholinear layout and it would be cool if it was a little bit more ergonomic for my fingers. Um, I don’t know if [00:26:00] this is going to become my new keyboard. Using it makes me Always wish I was using my ultimate hacking keyboard, uh, which now is almost complete with cool key caps, but, um, yeah.

[00:26:14] Brett: So anyway, key mapping a 58 key keyboard is, is weird.

[00:26:21] Jeff: How many keys are on a normal keyboard if you have a number pad?

[00:26:26] Brett: A hundred and four,

[00:26:29] Jeff: Jesus Christ.

[00:26:30] Christina: Yeah. And then I usually use like a 75 key, uh, layout. Um, or a 65. And so the 75 key is, is like what the, the standard would be like on your, um, MacBook keyboard, or if you got like a, um, apple, um, normal, uh, wireless keyboard. It doesn’t have the NU Pad or the um. Uh, like the, um, Home and PageUp and PageDown keys.

[00:26:53] Christina: Um, so like that’s, that’s a, that’s a pretty common layout. Uh, 58, and 60 is, is, and 65 [00:27:00] percent are, are common too. Those usually lack, lack the function row. Um, and you can, like, remap those. But 58, I’m looking at what this literally 58 is now. That’s a weird one, yeah. Cause even so, If you had 60, like you can do more there, although like 65 would be better, but like that’s just that those seven key differences, that is interesting how you then have to go into like a different layer philosophy and figure out like, okay, how’s my muscle memory going to work and how I

[00:27:26] Brett: Yeah. Right.

[00:27:27] Christina: like that, that, that

[00:27:28] Brett: then you can have layers trigger other layers with key combinations. And it’s cool because you can make, like, you can build a hyper key.

[00:27:38] Christina: Yes.

[00:27:39] Brett: no additional software. You can say, if I tap this key, do this. If I hold this key and hit another key, do this. If I tap this key twice, then like permanently switch

[00:27:50] Jeff: Wait, you can do that how? Just with this keyboard and its firmware?

[00:27:53] Brett: Yeah, exactly.

[00:27:56] Christina: Yeah, exactly. Which is really cool. Um, you should check out Viya, um, [00:28:00] uh, which is a web version, uh, that, that might have a better interface for you, Brett. Use Viya. app. Um, uh, we’ll do it that way. I also put the link in the, in the show notes. Um, but like, um, if, if you’re having, if you’re not liking some of the stuff with, with Viya, um, uh, check out Viya.

[00:28:16] Christina: It might be better. Cause it’s all, all of these are just basically different front ends for QMK. Um, but, but, but, but I, I think that, um, um, Viya or Via, um, that, um, my friend, um, Olivia, uh, does

[00:28:30] Brett: Cool. Yeah. I will check that

[00:28:32] Jeff: You should, you know, I bet there’s a way to do this, maybe it would require scripting or more than this allows you to do, but where if you, um, just palm down on the whole right half of the keyboard so that, like, it’s just looking for enough of the keys to be hit That it’s actually a, you know, like a, uh, it performs an action or like, I was gonna say fisting, putting your fist down on it.

[00:28:58] Jeff: That’d be fun. [00:29:00] You should try that.

[00:29:01] Brett: I’m not sure how to, uh, from a technical perspective, I’m not sure how it would

[00:29:05] Jeff: I already have it laid out in my brain, but I just don’t know if the software can catch up with my brain. You said I was bad at computers earlier. I want to revise that. I’m bad at computers for somebody who’s good at computers.

[00:29:19] Brett: I didn’t mean it. I

[00:29:20] Jeff: no, no, but I actually was thinking about that. And I’m like, no, I am like under pressure.

[00:29:25] Jeff: I’m bad at computers where I’m just like, I have to do a thing. And I was like, and just in my own systems, like I have all of these pieces. I’m like good at computers, but I’m bad at being good at computers. That’s how I actually like this. I’m not, this isn’t defensive. I was like, no, you really helped me get somewhere.

[00:29:42] Jeff: Uh, anyway.

[00:29:44] Brett: I’m titling this show, Bad at Being Good at Computers.

[00:29:49] Jeff: I like that. And so one of the reasons I’m always silent in these keyboard conversations is I feel fucking so left out because I can’t fucking type without looking at the keyboard. [00:30:00] And I don’t even, and even when I’m looking, obviously, that means I’m not using all my fingers. And I want that to

[00:30:05] Brett: don’t want my keyboard

[00:30:06] Jeff: I want that to be different. I want to know, I want to know a second language, which I don’t, I know a little bit, I know enough Arabic to not get beat up in a five minute span. Um, and, and I know what

[00:30:17] Christina: That’s way more than me.

[00:30:19] Jeff: Uh, but I am talking about limited and, and I love other languages and then I wish I could type.

[00:30:25] Jeff: And if I could just change anything about myself, those are the

[00:30:27] Brett: What, so there, there are

[00:30:29] Jeff: Little shorter.

[00:30:30] Brett: touch typing tutors. Why, why have

[00:30:33] Jeff: know there are No, we go through this all the time because there’s a fucking million things to do in my life every day. And so I can stop and learn how to type, or I can do one of the million other things

[00:30:44] Christina: Other things that you need to do. What was interesting to me, I, I kind of, so I took like a typing class when I was like in fifth grade or something. Um, and it was dumb. It was, it was a waste of time. Like my mom like paid money for me to go to like some community college thing and like take a typing [00:31:00] class because in her mind, like you still needed to like, that’s how you needed to learn to type.

[00:31:04] Christina: And, and, um, you know, yeah, I learned the homeroom, homeroom and all that stuff, but frankly it was just Mavis Beacon, but with like an instructor, it was stupid. But, but like, How I really learned to touch type, frankly, was just, I don’t even know. Like, I, I think I’m, I’m surprised that you don’t touch type genuinely because of all the, uh, how, um, how well you write and how much you write.

[00:31:24] Christina: Because for me, it was just like kind of an, I mean, like, and, and I don’t mean this like in, in, in a derogatory way

[00:31:29] Jeff: No, no, I don’t take it that way.

[00:31:31] Christina: cause there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Like, I also wish I could learn other languages and you know, more Arabic and Japanese than I ever will. And I’m envious of that, but like, it’s weird.

[00:31:39] Christina: Cause for whatever reason, like. I, I didn’t really pay attention that much in that, in that typing class when I was like in fourth or fifth grade, but I naturally just like figured out how to type correctly and to touch type, just because I guess I was just on the internet all the time. Um, I was just never not, um, you know, connected and I was just like, [00:32:00] okay, well, this is, you know.

[00:32:01] Christina: How I, how it, how I do this now. Right. Like it got to the point where I was like, I, you know, you start out, you’re looking at it and then it just became, it wasn’t even like I tried, I don’t even think to, to not look down at it. That being said, I did try to switch to a different keyboard layout once. And that I, you know.

[00:32:17] Christina: No, right? Like that, which is why I think like looking at that lovely 58 Brett, like that’s a really interesting looking keyboard, but there are enough like, um, things that are not there where I would be like, I w I would really have to, to your point, Jeff, like I would have to like switch. I would have to like take time out of my day and be like, okay, I need to practice on this and like put time into this.

[00:32:39] Christina: I don’t think it’s something that I could just, you know, pick up overnight. Um, and there might be better things to do, but I am a little surprised that like you didn’t just through osmosis get. Touch

[00:32:48] Jeff: Yeah. It’s weird because the one thing I discovered a few years ago is the thing I can do is if I am typing, and then I just look up and keep [00:33:00] typing, it’s like there’s a little bit of lag. It’s kind of like my wife killed a centipede this morning and not killed, she actually removed it, dropped it in the driveway, but the legs that were left were still moving.

[00:33:11] Jeff: It’s like, so if I look up, it’s a little bit of that, like I can still, I’m hitting the right one. Keys for just a minute, and then it’s like, my brain just goes, Oh fuck, we’re not looking! And it’s over. It’s very strange.

[00:33:23] Brett: It’s like training wheels. Like,

[00:33:26] Jeff: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

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[00:35:23] Hotel Woes and Travel Reflections

[00:35:23] Jeff: I was just in a hotel. I just traveled for work for the first time since before the pandemic. And, uh, we’ve traveled a lot since then, but not for work and not alone. And, um, hotels, I’m so over them when I’m alone. I find it all I can do is really feel a little lonely and fall asleep. Um, and maybe watch a movie with The Rock in it if it’s on, because that’s usually what’s on in the hotels.

[00:35:46] Jeff: If that’s on, then I’ll watch the movie. Um, but, uh, just a free association.

[00:35:52] The Fascination with Hidden Information

[00:35:52] Jeff: I found that even being away from hotels that long, my ability to, one, fail the book until the last minute, and two, no matter how good [00:36:00] Perfectly decent, the place looks, to find a room that has bloodstains in it is really fucking remarkable and I even started with my family just for shits and giggles, I bring a little like UV light so we can look at the floor of the hotel, which like some, some of my family refuses, but my youngest is like, yeah, oh fuck, right?

[00:36:18] Jeff: Like, uh, cause I love it. I love, I love invisible information. I just love the idea that there’s information around us all the time, like radio waves, like whatever. So I love to be able to reveal the stuff that’s not seen, right? Like,

[00:36:32] Brett: that’s disturbing.

[00:36:35] Jeff: but anyway, I, it was amazing.

[00:36:36] A Rough Hotel Experience

[00:36:36] Jeff: So this place, it’s basically, it was a halfway house. Like I, I, I walk in and there’s a dude. Coming out of the elevator with like a BMX and he’s like BMX bike is like neck tattoos the whole thing when I’m waiting for the for the guy at the counter there’s just like a this doesn’t sound like much but there’s just like a loose it was a loose cigarette on the floor at the counter I’m like you know what that’s nothing it’s nothing to see a cigarette but I can tell what [00:37:00] this place is now because there’s a cigarette on the floor because when do you ever see a whole cigarette on the floor anywhere anymore and And then I went down to like breakfast the next morning, literally every person in there was, I would say mid fifties, super like tattooed and weathered, right?

[00:37:18] Jeff: Like I have spent a lot of time outside. I’ve been drunk, passed out in the sun a thousand times in my life. I’ve been through it. I literally was looking around and this is not meant pejoratively. I was like, this looks like a fucking halfway house. Like, how do I, and here’s the thing. I always end up by the freeway and I always end up in a situation where in order to walk to where I’m going, I have to walk under the freeway.

[00:37:39] Jeff: And that’s its own thing. You just know, if you’re walking under a freeway, you’re in the wrong part. Like, and I used to love that. I used to be like, yeah, fuck it. You know, I was on tour. I lived in a van, whatever. I used to sort of like, not like exactly take pride, but just be like, yeah, this is the kind of place I go.

[00:37:54] Jeff: I actually like being in nice hotels. I love it. I just can’t make it happen for myself.

[00:37:59] Christina: [00:38:00] Right. I was gonna say our, I was gonna say our hotel experiences are so different. Um, but I’m not like, like at all, like I don’t have those experiences at all. But at the same time, I’m a little, I’m not envious because I, I’m going to be real. I prefer the nicer hotels, but there is some sort of like good people watching shit.

[00:38:16] Christina: You know what I

[00:38:17] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I do. I do appreciate that. And again, I don’t mind. I’ve been in some very nice hotel rooms. I am very comfortable in a nice hotel room in first class on a plane. We can get it with points. I am super comfortable. But for whatever reason, if I’m taking care of myself, it just it’s a little peek into what I would have been like without a wife.

[00:38:35] Jeff: I think it’s just like, I told her the other day, I’m like, if you were to pass, Tomorrow. I think it’d be about six months before I had like a, um, the shell of a pontoon in the backyard. So I could just be making some kind of fucked up boat and a monkey. Like, I just feel like that’s, that’s like, I’m just, you know, I need, I need someone.

[00:38:58] Jeff: Anyway, that was a major [00:39:00] diversion. Sorry.

[00:39:02] Brett: So, did you want to talk about this mythical man month?

[00:39:05] The Mythical Man-Month Discussion

[00:39:05] Jeff: Well, yeah, I wanted to ask you, I wanted to bring something up by way of the book, the 1975 software engineering book of essays and, and, and essays about how to kind of manage and not manage, um, software development and other development projects by

[00:39:22] Christina: It’s a great book.

[00:39:23] Jeff: Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. Also known as Fred Brooks. Uh, I appreciate that he put that much as he goes by Fred Brooks, but man, on the book, it’s Frederick P.

[00:39:32] Jeff: Brooks, Jr. Um,

[00:39:34] Christina: this is peak wasp stuff, right? Like

[00:39:36] Jeff: Yeah,

[00:39:36] Christina: the, the waspiest of like wasp time. This is like the 70s.

[00:39:40] Jeff: Yeah, it’s 1975 and like, there’s fucking, it’s like a prehistoric bears drawing on the car. Anyway, it’s called Mythical Man Month, let’s be honest. It probably used to be called Mythical White Man Month. Forget that, it’s just man, right? Like, there’s like a lot of things about this.

[00:39:57] Jeff: I read it, I read it, [00:40:00] um, I think two months ago when I was on vacation, it’s like, it’s a fast read. Um, and I was partly interested in it because I had just done the closest thing to sort of, uh, it wasn’t software designed at all, but I had to do, you know, like a complex sort of, it involved a lot of coding and involved a lot of custom, you know, database creation and all of this stuff for a project.

[00:40:22] Jeff: And I, and it was the kind of thing where it’s like, I roughly knew how I wanted to end, but I, I didn’t know how to get there. And so in other words, it was a creative act. It’s the kind of thing that people who code all the time go through. Right. And then the creative act, you can’t actually reliably set out the steps because you don’t know what they are.

[00:40:39] Jeff: Right. Like, so I was planning to build a deck this summer. It’s not happening. And someone asked me like, you know how to build the deck? And I was like, I will when I’m done.

[00:40:47] Software Development Challenges

[00:40:47] Jeff: Um, and so anyway, um, it would, because kind of a project management hell on our team, because nobody on my team. knew how to do this stuff or knew what I was doing or had my skill set, even my [00:41:00] like edge skill set that I was, you know, able to utilize chat GPT to like really multiply.

[00:41:06] Jeff: Right. Um, and so nobody knew how to think about what I was doing. I didn’t have a partner to talk with and say, this is what I’m doing. What the fuck am I doing wrong? Or like, how should we think about how to plan this? And I, and I kept thinking it was just causing a lot, it was taking longer than it should, whatever, but like the end product was really good.

[00:41:23] Jeff: Like I, it’s the first time in a long time that I’ve had a big idea and then executed it in a actually very reasonable points. Like I landed it. Like I was, I don’t land planes. That’s like, I’m like fucking Al Qaeda. Like I don’t, I don’t land planes. Right. Like, um, and, and so this thing

[00:41:40] Brett: Too soon.

[00:41:41] Jeff: This thing worked so fucking well, and it just, it happened, but I was left with a terrible feeling, because I had just frustrated everybody on my team, and especially our project manager, who came from the corporate world and never dealt with software or anything, right?

[00:41:58] Jeff: And it’s great, but like, just didn’t, you know, [00:42:00] didn’t have the frame for it. And I, and so when it was all done, it was like, I was really proud of it. Our client was like, we’ve never had anything like this, a big client. And they’re just like, nobody’s ever, they used to fucking hire Rand. And they’re like, nobody’s ever created something quite like this for us.

[00:42:13] Jeff: Not that it was the quality of what a defense contractor would give them. But, um, so anyway, like, I was like, why do I just feel shitty? Why do I just feel bad now that it’s done? And it’s like, I’m pretty sure. And it was hard to say it at the time because people were just bummed out by how the process went.

[00:42:28] Jeff: But I was like, I’m pretty sure that our framework was all wrong. And, and that, that is a huge piece of this problem. So reading this book was amazing. Cause it’s a lot about managing. I think there’s a quote in here. That’s like, um, how does a software project, uh, get to be one year late one day at a time?

[00:42:46] Jeff: It’s like really great. But the reason I’m talking about all of this, have either of you like either read or had this book in your hands?

[00:42:54] Christina: Yes, I have. I have it because I’m a huge fan of it actually.

[00:42:57] Jeff: did you how did it come to you?

[00:42:59] Christina: [00:43:00] I read something about it. Probably, I probably read somebody commenting on, um, it’s philosophy ones, probably, um, on, on a forum or a message board or something. And the idea immediately resonated with me. And this was before I even went into software development.

[00:43:13] Christina: So this was like when I was a journalist and the idea was like really resonant with me. And I’d heard like that one and like the innovators dilemma, uh, by Clayton Christensen were often. Mentioned and are often mentioned as like important and kind of like seminal, like software books. And, uh, the Innovator’s Dilemma is great because, uh, it’s from a guy, he died a couple of years ago, but he, um, uh, wrote a bunch of papers, kind of like his, his, Principle, his theories on disruption, like not all of them have necessarily worked out exactly, but like he kind of came up with like the notion of for, you know, market leaders, if they want to, um, uh, prevent being disrupted, they have to disrupt themselves because of how a lot of times like bottom up disruption happens and whatnot.

[00:43:55] Christina: It’s a really interesting book, but um, The Mythical Man was one of those [00:44:00] like kind of like Always on those lists of like important, you know, books to read about software development and other things. And, and it really made a lot of sense to me when I was covering software, um, uh, before even doing it at it, where it makes even more sense.

[00:44:12] Christina: It was like a good understanding of how like projects can run off course.

[00:44:19] Jeff: hmm. Mm

[00:44:20] Christina: know, so like, you know, because, because like one of the, one of the challenges when you write about software, if you’re not a developer, is that you don’t know all the intricacies and the things that go into how a project is managed and how something is done.

[00:44:32] Christina: And so what can seem like a small thing to you, like, well, how, how, how much of a problem could this be and whatnot, um, becomes, um, Um, and so when like, you know, you hear kind of the idea that it’s like hiring, you know, at a certain point, hiring more bodies doesn’t give you more productivity. And like, that’s been proven, like that instinctually makes sense.

[00:44:51] Christina: And if you’ve worked on large teams, whether you’re making software or not, like, you know, that that’s how it works. Like there are some things where just throwing people at the problem can, um, you know, make [00:45:00] you know, speed things up. Construction is one of those areas, um, although even that has its, has its upper limits, right?

[00:45:05] Christina: Like at a certain point, you know, just because you have a, you know, a, a, a million people working on a task doesn’t mean that it’s going to necessarily come together anymore. Um, but yeah, I, I came across the book, um, I, I probably just through, um, you know, hearing people talk about it. And then when I read it, I was like, Oh no, this, Is really smart and really changed kind of like how I both understood Like how people build things and also how things get off track and then also in some ways thinking about my own things like okay you know, you can understand the impetus for for feature creep and for a 2.

[00:45:36] Christina: 0 version and you can see like, oh no, this is You know, this is why oftentimes those things go off the rails. Like somebody creates something that’s really perfect and it’s just, you know, Oh, well, the next version, I’m just going to do a small refactor. And I’m just going to add a couple more features. And then the next thing, you know, that becomes bigger and bigger and bigger.

[00:45:54] Christina: And it’s, you know, takes six years for it to come out, you

[00:45:58] The Second System Effect

[00:45:58] Jeff: Which is, which [00:46:00] is a perfect segue, because like, the thing that I had in my mind coming in was this idea that, I think he names this in the book, I think it’s his bit, is the second system effect. And the way he puts it is he’s like, and I’m just gonna do, when I say he, just put like the bracket, sick bracket in your brain when I say it, because it’s easier than me translating in real time, you know, it’s like, uh, it’s.

[00:46:21] Jeff: Talking about, um, like the first, the first work is frill after frill and embellishment after embellishment occurs to you, right? And it’s going to be used the next time, right? So then when you get your first piece done, or maybe like you ship your beta or whatever, like the next version, the temptation is to throw everything in because now you’ve like, you finally got the space to make it what you want.

[00:46:41] Jeff: And then any number of fucking things happen, right? Like as you just And, and I’ve found, I’ve found this applicable in my work. Um, in the way we think about our projects and the way we think about deliverables for clients and the way we run our business, like I see it happening. It’s, it’s definitely, I see like the temptation towards it [00:47:00] in so many contexts, but it made me think of you, Brett, because one of the things that’s like such a marker of how you, how you are as a developer, um, it’s like, you are so amazing at being like, I made this thing.

[00:47:13] Jeff: And then. A month later, six months later, four years later, you’re like, I just made this thing better with like 16 things. Oh, and by the way, the next day I made this other thing. And you do this for like a few days and then you stop. Right. And it’s not exactly like, you know, I made version one, I made version two.

[00:47:30] Managing Software Projects

[00:47:30] Jeff: It’s very different, but I’m super curious how like hearing and thinking about this idea of the second system effect, like where that resonates in your world and philosophy and approach, or if it does.

[00:47:42] Brett: Well, yeah, so like Mark has been out for over a decade now. Um, and Mark one was out for about, I wanna say three years, uh, before Mark two came out. [00:48:00] And then seven plus years later, it’s still Mark two, it’s Mark 2.5, point 22, I think. Um, and. Like I got into this groove where instead of trying to make a 3. 0, um, that had all of these ideas, I just focused on one feature at a time.

[00:48:24] Brett: And some of those features would take six months and some of them would go six months and then I would Discard them. I would, I would shuffle them off into a branch in the Git repo and say someday if I’m still able to merge this a year later, you know, I’ll, I’ll tackle this again, but like it became like one feature at a time.

[00:48:47] Brett: And I think that is kind of the benefit of the more modern software development cycle, where things are subscription based and you’re not, you’re, you’re not trying to hit a goal of like a, [00:49:00] a major release every year and then charging upgrade prices instead. You’re just continually developing. Yeah. And you’re, you’re improving and you’re, you’re adding features without the need to make.

[00:49:14] Brett: Okay. This is going to be 2. 0. Here’s all the things we want to add. Um, when I am in that kind of more archaic, uh, development mode, I’m very careful. I use like Trello boards or like Kanban, Kanban boards. Um, and like a list, like this is 2. 0, this is 2. 1, this is 2. 2, this is 3. 0. And like every feature that comes up, especially if it’s on a team where I’m collaborating.

[00:49:45] Brett: Like, we all, we all decide together. This is, This is not a feature that needs to be 2. 0. We’re going to shuffle it off to three and then deal it, deal with that when we get there. Um, and then [00:50:00] like when we’re on 1. 0 and we’re planning 2. 0 features, we plan point releases like this. These are easy gets, these are easy, uh, Easy tasks, this will be 2.

[00:50:10] Brett: 0. Um, this one’s going to take a couple months of development. That’s a 2. 1. Um, and try to organize those up front and yeah, every once in a while you, you get stuck on a feature that you really want. For your next release, and it takes way longer than you think. It takes a year and then your whole release schedule is, is messed up.

[00:50:34] Brett: And I don’t necessarily have a where on that other than saying, if a feature takes me three months and I think it’s important for the next release, I’ll, I’ll cancel that feature. Um, I’ll shuffle it off to 3. 0.

[00:50:47] Jeff: it’s, is it easy for you to stop to just say, I’m done here? Uh, or yeah, that’s

[00:50:51] Brett: Yeah, well, that’s what I love about Git is I never have to like completely give up on anything. Like most of my projects [00:51:00] have 12 to 15 branches in the feature branch that are things that I’m playing with, that I was working on, that I decided not to merge. But I, like, I have bookmarks, basically. I can always load it up and be like, here are the 12 to 15 unfinished ideas that I had that they didn’t disappear.

[00:51:23] Brett: I didn’t permanently give up on them. Like all the code is still there for them. Um, I just decided not to integrate it at this time. And usually I have another feature that I’m interested in working on and it’s easy to be like, all right, this is too frustrating. I’m, I’m going to switch to something because this one looks like fun right now.

[00:51:47] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

[00:51:50] Christina: No, I mean, that has to be such a challenge too, like, cause there are certain, like, do you, do you run into the problem, like, like, like talking about like Envy Ultra, like that’s been, and I know that part of that like has been like in [00:52:00] stasis for a lot of reasons, but like, do you think that that’s like a, is that been like a process of like feature creep?

[00:52:04] Christina: Is that just a lot of things? Because.

[00:52:08] Brett: no, We’ve been very good about like, we, we have that Kanban board I was talking about, um, and, and we have it, we’re on feature freeze for 1. 0 right now. Um, any, any feature requests that come in are shuffled off to the two, maybe a 1. 2 release. Um, but 1. 0 is on feature freeze and no, we’re just waiting for Fletcher to work out a couple of bugs

[00:52:34] Jeff: want to point out that at the beginning of this answer, Brett, um, put his hand under his glasses and rubbed his eyes for a minute, just to give that, that visual, you ever thought what, what would happen, Brett? I’m not trying, I don’t want this to be a painful question. Um, but I was thinking about it the other day, cause I was like, sometimes I just download NvAlt for the fuck of it, cause it just brings back good memories.

[00:52:55] Jeff: Cause I, as a journalist, especially, I relied on it so much. Um, do you ever think [00:53:00] like, fuck it, I’m waiting too long. I’m going to spend two long nights. I’m going to update NvAlt just to make it basically functional and here it goes. And then I’m going to blow up the whole relationship.

[00:53:10] Brett: The thought has crossed my mind. Like the whole point of Envy Ultra was because I was putting so much time into Envy Alt and not getting paid for it. Like, Envy Alt has like 500, 000 users,

[00:53:24] Jeff: Still. And how about now? Do you have any idea? Like

[00:53:26] Brett: I don’t. I don’t have any metrics on that. I just know like total downloads on the last release were hundreds of thousands of people.

[00:53:34] Brett: Um, it is a high, a very popular fork of notational velocity. Um, and it’s, it’s dying. Like it’s, I would, I would bet nobody will be able to run it by the next OS release. Um, and the code is archaic enough that updating it is kind of. It’s a rewrite, and [00:54:00] honestly, I don’t know if you guys have seen the archive, but Christian Tietz did a great job of completely

[00:54:06] Jeff: use the archive sometimes. Yeah.

[00:54:08] Brett: yeah, completely replicating NVL, and there’s no point in, and FS Notes is actually really good too, and that’s a far more modern code base, and that one’s, that one’s free.

[00:54:20] Jeff: somebody were literally, and I use NvAltra just to be clear, but if somebody were really looking for like, I want exactly the feel of NvAlt, but not NvAlt, the archive by Christian Tietz is totally that thing. Cause I, I go back and forth. It’s nice thing about having a markdown folder of notes, right?

[00:54:35] Jeff: You can just be like, now I’m using this notes app. He did an amazing job with that.

[00:54:40] Brett: Yeah, he did.

[00:54:41] Jeff: Table flip too. That was at him. I

[00:54:44] Brett: I think,

[00:54:45] Jeff: think that was him. I love table flip.

[00:54:47] Brett: TableFlip,

[00:54:47] Jeff: is this Graptitude?

[00:54:50] Brett: TableFlip hasn’t gotten an update for a long

[00:54:52] Jeff: I still use it. I use it all the time.

[00:54:54] Brett: it’s so

[00:54:55] Jeff: I use it all the

[00:54:56] Brett: for, for anyone who’s never heard of it, uh, TableFlip, uh, if [00:55:00] you’ve ever made a multi markdown table with all of the colons and pipes and, and all of the columns and pipes, and all the columns and pipes Trying to deal with that formatting without, there’s a good Sublime Text plugin for editing tables and various, uh, markups.

[00:55:16] Jeff: fine. It’s nothing like using table flip.

[00:55:18] Brett: yeah, TableFlip gives you a very spreadsheet like graphical interface for Moving, moving rows and columns and cells around, and then you can load it on any Markdown document that contains tables. You can open it in TableFlip, and any changes you make in TableFlip are reflected in your Markdown document, and vice versa.

[00:55:40] Brett: It’s a, it’s

[00:55:42] Jeff: It’s very Brett Terpstra.

[00:55:43] Brett: yeah, it really, it feels like something I should have written, but it’s really,

[00:55:48] Jeff: like very, it’s very Christian Tietz’s design aesthetic, but it’s like functionally very Brett Terpstra. The way I use, let’s just call this Graftitude, but I do have my own. Um, the way I use TableFlip [00:56:00] is like, you know how in MindMap, sometimes you need to open up a MindMap and think in a MindMap.

[00:56:03] Jeff: You just know sometimes like the thing I’m trying to figure out, I need to think in a MindMap. I do like to think in, in spreadsheets, but I don’t like to think in Excel and I don’t like to think in Airtable and I don’t like to think in Google drive. I love to think in TableFlip. Like, I just find it very elegant, very easy, uh, very just sort of like, straight from brain to thing, um, beautiful. Nice job, Christian Tietz. You got yourself a bonus graftitude.

[00:56:31] Brett: Bonus caps. Should we, should we.

[00:56:34] Gratitude Picks: Software Tools and Apps

[00:56:34] Brett: We’re almost at an hour, we should probably do Gravtitude,

[00:56:37] Jeff: it. Let’s do it.

[00:56:38] Christina: yeah, I have, I have things.

[00:56:40] Brett: Okay, you want Sarcrasino?

[00:56:42] Christina: Yeah, I will. Okay, so the first one I want to, I have two actually. The first I wanted to talk about is Carbon Copy Cloner 7, uh, which I missed. I didn’t realize that 7, um, uh, came out a couple weeks ago. Um, this is the, the app that I have used. I, I used to either use this or SuperDuper, but I’ve been using Carbon Copy Cloner [00:57:00] as kind of my backup app, um, for Mac OS.

[00:57:03] Christina: For, uh, at least a decade at this point. And, um, uh, Carbon Copy Cloner 6 came out, I think about two years ago. Um, I’d have to look and see, um, when, when the update was, but, um, this is, um, uh, the interface is the same as Carbon Copy, uh, Cloner 6. Um, and if, uh, one of the nice things about how they’ve done the upgrade, the upgrade, I think is 25 bucks for, um, for existing, um, uh, owners.

[00:57:28] Christina: And I think it’s like 50 now for, for new, um, um, uh, licenses. One of the nice things about how I like the um, the way that the new version trial works out is you can try the new version, but if you don’t want to buy it, if you don’t want to keep it, you can just immediately go back to, to version six. Um, it, it won’t mess anything up, um, for you that way.

[00:57:49] Christina: Uh, but one of the things that this has added is it’s added a feature, um, that I haven’t used cause I don’t know how useful it would be for me, but it has like a, a, iOS devices [00:58:00] on your Mac. And, um, it, it also, um, you know, has now, um, uh, more, uh, more snapshot, uh, abilities in terms of, uh, for, for, for local snapshot management.

[00:58:11] Christina: Um, and so, um, I don’t like Time Machine and I’ve, I’ve had problems with Time Machine over the years and also Time Machine just isn’t always, like, doesn’t fit my, my mental model well. Like, I feel like if I’m doing network backups, I use Synology’s stuff for that. Like I, I, I don’t You know, Time Machine is just, also if you enable it, then like if the local things are turned on, then those can take up tons of hard drive space, and, and macOS is not good with caching, period.

[00:58:38] Christina: So that is really not a good thing. They’re

[00:58:41] Brett: I’m a SuperDuper guy. Um, have been for years. Why, why would I switch to Carbon Copy Cloner?

[00:58:48] Christina: If I can be completely candid, it’s because it’s more updated. It’s, it’s, they, they are much better about updating things and like working around weird stuff that happens and with like the file

[00:58:57] Brett: do they do AFPS [00:59:00] snapshots?

[00:59:00] Christina: Oh yeah, yeah,

[00:59:02] Brett: is one of the things I love about newer versions of SuperDuper. is snapshots. Um, like I use a combination of SuperDuper, Backblaze, um, uh, Time Machine and Synology Drive. Um, and between those four, I can use, unless, every once in a while, I’ll accidentally delete. It happened one time, I downloaded our, um, podcast episode Didn’t download it.

[00:59:34] Brett: We were recording with like, uh, Audio Hijack, I think I was using and I accidentally deleted. The files permanently. And it was too soon for any of my backup systems to have picked it up and, and backed it up. And I, if I felt very impotent, having four different backups running and still having lost an hour worth of audio.[01:00:00]

[01:00:00] Brett: Um, but in general, I never lose anything that is more than half an hour old. I definitely have versions and backups of.

[01:00:10] Christina: Yeah, I’m not that good. But like I, I, I typically use, I don’t use Time machine, but I, I typically use the other things. I would say this, if Super Duper works for you, there’s no reason for you to use something else. But I know that Super Duper has been, uh, slower to update to the latest Maca West versions and that they had some, some, um, more difficulties.

[01:00:28] Christina: Both, both of these companies, ’cause both of the developers I think, you know, are friendly with one another and work together. Like they, there were some changes to how file system handling worked. Um. For me, it really just came down to like when I, cause I, I’ve used them both. It just came down to when I was looking at which one to invest in, it was like, whenever I made the decision, however long ago it was, um, uh, Carbon Copy Cloner seemed to have a little bit more robust and a little more frequent, um, dev cycle, but you know, but, but if it works for you, it works for you, but yeah, um, but it does do all the, the, um, you know, [01:01:00] APFS snapshot stuff and it not, it does it for, for, for backup versioning as well.

[01:01:04] Christina: Um, and, um, Uh, I don’t know. I, I, I like it. It’s just one of those things that I, I have, you know, license to that I keep, like when I had to use, um, when I had to do that ridiculous backup of my mom’s computer, um, a few months ago, like carbon copy cloner was the thing that came in clutch for that. Um, but the second app I wanna talk about, this is a bigger thing when we talk kind of about like, you know, like the importance of Indy software and keeping things up.

[01:01:29] Christina: An app that I’ve used for a really long time as bartender, I know we’ve, it’s probably been a gratitude pick that we’ve done before. Bartender, which is a, an app to man, uh, to manage the, the macOS menu bar, which can become unwieldy and which if you’ve got like a, a newer MacBook with a notch on it, especially if you’ve got a smaller size one, like frankly, there are instances where the built in management system, you will literally run out of room.

[01:01:52] Christina: And so, uh, why Apple doesn’t have a built in way of hiding and accessing menu bars? I don’t know, but they don’t. Um, so I, you [01:02:00] know, menu bar is a thing that I’ve used for years. It was sold. And this was not disclosed to anyone. Uh, it was sold to some Chinese company, nothing wrong with that. But, um, the only reason it came through was because it

[01:02:13] Jeff: my best friends are Chinese

[01:02:14] Christina: Well, I mean, I don’t know.

[01:02:15] Christina: I’m just I’m just saying like I’m not I’m not I’m not saying that just the fact

[01:02:18] Jeff: Yeah, yeah,

[01:02:19] Christina: company on its own is a bad thing. The sketchy part is that no one knew but the Certificate had changed in Mac updater. And so somebody reached out and realized oh This has a new owner and they put like a weird help document on their website Which did not explain why you would need to run certain commands to basically reauthorize Um, uh, the, the, the system and update that for the, for the new, um, you know, um, uh, security certificate.

[01:02:47] Christina: Um, and until somebody on Reddit basically, they, they acknowledged, Oh yeah, this has been sold. We’ve, we’ve owned this for a couple of months now. After kind of the uproar, uh, the original developer of, um, uh, Bartender released a [01:03:00] statement on his website and the main website that said, Hey, I sold this a few months ago because support burden was too much.

[01:03:05] Christina: And I wanted to go on and do other things with my life. Hey, great, no problem, but like all that felt like a little bit too little too late for me, and I don’t know anything about this new company. They’re not being forthcoming at all about, um, you know, what, what kind of their plans are. I think that, you know, they want to add some widgets.

[01:03:23] Christina: into the, the system, um, it looks like the, the company that bought it, they buy primarily iOS apps and, um, you know, uh, probably turn them into subscription products. So who knows what’s going to happen with Bartender? I know people, I think they’re being ridiculous about like some of the security concerns.

[01:03:40] Christina: They’re like, oh, well, you know, the accessibility concerns this happens has always been a, Question for me and blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, fuck off. Like, I genuinely think you’re overthinking this. So many good apps have to enable weird settings, um, to work. Having said that, I do fully understand people feeling weirded out by the app now.

[01:03:59] Christina: [01:04:00] And so, um, there’s an app called, there are a couple of apps, uh, there’s, that are open source, um, and available. One is called Hidden, um, and it’s in the Mac App Store. Um, it’s also on GitHub, but that hasn’t been updated in years. So the one that I’ve been playing with is called Ice. It’s open source. Um, it’s, it’s on GitHub.

[01:04:17] Christina: Um, although, uh, people should definitely sponsor the developer if you get value out of it. And it’s not as good as menu bar was in terms of like every little feature that it had, there were still some things on its roadmap, like dragging and dropping, you know, the interface to rearrange individual items and searching menu bar items.

[01:04:36] Christina: And, and some, um, other stuff, um, and displaying hidden items in a separate bar. Um, those are all on the roadmap, but it has the basic stuff, um, there and it has a pretty good, um, uh, user interface and the, and the development is active. So, um, uh, ICE is, uh, is one of my gratitude picks for people who might be, uh, looking for a bartender alternative now that, you know, we don’t really know [01:05:00] whether we can or can’t trust these new

[01:05:02] Brett: Yeah, so do you, do you know, I’m using the set app version of Bartender. Um, has that been, has that been updated with the new,

[01:05:12] Christina: As far as I can tell, no. As far as I can tell, they’ve updated, like, who the, the maker is in the app, but it has not updated the app version itself, and let me look at it. Um, so, like, if you’re running the setup version, I think you’re actually fine, but who knows when they might, You know, push that out. And even so, like, I, I also trust that, like, the setup folks are gonna, you know, do the, the vetting that they need to do and whatnot.

[01:05:35] Christina: Like, I’m not concerned from a security perspective. I really don’t think anybody else should be either. Although people are, you know, pulling up a little snitch to show, oh, it’s phoning home, it’s doing this and that. I’m like, okay, genuinely, you need to chill because basically everything you use, you know, calls back to something.

[01:05:52] Christina: I, I, but I don’t think

[01:05:53] Jeff: get little stitches.

[01:05:54] Christina: Right. But like, you know, I’m just saying like, that’s good. That’s good. [01:06:00] Um, but I think that the, I think that the version on Setapp, yeah, let me see. Um, yeah, the version here is still from, um, uh, December, which was, um, before it was sold. So they’ve updated

[01:06:12] Brett: I’ve got a little time, but I, Ice looks really good. I’m going to check that

[01:06:16] Jeff: Yeah, it does. Mine is simple. This is probably the only time either, either of us have, have, uh, suggested a GitHub repo that hasn’t been updated in seven years, but I’m going to do exactly that. Um, and it’s a project actually from, from many years ago called Taco Fancy. And it’s a, it’s a GitHub repo that a bunch of journalists started by this journalist, Dan Sinker at the time we used to run Punk Planet Magazine.

[01:06:42] Jeff: And, um, and he was working for this kind of interesting, um, Journalism, sort of organization called Source at the time. And, and a whole bunch of journalists from like major media organizations, other people that were doing like hacker journalism or like, you know, nerd teams that at the Washington Post or NPR or whatever [01:07:00] at that time, like they had a real like energy together.

[01:07:02] Jeff: And so when someone came up with a stupid project, it just went crazy with people who were incredibly competent. And this one was like, I want. taco recipes. I’m tired of what I, what I normally have. And so it’s a GitHub repo where everyone could just upload not only like full taco recipes, but like how to make your favorite condiments for tacos, mixins, seasonings, shells, and my favorite, uh, a whole section just called like tacos.

[01:07:26] Jeff: Um, and at the time, what was really fun, there’s a lot of stuff that either was in development by just people out in the world, like somebody made an API for it, which is awesome. Somebody was working on a Twitter bot that would just like do random. Taco recipes. Someone had a taco randomizer up. It’s hosted on Heroku.

[01:07:43] Jeff: It’s not there anymore. Um, but I, so I both suggest it as an amazing taco cookbook. If you go to like the full index link inside of the repo. Um, but also it’s just like a, a, a reminder of how fun, um, Like collaborative repos can be. Um, and, and this [01:08:00] was just a great little spirited thing that I still, sometimes I went to it recently, which is why I’m bringing it up to, uh, to, to make something.

[01:08:07] Jeff: So for instance, uh, in the like tacos category, there’s something called a sad Mexican grilled cheese. So it’s also very funny at times. So anyway, I recommend it. It’s a good time. And it’s actually, it was made in part, uh, it was. It, it, there’s a whole piece of like, if you’re new to GitHub, here’s how to learn GitHub through Taco Fancy.

[01:08:26] Jeff: So just kinda like served a lot of, yeah. Served a lot of cool functions while also just being an awesome little cookbook.

[01:08:33] Brett: That’s very cool. I know you’ve shown this to me

[01:08:35] Jeff: I, you know what, the last time I was on systematic, which I think was the last systematic episode, it was my pick one of my picks.

[01:08:44] Brett: All right. Um, I’m going this week with Tower, which I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, but it is, it has been, uh, a powerhouse for me lately. Um, they’ve actually asked me to do like, uh, they have a [01:09:00] series of developers using Tower profiles that I’m gonna do an interview for, but, um, like things like, So you can look at your, it’s for Git, for anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, it’s a, it’s a GUI for Git.

[01:09:17] Brett: Um,

[01:09:17] Jeff: I’m gooey. Forget

[01:09:19] Brett: and there’s a, there’s a lot of stuff I just do on the command line. Your, your typical, like what I’m committing, uh, add and commit, I just do on the command line. But if you want to do a complex merge fix, if you want to do a fix up or a squash on your commits, uh, why wouldn’t you use. a graphical interface.

[01:09:42] Brett: Like, why would you sit there and figure out hash, hashes for which, which commit to go back to, which commits to squash? Uh, like, it’s so much easier when you have a graphical interface and you can just select, you can select two commits, hold down option, [01:10:00] drag them onto another one, and then turn them into fix ups for that commit, which is, like, being able to do that was why I mentioned it, because that, That blew me away.

[01:10:08] Brett: They also have a command Z, um, which can undo almost any Git operation, which is like, if, if you make an errant, uh, you, you commit and you push, and then you want to redo the commit, um, after you’ve pushed, like these are not, these are complex Git command line tasks to accomplish and, you know, And, uh, and Tower literally added Command Z, which lets you do just about anything in the reflog you can undo, which is awesome.

[01:10:49] Brett: So, uh, if you use Git, if you do any development, I know there are authors that use Git for writing, which is really cool. Um, [01:11:00] so limited, limited application. I feel like a lot of our audience will know what I’m talking about. Um, Tower is. I mean, you’ve got, you got GitKraken, you got, um, some semi graphical interfaces that work in, in the command line.

[01:11:17] Brett: You have options, but Tower

[01:11:19] Jeff: got VS. Codes. Nice little functionality, but nothing like

[01:11:22] Christina: is actually great, um,

[01:11:23] Jeff: I

[01:11:24] Christina: lot of

[01:11:24] Jeff: it.

[01:11:25] Brett: Agreed. And, uh, Git Sav Git I think it’s Git Savvy in Sublime Text is, uh, really good, but yeah, again, not nothing compared to Tower. Tower is sweet.

[01:11:37] Jeff: Awesome. Awesome.

[01:11:38] Brett: And Tower has GitHub integrations, as of, like, last year, so you can do, like, pull request management. And commenting and everything right inside of Tower, which is slick.

[01:11:51] Christina: It’s very good

[01:11:52] Farewell and Final Thoughts

[01:11:52] Brett: All right, uh, we did not get to talk about the Kat Katizen, Katzen Coffee Bar.

[01:11:58] Jeff: yeah, we’ll talk about it. It’s [01:12:00] evergreen.

[01:12:00] Brett: we’ll save that. And, uh, yeah, thanks you guys.

[01:12:05] Jeff: All right,

[01:12:06] Brett: I will see, I will see at least one of you next week. I don’t remember.

[01:12:11] Christina: going to be me. It’s going to be me. And, uh, have a great, uh, coming up week, Jeff, with the family and everything.

[01:12:17] Jeff: thank you. Thank you. All right everybody, get some sleep.

[01:12:21] Brett: get some sleep.