219. Master Cable Daddy

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast. This week's challenge, craft your wisdom.

Hello. Hello. Hello. I just pulled a Casey list so hard. Do you know what I mean?

MerlinDid you have your water on the wrong level?

AlexI had, well, I had my Red Bull.

MerlinI don't like that sound.

AlexI'm not concerned so much about my trackpad because that has AppleCare, I believe. But if anybody has, what am I talking about? Everybody's got good keyboard suggestions. Give me some good clickies, some more good, oh gosh. Let's see if this works.

MerlinHang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. Okay, hang on, hang on.

AlexYes.

MerlinHang on.

AlexYes.

MerlinOkay, sorry, it's really early. You have your fancy work computer there?

AlexYes.

MerlinAnd so you are using an external, oh, you're using your clacky keyboard.

AlexI'm using my clacky keyboard.

MerlinYour fancy aftermarket clicky keyboard, yes?

AlexYeah, the K9, or whatever, the K2.

MerlinK9, he's adorable. I love that little dog.

AlexIt's a little, thank you.

MerlinSo, okay, and so. Not all dogs. Oh, and you don't drink water. You spilled one of your greasy kid beverages in it, didn't you?

AlexExcuse me, excuse me. Let's see how much water I drank yesterday.

MerlinIt's a monster, isn't it? It's a monster energy? It's a five-hour energy.

AlexHold on. Okay, no.

MerlinIt's a literal bowl of sugar.

AlexNo, it is a, it's an 8.4 flowing ounce sugar-free Red Bull. But yesterday, I drank, where are we? Where are we? Yesterday, I drank 97 ounces of water. Oh, oh, I apologize. 87 ounces. The previous day, I drank 97 ounces of just water.

MerlinWhy didn't you spill that instead? If you're so smart, why didn't you spill that? I know.

AlexWell, that's why I said I pulled the case.

MerlinWhy'd you spill your little bowl?

AlexI don't know. I don't know. Because it's for the content. It's for the story. Like and subscribe. Sponsored by Red Bull.

MerlinOkay. It gives you wings.

AlexIt gives you wings. Yeah.

MerlinOkay. So you, is the keyboard functional right now?

AlexIt seems to be. Oh, it seems to be. Look at that. Look at that.

MerlinI would put it somewhere dry with somewhere low humidity, and I would put it somewhere. You didn't ask for advice, but I'm a guy. And so that's how I think I show love is by giving people advice. We're going to get to it, as they say on Blank Check. We're going to get to it.

Okay, so it's not sticky with sugar. It's sticky with wings.

AlexIt's sticky with aspartame wings, yes. Aspartame. I still have Spartamy.

MerlinGo to Bloons and have Spartamy. Apparently I'm Irish also. Always after me, has Spartamy.

AlexYou don't need to comment on this if you don't want to, but I just wanted to share a memory I had of Jason Calacanis making Veronica Belmont wash a... I believe she washed an I Am Mac... keyboard in a dish washing machine and to see what would happen just because apparently that'll get it clean like and subscribe on mahalo.com nobody understands this i'm old um um no i i think

Merlini i think i do um i like her oh gosh i showed my daughter the video where i lost the video game on stage with jonathan colton and veronica had to save everybody numerous times she's very good at video games. Oh my goodness. Well, I'd played it once. No, this is not an excuse, but just to say, I played... Just the reason. Exactly. It's costly, but not expensive. I had to play a video game in which Jonathan Colton performs the song that you perform in this video game, me and another

middle-aged man and Veronica. And Veronica and Jonathan did well. And I played drums and the tech man play guitar and we perform very poorly it's on a publicly released dvd and my daughter said this is even worse than i thought it was and it's the second time i played so that i've been there for tech like sound check and that's when i was shown here's how you play drums in a video game which is a phrase i didn't ever imagine coming up but such is life and i did very poorly

Alexi just had the realization that both of us have uh played video games professionally technically so that's something that you can think about.

MerlinSee, I'm like Dingus and Dilbo or whatever those English boys my daughter watches on Twitch. Doris and Donk. What are they called? It's Tubby and Tombo. I don't know. It's Satsuki and May. I forget what they're called. Oh, God.

AlexI'm just one of the millennials.

MerlinSo you're saying we're streamers?

AlexI think I'm streamers.

MerlinWhat would you call what we do, given that we're now technically professional video game players?

AlexOh.

MerlinI think that night I was paid in liquor, if memory serves.

AlexI mean, it's still, you get what you can get, no matter the casting coach.

MerlinYou don't get upset.

AlexWhat is professional gamer called on LinkedIn?

MerlinHave you seen the video to which I refer?

AlexOh, I have. I have indeed.

MerlinIt's pretty bad.

AlexIt's real bad.

MerlinAnd you can hear me off of the, I guess, probably room mic. I'm trying so hard to hit the spots on the moving guitar, even though I'm playing drums. I have to hit the guitar dots in time. I'm doing the best I can. In the best of circumstances, I'm not particularly great at these things. I actively do not like playing video games. But you can hear this clamor.

AlexExcept Cobalt and Threes. Or Cannonball and Threes.

MerlinWell, because if it were me, I could go. I could fake drums okay. A little quantization never hurts. But I can fake it. But playing rubber fake drums is so bad. And then Veronica has to keep doing that thing where she goes, you know what I'm talking about? You do a thing where you hit the thing and you go, like you're Pete Townsend, and then that saves Leo and me. It was very, very sad. Jonathan did fine. It's his song.

AlexWell, our, our, mmm.

MerlinAnd that's the night I learned the cake is a lie. Whatever that means.

AlexIt's the, yay! There we go!

MerlinI'm making a note here. Never do this again.

AlexHave you played the game?

MerlinPortal?

AlexYes, yes.

MerlinNo, but it looks, I feel I'd heard about Portal and Portal's I think based on another game. No. It's similar to another game. Isn't he MasterChef? I'm gonna get yelled at. Is he MasterChef or Halo? Which one is he?

AlexOh no. He's the half-lifer. Which one is he?

MerlinSo MasterChef, Halo's in

Alexand then what you gotta do is you

Merlinbuild up nightgowns and you keep them in your vault and you got 255 slots. It's like a safe deposit box but sad. And then you have to be by Baldar's taco truck at the time that he goes and he sells new swords?

AlexI can't.

MerlinWhat kind of sword? What kind of sword?

AlexI don't.

MerlinWhat kind of sword?

AlexAre you referencing Mystic Quest because I haven't finished it?

MerlinWhat kind of sword, Alex? I have to say it's a real sword.

AlexA real sword. I was going to say a fern sword. A real sword. I'm sorry.

MerlinIt had to be a real sword.

AlexIt had to be a real sword.

MerlinA real fighting sword. Yeah. No, I haven't. It sounds the concept, I'm going to try to avoid using terms I don't understand. So the idea is you've got a gun that shoots holes, and then you jump through the hole and you land somewhere else, right? The portal. That is the titular portal. That sounds like a really neat, as you say, mechanic.

AlexYeah. Oh, yes. Yes.

MerlinYou've got to get through the hole. It's a lot like middle school.

AlexOh. Okay, why lie, junior college?

MerlinOkay. So you got a whole gun. You keep it in your nightgown bank. And you get it in your slots.

AlexYeah. I mean, I call mine a slit.

MerlinAnd the slot where you keep your nightgown and your cursed sword is different from a spell slot. Is it a cantrip? What do you call it?

AlexI don't know. What do you call it? Just because I've done it for money. It's like sex work. Just because you've done it for money doesn't mean you're a professional. Just because you have an OnlyFans?

MerlinThat was true for me in web design.

AlexYeah.

MerlinAnd if you're a wizard who has negative thinking, you cast a cantrip.

AlexOh.

MerlinCan't? Okay. It's not anything. You know, it's a beautiful Wednesday morning in San Francisco. There's noise everywhere. People are making so much noise.

AlexHave you got your curtains up?

MerlinPeople are jamming in a lot of activity, I think, before the end of the year in the inevitable proto-apocalypse. There's a lot happening here. There's a lot of gas line things happening again.

Alexeveryone I have seen on the internet seems very excited about the new year or very upset about the new year um as if it has any meaning whatsoever other than tax purposes did you listen to uh

Merlindid you start today's EPM yet I have not oh man um it's really cute uh gosh I like those people a lot I want to be friends with Starly Kahn not in a creepy way but I really like her I need I need I need, I'm going to put it this way. I've always liked her work a lot as a professional person. And I think, again, all three of them, what they contribute to that show that we talk about every week is really warm. But, like, it doesn't have to be her because I know she's busy and she has a pet. But I need somebody like her in my life.

Will you be my Starly? Will you be my person?

AlexI would never.

MerlinI said I had to put down a person.

AlexI couldn't. I mean, if you want to, like, use me on a resume as a reference, sure. but like I could never fill I could never fill her spell slot I just couldn't

MerlinI know I know I'd rather have pockets am I right is that what you call it do you call it a spell slot

Alexagain slit

Merlinthere's gonna be another one of those isn't it there's gonna be another one of those Alex

Alexlike last week's episode

Merlinwhere we confuse everyone and then cry

Alexcome here for just the unintelligible nerd jokes and stay for the quiet weeping.

MerlinYeah. That's like, it's like drill says, you know, if you come here for the jokes, um, anyway, uh, yes. So you were saying you're talking about your slots and there was, Oh, Oh, sorry. Sorry. Yeah. Uh, somebody else, Starley. What was the next thing?

AlexNo, no. I just realized that I have a lot of intellectual.

MerlinOh, for the year people looking forward to the year you're saying.

Alexyeah. As if everything's going to change or if the everything's going to change people or that nothing's going to change people. And I'm like, well, that's true of literally every single day. So like, let people be happy or don't be happy. I don't, I don't have a take.

MerlinWe talked about this off air last week, but the, oh, it's so cool. When I love it. When crowd.

AlexYeah.

MerlinYeah. The, the, the, um, the pro am, uh, uh, cynics. speaking of humidity and temperature oh i have some humidity updates i'm having a real hummy of a dinger here with my with my devices i think somebody's gaslighting me oh do you think

Alexit's the gas people i've wondered that often did i not say they're out there working on the street

MerlinYes, yes, yes. They're doing gas things. Oh, my gosh.

AlexIt's all coming together.

MerlinIt's big gas. This is how they get you.

AlexThat's my father. I'm a little toot.

MerlinIt's too late. I've noticed, and now it's too late. And now they know my true name. So I just sent you a photograph I just took of two Eve's room.

AlexOh, I have one of these.

MerlinAnd three different acurites. and I'm sorry it's not a very good photo but you get the gist right I mean I can still zoom in and

Alexsee a product that I want to purchase so it's you know good good enough for me but which one the uh

Merlinthe hub the the hub yes I recommend the hub don't listen to Marco it's fine uh yeah I haven't see

AlexI feel like such it's just such I I'm okay with sounding like a dick when I say this but I don't want to sound like an asshole when I'm like yeah I don't listen to that how you did it hey nice work

Merlinyou're already manifesting this as canon I want to be a dick but I don't want to be an asshole

Alexyeah if you missed that part of the show last week that's because you aren't subscribed to our Patreon if you would like to be you can go to giveusourfuckingmoney.com and that's where

Merlinyou did it again I'm going to have to roll tape but I think you just did it again so it's double fortunate I bought that whenever we mispronounce it I think you did say give us our money

Alexgive us your fucking Money dot com links to I don't know if people know this. There's a way to forward domains. So you can go to Patreon dot com slash Dubai Friday and give us five dollars each month. And then you get another Dubai Friday episode. And usually we might be more tired, but that's also when I cry more.

MerlinAnd you don't cry. I cry more than you, I think.

AlexI don't know. I think about that.

MerlinI mean, I mean it more.

AlexThat's Actually

MerlinMy cries are meaningful

AlexI would absolutely agree There are times No

MerlinI'm just saying words You could also go to Patreon.com Slash I think it's his name You could become a Jorts enthusiast

AlexOh Brian David Gilbert Or Brian

MerlinBrian Gilbert David

AlexYeah

MerlinHis name is Todd Todd Todd But yeah I became a Jorts enthusiast A lot of people know He's a Jortsman

AlexOh I made a playlist

MerlinActually I can probably put it in notes I made a playlist of a few of my favorites Of his including the one where he Builds the perfect gamer setup Have you seen that one?

AlexYes, yes I have

MerlinAnd the 4x4 space by his radiator

AlexOh my goodness Oh my goodness, goodness, goodness This is

MerlinBrian David Gilbert is somebody you should give us Money please He's money, please. But he's also, I can go through my whole list of all the people I support on Patreon. I think Brian David Gilbert, he should become like the video laureate. He's so funny. He's so natural. He's so handsome. And he has great hair. He has really, really good hair.

AlexI have a fun fact about tangentially him, which I'm going to save for the after show.

MerlinOh, put it in the craft. Put it in the craft. I saw you have some parasocial links I only saw this morning. Is it a parasocial thing?

AlexActually, yes.

MerlinPut it in the doc.

AlexWell, I've recreated the doc that you created in Google Docs because, you know, spoilers for the challenge, we're using a different thing. Why are we putting it in Google Docs?

MerlinWell, and we're going to bring, it's part craft, part wisdom.

AlexOh, part craft, part wisdom.

MerlinThe wisdom's important, isn't it? I guess it's not. Anyway, we're going to talk about an app.

AlexOh, gross.

MerlinToo bad more people don't do that. I don't know. Very interesting.

AlexI'm honored.

MerlinThis one wins my bit of the year award.

AlexBleep bloop. Bleep bloop. I don't know why I did that.

MerlinI don't have any use for this, but I give it four stars.

AlexOh, it's not for me. However.

MerlinIt wins the bitty. Uh-huh. Unhealthy parasymposal relationships. This app is so good. Yeah, we're going to talk about an app. It's Kraft. You can get it at craft.do.

AlexOh, gosh. I keep trying to tag them on Twitter because I've got the parasocial relationship where I want them to love me. I don't know if it's a team or if it's like I would never presume to be Mr. Greg of Agile Tortoise and Giraffes.

MerlinOh, like am I speaking to the people who make this or am I speaking to their social media intern?

AlexYes, which, I mean, honestly, I'm fine either way.

MerlinI think that's why Soledad O'Brien is following me.

AlexI don't know who that is, but I assume they're an influencer or someone important.

MerlinShe's a famous person, and I imagine every time that happens now, I go, mm, social team.

AlexOh, oh.

MerlinExcept for Paul Feig. I'm going to go to my grave being happy about that one.

AlexOh, man.

MerlinPaul Feig was so nice. He's so nice, and he's so generous. And he made my mind. um uh sorry parasocial you want to start the show i i guess oh so anyway so the point the point of the photo is that i have before me now i'm interested in

temperature you know it's like the story of the the chicken and the pig you know if you're going to start a breakfast restaurant. I'm interested. I'm involved with temperature, but I'm committed

Alexon humidity. Got it. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. You're the pig.

MerlinSo before me right now, I have five devices. And let's just restrict ourselves for a moment to humidity. The following numbers I'm about to read are percentages of relative humidity according to five different measuring devices. 38%, 42%, 56%, 52%, 42%. So it's somewhere between 38% and 56% humidity in my office right now.

AlexWhat's the baseline?

MerlinMy favorite is the two Eves, the two Eves room, where one says 52, one says 42. And they're the same thing.

AlexI like that they're color-coded with some little dots there.

MerlinOh, Alexander, this has changed everything. You know what I've changed everything? My dots have changed everything. I'm sending my dots, too. Let's make it a photo episode. People love those.

AlexI know. I know.

MerlinWe can read things from Wikipedia. We can watch videos. You don't know about my dots, do you?

AlexWell, now I do.

MerlinOkay. I got dots. And here's my dots. And this started as part of my omnibus tech effort. So, for example, I don't know if this is like an official, like, leather man on the belt type thing.

AlexWhat? Oh, I know what these are. Oh, my goodness.

MerlinIt's from a company called Garage Sale Pup, and they have a very cute dog waiting at you.

AlexYes.

MerlinAnd these are quarter-inch round labels. So what I started doing is I replaced all my short Cat 6As because I started doing link aggregation on all four Ethernet ports on my Synology. So I do blue at this end, blue at that end, red at this end, red at that end. So now I know who's whom. And I've also started doing that for finally at long last a lot of my electric plug things. Now you're ready for this.

I've started doing this, which is, so I just configured some new Eve's room. Those each get a sticker of color, as we say now, an SOC. They get a sticker of color.

AlexWe're already canceled.

MerlinGo on. Is that funny to you?

AlexNo, I'm sorry. It's not a joke.

MerlinThey get a sticker of color on them. Collar.

AlexCollar.

MerlinThey get a sticker of color. Read receipts. They get a sticker of color. And then that sticker also goes on, get this, the little thing, the HomeKit printout thing, which I save. The printout? So I write on the HomeKit. You know the thing, like when you open it, you know. So it's got the HomeKit on the bottom.

AlexOh, with the QR code thing?

MerlinOkay, yes. But I'm doing this out of completion, not out of necessity. Sometimes you do it out of necessity because if you lose that code and it ain't on your device or dingus, you're screwed. Now, in this case, in a very cool way. I like Eve. They are 80% really good. And they do put it on the device, which everyone should do, I think. But anyhow, so I also put it on the paper, Alex. So on the paper, it says Eve Room for desk at office, and it's got the blue sticker that goes with it.

AlexSo where do you capture?

MerlinI don't have to look it up and go. I don't have to drill in five levels deep to go find the MAC address or serial number for knowing which one is which. And with Eve, you can hit ID. Sorry, I'm talking a lot.

AlexNo, no, no. I welcome back Merlin Mann. I'm just not fast. And I don't know, one, what the baseline humidity needs to be in your office. But two, are you saying that you just know the colors in your, like, they're just in your mind palace now of knowledge?

MerlinNo, no, no, no, no. So the other place that this started.

AlexI would assume a spreadsheet.

Merlinwell but okay for example another thing is i've been struggling with boy you know what thank you thank you for listening to the program this is good stuff i've been struggling with getting a good local backup of my sonology because my sonology is huge so what i had been doing so they say you know how offensive this is to so many people i'm sorry it's not stickers of color

Alexstickers how you use it i'm sorry i know i know um go on doesn't doesn't matter sorry duck

Merlinno no so so basically what i what i what is what i have been doing was just hooking up the synologies through by synology by usb one usb goes to the oh god one usb goes to the ups so i can say hey buddy powers off help me and then um i got another one with it's a ups that goes to um one of those little anchor four port rat tail guys where you like turn one port into four oh

AlexOh, yeah.

MerlinI love it. The travel boy. I had just been having this one 8-terabyte drive, but that thing fills up real quick. So then I thought, oh, what's the point of backup if I'm not backing up everything? So you know what I did? I took some other old 8-terabyte drives that were just sitting around. Guess what? Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. With that little dongus, it says, oh, I see you have three USB drives. What do you want me to do with that? And I said, do this. Movies get backed up to this one. TV and a couple other things get backed up to this one. And then all of the data, quad data of running the Synology backs up on this.

Do that every night. And then I, so those are drives one, two, and three. And guess what times they back up? 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 3 a.m. Guess what else? They each get a sticker on the drive. They get a sticker on the end that goes into the drive. And they get a sticker on the end that goes into the Synology. So now I know who is whom.

AlexSo there's no need for a, that's what's confusing. because you have, why not just put them, like you have the photographs of the QR codes. So just put the, I mean, I don't know. I don't know why I'm so bothered.

MerlinIt's to be consistent. No, it's to be consistent. So I have many folders. So for example, I have a folder of manuals. Things that I have at the office. I also have an iCloud folder called manuals. Every time I get a new thing, I download the manual because I am so like that. but that way you can do keyword searches and stuff. Like I got a new ice maker for Christmas and the ice maker, of course I got the manual in my iCloud.

AlexWhat's wrong with that? You're saying things as if they're not normal and I do all of them.

MerlinWell, I think different, I mean, a final thing, cause this is so fucking boring. I think different people have different tolerances for what seems like a waste of time or a frustration at different times in their life. So I think, I think it's fair to say, well, let's, here's an easy distinction and perhaps a straw man is that I look at somebody going like i'm helping my mom right now because she can't do wireless printing um she's having trouble making that work and i've been waiting to break the bad news to her that's gonna have to be done entirely on a capacitive screen but you ever do that you ever have to

enter in a good password on a capacitive screen yeah i mean it's really not a super lot of fun

Alexi don't think i have successfully actually so guess what the manual for that is in my thing

Merlinas well it says mom's printer and stuff like that i think there are people who are who are are look at me and go like why would you do all of that and i say well you know just kind of how i'm wired whereas i would look at them and go like why would you ever have a future where you

Alexwonder how to do wi-fi on your printer uh yeah that i i mean i've started doing that even with different folks at my jobby job because everybody has a different you know like uh everyone has a macbook of some sort but i need to know the serial number so i can go i then i have it then linked to the every mac.com site so it's specific i know specifically which how it's broken and why uh and it's it's all as pdfs though because i don't know where when that's gonna go away and this is

the constant thing i think about really all of my organization is just anxiety based everything i do

MerlinWell, I don't think that's terrible. Let's have just one short moment here of the Alex and Merlin show. We're going to talk about some boring things. I have been kind of acquiring a toolbox over time of little handy things. Have we talked about Tech Sniper?

AlexNo.

MerlinTech Sniper, it runs, and it's in your menu bar, or usually Command Shift 2, which can also bring up drafts, but your mileage may vary. Tech Sniper, you've got a photo. You're looking at a photo. You hit Tech Sniper. You drag the same way you would select to do a screen grab. And then a little thumbs up says, got it. And you're like, what did it get? Well, guess what? It just grabbed whatever text it could see in that photo. Put it in your clipboard.

AlexOh, I apologize. I think I have heard of this and I was just lazy and did not install it. Proceed. I apologize.

MerlinBut so I got, like I say, I got this one of the great Christmas gifts I think I've ever gotten. My lady got me an ice maker from my office with good ice. It makes good ice, you know, a little pellet ice, like hospital ice.

AlexYes. Yeah. These are the like ice chips.

MerlinYeah. Yeah. They're soft. They're like squishy. They're really good. And it makes three pounds of ice an hour, which is pretty impressive. Anyway, and you know me, it's got an app. So I got the app. And of course, the GE app for their appliances is it's such hot garbage. And it's obviously just a way to yoink up a bunch of data. And I'll spoil the ending. Once you do get this thing set up, I found out only after I had it all set up, guess what you get? Here's what you get. It's either making ice or it's not.

You either have a schedule or it's not. That's the entire thing. And then it's pages of things where when you click on it, it goes to a website. It's the worst. And to set it up, I had all this horse shit I had to do with, of course, they always want you to read stuff, whether this is your litter robot or this is your ice maker or whatever it is. You got to read all this bullshit off the back of a device with my eyesight. and so i've just gotten in the habit of okay bud number one take a photo get photo on mac do tech sniper to grab that stuff put it in drafts or wherever whatever works for you

and now you're copying and you're pasting and it's it's such a different world my point being that there's that there's stuff like having a place where you keep your home kit codes there are apps that do that i don't think that's necessary another recent entry in my toolbox that i wish would get better because it could be so good. An app I learned about from Matt at Interconnected, it's called Memos. And basically you give it permission to see your photos. It runs through all of your photos and does OCR on everything in it and makes it searchable.

So you can do this with stuff like Google Photos, but this is built to be something where you look at every photo you've ever taken and find a string of text.

AlexMy, my. My, my, my.

MerlinWell, now here's the thing. Now, let's go back to the hipster PDA way of looking at this. At first, Blanche, like, why would you have index cards in your pocket? Well, let me ask you again in six months. When you've been doing this for six months, you go, yeah, I can't live without this. So the idea of, like, you know that it's not just – I like to think that I invented the thing where you take a photo of where you're parked because I was doing that in the early 2000s. But, like, that's the most basic example of, like, guess what? Now you're – back then, your camera, your phone camera is functional. So now, if you ever want to find anything where you took a picture of directions or something, you can find it all.

I'm saying, you don't have to do all of these things, but think about it. You've got to catch them all. Think about this. Do you do stuff like this?

AlexYeah, why isn't anybody talking about this?

MerlinI've known talking about this, Alex.

AlexI mean, really.

MerlinTell me about what you've learned by being a chief cable wrangler where you work. How will, what have you learned? How have you noticed patterns for improvement and what are the kinds of infrastructure and compensatory muscles you have in place?

AlexWell, there are two types of problems right off the bat. And the first being—

MerlinThere's always two things with you.

AlexI know. I'm very sorry. There's— I don't know what the noise was.

MerlinThat was a duck trying to pass on the left.

AlexIt's not a goose.

MerlinHe's going so fast with his little paddly feet on a tricycle.

AlexGotta get it, gotta get it. That's so cute. Gotta get back to the babies. They're crossing the street. Almost dinner time. Meow, meow, meow, meow.

Well, you know this, especially because of your projects, that there are many types of USB-Cs and thunderbolts now. And I don't want to have to explain that to anybody who doesn't need it because you see it on their face, the anxiety of like, oh my God, I know that I will not remember this. And also I know that I will not look at the documentation

that Alex has put together in this ramshackle Google Doc wiki thing. And, you know, spoilers, I'm rebuilding it in another app that we might talk about.

MerlinBut this is also, this is where I came to coin that term, the wiki guy.

AlexYeah.

MerlinThe guy who does believe in sort of formalizing institutional knowledge, but does it in a way that everybody else finds utterly perplexing and nobody ever uses.

AlexCommand F MacBook dongle. It's not that hard.

MerlinI know. I know.

AlexCommand F MacBook dongle HDMI.

MerlinYou don't even have to use tags. Tags help a lot. Folders help a lot. No. But I also do a lot of this with Hazel, where with Hazel, for example, on my laptop, for example, screenshots, I don't want screenshots all over my desktop. So I take screenshots, they sit there, and then I wrote a little Hazel thing that says if you see something that begins with screenshot and is an image and it's been there for more than an hour, move it into this folder. There's like a million things like that that you can do.

AlexOh, I just throw those in the trash. normally they're what if what if you need them for your work i mean i what i need them for is is asshole tweets and i'm like no no get rid of these get rid of i i don't like keeping receipts that's gross unless it's like oh boy did i get red last night oh oh i got 15 i got 15 minutes

Merlinof lecturing on receipt read receipts oh i don't oh shit dog no it's your fault you do that i know i'm sorry i'm sorry okay so so so sorry you're thinking about using the new app that we're going to talk about but you do have to like so you have to be the tech mom i am really right i

Alexmean don't you i mean kind of like you're the den mother for cables yes i and even more so now because you you have to uh normally like i i got it i'll order for you on amazon because in my you know ramshackle wiki command f also takes you to the link to exactly where you want to buy it However, everyone's working from home, so now everyone is buying things instead of stocks, and then I have to go monoprice. So yeah, I'm big cable mommy.

I like cable. Actually, they call me cable daddy, and I don't know how I feel.

MerlinCable daddy or big cable mommy. They're both very good.

AlexThey're both very upsetting in image.

MerlinI'm going to write them both down and think on a big cable. Was it big cable mommy?

Alexuh uh yeah a big big cable uh mommy and uh the the the master cable day master cable daddy uh master game exactly he's in a halo game i'm the i'm the dom in this situation no no no please unlike most uh master cable daddy okay well and it's it's one of those things where i want people to just get uh back back to work see what i did there uh i agree but there must be times also like

Merlinwhere you're called into like, you just, for me all the time, where like you'll just send something to me and be like, you seem very competent at knowing like, oh, here's the thing that needs to be there. Like if somebody needed something like a, I'm trying to, I'm sorry, words are failing me. But if they needed some way to get on a conference call that required a piece of hardware or a cable, you'd be able to get that to them. Like you must, it must be that like, you know, everybody's got most of their day-to-day stuff unless it breaks or, you know, unless it needs to be upgraded or whatever. And then you're there to be like, you know, Joni on the spot for like making sure it gets taken care of.

Right. As well as the day to day.

AlexYep. Yep. It's on the third your HDMI cable. It's on the third AV closet shelf on your left in the third bin. It is labeled in bold and with a labeled in bold with a white label maker. because also nobody looks at the doc documenting that. However, but again, I have no problem with that because I have built that infrastructure so that I can do it very, I can do it super fast.

MerlinDo you know that off the dome or is that in the wiki?

AlexThat is, well, that is one of my new jobby job projects is like, okay, if and when we go back to the office, like the infrastructure to going to get things can't be in a tiny closet like even if every single person is vaccinated like i don't think we want to go into a tiny closet um and you know a lot of us have had to spend a lot of time in the closet anyway so it's great to not have to go in there again well i think you should at least get a closet trigger warning yeah exactly and the because then also my fall on you i also the the

The good, not going to lie, the good like $75 Apple dongles, you know, that have the Thunderbolts and the USB. No, see, I don't.

MerlinThe ones that have a three on it. Oh, God. They have a lightning bolt and a three.

AlexYeah.

MerlinThat's how you know it's Thunderbolt. What?

AlexThose are literally under lock and key.

MerlinThey're costly.

AlexBecause they, well, they are. And those are the things where I'm like, I am positive that these will work.

MerlinWhereas it's sort of like it's sort of like the good scissors. Like, yeah, you know, like I there's certain pairs of scissors that are just not known to my family. And you know how like those little knives that I'm always wielding those little Gerber utility knives.

AlexYes. Yes.

MerlinWell, I it would be easy to understand that it sounds like I'm joking when I say I buy five to seven at a time. Well, when was it holiday party? Right. Holiday party was the last time I mentioned I just opened like five more of these and deployed them. I could find one last night. Oh, boy. Okay? Like, it's very important to me. This is in the same way that a garbage can should be wherever my right hand wants to drop something. I also want an open. This is not. I'm not recommending this, especially if you have small children. I want, what I want is for there to be a Gerber utility blade, whether that's on a magnet or on a table or under the surface of something, like I'm a spy.

I want to be able to grab a utility knife with my right hand almost everywhere that I am. If I'm doing my afternoon package opening and recycling, do I want to have to look for a knife? I had to look for a knife last night. And you know what? An entire pile of disuse of old batteries and old DVDs fell over on me last night.

AlexI'm sorry, Quinn. I'm trying to – I'm sorry, Editor Quinn.

MerlinAnd so you know what I do when that happens? the same thing I said to my lady friend for 20 years. I say, trick house! Trick house! Someone's been piling! There's piles in here! I went to get a knife. I realized I had a battery to put into the battery box. And I put that in. And then I had a real Fibber McGee and Molly situation. Oh, that's

Alexthe other thing that I do is I have tiles on all the roaming chargers in the office. Do yours still work?

MerlinI think the system has stopped working for me mostly in general. I moved pro. I changed all the batteries. And I still can't make the tiles work on fully like over half of the tiles I've bought over the years. It's crazy making. I wish it worked because it used to work and it used to be so great. I know. And then I've wondered if it's the batteries. Oh, I just got a new battery tester that's really good. You should check it out.

AlexOh, good, because I hurt myself accidentally with the one that I purchased. I think we may have both purchased the one that had like clamp this on to the thing that's going out of the outlet.

MerlinAre you sure you got a battery tester and not some kind of a sex thing?

AlexI think I got a voltage. I mean, I don't know if they'd have to be really tiny nipples to clamp them on, but I don't want to shame anybody. Yeah. Okay.

MerlinYou're looking for like a silver dollar pancake type situation? Well, they do work with watch batteries, which is kind of similar. Okay, I'm taking a photo.

AlexOh, oh, oh. Well, it's interesting because I haven't used Tile until last night. I had not used Tile since literally March because it was last time.

MerlinRight, of course.

AlexYeah, that was last time I was in the office. and also i don't even know if i used it then because uh it was like the implication like oh see see see this little device here see see how it has been you know super glued on to this charger uh yeah it's it's just uh it's like a bike lock like yeah i've got i've got one gorilla tape to

Merlinmy segway yeah yeah that's good i do but like fully half my devices just simply cannot be found Now, I used to be frustrated. This is – they are my – well, I have someone else that's my worst friend. They are like the ultimate deadbeat friend with Tile, where it's like we used to be peers and do drama club together, and now all you do is borrow money, quote, unquote. And it's like, you know, fine. Okay, look, I know we both have our problems. And one of your problems is that you've got to throw away a piece of plastic once a year and buy another, even though it really will work for probably another six months to a year, whatever, fine.

In for a dime, in for a dollar. Then they introduced the pro. And there's a lot to recommend the Pro, apart from it being incredibly costly. They're very loud. And most importantly, of course, they have a replaceable battery. It's like, okay, cool. These are things I can use for like three years if Apple ever puts out those other things. That's great. But in the meantime, every gear bag, cat carrier, every suitcase, my kid's key chain. Like I say, my Segway. There's just a ton of places where it's very valuable to have this. Let's put it this way. in in in the worst of circumstances or best depending on how you look at your life as

insurance policy like they will all be paid for in one experience if it works right and and just i did test these when they first came out it drove my kid crazy i would leave these i would bury these outside buildings near our area and i would leave them behind products in walgreens because why Where it's a place, of all the places in the entire fucking world that's not my house or office, where's the place I'm most likely to lose something? Say the two syllables.

AlexOutside?

MerlinWalgreens.

AlexOh, I bought, nice.

MerlinSo I fake lost stuff behind the shampoo bottles.

AlexWait, wait, oh my God, oh my God.

MerlinBecause why, because why, because why, what am I testing? Tell me what I'm testing, tell me what I'm testing.

AlexYou're testing if you left a wallet.

MerlinWill the community find it?

AlexOh, the community. I see.

MerlinNo, no, no, no, because that's the whole point. If it's lost, there's a difference between mislaid and lost.

AlexI know, but I have never engaged with the tile community.

MerlinI've had things found, and I've found things for others. Hell yes. It's a very much, you talk about network effect, woof. That's a really good example. But okay, so set all of that aside. How about this? Silicon Valley effect. How about this? Okay, I'm not going to put one of these on the remote, but I don't love Silicon Valley. Don't throw that in my face. But, well, I'm just saying there is a higher... Do you want me to demonstrate middle-out impressions for you?

AlexIs that on the list of shows we don't talk about to mom?

MerlinOh, actually, you know, it's okay. Well, except for a few things, it's all okay.

AlexThere's a couple, but it's not that bad.

MerlinWell, you know, with that said, last night we watched A Grey's Anatomy where there was an accident. All the doctors were drunk and a pole went through two people.

AlexYep, early on. Yep, yep, yep, yep.

MerlinAnd here's me. oh my god she's like what you're a monster this is horrible and they think it's funny and meredith's drunk and then and then of all things i'm recording with john spirk use last night and my wife texted me and let me find you what my wife i don't think she'd mind me saying this my wife texted me and she said to me last night let's see cornbread is done hanging out in the yard i'm now a graze fan i guess she said oh and i said what i said they got you and she said

they did and then i said a photo of two people with a pole through them i okay you gotta set

Alexthe bomb photo and that's saturday night or saturday night live uh friday night light sky is in it have you not seen the bomb episode it's very upsetting wait bomb episode what landry uh Is that the guy? The coach.

MerlinAre you talking about Matt? Matt Saracen?

AlexMaybe. I don't know.

MerlinI don't know. Not the serial killer.

AlexYes, yes. And he is part of the bomb squad that helps Meredith.

MerlinHe produced that public enemy record. Okay.

AlexUh-huh. Yeah, there's a bomb in a body in Grey's Anatomy, as you do.

MerlinOh, God. Wait. And it's also got, there's an actress. It's Christina Ricci.

AlexOh, is she in this one?

MerlinDo you remember the one where the cop has to hold the heart?

AlexYes, yes, yes. there we go that's uh that's Wednesday Adams oh oh I know it's Wednesday Adams it's also uh Casper's girlfriend in your fan fiction why no no have you not seen the live action version of uh live action whatever the the Casper that's not just animated oh I see I see the okay yes no no

MerlinI'm not sure I've seen that uh you don't need to I did read Richie Rich as a child and I hated him

AlexYeah. Oh, have you seen the Richie Rich film? We're going deep on the 1990s.

MerlinIs that with Macaulay Culkin?

AlexIt is indeed. It is indeed. It's so bad. Oh, God, challenge. Oh, my God, challenge. All right, put her on the list. What if we got Sarah Marshall on the... Oh, my God.

MerlinWait, wait, wait. How does Sarah Marshall fit in this?

AlexI don't even want to... Sarah Marshall, if you have been listening to...

MerlinI have been. You're wrong about... I'm Paula. Paula, baby.

AlexOh, Paula.

MerlinOh, Paula. Oh, sweetie.

AlexOh, bless her heart. Bless her heart. My goodness gracious. Oh, but Sarah Marshall is a fan of many of the, I'm not going to say terrible, because they are formative 90s films that, like, Newsies, Casper.

MerlinThe 90s were such, everybody says this, and they talk about this on Blank Check all the time. It's bananas what people got away with making in the late 80s and through the 90s. You will never see movies like these again. Adam's Family Values is such a weird movie. It's so good. It's so fucking good. But don't you have to agree it's so weird. Joan Cusack and Uncle Fester. Oh my God, it's so weird.

AlexI had a genuine fear of Joan Cusack for years. And she, I'll humble brag this, I would run into her because she is in, both the Cusacks are from the Chicagoland area. And occasionally you'd like see them and I'd be like, ah.

MerlinAnd this is all pre-Jesse the Yodeling Cowgirl we're talking about.

AlexOh, yeah. This was what? 95?

MerlinYeah, 93 or 4 or 5. Something like that. Yeah.

AlexThis was also, I mean, by the time I was born, PG-13 had been implemented. But a lot of films still like got away with it. It was kind of like to dampen the moral, a little panic. Like where it's like, okay, here, we've got this thing for you to warn you. But really, we're going to leave in all the sexy stuff and just pretend like the MPAA is actually doing stuff.

MerlinThere's just boobs everywhere. Of course, we watched a certain film on Christmas Eve, which is our tradition. And the game of, I don't want to say anachronisms, but I had a little joke about this on Twitter. But the amount of shit where you're like, you watch the first, I'm going to say 10, 15 minutes of Die Hard. And it's just such a hilarious ride of nobody thought this was weird. in 1989.

Smoking in an airport, going on a plane, coked up guy with the beard, and then just boops, boops, boops. When the boss comes in and there's a topless lady and they're having intercourse on the desk, it's like, oh, sure, it's an 80s Christmas party. Why wouldn't they?

AlexI still haven't seen the movie and I'm afraid to because I'm afraid.

MerlinYou're good. You're good. You're good.

AlexI know. Well, because it's one of those things.

MerlinBut it's like watching Citizen Kane where you're like, okay, yeah, this is like every action movie you're like well yeah but i'll say blade runner whatever you want it's difficult or alien especially it's it's difficult to appreciate what that felt like at the time and you don't really need to care because you've seen all the great movies that are that

Alexripped it off except i disagree everybody should watch a citizen kane because i think it has become incredibly underrated because the techniques used in that film oh it's actually it's actually

Merlinit's an extraordinary there's a reason it's an extraordinary movie and like guess what he invented like five he's kind of like you know we don't talk about D.W. Griffith much but like or you know but like he invented a lot of things that we just take for granted now

Alexoh god

Merlinthat deep focus stuff was not happening a ton in mainstream American films let's leave it at that

Alexno

Merlinit's beautiful just gorgeous the scene where they're in the house the cabin and he's outside and both the kid I don't know if this is a split diopter alert but like him playing outside in the snow trigger warning but him in the window and the people who were like five or six feet away are all in focus you're like how bright did that have to be to do that i mean not even just that

Alexbut the just putting a camera under the floorboards for for that uh when the snow globe falls yeah no no no um they do it a couple times but the fuck the conversation oh see now i want to watch it uh uh fuck i don't remember the there's a conversation happening and basically they're

Merlinthe camera is going around them oh oh yes yes yes yes yes yes the kind of thing yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah absolutely uh i gotta cut you off four times did you get the picture of uh of 10

Alexkissing uh jack harkness oh oh oh no i i mean i i'm sure i did but got that dnd on hello yes indeed did you know he's a gold star gay uh which there's like in afghanistan or something what uh oh another another humble brag he is from uh juliet which is uh jack harkers i am yeah yeah um and he is one time at a panel gold star would you say gold star what'd you call it

Do you not know what a gold star gay is? Someone who has never had a traditional intercourse with someone of the opposite sex. And he shared this information openly.

MerlinCause, cause they're freaked out by it or it's gross. Why?

AlexWell, cause he knew he was super gay and didn't want to and learned he liked butts really early on, I guess.

MerlinAre there gold stars on the Chicago flag?

AlexOh, Oh, we only, Oh gosh, I wish it's like for some kind of like an Israeli flag,

Merlinbut it's got stars, right?

AlexYeah, it's got stars. Like, I feel like it's, that's one of-

MerlinYou understand my confusion. Yes. Also, I thought he was English.

AlexYeah, right? No, he is a Juliet boy, which is hoof.

MerlinBecause he sounds like somebody who could be English faking an American accent.

AlexYes, but that's intentional.

MerlinJohn Barrowman, is that what we call him?

AlexYes, yeah, but isn't that like, because you hear him talk and you're like, that just doesn't sound right, which makes sense.

MerlinYeah, yeah, it's not so far off on McNulty. Like, I don't know. it doesn't sound like Dan Aykroyd or anything

Alexhe doesn't get a blow he gets blowjobs but he doesn't get one from a ghost

Merlinyou want I should wipe the dead bugs off the windshield

AlexI hate Illinois Nazis

MerlinI don't know why that line still sticks in my mind of all the things in Blues Brothers why that one Illinois Nazis and then you were saying something about cables fan fiction

Alexwhat about fan fiction what

Merlini was talking about jack harkness what were you talking about i wasn't talking about fan fiction i mean we can talk about humidity cables apps oh battery testers look at my battery tester yes i am incorrect i believe i look at it does it does little button batteries you see button

Alexbatteries yeah that that is some advanced it also does those little weird those little tiny

Merlinthose little batteries like you use in flashlights though yeah but then i scrolled down to the to the

Alexthe pole impaling

Merlintwo people. She says you have nice pores, I think she says to her.

AlexIt's a sweet scene. It's so sweet. Oh, gosh.

MerlinI'm saying to my kid, it's like Sophie's Choice except one of you is Sophie. God, that show. Meredith, why are you showing up at the hospital drunk? Don't do that. Don't put Miranda in that

Alexsituation. Oh, they're all... Oh, poor Bailey. God, thank you for all of the new listeners.

Merlinwhat is up with George's hair? I want to give George a makeover so much

Alexoh he's I miss George

Merlinnot as much as you miss George I miss George he's on that stewardess show which is good my wife finished it and she says it's great I've seen two episodes The Flight Attendant have you watched that yet?

AlexI was going to say we call them Flight Attendants no no no

MerlinI need to watch The Boy First

Alexthat's the bit I'm sorry I'm in the space with you I'm playing Flight Attendants

Merlinokay no sorry Escape Escape have you watched The Flight to The Empowered Flight Attendant. Have you watched it?

AlexNo.

MerlinI think you'd like it.

AlexIs this HBO? Oh, HBO Max. I think I'm paying for this stupid thing.

MerlinOh, God. Alex, I've got to, I've got to, just for like, just for like the sake of my soul, I need to cancel so much shit. It's like, I've got to cancel. The Adobe, I don't want to pay for Adobe anymore. I love Criterion, but I never, I have spent, if you saw a pie graph of the time, it's way worse than Netflix, okay? in the sense of like the amount of time I've spent adding things to my list versus watching things it's got to be six to one because I love adding things to my list and makes me feel oh meshes of the afternoon I'll watch that again or like whatever you know I mean because I still like

AlexOmniFocus I am very diligent about trying many services and then and then making watch lists

Merlinthat's interesting you should say that because that actually could be a good segue uh if you're done being interrupted by me that that's a good segue into our thing because i think one of the things i'm realizing about myself is that it's time for a uh not a culling it's time for a simplification i've got too many things in too many places and candidly it's one of the reasons i'm so frustrated with my home pod thing right now which sounds really dumb but i've really gotten kind of addicted to being able to yell things from the other side of the house or whatever and know it got it and like i don't sometimes i'll just end up carrying like a small

notebook around the house if i'm power puttering i'd really much rather be yelling into the air to do that kind of stuff but you know drafts drafts editorial and the alt things like craft um i've been trying to get back into omni focus as my main thing because i love task paper but like i get more functional stuff out of omni focus i got too much shit going on in too many places which makes it the wrong month for me to get very excited about an app called craft

Alexchallenge this week's challenge uh was kind of a mutual challenge this week's challenge is to craft your wisdom it's part craft part wisdom yeah part part craft uh part wisdom do you want to talk about what the application we are so excited about uh craft is i think we can do i

MerlinI think if I may, I think last week's after show was kind of funny because we, I feel like we both, you were slightly ahead of me, but we both had this realization of like, there's this kind of like cultural, intellectual, lifey, cryy challenge over here. And then there's this techy, appy challenge over there. And like at virtually the same second, we were both like, we can do both. So we were talking about stuff. How did it start? I'd mentioned, I've been trying to talk about craft on Back to Work for like three weeks.

And so it keeps showing up in notes where I've like carefully prepared and put it in and we never get to it.

AlexWell, you've got to talk about your neighbors. So, you know.

MerlinYeah. It's important. Yeah. So, but we also, how did the wisdom thing? Oh, because we had our cry episode. And then we were saying, I think I said we should start writing down the wisdom that we have gleaned from doing this show. Something like that.

AlexYes.

MerlinAnd even up to this moment, we have exactly two pieces of advice. But we'll get to that, as David says. but then the other thing was to have an excuse to talk about craft which i learned about because i don't tech stuff not super interested but i learned um that this app called craft had appeared in um the max stories best of 2020 and then i ended up reading that and i think it was federico wrote it was like i mean effusive doesn't begin to explain how he feels about this app i ended up reading the review and so i will throw at this point to alexander tell us tell the class

what is the app called craft and if if you care to what's interesting and unusual about it

Alexoh boy uh craft i think honestly most importantly is a native apple citizen so it has a mac os app an iPad app and a, I guess, whatever regular iOS is called. And why do I say that is important? It's because tools that are similar to this, such as Notion and Roam and Obsidian and, I don't know,

there's a million things.

MerlinAll fascinating and different in their own right.

AlexYes.

MerlinBut all of which kind of feel a little bit, this also gets you into stuff like, what's the scripty app that everybody likes, Scriptable? These are all things that are more like a fun hobby project. That's not fair. But Obsidian's really cool, but I don't see running my life out of that.

AlexYes. I've started to use Obsidian. Obsidian is super cool for anybody who wants to have, who's like big into research.

MerlinAnd is very much, and all the things we're talking about in some form or fashion are cool with Markdown. But I would say Obsidian is at the heart of it very sort of Markdown first.

AlexYes.

MerlinWhich is cool. actually really cool for what like the way david sparks uses it is really cool yes and well i mean

Alexi'll get to i think we'll get to this but all of these are like run your life out of this application uh and essentially they're like uh whizzy wig wiki is kind of like i sound like

Merlinyou're scratching.

AlexWizzy Wig Wiki. But the idea behind all of these apps is you have all of your stuff in here, right? Whether it be reference materials or show notes or now for me, I'm slowly putting all of my PDFs for all of the crap I have in my house and smart

Merlinmachines. What are you putting that in?

AlexIn craft.

MerlinSo you're treating it like a Devon thing, kind of?

AlexI'm kind of treating it like a Devon think because the difference between things like specifically Notion and Kraft is not just that it's native to the Apple ecosystem, but the export tools are awesome. Like it can export via PDF different flavors of Markdown and as well as text bundles. And like things like Obsidian and Bear work with text bundles.

And so like if you have pictures.

MerlinI never heard that term till this week.

AlexYeah. Yeah. It's super great. That's I mean, that's I actually use a lot with Bear. And because I'm looking for the other important thing, I think, is unlike something like Obsidian and DREF is that this natively will hold photos. and videos for you. So you can just plop if you have the, you know, if you pay for it, there's a gigabyte limit or whatever.

And it is kind of hard to get your head around. And I've been using this thing since.

MerlinOh, wow. I am at textbundle.org. And I feel like I've been in a rib van winkling this. I did not know about this. It's kind of an initiative to like have a format that works between different apps. Is that the idea?

AlexYeah. I mean, it's like Markdown, but when you have to have other stuff.

MerlinThis is cool. Alex, just so you know, I'm so sorry. I'm hitting mute, and I know it's not helping. They're literally jackhammering outside my window, and I'm very sorry. I don't think it's going to be fixable. So here's your choice. Your choice is either we just let it rip, and it keeps jackhammering, or I try to erratically hit mute, and then we have quiet spots. What should I do?

AlexI mean, there's this wonderful thing called the Topey. And I'm always pro-jacking whenever it is consensual. So I say just leave it in. And the show is the show. I don't think you can hear it. But also there's a number of things going outside because it's Chicago's first big snow. And I'm very happy about it. But other people aren't.

MerlinThey took away your Christmas, but they gave you your snow.

AlexYeah, I'm so happy. Oh, we should talk about Christmas, too.

Merlinadding this to notes text bundle dot or I can't believe I didn't know about this legit like I'm

Alexvery surprised that this I did not know what this is I don't really know actually when I learned about it or when it kind of probably when I started using bear like when it came out because I was like how do I get things out of here I really like bear like if you're not a draft person and And if craft is too much.

MerlinI definitely see the appeal.

AlexYeah. It's a good, simple thing, actually, if you want to make a simple wiki for yourself.

MerlinWell, you know, you can do stuff like that in Envy Alt and, I think, drafts. There's all kinds of... Yes. If you want to really work it, it depends what you... How do you say this? All these tools are all potentially capable of doing a bunch of stuff in a very above-average way. It's just that there are some apps that really excel at some things almost just to the exclusion of others. And oddly enough, a thing I'm going to end up saying today is that part of that is some of them are just more beautiful and intuitive to use than others.

And that does end up mattering in some cases. You can do a lot with Emacs, but I don't know if I want to be doing that like on a phone.

AlexYeah, I mean, there are some apps that I adore that I can't use for long periods of time just because my eyes are broken. And that sucks. But again, I'm not using Obsidian for a ton of stuff. But if you really need to get in there with your customization, they have a wild community around it.

MerlinBut so does Kraft now.

AlexLike all of these different note taking apps, which have been talked about, I think, on a bunch of at least on Cortex, the show I'm thirsty for.

MerlinCan I jump in on Kraft real quick, though? Oh, yeah, please do. I want to make sure for people who've never used it at all or never heard of it. Like, it's difficult to know from what we said, like what this is.

AlexWell, it's also it's also I'm coming from a place of I've been using this for a long time. So I want to hear. I did not know that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm cool. I'm on the beta for things. But there's also a big community around craft.

MerlinI think the way you say it is I've been on the beta for a few weeks.

AlexBefore it was cool.

MerlinI think that's what you're supposed to say.

AlexOh, really? It's coming out soon. I can't talk about it yet.

MerlinYeah.

AlexSorry. I'm being an asshole.

MerlinBut, like, I mean, like, this is going to be, this is one of those, well, see, I'm making a little list here of things like Descript, craft, air table, these certain kinds of things where like if you were to describe them to somebody, you'd go, well, isn't that like X? Or isn't it like, you know? And so, you know, Descript, well, it's magic. But like it's part of the beauty in a very Mac-like way is that using Descript is it's ridiculously powerful and intuitive in so many ways that like me saying to you

it's very intuitive is not going to express how intuitive it is until you intuit with it. And I think that goes for some stuff like, I mean, like Airtable is really cool. It's how is that different from what Google Sheets or whatever? Well, there's it's really easy to use and it's pretty and you can have images in it without being clever. You know, and so why would you use craft? Well, because I would end up saying to you craft. Imagine like a beautiful wiki as just the beginning. The jumping off point is it's like a beautiful wiki, which it is. You go, well, OK, but it doesn't look like a wiki.

It doesn't feel like a wiki. and like things, there's this one kind of functionality I know has existed forever that I first encountered in, I want to say, probably TextMate. And there's usually some, Descript has this and Craft has this, but it has, all these apps are similar in that they have some kind of an everything key, which oddly enough is often Command-K. So like on Descript, which this is so powerful, if I hit Command-K 10 and hit Enter,

it knows when I, to take me to minute 10 of whatever I'm looking at right now. It knows like when I do this, I want to add a chapter marker, stuff like that. So you don't have to learn key commands. There's one key command to learn, at least to get started, which in almost all these is command K. And then it does stuff. So in this one, is it command slash, I want to say?

AlexI think it's just slash in most cases.

MerlinJust slash. And then you get, so you're in craft. And again, just to be clear here. So at the most basic level, you have documents. Of course, you can pour collaboration sauce all over this because everything's all about collaboration nowadays, whatever.

AlexWell, but I will say that these intuitive features that are in things like obsidian, drafts, and bear, those do not carry over very well into Rome and Airtable. They kind of do, but I like crafts the most.

MerlinI just, I don't, to use this a lot, if I were, as you say, well, I'm getting a little ahead of myself here. But like you pointed out that for us to collaborate, I had to basically create a whole new area. And you can either be in this area or that area, which is pretty frustrating at constantly having to disambiguate, is this about me or my team or this other team altogether? Like I'd love to see that ironed out. Anyway, so but why is this so good? Well, it is really pretty. It's really intuitive. and it's got a lot of, and again, I keep thinking of it being like Descript, which is that you'll

get what's special about this when you use it, but if you just dig around just a tiny little bit, you'll see that, oh, it's really intuitive to say, do spell checking on just this page or spell checking everywhere. I want to have this area, what do they call it, a card that's going to be like this sub area, like a sub page, if you want to think of it that way, but you can make it pretty and it can have images and it's almost like your own little sort of square space. and then of course it does do it sounds pretty underwhelming to describe but it's so much fun to use and that was our project

was to play around with craft which Alex apparently cheated and has been doing for weeks since they were on the beta

Alexwell but I that's the thing I definitely peanut buttered in our challenge half of our challenge

MerlinI'm mostly peanut buttered but I have some things so anyway we've got we've been using this and I feel like I did not do neither of us did a good job selling why this is good. It's really hard

Alexto. Like I just did a sort of an episode of what we called Roboism but it was Savannah just telling me how to use Notion and why it is useful because it is now more than ever we need collaboration tools and I mean it's the same thing where we have all of these things in different places and basically i'm trying to consolidate it all because i nobody can't walk over to my desk and i it's really hard to just sit down and be like this is

why it's great like with drafts you say it's where tech starts and honestly that's and that's usually enough for a lot of nerds but even this is kind of hard to explain for nerds which is why the review

Merlinof it is really long. It's ironic because you're absolutely right in that drafts is one of those things where like it can, I mean, I feel like part of the pitch of drafts that I don't know if this is interesting enough, but something I've said for, I believe for years about drafts is like, before you learn anything else about drafts, I appreciate this. You open this and you instantly have a place to start typing. Now, every word in that matters because the instant part is huge. It's crazy fast to never have to worry about where something goes. I'm sorry. It reduces stress greatly and to know that it will open so fast you don't have to worry about it you can come back to

it later um but then once you scratch even the slightest bit past that even if you just start with something like oh and guess what whatever you typed you can send that to messages or you can make a phone call or you can do all these things like what you do with whatever you just typed is kind of like functionally like limitless then let's take it even further and like guess what it can be a whole ecosystem where like you've got all these different sorts of these sets of action sets of functionality, like stuff Rose has made for test paper and OmniFocus are wild. And then all that stuff, it's not only where, so I say to you, my friend, the listener,

yes, drafts is where tech starts, but it's by no means where it has to die because there's so much you can do. But I think I have stressed myself out a little bit with the, I mean, and for years I have known the value of, as I keep saying over and over, knowing where something goes and i feel like i'm a little bit at sixes and sevens with trying to figure out where stuff goes sometimes where i do eventually fall back to okay putting all this away and taking out

Alexthis uh notebook i uh sorry what do you mean at six at sevens i do not know that phrase or turn

Merlina phrase i don't know oh um so it's a phrase i think was probably popularized in the 20s and 30s. Oh, then I would. Are you done? I'm sorry. Have you ever heard of a musical called Evita? Yes.

AlexIt's quite good. Oh, there we go. All right. Sorry. There we go. I'm sorry. I just finished my Red Bull. What is she?

MerlinIs it fair to say that she's at sixes and sevens with you? Is that fair to say? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I think it's a terrific phrase. Will you use it now? Will you use it? I don't know. It's a little cute for you. It's not really your style.

Alexyeah yeah i i'm sorry i interrupted interrupted please go go back no no no it's about time god

Merlinplease oh no but that's why i end up pulling out but where is here i pull out the and i got a brand new one because i filled my last one the mead cambridge 96 sheets action planner notebook that is a spiral mount on top which makes it very desk friendly oh oh spiral mount on top means i do a flip and I don't have to move anything because think about 8.5 by 11 times 2. Who got room for that? You know what I'm saying?

Like I said to my wife, I said it literally, I said it this morning, I said it yesterday, I want more things that I can do in my house that involve exactly one hand and not moving anything. And this is why I had DVDs fall on me. I had explained to her how I said, because I was having a very frustrating afternoon for a variety of reasons and I says to her, I says I feel like we talked about how we're going to do the grocery bags. Oh yeah, I'm sorry. When you put the grocery bags in, you fold the grocery bag. The fold, I don't care one way or another, but we've got to pick one.

The fold A has to be toward the back and B cannot be enfoldinated with any other bag because then this happens. And I did a demonstration where I grabbed the bag and they shot out like snakes out of a peanut can because now they're interleaved with each other. They must all be independent such that in the dark, I could walk up to this. I could stick my hand to the bag of bags and grab a bag causing no impact and no flying snakes from the nut can. La, la, la.

And then I said, you know what? I regret saying that. That was, I'm having a bad day. I said, you know, I'm in a really shitty mood. But, you know, the bags, it's important. This is what separates us from the animals, Alex. Yes.

AlexYes, that and putting toilet paper on the toilet paper dingus correctly. Clearly, the roll on the stick.

MerlinOh, roll on the stick. Uh-huh.

AlexOkay. All right. Is there a term for toilet paper roll? Toilet paper holder.

MerlinToilet the roll? I'm genuinely.

Alexuh yeah see it's just called toilet paper holders okay all right cool toilet paper holder uh are you a a frontie or a backie i'm a frontie and a folder okay oh i am yeah you're you're a folder are you a crumpler the crumpler i don't even know how much we use i don't need to It depends on the situation.

MerlinOh, sure. It depends on whether you've just had, you know, if you just had a situation. Like if you just do a yard sale, for example. Yard sale.

AlexAnyway, why do you like craft?

MerlinI have some wisdom in here, but I'm going to keep working on it. I'm going to keep adding the wisdom. The only two pieces of wisdom that we have from this program, we can talk more about this in the after show. The two, you did not add any new ones. The two that I added from last week's program is, you can be a dick without becoming an asshole. And the second one was, be picky about who is allowed to owe you a favor.

And I added some ones. I'm going to make this the repository for where I put everything I know. and I put in a few good ones and I will add more. Have you seen my wisdom, Alex?

AlexYes.

MerlinOkay, all right. Let's see. What are the good ones? You know what? This is too bust a gut, but really seriously, buy slightly larger shoes. Get larger shoes.

AlexYeah, I agree. Even though it's...

MerlinWhy do I have to explain this? Why do I have to explain this? Your shoes are smaller than you think. I realized this during Korn, which is that I've always been, I believed, and sizes are so fucking arbitrary. it's just it's bananas how arbitrary sizes are in general still to this day like my wife bought me fancy sweatpants because my my sweatpants i have are all disgusting and have holes and make make my family embarrassed for me and also they do fall down when i take out the trash or bring up toilet paper and and so she got me these fancy ones and like of course you know whatever else i

have going for me i have a short rise i'm proud of my short rise i enjoy having my short rise i have short rise short legs i have short everything and and the thing is whenever i get pants that These are called a large. They'll fit me. Because if I get a medium, the waist is going to be too small. But if I get a large, they're going to be nine inches too long in the leg and about 18 inches too long in the rise. Whose rise is that long? What are you keeping down there? I'm not talking about dick stuff. I'm talking about where's your tank going to end?

AlexIt takes all kinds.

MerlinIt does take all kinds. That's a good point. But the point being, what was I talking about? Taints? Before that.

AlexYou were talking about taints and some of your wisdom. I added some wisdom. I started playing with, like, making a little wiki, but I don't know. This was in the middle of the night.

MerlinIt's not really great for that, probably. I mean, well, I mean, like, a wiki is good for a wiki. This is better. I think this is, and my rule of thumb always used to be when you start a wiki, I haven't had any super successful wikis, but I would always try to minimize the number of new pages or as you say, stubs. Like, and this is back before Wikipedia was a thing, believe it or not. Before Wikipedia was a thing, a big thing, there were just wikis and all kinds. There was Insticky and there was so many different wikis that were like, you know.

But like my goal was always to minimize the number of pages that go nowhere and frustrate people. so like keep stuff on one page until it needs to be two pages keep stuff on two pages until it

Alexneeds a category you know i'm saying oh that is absolutely how it should function in theory but in practice that's fun to make pages so people make pages well and it uh a new shiny thing often excites people and they they want to dig around and when they see the big pretty pictures it's like oh yeah this is super cool and that is why i am super stoked about the export feature because eventually when like there are a few people who at cards who like love notion uh but they're in

operations so like they do the big fancy uh or air table so they do like the big fancy excel stuff and uh design really likes what is it uh figma which is also a really good app but the way that you can export things from here makes i don't feel like i am wasting my time investing in making

Merlinthese dumb little pages and stuff and when you export are you exporting just that page i could just do it myself um are you exploring just that page or everything at that from that level down or do you choose you can choose and so i'm gonna go to more from merlin let's go back one level links to this page i love just how intuitive though that it knows i love the thing of like just hitting an at symbol and then like you're making a new page like that's and i love the right arrow we talked about this last week i'm not bringing anything new to the table here but i love the little right arrow to like drill down into the sub area oh did you like that i

Alexput a picture of you and me from ted lasso yeah yeah yeah that's very cute that's our patreon

Merlinit's very it's very cute yeah it is now that's right i thought i surprised you with that i'm Clicking export, I'm clicking PDF. And it says show watermark. Okay, maybe a paper size. Markdown, text bundle.

AlexHmm.

MerlinAnd so let's see. All right. Oh, I see. If I do markdown, I get, that's where I saw the flavors. I don't see how to do like sub levels.

AlexOh, what do you mean by that?

MerlinOh, well, like it's, so essentially when they say export, they mean the equivalent of print or make a PDF of this page?

AlexIf you're making a PDF.

MerlinHow do you get all? Is text bundled, T-H-E way to get all your stuff out and put it somewhere else?

AlexNo. I mean, I can do it in, I've done it in Markdown. So if you go to Markdown, you'll see that it does the, like you can choose.

MerlinYeah, all I see though is formatting options. I don't see a way to say like everything in this area of the tree, same way you would with like a mind map. Is there a way to like, how, so let's say I made this thing and I want to share it with my team, not in this app. Is there a way to just spit it all out as a big wad of something?

AlexI think so. Yeah. Like, like the entire, um, card.

MerlinMaybe it's because I'm on the page instead of the, let's go to file craft. I'm clicking edit. I'll figure it out.

AlexSo, um, yeah, that's, that's the thing. It's also not super intuitive. And they have changed stuff around since.

MerlinYeah. Also, they do that thing that's understandable of this. In my head. Oh, look, there's your name. I see you're on my page. Oh, it's so fast. Oh, yes. Well, syncing is instant, like we talked about. That's the amazing part. If you have your iPhone up, you're typing on the Mac, you'll see it's basically one letter behind. It's nuts.

AlexAnd I used it with two other people yesterday, and it was almost as good as Google Docs.

MerlinReally?

AlexIt was wild. I, yeah.

MerlinThere's stuff, like I say, I mean, I could not love Descript anymore. It's been so wonderful and has made one aspect of my job I didn't, I've never loved so much more fun, which is in this case, having to edit a podcast every week, such as I edit it. But like one thing I'm not entirely loving, it's like there's these ends of the spectrum where you think about like, PB Edit is still like my like open up a text file and do stuff app. and like there's so many things in the menus and if you're not the sort of person

who's inclined to know command shift you know quotation mark and you know learn that because that will then let you search for the thing that you would want in the menus without having to look but there's so many things in the menus it's kind of overwhelming ditto obviously text mate things like that and at the other end you get something like this where craft does all this stuff but like it's not always all reflected in the drop down menus and I feel like that's kind of a new thing is like you do this in the app, especially for things that have been ported, which this is not necessarily, but things that have been ported, you'll see this more often, which is like the basic shake and bake,

like the kind of stuff that, you know, the Marco style. Okay, fine. I made a Mac app. This is exactly what it has. There is no help. Here's what it is. You know what I mean? And then, but then you do all your stuff over here in the window. And given that they do stuff like letting, like have that slash command, it's fantastic, but it can be like, there's no.

AlexYeah, that's kind of taken straight from Notion, which is another great thing.

MerlinI can learn more about Notion.

AlexBut you don't. That's the thing.

MerlinThat's the previous one that Federico loved, right?

AlexI don't know. I can't keep up with what's cool.

MerlinThey talked about Unconnected. Yeah. They actually talked about Unconnected.

AlexI don't know. I don't want to be the asshole who's like, I don't listen to podcasts anymore. But I just get stressed. I don't know.

MerlinOh, don't worry. I'm already that asshole. I don't listen to anything.

AlexI don't want to be...

MerlinI want to listen to the mountain goats. Is the mountain... What? No. I still love someone. I went back to the beginning. Now that I got... I got... I got Jason from the Presidents. Got him on to blank check. So I went back to the beginning. I only now just got up to the second Star Wars movie. You got to go back and listen, Alex. I would be disappointed if you don't.

AlexThat's the thing. I have been listening to weirder and weirder shows.

MerlinReally?

AlexBlank check's a weird fucking...

MerlinYeah, but it's polished.

AlexExactly. And that is what I'm interested in.

MerlinYou don't want to listen to like six episodes about somebody wanting to fuck a robot. No, that's... TC14, played by Lindsay Duncan.

AlexNo, but that's the thing. I want that, which is why I have been the asshole who's like, well, I've been reading this book. I'm going to get everyone to read Why Fish Don't Exist.

MerlinI see that. I did see that.

AlexWell, but then I didn't finish. Oh, God. That's the other thing is I'm trying to get all of the bullshit I have from my Kindle highlights and notes from like literally like 15 years at this point. And I just want it out. And there's this fun new thing where if you export, it's like this publisher allows you to export up to 10 percent and you are at 2.8 percent. Oh.

Merlinsure oh i know that stuff's crazy making yes yes yes yes uh the the one thing that i we haven't

Alextalked about in drafts that sorry uh craft that is also a feature of notion but i don't think notion does it as well is the idea of like this is a single like this is a web page or like this is a square space so the thing i just sent you is some guy's like resume or cv type whatever it's called now i'm so he exported this out of craft uh he didn't know it is he did the secret link

Merlinthing and just sends that interesting yeah and and then you can uh if you click on the things like the pages just move over and it's i'm super allergic to things like that there was what was the one i used to do god there was that amazing one back in the day i made that bacon ray page for our first seven inch it's still up somewhere but there was those you know those kinds of sites where you just all you go in or you enter in some kind of a generic thing and hey you've claimed this page now you're making a page and like i i worry even with descript and the like

exported videos and stuff i worry a little bit about the longevity and editability of that

Alexor like you know exactly why i like it because it's assuming they stay up the well but but i wouldn't use this as a permanent situation like those you can turn those links on and off at any time kind of like a google doc i get it yeah you're right you're right you're right you're

Merlinright but it's really just more like one page centric kind of export uh that's the part i keep getting hung up is like if i if i go all in on this and love it this is not even to say like blah blah blah something something lock in but more to say if i really love this and then how do i like you would not believe the time i spent yesterday trying to figure out a non-scripted non-manual way to back up all my old shit from libsyn and it's like they've not made that easy at all and like well just go get a shelf script and do this and it's like well no look i all i

want is the whatever 16 episodes of the merlin show like it should not there should be a place it ought seems to me you've got this service there should be a place that i can go and say like download everything like all this stuff and it's like it was i ended up using my sonology you know download center which worked fine but i i get sketchy when i get even the slightest whiff of like well you live here now but but i do take your point in that it is very easy and reflects the desire to make this something people could pick up fairly fast and that's what excites me

Alexabout it in the same way obsidian uh excites me because i when i am excited to join a slack then you know i am very enthusiastic about an app because i don't enjoy it have to be really

Merlinreally really really really really yes exactly uh and but watching it's kind of a fun thing that um

Alexsame with uh like um omni focus and or the like omni in general and um greg the the drafts uh

Merlinslack where i don't know what those are surprisingly unannoying communities right and

Alexand watching things get built and seeing developers listen to uh requests and also saying why this doesn't work um especially when it's like a subscription like they they have sort of made it part of their mission of like yeah we are going to for at least but but they don't have like illusions of like it's gonna be like this forever uh but it's like yeah we are in this new thing and um like the thing that's stopping me from putting everything in is that it doesn't support um audio

right now so i can't upload an mp3 like i try and also you can't we've had you know we've had our issues with simplecast the the place that hosts our podcasts and yeah um i i don't know if

Merlinyou know. Drop that menu for draft.

AlexHow hard is it? Yeah, it's so easy. It's so easy. But I'm trying to get the stuff out of there and I truly started doing it by hand. And I'm like, I don't want to do like 250

Merlinmillion. No, no, dude. Are we talking about this? Because the thing I gave you works. You'd use the thing and you pointed at that thing and it

Alexjust grabs it. But can you... Oh, I see what you're saying. It takes care of it all.

MerlinI see what you're saying.

AlexI just, I realized I don't have any sort of like.

MerlinIt's such a pain. And when I had to do that, so I'm not going to beat around the bush. When we restarted You Look Nice Today as California King, I was very happy to be doing the program with the boys again. But my thing was, I just like, I was so, I'm really proud of You Look Nice Today in a way that I'm not that proud of that many things I've made. And it is oddly one of those very few things where I would like it to be around for a while. But first I needed to resuscitate it from a very old Drupal that involved parts of Libsyn, involved parts of this kind of reseller shared hosting plan I was on.

It was such a pain in the butt. Hey, listen, I'm going to hit the bell because I have to go to the bathroom, okay?

AlexYeah, we're done.

MerlinYeah. Happy New Year, everybody.

AlexYeah! this week's challenge craft your wisdom craft your wisdom craft your wisdom craft your wisdom uh i keep saying whiz and it sounds like pee

Show notes

Transcript

219. Master Cable Daddy

Show notes

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