242. Made for Your Heart

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast. This is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann and Alex Cox. This week's challenge, analyze something with a spreadsheet.

This is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast. this week's see do we do it with the thing i don't uh quinn sure let's say we do it with our names this is do by friday a weekly challenge podcast with merlin mann and alex cox this week's challenge analyze something with a spreadsheet this is do by friday a weekly this is do by friday a weekly challenge podcast with merlin mann and alex cox this week

this week's challenge analyze something with a spreadsheet that was the worst i've done in so long I think you got the wrong A.V. I know, I know.

MerlinProbably need to change your input.

AlexI do. Every time. Every time. And I did test audio.

MerlinLet's be honest, Alexandra. Don't we all need to change our input?

AlexOh, gosh. There's a joke there. But I just, oh, my mouth is still sticky from the peanut butter. Oh, there we go. I just had a spoonful of peanut butter and it was delicious. I love.

MerlinYou're a little quiet. Is it just me?

AlexPossibly. Let me go check here. Not.

MerlinYeah, someday. Someday, Alex, this is all just going to work.

AlexOne day I will know how to control my computer. Oh, God, I'm back on my work computer today trying to use. All right, because my internet's out. So, or rather, my router broke. Router modem? Yes, my router broke.

MerlinWell, what happened to your router modem? What happened?

AlexI don't know.

MerlinI don't know.

AlexIt was this morning.

MerlinDo you have thread enabled? You should turn off thread. Turn off thread.

AlexThat's what I suggest. Oh, I don't know what that is. Oh, am I a normal volume?

MerlinIt'll be fine.

AlexI hope.

MerlinQuinn's so good at this. Quinn can put in some funny sounds and do some wackadoo edits like a boing kind of thing.

AlexYeah. Boing. Boing.

MerlinA hooga. Or a klaxon.

AlexI don't know if you hear everything I hear when I'm recording. But yeah, there's a lot of noise that happens on my end that gets magically cleaned up by editor, producer Quinn. It's delightful.

MerlinWhat? No. Come on.

AlexOh, there's, I mean, I have a delightful microphone as well. But yeah, there's cats prancing about usually.

MerlinI don't hear this. Are you sure that, hmm. Okay. You know what? You're probably right. I, my ears are so bad.

AlexZoom does the compressy. No, no. Zoom does the compression thing. Like even, even I in, in the cans, as you say, hear it less because I think of Zoom's little compression. Like it's like the pretty filter in a tick tock.

MerlinI have suppressed, suppressed background noise set to auto.

AlexThe yep. Yep. Yep.

MerlinI can also set it to low or medium or high, high, high coverage, typing and dog barks. Oh, I'm going to give that a test. Cause guess what? Alex, Alex, you know what?

AlexYes.

MerlinYes. I have had a series of slight, if I'm being honest, deliberate regressions. And here's one of them. Okay. I'm going to set this to high for typing and dog barks. I do not have a dog. Oh, download the audio enhancement package. You do that.

AlexI don't. Well, like you said, everyone needs a different input.

MerlinThat's a good point. But guess who's back?

AlexOh.

MerlinYou know, it's like you break up with somebody for a couple months, you know, and you miss the taste of Marlboro on their tongue. And so I got my DOS back, but I'm not doing it for a podcast. It's so nice to have a real keyboard. That's not nice.

AlexBut it's nice. I like this keyboard.

MerlinI like the low profile of going all Apple, but I think I really missed this. It's got a giant cord. I feel very retro.

AlexYou're also making the clackety noise again.

MerlinNot as much as I'd like. I'm making music. That's fun.

AlexOh, I believe I briefly saw that. You're using GarageBand.

MerlinOh, I should send you the bare bones of the song I'm working on about anxiety. I'll send it to you.

AlexWait, what? What? What?

MerlinNow this, this is one I could send you and that we could drop in because it's just a file. Do you want to use the audio device LG UltraFine Display Auto? I do not want to use.

AlexNever, never, ever. You can hear my keyboard.

MerlinOh, now tell me about that keyboard. What is that?

AlexOh, this is my Lumi keyboard. It is, I think technically it's a MIDI keyboard, but it's by, what is, it's not teenage engineering. What's, oh, Rolly. There we go. Rolly.

MerlinThose both sound like bands from the 90s.

AlexI think, oh, oh, I wonder if, oh, sorry, I got, I got very excited for a second.

MerlinPlease go, please go. I want to play with you. I want to play with you in the space.

AlexNo, I'm just looking at the Roli.com website and all of the pretty, very pretty software.

MerlinCould you spell that for me?

AlexR-O-L-I. Or I could also give you the link. We have the technology. But I have totally fallen off the bandwagon of both being able to sight read any sort of music theory, honestly.

MerlinWell, there's a point in your life. I'm sorry. there's a point in your life when you could sight read yes what was your what was your

Alexinstrument guitar the no uh well i mean eventually but then i would sight read like a quote sight read tabs uh but in actually in grade school we just had to learn music theory that was just part of the curriculum for music yeah we had music class and like it wasn't a huge deal but you know You have those things where, what are they called? Oh, a recorder. And everybody plays hot cross buns terribly at like a little assembly for the parents.

But then in high school, when I did play guitar, but a lot of my friends were in band, but they don't.

MerlinI think you're sandbagging. I think you're a really good musician and you're just not telling me.

AlexNo, not even a little bit.

MerlinThat would be really, that would be your profile would be to not admit. And then you do that, you're going to do that, you're going to do that make Rebecca great again thing where they get you to go up on stage and then you're going to just rip it on Let It Go.

AlexNo, no, no.

MerlinNo, no.

AlexBut then I learned how to play flute because there wasn't enough flutes in our tiny high school band.

MerlinOh, my God. That's so funny. Oh, my gosh. This is one of those, like, I don't know, fushball moments, moment fixed in time. I so much when I was able to join band in elementary school in third grade with my teacher. I think it was Miss Phil apart, which is a very unfortunate name.

AlexOh, yep. Got it. Yep. There we go. Oh, boy.

MerlinYou tell an eight year old about a Phil apart. And that does not take a surpassing amount, even for the set by 70 standards. A lot of creativity to come up with Phil apart.

AlexIt's like Mrs. Chokes on Dick.

MerlinI want to play a saxophone. I think the saxophone I saw in my head was an alto sax. And, you know, it's a difficult instrument, but guess what? Guess what? I was a day late and a dollar short because Miss Filifart already had the saxes she required.

AlexSo I had to play something else.

MerlinAnd that's how I got it. No, listen, all you tromboners out there, I think Travis McElroy might have been a tromboner. I love you guys. A trombone can be a great thing. I did not like playing trombone.

Alexyou gotta use a lot of tendons for that it's it's i mean okay so like if you think about the

Merlinspectrum of instrument difficulty uh which sounds like a prog rock record like you've got on the one hand you've got like a triangle and listen marco i know all percussion not all percussion

Alexbut but wait just did marco our men play the drums he did wait how did okay well i mean we can talk about yeah i'm pretty sure he played drums in marching band all right uh i'll try to get follow-up with that uh i i apologize so mrs chokes on dick did what no but you compare that to something on on the brass side you got something like a french horn which is notoriously

Merlinpretty difficult to play to learn and to get good at violin obviously even people who play violin usually don't play violin very well that's matchy wait what say it say the words what matchy did

Alexwhat oh my spouse uh matchy plays via violin and he's getting back into that too are they any good at it the okay what am i gonna what's gonna happen can they play a hot cross buns or a three blind three unsighted mice can they do that uh yes they used to be phenomenal and i am just going to

Merlinleave it at that how are you not making matchy play the fiddle all the time the devil went down to georgia you could just have that right in your house that'd be so great but the cats would love

Alexthat we've got like uh uh oh they're fine with uh i'm gonna get in trouble um so never mind so mrs chokes on dick had all jokes on dick uh-huh what what was that person's name what was that person's real name is it like a polish name no no no no i thought you're doing a filth no i was i was uh doing doing a south park bit but i want to hear about the trombone

Merlinanyways the problem is though on the spectrum and you know me you know me you know how i am i love to add extra axes so you can start with that axis of like how difficult is this to pick up so like you know let's be honest guitar is pretty far to the left like literally yeah french horn or like that game go where they say a moment to learn a lifetime to master you can like but like think about like if you've ever heard somebody who really knows how to play recorder but most of your experience with recorder is somebody playing three unsighted mice in like in fifth

grade right so but the amount of effort it took to learn trombone it's not a difficult instrument but the it's just not very fun you're basically like the world's worst bass guitar you do a lot of honk honk honk a lot of one five one five kind of like uh but the point is yeah i failed two classes when I was a senior in high school because I was just the worst. And one of them was music theory. Oh, well, I said I refused the main project upon which we would be evaluated was

writing a march, which is not a difficult thing to write. But you know, we had to learn all the theory stuff, you know, I watched like six hours of Adam Neely on Saturday. So I've got music theory on the brain. I watched all of his Q&As. I watched all of his Q&As, but I watched him, I watched him chaff amadorian style like in a reverse chron order i just pulled up a list and let it roll

Alexand it's weird to see his hair get you know shorter oh man watching like youtubers so good

Merlinand he's a little spotty he's just he's like a little boy he's so good he well i mean it's like

Alexwatching the green brothers from the time i was in middle school until that's hank and john um But it's, yeah, yeah. Adam Neely, he is a handsome, handsome tuber, though.

MerlinHe's so handsome. He has a cute cat. I like that painting on his wall. But anyhow, and I'm not proud of this, Alex. You know, this is Merlin 1985 is a very different release from Merlin 2021. And I refused to write a march. And then I used an adjective that we don't use anymore. I said it is. And then adjective.

AlexYeah.

MerlinI said it was gay. It's gay to write a march. I'm not going to do that.

AlexI mean, it kind of literally is.

MerlinAnd my music teacher, who was also my stage band, he was also my stage band teacher. So I had a relationship with the guy. And I think he was pretty, you know, bummed and disappointed. But, you know, it's so good to learn an instrument. I mean, I wish I could play piano.

AlexI mean, that's what that's get a loomy, get a loomy.

MerlinA loomy. I feel like I know what that is.

AlexIt's by the Rolly Company. It's just a teensy tiny little MIDI keyboard.

MerlinOh, this thing you sent me, the Rolai.

AlexYeah, yeah.

MerlinOh, this is cute.

AlexAnd it says, you know, you're RGB. So you can have colors and a fancy keyboard, just not all in one. So yeah.

MerlinOkay, I'm going to grab this and I'll look at this. And I will put it in the dock. Are you still doing stuff with Hook, out of curiosity?

Alexby doing stuff you well oh gosh we should save it for the after show this is already the best episode ever want to start it

Merlinso you're worried about me you're worried about me you like to listen to the other podverse things because I'm full of beans and then you have a conversation about me

Alexwith somebody on the internet the oh we were friends man um i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry that was also like the only time i was on twitter bad am i in the dock what are we oh there we are oh i have oh oh the font did wait oh oh no libre libre it's a it's the cheap for the freebie version of franklin gothic do you hate it be honest no no it just surprised me and also i'm wondering uh because i opened it on ios in i well and then notice that in our google doc the

official cursing cursing uh cursor resting area does not hold my cursor i apologize but why

Merlinbut why is but what's this why why here oh no that must be me i can fix that oh gosh down t keys t keys going up where am i i'm over here i'm here and i'm clicking i'm clicking huh that's oh I see why. There it is. Okay. Is that better? Should we put an actual box that you could put your cursor in? Would you like that?

AlexYes. Wait, no, but that doesn't, that's not, that doesn't, is that a, I mean, I guess that would take a lot of work and by a lot of work, I mean, at least six minutes.

MerlinI sent you a marker probably, but I'm so happy with this so far. This is just the bare bones. I said in my head, I had this marker, right marker. You got a marker somewhere here because if it's good, we can keep in, but if it's not, we can cut it out. If it's not, if it's not generative for the show, will cut it out but i would love it if you listen to my song and compliment me oh fuck yeah no okay so what you're listening to here is so i started this is uh version five this is very very very bare bones from a song structure standpoint it's very repetitive but then again says anxiety am i right could be almost like a little figure of a bass thick bass part in your head that you can't

get out it's called waiting for my dissolution and um uh and it will include the line something along the lines of phone rings door chimes i crawl i curl up in a ball okay so when you're you're able to please no no phone ring no door chime uh it tells me you're able to do three two one go and if we like it we'll uh so at the go part of the song we'll start yeah all right three

Alextwo one go

MerlinWe got a burst part.

I like this part.

MerlinClaps. Okay.

AlexNo, we're finishing it.

MerlinWe're finishing it. It's just, it's like a minute long. bare bones

Alexwell you need to finish this song or i will not compliment you and not tell you how much i like it

Merlinoh yeah i love that i love you're withholding i need withholding yep no i'm not gonna tell you

Alexhow much i enjoyed it i'm not gonna tell you how much i was like how much of a bop that is nope

Merlinnope did you like did you like the three little little singing parts where i go ah

Alexyou know what i would probably i would probably talk about how wonderful i i i forget how wonderful your voice is but i'm not gonna do that until you finish it i'll tell you what i love here's

Merlinwhat i love about it so the part that came to me in my head this is so fucking boring the parts

Alexcame to me no no this ties into a thing that i did this one oh i'm sorry i'm sorry for interrupting

Merlingo ahead what what excited me what excited me was though in my head i'm sitting there i'm watching TV and I go, oh God, I've got all these different parts. I can like, it's unusual for me. Like I'm not much of a song, right? I'm not much of an anything, but I very rarely I'm like, oh, this is the thing where I like Michael Jackson it into like a tape recorder. Cause I don't want to miss it. And I was like, oh, I got to just lay down some basics. So I grabbed a little guitar uke, but I liked that. The, the, it started out just in my head as like that. Imagine, imagine like one of my favorites, like an E chord that you're just playing a power chord,

like a like the A, the D, and the G up at like the 7th fret and then let the open E strings ring and I knew that that was the thing and then I heard this fake Lou Barlow part for a bass in my head.

And then but then I really like the drum part and the other drum part because it's got claps.

AlexYes, yes. Oh my god, that's so good.

MerlinAnd then the piano part to get the basics, I'm using my iPad at home at like 11 o'clock god technology is so fucking cool oh it's insane ipad like ipad garage band is still better than mac os garage band you buy an ipad and you get comes with an 8-track studio oh and by the way there's all these drums and these parts and like you don't have to be good like everything on there well no that's not fair there's a bunch of stuff that i got a lot of help with like the drum parts and things like that but but but but garage band on mac now you can go in

and do all this cool shit with the drums to like change it up a little bit. It's no longer just the matrix of loud and complicated. You can also do stuff like say how loud you want each to be. Is it compressed? Is there room? And in my case, I wanted it to sound like it was like, you know, in a bathroom for that one part. Anyway, but then I'm like, okay, and then I want to hear this octave thing. I want a bang and piano thing that goes like ee, ee, ee, ee, ee, like really percussive. And I just did that. And then when I got to my office, I hooked with the MIDI keyboard.

And that's where I got a really good bang, bang, boom. We should save this for the show.

AlexThis is so good.

MerlinI'm glad you like it. It makes me happy. It's fun. It's fun to be like doing all of this again, relearning the stuff, like pulling out the instruments, getting everything set up. It's so fun. It really is fun. Do you ever do that? You record? I'm sorry. I'm talking a lot. Do you record music?

AlexI can't say anything without getting trouble. People are going to ask and then we'll try to. Okay, never mind.

MerlinNever mind.

AlexSave it for the show. Save it for the show. I producing live music stuff is is my favorite thing ever which I've just kind of talked really isn't it don't you find it difficult you're the sound man sound they oh no no no I mean well that's the thing uh oh god yes oh live mixing oh and and it's such a dark art and it's different every single night uh-huh and it's never the same no and that's why our actually our lovely interim or not not interim our um hiatus engineer who when i was in a studio record us uh cameron

bopp and put his stuff in the show notes love cameron love cameron i'd be like hey there's there's like 20 people and two instruments that uh i need uh can you do this mix new mixer that i just got and we don't have a no like oh gosh it's but i i'm not even just talking about that like i still specifically producing musicals too is it's i don't it's my favorite thing like playing with people's voices live too which oh they definitely love that that's yeah but like

Merlinthat's we've been i mean there aren't that there's almost zero things that we we never force emma to do pretty much anything because we're California parents, but we don't even like push very hard, but there's just some kinds of things where I think I told you like apart from her being healthy at birth, I always hoped that she would enjoy music and like to read and fortunately for me, both of those turned out. But like the other thing is like it'd be fun to nudge her into something group related, which is about the last thing

in the world a 13-year-old kid wants, but we're like we've been trying to like sort of nudge her a little bit into doing behind the scenes theater stuff. Because you get the fun of theater because it's hard to describe, but it is really fun. It's really fun to work on plays and musicals. She enjoyed when she did it at school. She did a really good set flats for a local production of a Dr. Seuss musical.

AlexThird grade. Listen, it's called Seussical. So, I mean, I thought it was good. Seussical. I had a friend who put

Merlinthat on in San, well, I shouldn't say, in San Diego, who, he runs a local theater, and he said working with Mrs. Dr. Seuss was, she was a bit of a handful.

AlexI can imagine.

MerlinI don't say, I'll say her name's maybe Audrey. Apparently she's really a

Alexhandful. I mean, any, I feel like anyone who is related, see, I don't want to get in trouble and speak ill of the dead. You're so worried

Merlinabout getting in trouble today. I'm going to write this down, because you need to talk about what's happening.

AlexOh, nothing. No, I'm, I'm, well, Well, now I'm reliving memories of just my favorite place to be is backstage. And God, I miss it so much.

MerlinThere's one time once I think I might have told you this story. But so I was in stage band and my famous actually true story of dropping basic so I could be in stage band, play guitar in stage band. And which is true. And I hated basic. It sucked. And but it was great. So me and my friend Tim were the guitar players. And, you know, it wasn't until 99PI and Adam Neely that I realized that most of the music we've been given had been Xeroxed out of a fake book.

AlexOh.

MerlinIt's got the same like handwriting and everything. It wasn't even a real book. It was before real books. But anyhow, it was so fun. I really enjoyed it. Like it wasn't very good, but I really liked it. But like one day they were supposed to go to the marching band. So, you know, there's stage band, there's marching band, orchestra band. And it's, you know, the same people play in pretty much all of those. but they had to go be in a parade.

AlexI was the token jazz flute, actually.

MerlinToken jazz flute?

AlexThey just needed someone who played flute for the jazz band.

MerlinWait, does this happen with you?

AlexYeah, no, that's literally what it was.

MerlinAre you shitting me? Really?

AlexWell, apparently jazz bands have flutes or need to at least look like there's a flute.

MerlinHave you heard me tell this story before?

AlexWhat story?

MerlinI'm about to blow your mind. Oh. So his first period is stage band. Nothing's getting done. For once, nothing's getting done, not because of us and our, you know, because everybody in band is so horny and so weird and so agitated. But no, everybody's getting ready because they've got to go get in the school bus and go to Plant City to be in the big strawberry festival, like a parade, right? And, oh, boy, one of the folks really got in trouble because there were a surprising – it's a senior year, so, of course, there's some senioritis. But several people did not show up.

And as you know, it's a big deal not to show up on the day of a band event because you've been rehearsing, you know, whatever that instrument is. Like, it's important. And in the case of marching band, even though they're not – it's not like a military drill, like, now you're going to have holes because you don't have spots.

AlexOh, God. I wasn't even thinking of that part. I was purely thinking of music.

MerlinBecause, yeah, yeah. I mean, you're really just doing basic, you know, bump, bump, bump, bump, horns up, bump, bump, and then turn left, turn right, that kind of stuff. But still, like, the whole point is to, like, look like a marching band. And enough people didn't show up that Mr. Francis had a problem. And, God, he was so funny. And he's like, he's like, Marlon, Marlon, you're going to be in the marching band. And I'm like, I don't know how to play anything. It doesn't matter. You just hold up baritone and act like you're playing. And they went and found me. There was, like, three of us in stage band that were not in marching band.

And they found us all, you know, these terrible, terrible, you know, those marching band uniforms. And green and yellow were my horrible school colors, both of which look terrible on me. Not that it matters. And the big hat you wear in marching band, you know how it always looks like a Q-tip? These look like used Q-tips.

AlexNo, no. Oh, no.

MerlinBut I got to be not a baritone, but a carotone. I got to carry the baritone and act like I was in. And it was totally fun. And a mere five years earlier, I had been in military school, so I was a pretty good marching boy. I was even on drill team. Not the kind with batons, the kind with fake guns. But I was a pretty good marcher, as marchers go. And it was so fun. You know, there's the experience of stage band and doing concerts and stuff like that. But it was so fun to get in the bus and the camaraderie. And everybody's so horny. I don't know if you know that, Alex. It's a horny group.

AlexI know. I know, I know, I know.

MerlinEspecially the French horn player. We had intercourse three years later when I was in college.

AlexOh. Yeah. Okay, I don't – you're already a penis lawyer. There doesn't need to be two penis lawyers on this show.

MerlinOh, it was beyond consensual.

AlexLike she came to Sarasota. Oh, my God, I don't –

MerlinShe came to Sarasota.

AlexYou know what I'm saying?

MerlinShe came to Sarasota.

AlexIt didn't say she came in Sarasota. No, no, no, no. I wanted –

MerlinLet's not say things we both know aren't true. No. um alex yeah you you're worried a lot about being in trouble we're gonna do an after show what would you read them if i could ask what did you read that made you emotional

Alexthe if you want to say you're gonna get in trouble okay fine oh no i'm gonna get in trouble with you i don't care about getting in trouble with the other people oh no no tell me oh no am i in trouble No, no, no, no. A little more than 10 years ago, you wrote a piece on your professional blog.

MerlinOh, no, web blogger blog?

AlexYes, blog.

MerlinBlog, it's called blog. Welcome to blog.

AlexAnd about your dad and your family and just work in general. Oh, yeah. And I actually typed 73 folders into my browser.

Merlinplease don't let sir kiss be right please he insists that no he insists this is the gray goo of my career title he insists that like i will and all my friends will eventually start thinking it was 73 folders oh interesting hmm oh yeah that was that was yeah i mean that was a little bit of a bust of gut thing i was kind of at the end of my rope i was very emotional and vulnerable yeah i i can tell uh i fucked up alex i fucked up so bad i fucked up i fucked up again i fucked up like

Alexfour more times. It was, God, it was also terrible. Are you saying that you're a human being who makes mistakes and perhaps all of humanity is that way? No, I mean, I don't like to dwell over much on it

Merlinbecause it is a real black mark on what I'd like to think that I'm capable of. And I'm trying desperately to avoid intentionally or unintentionally making myself the hero of something where I was very much not the hero. And I do worry that, I think that was a pretty good piece of, you know, busted gut writing but i was i was probably a little too kind to myself in that case but you know it did suck my family so what we're talking about here is we're like this my stupid goddamn book was due and due and due and then overdue and like they my editor and the people at the

book place had been very nice and very supportive and they were trying to push this ghostwriter on me and of course i found that the ultimate oh yeah you can always go back and listen to the back to work about it it's really bad oh um but i uh yeah no no bad as in like i suck but like i should have done it i should have just done it i should probably just should have let this this dude write write the book for me but like it just seemed like it would feel really and i'm not trying to be a hero but would have been so inauthentic to the entire point of everything i was trying to accomplish to sort of hit escape to get out of the pain of that when the pain of

that was exactly the point. I wish I pulled it off. Do you know what I'm saying? Like my whole bit at a certain point, and I still believe this, I just don't cry about it in public as much, but I do think it matters a lot to, you know, challenge yourself at stuff, whether other people think that's what you should be challenging yourself at or not, to like make your own peace with what you're going to sacrifice for or ask your family to sacrifice for. And like, I don't know. It just sucked i really wish i could i really wish i could have succeeded at that not to just like shit out

whatever book but like i just i'm bummed that i never found it in me to do that make that big leap if that had been my you know in my joseph campbell story it would have been neat if i'd been able to actually pull it off in a way i was happy with it's very it's very really really it's a bummer

Alexit's a bummer i hate it see i remember the back to work episode and the so embarrassing and weird a lot of articles that i find or or um web web blogs that have been published uh i i i uh put in the the calendar or in in omni focus uh five years or ten years like i want to read this later to see if it's still that's such a good idea yeah i mean it's just like um i i well because if it's

like if i if you read something and it hits exactly the same then maybe it's not that maybe you need to think about yourself a little bit more and not in that it you should completely change your opinion about something but something could some stuff like that really does i'm not

Merlinreferring to myself here but like in just in general like some stuff really does like super hold up you know and then other kinds of things like you really read it differently that's what

Alexi mean not in a like ah if you still enjoy pokemon you're a disaster of a human being although that might be true for some people but you know i'm sorry keep the numbers if you can

Merlinsay what are examples of other kinds of things like that that you return to um other successes that you put in your calendar in OmniFocus? Are there things where you're like, wow, that's as good as I remember or better than I remember? Are there things like that? Can you give you examples of those?

AlexOh, there was something that doesn't necessarily hold up, but if it wasn't clear, Cranking is one of those that every half decade I've read it, which is twice now, good Lord, definitely hold up more each time, which is hard in a good way um and i um sorry to share emotions um but no uh it's just a phase

um there's this thing called the internet is my religion and for a while uh i was like yeah this is very cool it's sort of like not kind of denouncing organized religion in favor of jim gilliam uh yeah yeah is it like a ted talk ish thing it yeah it was i think he did a whole let me um is this broken uh yeah and it's um honestly a lot of the writing and talks holds

up in theory but because the world is so so very different obviously yeah and something like that

Merlincan end up at the time feeling so relevant and it ends up seeming unrecognizable for half a dozen

Alexreasons yeah and typically it's the stuff about the internet and the stuff that i loved about the internet which which really sucks but i mean yeah i i i don't know just keep thinking about the internet and music why i don't know why i'm doing this to to myself just should stop because you watch that torres video oh uh the video you just sent me wait why why do you why why i don't know

Merlinman it's like it's just nice it's just nice to come up so i'm talking here about a video that um i saw via uh one of my favorite tweeters uh dave weigel from dave weigel who wrote that great book on prog rock and is a elections reporter for the washington post um he wrote a book on prog rock yeah it's called the show that never ends it's really good um and uh he had re quote tweeted this thing and said something like you know this is the most i've thought about a new song in years

new music in years i clicked it and i i did not know is torres is that how you pronounce it torres

Alexright i i don't know i think so this is a woman who uh she's been around i guess for a while i

Merlinfound a a tiny desk concert from like five years ago but this song comes over my transom and you know sometimes you know how it is moments snap together like magnets sometimes you're just in the right mood and something hits you extra super hard and it's called um wait don't tell me i can do this because it's the line in the chorus don't don't go don't go telling me don't don't go giving

Alexme hope what's it called what's the name of the song oh i don't go scroll link scroll link you're not gonna stay with me don't go messages is so broken for me um it needs to think sometimes it

Merlinneeds to think uh i'm so embarrassed but uh i think it's called don't go don't go giving me hope

Alexoh the the song is uh don't yeah wait don't go putting wishes in my head don't go putting

Merlindon't oh god and i don't want to spoil it for y'all we'll put it in notes and i don't know check it out of course i was like oh my god this song is so goddamn good somewhere like she discovered the killer so i'm like okay like i can hear how you think this sounds like the killers that's fine i'm sorry i can put that in anyone's head but this isn't the killers like she's there's something so uh what's the word that i want the video is its own thing but the song this video is really cool but the the song itself is so it not confessional i don't know just hit me in the feels because

For example, you're the first person I think I ever heard use that phrase. Was it U-Haul Lesbian?

AlexYep.

MerlinBut like that, like falling into it. And it was even a pretty funny joke on SNL this weekend. You know, even for lesbians, we got into this too quickly.

AlexI love Kate McKinnon.

MerlinThe designated lesbian. But there's just the lyrics to that song. And it's just you can hear her heartbreaking saying, basically, I don't just love you. Like, I like you so much. I just kind of can't imagine not being with you. And, like, I don't know. It's just a nice twist from the usual, like, pining for somebody thing and more like, you know, if you're not going to be with me forever, don't go putting wishes in my head because that's the thing, basically, that I want most in the world is to be with you.

And the video, I feel like, and who knows, but I feel like the video really amplifies that point in the nicest way.

AlexA million trillion times. Well, at least for me.

MerlinWhen she's just standing there with her high-waisted pants holding the sun lamp, it's just... I'm reading the book about why there's no successful women artists. I watched it so many times, and I love her left eyebrow in that tight shot. She's got this slightly screwed up looking. She has such an expressive face. I love every... Like I said to you, I love when they cut to the chorus in the kitchen or she's in the shower and they pull the curtain. And it looks like it's an apartment,

approximately the size of a walk-in closet.

AlexIt looks like specifically a dorm room. Yeah, right.

MerlinAnd they're sitting across the room from each other doing what they do. And it's like, oh God, this feels so real. So how does that relate to the internet and music? I don't know. It's still, I'm trying not to be negative about stuff, but like, as we've talked about numerous times, the performative nature, things that are expected of us on the internet are not making us good. They're not making us better. And it's, you know, it goes all the way back where they want to go back to clickbait headlines or, you know, find the most attractive picture for your avatar or

whatever. I get all of that, but I feel like it has gotten way, it's gotten way out of our control. It's gotten way out of our, if you like, agency. And now like you, you may be wearing sweatpants at home for the last year but like when you show up on the internet like there's this character people expect you to be they expect you to be like a digital brand and it's like when you find something a little bit raw that feels real and is so fucking good same way i felt listening to like the florence and the machine cover of tiny dancer like sometimes just something gets oh jesus um

it's just something that gets to you and like just hits you at a certain time and that's a really great thing about the internet, you know, and suddenly all the bullshit falls away for a minute. And it's just you and this thing that feels made for you or made, made for your heart. And you can't tear yourself away from it. And I just love that that still exists.

AlexI mean, I was going to say it felt like it was much more prevalent. And God, I sound, I don't mean to sound like crotchety when I'm like, oh, there was there were so many songs, not even songs, songs like this, blogs like this, little things that were for weren't specifically for anybody, but you were able to make something for yourself because you didn't feel as if you had to perform. And that's when you found your people online. I totally agree.

MerlinThere's a remark that I've made several times. I suspect you're probably not the Van Halen fan that I am. But I feel like there's this one moment in this. My favorite, probably my favorite Van Halen song is a song called Unchained. But there's this part like three quarters of the way through the song where David Lee Roth is like shucking around in the studio. And you hear Ted Templeman say, come on, Dave, give me a break over the studio mic. And David Lee Roth goes, one break coming up.

And in that moment, you can feel like the entire direction of Van Halen has changed. They'll still make great stuff, but that's my favorite Van Halen song. But it's also the moment when everything started cocking up really bad. And I'm going to say the same thing about one website. You guys are going to laugh at me. But the Unchained moment for me was LiveJournal. The two or three years that I was on LiveJournal, because on the one hand, so many of my friends from back home were on LiveJournal. and we all got to be really good pals

you know in a new way I met new people through music stuff how I learned about the Long Winters my friends on LiveJournal much younger than me friends on LiveJournal well at the same time the one break coming up part of that was that was also at least for me the beginning of feeling more need to perform in a certain way and LiveJournal was very I think very much kind of I don't know at least in our circles like you know there would be like kind of weird humble brags and backstage stuff and a little bit of statusy high school stuff

but at the same time it was still really great for so long that's how i i i would i this is gonna sound so strange i got acquainted with somebody on live journal through the music groups and i think it was probably six months before somebody pointed out to me it was john darnell's wife and she's just really cool and i just knew i just um i don't even know how to pronounce her name she has a really cool name but lalitri i guess but like she she's like oh my i'm like oh my god her from the live journal that's so cool it didn't matter in that instance but like you

know it's just like i don't know it's just a bunch of people who were still really excited about music and life and pals and of course you could do amazing stuff like making an entry that only these specific people could see not even a group you could just say only alex and quinn are allowed to see this you just tick a button which nobody else has ever done as well i'm sorry i'm going on but that was a special time for me and that's eventually what led me to create an actual blog that's what led me i mean not that it matters but like that was my first well i i'd messed around

with blogger which you used to have to install and run yourself not yourself but i mean you had to do a lot it was pretty fiddly if powerful but it wasn't really my tempo but live journal was so fun but then at a certain point i realized like i this is really it's really below i had aspired to create a web blog like i'd enjoyed for years a couple couple three five years anyways and that's what led me to contact a young ben trott and pay forty dollars to install uh to install movable type on a shared internet account and that's that's how i started a blog that's how kung fu grip started

AlexI mean, and that's the thing. Well, I was going to say the moment I got a little, not how even we use cringe now, but I guess so. It was watching Tumblr become the call out, well, now cancel culture or whatever, but just the weird flexes of reblogging and then have someone else reblog another thing. and I actually remember thinking.

MerlinI love Tumblr. I thought Tumblr was amazing.

AlexIt was the best. It was just amazing.

MerlinYeah. I couldn't tell if you're, but you used it and enjoyed it back in the market days?

AlexOh, absolutely. Yeah.

MerlinIt was so economical. It had such, this sounds silly to say, but it had such an internal sort of sense of coherence. And I admit that having said that, I was, it's not really meant to be a blog, even though that is still where the domain name for Kung Fu Grip lives. You know, it's lived in different places. It went away for a while. But, like, you know, that is – I was willing to, like, have my stuff be there forever.

AlexYeah.

MerlinIt got stupid. But it was so goddamn fun. And this is – I feel like this is before the fan stuff became as big. But, like, in the – well, how would you describe Tumblr in the Marco days?

AlexOh, I mean, it's hard because a tumble log, that's what they call it.

MerlinT-U-M-B-A-L-O-G.

AlexI mean, I always saw it as a very accessible way for people to make their own, just a post, not even like a website. Like it was the fastest way.

MerlinIt was meant to be more ephemeral.

AlexYes. Or you could, like, that was the other cool thing about the templates, which was another accessible thing. I think there was also some, like, free, I don't think it was on GitHub or if it was around, but like it.

MerlinYou're talking about the templates? I'm using one I bought by a friend of mine from Twitter. My friend Jeff made the design, which really could use some updates from me at this point. But yeah, you could go in and you could make it your own. Most people just had that weird blue background and the chunky text for the title and stuff like that.

AlexBut it didn't matter if it was just a one post type of thing. I mean, and I don't even know how often I use the website. because back then I think there was still RSS available. I'm not sure.

MerlinOf Tumblr's?

AlexYeah, yeah.

MerlinOh, totally. Absolutely there were. I had like 10 of them.

AlexAs the website slowly degraded.

MerlinIf I went in, I'm going to go in and look now. I think I, it's so funny, my kid, it's so weird. Like, it's just, Alex, I can't even tell you how strange it is sometimes where it's like there's all this stuff. I'm not, you know, as much as I am full of myself and some kind of narcissist, there's all kinds of things where I'm not going to give her an anecdote about something. But you know what I mean? We're like, she's looking at Tumblr. She noticed something I had. Wait a minute. She's like, you have the Tumblr Merlin? I'm like, yeah. And she's like, you're kidding.

Which I guess is kind of like having, you know, the username Apple on MySpace or something. You know what I mean? It hadn't occurred to me that I was there a million years ago where you could just pick a name. I don't think I had never had that much problem finding a subdomain for what I wanted. But that did make me think, oh, my gosh, that's probably longer ago than I think. If I joined up now, who knows what the hell would be called? I think on Twitter, you're not even really like allowed to pick your own handle anymore.

AlexOh, wow. Yeah. When you create, you can, but it does not volunteer. Yeah. I had to do a quick little duck, duck, go search to figure out how to do it. because it's not it's not like up front because because i'm i'm one of those uh one of those

Merlindicks i don't know if i'm an asshole but i'm one of those dicks it's like you know i'm a typical pound sign resistance guy where i'm like okay that's obviously a bot like this thing this twitter account just got created it's got the numerical thing and then at one point i needed to go make a new account for something wasn't due by friday but it was something more recent and i was like oh, it really wants me to have this wackadoo, meaningless name. And you're right. It was difficult. If memory serves, it's not easy to just say, you know, I want Alexander69 or whatever.

AlexYeah. No. Yeah. Try signing up with the name Matthew Cox. Try to sign up on Twitter with a normal.

MerlinBecause of porny things?

AlexNo, no, no. Because if you have a common name, it ends up being, Like, ah, yes, your name is Matt Cox. So then you would like the username MattCox6258, yes? And it's so weird. I don't know. And to kind of, well, let's close this circle back. The way you felt about LiveJournal, I don't know if there's a place on the internet where anybody can feel that way anymore. Or be, I don't like the word inspired, but fine.

Or motivated. Just anything.

MerlinWell, how about invigorated?

AlexYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

MerlinThere have been slacks and slack channels where I've felt that. But, well, it's just that LiveJournal, I mean, but here's the other thing about LiveJournal. Also, it was so interesting. It was ahead of its time. It was late for its time. But LiveJournal, where you could do stuff like, say, what's your mood right now? And what music are you listening to and stuff like that? And that became a way of bubbling up this part of you that didn't really have a place to live other places. because and again i'm sorry let's state the obvious it didn't used to be it didn't used to be easy at all to make a little home on the web unless you're syracusa and can like cgi bin that

stuff like for for even like for typical people even like getting blogger going might be a bit much because it involves some ftp and things like that but like live channel just made it so easy for you to create this thing skin it the way you want they were myspace before myspace they were twitter before twitter they were tumblr before tumblr fucking george martin's still there right

AlexWait, really?

MerlinYeah, yeah, yeah. I think George R.R. Martin, that's his main place he posts, I believe.

AlexOh, that's funny. Or like the guy who owns that, you know, the guy.

MerlinNever mind. Anyway, enough said. I'm going to try and log into Tumblr and see. You were saying, you were saying, not a place like that. I agree.

AlexI don't know. It just bums me out. And I wonder if there will ever be a place like that again. And then I stop thinking about it because it makes me too sad.

MerlinDoes that deal? Don't you feel like that's slightly, I mean, like for my, again, all I know is my kid. and for that matter what I know about my kid, which I think I know things about, but she has so many text channels with her friends, like just iMessage or whatever, you know, text threads, which I'm given to believe a lot of grownups have especially adopted since Korn. There's that. And she is, like, she's on Discord a lot. She's, like, she's got accounts all places where I'm like, oh, God, that's so weird. Like, I probably, I don't want to know this. But, like, I think that does exist.

but like for example that uh what they call it finsta that whole idea of like there's your there's your main account i don't know i'm just saying words but like but then you got your other account like isn't that another one where there's a little bit of like hanging out and being with

Alexyour pals kind of stuff sure i guess i didn't word that well yes especially i i think with discord i've i've had this kind of like those experiences in discord i think of like oh oh cool like and here are my people but uh there's never been anything that spurred sort of like ah i i want to create a thing from this and maybe uh that's just not a good way of thinking about stuff i don't know i mean it's cool to have different places to talk there's there's so

oh god there's so many there are so many places to talk but but um there's not really a place I don't know to be yourself or does that even need to be a thing did I do drugs what am I even

Merlinsaying it's very no I don't think you are I don't think I don't know I mean there's this what was that book there's a book in the 90s whose name I'm gonna mangle but it was something like the presentation of self on the internet or something like that Sherry somebody wrote this really kind of groundbreaking book on how we present ourselves this is like I say it's in like the 90s. This would be inside like AOL wall garden groups and stuff like that. But, but I mean, it's something people have been thinking about for a real long time. I mean,

even before the New Yorker had the dog cartoon. I don't, I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. I mean, the, the cynic in me says, well, like, is, is there any ourself, you know, apart from like what we make of it? And, but, but it's, it's, hmm, unless it's on brand for you, there aren't many places where you get to be a little bit ugly with your friends not ugly as in like hurtful but ugly as in like you know um i'm having a really rough day or unpolished yeah yeah

but but you know i mean also the the like and this is i have to be honest this is not a very popular or politic thing to say but everybody who is so willing to go out there and like you know say boo about anybody who's said anything controversial it's like are you fucking kidding me? Are you telling me you don't have any group where you make desperately off-color jokes to people? Does that really constitute a hate crime? If you and your friend have some inside joke that's in incredibly poor taste? Are we just not going to, are we going to pretend that that

doesn't exist anymore? What is your outlet? Do you just sit around all day making bracelets and saying, Yas Queen? What the fuck? Isn't there some part of you inside that's dark in an authentic way instead of dark in a public performative way where you just yell at strangers? Isn't there some part of you where you just snicker with your pals under the bleachers? God, I hope so. You know? And now I sound like Joe Rogan or something,

Alexbut you know what I mean, right? No, no, no, no. Yes.

MerlinIf I didn't have ways to be ugly with you offline, I don't know what I'd do. I don't know where it would go.

AlexI mean, if you think about this too, and there was something that kind of clicked in my brain the other day that I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing, but every time someone is chased off the internet, it's not because they were ever trying to hide something bad about themselves. I mean, I'm sure there's outliers. But, you know, it's not like Matt, it's not like Matt Gaetz was like flexing his fake IDs online and was like, yeah, this is a thing or made a funny joke and

And then it was like, meh. But when someone does something in good faith, not even in good faith, when someone says something stupid and is chased off the internet, like, Matt Gaetz is still going to have a job. We know Kevin Spacey has a job. But let's not, the cruelty that the internet enables when we are in so denial. I think in denial about how fine it has become to be cruel in public.

MerlinYeah, yeah. If you're a bully for the right cause, that's actually going to make you into a superstar. You might be one of those people who, maybe somebody your age, a little older, who got treated pretty badly in life. There's certainly a lot of us that have treated and been treated badly in life. And it's, I'm certainly not, I'm not prepared to say that this is everybody out there. There's a lot of people with a good heart trying to do the right thing. But there is a tremendous opportunity for building a brand around a certain kind of acceptable bullying.

And acceptable, like basically lynch mobs. And this exact kind of stuff that we used to hate when the cheerleaders, the football players, or student council did it. Like that exact same thing that used to make one feel so small, it's now become OK to do as long as you have a cause. We can look at the Trump people and say, well, you know, oh, they stormed the Capitol on January 6th, you know, because they're bad. But like they don't think they're bad. They're not they're not the villains of their story. I'm not here to defend them. But I'm saying once you get a cause in life or like they say in that, you know, in Rules of the Game, terrible thing in life is that every man has his reasons.

Well, if you have your reasons, that shouldn't to me mean you get a blank check to just be horrible to people for a cause. What does that look like in five years in terms of trying to achieve the things you want to achieve? You've just done a little bit. I don't know if you've read the book The Lottery, but Shirley Jackson. But it's kind of like that. We're like if you're not performing this, even if you do perform this, you might be performing. I don't know. See, I'm just – but I agree with you. There should be places where we can be fucked up and not not have to worry about losing access to the rest of the world.

AlexI mean, you said it, but like, I, there were times where I was like, literally kicked, not kicked, but like, I left places because for being bullied for supposedly being one thing or another. and uh those those i i would like to think that being liking books and uh liking books and girls isn't something you should bully someone so badly that like they leave a club or pretend they're

sick and don't go to school and then you be oh god like most of the lies i've told in my life are because i've been afraid of yeah not performing the right way now you're gonna have to go to the

Merlinout group. Well, think about, there's a TV show I like called It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. And there's a two-part episode called High School Reunion. Think about what Dee does. Think about D'Andra in those episodes, especially in the first one, where she goes into this going like, okay, all these people who called me the aluminum monster and were terrible to me, I'm going to go suck up to all of them, and then I'm going to fuck them over. It starts out as D'Andra going, ha ha ha, I'm going to go mess with these guys. And when she does that, she is, of course, she's kind of, you know, with the popular kids from when she was in high school,

and she's being terrible to everybody else in the gang.

AlexRight?

MerlinSo she's helping give a wedgie to her friends because she loves that feeling of fitting in. But that fitting in, the other sort of functional component is that she gets to be awful. She gets to be a bully. And to be honest, they're always calling her a bird.

AlexDo you know what I mean?

MerlinShe probably thought, oh, this is going great. And then, of course, in the end, it turns out that actually the other people, they didn't like her that much. and she's still an outsider but now she's an outsider who's also been terrible to people who

Alexare her friends yeah god that's a good show it's a really it's a really we watched uh we watched

Merlinthe one called charlie's home alone the one where everybody goes to the super bowl i don't know if i remember there's one where charlie has to stay behind there's another guy that dresses up like the green man so they think that charlie's on the bus oh yes they literally literally they literally Charlie literally does Home Alone.

AlexHe's terrible. Oh, yes.

MerlinSo it starts out as Home Alone. He even does the bit with like, ah, you know, and putting the heated thing on the doorknob. He does all that. But over time, I can't decide if it turns into more of Saw or of like 128 hours or whatever.

AlexI mean, isn't he literally? He's stuck in a bear trap. He's literally in a bear trap. Yeah, he's literally tied. Yeah.

MerlinHe wants them to win. So he's trying to get the paint can, the can of green paint to fall on him. And it's so goddamn funny. Um, yeah, I don't know. It's just weird. I feel like, you know, I don't know if I'll be less exhausted by feeling free to just say honest, true things about this. You know, I'm not trying to be an hero, but like, I don't know, man, I do know that the exhaustion of continuing to agree, like all of this is normal is not wholesome to me. Yeah. In the same way that I wear a mask as theater to like encourage other people to do the right thing. Um, and I admit that that's opposed,

That's opposed. I'm fully vaccinated. But I do it because I want people to feel like it's okay to wear the mask and to do, you know, whatever it takes to, you know, kind of do the right thing. And maybe this could make somebody else feel better about realizing how bad they feel about how terrible they've become in their performance.

AlexYeah. No.

MerlinWho will I harm today for hearts?

AlexYeah.

MerlinChallenge! Pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew.

AlexOh, Merlin, this week it was your challenge. Welcome to Dubai Friday, a show where we cancel ourselves. Oh, God.

MerlinI'm ready to take a break from that word. I'll tell you, man. I'll tell you, buddy. Saturday, so I don't know if you listened to that back to work. It sounds like you haven't because there's a lot of – anyway, I had something go boobies up on Friday. I suspect it's thread-related because it was a day when a couple different thread things were introduced alongside Eero's thread implementation. Too long to explain. Anyway, I spent two and a half days fixing a bunch of stuff at the house and also like – when I say fixing, like trying to get Hugh to work again and stay connected.

Alexchanged my zigbee channels which is no fun oh god we got a oh after show oh man say yeah write it

Merlindown because that's good but um yeah and that's where i ended up watching hours and hours and hours of uh of adam neely and fixing a bunch of stuff cleaning out a bunch of stuff there's so much cruft you ever go into something like alex did you ever go into something like tube lady or

Alexokay listen if amazon says that alexa alexa alexa is smart enough if amazon says it's smart enough to to be able to detect a specific person's voice then that should not have triggered anything and if it did trigger something uh just throw that alexa out the window point is you ever

Merlingo into somewhere and you're like okay like in my case like i've been i have been so happy with you lights for so long i understand why people might not be but you know i like it's worked out great especially with the tap switches let's put it this way when the lights and the tap switches stop working as i said to dan i hear about it understandably like it can't connect it can't stay connected i'm trying all the things but like you know part of it is also part of this like fixing all of this was then also going in and going like okay let's tear out some of this extra coax we've got hanging around in here like you know oh i got this app eight years ago that turns

your living room into a disco and it automatically creates 35 scenes so that's why i'm saying if you go to the amazon product and you go in and look at like you try and do fucking anything with that app you're going to see all of this cruft from like years ago all these scenes that you might have used like once and i don't know if it has an impact on performance but definitely has an impact

Alexon usability you know what i mean like this is part of this other stuff well because you think

Merlinabout this like there's an app this kind of terrible app that i ended up buying this dollar 99 app that lets you log into your hub and then lets you see all kinds of cool stuff in a way that you wouldn't normally see it like show me every device show me every scene um show me every automation show me everything all these things and like when you see it all in excuse me in one place it's like so think about like for every room or group like you've got bright concentrate energize aurora like whatever there's all of those plus all these sort of savannah sunsets

savannah suns i killed six savannah sunsets title um like also where you're like okay you know i'm I'm still toying with which version of the lights being red at night I like. So I end up with like, you know, like five different scenes that are functionally identical. I can't tell which is which. You know how it is when you're like playing with something. You know, it's another version of final, final three, final, final. You know, when you name a document. Cleared all of that out. But it's, what was my point in telling you this? Adam Neely and Thread.

I'm excited about Thread.

Alexi i don't know what that is but considering i have a broken uh router now i'm why'd your router why'd your router break you know i mean uh i don't know is it an arrow no no it's um whatever the wire cutter recommended so oh the second second cheapest one yeah yeah the one that uh the one that uh we clearly don't have a relationship with and we recommend every time even though it totally, totally sucks.

MerlinYeah, no, the thing is, though, I do legit love my Eero. I bought a new Eero last week for my office with the Wi-Fi 6 or whatever. But long story short, keep an eye out. I can't prove this, but I did learn that Thread's implementation is very much not HomeKit device friendly.

AlexOh.

MerlinAnd now between the Apple TV, I have so much Thread shit going on. It's amazing. So I've got the Apple TV, I got the HomePod mini, and I got a bunch of brand new Eve devices that work with Thread. Eve.

AlexIt's a good movie.

MerlinClassified. That's a fight. Um. Um. Yeah, I love Eve. You know, Scott Simpson's boy, who's now like a teenager, he was Eve for Halloween once. It was very cute.

AlexOh. Don't you love Eve? I love Eve. Protocol. We can't like that anymore.

MerlinWe don't like Eve anymore? Are you in trouble?

AlexYeah, yeah, it's fatphobic. Ignore all the parts.

MerlinEve is fat?

AlexNo, no, no. In Wally, the...

MerlinWhat makes you fat?

The challenge this week is mine. And the challenge is to analyze something with spreadsheets. And it comes out of me realizing very happily that there's a little button you can click. Most people might know there's a button you can click in Google Sheets. You make a selection. And it'll do cool stuff like say, okay, do you want alternate colored rows? Let me help you do what I think you might want to do with this data. And it wasn't until last week or two that I noticed a button inside that button that I never noticed, which is analyze. So you can select some columns and rows.

You do whatever you want to do. And you can even keep this thing open. You probably discovered this. and like reselect things and it gives you different kinds of suggestions. I discovered this because I have something called, I think it's called the Emporia View that monitors our electric meter. I just threw in the CSV of all the raw data, second by second data or minute by minute data and said, hey, and then I said, oh, you analyze this. And I hit the analyze this and it found really cool trends that I didn't expect. So the challenge this week, and you can take it any way you want. For you, the listener, you might want to go just look at Google Sheets

and like pull in some giant ass CSV or similar of stuff where you've been ambiently recording data for a couple years, it might be really fun to see what it comes up with. And so that was the challenge, was to just analyze something with spreadsheets.

AlexMm-hmm. Did you do anything different or new? In the after show, I think we talked about, oh, gosh, we looked at the, oh, our challenge spreadsheet of... Right, right, right.

MerlinI mean, I think that you're going to see, I suspect in general, you will see probably the most interesting stuff. Well, okay, think about this. Like one thing that I think is really cool, well, I should confess that I'm a big fan of spreadsheets in general and Google Sheets in particular. And there's all kinds of completely meaningless stuff that I track in there just because that's how my brain works. I'm not a math or, I'm not into the maths or the arithmetics, but the spreadsheets really, once I understood how to like associate cells and do formulas back in the day,

something really popped in my head. And it really made sense to me for modeling things. And that got me interested in the most basic day one statistical stuff of like, well, averages are interesting. But, you know, min, max, median and mode are even more interesting. And then when you put those up against each other, you can infer your own interesting patterns. Like, you know what I mean? And then you get into stuff like standard deviations, which I know how to use but don't really understand exactly. But that's all been so interesting to me for so long.

So whenever I model anything, whether that's back in the day trying to figure out what to charge someone or looking at what time our mail has been delivered for the past two years, it's interesting to me to go in and say like over this I create tables for the tables where I can say for up to the last two years, here's min, max, median, mode, and mean. So mean or average. And then I can do that for all these different things and model that. But it's cool because Google is like trying to help you out. And I thought it was neat.

There were some I found very interesting. I think most people are probably going to see the most interesting, surprising, and successful results if it's a pretty sort of standardized thing, like a date and a number or, you know, like a date and a dollar amount. And then if you've got a shit ton of that, it's going to find probably something. And I can do mine. Did you do it? Did you try it? Not really? It's okay.

AlexIt's okay. I almost didn't do it. I woke up and, God, it was like I pulled a Max. I'm like, wait, it's, oh, it's two by Friday.

MerlinWhat the fuck was the challenge?

AlexAlex, I'm so glad it's not just me. What was the challenge? And I'm like, this is the first time.

MerlinI forget about this show for four and one half days every single week.

AlexOh, thank you.

MerlinIt's not, it's not, I mean, it's not anything I'm proud of. But, yeah, it was mainly a thing. Like, I would just say, hey, y'all go check it out. It's kind of cool. Let me see if I can find some good ones here, some interesting things. I mean, some of it, it's only going to be as good as your data in the sense that it's got to be sort of like, if you want to discover things, let's see, how can I put this? I can't get away from a podcast I heard the other day. I mentioned this on Back to Work, but I'm going to really recommend you all check this out.

But I love this podcast that is called the name of the podcast. The name of this band is Talking Heads. The name of the podcast is, oh, my God, how am I not remembering this? It's John, not John Shiggy. John Shiggy does the other engineering podcast. This is called, it's the one with the guy who wrote the book on, the Data Scientist book. And the name of the podcast is Cautionary Tales.

AlexCautionary Tales with Tim Harford.

MerlinI recommend following Tim Harford, just his work in general. He's really interesting. Episode of his podcast, Cautionary Tales, part of the Pushkin Network, called Wrong Tools Cost Lives. Oh. No, it's the Malcolm Gladwell Network. Wrong Tools Cost Lives. And so basically it's about what he gets to is you might remember some months ago when Britain, England had this big announcement of we're going to have the best contact tracing plan in the world. It's going to be the envy of every other country. We're going to get it going. And then you might have heard secondarily to that that something got screwed up and they lost like 160,000 records.

And you might also remember hearing that's because, not because of Excel per se, but because they saved it in XLSX instead of XLSX. Something happened. They were saving it.

AlexIt was like the new Microsoft 360 or something.

MerlinThe new one.

AlexYeah.

MerlinAnd anyway, it was dropping – on the one hand, it was dropping – it exceeded the number of records of Rose that you could have and nobody caught it for a while. But further on this show, the part that was really new and interesting to me – and I just love this guy's show. I love things about how engineering can go wrong. But he talks about the invention of double entry bookkeeping in like Florence in like the 1600s. It's very interesting. But then he also talks about other ways. I did not know this. All the ways that Excel can go wrong because you're using default stuff.

For example, like if you just leave something in a default state, it might be rounding in a way that's assuming it's a whole number rather than, say, a serial number.

AlexI don't like this. I really don't like this. Oh.

MerlinStuff I never thought about. The way that rounding – default rounding up can happen, the way that zeros at the end of a cell are meaningless, like point zero kind of stuff. Like that's meaningless in arithmetic. But it's incredibly meaningful if that's not actually a whole number and you got it set up wrong. And now it's dropping information and now everything that you've done as a base – I just thought it was –

I can't stop thinking about that episode. We'll put it in show notes.

AlexI'm so upset. I don't even want to listen to this episode.

MerlinOne of those things you don't want to think about.

AlexThere's that story.

MerlinI don't like saying this. I don't like thinking about it, let alone saying this. But there was a story the other day about somebody who had to have a leg amputated. And they amputated the wrong leg. So now they've got to be amputating both his legs.

AlexAnd do you know what the solution to that is?

Merlinthis has been confirmed by my lady do you know what the solution that is a lot of the time in a

Alexhospital sharpie on whichever one you identify like you actually the ultimate dependable lo-fi solution i didn't know that that literally happened and like i knew about the sharpie thing um because

Merlinthey put it on my hand but that's like that's so tragic i mean shit out of them well yeah he also

Alexlost a goddamn leg yeah i think uh i think it's okay um god so but like you know um yeah this

Merlinsort of like that sort of uh dr drang ish like how how stuff breaks kind of stuff is is is very interesting to me not just for like schadenfreude but for like you know now i feel like i should say it so this tim harford does that show and what is the name of john chidgy's show that i like um i was on his podcast once and it was really fun on his other podcast that's not about engineering john should you get really gets into the weeds he goes very deep on like how this amusement park ride broke and like hurt a bunch of people uh and i want to say the name of it

because you should check his show out too he's on this engineering network i'm scroll okay now okay Alex it's called causality John Chigi show causality put it

Alexin notes recommended but

Merlinsee for example like there's all of these things in overcast I'm using podcast menu on my Mac right now and I've got like dozens of shows that either that are either gone or I don't listen to anymore or I got for one podcast and now it's making my life hard that's the kind of thing I got to clean out my old YouTube playlist clean it out huge scenes clean it out this might be a challenge

Alexclean it out

Merlinwe're almost done here I'm trying to think of some ones I did that are interesting if you want to do this yourself I would say just go search for .csv in spotlight look for anything on your macro similar that has like a huge number of records and you know rows and play with that I didn't find anything super interesting the one with my mail being delivered this is very like I don't know train spotting like you know what i mean like it's one of those like weird you know odd sort of things no i don't

wait okay sorry what is train spot well or like i'm trying to avoid words that we try not to use

Alexin a hurtful way anymore but you know i'm trying to think of what that would be imagine max for

Merlinstill here he'd say it but like it's kind of person who has a lot of trains in the basement but also like it could be bird watching it could be whatever but like nobody needs like i remember of this story there was a this american life about this kind of stuff there was a i feel like a harper's article but about like the guy who's journaled everything in his life for like 60 years he takes the stickers from neat that he bought and puts it into the thing he writes down what the temperature of the weight of the newspaper and the temperature on the front porch and all that kind of stuff and i hate to admit that i see some of myself in that but you know okay so for

example, I use an app for, um, that works with iBeacons and geolocation. It's called, um, I told you about this. It's called, um, GeoFency and GeoFency. You can give it access to your contacts where it'll say like, oh yeah, you spent this much time at the library or Walgreens. You were here, you left. And it's really handy with iBeacons because it'll say like, okay, you were in this room. So I was in the lounge for this, this time. And then this other time I went into our bedroom where there's another iBeacon. And it's, you know, again, sort of like our future of ultrawide. Like It's much more specific.

And I was able to go in and let me see if this has anything good in it. I ran. How many rows is this? That's a lot of rows. There are many. Oh, dear. Okay. This is 3,961 rows.

AlexOh, Lord. Oh.

MerlinSo, like, I should be able to get something out of that. But, like, so, okay. But this, you know, QED, this is the reason that people like Alex and I are like, I don't have a need to do anything with this data. but it might be handy someday to have that accumulated. In this case, I've been using this for probably three, four, five months, like since I got into Home Assistant. And like I say, it's got these thousands of rows. And if it captures like which eye beacon, when did you enter that area, time you entered that area, when did you exit date and time, how many hours were you there, and then it also hours, minutes, seconds, et cetera.

And then it also reports the lat and long of that. So there's a lot that you can do with this that's, I think, potentially pretty interesting. And I'm probably going to be really disappointed now that I'm going to do this. So I'm going to do, for example, location and entry date and see what it offers me. I click on Explore down in the lower right, thinking, thinking, thinking. And of course, it presents, you know, don't, as they like to say on Twitter, don't sleep on this. Just the basic Explore stuff. You've seen this, right, Alex, where it's like, do you want me to format this for you?

AlexDo you want alternating colors?

MerlinBut it automatically created a pivot table.

AlexOkay, that's pretty cool.

MerlinIt automatically is saying, do you want a pivot table of the average of hours for each one of these locations? And you can go in and tweak that.

AlexNormally that drives me crazy, but that's very cool.

MerlinOh, my God. I might be overlooking this. I feel like it's worth saying. The reason this became interesting to me is by dumping in that power usage data for the last few months, it's able to say okay um out of these months of monitoring this i can tell you there is a pattern there's a like a four-point pattern your your usage goes down at this time of day up at this time of day back down generally around this time of day and then back up at that time of day how would how would i go and figure that out without doing a whole bunch of clicking and

dragging and updating and in this instance i can just i can just point to all of that

AlexOh, I just, when I was, I did indeed start this challenge immediately after we stopped recording. uh but i i was just thinking about how essential god i don't i'm such a bummer today um how difficult slash essential it should be to get your data from whatever product or service you use um and i'm i actually you know you have to

download your Twitter archive if you want to do anything special with it. And I thought, because I'd done it once before, and I thought that it was just a straight-up CSV of all of... I think it's a big

Merlinbunch of JSON and whatnot.

AlexYep, I'm looking at it. It has a readme file. You get a zip

Merlinwith all of this stuff.

AlexBut I don't know. I want to put all my tweets somewhere and get them... Oh, every MP4? Wow.

MerlinJason does cool stuff.

AlexThis is, oh, wow. This is so much.

MerlinIt's all in there.

AlexWe'll figure out how to do something. But yeah, no, this is.

MerlinThis trend line on Roderick is not good. So I basically, we've had.

AlexOh, okay. Wait, what is the trend?

MerlinDown. That's okay. I mean, people don't listen to podcasts like they used to.

AlexOh.

MerlinSo starting on September 9th of 2011, never forget, to this week, we've had 420. 426 episodes. You see that number and maybe you don't think about it. And they're like, oh, God, 426 episodes. But the analysis is really cool. Unique downloads versus publication date. So it'll show you, like in this case, like a graph. But then under it says, you know, there are outlying values for unique downloads. It peaks at 53. Well, I shouldn't say what it is because it's not that great. But then unique downloads versus publication date. I mean, it's more than the like 50 people

here right now. But like, show me the outliers in this. And obviously, you could just do min and max to see that kind of stuff. But if you think about multiple columns, it's kind of the dream, you know, to have something that can interpret interesting patterns that you might never see. That's really all. I would say keep playing with this. Next time you come across some big set of

Alexyour own data, just play with this and I think you'll find it fun. I'm almost wondering if I should slash how i would put all of my plain text files and uh i don't know i'm trying to figure out

Merlinwhat would be an interesting thing even for me to do to like take a corpus of like like a not a markov chain but to take a corpus of text of some kind and do something with it you know you're talking about like csvs you're talking about a bigger body of data yeah yeah i don't know no

Alexthis is one of those things where I am excited to actually revisit a challenge in my own, in my own way, because that's, I just realized now that it's usually after we do or either don't do a challenge, like when it, when it's a bit. No, I totally know what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. Like I,

MerlinI was so anxious about how I knew I wouldn't do this properly that I kind of get a mind block. But then afterward I'm like, Oh shit, that's actually kind of cool. You know, I, I would love to do that um you don't even remember when the show is i don't i mean no i know i do the show but like i i we in the moment it's a terrible cognitive error on my part of like we're wrapping up the after show we've entered it into the sheet and i go okay so challenge for next time beep boop boop also we kind of start remembering to put it i added it to the last one but we need to start

Alexremembering to put the next challenge in the thing yeah oh yeah i got it last time don't worry um but

Merlinbut uh but uh but uh but uh what i'm gonna say about that i forget about i space it but then once the pressure's off, I'm like, oh man, that actually is cool. It's like forgetting to go to your high school reunion. What else was I going to say? But I think about stuff like Descript, where Descript has become so important to me, not just because it's how I edit Roderick, edit. That's how I construct Roderick on the line. But it's like, I can't even tell you how often I'm just looking, like, if y'all don't know, so Descript is this thing that creates a transcript,

you basically edit audio and video like a text document. And for us, for all of my shows, it's become so important because guess what I go and search for in the transcript? You ever wonder why I always say we'll put it in notes? Because that means I can now go search for anywhere in notes appears and find everything I said I'd put in notes. I can also search for video, article, link, those kinds of things. I can find all of those. Or anytime I've quietly said title, well, guess what? I'm going to go find most of the places.

Hopefully not too often I said that. But I think something like, using Descript like that, I mean, you must have things like this, Alex. It makes me think differently about how I do stuff now. And even Syracuse does this. Syracuse goes and runs Descript. Syracuse said on a recent episode he'd love to have a way to throw all of his podcasts and be able to find, you know, somebody wants to say, oh, didn't you talk about XYZ on this one episode? to have that all as this big corpus of data that you could query. Like that's kind of the dream. But something like Descript, audio used to be pretty inscrutable

except for onesies, twosies. And now, I don't know. I think that's powerful. It's what enables me to make a supercut of earliest show or a supercut of blank check or a supercut of, you know, the flop house or whatever. It makes it so easy. What's the one I did with you recently? Oh, I sent you, I sent you, oh, the Moana episode. I don't know if you listened to it, But I pulled up the Moana episode of Blank Check and found every instance where almost always Griffin says, consider the coconut.

AlexOkay, you did not. You did it so.

MerlinI said it to you. It's in text. But basically, I can go. I find every instance, consider the coconut. And of course, because it's Griffin, it keeps coming back, you know, in the same way that in RoboCop, he's constantly saying, you know, cancer is a crime. The crime is cancer. RoboCop is the cure. Robert Cop.

You know, those kinds of things. or um yeah just every time that somebody like all the times that david sims goes oh boy i've done i can i'd be happy to share these i've done so many of these every or like i say every time every mouth noise from that over an hour of outtakes from the earliest show like funny bits and mouth noises and then you watch it just i don't know that i think that's powerful that didn't exist a year ago right two years ago and now i think differently because of that tool

there's a world of possibilities that just wasn't accessible before spreadsheets are cool they're

Alexkind of sexy they are because they are the oh but but but what kind of spreadsheet what would you do

Merlinthe google would you go excel it says spread right there in the name

Alexthe

242. Made for Your Heart

Show notes

Transcript

242. Made for Your Heart

Show notes

Transcript

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